A/N: Still dont own RWBY or Highschool DxD, still don't make any money off this. This Breach was brought to you in part by Bring me the Horizons "Parasite Eve"
Blake blinks, slowly, sorely awake.
Probably not a good thing.
Between the train slamming into the wall, and the sounds of fighting surrounding her, it was probably terrible that she was finding it so hard to rouse herself.
"–up!"
Those last few frantic minutes on the train had been rough. They'd managed to get all of the bombs deactivated, thankfully. The one set to separate the engine from what was left of the train had been easy enough. The stack of larger ordnance had taken them right up to the collision.
"Get up, Blake! This is no time for a cat-nap!" She will make Yang pay for her terrible cat puns one of these days...The concern in the blonde's voice almost enough to make up for how rudely she's being woken up. Her ears twitch; there's a lot more background noise than even the rowdiest of mornings in their dorm has ever had. They're probably still in the middle of a fight. Maybe in Vale?
An explosion has the ground shaking underneath her. She opens her eyes enough to see the fuzzy outline of her teammates. Well, most of them. The blonde blur is looming over her, and the face on it looks worried. The black and red smudge is shifting around, one of its noodly things searching its form. Or dancing. The white blur is bouncing between bigger black smears. It has a few bright red splotches on it. That's bad, right?
The red-black cinnamon roll shape pulls a silvery thing out of itself and pushes the worried yellow friend shape to the side and they squawk at each other. They sound angry, and that doesn't feel right. Then a black shadow is over her, and the yellow ooze is a loud golden streak and the dark wrongness is gone. Spoiled noises squawk something worriedly, and the leader-thing chirps back tersely.
Something pricks her arm, and the world snaps into focus.
Blake can feel her eyes widen and pulse hammer in her chest. Her scroll dinging out that her aura is full all but drowns out the hellscape of a battlefield that looks like downtown Vale to her enhanced hearing. Two other angry tones are still blaring out that two of her teammates still have their Auras in the red. Blake's eyes dart to the now-empty hypo-gun in her leader's hand.
An Aura Amp. She shifts to glare up at her leader, ready to tear her a new one for subjecting her to something so risky to her long-term health, when she spots the second empty hypo gun dangling from Ruby's waist.
If the damned witch's brew of a drug is bad for Blake and her potential development, it's even worse for her fifteen year old leader. Blake lets Ruby help her to her feet and drawls Gambol Shroud, keeping its sheathe/cleaver gripped firmly in her off-hand. "Weiss! You're up!"
Blake dashes off towards the heiress, ready to relieve her so Ruby can administer the petite girl's dose of dubiously helpful medicine. "I refuse to let you stick me full of that horrid concoction of chemicals!" She shrieks, a thin, flickering blue Glyph catching a Beowolf's claw before it can rake across her side. She darts under the second Beowulf she is contending with and plunges Myrtenaster up into what would be the ribs and lungs of a natural beast.
Blake launches herself up and over Weiss' Glyph. A golden flare of light and heat springs to life behind her, followed by a deafening roar-just another in a constant symphony really-and three pieces of Deathstalker tail go flying off to her left. One of the two emergency alarms on her scrolls shifts from a pulsing pattern to a solid, deadly tone. Aura depleted. Ruby growls "Yang! What did I say about using your Semblance when you're that low!?" Gambol Shroud slides into the neck of the pinned, half-frozen Beowolf. As the monster starts letting off a fine black mist, Blake uses her blade as a pivot point. A quartet of tracer rounds arc through the apex of her rotation seconds after she clears it.
Her cleaver slams into the mask of a crouching White Fang grunt, spilling him to the ground unconscious. She rolls forward, pulling Gambol Shroud free of the dead Grimm and switching it into its pistol form as she rises to a crouch. She levels it on the next Fang soldier, then immediately checks her barrel upon spotting the bright red cross on his back, and the probably soon to be dead Faunus he's hunched over. Medic. "Weiss, if you don't take your dose, hurt is the best way you'll be leaving this fight." Blake growls at her stubborn, swaying teammate as she puts a burst of fire into the Creep that had been stomping towards the Fang medic.
The heiress pirouettes around a wild slash from another White Fang grunt, elbowing him in the back of the head and knocking him to the ground. Blake cracks her cleaver across his face for good measure as Weiss hops back from a lunging Beowolf's claws and hops away from another terrorist's wild attack. Blake executes the hyper-focused, overextended grim, idly wondering at how the poise and grace her friend moves with on the battlefield doesn't at all translate to the dance floor-that's probably the concussion talking-and letting her Semblance carry her clear of an angry Faunus attempt to gun her down with what looks like a light machine gun.
"I'm fine!" the heiress barks as they find themselves back to back again. Blake catches an Ursa's forearm on her cleaver at the same moment Weiss parries her rapier around a rushing boarbatusks tusks and into its mouth. Weiss spins Myrtenasters revolver. Blake shifts her weight.
A flare of green launches the now dead porcine grimm into the Fang grunt who'd just tried to gun Blake down in the same moment that Blake steps to the side, lowering her cleaver and letting the bear grimm stumble past her. She puts three rounds from Gambol Shroud into the back of its skull. She squints at Weiss, and-lightly-prods the angry red gash of an open wound on her left thigh. Weiss turns to glare at her. Blake's eyes narrow right back. "Do you want to lose that leg?"
The Heiress deflates a bit, and a deafening crack heralds Ruby's arrival moments later, carried on momentum and a shot from Crescent Rose. "Blake, if she argues, hold her down." Grumbling, Weiss sticks her arm out, elbow pointed at their leader. Ruby nods, presses the second-to-last hypo gun she'd been given when they left for their mission to her partner's bicep and pulls the trigger. The last emergency tone blaring out from Blake-and Ruby's- scrolls finally goes silent. Yang flashes past them, barreling into a Beowolf and pulping its skull with a trio of punches, rolling back to her feet and charging ahead into a gaggle of White Fang soldiers breaking for one of the gaps in the rapidly forming cordon.
Weiss looks at the last unused dose of Aura Amp dangling from Ruby's belt. "Do you think Doctor Oobleck will want that last dose?"
Blake side-eyes the Heiress "He's a professor and a professional Huntsman."
Weiss shrugs and nods, accepting her logic without argument. The Professor, however, cuts off Weiss' reply as he steps into line with them. "Who just spent half an hour fighting stolen Atlesian war machines on top of a speeding train, which just crashed." He holds out his left hand, the right idly spinning Antiquity's Roast. "And it would seem that we haven't even gotten halfway through our work for the day yet."
As Ruby hands the professor the last hypo-gun everything goes silent.
Yang punching the hell out of a Beowolf. Weiss being drawn off by a pair of bloodthirsty looking White Fang grunts. The Ursa roaring a bit off to their left. Nothing makes so much as a peep even as the world keeps moving around them. At least until what sounds like a grumpy old man's voice announces where an aid station is being set up loudly enough that she can feel it vibrating her bones.
Weiss blocks one of the Faunus' she's fighting short sword, and catches the second terrorist's sword arm by the wrist. Yang knocks the Beowolf's she is fightings head off.
Oobleck shakes his head and glances towards the direction the announcement had reverberated from. "Why they forced Alabaster to retire is still beyond me." The Faunus who's wrist Weiss is holding, draws a long-knife with his off hand and slams it into Weiss' thankfully protected sternum, eliciting a growl from their leader, who bursts towards her outnumbered teammate in a flurry of rose petals.
Blake tilts her head at the professor, making a curious noise as she switches out Gambol Shrouds standard rounds for some ice dust. "Who's that and why shouldn't he have been put into retirement?"
"A particularly stubborn Huntsman who has a Semblance that, much like Miss Schnee's, is not reliant on the vigor and energy of youth to be combat effective." Her confusion must be pretty clear to see, as the Doctor continues to explain "Imagine Miss Xiao Long charging into battle as an octogenarian, or yourself employing the acrobatics that make your Semblance so useful half a dozen decades from now." She opens her mouth to protest, but the ridiculous mental image the professor had put in her head silences any protest.
"Miss Rose!" The doctor shouts as Ruby bowls over the Fang grunt that had gotten past Weiss' guard, bashing him in the head with the blunt end of Crescent Rose as he falls. "Take your team and meet up with the other students to our left! I'm off to ensure the Aid Station is set up efficiently and well-guarded!" At that, the professor turns and jogs away from the massive hole in the ground, Zwei jogging along at his heel.
_-*R-DxD*-_
Jaune catches a hail of bullets on his shield, crouching just enough to give Pyrrha a clear shot to return fire over his shoulder. Ren darts out from between the two person shield-wall to open the necks of a pair of Beowolves. Pyrrha shifts to her left, and transitions her rifle into its xiphos form just in time to parry a wild slash from a White Fang grunt, and send the Faunus' weapon flying from his hands with a flick of her wrist and semblance.
The White Fang aren't standing and fighting either. They're breaking for gaps in the forming cordon in small groups.
The first Atlesian airship to arrive had been pelted by no less than six rockets and forced to veer off course before it could be knocked from the sky. Nora fires off a grenade from Magnhild, Ren darting back to the relative safety of Jaune and Pyrrha just before the explosive can land. Jaune catches an Ursa's claws on his shield, shifting to his right to allow Ren to pass and better block the bear Grimm's strike. He follows up by taking the Grimm's now immobilized arm off at the elbow.
Ren finishes the Grimm off with a hail of bullets. "We need to try to group up with some of the others." Ren points out as the team starts moving again. Jaune raises his gauntlet-Mandatum, maybe?-and fires off three of the blunt tipped, gravity dust overloaded, kinetic rune enhanced darts, knocking as many scraggly, young looking beowolves to the broken concrete. Pyrrha steps ahead, shifting Miló into its lance form, and lashing out with three swift jabs, lancing through the head of each of the felled Grimm.
A deafening crack erupts from behind them, and a blur of pink and white arcs over them. Pyrrha raises her shield arm, and a light black fog coats Nora for a moment, correcting her course and slowing her just enough that Jaune can hit her with a trio of shock darts. She slams into the ground and a torrent of pink lighting lashes out around her, breaking up the squad of Fang grunts she'd landed in the middle of and clearing their line of sight. "Well, there's Team Coffee." Jaune quips as he, and the rest of JNPR break into a jog.
Further off to their north he can see Sun and Neptune fighting alongside a handful of VSPRD inspectors and a few squads of Atlesian Knights. To their south team RWBY is, almost, to the cordon still being formed and reformed as the fighting continues. A bullhead shrieks overhead, hot on the tail of a manticore, with a trio of nevermore on its tail. A rocket, probably old or homemade lances up towards it, but it can't track the swifter, more agile craft and tags one of the Grimm instead.
A torrent of bullets streak skyward, clearing the tail of the grey-white military craft. "Hey, Juniper." Velvet greets them as they meet up with the other team, having just bounced back towards her partner off of a now dead Ursa's shoulders. Honestly, her cheery voice is more fit for a classroom than a battlefield. At least she's still calm.
Ren rolls his eyes, then nods towards another squad of White Fang grunts making for an unguarded street not too far from them. Yatsuhashi nods and jogs off with the younger Huntsman in training to deal with the terrorists. Hopefully, the eastern side of the now ruined market square is holding up as well as the western and northern seem to be.
"Any idea what caused this?" CFVY's leader asks, her feet planted widely, Gianduja whining and spinning but not currently firing.
Jaune shakes his head as he and Pyrrha fall into a shieldwall again. He pops off a cheap shot at an important looking Fang terrorist. His shirt catches fire, and the grunts rallying around him scatter. And that's all those darts are really good for. Disappointing. "No clue, just got back into Vale."
"Fifty lien says it was Team Ruby." Nora quips as she falls in next to Coco, Magnhild once again in its launcher form. "They were literally in the middle of this mess when we landed."
Coco snorts before replying. "Stupid bet. I don't want to waste the Lien." though she doesn't leave her ready stance to banter. Nora squeezes off a pair of shots from her grenade launcher, scattering a pack of Beowolves accompanied by a handful of Creeps to the ground, Velvet and Fox dashing forward to start finishing off the stunned Grimm. The former snapping necks with harsh axe kicks or stomping in faces with her boots, the latter lopping off limbs and heads with Sharp Retribution.
Off to the right, Yatsuhashi is launching Faunus away from him and back into the market square or nearby walls with broad sweeps of Fulcrum. Ren is darting around the bigger teens attacks, knocking out stunned Faunus with quick, auric enhanced strikes, or driving off any would-be reinforcements for the terrorists with bursts of gunfire.
Between the pair of heavy weapons toting girls behind them, the taciturn boys holding back the nearest group of White Fang fighters, and Fox and Velvet's—The blind boy and Faunus girl both drop to the ground, pulling themselves as flat as they can to the rubble-strewn pavement. A torrent of tracer-fire from Gianduja rips through the air where the more agile members of team CFVY had been fighting.
The efforts the other students are putting in has the flow of Grimm and Faunus making it to Jaune and Pyrrha that they are able to more properly observe the unfolding battlefield. Most worryingly—Pyrrha snaps off a few shots with her rifle, downing a White Fang grunt who had almost made it past Ren and Yatsuhashi.—There is an all but unchecked flow of White Fang fighters and Grimm where the southern section of the cordon should be.
Not a single Huntsman, student, police officer or Atlesian military asset impeding their progress.
Jaune severs the arm of a Beowulf, kicks it to the ground then finishes it off with an armor-piercing dart through the top of its skull. Before he can comment to anyone else about the unsecured southern side of the market square, a massive pulse of Fallen magical power flares to life in the same direction.
Crap.
He shares a glance with Pyrrha before half-shouting to Coco, "Umm, not to leave your team hanging, but mine's gonna have to, stretch our wings if we want anyone to get this mess properly contained."
Coco locks eyes with him over her sunglasses for a beat before she lets off on Gianduja's trigger, allowing Fox and Velvet to rise and dash back to the rest of the group. The brunette spits off to the side. "Go. Get it dealt with, there's help streaming in from all over the city by now so we'll be fine." Jaune nods, and lets out a sharp, piercing whistle, grabbing Ren's attention as the rest of his Peerage starts moving towards an alleyway entrance. Ren is hot on their heels as Pyrrha starts leading them through the warren of dirty, ill maintained and seldom used back paths that hadn't been entirely destroyed as the Kingdom had modernized.
Apparently, the police, or at least some of the precinct chiefs that Pyrrha has been contracting with have a map of the veritable maze of alleyways that they keep to themselves for department use. She might not have many favors left after today, but those maps, and some of the other knowledge she's formed pacts for would still be useful for years to come, Jaune figures.
They eventually spill out onto a four-way intersection maybe three blocks from the hole in the ground that's probably still spewing Grimm and Terrorists.
They'd passed as many people rushing towards the combat zone as they had fleeing it. A lot of them Faunus, more than a few in groups with a suspicious amount of bags and packs, but enough in white clothes or by themselves that they can do anything about the very real chance that a lot of them are likely terrorists fleeing the scene. Pyrrha leads them back onto the main road a few blocks away from where the southern edge of the cordon should be. The alleyway entrance is a block from a far less idyllic four-way intersection.
Nearly all of the buildings near the intersection are showing signs of damage, the ones on the corners all with gaping holes in their front walls, fire or smoke billowing out. Some have shattered windows, others walls are splattered with steaming oil or glistening blood.
The only living beings present are a dozen black winged figures. All of them clad in charcoal gray kosodes hanging open to display brightly polished breastplates, and wide-cuffed hakamas, a wide crimson sash wrapped around each of their waists. Over every heart that can be seen a blade crafted from flame is proudly emblazoned in the same crimson as the sash's. Each Fallen's hands are filled with a different Light Blade, each in a separate shade of sunset.
At their feet is a tall mound of bodies, some in Atlesian uniforms, others in Vale Police Department blues or VSPRD black. A handful in the bright regalia of Huntsmen and Huntresses, and even more simple civilian garb. All of them dirty, bloodied and entirely too still. A good number of the new model of Atlesian Knights are mixed in, and even more bodies are strewn about the space leading to and from the intersection.
Jaune feels anger spike in his chest, and with a flash he lets his bat-like wings unfurl. Three more loud flaps let him know the rest of his Peerage had done the same, he could practically taste his friends' anger, outrage and naked animosity.
Another pulse and the blade in his gauntleted fist is no longer a plain arming sword. An ivory hilt that had shifted to be a perfect fit for his palm the first time his Sacred Gear had let him unlock the magic weapons true potential, gold leafed laurel wreath guard gently curving away from the gladius blade and his hand, the similarly decorated eagle perched on the pommels talons no longer digging into his sword-hands flesh thanks to the gauntlet Ruby had helped him craft. The gladius' pattern welded steel blade-colloquially Damascus pattern on Earth-is glinting in the early evening light, 'SQPR' proudly etched into its wide fuller in big, blocky letters running from its guard to its tip.
A second set of wings, the same size as the first spring from the back of the murderous fuck that has been wearing a kid named Sky's skin since the start of the semester. The bastard is actually grinning at him.
"So, this is where our rivalry ends then." Jaune growls out.
The Fallen nods back at him. "A shame that Cardin will lose our bet. He thought you and Nikos would have managed to fornicate at least once before we ended you." He reaches under his breastplate to grasp the amulet maintaining his illusory form. "Such a waste. If you had just laid down and died like a proper animal when we first clashed, the trash I've been impersonating, and the artifact that l had to waste to do so would still be exploitable." He tears the chain from his neck, and bends down to wrap it-the amulet and what looks to be some sort of paper charm around the neck of what looks like a homeless kid, if the filthy clothes and emaciated frame are anything to go by. "The artifact, of course, was worth more than the servant." He adds, eliciting a chorus of chuckles from the other Fallen gathered around him. In a flash, a sunset orange jian of light flashes to existence in his now empty hand. He draws the blade across the kid's neck as he rises.
A dark blue pseudo-mullet shifts to a jet black top-knot. Expressive brown eyes become beady golden orbs. Broad shoulders and a wide face become wiry cords of steel and a hard aristocratic beak-nosed facade. Suriel twitches his wings as the street-orphan kid at his feet breathes his last, completing an inverse of the conversion into the corpse of the young man Suriel had left hanging to rot impaled on a tree branch in the Emerald Forest months ago.
Jaune's hand tightens around the grip of his sword. "Deal with the chaff. Suriel's mine."
_-*R-DxD*-_
Cinder watches Arc and his Devil servants jog off in the direction of Suriel's team. Not long after, the Silver-Eyed Runt and her team break away to follow them. She suppresses the urge to sigh. She makes a mental note to factor in how eager starry-eyed children and would-be heroines are to stick their nose in everyone else's business moving forward.
Ugh, tiresome.
"Emerald, it seems two of our teams of interest may be in a position to derail our, accelerated plans. Be a dear, and make sure they remain as close to the original as possible." She purrs just loudly enough to be heard over the din of battle. There are enough students and agents of the kingdoms nearby that thinning out her numbers won't cause her too much trouble.
Emerald bounds away from the two halves of the Ursa she had been dealing with and to Cinders side, shifting Thief's Respite back to a pair of revolvers. "You need me to help out Suriel, Cinder?" She asks, eyes battle-hardened yet full of a puppy-like eagerness to please, while her posture screams that she doesn't want to leave her mistress' side.
Oh, Emerald, never change. So broken, so easy to manipulate.
Cinder begrudgingly draws the Old Bastard's sword. She is loath to admit she still has it after all this time, let alone wield it. However, both Midnight and her Semblance are too likely to be noticed by certain individuals. She would rather not place herself in a situation where they could connect too many dots, or have reason to look too closely at her cover story. The role of an, at best, average fighter who relies on tactical prowess to succeed as a leader isn't the face she had wanted to wear, but for the penultimate act of her master plan, she'll do what she must. "Only if it looks like he will start telling secrets or fall too quickly. It has been made abundantly clear that he is not the highest ranking member of his branch of our organization in Vale." As her uplifted urchin begins scanning the roofline, she adds "If it does become necessary for you to intervene, be certain to let me know before you engage."
Emerald nods, before shifting her weapon into its kusarigama configuration and using them to pull herself up to the nearest rooftop. She tags a handful of White Fang expendables from her incredibly visible perch on the roof, before bolting off in the general direction the meddlers and Devils had gone. Sanvi had been a simpering, petty ball of anger, and the plan is better with her gone. Suriel is more skilled and powerful, but spiteful and narcissistic in the extreme. Hopefully, Arc will deal with him, and his superior will prove to be a worthwhile ally.
Not that she's holding her breath...
Positioned where they are closer to the northern edge of the square than the eastern, she can see around the smoke and rubble to the western edge. Up until that fat ignoramus Port had arrived with a dozen Valean Auric Commandos and a pair of Specialist teams in tow a few minutes ago, the White Fang's more veteran and cultish second wave had been blasting holes in the so-called defenders of Remnant's attempts to contain the tide of Grimm and thrust of the Revolutionary fools. He almost looks dashing, suit-jacket hanging open, typically immaculate hair out of place, matted with sweat and blood. The fact that he isn't doubled over panting, and is still at the forefront of the efforts to contain what certainly looks like a catastrophe is proof enough that there is muscle underneath the outer layer of blubber.
Hopefully he'll fall here. It would make the next phase of her plan run so much more smoothly.
A particularly strong Faunus nearly leverages her sword out of position as she parries his sloppy slash, forcing her attention back to the fight at hand. Speaking of sloppy, Rhodes would probably still be taller and physically stronger than her were he alive. Because of that simple fact, sis sword is a touch too long and heavy for her to effectively wield, despite her initial training having been with the very same weapon. She grunts, partly from the exertion of trying to regain the control she had ceded to observe the battle at large, and partly in frustration. If she had her weapon, or both of her followers, she wouldn't have to lower herself to fight these cretins. "Mercury!" She barks out. What good is dumb muscle if it isn't where it should be when you need it?
"A little busy here!" He shouts back. She spares a glance in his direction just in time to see him flip up onto his hands to lash out with half a dozen kicks at the white-uniformed Faunus surrounding him. Three fall, but one of the ones still standing recovers quickly enough that Mercury is forced to catch his wrist to block a wild jab when he lands back on his feet, instead of keeping up his assault.
A charcoal and black blur barrels past her and into the musclebound Faunus she is currently attempting to deal with. A disproportionately large gout of flame erupts from the one-armed, trench-coat-clad figure, an open palm made of flame emblazoned proudly on the back of the coat. He tilts his head over his shoulder, tousled black hair, keen amber eyes and firm features that would probably have her legs turning to jelly were she actually the schoolgirl she is playing the part of to infiltrate Beacon. "Need a hand?"
He bumps the pommel of his Jian on his hip, ejecting a minuscule dust phial from its guard and slap a fresh one into the chamber. Oh but she does recognize him, even if he isn't on her list of potentially troublesome junior Huntsmen to observe and, if needed, eliminated before the final phase of her plan. She desperately wants to tear into the glory-hound constantly hounding Nikos from the second or third podium place, but that would be a break from character. "The assistance is appreciated."
"Raye Huoyan." He introduces himself, letting a ghost of a smile cross his face. Great, a battle-flirter.
She snaps her late failure of a mentor's blade off to the side, effectively stopping a slash this time, before flowing into a neat parry that lets her elbow the faunus that had attacked her in the temple, crumpling him to the ground. "Cinder Fall." She pauses, blocks another rushing Faunus' wild strike-bantering like this from a pair of students driving the fanatics especially wild-and kicks him in the groin, dropping a second in nearly as many of the units of time. "Not that someone as famous as yourself needs an introduction." She demurs, biting back the bile rising to the back of her throat.
He predictably puffs up at that (men and their egos), and lashes out with his Jian, a wide arc of flame buffeting back half a dozen white-uniformed Faunus. Definitely an enhancement-type Semblance. Not useful for the finals, but, perhaps...
"Quit flirting and fight, Huoyan!" A second new voice shouts, drawing her attention to where an almost obnoxiously tall, deeply tanned man is flowing around Mercury's near-chaotic kick heavy combat style as much as he is the gaggle of militant Faunus the pair are fighting, hooked falchions chattering away seemingly at random with sub-machine-gun fire. Each burst, however, tags a Grimm or Faunus.
"Hey! Knowing your allies is important in a fight as chaotic as this one!" Raye barks back, voice almost calm despite the heat behind it. "That's Onyx Paasang, by the way."
"I follow the tournaments. I know who both of you are." Cinder informs him. Mercury taps his temple, eyes, then shrugs when she makes eye contact with him. A potential precognitive Semblance? She could certainly work around that with a pair of illusionists on her 'team'. "That's you and your partner, where is the rest of your team?"
The pale-skinned tournament fighter levels a straight kick into the sternum of another fanatic, downing him in one go. He recovers his side-on, one armed stance as he falls into place beside her and shrugs his shoulder. "Berg's Semblance is too useful to not have him at the aid station stitching people back up. And Aub's better on lookout than a straight up fight, so the Pro we were shadowing took them there and pointed us at the Grimm. What about yours?"
The mute Torchwick uses to shield his own moral foibles is hopefully keeping the cigar-smoking irritant safe before he's taken into custody, and her obsessed pickpocket is off ensuring that a subversive action against the kingdom Cinder is complicit in and had approved is successful. "If I knew I'd tell you. They constantly bite off more than they can chew and need me to save them. I'm worried sick to tell you the truth." She lies, a waver in her voice selling it easily.
He cuts another almost grin at her. "We'll need to clean this mess up quickly, so we can find them, then, won't we?"
Annoying, but potentially useful.
_-*R-DxD*-_
Weiss can feel her chest starting to heave as she runs behind Ruby, Blake and Yang working just as hard as she is to keep up with their leader's periodic use of Petal Burst.
Yes, Team JNPR breaking away from the fighting, and leaving Team CFVY to cover even more ground by themselves is troubling.
Yes, they had technically abandoned the soldiers and VSPRD officers that they had been fighting alongside as well–Ruby had at least explained things to the Investigator leading the VSPRD squad.
And yes, running off to potentially save the team led by a Devil right after working with her and Ruby's recently made 'Hero' acquaintances is probably trying to have their cake and eat it too.
All that said, no one will ever be able to claim that the Huntresses of Team RWBY are willing to leave their 'sister team' to fend for itself during a crisis of this magnitude. Ruby mutters something about all the scared people as they break out of the warren of back alleys Pyrrha had inexplicably led her team through–and proceeded to lose team RWBY in–and back out onto the main roadway. Weiss shares a knowing glance with Blake, there's no telling how many of the Faunus 'fleeing' the Breach are actually White Fang radicals infiltrating the city.
They round a corner just in time to see Jaune, standing at the head of Team JNPR, who are arrayed against a dozen...Vulture Faunus? With Sky Lark, of all people, at their head, standing atop a… Mound of corpses and broken Atlesian military hardware. Weiss and her teammates stumble at the sight–and stench–of it all, stopping several meters away from the encounter. Their young leader's hands noticeably trembling.
Before their group could rally themselves, Jaune unfurls his Devil wings as Sky drawls something at him.
Blake is, understandably, brought up short. "What…? Jaune's a Faunus? But how can he…?" Her blonde partner is struck speechless. Truly, a momentous occasion. A shame that this is no time to celebrate.
Ruby, quick on the uptake, looks to Weiss, uncertain understanding writ large across her face. "Weiss…?"
Jaune growls a response, and with a now familiar heat-haze shimmer Crocea Mors shifts from the arming sword she knows it to be, into an absolutely gorgeous gladius, that hurts her eyes and fills her chest with a sense of dread more and more as she lets her eyes rest on it. Ren, Nora and Pyrrha manifesting Devil wings as well is enough to tear her gaze away from her friend's sword. Sky responds by unfurling a second set of wings.
What...?
"Weiss…!" Ruby urgently tugs at her sleeve as she leans in close enough to whisper into her ear. "Juniper are...Those guys, I think they have black angel wings…!"
[[If you require any more proof, there are a handful of Devils and Fallen Angels going around your campus, and not being terribly subtle about it.]]
Ohh….
"Umm, Blake? What kind of Faunus has two sets of wings?" Yang dryly asks. To anyone that hadn't spent the last few months living with her, it wouldn't sound panicked at all. Weiss, unfortunately, knows better.
Whatever Weiss was going to say dies on her lips as the Fallen Angel tears an amulet from his neck with a taunt about when Jaune should have died–hadn't Ravel told her the Three Way War was over?–and sounding more upset over the loss of the artifact in his fist than the loss of a life. His cronies proceed to laugh and jeer like the demons or monsters from some sort of fantasy novel or movie.
When Not-Sky wraps the amulet around the neck of a child and cuts its throat open, Ruby flinches with a whimper. Yang, ever the big sister grips her shoulders supportively. Not that the blonde seems any better off. Neither are she or Blake, truth be told.
Team JNPR seem just as appalled with Not-Sky's actions as Weiss and her teammates. Some Devils, apparently possess a moral compass comparable to humans at least. Ravel and Jaune hadn't lie to her about that, thankfully. Conversely, they seem almost used to this level of blood and gore, lending an uncomfortable level of credence to Jeanne and Connla's description of their species as well. Jaune bites out a command, and both sides explode into motion.
Nora doesn't even draw Magnhild from her back, shoulder checking one of the Fallen Angels hard enough that he slams into the wall a dozen feet behind him, dazed by the impact. Ren hops back as a set of twins rush at him, both wielding wicked looking burnt umber broadswords. The first lunging at the taciturn teen, who simply holds his palm up, the light sword dissipating as it makes contact with his skin. Ren's eyes are alight with power as he snakes his arm along his first foe's now empty appendage and the limb it is attached to, shifting him aside and allowing Ren to step past the brunette Fallen Angel and directly inside the guard of the Fallen's longer-haired twin. Ren places his right hand on the left shoulder of the angel he is now face-to-face with, the arm attached to it drawn back for what would have been a powerful sweep moments ago. As Ren retracts his trailing arm from the stumbling Fallen behind him, a tarnished silver patina of energy lances through the Fallen's shoulder, causing him to scream in pain, his blade dissipating as Ren shoves him to the ground by the now wounded shoulder.
A vibrant amber arrow lances through where Ren had been, nearly hitting the wounded Fallen as the Remnant native rolls forward and away from the Angel he had just wounded, bashing his elbow into the prone Angel's sternum as he goes. A trio of rifle rounds reply to the attempt to shoot Ren, Pyrrha confidently striding towards the black-winged archer, Miló in its rifle form, her wings twitching with each step and shot as she advances on the Fallen.
Ruby tries to take action. "We...We should–" The youngest girl chokes on whatever it was she'd meant to say.
At the same time, Nora lifts a dumpster from a nearby alley and smashes the Fallen she had shoulder-checked into the wall with it, viscera exploding outwards from the crater she had left in the wall. The dumpster clatters to the concrete with a deafening clang and rattle, and moments later the burnt, hole-filled wall behind it collapses backwards as Nora turns to finally draw Magnhild.
Ruby dry heaves beside Weiss, Yang rubs her half-sister's back in a redoubled effort to provide comfort as much as receive it. Blake isn't trying to hide her rapid breathing or panic. Her eyes, however, seem to be somewhere else entirely, despite them still being glued to the gory scene playing out before them.
Not-Sky is laughing maniacally as he duels Jaune, both of them moving almost too quickly for Weiss to follow. "Perfect! Not only do I finally get to kill the Devils that have been infesting Beacon without going against my orders today, but I'll be able to replace at least one of the useless drones on what was supposed to be my elite cadre of Huntsmen AND kill the meddlesome little twats that nearly ruined our infiltration of the CCT Tower!"
Weiss had almost recovered, and was ready to do something about her friends being caught up in a life or death battle right before her eyes, before the Fallen Angel had dropped that bombshell. Now her feet refuse to respond again, and dread is clenching at her chest. Looking at Jaune's opponent more closely, that top-knot IS familiar...She and Ruby had tried to go toe-to-toe with this?
"Shut up and fight!" Jaune snarls as he launches into a furious counter-attack, the most hideous shriek Weiss has ever heard draws her attention to her left. Pyrrha, now wielding a xiphos in her blade hand, has her off hand held up, palm flat and faced away from her. A few small tongues of deep crimson flame flickering on the appendage, a charred corpse with those same flames, flickering to an impossible acid-purple and almost as hard to look at as Jaune's sword clinging to the freshly dead Fallen. A manhole cover zips past the Invincible Girl–Devil?–and decapitates the Fallen that had been maintaining some sort of shield between himself and his twin. As the corpse falls, and the sound of Ruby vomiting further worsens the acrid stench of the intersection–charred flesh and fresh viscera already layering over the cloying corpse stench hanging in the air–Stormflower's fusillade of bullets rip into the now unprotected Fallen.
"You know, every time you let me cut you that's just bringing you that much closer to your new fate, Suriel." Jaune growls as he and the four-winged Fallen lean into each other, blades locked. To the dueling pair's right, a slender Fallen is dancing around Nora and a mountain of a dark skinned man. The former trying to trip Nora up, or strike her weak spots with a rapier while the latter is going blow-for-blow with her wielding a blindingly bright crimson bastard sword. To the blond's left Ren is trying to duel with a shapely black-winged woman wielding a pair of long-knives. Both of the close quarters combatants darting around each other and scoring dozens of superficial hits. Unfortunately, she is supported by a string-bean of an Angel jabbing over his allies' shoulders and in-between Ren's guard with an amber naginata of light.
"You speak of fate as if it has any bearing on one such as myself, Devil scum." Suriel sneers back at Jaune. At least 'witty' banter isn't much different between supernatural beings. Weiss notes, reflexively trying to find any measure of normalcy she can from that from the debacle playing out before her.
Jaune breaks the blade-lock for long enough to level the gauntlet Ruby had helped him make in Nora's general direction. Weiss thinks he must have missed, as the darts look like they are going to hit his teammate. When arcs of electricity start playing across the ginger Devil's skin, Weiss knows that Jaune's aim had been spot on. "Habriel! Make sure the humans don't escape!" Suriel barks as he slashes at Jaune's torso. The blond catches the blade of light on his shield as the polearm-armed Fallen Angel backs away from Ren and starts advancing on Team RWBY. The taciturn teen is the first to notice that Team RWBY is in his enemy's path, fear and surprise briefly flashing across his face before he tries to disengage from his ongoing duel, to move towards them, but the other knife-wielder doggedly pursues him, preventing any intervention.
Pyrrha shifts to kick one of the arming-sword and shield of light-equipped Angels that she had been fighting to send a gout of that impossible, eye-hurting flame at the tall Fallen Angel now advancing on Weiss and her teammates, an unhinged glee in his crimson eyes and sharp-toothed grin. A pillar of white-to-yellow flame intercepts Pyrrha's attack, and a second lances out from the now seemingly unarmed Angel that had been standing near Pyrrha and the two Angels she had been battling. The Invincible Girl rolls away from the attack, which, instead of slamming into the shield of the Fallen that had been behind her–relative to the flame-wielder–angles off of the defensive tool to slam into Pyrrha, causing her crimson Aura to flare brightly from the hit. She bounds to her feet and is–barely–able to attack the third Fallen seemingly tasked with locking her down before he can lash out at her. He still blocks her blow.
Pyrrha briefly glances over towards where Team RWBY is frozen in place on the side of the battlefield. Her face locked in a mask of apologetic sadness and slight shame as she takes in Weiss and her teammates' distressed, frightened and mildly revolted features. "Jaune!"
The team leader leans back, Suriel's blade still pressed into the Devil's shield, and levels his gauntlet at the Fallen that is now nearly within striking distance of the still petrified team of Huntresses-in-Training. He doesn't seem any happier than his teammates that Weiss and her team are present. If anything, he seems more upset than his team, and protective of Team RWBY as well, going by the naked rage now playing across his face.
A sickening squelch breaks Weiss' train of thought.
A dart explodes out of the front of the Fallen's skull, showering the young Huntresses with shards of skull, blood and gray matter. The Heiress freezes in place, stomach roiling from the stench as much as she is from the sticky, hot gore now trickling down her face.
Yang and Blake violently recoil.
Ruby screams as she scrambles to wipe the carnage from her face and person.
Arc winces for a fraction of a heartbeat at the sight of his friend's reaction to what he had just done, before he snaps back towards the Fallen Angel leader, and slams his blade into the raven haired Angel's breastplate, sending him skidding away from Jaune.
A pink flare draws Weiss' terrified attention from the too-still, mostly headless corpse mere inches from her feet to Nora's fight. She is just in time to see the ginger girl's hammer slam into the more agile of her opponents chest with a burst of pink lightning, and see, for one terrible moment, the Fallen Angel become a frozen statue. Then Magnhild continues through the dead Angel, reminding Weiss that the human body does not freeze evenly. Icy shards of skin and flesh scatter, slushy blood from further in mixed in with and spraying away from Nora's singular blow. Organs, blood and intestines from the center of the formerly living being getting just as much distance as the frozen shards.
The ginger Huntress-in-Training notices her sister-team's reactions to, well, everything and grimaces. "Well, crap." Is all she says, but the bombastic girl's expressive nature expresses how she feels about the situation far more clearly than her nearly panicked exclamation would for a more reserved person. Her remaining opponent catches her strikes backswing on the flat of his blade and snarls down on her. Not moving so much as an inch from the strike's momentum, flinching from the vestiges of electricity that play over him, or acknowledging the hoarfrost impossibly forming on his light sword.
Jaune and Suriel skid away from each other, Crocea Mors ringing from the power behind the most recent exchange of blows, and the Fallen Angel's light blades flickering as he manifests fresh weapons. The top-knotted marauder leers at Weiss for a moment, his gaze making her feel more unclean than the dirt and gore now covering her body had, and twisting her gut with fear.
"Your friends will serve excellently as collateral. Deciding which of them will die first while you watch helplessly from your knees will be a delightful way to cap off my evening." The Fallen cackles, sending a chill down Weiss' spine. With everything she has learned over the last few months, she knows full well that Team JNPR is the only thing standing between her team and an especially bloody end. The Fallen leader then manifests a second jian of light and launches himself at the blond Devil.
_-*R-DxD*-_
Sun dances around an Ursa Major's swiping claws.
They'd gotten shuffled off to the right along the cordon again. The Grimm growls then lunges at him, a perfect chance to, well, punch it in the kidney with Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang and fire. The oversized Grimm's lunge halts just long enough for Sun to drop into a backroll, the scarred bear-Grimm's retaliatory bite missing him completely. He returns to his feet with his weapon snapped back into its bo-staff form, ready to crack it against the now overextended Grimm's neck.
A massive orange cleaver of a sword decapitates the monster before he has a chance to. "Well done." The hulking, armored Huntsman in training compliments Sun as he shifts back to a more solid stance. 'Desperately trying to avoid the attacks of a Grimm that more than doubles your weight' isn't exactly conducive to great form. Sun glances around, there are a lot of student teams, or pieces of them, scattered around this section of the cordon now. The soldiers, police and professional huntsmen and huntresses had been herding the students towards the eastern end of the cordon for, well, since they had started showing up in decent numbers.
Sun glances something rapidly approaching out of the corner of his eye and hops back, a Nevermore feather the size of his torso digging into the concrete where he had been standing. Moments later a stream of bright-orange tracer fire lances skyward, followed shortly by a pained shriek momentarily piercing the din of battle. "Yatsuhashi." The big guy introduces himself, heaving his sword up onto his shoulder and starting to jog towards the nearest clump of students and Grimm fighting.
"Sun. Aren't you... on…?" Sun lets his greeting towards the larger upper-classman trails off when he spots his dense horndog of a partner sidled right up next to the R.A. from team RWBY's floor of the freshman dorm hall. And he has his 'flirty' face on. At least he's helping the beret-clad Huntress-in-Training with fire support while he makes a fool of himself. A second teen, this one deeply tanned with dark red hair and milky-white eyes falls into step with them. The monkey-tailed Faunus pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation, and quickly moves to clear up any budding problems before things can get any more out of hand than a massive hole in the ground spewing Grimm and terrorists. "I apologize for my partner's actions. He's a moron." The new guy smirks, and, oddly enough, the girl who Sun is pretty sure is his team leader, and current victim of Neptune's bad timing and inability to read body language or take hints relaxes a bit.
"Coco can handle herself. It's fine." The blind guy answers, then they are stuck in the pack of Grimm, and too busy to do much talking. It's mostly Beowolves, but also probably the tenth or eleventh pack of the things he's had to help deal with since the giant hole in the ground had opened up. Sun does his best to keep his momentum up, keeping his body moving and bo staff spinning and striking.
Flip over slashing claws, staff as a counter balance. Crack the overextended monster on the back of its skull. Use the leverage to propel himself away from snapping jaws. Spin low under the mangled bone club an Alpha has instead of a paw and claws, sweep its feet out from under it.
Sun leaps away from that gaggle of the pack, flipping mid-air, ready to separate his weapons to pepper the Grimm with buckshot and hope some stay down. He freezes for half a breath when he sees the slender upperclassman run one of his punch-daggers through the base of skull of the first Beowolf Sun had put off balance; before shifting to his right to open the throat of the one Sun had sent stumbling by avoiding its clumsy attack. The bigger upperclassman jams his massive blade through the prone Alpha, before looking up to Sun and offering him a nod.
Sun recovers, tucking his feet up into his chest and leaning back. Once his head is pointing towards the ground, he lashes out with both feet, accelerating his spin. When his upper torso is almost pointed skyward again, he picks a target before throwing his back towards the ground, and letting his bo-staff slip down so that he is just barely gripping its butt, putting all of his strength into swinging the weapon. The tip of it crashes into the back of the skull of the Beowolf he had chosen, launching the beast away from him and rocketing him forward. As he flows through the air, he spots a squad of Atlesian soldiers in clean uniforms stepping forward to allow a tattered, dirty and tired looking squad back away from the combat zone.
Sun can hear the confused, angry yelping and growling as the grim he'd hit crashes into the rest of the pack while he tucks his body back in on itself, separating Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang as he rolls along the ground. As he comes out of his landing he briefly skids up onto one knee and extends both barrels of each half of his weapon outward,either arm leveled at a separate Beowolf's head. All four barrels bark, removing the lupine Grimm's heads in a splatter of bone shards and black, mucky viscera.
The recoil throws Sun's arms behind him and launches him back into another somersault. For the brief moment he is inverted, he can see Yatsuhashi and-Fox, was it?-ripping through the pack of Grimm he had thrown into chaos nearly effortlessly. With a satisfying click he reassembles his bo-staff and, once again using a Grimm as a springboard-a one-legged Creep this time-launches himself forward. A shot from one of his weapons' exposed barrels finishes the Grimm off, and stabilizes his flight. He crashes into the back of a young looking Ursa that had been sneaking up on his partner with a flying kick, sending it to the ground, and buying him enough time to get in a half-spin to put momentum behind his staff. He snaps the Grimm's neck and has his feet touch the ground between his partner and the leader of the upperclassman team. "Hey, Nep, how's the fight going?"
Neptune shrugs, still wearing his 'flirty' grin. "Oh, you know, blasting Grimm, making an impression. The usual." Fox and Yatsuhashi barrel past the stationary trio. Heading off a trio of Ursa that had been loping towards where a team of pros is relieving a haggard looking quartet of students in dirty, bloody and tattered Haven uniforms.
Sun winces as he sees a hulking, bare-chested, blonde-maned Faunus crash into a group of VPD officers, swinging wildly with his kanabo further down the line. A snarling mask covering his face completely, and enough feathers set into his mane that Sun almost hadn't been able to pick the big guy's hair color out at first. A dozen plainly uniformed White Fang dart through the hole in the line as the bigger, more fanatical Faunus roars a challenge to the half-dozen VSPRD officers that start advancing on him almost immediately after he created the gap, riot-shields raised, shotguns braced and ready. "Sounds great. That means you're focused on the fight, not flirting, right?"
"Dude."
"Thank you. This idiot yours?" A velvety smooth voice asks over the whir of her miniguns electric motor and from under a black beret and behind her stylish sunglasses.
Sun nods, scanning the chaos around them for any approaching Grimm or terrorists. "Yup. Neptune's my partner. Pretty cool, but, well, today's been stressful and everyone copes differently, right?"
"DUDE!"
A cute rabbit Faunus who Sun's pretty sure is on the R.A.–Coco's?–team bounds back to the small group. "I reeaally hate to break this up, but we've got more Grimm incoming." Sun looks in the direction she had bounded from the see a massive Ursa Major slumping towards them, overly long, shovel-like claws dragging on the ground, long knife-like fangs protruding from the pronounced snout protruding from beneath its bone-mask. Off in the distance behind them, closer to the gaping hole in the ground, he spots a Faunus with a red cross on his mask dragging a trio of injured, mask-clad Faunus back towards the hole.
Wind buffets the quartet of students, first pulling back away from the hole still spewing Grimm and White Fang radicals, before it starts twisting. It accelerates for a moment, before all goes still, and a wild purple-white, slowly shifting lash of energy washes over the Ursa-led pack of Grimm the rabbit-Faunus had just leapt back from, leaving nothing but ash in its wake.
All four students shift to look behind them, and are greeted by the sight of Chief Gol Drak advancing towards the breach, left hand extended towards where the Grimm had been, smoke rising from the limb, his left hanging loosely at his side, oversized shot-tonfa gripped firmly in his fist. Behind him are a quartet of VSPRD inspectors, their eclectic mishmash of different pieces of law-enforcement uniforms given a sense of uniformity by the Captain's bars on each of their shoulders and different choices of head-wear. Behind them are perhaps a dozen more behind them with sergeant's chevrons. "Ch-chief Drak, sir!" Sun greets the burly, light blond and utterly furious looking Chief of Vale's Auric-enhanced police forces.
He shoots a glare back at him, ice blue eyes hard, the streaks of gray in his hair adding to the severity of his expression. "What are you doin' here, Wukong?" His voice leaving no room for anything shy of a plain, concise response.
He blinks and steps back as the Captain's continue striding forward, drawing or leveling their weapons as they do so, The other Inspectors behind them filling the gaps as they fan out. "I, umm, well, my partner and I were shadowing Inspector Brown when this all started. He told us to help with containment while he worked on keeping civilians away from the combat zone."
The Chief nods. "Good job then. You and your partner are relieved now. Get back to the Aid Station."
"But–"
"What'd I tell you before you left my Headquarters with Inspector Brown yesterday?" Drak cuts him off, gaze still harsh, tone as much judgemental as it is questioning.
Sun shuffles around a bit. The Chief really can make you feel two feet tall when he wants to. Without factoring in his towering height. "Thin ice. Sir."
He nods. "So listen before I have to get the Headmasters involved." At that, he strides past Sun, clearly aiming to get back to the front, center of his department's contribution to getting things back under control.
Stubborn, cranky set-in-his-ways old man...
"I saw White Fang medics pulling their wounded back to the Breach! I think they have some way to escape down there yet!" Sun all but shouts, desperately hoping the Chief doesn't skip straight to punishment.
Getting expelled for trying to help would be lame as hell.
Drak pauses, and pulls his scroll from his pocket. A low, sonorous tone bleats out from all four of the gathered student's scrolls. He grunts, before half-shouting "Captain Kysh, modification to your orders. Any students over sixty percent aura who haven't taken an Auric Amp are to be given access to our reserve of Aura-restrictive cuffs and set to work rounding up any downed White Fang. Once the immediate area is clear they are to report to the Aid Station."
He shifts to glance at Sun over his shoulder. "Good catch, kid."
_-*R-DxD*-_
Cardin is dripping sweat inside his armor.
He swings The Executioner at the fanatic freak of an animal standing in front of him. Bastard catches it with one hand and twists his mace down and to the left until its head hits the concrete. Russel springboards off of the Ursa he had just finished off to latch onto the Faunus' back. He crosses his ankles around the animal's bare chest, and interlocks Shortwings under his neck, putting almost all of his weight on the Faunus throat. The Faunus stumbles back, losing his grip on Cardin's mace, counterpunch barely scraping Cardin's armor instead of thundering into his sternum again. Hooves clatter on the broken pavement as the animal reaches over his back to try to dislodge the smaller human.
Cardin crashes The Executioner into the Faunus' hip, toppling him to the ground, and allowing Russel to lock in a rear naked properly. Cardin glances around. Still no sign of the Professional Huntsmen his and Ryse's teams had linked up with. They'd ran off towards the south to try to close up the cordon, a while ago. The two students' teams had been getting pushed further and further north since then. The damn Faunus sprint past them headed towards the slowly setting sun as often as they stop to fight.
A javelin darts past his face, and buries itself in a Creep off to Cardin's right. It shimmers out of existence as the Grimm goes still, and back into the hand of one of the two girls on the team what's left of his has been fighting beside for a while now. "The hell is everyone else!?" Cardin bellows after pausing to catch his breath.
Three more Faunus dart past them, a fourth with a maw of razor-sharp teeth–still in his white uniform jacket and mask–tackles the purple-mohawked rooster faunus on the other team, pushing the students rifle-axe up above his head with one hand, grinning as he uses his other to press a hand-canon under the teenagers chin, slowly pulling back the hammer as he pushes the students head back until his skull touches concrete.
The wiry bleach-blonde leader of the birds team hooks his arm under the terrorists gun-hand, twists and launches him across his back towards Cardin. He is just able to tag the bastard, launching him towards Dove, who side-steps the Faunus, letting him slam into the wall and slump over, instead focusing on the pair of Beowolves hounding him. "If I knew, I'd be leading us to them, Winchester!" the shorter team leader shouts, red faced and sweating as well.
He offers his down teammate his free hand, Rapier gripped firmly in his left hand, handgun having run out of ammo a while ago. The rooster Faunus glares up at the younger teen before accepting the help up. "I think I hear something close by!" Russel shouts as he disentangles himself from the now unconscious Faunus on the ground. The taller chick from the other team–Tannith? Terra? Whatever–jogs over to try to help Dove out, only to be cut off by a half-dozen Nevermore feathers as one of the damned overgrown feather-dusters swoops by overhead, talons tearing shingles free from nearby rooftops to pelt the seven students on their heads as it passes.
Sure enough, a series of explosions, shouts and growls heralds another student team tumbling onto the ruined road that Team CRDL and Team RSLT are currently getting pressed back along. Oh, fucking great. More students. "Out of fucking ammo!" One of the shorter ones shouts. It's nearly impossible to tell who they are, each of them is covered head to foot in dirt, soot and blood.
Then the shortest one on the team lifts his right leg and lets loose a spray of bullets from his heel. Reg?
"Looks like Team Cloud managed to find us!" Dove shouts as he rushes to intercept some of the White Fang grunts that had followed the third student team into the roadway. The other nearby Faunus rally to their reinforcements, at least letting the sane people group up properly. The Grimm are still a problem for everyone. Biting and lunging at Terrorists just as often as they focus on the law-abiding citizens.
Everyone's having a shit day like that.
"The hell is going on?" Cardin asks, stomping over to where Ryse and Reg-now's not the right time to make a dick joke about his first name-are standing together, the Atlesian immigrant keeping the more melee inclined animals away from the one legged student who still has ammo for his gun.
Ryse shrugs, and Reg shakes his head as he reloads his rifle-axe. "Apparently shit's even worse off to the south."
"Well that's reassuring." Cardin quips, smashing his mace into a runty masked Faunus with what look like metal plates strapped over his crustacean claws. A trio of Faunus barrel out of a smoldering shopfront a bit down the street. Feathers affixed to their ornate masks. One of the freaks has a different uniform, his shirt more robe-like than shirty? Whatever. It's loose and is hanging open like some edgy RPG enemy sprite or a romance novels 'dude where's my shirt' cover art. The distraction is just enough for a half-dozen plainly uniformed Faunus to slip past the student teams. One gets a cheap-shot that knocks one of Regs teammates to the ground as they pass. Hopefully he'll get back up.
Reg racks the action on his rifle-axe and shouts, "I've got them!" Before charging off at the fresh additions. Of fucking course he didn't hang around to plan. Pretty much everyone else is still trying to keep the White Fang on the other side of the intersection from pressing out of the street they had emerged from to either surround them all, or simply escape into Vale.
Fat load of good that's doing them.
"Dove! Cover Team Cloud's lead dumbass!" He bellows, hoping his teammate is in a position to disengage and bail the dumb-ass out. He turns to look at Ryse. "All right, let's help the others deal with–"
"Manticore!" One of the girls screams from the opposite side of the road the gaudy terrorists had just taken a shortcut to. The fuck did one of them come from?
"They tend to stay up above the clouds outside of Anima and Solitas. Things gotta get bad for them to come down to ground level. Weren't you listening in Port's last class?" Ryse half-quips, half-shouts.
Shit, he must have said that instead of thinking it.
He grunts and turns to deal with the Grimm. "Help the others keep those animals from getting away. I'll handle the new Grimm." He starts jogging towards the massive beast, psyching himself up for what's probably going to be the hardest—
Cardin blinks. When had he gotten inside? Through the smoke he can see Reg and Dove tumbling through the air, brilliant blue and almost gold-tan shatter patterns playing across their skin and what is left in-tact of their battle gear. Why is everything ringing? Shit, what happened to his eyes, everythings all blurry. An explosion blossoms on the side of the building they had been flying towards, and launches both of his airborne friends back towards Cardin. He pushes himself to his feet, and immediately stumbles back to the ground. Dove and Reg both crash into the wall. No bright light of aura. No reaction at all. Both go limp and fall to the road. He pulls himself forward until he's back out in the street. Why aren't either of them moving?
Figures in white start streaming past as he pushes himself up to his knees and shuffles over to the downed pair. He reaches his fellow team leader first, and rests his-now bare-left hand on his neck. For a moment he is watching some older guy with the same ochre skin and tawny tan mop of hair fuss over a forge in what looks like a bamboo shed of a smithy. Then the world shifts back into focus as his hand backs away from the chain Reg keeps his weird medallion on, and he can feel a pulse, light fast and stuttering, but it's there. He crawls over the unconscious leader and rests his gloved hand on his teammate's neck–no need to risk his Semblance acting up again.
No.
No no no.
Where the fuck is Dove's pulse!?
He shakes his friend's shoulders, slaps his face and checks his neck with his bare hand. He can't have lost another person from his team. Can't have gotten another friend–
"Snap the fuck out of it, Winchester!" Ryse's voice.
Someone else screams. Cardin shifts his head–everything goes blurry-towards the sound. His vision recovers just in time to see that shortstack with the axe-javelin on Ryse's team get snagged out of the air by the Manticore. Its jaws clamp down around her thighs. His hearing now recovered enough for him to hear bones snap and flesh tear
"Figure out which one has the explosion Semblance and get him!" One of the other girls shrieks.
"There's too many of them!" Either Dun, that rooster Faunus, or Russel. They both get mouthy when they panic.
"Out of my way, human!" Probably a Faunus. That shout is followed by a sickening meaty thwack and one of the girls screaming. Cardin's head reflexively tracks the sound just in time to see the mouthy muscle-girl from Regs team crumple to the ground, her left knee bent backwards, jagged white spikes dripping crimson piercing both skin and fabric. The second Faunus to pass her goes half a step out of his way to stomp down on the opposite shoulder. He can't hear the pop over explosion and gunfire and roaring nightmare monsters, but he can see the shoulder violently jump too far from her torso perfectly well.
The now legless girl skids to a halt not too far away from him. Blood from her severed femoral arteries splashing across his face as the last of her momentum runs out. Just on the edge of the fleeing Terrorists. She'll be dead in minutes at best like that, the detached voice that has been in the back of his head since Sky- since he'd picked up that elective on Battlefield Care and Triage just after the years started, notes.
[[You can make the hard calls, when there's no good options. When the optimists and idealists want the fairy tale ending where no one dies and the good guys prevail against the forces of Grimm, you're the asshole who crams reality down their throats so they live to fight another day.]]
Cardin shoves himself to his feet, pulling three of the stupid decorative belts from Reg's immobile form and rushes over to the rapidly bleeding out girl. Belts aren't the perfect tourniquet, but they'll do, for now. "Ryse! Gather up everyone and deal with that Manticore!"
"What about the White Fang?" He shouts back, before barking a few orders at whoever is still standing. The dark-skinned girl looks to be passing out. Not good.
Cardin slaps her face just enough to get her attention "Focus! No dozing off." He turns to Ryse-looks like something used his left arm as a chew toy-still standing, looking more or less ready to fight. "Fuck the White Fang! If they wanna play hard to get with the cops, let 'em! We don't do anyone any good if we get ourselves killed here playing hero." He pauses, before barking out, "Sky!" Ryse and most of the others start moving towards the oversized Grimm, a few trade blows with the White Fang as they stream past, but that's about it. "Damnit Sky–"
Oh, right. Suriel had 'better things to be doing today than keeping up appearances.'
Fucker.
"Russel! Burn Dust, now!" The green mohawked knife fighter slides to his knees at Cardin's side, and starts fiddling with Shortwing's revolvers. Cardin, barely looking, pulls a hypo-gun from the pouch on his thigh, jabs Russel's and pulls the trigger. His scroll shuts up, and he grabs the mortally wounded girl by the face and tilts it so that she is looking at him. "I need you to bite down on this." He shoves the third belt he'd grabbed into her mouth, then unclips one of the pauldrons from his armor and sets it on the concrete in front of him. Russ hops to his feet and dashes off towards where Ryse and the others are fighting the Manticore. Looks like the White Fang–this group of them at least-are mostly past them. "This is gonna hurt like a sonofabitch, but it beats dying." he explains as his free hand keeps working beneath her field of vision, uncapping the first vial and pouring it out into the soon-to-be-ruined piece of armor. She looks at him, dazed and clearly confused. "No passing out until I get both legs." Her eyes widen in realization, but before she can spit the strip of leather out to protest–or more likely bite her own tongue off and drown in blood instead of bleeding out–he pushes his aura into the now full pauldron, activating the dust and rapidly heating the piece of armor. He presses the nearly white-hot metal into one of Tina's still slowly bleeding legs. The sizzling, popping hissing of burning flesh and the acrid stench of searing meat are offset by the girl screaming around the strap of leather, one hand slamming repeatedly into the concrete, the other trying to crush his bicep through his armor.
The metal loosens up, and he pulls it away from the charred, cracked stump. It isn't pretty, and will scar badly, but she won't bleed out through it now.
"One more. Ready?"
She shakes her head violently, but Cardin sets about getting his pauldron ready to cauterize the second stump anyways.
_-*R-DxD*-_
Fuck. To say that things had gotten out of hand quickly would be a gross abuse of understatement.
Between the ambush during their mission—
The ongoing terrorist attack on Vale—
And now his friends on Team RWBY finding out about his team and peerage's status as Devils in one of the absolute worst ways possible, vocalizing that thought may even constitute a lie. For better or worse, he isn't really in a position to acknowledge the girls aside from the occasional stolen glance to make sure they are still safe, present and unharmed.
Jaune knows he's gonna have hell to pay for giving the girls a literal bloodbath, saving their lives by doing it be damned. Sloppy, Arc. Nothing more to it other than taking it like a man once this is over. And they will survive this fight. He didn't spend the last half-dozen years training his ass off with Sairaorg to let the people who matter to him get killed when things start getting bad.
His peerage positioning themselves between the gathered Fallen Angels and Team RWBY hadn't exactly been a handicap, but it it isn't making their fight any easier either.
Jaune is backpedaling away from Suriel's blistering, twin-bladed assault. He parries with Crocea Mors, takes a step, lets the follow-up slash crash into his shield, shifts the first blade onto his shield and throws both of them away from him with a mighty heave. He takes the moments reprieve to lunge forward, lashing out with Crocea Mors aimed for the Fallen Angels unprotected gut. The raven-haired bastard hops clear of his attack with a sneer, and counters with a twin back-handed slash with both of his Light Jian.
Jaune rolls under the attack and, for a moment catches sight of Pyrrha's Miló catching one arming sword, shunting it away from her with an expert pirouette, allowing her to bring Akoúo̱ up to block the second Fallens near-identical blade. She steps forward, lashing out with a point-blank shield punch to send her second assailant stumbling back, buying her the time to whip her now trailing xiphos out in a slash aimed at the third Fallen accosting her. The strike has no hope of hitting him, but the shrieking crimson-to-purple wave of flame that lashes out from her blade is perfectly positioned to intercept the yellow-white jet of flame the ranged combatant had tried to singe the Invincible Girl, and the Huntresses-in-Training behind her with.
He springs back to his feet just in time to catch another of Suriels slashes on his shield. The Fallen Angel's left hand is just out of position enough that Jaune is able to land a solid uppercut into Suriel's gut, and add a bit of extra force with a concussive dart from Mandatus. Suriel flies skyward for a few moments before flaring his wings and regaining control.
Behind the space he had been occupying, Nora and the greatsword wielding Fallen are making a wreck of the roadway. The hulking Fallen Angel windmilling his light greatsword in front of him, chopping loose chunks of asphalt and launching them towards Nora. The short hammer-wielder is barreling through the barrage of stone, pink aura flashing periodically and a madcap grin on her face as she rushes the taller fighter down. A bigger rock sends her spinning a few steps from the black-winged Angel–or at least that's what it looks like–the apparent uncontrolled motion gets her perfectly inside the Angel's guard, and able to smash Magnhild into the small of his back, and with a thunderous crack, a grenade is fired off, launching the two winged Fallen away from her and towards Ren and the Fallen he is caught up in a brutal knife-fight with.
About the same height and build as the raven haired Devil Huntsman-in-Training, the tawny haired Fallen has one of his light long knives held in a forward grip, and its twin in a reverse grip in his right hand. Both of them darting and slashing at each-other almost faster than Jaune's eyes can track.
A mighty kick connecting with his face sends him tumbling to the ground, and draws his attention back to Suriel. Jaune rolls along the ground, dodging an alternating trio of downward stabs from the still flying Fallen. On the fourth, Jaun is able to whip Crocea Mors up to slash at the inside of the increasingly cut-up and bleeding Fallen's bicep. It isn't a deep cut, but Suriel reflexively hisses and draws back. Just enough time for Jaune to bash his shield into the ground. On its own, the action would barely have lifted him from the ground. Combined with a flap of his wings, and a point-blank shot into the ground from one of Mandatus' concussive/gravity dust darts, it's enough to get him back on his feet.
Just as he skids to a stop a pair of deafening clangs draw his attention for a brief moment towards Pyrrha. Both of the melee combatants she had been dealing with are reeling away from her, deep dents in their breastplates, Akoúo̱ spinning away from them towards Suriels back. The glinting shield connects with the over-confident Fallen just as he rears back to hurl one of his light blades at Jaune. The shield collides with his back, and rockets off towards the Fallen that had spent most of the fight slinging gouts of yellow-white flame. Suriels aim is ruined, allowing Jaune to easily shatter the spinning blade on his shield as Suriel begins tumbling towards him.
Suriel barely manages to recover, leveling a clumsy chop at Jaune with a freshly formed blade. He sidesteps the strike, and draws Crocea Mors along the small of the four winged falls back. Rotating away from the–once again screaming–Fallen, Jaune is able to watch Pyrrha's shield smash into the Fallens ranged fighter's side. His aim fouled, Pyrrha calls out for Ren just as a blast of flame arcs towards him instead of Nora moments before the greatsword and knife-wielding Fallen are able to untangle themselves. A magic circle springs to life in front of Jaune's Bishop moments before the pillar of flame connects with him, thirstily drinking the magical attack up.
In the same moment, Pyrrha leaps up, catching one of the sword and board Fallen in the temple with a snap kick, launching her higher still, and placing her at a perfect angle to catch Akoúo̱. She lets its momentum set her spinning, shifting Miló into its javelin form as Jaune steps away from Suriel, and Ren lets loose the magical energy he had just absorbed with a wordless cry in a burst of power centered on his body. The knife-wielder is launched into, and then through, a wall on the near side of the street from the raven-haired devil. That unlucky fallen is sent into a fusillade of grenades courtesy of Magnhild and a now cackling Nora in the same moment as Pyrrha plunges her spear through the base of the pyromaniac Fallens neck, down through his chest, and out through his sternum just beneath where his breastplate ends.
Pyrrha rides the corpse to the ground, skidding to a halt as Jaune and Suriel turn to face each other. "So, we've fought, what, three, four times now, Suriel?"
"Why waste our time with pointless banter, scum?" He snaps back, summoning a fresh pair of jian. Looking to bypass his Aura again. Perfect.
Pyrrha lets the corpse drop, and raises both of her hands, palms flat and facing her two still living foes. The terrible hissing shriek of metal being shredded and ice being dumped into boiling water heralds twin lets of deep crimson to acid purple fire lancing out at the Fallen. They–just barely–manage to hunker down behind their shields before she can immolate them. "Because, you must think you have my skills, and how good of a match-up you are for me figured out by now, right?"
The top-knotted Fallen sneers, and spits off to his side. "Of course I do. I have centuries of experience and training. You're a worm with less than two decades to your name!" His voice, usually so controlled and condescending, rising louder and growing more furious with each syllable. "Today is the day you and your misbegotten servants fall! And your human cronies too!"
Jaune lets out a grim chuckle. "I've got two words to make a liar out of you."
"Oh? And what could you possibly say to alter your doom now?"
Jaune's expression falls into a deadly scowl. "Balance Break."
So, that was a thing. Getting my chapters back under controll/away from upwards of 20k words again, heh. Massive shoutout to my awesome Beta Readers MasterPrince713 and Hybrid theory!
Loved it? Hated it? Have a 5 gallon pale of gunpowder and gasonline and not sure what to do with it this weekend? Drop me a review! I live for that shit!