Volume 2 Chapter 22: Deathmatch

AN: So, a couple things. Busy week, busy weekend, busy week coming up, so sorry this chapter came out late. We have this chapter today, I'm going to put another chapter out on Friday, and then the chapter after that will come out not on that Friday – but on that Monday, both to commemorate this fic's one-year anniversary, and also to begin a shift to Monday uploads.

Also, super fast, happy birthday FloriteFlower!

Okay, one fight down, two to go. Let's get this party started!

(Perspective: Weiss)

The door on the opposite side of the room hissed closed, and Weiss found herself without a teammate. She was worried about being alone for this, but despite her ego's wishes, Kassidy truly was their best bet to stopping this train: between her technical expertise, combat experience, biological augmentations, and Bob himself, she was the best suited out of the three of them to dealing with whatever else the White Fang had in store for them, and putting a halt to the locomotive's progress.

But just because Kassidy had left the room, it didn't mean that Weiss was alone in this train car. She kept Myrtenaster up and at the ready, pointed at the raven-haired cat Faunus in a similarly ready pose across the room from her. Still, neither was making any aggressive move just yet, so Weiss took the opportunity to go over what she knew of the vagabond: Blake Belladonna, higher-up in the Vale branch of the White Fang. Fights with a bastardized katana with a pistol built into the grip, and can dual-wield using the sheath as a cleaver. Semblance allows her to produce shadow clones to reposition quickly and take hits for her. Ridiculously agile, about as fast as I am, but pretty low strength and even lower durability. Kassidy's able to fight her for reasonable lengths of time without horrifically dying, so she's probably not that much better than any of us, if at all.

"Weiss Schnee," Blake said. Cleaver low, main blade high. Will feint to the left before coming in fast to try and bully through my guard. Blake interrupted her inner monologue by adding, "I must admit, I've dreamt of this moment for a long time."

Focuses on overwhelming aggression and staying in control of the tempo. Counter by hopping back from bully, then strike right shoulder and follow up with a glyph to create space. "You've dreamt of losing to a Schnee? I'm flattered," Weiss replied.

Blake scowled so hard that Weiss could see it even behind the mask. "Typical Schnee arrogance, I suppose."

Hinder with ice Dust, buy time to use a time dilation Glyph. Weiss shook her head. "Forgive me. My teammates have been a rather bad influence on me, I'm afraid."

"So I've noticed," Blake replied. "Kassidy always has been too annoying and stubborn for her own good."

"After her home was destroyed by organizations just like the White Fang, is it really a surprise that she doesn't take kindly to what you're doing?" Weiss asked. Shaking her head, she asked, "Why are you doing this? How does leading Grimm to the city get you closer to Faunus equality? All this will do is kill countless innocent people."

"They're not innocent," Blake curtly shot back. "By doing nothing and remaining silent, they endorse the innumerable abuses that the Faunus people endure."

"They're not to blame any more than Dust is to blame for energy shortages," Weiss returned. "Have you considered they do nothing because they can do nothing? Or perhaps, that they don't even know? Take it from someone who knows: powerful people do many things to keep their public image intact."

"People like you?" Blake accused.

Weiss shook her head. "People like my father. Like my brother. People who are cold and heartless enough to put profit before people, and who are stuck in centuries-old ideologies that do nothing but hold us back."

Blake stared at her, and if Weiss didn't know any better she'd say that Blake looked at her with an air of curiosity. "Interesting thing to say, coming from the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company."

"Heiress," Weiss stressed. "Not CEO." Taking a gamble, she lowered Myrtenaster and sheathed it at her side. Blake tensed, and cocked her head when Weiss took a step forward while unarmed. "Blake, I know why you're doing this – or, at least, I think I know why you're doing this. You feel like you have no other recourse; that nobody's going to help you, so you have to help yourselves, no matter the cost.

"But listen to me: running this train into Vale will not help your cause. It will not help the Faunus. Please, I am not your enemy. I am not my father. I am not my brother. Let us stop this train. Let us keep countless innocent people from dying. We can make a difference here."

Blake thought for a second or two, but then snorted in derision. "How arrogant do you have to be? You know nothing about me, or what happened to me, or why I do what I do. How could you even pretend to?"

"Kassidy," Weiss answered. "She's spent her entire life from before Beacon at an even worse place than you are now: alone, on the run, with everyone left hating her and trying to kill her." Shuddering a breath, Weiss resumed, "I'm not perfect; I still have a long way to go. But I'm not my father. You're tired of being hated because of what you are? I'm tired of being hated because I share a last name with the man who gave me half my DNA. Let me stop this train. Let me go. I'll let you go. We'll both go our separate ways, we'll both do what we can to make things better, and this meeting will never have happened." She blinked, allowing a single tear to flow down her cheek for the effect. "Please, Blake. Help me do the right thing. Equality between humans and Faunus – we can start, right here."

Blake continued to leave her head cocked, and Weiss could tell that her eyes were narrowed as she tried to think. "You actually mean all of that, don't you?"

"Of course," Weiss urged, hoping against hope that she could make Blake see reason, the same way she'd been made to see a different point of view.

"You… are different. You're not what I expected," Blake allowed. She lowered her head and took a breath, and Weiss held hers. Any hopes Weiss had for a peaceful resolution, however, were dashed when Blake raised her head again. "I want to believe you. I really, really do. But I've been lied to too many times. You might not be your father, but you're still just another human in a long, long line of humans to promise us equality, only to not mean it."

Weiss sighed in resignation. "We have to do this, then, don't we?"

Blake nodded. "For what it's worth, you've succeeded in earning… not my respect. Something." The Faunus shook her head at the failed attempt to make sense, before continuing, "I guess we'll just need to continue where we left off. You'll do what you think is right, and I'll do what I think is right. Hopefully, with some combination of the two, something good can result."

Incredulously, but in a manner that Weiss guessed befitted their new… working relationship, if she had to guess, Blake motioned to her side, and allowed Weiss the opportunity to draw her blade again. Myrtenaster sung in her grip. The Dust in their cartridges called out to her, begging her Aura to focus and unleash their power. Weiss took a breath, and as she opened her eyes, frost started creeping out along the floor near her feet. "You do know you've already lost anyway, right? Kassidy will stop this train. You've got nothing that can stop her, and between halting a terrorist attack and getting her girlfriend back… she's got an immense personal interest in this. She'll kill whoever's between her and the caboose, she'll kill Torchwick, and she'll stop this train. You've already lost."

Blake shook her head. "She can't stop this train; we've made sure of it. Killing Torchwick, though…?" Blake trailed off for a few moments, before a terrifyingly feral grin split her face. "I hope she does. Honestly, killing that racist moron is something that I wish they'd let me do long ago. He's been nothing but bad news for the White Fang, doubly so after she broke up our mission at the docks. There's a reason I let her past, and it was to give that asshole what's coming to him."

Weiss let a smirk grace her own face. "Well then, I suppose neither of us should be disappointed with that outcome. I can't say he's done my family any favors, either."

Blake nodded, before suddenly tensing. "Enough words. Defend yourself, Schnee."

Just as she predicted, Blake dashed forward, covering the length of the room in a fraction of a second. The cleaver came through in a weak swing that was more to get it in a more advantageous position. Weiss began enough of a thrust to convince Blake that she'd fallen for the bait, then suddenly utilized a Glyph to pull herself back from the two-bladed slice that tore through where her waist had been mere instants before. Myrtenaster struck true, and it rang as it drilled into the Faunus' shoulder. Blake hissed, but had to duck under her blade a second time. This, however, advantaged her not, as Weiss planted a kick through an acceleration Glyph that sent her opponent flying into the opposite wall.

Blake tried to leap back into the battle, but instead crashed into a sudden wall of ice that sprang up, bisecting the room and keeping the cat girl at bay. Weiss only barely suppressed a smirk – with no paths to aggression, no paths to disrupt what she was working on, Blake could do nothing productive, while Weiss was free to setup the battlefield to her heart's content. A few projections of power from her Aura implanted the beginnings of what will be Glyphs for future use on the walls of the train car, but most of her power funneled into a time dilation Glyph rotating rapidly at her feet. As far as any of them could tell, Weiss was every bit Blake's equal in speed and agility; it would only ever be a question of spontaneity and aggression vs. preparation and strategy. Once the Glyph got enough energy and took effect, Weiss would hold all the car-

She didn't even get to notice as Blake's sword flew at her until it was too late, the blade cutting into her face and nearly giving her another scar to match her existing one in the process. Startled and with her focus brutally ripped from her Aura, Weiss' time dilation Glyph outright failed, the energy dissipating into the air with only some returning to her. A black ribbon that Weiss failed to notice earlier – and that Kassidy completely failed to mention – returned the hurled sword back to its owner, while the cleaver finally cleared Blake a path to her.

Weiss snarled. She would not be beaten, not when the city of Vale depended on her. Refocusing her Semblance, she slid under the Faunus' attack, then used a Glyph to abruptly reverse her momentum and catch Blake in the thigh with her blade. Her opponent cried out in pain, before abruptly vanishing in a puff of smoke, and it was Weiss' turn to exclaim her pain as she got slammed into the wall.

"And I here I thought you were supposed to be good," Blake taunted. "Didn't you say you have some grand, noble purpose here? You're sure not fighting like it. But then, I guess we both already knew that only one of us cared what hap-"

Weiss cut her off with an arc of blazing fire that swept the breadth of the room, making the Faunus dive into an acrobatic series of flips. This was why she never subscribed to bragging in battle – all that time that Blake had spent talking, she'd spent pouring her power into her blade and into the room. And by the time that Blake realized that she landed with her back to a repulsion Glyph, it was too late.

Blake was launched towards her, and Weiss sprung up on her own repulsion Glyph and launched herself towards her opponent. She could see Blake attempt to use her Semblance again, but a third repulsion Glyph in the floor launched her into the ceiling before she could focus. Myrtenaster struck true, and a searing slash across Blake's abdomen was Weiss' reward. But she wasn't about to let off the pressure. The dome of repulsion Glyphs Weiss had previously set the foundations of sprung to life, surrounding Blake. Weiss bounded from one to another, faster than Blake could track, striking her foe again and again. I can do this. I've practically won already. Blake doesn't take the pain well; if Kassidy can fight her to a standstill, then surely she can't stand up to this. Weiss landed on the last Glyph, and flew towards Blake's exposed back.

Instead of spearing through her opponent, Weiss found her blade lodged inside a perfect replica of Blake constructed out of stone. The Faunus came out of a flip and landed at the end of room, wearing a cocky smirk and loading a new magazine into her sword; her mask had broken and fallen away, leaving amber eyes glittering with amusement. "What? You thought you were the only one who knew how to use Dust?" And with that, Blake fired… something from her cleaver. Looked like an Aura beam of some kind, if Weiss could guess.

Of course, she couldn't guess. The purplish-white beam plowed through the stone statue and crashed into Weiss, sending her flying into – and then through – the door into the next room.

(Perspective: Yang)

"Wow, you have got to be the most girly man I've ever met. I mean, exactly how much mascara are you wearing right now?"

"… you do realize you've used that line already? Twice, I might add?"

Yang rolled her eyes. "I'd be able to get more material if you unlocked me from this wall."

Roman groaned. "If you do not shut up, I swear to Oum I will find or make a gag for you."

"Ooh, kinky. Too bad you'll be the one wearing it."

Roman growled again, and Yang had to bite back a sigh behind her smug grin. Torchwick had her locked up real damn good to the front wall of the train… even her Aura couldn't help her break free, no matter how much thrashing she did. Her Semblance, however, would be another story, if it weren't for the fact that she's so far completely failed at goading Roman into hitting her. And she'd be lying if she weren't getting a little worried, what with her current position of being shackled to the wall that would be slamming into Vale's bedrock, while Roman had a half-cane, half-grenade launcher metaphorically (and occasionally literally) pressed to her head. She tried again, pooling her Aura into her arms and wrenching her hands against their restraints with all her might, but after a few seconds she had to give up. Her arms might as well have been welded spread above her.

Something banged into the door directly across from her. Roman sighed, before yelling out, "What do you animals want now?"

Yang had to bite back the biggest shit-eating grin she'd ever worn when a very recognizable, albeit heavily accented voice (Russian, it was called?) answered back, "Have prisoner. You want?"

"Ooh, this is gonna be good," Roman muttered, before shooting a smirk at Yang. "Well, Yellow, looks like your friends weren't so tough after all. How does a cellmate sound?"

"Aww, you do want me!" Yang crowed. Roman rolled his eyes, completely failing to pay attention as he unlocked and opened the door.

That was a decision he instantly came to regret as he got punched in the face by a familiar fist wearing a more familiar shotgun gauntlet. The guy tumbled back into the wall, just a few feet from her. Yang could've turned the guy into paste, maybe even have just tripped him up, if her legs weren't shackled to the floor, also. Instead, she had to remain content with her Kassidy storming into the room, chambering another round into Ember Celica as she stopped long enough to recognize the situation. "Yang!" she cried.

"K!" Yang replied. "Kick his ass!"

"Oh, you again," Roman growled. "You are really more trouble than you're worth. You know that, right?"

"Don't I know it," K shot back. Yang's eyes widened at the sight: K was positively murderous. As in, she looked about two seconds away from committing homicide. Baton in her left hand, Rogue as well as one of Ember Celica's bracelets on her right, her girlfriend was definitely equipped to fight someone to the death right now.

"Ah, ah, ah!" Roman chided, suddenly sticking his cane against Yang's head. "We wouldn't want anything to happen to her, would we?"

K rolled her eyes. "Her Aura's still up. All your little boomstick will do is bust her restraints – and charge her Semblance, I might add."

Roman growled yet again, and Yang had to wonder whether he was part dog. Suddenly, he asked, "Oh, and what do we do now, I wonder? Do you intend to fight me? To save your pitiful, pathetic partner from my evil clutches?"

"No," Kassidy whispered, and despite the low volume it seemed to fill the room. "I don't intend to fight you. A fight implies that you stand a chance." Murderous hazel eyes flashed across the room, and K glared at Torchwick. "I don't intend to fight you. I intend to kill you."

Roman clicked his tongue and shot a grin at her. "Not if I kill you first."

K actually laughed at that. Not a fake chuckle, either. She laughed like Yang had just said one of her world-famous and totally awesome puns. She eventually got out, "Oh, that was a good one, Torchdick, I'll give you that one." Cutting off her abrupt laughter as quickly as it started, K asked, "Tell me, Roman: do you even know how to kill me?"

"I've got a few ideas," Roman said, grin disappearing.

K shook her head. "I don't intend to fight you. I intend to kill you. I intend to make you suffer. I will beat you into the ground, gut you like a fish… well, I probably won't have time to skin you alive." Hazel eyes flashed with promises of untold pain before meeting Roman's gaze. "Your pain will be legendary, and I will make sure you live long enough to regret every. Little. Thing."

"Ooh, scary," Roman said, no doubt used to her threats by now. "Let me know when we – woah!" K began the fight while he was in the middle of talking, using Ember Celica to launch herself across the room and bring her sword around to take his head off his shoulders, if Roman hadn't brought his cane up to block it. Yang thought she was going to enjoy have a front-row seat to her girlfriend kicking this guy up the curb and down the street… but this wasn't a fight. It wasn't even a brawl. It was murder, pure and simple. She'd fought a few guys; they all had. Those fights had a certain decorum, certain niceties and rules that you just didn't break. Even if you were trying to kill the other person, there were some lows you simply didn't sink to.

There was none of that, here. They were both doing their damndest to kill the other; at one moment, Roman would claw her face, trying to gouge an eye out, while his cane would try to break anything and everything it could. The next moment, Kassidy was spitting in his face, biting and tearing and trying to hack him limb from limb. These weren't two people fighting. These were a pair of caged animals, in a desperate bid not even to make sure they walked away, but to make sure the other person didn't walk away. Like they didn't even care if they lived, so long as the other died.

It was a battle that Kassidy seemed to be winning. Despite that Roman had an Aura, despite that he had decades of experience on either of them, despite that he had actual muscles, he was finding himself quickly outmatched. Kassidy was fast, she was smart, and she knew exactly how to win a fight like this. Of course, this only prompted Roman to become even more desperate in his frenzied assault. But even then, it was less an attack to beat K, and more an attempt to not lose body parts.

By any reasonable definition, the battle should have ended roughly thirty seconds after it started. Kassidy had relentlessly hounded Roman, never letting him get enough range to use the firearm feature of his cane, while both of her firearms were relentless in their assaults. She found her mark when both Rogue and Ember Celica were simultaneously fired into his face before he could twist out of the way, and while the man was falling she caught him at the same time with a second blast from Ember Celica, Baton, a knee, and even her forehead, causing red Aura to crackle and fail as he crashed into an unceremonious lump on the floor. It should have ended there.

It didn't. Roman dove for his cane, and finally got an opportunity to get a shot at K. Yang screamed her warning, but she shouldn't have bothered – K simply brought up Ember Celica, letting it tank the shot itself and walking through the explosion without a care in the world. Roman tried to scramble to his feet, but her next blows removed that option entirely. A sickening crack sounded as she stamped down as hard as she could, making Roman's left knee bend completely backwards, and Yang had to fight to not look away. Then she broke his other knee. Then she broke both his elbows.

"Heh," Roman managed to get out, a bit of blood bubbling up from his throat. "So this is how the great Roman Torchwick eats it, huh? I… I always knew you had it in you, Kassidy, was it? I… I always knew you were… different."

"Don't be so dramatic. You're not dying," K butted in with a roll of her eyes. Yang breathed a sigh of relief, but it died a premature death when K venomously added, "Not yet, anyway. Let me fix that." She brought her sword up, and almost as quickly brought it down.

"K!" Yang yelled, making her girlfriend stop. Dust, she couldn't watch it. She couldn't let K do this. Not to Roman, not to her, and most certainly not to herself. "This isn't you, K. You're better than this. You're better than what you used to be. Let him go. He's beaten."

"Are you better, though?" Roman taunted. "Admit it: we're monsters, the… the both of us. Don't hide from it. Embrace it."

"Please…" Yang begged, and she had to blink tears out to maintain eye contact with K.

The scene was interrupted with Weiss flying into the room and crumpling on the ground, clearly dazed and making no concerted effort to get to her feet. Her assailant wasn't far behind her in getting into the room, and who Yang now recognized as Blake positively flew to the heiress.

K was faster, though. Almost seeming to teleport from between nearly killing Roman to standing in between Blake and Weiss, she parried the strike before sending the cat Faunus into retreat with a barrage of gunfire. K leveled her arsenal on their newest arrival, before growling, "Leave. Now. I will not ask a second time."

The two seemed to stare each other down for a few seconds, but eventually the cat-girl huffed and nodded before throwing some ribbon out of a hole that must've appeared in the train when she was fighting Weiss, and letting herself get dragged away.

"Ugh," Weiss groaned. "Where's – where's Blake?"

"K chased her off," Yang said. Hurriedly, she added, "Uh, look, not like this isn't probably some fantasy of yours, K, but I'd kinda like to not be locked to this wall when it slams into Vale at however many kilometers an hour we're going right now."

"Weiss, keys," K ordered, throwing Weiss the described objects, while occupying herself with frantically tearing off Ember Celica's right gauntlet. By the time she'd managed that and pulled the left half off her belt, Weiss had managed to unlock Yang from the wall. Yang rubbed her wrists and flexed her legs – she was starting to get real sore the way she was. K tossed her the gauntlets, getting out, "Ruby down-shifted the power some so they didn't break my arms, so keep that in mind. Alright, wake up, Bob. Let's try and stop this."

"Analyzing," the computer said. "Bad news. All computer-controlled braking methods have been disabled, and it seems they've damaged the physical brakes as well. Even if that wasn't the case, we're inside a mile and a half of Vale. At the speed we're going, we'd still collide the projected impact force with considerable force."

"So, what?" K asked, growling at the computer and herself. "We can't stop it?"

"Doesn't sound like it," Yang answered. She was about to comment about how they should find cover, but she found Ruby sprinting through the previous car. "Ruby!" she cried out.

"Yang!" Ruby yelled, putting on a burst of speed and trying to tackle-hug her. "How's everyone doing?" she asked.

"Train's not stopping," K reported. "If anyone has a way to not horribly die here in about twenty seconds or so, now's a good time to start doing it."

Yang watched Weiss redraw her weapon, set the revolver to ice Dust, and make her way to the center of the room. "Everyone hunker down with me. I can cover us, but you need to be close."

"You heard her, girls; duck and cover!" Yang said, shoving Ruby onto her partner and grabbing K in a great hug before kneeling under a steadily growing shell of ice. She'd managed to be completely useless so far, but she'd be damned if she didn't at least do something to keep her teammates from dying. Yang managed to maneuver her way in front of everyone, wrapped herself fully around K, who was currently trying to make herself as small as possible, and braced for impact. She prayed that, if the train or the ice didn't hold, she could. She had to. For her sister, for the woman she loved, for Weiss… for Vale. She had to hold.

AN 2: And there goes the neighborhood. And by the neighborhood, I meant Mountain Glenn, because it wasn't enough of a ruin earlier.

Blah blah filler Author's Note blah

Coming up next: Battle of Mountain Glenn, Part III: The Breach

Right up after these Reviewer Responses

helenGet: Glad you liked it. Here, have more!

Captain marvel 36: There were a couple reasons I felt Raven talking appropriate here: firstly, while Munsell's obviously heard of her, he's just as obviously not as familiar with her as, say, Neo, and might need more than a sneak attack to get the hint that he should scram. Also, I'm still of the opinion that she's kinda-sorta guilty about abandoning everyone and then just ignoring everything that happened when Summer died, and so tried to make it up (in her own way, of course) here, with her stepdaughter.

Artoria Pendragon: Glad to hear you're liking this story so much, here's to hoping you keep enjoying it! Wait no more, the next chapter is here! Yeah, as of right now I consider Raven to be Ruby's stepmother.

EWR115: Well, it's a good thing we've got more blood here. My yard's looking a bit dry.

AgentDraakis: Well, I mean… I didn't exactly say that Weiss would fight Blake, but I kinda made it obvious anyway, didn't I? Wait, authors tend to make Crescent Rose somehow work in enclose spaces? Why? How?! I mean… isn't this, like, Physics 101? Pauli's Exclusion Principle, two objects can't occupy the same space, and this means that big weapons in small spaces is a bad idea?

FloriteFlower: Again: Happy Birthday! I'm glad you like this so much, and to be honest being able to interact with my readers is far and away my favorite part of writing this story. Here's hoping life's finding you better these days, and continues to do so.