Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. RWBY is owned by RT, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone. Rest in peace Monty, your vision lives on in us all.

CHAPTER 4

Team RNNJRS had been walking for two days since they left Higanbana. They'd acquired a new map, and were well on their way to reaching the next marked village on it. misfortune would have it, they'd stumbled unto a village not marked on their map. "What is this place?" Clayton asked as they entered the gate of the village. Looking around, they saw unfinished buildings, and seemingly abandoned homes. "Ruby, up top, keep an eye out." Clayton said, holding his hands together, so his girlfriend could jump off of them and post herself up in the nearest empty and unfinished tower.

After about thirty seconds of searching, the group on the ground found a sign. "Oniyuri?" Nora asked.

"Minstrel's Mountain Glenn." Ren said.

"Heard of something like that before. Place was set up by elites who wanted to make their own kingdom, right?" Clayton asked.

"What happened?" Nora asked, as Ren walked over to the raised stone walkway that lay before the unfinished buildings.

"What always happens." Ren said. Clayton looked up to Ruby and motioned for her to come down. Nobody wanted to say it. Everyone knew Ren and Nora were orphaned at an early age. Not many things in Anima orphaned you… It was either bandits, or grimm.

"We need to keep moving. This place is creeping me out." Jaune said, as he started walking to the next segment of the forgotten city. Everyone grouped up and continued on, but Clayton hung back for just a second, until he backpedaled to catch up with his team.

Team RNNJRS was nearly out of Oniyuri. The six young travelers close to the end of the urban sprawl. Suddenly Ren raised a hand, halting the team. Clayton already knew there was trouble ahead. Checking to ensure he had a shotgun shell chambered, he mentally prepared for an attack. Everyone else deployed their weapons, and Jaune gave a quick order. "Form a circle."

From the nearby rooftop, a man in a trench coat leapt, landing in front of the team, letting out a deranged cry with a smile before he began to charge at them. Ren broke formation to counterattack, which earned him a few swings from the man's wrist mounted blades. Ren blocked the attacks expertly, but faltered when the man kicked him in the face. Free to move again, the man seemed to pick his target as he charged, jumping clear over Clayton, who tried to shoot him out of the air like a skeet disk.

The man slashed at Ruby furiously, only getting a few attacks in edgewise before Jaune attempted to shoulder ram the man away from his friend. The man instead of being knocked down, jumped up onto Jaune's shield, and looked at him. Jaune was momentarily freaked out, before he steeled himself, and tried something he'd seen Clayton do. Pulling his shield arm inward and recoiling his head back for a moment, Jaune bashed his forehead into the man's nose, which forced him to fall off his shield and scamper to his feet.

"Who are you?!" Jaune shouted, as he and Pyrrha formed a small shield wall between the man and their friends.

"Oh, that doesn't matter." He said, dusting off his shoulders.

"Then what do you want?" Pyrrha asked in confusion. The man chuckled for a second, before pointing to Ruby.

"Her." He said with a smile.

"Eww." Ruby said shortly, causing the man to chuckle more.

"Oh, you don't know, do you?" He asked as his laughter subsided.

"Yeah whatever it is you're planning, not happenin' bub." Clayton said, as he finished reloading Kingslayer.

"I was hoping you'd say something along those lines." The man said before he rushed to flank left, attempting to attack Nora first this time, systematically eliminating the strongest seemed to be his new plan of attack. Ruby quickly extracted a spare lightning dust round from Crescent Rose, tossed it to Clayton, and then worked the bolt on her rifle again to chamber a fresh one. Raising her gun, she took aim, and fired… Nailing Nora in the chest before the lunatic could reach her. The man turned to look between the seemingly injured Nora, and Ruby.

"Well that's ironic." He said, before Clayton just chuckled.

"Oh you have no idea how many levels of irony that is." Ruby said with a smile, before Clayton stuck the bullet end of the lightning dust round in his mouth, and bit down.

The dust bullet ruptured and the power of a lightning bolt coursed through Clayton for well over ten seconds. He screamed through his teeth the entire time, before the dust wore out, and Clayton was able to toss the spent casing to the side. "OH SHIT, I'M FEELIN' IT!" Clayton shouted, as his semblance absorbed the damage over time of the lightning. As an effect of ingesting the dust, electricity raced across Clayton's skin as he rushed forward, all his action hastened by muscles that had momentarily grown due to the dust stimulating them. Their trench coated attacker was completely unaware of Nora's coming up from behind, until the second he felt himself be both clotheslined by the hastened gorilla faunus's axe, and leg swept by the empowered Valkyrie's hammer. Only able to even attempt a counter on one of them, the man let his scorpion tail come free from around his waist, and attempted to poison the bigger brute with his semblance breaking down his aura.

Clayton felt a small pain in his abdomen like a cramp almost, but shrugged it off. Nora had taken the man's legs out from under him in an explosive hit, and Clayton had smashed him in the skull with his axe. Now on the ground, the man was open to one of Clayton's infamous hammer fist poundings. Arms raised, Clayton prepared to slam his fist's at a faster than usual rate, only for the faunus to roll out of the way, leaving Clayton to smash the stone walkway at about 1200 impacts per minute for all of about 1 second. Seeing that his target had rolled away and the effects of the lightning dust having worn off. Clayton looked up at the man, his tail now revealed.

"He's a faunus?" Pyrrha both observed and questioned.

"Does this have something to do with the White Fang?" Ruby asked.

"Pfft. The tin soldiers would only wish for such a man as myself to be loyal to them." He said with a smile. "No, my heart belongs only to our goddess."

Pyrrha was the one to scowl the worst of the group. "Cinder." She said through grit teeth, her abdominal scar slightly burning at the mention of the woman.

"Only in her wildest dreams." The man said, before rushing back in to attack once again. He bounded between Nora, Ren, Jaune and Pyrrha acting as a single unit. Dodging all of their attacks, and landing counters where he could, the scorpion faunus was too quick for everyone but Clayton and Ruby, who could either simply take the punishment being dealt, or avoid all of it.

Clayton had started to notice a pain spreading in his thigh, his movements were getting sluggish too, but his semblance was dealing with whatever was wrong. So long as his aura held, he would be fine. Ruby on the other hand… One single slip up, and she'd been kicked about 30 feet from Crescent Rose. Clayton knew how impaired she was without her weapon, and that was when he took the fight just a little more seriously. The man had managed another hit on Clayton with his tail, and Clayton felt pain course through his shoulder. "Venom!" He realized too late. Stil, it wasn't likely to kill him, his metabolism and semblance were beating back any serious damage, even if it was a chemical attack that bypassed his aura, much like poison ivy… Inspiration struck him for another type of tactical grenade, but now was not the time to be super tactical… Unless it was.

Tyrian Callows stood over Ruby Rose, his time was short. The others were picking themselves up, or were nursing wounds. He'd only envenom the little Rose just enough to make her ill, and then he'd take her back to his goddess, and she would be so pleased with him. Something landed by his feet, and gently rolled. It was a cylindrical black cardboard tube that had the word "smile" written on the side. Cocking his head sideways, Tyrian did not understand the implications. "Smile for the flash?" He asked, reading the new words as they became visible from the underside of the thing. As his eyes widened, Tyrian got first hand experience of what it felt like to be flashbanged. The 2 second fuse had run out, and there was indeed a flash and a bang. Shouting out in pain, as his retinas were assaulted by an extremely intense flash, and his ears were ringing from the sound of the thermobaric explosive, Tyrian stumbled around clutching at his eyes, as his vision slowly returned thanks to his aura rapidly healing the superficial damage.

"Wanna try that again?" Clayton asked, flipping a fresh banger in his hand, as Ruby, also impacted by the non-lethal grenade, clawed at the ground for her weapon. Tyrian finally regained enough of his hearing and vision, to look at Clayton with a sneer. Only to look at the two new arrivals inquisitive. A man in grey, and an elder man in black.

"Children… Who's been misbehaving?" The old man asked.

Author's note.

I mentioned Clayton still had flashbangs, and he's going to use them.

watch?v=0YsC6M4GFoc.

For reference on what Tyrian had land at his feet. Is it a cheep move? Yes. Is it funny? Also yes. But as it seems grenades of any sort are just not used in RWBY and definitely not the more tactical ones. The ones clayton has are basically home made. They've been used exactly once before in V2 during the fang rally, and off screen a few times in combat class. They are expensive, and only really good at making people disoriented for a few seconds but Clayton makes good use of them when they are needed most. Against other people. Speaking of cheap tricks, Clayton much like Hazel can use dust internally for weird boosts, his semblance being the only thing keeping the effects of eating dust from killing him. With Hazel, he's just tough enough to survive it, and the pain caused isn't making him pass out, with Clayton, he's surviving because of his semblance and not passing out from pain because he's tough enough to deal with it. The difference in injection and digestion make a difference as well. Hazel's method of stabbing himself is more painful because of direct contact with blood flow, but eating dust is more dangerous due to the relative distance to the brain. Fair trades I'd say.