Volume 1, Chapter 22

Revenant

Part 2

Lee

"You ready for this, Lee? You're about to be twenty lien poorer!"

Lee grinned from his side of the arena, nervously hoping that it would hide the fact that he'd just gulped.

"Don't forget that I don't even have to win, just have to land two hits!"

Of course, two solid hits from Lee while wearing his gauntlets was theoretically enough to put Neo in the red. However, it remained theoretical because, despite many efforts, Lee had failed to ever hit Neo more than once during a match, and that would usually end up being the signal of his own defeat; to date, he'd managed to defeat Neo exactly twice, once because Neo had underestimated his reaction time and taken an elbow straight to the temple (which was a fairly easy mistake to make, seeing as he needed his Semblance to keep up with her once she started to really push herself) and once because Lee had simply bunkered down and waited for her to get tired. The latter strategy was the one Lee intended to use today, if only because it had worked and was the more easily replicable of the two previous examples, but there was one snag; he would be using different weapons today. Hopefully, five and a half weeks of practice had been enough to make him at least as good as he had been with the gauntlets.

It was time to find out. Calmly, Lee reached both hands down towards his hips, where they clasped around a pair of mostly straight handles before he quickly jerked them upwards and released, allowing his weapons to clear their harness. Then, just as they reached eye level, he placed his right foot behind him while his arms shot out and caught the weapons, this time with his fingers landing nestled within the trigger guards. A surge of confidence surged through him after the successful quickdraw, basic as it was, and he settled into his default stance, only slightly modified to account for the fact that he was now holding weapons instead of wearing them: left foot forward at 30 degrees, right foot a shoulder's width and a half at 90 degrees, both bent just enough to be comfortable; hips and shoulders at about 45 degrees, left hand held above the same knee at chin level, right hand held level with his left shoulder with the fist pointing forwards, allowing the weapon in that hand to do the same.

Lee's weapons were... Fairly complicated, to be perfectly honest. In his hands, he was holding a pair of katar/magnums (not the pair looted from/bequeathed by Summer Rose), which were simple enough, but closer inspection would reveal that not only did they each have an extra trigger and an extra switch, but also a cord coming out of the handgrip that kept them connected to the sheaths. Both the cord and the hand grips had a slight sheen that looked suspiciously similar to the color of his Aura. The sheaths also looked somewhat unusual, being rather boxy, having a couple of small metal Air Dust canisters (about half the length of a standard compressed air tank and similar in appearance) strapped to the outside, and what appeared to be a couple of extra blades and several magazines protruding from the top. But what truly made his weapons complex were the belts and straps forming a full body harness, and the pair of steel grappling darts that were fired out of the sheaths at his waist. He probably looked a little odd thanks to all that, but, having designed it himself with inspiration from an animated show he had once watched and the physics of Remnant allowing him to make such a dangerous device somewhat safe for use (after hours upon hours of headaches during the design process), he was damned proud to be wearing it.

He called it the Cloudburst Regalia.

"Let's get it on!"

"Gladly!" The ice cream themed petite was full of bravado, winking as she drew her parasol with a twirling flourish, spinning it several times around her hand (without the aid of the hook) while she herself did a pirouette, finishing with a sweeping bow before stepping back into a fencer's stance, the tip of her blade extended from the tip of her umbrella.

"Show off..." Lee muttered, but not quietly enough, apparently, for Neo was quick to retort.

"Scrub!"

Lee pouted, eliciting laughter all around; that one had hurt. It was true that, compared to his friends, his skills were pretty basic... But even if he was at the bottom, he was still in the same league. Give him another couple of months with his weapon and he'd be performing tricks of his own...

Lee steadied himself. "Yeah, yeah, just shut up and come at me already."

Neo smiled cutely at him as she began to inch forward. "Just remember, Lee..." Neo stopped, and her grin took on a dark, sadistic gleam. "You asked for it!" Neo lunged as she 'shouted,' and had Lee not known what to listen for, he might have lost right then and there; had Neo still been speaking aloud, Lee never would have caught it. As it was, he was able to just barely hear it when Neo disappeared with a small fwoosh, and reappeared with an equally minute pop.

Lee spun on the spot, allowing her afterimage to shatter against his side while the real one watched her blade glance off of Lee's elbow, right before she was forced to hop back to avoid a knee aimed at her chin, and then duck when Lee turned it into a front kick. Neo didn't let up there, and neither did Lee. Neo attempted to turn her duck into a sweeping low kick, but Lee hopped over it before driving his heel down for a brutal curb stomp.

Lee growled as Neo's after image shattered, but quickly recomposed himself when she didn't immediately attack him. Since he couldn't see her, he spun around once more, and sure enough she was there where she had originally been standing, about ten feet away, studying him with a calculating expression.

"Not bad, Lee. I didn't expect you to be able to make me retreat."

Lee couldn't help but smirk, even as he subtly began to maneuver his thumbs. "So, does that mean you'll fight me seriously now?"

Neo's own expression reverted back to that terrifying grin, with a uniquely sadistic gleam in her eyes. "Something like that."

Lee changed his expression to mirror Neo's, excited that he'd gotten her to take him seriously, yet also nervous because of it. Still, his nervousness would prove to be his undoing if he allowed it to make him hesitate, so he decided that it was his turn to press the attack. Both of Lee's middle fingers squeezed their triggers, and a signal was passed along the wire until it reached the boxes at his hips. Once there, signals were passed to the grappling hook mechanisms, causing the spring mechanisms within them to become uncoiled very quickly. This in turn caused the rope darts at his hips to be fired out, aimed not at Neo, but at the wall behind her, where the pitons firmly anchored themselves. But even before they'd stuck in the wall, Lee had jumped straight up before pumping Aura through his weapons, causing the parts green/blue parts of it to actually glow. But, more important than the aesthetic was the function, and that was to activate the Dust canisters strapped to the backs of his thighs, which in turn blew compressed Air through a hose to turn a fan at the small of his back at super high speed, which, combined with a second squeeze of his middle fingers causing the grappling line to start reeling, sent Lee through the air towards Neo at high speed.

Against an opponent who hadn't seen this before, it might have surprised them, but one should remember: Lee's opponent for the day was Neo, and while it was true that she'd never actually gotten to see him using the grappling hooks in combat, she'd still been watching him practice for the last five or six weeks; she was hardly surprised, which was why she was able to dodge Lee's spinning slash with her usual level of aplomb; that is to say, she made it look easy. However, Lee noted with satisfaction that she seemed to be having progressively more difficulty as his assault went on.

After he'd used his grappling hooks to pull himself towards Neo and failed to hit her, he'd launched himself out of his crouch with a rising backslash chained together with a thrust. From there, he'd fallen into a style he was more used to, jabbing at Neo with his left fist (which, of course, meant he was actually attempting to stab her).

Neo, perhaps wishing to test him, or perhaps in surprise at the sudden shift in tactics, chose to lean back from his fist instead of doing what was typical for her by moving to the side, so Lee allowed his fist to retract and attempted a hook-cross-shin kick combo, which, again, Neo chose to dodge rather than parry.

Lee expected that, considering that he was nearly two feet taller and quite a bit stronger than she was, so he continued to press the attack, rapidly jabbing out several times with his lead arm, watching vigilantly as Neo dodged each strike with minimal movement.

As he was extending for the fifth jab, Lee was forced to grimace in anticipation, for while it was true that his Semblance was active and helping him to chain his attacks together without stopping to think, it also had the unfortunate side effect of allowing him to see when he was about to take a hit, without letting him do anything about it. Neo was -highly- aware of this fact, and took advantage of it to wink at him while lunging, sliding the point of her blade across the outside of his arm as she passed. Being that his Aura was still in the green (or at least, it was before that hit landed), Neo's blade didn't manage to pierce his skin, or even his shirt, but he did still feel something just a little bit sharper than a sting.

Lee soldiered on, pivoting on one foot in an attempt to smash a knee into her. And then his boot after she dodged the knee, only to receive a sharp rap to the shin from the shaft of her umbrella. He retaliated by jabbing his lead fist out at her, then attempting a hook with the same hand, only to find his eyes widening in shock as the world seemed to slow to a crawl, even as his surroundings morphed. Gone was the state of the art private training facility, and gone was his opponent. But in her place?

Winter Schnee was in front of him now, against a familiar forest backdrop, and she was in the midst of lunging past a leaping uppercut from Lee... But wasn't Winter Schnee shorter than that? And since when were Lee's arms so small? So pale?

Lee continued to wonder even as he felt... his body? It felt so natural... continue to move of its own accord, an amused smile coming to his lips as he managed to stop mid leap, pivot on the lead foot's toes, and proceed to drive the toes of his other foot into Schnee's stomach. It had been a trap, and Schnee had fallen for it hook, like, and sinker. Just like countless opponents before her.

What the..?

Lee blinked, and he was back in the sparring arena, with a stunned Neo draped across his foot, the expression on her face making it clear that he'd managed to knock the wind out of her. More interestingly, it closely resembled the expression Schnee had made in the scene he'd just witnessed...

Lee mentally shook himself; he'd worry about what had just happened later. For now, it had helped him land a hit on Neo, and he still needed one more to win his bet. He was not going to fail to get it by allowing himself to be distracted.

Lee allowed his foot to drop, and Neo dropped along with it, hitting the ground on one hand and one knee, Lee's hesitation having allowed her to begin to recover already. It was enough so that when Lee attempted to kick her with the other foot, she managed to dodge it before she pushed his foot up, unbalancing him. His back hit the ground a moment later when his other foot was swept out from beneath him.

Lee couldn't help but notice the irony there.

Still, Lee was far from finished, and Neo was still catching her breath, so he had plenty of time to cross his arms and catch the umbrella handle that would have become violently acquainted with his skull. He did flinch, however, when Neo's face appeared just above their locked weapons; her eyes were wide, the corners crinkled, and her teeth bared in a feral grimace. But the most telling feature was that her eyes had switched colors; her right eye had switched from brown to pink, but her left?

Neo's left eye went white.

Okay, I've managed to piss her off. I'd better be careful from here...

Lee curled his knees in towards his chest, and immediately the umbrella was lifted from his face, allowing Lee to kip up into a ready position. However, he had misjudged Neo's position, and ended up facing the wrong way; he paid for that when the end of Neo's umbrella, blade now sheathed, was thrust into the base of his spine, causing him to stiffen in pain. His hands could move just fine, however, so he was able to deploy his grapple lines once again, escaping a follow up attack he would have otherwise been helpless to avoid by propelling himself towards the wall.

Neo wasn't about to let him escape that easily. A minute pop was the only warning he had before his own momentum drove her umbrella into his gut, driving almost all of the air out of his lungs...

But his momentum was not halted, and both of them were slammed into the wall. Neo, pinned between Lee and the wall, had her umbrella driven point first into Lee's gut, but Lee had driven the blade of his katar into the wall next to her chest.

"That's the match!"

Blue/green eyes met white/pink, before both blinked, restoring the latter to their usual colors while the owners of both sets of relaxed, tension seeping out of their bodies. Bodies that Lee were suddenly hyper-aware of, now noticing that Neo's legs were wrapped around his waist, with one of his arms holding her there while hers were resting on his opposite shoulder and his own hip. And as mentioned before, he had her pressed against the wall, letting him feel every one of her curves, the pair against his chest having drawn his eyes.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Lee wasn't sure if that was his heart or hers... Later on, he would realize it was likely both, considering he felt it on both sides of his chest.

"Lee?"

Lee's eyes immediately shot back up to his partner's face, even as he felt his own skin heating up with a mixture of shame and embarrassment at having been caught eyeing Neo's chest... But those began to be replaced with a different emotion when he noticed that Neo herself seemed to be affected, if the pinkish-red flush her skin had developed, her slightly parted mouth, and her wild eyes were any indication. Add the slight sheen and scent of sweat the both of them had worked up as well as the way they were both struggling for breath and it was almost as if-

"Getting comfortable down there, lover boy?"

"We could go somewhere else and give you two some time alone?"

Emerald's acerbic tone and Mercury's droll one served to break the spell, snapping both teens back into a rational state of mind.

"Um... Give me just a second, my blade is stuck!"

Lee's blade was indeed stuck... But it shouldn't have been difficult to remove. Wouldn't have been difficult to remove if he'd just allow himself to get the proper leverage. But that would require him to either drop Neo...

"Just hurry up and get it out so I don't have to listen to her nag at you later."

Lee's brows rose as Neo wrapped her arms around his chest, which didn't help with his sudden awareness of her, but it did prevent him from having to awkwardly drop her, while allowing him the leverage to pull his weapon out of the wall.

He did his best to ignore the fact that there was disappointment mixed with the relief when his blade slid free with a shing, and he was able to put Neo down.

"So, did I win?" Lee asked with an extra upbeat tone while he turned to walk back towards their friends. Despite the fact that he was obviously distracting from what had just happened, he legitimately did not know whether he'd won or lost; the ending of the fight had been too sudden, too ambiguous. Lee could feel the bruises forming on both his spine and abdomen... But Neo herself seemed to be in just as much discomfort, moving just as stiffly as he was. Though he supposed that could have just bee-

"Nope."

Lee rolled his eyes. "Sorry, Emerald, let me rephrase that; did my Aura break before or after we smashed into the wall?"

"Uh..."

"Well, it went red as soon as you ran into Neo, but both your Auras were depleted upon impact with the wall. In other words, you'd both be dead right now."

Lee nodded gratefully at Mercury, before turning a devious smirk on Neo, whose eyes narrowed warily.

"So under tournament rules, would that have been a win for Neo, or would it have been a draw?"

"Well, considering you initiated that last attack before Neo hit you, your momentum wasn't halted by it, and it was the momentum of the impact the brought Neo down from the orange to completely broken, it would technically be a draw, despite the fact your Aura went red first."

"Which means you owe me twenty lien! Ha!"

Lee had no idea why Neo was grumbling while she fished her wallet out of her pocket; one would think that Lee had stuck his tongue out and blown a raspberry at her. Lee wouldn't do that...

"Real mature, Lee." Lee just scoffed at Emerald's analysis and made to leav-

"Congratulations! You beat up a little girl and took her lunch money!" Only to falter at Mercury's. He wasn't about to leave it at that, though!

"She may be little, but you know for a fact that she's one of the most dangerous people on Remnant! I'm allowed to be proud of the fact that I'm capable of beating her!"

"Yeah!" Lee grinned victoriously at Mercury and Emerald, despite being a little confused that Neo would jump to his defense in this instance... "Being able to beat me is something that someone should be proud of! Of course, Lee hasn't actually beat me yet, so he should probably shut his face before I shut it for him."

Lee promptly proceeded to shut his face, before turning and walking (more like hobbling) out of the arena. He could still hear his friends, though.

"It looked to me as if he would have enjoyed that."

Leave it to Mercury to actually sound as if he was interested in the subject. Lee knew he was interested, alright; Mercury was just interested in the drama that was in the midst of unfurling, and even then only because he had what he thought was a vested interest in the outcome...

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Luckily for Lee, Neo had no intention of allowing that game to be played. He couldn't see her, but after spending every day with the same group of people for more than seven months, it became pretty easy to imagine what what was taking place behind him. Neo, after finishing that statement, would be staring at Mercury with a deceptively calm expression, daring him to challenge her on the issue. Mercury would respond by making an amused expression while crossing his arms behind his head before beginning to hum a tune, and Emerald, if the hairs on the back of his neck were any judge, was frowning intensely at the back of his head. And Lee had a feeling this was going to become the regular state of affairs until something was done about it.

Chup my life.


So... That happened. As did that... and that. Lol. For those of you who are wondering what took so long to write this chapter, I apologize; I changed Lee's weapons three times before I settled. I originally couldn't decide between a pair of tonfa that could combine into a staff/spear and act as a focus for Dust Magic, or a pair of pointed sai that, while not able to combine, would have done the same thing for his magic while allowing him to still stay somewhat true to his roots in fisticuffs. That second one got scrapped before I released the last chapter, but it did necessitate a rewrite of this entire scene. Which I was almost done with before I was introduced to Attack on Titan, which, in addition to eating up many hours between the anime and all of the English-released mangas, made me fall in love woth the concept of vertical maneuvering gear. I thought: "They have to have an insane reaction time to travel through forests at that speed without crashi- holy shit balls, Lee could do that!" Then I got stumped on how to incorporate a gun onto it when it already has two triggers... But finally said chup it, Aura and mech shifting are things in RWBY, there's no reason I can't have the fan mechanism run on Aura. Lol. So yeah, once again, sorry this one took so long!

So yeah. I know there are a few things in that chapter some of you must be dying to comment on, so please do in a review!

Until next time! (Shooting for no later than 1 February)

-CS

Update: Today's the first of February, and I'm still writing the next chapter. Spent most of the month struggling through some writer's block before I had an epiphany a few days ago, and now I'm about 3500 words in and only about two thirds of the way done with the chapter (from a plot standpoint, that is. Don't hold me to my word on the final word count here ^_^). But fear not, the story is flowing at this point, so if I don't have part three up tonight, it'll definitely be up some time tomorrow!

-CS