Remember when I said fight scenes were hard? Well, here's a chapter-length fight scene. I am a glutton for punishment. Things...might get weird.
"Urgh." Weiss stumbled out of her rocket locker, looking a bit green in the face. "Yang, let's never do that again. These lockers weren't meant to transport people!"
Yang ignored the heiress's complaints, as was par for the course. "What's up, Blakey?" She gave her partner a cheerful wave with one hand, and uppercutted some poor sap halfway to the moon with the other. "Don't mind us, just dropping in! Some weekend you're having, huh?"
"What." Blake stared at the scene, slack-jawed. Considering how her day had gone so far, perhaps she should've expected something unexpected to happen. The other half of her team interrupting the fight by literally falling from the sky, sisters in tow, was still not something she'd seen coming. The White Fang seemed to feel the same way, judging from their confused screams as the four newcomers tore into them.
"Get it together, you lot!" Torchwick roared, waving his arms for attention. "There's still only seven of them! Quit running around like headless chickens and—"
"SCHNEE!" One goon shouted dramatically, matching the snowflake on the Dust crates to the one on Weiss's jacket and putting two and two together. That converted the Fang members from headless chickens to enraged chickens. Practically the entire flock charged at the white-haired girl, screaming at the top of their lungs.
"You stupid animals!" Torchwick facepalmed.
"TWO SCHNEES!" The twins stood back-to-back. Sable roared defiance at the horde. "Come here! I'll kill you all!" Somehow, he made his death threats heard over an entire crowd of angry faunus.
"Weiss!" Ruby waded in, trying to cut a path towards her partner. "We gotta save them!" Crescent Rose cut through the White Fang like so much overgrown wheat. Yang followed in her wake; each crack of her gauntlets sent an unlucky faunus ragdolling away. Blake and Sun blasted away with their respective guns. Jaune just ran up behind some goon and whacked him with a sword. Hey, whatever worked?
The Schnees, however, had no intention of needing rescue. As the circle of White Fang closed around them, Weiss twirled like a dancer, releasing a perfect circle of ice Dust from her rapier. A moment later the Dust solidified. Now there was a protective ring of ice around the twins, freezing numerous grunts inside. From above, it looked like a particularly large and unappetizing doughnut. Sable followed with a twirl of his own, and slapped a ring of red glyphs onto the inner edge of the ice—sprinkles for the doughnut, to continue the baked goods analogy. With a flick of his sword, the fire Dust-infused glyphs all detonated outwards. A hail of frozen shrapnel pelted the White Fang, along with the bodies of their comrades, sporting varying degrees of burns. The seven students swiftly suppressed the shell-shocked survivors, leaving just one enemy standing.
"Torchwick!" Ruby shouted, aiming Crescent Rose at the criminal. "Surrender now, or prepare to...uh...get wrecked!"
"Damn crazy kids." Torchwick grumbled. He fired a blast into the ground from his cane and launched himself away, narrowly avoiding Ruby's sniper round. "See ya later, Red. And Ice Queen, Blondie, Pyro, Hippie, Tail Boy, Noodle..." He rattled off nicknames at mach speed as he sailed off.
"After him!" Ruby shouted in excitement. The two White Fang Bullheads that still hovered over the dock, nearly forgotten in the excitement, had other ideas. The ships landed with a thump, forming a solid steel wall between the thief and his pursuers, and opened fire with their mounted machine guns.
"Take cover!" Ruby shouted in panic.
"Hey Jaune!" Ruby greeted her missing friend. The two of them were sheltering behind a large forklift, along with Blake and Yang. "I'm so happy you're safe! Well, safe-ish! Was it scary out there? Did you sleep on the street like a homeless person?"
The sound of bullets pinging off crates and miscellaneous dock equipment drowned out her words. "WHAT?!" Jaune bellowed. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU—"
"I SAID—"
"Can you save the pleasantries?" Blake shouted into Ruby's ear. "We need to do something about that!" Right on cue, a Dust container somewhere crumpled under the barrage, and the resulting chain reaction blew up the entire column of crates in a spectacular fireball.
"Right! Right!" Ruby leaned in towards her sister. "Yang, I can get you up there, but you might need to...you know!" she mimed setting her head on fire. Yang nodded, took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind cover.
"COME ON! HIT ME!" The White Fang manning the guns duly obliged. Yang grunted as a volley of bullets clipped her, Aura flashing gold. Blake and Jaune shouted her name in concern.
"All good! I got this!" Yang gave her teammates a thumbs up. "Rubes, payback time!" Ruby came up and hugged her sister. Their bodies seemed to disintegrate into a cloud of red and yellow flower petals, and off they went.
Travelling on the Rose Express was always a trip, thought Yang. The world seemed to move in slow motion around them. How she could see that when her eyeballs didn't physically exist at the moment, she had no idea. Probably some kind of weird Aura-vision. It would kind of suck if Ruby went blind every time she used her super speed. The Bullheads tried to train their guns on the strange red-yellow blur streaking their way, but they had zero chance of keeping up. Ruby and Yang rematerialized a foot in front of the left-side Bullhead. Yang savored the stunned expressions on the White Fang in the cockpit, before her flaming fist smashed through the windshield.
"SURPRISE MOTHERF...FREAKERS!"
"Yang, what's a motherfreaker?" Ruby asked innocently, diving through the broken window herself.
"Never mind that! We've got bad guys to beat up!" The fight that ensued was too brief and violent to describe any further.
"Too easy!" Yang flexed on top of a heap of unconscious faunus. "Let's pay those boys next door a visit, shall we?"
"Yang, wait!" Ruby pushed the comatose White Fang pilot out of his chair, and stared at the various levers and buttons. "The Bullhead's still perfectly fine, except for...that." She gestured at the front window. "What if we could...you know, use it?"
"I like it! You aren't team leader for nothing, huh?" Yang pictured them chasing down the smug orange jerk in their hijacked ship, while orchestral music played in the background. "Wait, do you know how to fly this thing?"
"Uh...no." Ruby said, shamefaced. "I was hoping you would? You're the one with the license!"
Yang shook her head. "Rubes, I drive a motorcycle. This doesn't even operate in the same number of dimensions."
Ruby looked crestfallen. "Oh...uh, well, I'm sure we can figure it out! How hard can it be?" She regarded the controls pensively. "Remind me, the pedal on the right is the brake, yeah?"
"Um, I don't think this is a good idea..." Yang began nervously. Did Bullheads have brakes? What would they even be braking against? That defied physics!
"Aha!" Ruby pulled a lever. The sound of engines grew louder, and the Bullhead started to rise into the air. "Yeah! I did it!"
The dock-turned-battlefield receded beneath them. Dust fires and muzzle flashes faded away to pinpricks of light in the darkness. The colorful figures on the ground got smaller...and smaller...and smaller...was it just her, or was it getting hard to breathe in here? "Rubes, we gotta stop going up!"
"I know!" Ruby pushed more buttons. The cabin lights flickered on and off like a rave. Oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. A disembodied voice warned them not to smoke and to fasten their seatbelts. Finally, their vertical momentum ground to a stop and they hung in the air—
"Yes!"
—then the engines stopped too.
"AHHHH!"
Jaune sprinted across the dock, Blake and Sun on either side. Now that the enemy was down one ship, moving forwards felt a lot safer. Bullets pitter-pattered off Crocea Mors, with no more effect than a bunch of raindrops. Gods, the hand-me-down shield was really growing on him. Sure, it was heavy and old, and only did one thing, but it did that one thing very well. Frustrated, the White Fang gunner turned his fire on the other two, but between Sun jumping around like an actual monkey and Blake's clones, he got little to show for it.
It was a bit concerning that the other Bullhead had taken off with Ruby and Yang apparently on board, but Jaune was sure they would be all right. They had their landing strategies, didn't they? Sable and Weiss hadn't joined the attack. The twins had fired what looked white laser beams at the Bullheads to little effect, and the last he'd seen they were cutting a Dust container open. A bit odd for them to be stealing from their own company, but whatever.
Later, Jaune would question why he had left cover to charge at the crazy terrorists in the flying death machine, but right now, it all seemed to make sense. The gunfire stopped, and Jaune heard more angry faunus noises coming towards them. It seemed the White Fang were equally eager for some melee action. The first one headbutted his shield, screaming like a madman, and promptly slumped to the ground unconscious. Okay, that was just stupid. Sun tripped one goon with his staff, then smacked him so hard on the rear end that he apparently passed out. Ouch. Blake was strangling another one with her ribbon, using the unfortunate grunt as a human shield...or rather a faunus shield. Yet another masked man vaulted over the shield, blade slicing at Jaune's neck. Jaune instinctively lashed out with the sword in his right hand, and the faunus crumpled to the ground with a high-pitched cry.
"Oh gods, I'm sorry!" Jaune winced. He wouldn't wish a sword to the crotch on anyone, terrorist or not.
"He's getting away!" Blake hissed. A third Bullhead had taken off into the night. Roman Torchwick was clearly more about 'run and live' than 'blaze of glory'. Despite Blake's disappointment, Jaune felt relieved more than anything. Any fight with a notorious criminal, a bunch of terrorists, and two gunships that you could walk away from, was a good fight, or so they said. At least nothing else crazy had happened—
Something very bright passed overhead with a loud crackling sound. Jaune stumbled around in agony, covering his eyes. Damn it, he really needed to stop tempting fate!
In Weiss's humble opinion, the Schnee glyphs were a pretty great Semblance. Very few people were versatile enough to pull off effects ranging from solid platforms to speed to summoning, even if the last one was purely theoretical in her case. Sadly, there were always some annoying little situations that really tested your limits, like being pinned down and shot at by military-grade aircraft. Myrtenaster was, admittedly, a bit lacking in ranged capabilities, and neither of the Schnee twins had been blessed with massive Aura reserves, certainly not enough to run out and soak up a Bullhead's worth of bullets. The one thing that seemed promising was infusing a glyph with hard-light Dust, and focusing it into a high-intensity energy beam (a laser, to the uninitiated), but unfortunately, it turned out Bullheads were a bit harder to crack than your average Grimm.
Fortunately, there was a simple solution. More Dust equaled a bigger laser, and while hard-light Dust was usually too rare to throw around willy-nilly, they happened to be surrounded by shipping containers full of the stuff. Quite convenient, really. It was like fighting a bear in its den, or fighting Nora in a pancake restaurant.
"Found it!" Sable lifted a metal canister with a cyan marking—not to be confused with blue (water) or light blue (ice). He and Weiss crouched on the floor, transferring the powdered Dust into vials and swapping the vials into their swords. The way they were doing it violated every safety protocol enumerated in Dust for Dummies; this sort of operation was supposed to be done in a secure environment with appropriate protective gear...but they were short on time, and it should be fine as long as nobody sneezed.
"He's getting away!" Blake's voice shouted. Weiss poked her head out of the shipping crate. There was only one Bullhead left; the other had vanished unaccountably. Blake, Jaune and...was that the stowaway? what was he doing here?...were battling more thugs. And that Torchwick filth was apparently making a tactical retreat. So much for honor among thieves. She glared at the criminal's departing ride. What he got out of this deal, she did not understand. Even in the interest of mere self-preservation, wasn't it a bad idea for a human criminal to team up with a pack of human-hating terrorists?
"Change of targets, Weiss? Let's give that bastard something to think about!" Sable squinted at the distant Bullhead. "Unless the shot's too far for you—"
"It is not!" Weiss narrowed her eyes in concentration. A ring of small cyan snowflakes appeared around the tip of her sword; Sable did the same. A larger glyph of the same color formed in front of them, fittingly shaped like a giant set of crosshairs.
"Ready." Weiss leveled her sword at the crosshairs glyph. Myrtenaster's tip glowed a brilliant blue as she channeled two entire vials of hard-light Dust into it. "Three...two...one!"
Twin beams burst from their swords. They converged in the dead center of the crosshairs, and combined into a massive laser...sorry, high-intensity energy beam...which arced across the sky with a satisfying thrum. It lanced into the distant Bullhead with a flash of light. The ship plunged into a death spiral, trailing smoke, one wing blown off. Yes! YES! Someone was laughing and cheering like a maniac. No wait, that was her. Sable yelled something quite obscene, which she did not feel like repeating. It had taken a sizeable chunk of her Aura to launch that attack, but gods was it worth it. After all the assassinations and thefts and other unpleasantness over the years...it felt good, to get a hit in for Team Schnee.
"What?!" the stowaway shouted. "Was that a fucking railgun? You can do that?"
In the background, another Bullhead fell from the sky while two red-and-yellow shapes bailed from it, screaming. It landed right on top of the last remaining Bullhead, destroying them both in a fiery explosion. No one commented on it. It had just been that kind of day.
"Aw, shit." With a long-suffering sigh, Roman Torchwick lit a cigar. The no-smoking sign was still on, but fuck the rules, and besides, it really didn't matter anymore. He kicked open the door of the stricken Bullhead, while around him the White Fang members on board ran about in panic. "I'd say it was nice knowing you, but I don't believe in lying to people in their final moments." On that parting note, Roman stepped into thin air. For a moment he fell freely, then a small hand grabbed his.
"Thanks, Neo." His trusty pink-and-brown sidekick winked at him. Her other hand grasped her parasol, floating lazily above the ocean like it was Sunday in the park. Below them, a hearty splash marked his getaway ride's demise. He sincerely hoped every last one of those animals drowned. This was worse than the time he'd hired Junior's goons. All they had to do was waltz in, pack up a totally unguarded pile of Dust, and leave. And they'd somehow failed so hard they'd summoned the godsdamned heiress to the SDC herself. It was like trying to take candy from a baby, and getting eaten by the baby instead. Damn those animals. And damn Little Red! As if she wasn't annoying enough on her own, she had to bring along an army of colorful little pains in the ass this time. He missed the days before Cinder, when he didn't have to deal with teenagers packing anti-aircraft lasers. Semblances were dumb. He wasn't bitter about never discovering his own, not at all!
A dull boom indicated the end of the other two Bullheads. Neo raised her eyebrows and puckered her lips. If she had a voice, Roman was sure she would have whistled. He scowled. Hilarious as it was seeing the animals get completely trashed, this was putting his escape in serious jeopardy.
"Hey, Lassie!" Roman shouted into his Scroll. The dog faunus on the other end of the line barked something about not calling him racial slurs, or whatever, Roman didn't care. Wasn't his fault it was so much easier to call them all Lassie and Kitty and Deery than to learn their actual names. They all looked the damn same, especially with those masks on, and besides, no point wasting his energy on a bunch of stiffs. Most of them would be dead before the year was out. "I need some cover here! Send in the reserves! All of them!" Lassie yipped some nonsense about how he wasn't going to risk the proud brothers of the White Fang to save his scummy human ass. "There's a Schnee down there! Two of them! Turned a bunch of your friends into a doughnut!" Okay, that last bit really didn't make sense out of context, but it seemed to work anyways. Lassie was howling and barking orders to his kennel. There it was. Say the S-word and that lot started foaming at the mouth, like clockwork. Roman recalled an experiment he'd read about in his school days, the one with the dog and the dinner bell. Heh. Bless their hearts, hose mutts didn't stray far from their roots.
"Where is he, where is he...I see him!" Ruby announced, looking down Crescent Rose's scope. "He's holding onto some girl with pink-brown hair, and she's holding onto...an umbrella? Well, that's a landing strategy, I guess."
"Can you make the shot?" Sable asked eagerly.
"I dunno." Ruby said. "If I hit him, and he falls from that high up...it might be messy."
"So what?" That earned Sable a few disturbed looks. "Okay, we can let him land first! All the better to interrogate him, I guess?"
"Isn't shooting someone while they're parachuting a war crime, anyways?" Blake pointed out.
"It's an umbrella, not a parachute." Sable argued. "And the Vytal Convention only applies to licensed Huntsmen and the military, this man's abetting a terrorist organization and therefore an unlawful combatant—"
A roar of engines interrupted their discussion on the legality and ethics of shooting Roman Torchwick on the spot. One, two, three, four, five more Bullheads crested the city skyline. They parked themselves over the dock, with yet more White Fang members dropping down on ropes while the ships provided suppressive fire. The students dove for cover again, with a distinct sense of déjà vu.
"This is nonsense!" Weiss protested. "How did they acquire this much military hardware?"
"Maybe that Torchwick guy's Semblance is to summon Bullheads?" Jaune suggested.
"That's stupid!"
"This is bad..." Blake muttered. "I think it's time for the Belladonna Secret Technique again..."
"The what?" said Yang.
"Huh? I mean, we should run for it!" Blake looked embarrassed. "It's not as if we can expect to receive conveniently timed reinforcements, again!"
Right as she said that, a pink explosion blossomed on the dock, blasting a hole in the White Fang's formation. Their conveniently timed reinforcements followed behind. A young girl in a green dress literally flew into the battlefield, trailing glowing swords behind her like wings. A redhead in bronze armor and a boy in green clung to her legs. And another girl with orange hair sat proudly atop the whole amalgamation, hammer raised like a warrior angel of yore.
"Penny!" Sun gasped. "And holy crap, is that the Pyrrha Nikos?"
Blake shook her head in disbelief. "It's not as if I can expect a million Lien to drop next to me?" Nothing happened. "Worth a try."
Ren stared at the tableau with wide eyes. Their entire social group was down there, along with the monkey boy, under siege by five Bullheads and what looked like a small army. The dock was littered with wreckage, small fires, and Dust crates exploding left and right. It all brought back some unwelcome memories. Kuroyuri hadn't looked much worse than this, after the Nuckelavee finished with it.
"Onwards, faithful steed!" Nora cheered. Oh, and it was a very long way down, and he was only holding onto Penny's leg. The girl must've had some seriously sturdy joints, to handle the weight of two people without dislocating her hips.
"Ren, how did we get into this situation?" Pyrrha whispered next to him.
"I have no idea." he deadpanned. Well, he knew perfectly well how they had gotten here—Ruby had sent them a message begging them to help save their friends from the White Fang, Penny had suggested she could help them get there faster, and Nora had literally jumped on board. But he suspected Pyrrha meant her question more in a cosmic 'why are our lives like this' manner, which he had no answers for.
"Drop us off on that Bullhead, Penny!" Nora ordered.
"Consider it done, Friend Nora!" Penny answered cheerfully. Nora grinned down at Ren, and offered him a hand. Ren quickly wished Pyrrha luck, and took his partner's hand in his own; then they fell.
"Thanks Penny! Five stars!" Nora called. They touched down atop their chosen Bullhead, balancing carefully on the smooth metal surface. Hopefully the occupants wouldn't have time to notice. A sudden roll would not go well for them. "Renny, emergency lightning Dust!"
"Here you go." Ren handed over the vial of yellow powder. Nora sucked it up her nose through a straw instead of swallowing it, for some reason. He wasn't sure he believed that it 'helped her absorb faster' like she claimed. "RARRRGH!" With one mighty blow of Magnhild, she blasted a hole in the roof of the passenger cabin. The pair dropped in through their impromptu door, to panicked screaming from the faunus inside. Ren dropped one with a clean headshot from Stormflower, downed a second with a flurry of well-placed stabs, and chopped a third in the throat with a flare of pink Aura. Behind him, he could hear Nora's hammer whistling through the air and bodies bouncing off the walls.
"Renny, take the gunner's seat!" Nora shouted. Ren turned around. His partner was sitting in the pilot's chair, hand on the controls.
"Wait, wait, do you even know how to fly this thing?!"
"I read that flight instruction manual from two chapters ago!" Nora said brightly. Ren had no idea how much time a 'chapter' measured, but shrugged it off as one of her many eccentricities. "How hard can this be? All right, BARREL ROLL!"
"Nora, no!"
"Holy crap, is Nora flying that thing?" Yang said in amazement.
"I didn't know she could do that!" Nora's Bullhead zipped across the sky, pulling off death-defying rolls and sharp turns, and spraying bullets all the while. The enemy ships had to break off their attack and take evasive action, easing the pressure on the fighters below. Ruby whirled around the dock, pumping off rapid-fire shots from Crescent Rose. At this range, she didn't even need to scope in. White Fang dropped one after another; the recoil propelled her in a neat circle, and Ruby landed exactly where she had started. Imaginary air horns sounded to commemorate her achievement. She still felt a little inadequate, considering her own dismal attempt at piloting.
"Salutations! Friends, acquaintances, best friend, unidentified faunus!" Penny waved good-naturedly. Her other hand directed her swords forwards, knocking goons down like bowling pins. A very confused-looking Pyrrha stood by her side.
"Penny? Pyrrha? How are you even here?" Ruby asked.
"I have no idea what's happening!" Pyrrha called back. She waved her hand, and a stack of Dust crates lifted into the air, glowing black. She proceeded to drop them right on a knot of White Fang that were threatening to overrun Blake and Jaune, sending the terrorists flying in a multicolored fireball. "Nora just said it was important..."
Where was everyone today?
Pyrrha hadn't seen any trace of her friends...and acquaintances...all day, and she had no idea why. They weren't at breakfast, or lunch, or in the training rooms. She'd even tried listening at Team RRWN's door, and nothing. Was that a weird thing to do? It felt too pathetic to just knock and beg to be let in, though. Her Scroll vibrated.
Nora: yo do you wanna come join Renny and me on our treasure hunt. we're in vale
Pyrrha: that's kind of far. what's the treasure
Nora: if we don't find it they'll probably put you on Team SJBY
Oh no. Pyrrha grabbed her weapons, and sprinted for the airship terminal.
Pyrrha: ON MY WAY
"...very important."
Sun was staring at the heavens. "We gotta do something for them! Can't let them dogfight the whole fleet on their own. Can you guys do that railgun thing again or—aah!" A stray volley from above caught him in the side. The monkey faunus jumped back, holding his ribs.
"Best Friend Sun!" Penny stepped in front of him, blocking any further shots with a spinning wheel of swords. "I shall help. Inform Friend Nora to get clear!"
Ruby gave some orders via Scroll, and soon enough the rogue Bullhead peeled away. Penny had her swords floating in a ring, a green glow at its center growing ever brighter and brighter...Penny fired. The shockwave alone tore a groove in the concrete, and sent anyone in its radius sprawling. The green laser hit one Bullhead, went right through it, hit a second Bullhead, and went through that one too. In a blink of an eye they were gone, nothing more than debris raining down on the dock. Seeing the fate of their comrades, the remaining two ships turned to flee.
"Now that's a laser!" Ruby exclaimed. Weiss and Sable looked a bit annoyed at being upstaged so quickly.
"I am not finished helping!" Penny said, voice determined. Her swords shot out again, impaling the last two Bullheads. Planting two swords into the ground to anchor herself, the girl pulled.
"Holy shit!" Yang gasped. "That defies physics!" Though it was quite remarkable that she hadn't been instantly dismembered, Penny was clearly struggling against the force of two Bullheads at once. Her boots let off sparks as they scraped against the ground, and her arms made some rather alarming creaking noises.
"Penny, just let them go!" Ruby said in concern.
"They attempted to harm you all. My friends." Penny gritted, strain written on her face. "They will not get away with this. Not a single one—"
"You've done enough!" Sun begged her. "I can't have my best friend tearing herself in half for me! Please!"
Penny sighed. "Very well." She withdrew her swords from one Bullhead, and the wounded ship scurried off. The hum of its engines sounded almost like a sigh of relief. The other was not so lucky. Penny casually reeled it in like a prize fish on a line, still looking rather put out. It fell down onto a tall stack of Dust crates and exploded. The others barely batted an eye. If you'd seen five Bullheads get destroyed in spectacular fashion, you'd seen them all.
The White Fang members remaining on the dock didn't take it nearly as well. After seeing their air support get absolutely dunked on or abandon them, the formerly confident bunch were huddled together, eyeing their nine opponents with barely concealed terror. The students hefted their weapons, ready for one final charge.
Nora and Ren spared them the trouble. Their Bullhead hit the ground, skidded across the dock upside down with a horrible screech of metal on concrete, ran over the White Fang, crashed into a wall, and caught fire. "Aww..." the hammer-wielder climbed out of the exit hatch. "It's broken."
Ren staggered out after her. "Nora, please don't ever do that again."
"Boy, that escalated quickly..." said Sun.
"How...how did this even happen?" Blake shook her head in bewilderment. It seemed only minutes ago that the three of them had been sitting on that rooftop, bored out of their skulls. And now eleven superpowered teenagers stood awkwardly in the blasted ruin of what had once been a port of commerce. The dock was strewn with dozens of masked faunus in varying states between 'mildly concussed' and 'deceased'. Half the place was by now engulfed in flames, casting them all in an unnatural orange light.
Penny approached her self-proclaimed best friend. "Thank you for earlier, Sun. I was about to exceed my operational limits without realizing it. Imagine that!" Her eyes flicked over to Blake, specifically to the top of her head. "I don't believe we've met! Are you a—"
"Oh, Penny!" Sun interrupted loudly. "This is Blake! We just became friends today! I think it's really neat how she wanted to be friends even though I'm a faunus, and she's a human." He winked. "Just like how you and I became friends, even though you're human! Interspecies friendship is great, huh?"
"Ah!" Penny's eyes widened. "It most certainly is! A pleasure to meet you, *hic* Human Friend Blake!"
"We really need to talk." Sable said, glaring at his two wayward teammates. "And you! What are you doing here, stowaway?"
"Sable, right?" Sun said nervously, hands raised. "Nice to see you again, heh. I've heard a lot about you from these guys...good things obviously...please don't set me on fire."
"Excuse me, but you were running from the law at the time!" Weiss interjected. "I don't know what you've heard about us, but we don't go around setting random faunus on fire for entertainment. That would be barbaric!" She turned to Penny. "Weren't you supposed to arrest him? How is he here?"
"Not her fault!" Sun defended her. "I just...uh, I was just too charming! She didn't have a chance!"
"That is true." Penny agreed. "Best Friend Sun was very charming. In spite of his transgression, I could not bring myself to turn him in! Not after we...er..." she closed her mouth abruptly, cheeks slightly pink. Sun wondered how that was even possible.
"Wait, what did you do?" Yang looked at her in surprise. "I mean, damn girl, I didn't think you had that in you."
"I am not sure what you mean. There are many things I have had in me at some point—"
"Okay, too much information!" Yang said hastily. "Geez, it's always the innocent ones..."
"Blake, what the hell!" Sable kicked off his airing of grievances. "Was this the errand you had to go run? Fighting all the White Fang in Vale?" He gestured at the carnage around them. "You had your Scroll off for two days! Two days, you dunce! We thought you might be dead in a ditch somewhere!"
"I was only going to observe them! Things...kind of got out of hand...all right, they really got out of hand." Blake explained sheepishly. "Sorry if you were worried, I didn't want you guys to get caught up—"
"Blake, you idiot!" Yang wrapped her partner in a tight hug. "You could've died out here! Thank gods Vomit...Jaune's got enough sense to call for backup!" Blake gave said boy a look of mixed betrayal and gratitude, which he returned with a nervous grin.
"Tell us the next time you get the urge to conduct some counter-terrorism, won't you?" Sable admonished her. "I didn't even know you felt so strongly about the White Fang. I would've helped if you'd asked! So would Weiss!"
"Indeed." Weiss added. "Our family has a lengthy history with those scoundrels, after all. If there is anything you think we can do to mitigate the threat...I will be happy to assist."
"Great." Blake said weakly.
"Don't mention it!" Sable gave her a grin that was a bit too wide, teeth glimmering in the fire's light. "I've wanted to get back at those bastards for years!"
Blake turned white as a sheet. Her leader took no notice, and turned to their last teammate. Jaune stood rooted to the spot, head bowed. "Uh...sorry..."
"Quiet. Spare me your grovelling." Sable said harshly. "Look at me!" Jaune met his eyes, trembling slightly. Their peers stood in a circle around them, wondering just what the dark-haired boy might say to his partner...or more likely, do to him. Blake winced, anticipating a repeat of the Forever Fall incident. Ren quietly readied his weapons, in case a homicide seemed imminent.
"Kiss and make up!" Nora suggested loudly. Ren clapped a hand over her mouth, a second too late.
"Damn it, Valkyrie! Learn to read the atmosphere!" Sable shouted at her. He turned back to Jaune with a sigh. "You missed three trainings while you were having your, ah, breakdown. I expect you make them up. Double length sessions through Wednesday."
"Huh?" Jaune gaped at him. "You...you're taking me back? Why?"
"No questions!" Sable smacked his partner over the head. "I decide who belongs on the team, got it? You don't get to quit whenever you feel like it!" He grabbed Jaune by the shoulders. "We'll make a Huntsman out of you, like it or not! Unless you think you're too good for us? My transcripts are perfectly real, you know!"
"No! Definitely not!" Jaune shook his head fervently. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. "Oh gods, thank you..."
"You're welcome, you dolt...now stop crying! Have some dignity!"
"I'm not crying! It's allergies!"
"WOO! Now kiss—" Nora began, before Ren shut her up again. Blake looked dumbfounded. Ruby pumped her fist and cheered. Pyrrha sighed in relief. Sun had no strong feelings on the matter and just stood there. Penny had inexplicably gone missing.
"Hmph." Weiss scowled in defiance of the general sentiment. "Arc, I have no idea what my brother and the rest see in you, but don't you dare fail them. Or I'll..." she tried to think of some punishment that sounded suitably intimidating but not totally unhinged. "...be very displeased..." That was lame. In her defense, it had been a very long day.
"AWW YEAH!" Yang swept the SJBY boys into a group hug, ignoring Sable's yells of protest. "Team SJBY's back in business, baby! GO STRAWBERRY! Wow, that sounded way cooler in my head—"
Wee-woo, wee-woo. Muffled sirens sounded in the distance.
"Aw man, it's the cops..."
Welp, this has been RWBY, as directed by Michael Bay. No faunus were harmed in the making of this chapter.
Scaled the encounter difficulty up a bit to account for the increased party size. "How many Bullheads does Roman have?" was the question, and "YES" was the answer. I was running out of ways to say 'and then a bunch of White Fang got dunked on' halfway through.
The Schnee Death Star is pretty ridiculous, but whatever, what is this show if not people doing ridiculous fighty stuff. It's a scaled up version of that laser thing Weiss shot at the Giant Nevermore, based on the scientific principle of more Dust = more laser. Glyphs are useful for more than being a walking Zamboni, ya know?