new update, due to the holidays, latest chapter is to be delayed, I appreciate your patience
Chapter 14: Team RWBY to the rescue?
Watts could not sit still. All night. He hadn't heard from them all night. Hours had gone by and nothing from the hunters he contracted to deal with that little brat. He didn't even know if they had her. Picking up his scroll again he typed out another message. The feed was filled with countless frantic attempts. With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"This is what I get for outsourcing. Okay, Watts. You want a job done right. You gotta do it yourself." Watts muttered in frustration.
Rolling up his sleeves, he began packing his bags. Going rogue is what he deserved for such a sloppy operation. If Salem found out about this being botched, especially in the state he found her in lately, then his head would likely share a spot with Cinders. Whenever the Grimm laced queen got around to ending her for her treachery. With a sigh, he flung his bags over his shoulder and was off. He had business to settle.
Meanwhile, with Cinder
Cinder tapped the hardwood desk in her office. She hated the remnants of Junior that remained in it, but she was too busy to have it fixed. Six weeks had passed since she began her campaign of extorting Vale for all its worth. True to what she expected, it was worth quite the pretty penny. However, all the material wealth in the realm could not lift her ethereal mood. Looking at the report in front of her, it was grim news indeed.
"Another team gone. At the rate I'm going I might actually run out of men I can throw at this problem." Cinder mused to herself.
Fifty men. She had sent fifty men over these past six weeks investigating the legends of the relics. Not a single one had returned, made contact, or even produced a dead body. Absolutely nothing of note. She literally has run into a brick wall, and the wall won. Not wanting to let anything else win other than herself, she still was left with a pause. How to possibly proceed with this? All of these thoughts were thrust from her mind when a knock on her door was heard.
"Enter." She said sternly. She needed something to get her mind off this topic for a bit anyways.
She heard footsteps, heavy ones. Likely steel toed boots. What greeted her was a rough, coarse male voice.
"I have come on behalf of Ms. Malachite. She has agreed to discuss the possibility of an alliance with you." The man's voice said.
"I'm glad your master has come to have sense on the matter finally. It only took six weeks." Cinder answered dryly.
"Its so hard for information to travel these days. What with increased grimm activity and all that. Must have gotten lost somewhere down the line." He answered, a hint of confidence and smugness dripping from it that made Cinder sick.
"As I've assured her before, if she assists me in my plans, you will be richly rewarded." Cinder said.
"Oh Lil Miss doesn't care about money. She cares about loyalty. And you Cinder are certainly an interesting one for sure." He said, beginning to pace back and forth in front of her, practically taunting her.
"Oh? And what makes me so interesting?" Cinder asked, curious.
"Oh nothing that's of concern to you darling. Nothing at all." He drawled on.
'Your so fucking lucky I need this help.' She scowled internally.
Back to team rwby
"So what's the plan?" Ruby asked as they looked up at the imposing castle.
"I say we run in there, bust some skulls, and rescue our friend before lecturing her about running away and putting herself in danger!" Yang replied, punching her fists together.
"I have a better idea. One that isn't stupid and will actually work." Blake answered her blonde partner.
"Hey! What's wrong with my plan!?" Yang demanded indignantly.
"It's so bad I will not give it the time of day and let it die. Okay here's the plan. We are going to sneak in, grab our little dumb mascot, and sneak out with her. Then spank her enough to get the point on how stupid she was. Any questions?" Blake explained.
"I still like my plan better…" Yang grumbled.
"And that's why you are not ever going to be team leader." Weiss shot back.
"No questions? Good. Move out!" Blake ordered like a drill sergeant.
With a grumbling Yang in tow, Team RWBY began looking for a way in. Finding an unlocked window, they quietly opened it and slipped in. Their infiltration successful, the four girls began to sneak their way through the empty halls and tried to find Neo. They would make sure a hallway was secure before making their way into it and checking rooms for any sign of Neo. For the better part of two hours, they did this and came up empty until Yang started getting frustrated.
"This is getting us nowhere! Why don't we just find someone and make them tell us where she is…?" Yang angrily whispered.
"If we capture one of them and try to make them tell us, who's to say they won't just kill her before we get there?" Blake quietly pointed out.
Yang sighed as they went back to looking through rooms with no success. So far, things were going well. They were making their way through the castle undetected, even if they were still no closer to finding Neo. That is… until a voice cut through the quiet of the seemingly empty castle.
"Hey, what are you four doing here!?" The voice angrily called out.
The four girls turned to see two guards standing at the entrance to the hallway. One was drawing his weapon while the other was already calling in on them.
"We've got intruders!" The one calling his friends yelled out into his scroll.
"Shit!" Yang cursed as Ruby changed Crescent Rose into its sniper rifle form and took aim.
Ruby quickly shot the scroll from his hand, destroying it as the gunshot echoed throughout the halls. The second thug cursed and grabbed his hand in pain as the pieces of the scroll fell and clattered to the ground.
"... Well, there goes the stealthy approach." Yang said as the four girls closed the distance between them and their opponents.
Grabbing a nearby vase, Yang chucked it at the two thugs. It hit one of them as he raised his hands to block it, allowing Yang an opportunity to fire her gauntlets to propel herself through the air. Coming down at high speed, Yang punched the guard with all her strength, knocking him to the ground with a sickening thud. The other, recovering from the shot to his hand, glared at Yang and raised a sword to cut the blonde brawler down from behind. Yang spun to the side to dodge, some of her hair getting cut off at the tips by the blade.
Yang's eyes turned red as she screamed out in rage and punched the thug through a wall, breaking it on impact and knocking him out. Which immediately backfired as the wall she punched him through led to a room with five more thugs.
"Way to go, hothead!" Weiss commented as she used some Earth Dust to create a rock wall to block the hole, giving them a chance to run.
"Shut it, Ice Queen!" Yang replied as they took off running, the five thugs beginning to fire on the rock wall to break it.
The four girls ran for it with the thugs in hot pursuit. One thug managed to get in close as Blake used her Semblance to avoid being hit and attacked the thug from a bling spot, knocking him to the ground hard. Yang dealt the finishing blow by punching the thug down through the floor as they kept running. Two more got in close, only for Weiss to unleash a barrage of stabs with Myrtenaster on one as Ruby slashed the other back with a swing of her scythe. With two left, the girls took off running again with the other two right behind.
They ran into a big, open foyer where a seven foot tall, four feet wide at the shoulders, and three hundred pounds of muscle thug wearing a large bowler hat and a full tuxedo was waiting for them. The man cracked his neck by tilting it to the side before cracking his knuckles. He then took the large bowler hat off of his head and threw it like a frisbee. The girls stared in shock as the hat's rim cut through a three foot thick marble column like a hot knife through butter, sending the column crashing down on the two thugs pursuing them. The hat continued going like a boomerang as it came back to the man, who caught it and calmly put it back on his head.
"How is that even possible!?" Ruby and Weiss both asked in disbelief.
"Fuck you, that's how…" The man replied in a deep voice before walking up to them, punching one fist into his palm.
The four girls then prepared to face the mountain of a man before them. Yang launched herself at the man with shots from her Ember Celica to fire herself at him at high speed, fist cocked back for a punch. However, the man merely raised his hand and caught Yang's punch, the force of the blow not even budging him an inch. The man then pulled Yang in and hit her hard with a punch to the gut, making the blonde brawler cough up and gasp in pain before she was sent flying by the force of his blow. Yang hit the stone wall hard, sending her through it on impact as the hallway behind them began to collapse.
"Yang!" Ruby called out in concern for her big sister before she, Weiss, and Blake glared angrily at the thug.
Weiss used one of her Glyphs on Blake to allow her to move faster as she took off at the massive thug, intent on bringing him down for what he did to their friend and teammate. She hit him with slash after slash as she dashed around him, dodging his punches as she tried to cut him down like a tree. However, unlike a tree, the man refused to fall no matter how many times Blake cut him. She slashed as fast as she could with all her strength, but he wouldn't go down.
Meanwhile, Weiss fired some Dust attacks at him in an attempt to help Blake knock him off balance. However, all it did was seem to annoy him as he punched the floor where Blake had been hard enough to crack it. Ruby used her speed to zip around the man with Blake, the two running circles around him as they slashed at him with all of their strength. Trying to bring the juggernaut of a man down.
Meanwhile, Yang groaned in pain as she dug herself out of the rubble from the collapsed hallway.
"Okay… THAT hurt…!" Yang groaned out.
She then got up and tried to shake the cobwebs loose, having been thrown for a loop by the hit. She then looked to see her teammates attacking the man. In shock, she saw that, no matter what they hit him with, he just wouldn't go down. Clenching her hand into a fist, she launched herself back at him with shots from her gauntlets, her Semblance activating as her eyes turned red and her hair glowed, burning like fire.
"Hey, big guy!" Yang called out, making the man turn to look at her.
"Knighty knight, asshole!" Yang called out as she punched him in the face with twice the force he hit her with.
The blow depleted the rest of his Aura, causing it to shimmer and break as the force traveled through it. He was then launched back by the remaining force of the hit, sending him smashing into a suit of armor and crumpling to the ground in an unconscious heap.
"... 'Knighty knight, asshole'? Really, Yang?" Blake asked in a deadpan.
"What? I couldn't resist." Yang replied with a grin.
The four then prepared to continue on only for three more thugs to run into the foyer with their guns drawn.
"You're not going anywhere!" One of the thugs called out as they aimed their guns at the Huntresses-in-Training.
"Chandel-where?" Yang asked in seeming confusion.
"Chandel-what?" One of the thugs asked in confusion.
"Chandelier!" Yang replied, shooting out the part of a ceiling holding a cast iron chandelier above the thugs.
The chandelier came crashing down on the thugs as they screamed. The girls looked away as the chandelier crushed them and broke all of their Auras, turning them into a red mist and cratering the ground. Horrified, Ruby looked and threw up on the floor at what she saw. The others guided her out as Yang tried to not turn green at what she had done, telling herself that it was to protect her team and save her friend.
Heading down the stairwell, Team RWBY saw eight more thugs waiting for them. Staying back to recover her Aura, Yang began firing on them as the other three took off to go on the attack. Ruby dashed forward and slashed with her scythe, slicing through one of the thugs' guns before slicing with her scythe to cut him. The thug backed up and drew a pair of daggers as his nearby buddy fired on Ruby, forcing her to spin her scythe to deflect the bullets.
Yang fired on the thug with the daggers to cover for Ruby as she dashed in and sliced the barrel off of the second thug's gun. The thug drew a sword as the one with the daggers tried to rush at Yang, only to be met by stabs from Weiss and slashes from Blake that dropped him to the ground. Ruby slashed repeatedly at the thug with the sword, forcing him on the defensive as he tried to block the attacks from her much heavier weapon. Soon, the blade was knocked from his hands by the force of one of Ruby's swings, opening him up to a kick to the face from the red-hooded reaper. Weiss then launched a few bolts of Lightning Dust at him, zapping him and taking him off balance as Blake slashed at him to bring him down.
The next thug drew a greatsword and prepared to swing at them with it as two of his friends tried to flank the team of teenage girls. Weiss met one of the attacking thugs while Blake met the other as Ruby blocked the slash from the middle one's greatsword and Yang provided coverfire. Ruby struggled to hold the middle thug's sword back as Blake parried slashes from two swords wielded by the one she was dealing with and Weiss stabbed and dodged at the third one in front of her. Using all of the strength she could, Ruby stomped on the foot of the thug she was locked with, forcing him to drop his guard and opening him up to a slash from her scythe.
She then turned Crescent Rose into gun form and fired shot after shot at him at close range, hitting him square in the chest and forcing him back. Meanwhile, Blake ducked under a slash from her opponent that nearly took off her head before taking a slash to her torso that made her stumble back. Quickly recovering, she used her Semblance to dodge a double overhead slash and darted into her opponent's blind spot. Slashing with her weapon, she unleashed a wave of purple energy on him that knocked him back into the thug Ruby was fighting.
The two thugs collided back to back against each other as Weiss took a slash from their friend before counterattacking with a stab to his face that made him stumble backwards. Stabbing him in the foot with Myrtenaster, Weiss unleashed a barrage of Dust attacks that he was forced to dodge, causing him to bump into his friends.
"Hey, watch it!" The thug called out.
"You watch it!" The other thug replied back.
"Both of you watch it!" The third shot out.
"Watch this!" Weiss called out as she unleashed a barrage of Lightning Dust attacks on them.
Meanwhile, Blake slashed to unleash another wave of purple energy as Yang shot some Fire Dust rounds from her Ember Celica and Ruby fired some Wind Dust rounds from Crescent Rose. The four attacks hit the three thugs all at once, causing an explosion that knocked all three of them out.
The last three more thugs charged in as the girls charged in back. Ruby shot Wind Dust rounds at the one charging in at her while Blake unleashed slash after slash of purple energy at hers and Weiss unleashed Ice Dust rounds at her opponent. Their opponents dodged the attacks as best they could, taking a few hits as they closed the gap with the team of girls. Yang shot Fire Dust rounds at the three thugs to distract them as Blake rushed in at the thug heading towards her who had a dagger in hand and slashed at him, forcing him to dodge.
Weiss stabbed and dodged around a thug wielding a scimitar, forcing him to block and deflect her attacks. Ruby slashed and kicked at her opponent, forcing him back. Blake managed to slash her opponent hard enough to knock him back, then hit him with three slashes of purple energy. This knocked him to the ground as she kicked him in the head to knock him out.
Weiss managed to disarm her opponent and stabbed at him repeatedly, knocking him back. She then kicked him in the temple hard enough to knock him down, hitting the ground with a hard thud and knocking him out. This left Ruby's opponent standing alone, a three foot long sword in hand. He went on the offensive against Ruby, trying to slash at the fast moving girl and failing. Yang shot Fire Dust rounds at him, forcing him to dodge only for him to take a hit to the back from a crescent blade of purple energy and be hit by a barrage of Ice Dust rounds.
Turning to look at where the attacks came from, he saw Weiss and Blake with their weapons ready. However, before he could make a move, a yellow, brown, and black blur came shooting at him and punched him in the face hard enough to send him crashing into a wall, knocking him out. The four girls panted and tried to catch their breath, tired from the back to back fighting. However, they knew they couldn't rest for long. Neo needed them.
"How's everyone holding up…?" Yang asked, clearly tired.
"By holding up you mean running on fumes? Oh I'm doing swimmingly." Blake panted.
"I call first dibs on spanking that little idiot for this…" Weiss panted.
"Air… Need Air…" Ruby panted in exhaustion.
"Good, it's not just me. I'm still aching from that big bastard bringing a hallway down on me…" Yang replied, equally exhausted.
"I vote we never let Neo out of our sight ever again…" Weiss said, "all in favor vote aye…"
"Aye…!" The others replied in exhaustion.
As they tried to catch their breath, the irony of the situation was not lost on them. They were out here, risking their lives to save Neo from herself, when all it would've taken was a hug from Ruby and being told what happened at Beacon wasn't her fault for this to have never happened. If that had been the case, they wouldn't be in this mess. Not that any of them were going to say anything about it.
Having caught their breath, the girls continued on their way to Neo, knowing that they had to be getting closer with this many thugs guarding the staircase. Trying to drag their beaten and tired bodies along to save their friend. Soon, they found their way to a door with one guard in front of it. The guard was a redheaded young man of about Ruby's height or taller. He had orange colored eyes that burned with a desire to kill and wielded a pair of military grade serrated steel combat knives.
Drawing his knives with a sadistic smirk and a bemused look, he jumped right at them with surprising speed and went on the attack. Ruby barely managed to block his slashes with her scythe's shaft only to find one of her knees kicked out from under her as he slashed at her face. Blake acted as quickly as she could, just barely managing to save her team leader and block the slash. Before Blake could react, she found herself knocked back by the kick to the face.
Weiss tried to stab at him only for the boy to dodge her stab and kick her aside. Yang tried to fire some Fire Dust rounds at him, only for him to dodge her attacks and rush at her. Ruby rushed in as fast as she could to protect her sister and slashed at him only for him to easily jump over the slash of her scythe and kick her in the face, knocking her back. He then ducked under a slash from Blake and slashed her in the face, knocking her back and forcing her on the defensive. He dodged to the side to avoid a stab from Weiss before kicking her in the gut hard enough to knock the breath out of her before kicking her aside, right into Yang as the blonde brawler caught her teammate and friend.
The four girls panted as they stared at him in shock. This was insane. How was this guy so fast? Were they really this exhausted or was he just that good? Not only that, but that sadistic look in his eyes and bemused smile had never left his face, like he was enjoying this.
Not giving them time to contemplate these thoughts, the boy took off right at Ruby and slashed right at her, catching her by surprise and making her stumble back. He then dodged a slash from Blake before stabbing her in the side to knock her off balance as he kicked her backwards as her Aura shimmered. Thinking quickly as the boy went in to stab Blake, Weiss used one of her Glyphs to speed Blake up to allow her to just barely dodge. Using a black colored Glyph to hold him in place, Weiss used her Time Dilation Glyph on Ruby, Yang, and herself as Team RWBY began their counterattack. The boy seemed surprised by this, but his amusement only grew.
"Oh dear…" The boy simply said, his voice disinterested as his sadistic, amused smile never left his face.
Charging in at him, Ruby slashed with her scythe to force him to focus on her. As he dodged her attack, he lashed out with a kick that she blocked. He then had to dodge a stab from Weiss and a slash from Blake only to be hit by a kick from Yang that knocked him back. Quickly recovering, he went back on the attack as Blake slashed at him, forcing him to block with his blades.
This left him open to a stab from Weiss which created an opening for Yang to attack. Unleashing a barrage of punches, Yang staggered him and forced him backwards as he didn't have time to defend himself. Finally, with a kick, Yang knocked him back as Ruby came in and slashed him with her scythe. He fell to the ground unconscious, his sadistic grin still on his face as Team RWBY tried desperately to catch their breath.
Rushing through the door, the team charge through the door with what little is left of their strength. On a table in the center of the room Neo was laid tied up. Swiftly they cut her from her bonds and pulled her into a group hug. However soon a slow clap echoed through the cavernous underground hall. The 5 girls slowly turned to look in the direction of the sound. Walking out of the corner of the room looking incredibly smug was one Arthur Watts.