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 5
Team SPGL sat with Team's RWBY and JNPR in the Amity Colosseum, rooting on a friend. Penny was thrashing Cardin and Dove. Her robotic strength and wire controlled blades made the fight almost easy. Looking up into rows upon rows of cheering fans, Penny saw her boyfriend, giving her a standing ovation. When the match ended, Penny rushed up to the stands to find Pale, tackling him in a hug at one of the entrances to the landing platforms. He stumbled for a moment, but returned the hug in kind.
"You were amazing out there." Pale said, as Penny stopped crushing his lungs.
"Thank you Pale. Your match against Team GRAS was quite spectacular as well." Penny said. Pale rubbed the back of his head at that statement.
"Well I wouldn't say spectacular… I got knocked out of the fight." Pale said.
"But you did so having severely depleted one of your opponent's auras." Penny pointed out. Ciel cleared her throat.
Pale looked over to Penny's handler. "Oh, Pale, this is my teammate." Penny said.
"Ciel Soleil." The young woman said. Pale tipped his hat to her, but before he could introduce himself, she started talking again. "You are Pale Lee. 17. Hails from Anima. Designated sniper of Team SPGL. Status… Potential Threat." Ciel said. Pale looked at Penny.
"She alright?" Pale asked.
Penny nodded her head. "Ciel is very gifted with numbers and time management." She said.
Pale glanced at the woman and shrugged. "Speaking of time management. Penny, we should be moving along now." Ciel said. Penny smiled at her teammate.
"Could you give us two minutes?" Penny asked. Ciel nodded, and stepped back two paces. Pale chuckled at her rigidness.
"She's stiffer than you are." Pale joked. "She know about the whole being a robot thing?"
Penny shook her head. "General Ironwood does not want anyone to know… There was an incident with a magnet, but I borrowed from your general fashion sense, and played it off with a hat." Penny said, earning a nod from Pale.
"So, got any plans for this evening?" Pale asked. Penny frowned at his question.
"Unfortunately yes. I have a maintenance session with Father. The magnet might have locked up one of the smaller components that move my eyes, and looking up has become strenuous." Penny said, before a small smile graced her face.
"But there is good news. I'm going to ask him if I can transfer to Beacon for the remainder of my schooling, and for anatomically correct simulated reproductive components." Penny said. Pale looked around making sure no one heard that.
"That's... Great Penny, but ya' might not want to speak about that in public." Pale said with a nervous grin.
"Oh, right." Penny said with a forced wink, before she turned to look at Ciel. "I have to go soon. I hope I can see you tomorrow sometime." Penny said, before standing on her toes to give Pale a quick kiss. "Goodbye." She said, as Pale basked in the momentary affection.
"See ya' 'round Darlin." Pale said, tipping his hat as the two parted ways.
"So, Penny's a robot?" Pale spun on his heels and looked up at the top of the entrance to the landing platforms. Clayton and Halcyone looked down at him with grins. "That was cute." Halcyone said. Pale sighed, as he turned to go back to his seat, pulling out a cigarillo. Yang and Ruby were up for their fight next and he didn't want to miss it.
It was a spectacular show of power and speed… Well, for the later half. At the start, Neon Katt continuously harassed Yang about her boobs being too big and how that was a part of her being overweight, and Ruby had trouble closing in on Flynt initially as the sonic wave his trumpet produced nearly made her ears bleed. Then again, power and speed aren't mutually exclusive. Ruby looked over to her sister, and shouted out an order. "SWITCH!" Yang turned her attention away from Neon, and got the idea. Neon was too fast for Yang… Ruby on the other hand. The two sisters passed each other, and exchanged a high five, as they exchanged their opponents.
Ruby wasn't very knowledgeable with the "science" behind semblances, but luckily Clayton had a very firm grasp on the subject. Speed was not something that could just be increased, there was more to it than that. Two weeks of observation at Signal, and an accident involving Ruby running through a chain link fence like it wasn't there, had led to a revelation. Ruby, with the assistance of her semblance, did what she'd been practicing for little over a year now. She warped. It was strenuous, but Ruby had learned to shift her state of matter into, mostly, a gas. It wasn't super refined just yet, and she still left behind little solid flakes of herself that eventually gasified and returned to her, but with her molecules being so loose, her air resistance was practically nonexistent. More to the point, it allowed her to fly in short bursts. And a burst was enough for her to catch up to Neon, and hook her around the middle with Crescent Rose.
On the backswing, and with the assistance of recoil, Ruby pulled Neon out of her angle of momentum, and flung her into the nearest wall… Hard. Neon had very little aura as it was, and all it took for Ruby to end her engagement was to shoulder check the cat faunus with the assistance of her semblance, solidifying right before she made impact. Mass times velocity equals energy… And let's just say Ruby was carrying enough energy to collapse the wall Neon was against… A little too much energy. Ruby herself didn't have much aura as a result of the bursts taking up so much of it, and ended up taking Neon out of the fight with her.
Yang for her part, was already sufficiently pissed off and seeing red. Flynt stood no chance, and with Yang having the strength to simply power through Flynt's semblance, the Atlesian soon found out what being "punch drunk" meant, as he didn't have time to use his semblance before Yang walked up to him, grabbed hit little metal horn, and repedetly sucker punched him in the face.
Once the match was over, both Teams RWBY and SPGL met with Yang and Ruby. Clayton scooped his girlfriend up, and the two exchanged a kiss. "That was awesome!" Clayton said loudly.
"I know right?! I finally did it, I warped!" Ruby shouted, jumping up and down once Clayton put her back on her feet. "Watch out bad guys, this Rose can fly!"
Team CMNE was lounging around in their room. Cinder of course was going over multiple files she picked up from the backdoor access she had to Ironwood's scroll. Technology was a wonderful thing. There were three pieces of information that interested her greatly. One was file M347, P.E.N.N.Y. Apparently the little girl was an artificial being. Decades ahead of it's time and something out of a sci-fy movie, a mechanical person was very interesting… Possibly useful too.
Then there was what she dug up on members of team SPGL. Siniy Garnet was a person of interest. After Roman's failure at the docks, it seemed The General had picked up some sort of trail on him, listing the polar bear faunus as a "Potential Escaped Felon." Opening the attached files, Cinder found that photographic documentation compared the molten pavement at the docks to be a near identical match to molten stone from some place called Camp N1, along with more investigative reports on the paladin Roman had destroyed, CCTV feed from Vale showing the bear man had not only survived everything it could throw at him, but that he was able to cripple it on his own, which Roman failed to inform them of... Apparently the revised models were going to have more armor, and something new was being drawn up to handle exeptionally potent aura users like the bear. Something called Project REX. She'd have to call Watts, and have him dig into that.
Snooping around more, Cinder found that Halcyone Lacquer, who had a theft related wrap sheet over a mile long, had made a suprise visit to Atlas's military hospital and disapered before she could be detained after treatment. The sniper, Pale Lee, had a warrant for his arrest in Anima, on multiple charges of murder. Apparently The General knew of his past grudge against the White Fang, and had been looking into his exploits. There was a single attached video from a Mistral security camera. Pale walked into a theater, revolver in hand, snuck his way to a private booth, dug the muzzle of his gun into the back of some unwitting deer faunus's head and blew his brains out. That would certainly come in handy. Perhaps The General was looking to recrute an assassin with a gruge against the White Fang?
"What's got you so happy?" Mercury asked.
Cinder smirked. "Our mission has just gotten easier."
Pyrrha was on her way to the rooftop she and Jaune always used to train. After the two's victory against a duo from Shade Academy, she'd fully intended to ask Jaune to officially be her boyfriend. After the dance there was an awkward time where they weren't "dating" but it was obvious they'd both grown closer than just friends. And Pyrrha wanted to change that… How unfortunate she was called away by Headmaster Ozpin.
Authors note. So Ruby has made progress with her semblance. Don't bash me on this, technically she figured it out later in my version because instead of warping at the age of 16 in the V4 trailer, she did it at 17 with the technical information to do so being provided to her as well. So really she's a late bloomer for semblance development. That all said, she's a better strategist too. The fight with team FNKY being the biggest indicator. She assessed that Yang was not fast enough to catch up with Neon, and that Flynt was too much of a threat to handle on her own, so she delegated their work, speed matching speed, and strength matching strength.
As for Cinder's little plan, it's clear what direction she's moving in with the new pieces of information being presented to her thanks to Ironwood investigating three members of team SPGL.