Glynda had been on hundreds of airship rides in her life, but never one quite like this. The Sphinx glided through the night sky like a great white ghost; every Nevermore in the vicinity screeched as they passed, at this strange beast that was a Grimm yet not a Grimm. A couple particularly curious specimens swooped in for a closer look, before it spat out a fireball and obliterated them. They kept their distance after that. Winter's summon beat its great wings in a steady rhythm and easily left its lesser cousins in the dust. Goodness, she felt almost like a dragon-riding princess from those fairy tales she'd used to read. The kingdom of Vale stretched out below, from the treetops of the Emerald Forest to the peaks of Mountain Glenn to the ocean lapping at its shores. The stars twinkled and the moon shone down in all its broken glory, bathing the scene in faint silver light. It was a beautiful sight—or rather, it would have been under better circumstances. The scattered fires and hordes of roving Grimm thoroughly spoiled the atmosphere. A distant boom came from the direction of Beacon, and she winced, wondering if she would even have a school to come back to. So much of her adult life had been spent in those halls; the cycle of exams and missions and tournaments was as familiar to her as the passing of the seasons. For it to be so suddenly torn away was—it wasn't fair. She still had so much to do! There were delightfully difficult finals that she'd spent weeks prepping and pending detentions for a few certain miscreants and—focus, she scolded herself. She was Glynda Goodwitch, right hand to Headmaster Ozpin himself, not some rookie who wore her heart on her sleeve. Too much lay at stake for her to get bogged down in petty sentimentality.
Not all her fellow passengers were so stoic. "Oh man." said the dog faunus sitting behind her. Marrow, if she remembered his name right (given the circumstances, intros had understandably been a bit rushed). His Semblance's ability to freeze everything he pointed to would be vital to their plan, assuming of course that he could keep his head on straight. He was also the only faunus representation aboard, though that was neither her nor there; Sun Wukong had been reasonably excluded on basis that he was neither a fully qualified Huntsman nor a hyper-advanced robot. That had threatened to kick off a fresh argument, until Penny gave him the 'sleeping on the couch' look again and he reluctantly acquiesced. The goodbye hugs and exhortations to stay safe had still delayed their departure by half a minute. "Long way down, isn't it?"
Hm, so he was one of those Huntsmen. There was a certain type that dealt with pre-battle anxiety via mindless chatter and 'humorous' observations that verged upon blindingly obvious. Glynda did understand where he was coming from, mind you. Sitting on the summon felt like sitting on a cloud, and she knew how hard it was to maintain an Aura construct this large (the younger Schnees were proof enough of that). But if Winter was willing to stake her own life on it, then it was good enough for her. Mostly. It still comforted her to know she had her telekinesis to perhaps literally fall back on.
"I've got it handled." Winter from her seat at the head of the Sphinx, a tad crossly. The black bird perched on Glynda's shoulder cawed skeptically. "Oh, shut up. I've been doing this for years. I'll be fine unless, say, someone insists on distracting me." Another caw. "Just because you can fly—!"
"Fear not, Specialist Amin." Penny chimed in from the tail. "With Aura I estimate your odds of dying from the fall at a mere nine-point-four percent plus an additional three-point-eight percent chance of injuries not correctable with bionic implants—"
"Not helping!" Marrow yelped.
Glynda cleared her throat. "If I may suggest?" she said in professorial tones. "Remember your Academy training. Trust your teammate to do her duty, and focus on your own." There. That should settle his nerves, unless...a horrible thought popped into her head. "You do not happen to suffer from motion sickness, do you?"
Marrow blinked at the sudden tangent. "Huh? No! I, um, actually really like roller coasters!" he said with a slight hiccup. Good, Glynda thought. Though it had been nearly a year, the incident with the Arc boy and the giant Nevermore was still stark in her memory. That had been disgusting enough to watch on camera; she had no desire to experience a repeat first-hand.
"We're getting close." Winter announced. The black bird squawked twice (it sounded vaguely like 'good luck'?) before taking off in a flurry of feathers. Ostensibly, the plan was for Qrow to fly around and draw some heat off them. In reality that was mostly an excuse for him to leave because the last thing they needed here was an automatic 50% luck penalty. Down below, the rooftops gave way to a scene from the pits of hell. A train station had stood here once upon a time, to receive service from Mountain Glenn. After the tragedy, the Council had ordered a hill piled atop the sealed tunnel and apartments built around it, in hopes that people would slowly forget. But now the Vale-to-Glenn line was open for the first time in decades, and Grimm were pouring out like commuters at rush hour. A bunch of bulky metal shapes stood around doing absolutely nothing to stop it—those must be the rogue Paladins, then. The robots seemed to look up as they flew overhead, and strange protrusions began sprouting from their backs. If Glynda squinted they looked almost like missile launchers—
Oh dear.
Winter had come to the same conclusions. "Hold on, evasive actions!" She plunged the Sphinx into a near-vertical dive, forcing her passengers to grab onto its spikes for dear life. It was a good thing she did, because seconds later, two dozen balls of light launched up from the breach site, trailing smoke. The missiles were as pretty as fireflies on a summer night, but no one was fool enough to try and catch one in a bottle, lest their flight come to an end in an awful lot of fire. In spite of her best efforts, Glynda felt the tiniest of butterflies in her stomach. Much as she enjoyed her day job, it didn't leave much time for true combat. She had to remember this wasn't one of her classes, where you could make a mistake and come back wiser tomorrow. One false move and there would no more tomorrows for them, along with gods knew how many other people.
Was it strange to say that she'd sort of missed the feeling?
A Goliath. A freaking Goliath! The giant Grimm (along with its northern cousin the Megoliath) was an object of awe and dread even among Huntsmen. Back at Atlas Academy, it had been somewhat of a tradition for upperclassmen to regale the frosh with absurd stories about fighting demon elephants. Most were patently false—Robyn was pretty sure that flooding a village with lava to kill a Grimm horde would get you expelled—but these were no creatures to be taken lightly (no pun intended). They could flatten houses with their weight alone, they showed surprising intelligence for supposedly mindless beasts, and those myths about them being scared of mice were utter nonsense. The specimen before them seemed content to glare menacingly for now; it kicked its massive legs lazily about, demolishing what was left of that poor apartment building. Robyn wondered what was going through its head. Was it formulating the optimal way to kill them all? Or had it calculated that it could cause greater destruction, if it intimidated the Huntsmen into leaving it be? "Junior, get out of here!" she ordered. Sketchy though the man might be, he was still a civilian under her protection. "We'll hold it off."
"You're going to fight that?" Junior squeaked.
"I'm going to kill that." Nora declared with a twirl of her hammer. "Run along, girls. I'd hate for you to break a nail or something."
Melanie folded her arms. "For your information I've been in plenty of fights—" The Goliath trumpeted again. It brought its foot down on a parked car, instantly reducing it to a metal pancake. Her eyes widened. "Uh, never mind actually gotta go now have fun!" She sprinted back the way they'd come, so swiftly that she seemed to leave a dust outline behind. "Um, good luck. Don't die." Miltia said awkwardly, before running after her sister and her...Junior, whatever the heck relation he was. Thud. The entire street shook as the Goliath plodded forward. Its great bulk emerged into the open inch by inch. Legs as tall and thick as tree trunks trod the asphalt, supporting a dark body bristling with bone spikes. Its powerful trunk twisted and coiled about like a great serpent. "Hold steady." Robyn said. For all their valor, Ren and Nora were still very young, and this was the kind of situation where youthful bravado tended to wilt in the face of primal fear. "Quick game plan, we—"
"All right, TIME'S UP! Let's do this!" Nora bellowed. Next thing she knew, the short girl was charging headlong at a monster over five times her height. At the sight of his partner's elaborate suicide attempt, Ren let out sigh. Not a scream, not a shout, a sigh. It reminded Robyn of her school days, when she'd be asleep in her room and then her teammates would stumble in drunk at 3 AM for the fifth time in a week. Same energy. "Dang it." he muttered, before running in after her. Robyn blinked. Okay then! Clearly she needn't have worried about the kids losing their nerve. If anything, she should have worried more about the opposite. "Wait, come back!" she sputtered.
She might as well have tried to reason with a freight train. Nora was practically face-to-face with the Goliath already. It thrust its head down, trying to impale her on its tusks, but she fired some kind of pink explosive from her weapon and launched herself over them. The muscles in her arms bulged as she drew back the hammerhead and swung with a roar to rival the Goliath's own. All of Robyn's experience told her this was a terrible, terrible idea. It was ridiculous to imagine that teenage girl could single-handedly slay a Grimm that whole teams of adult Huntresses struggled with. And yet Nora dove in with such confidence that she couldn't help but believe for a second...
...until the hammer struck the Goliath's skull and reality asserted itself. Bonk. For a moment Nora hung in mid-air like a character from some zany cartoon. Her face was a picture of bewilderment, as if unable to comprehend why her enemy hadn't messily exploded yet. Then the Goliath tossed its head. Slap! Nora's body flew back and to the right like a swatted bug. She crashed into a wall so hard she left a miniature crater behind, then banked down into an open dumpster. The dumpster tipped over, burying the unfortunate Huntress under a tidal wave of garbage. Judging from the sheer amount, Vale's sanitation services left something to be desired. Ew.
"Nora!" Ren did shout now, with no small amount of distress. The Goliath broke into a trot. Thud. Thud. Thud. He stepped between the advancing beast and his downed partner without any hesitation. A hail of green bullets flew from his twin guns, but they might as well have been green beans for all the good they did. A dozen rounds to the face didn't even make it flinch. Its footfalls got louder, got faster. Thud-thud-thud. Yet Ren was likewise unflinching, standing his ground and doggedly plugging away. Gods, but these Beacon kids were built different—if this had happened to Robyn as a first year, she thought she might have soiled her pants. But that had been a long time ago, and she was a far braver woman now. Certainly not the type to stand by and narrate while her comrades got bodied. "Heads up!" she called. She briefly closed one eye to confirm her aim, then squeezed her crossbow's trigger. A single bolt shot out and—bullseye! Well, elephant's-eye, more like. It whizzed through one of the two holes in the Goliath's bone mask, sinking in with a nasty squelch before its explosive charge detonated. Black ichor sprayed from the empty socket. The Grimm reared up on its hind legs just short of Ren's position, trumpeting in agony. "You like that?!" Robyn shouted. She veered sharply left, loosing another bolt on the run. This one pierced the Goliath's trunk, and now its trumpet sounded like it had a bad sinus infection. Its head swiveled towards her. "Yeah! That was me!" She dashed down a side street, waving her crossbow enticingly. The third bolt went through its ear and stuck there like a piece of jewelry. The Goliath turned to face her fully, its remaining eye aglow with wrath. Robyn grinned. The plan was working! "Scared, tusk-for-brains? Come get me!" And it did. Thud. Thud. Thud. "Come after me! I'm not a kid! I'm thirty!" Ugh, what was she even saying? The taunts were just coming stream-of-consciousness at this point. She peppered the Goliath's face with more shots, aiming to fully blind it, but the beast was a fast learner. It shook its head erratically from side to side, and her arrows bounced harmlessly off its hard skull. It thundered closer and closer, its shape growing ever larger and larger...
Robyn suddenly realized that this might not have been such a good plan. "Oh boy."
With those words of wisdom, she executed the oldest strategy in the Huntress playbook, namely running the other way as fast as she could. It had gotten her out of many tight spots before, but in this case she doubted it would avail her for long. A Goliath could sustain a top speed of 25 miles per hour, faster than most Aura-enhanced humans could manage without a specialized speed Semblance. She supposed it was a testament to the skill of the Atlas Grimm Studies professor that she still remembered that factoid. This stretch of road was unfortunately a long straightaway with no turns in sight, but it was a poor Huntress who only thought in two dimensions. And although Robyn couldn't fly like the bird she was named for, fighting in the middle of a city had (again, no pun intended) its upsides. A well-timed jump saw her snag the bottom of a conveniently-placed fire escape, and she clawed her way desperately up the ladder. She made it one, two, three floors before the Goliath hit. It didn't even attack properly; instead, it just casually tossed its weight sideways and reduced the entire building to rubble. Robyn would have felt insulted, were she not busy fighting for her life. She barely cleared the crush zone with a flying leap off a railing, then face-planted awkwardly into the side of the Goliath's head. Its mask was hard and cold and smooth to the touch. Her fingers scrabbled for purchase as she slid down towards the trampling feet below, until she managed to secure herself on one of the bone spikes that jutted out.
Well, 'secure' was a very relative term. Her legs flapped in the Goliath's slipstream and hung over a twenty-foot drop. How did she get into this situation (meaning in the metaphorical sense, since the chain of events leading here was actually pretty clear)? Her free hand was occupied with clinging to the uncomfortably slippery spike, so she had to turn the crossbow's crank with her teeth instead. Despite having owned her weapon for years, she'd never really appreciated how much draw weight it had. Ow. If not for Aura, she might need dentures after this. From her position she could see the red of the Goliath's good eye; the shooting angle would be tight, but it wasn't like she had a better option. She spat the cocked crossbow out of her sore jaw, aimed one-handed...and just as she fired, the stupid creature lurched sharply right. The bolt skimmed about three inches wide of its target. "Gods damn—"
She never finished the curse. Apparently Goliaths got offended when you took the gods' names in vain. It rammed its head straight through a brick wall and then oh gods oh fuck the pain. The hit made her black out for a second. One moment she was taking a brick to the face, and the next she was upside down in the ruins of someone's bathroom. She came to atop a broken toilet, with water from the shattered bowl soaking her hair, feeling like every bone in her body had just been pulverized. If not for Aura, she'd probably be eating through a tube for the rest of her life, at best. On the bright side, at least her toothache was gone. Gone, too, was the entire front half of the room. There was nothing on that side except open air and the trunk of a giant elephant—oh. Oh.
Before Robyn could drag her aching body out of the way, the trunk had wrapped around her waist. It lifted her in a crushing grip that made her legs go rapidly numb, and yet she felt oddly calm. Perhaps it was the head trauma? With practiced ease, she turned the crank again and loaded three explosive bolts. That would take a nice chunk out of the bastard's nose, hopefully enough to blast herself free. As for what a point-blank explosion might do to her with her Aura this low...well, she didn't really know. But like hell was she going to meekly submit to becoming Grimm food. If this was the end, she would meet it as a Huntress should, with a weapon in her hand and defiance in her heart. And hey, saving two kids wasn't a bad way to go—
"Wheee!"
Um, what? Robyn was half-convinced she was hallucinating on her deathbed until she saw Nora rocket into view. Using her hammer as a pogo-stick, the girl bounced down the street like a stone skipping across a lake, except with pink grenade explosions instead of splashing water. That left her entirely convinced it was a hallucination. Then Nora sprang up and planted her hammer somewhere in the Goliath's thick posterior. The boom that followed was strangely muffled as if it had gone off in a tight space, and the Grimm squealed, more like a pig than an elephant. Its trunk abruptly went slack, dropping her like a hot potato. "Yes!" she cheered, with an enthusiasm that only someone unexpectedly reprieved from death could muster. Then she realized she was three stories in the air with nothing to hold her up. "Oh no—"
She fell straight down, right onto a pile of bricks. "My back..." she groaned. Oh, she was going to be feeling it in the morning. It used to be that she could get the crap beat out of her by day, then wake up fresh as a daisy after good night's sleep, but sadly she wasn't a teenager anymore. A pair of strong hands grabbed her under the arms and pulled her away. "Goodness, are you all right?" said Ren.
"I'll live." she grumbled. Her muscles would be horribly stiff for the next week and throb while performing the most basic tasks, but she would live. "You came back. Thanks."
Ren shrugged modestly. "Just returning the favor." In the background, the Goliath was still trying to recover from its grenade suppository. A cloud of pink smoke billowed from its rear end as it roared in agony and repeatedly slammed its butt into various walls. Robyn almost pitied it, before a spasm of pain in her back quashed any sympathetic feelings. "Nora, quick!" Ren called out. "We need to escape while it's distracted!"
"Huh?!" Nora called back, as she ran to regroup with them. It was good to see her unhurt, even though she stank so badly Robyn could smell it from halfway across the street. A stray rat fell out of her hair and crawled away, looking terrified. Ugh. "We're letting it get away?"
"Letting it—you saw what it did!" Ren said. "Robyn's a fully trained Huntress and it still nearly killed her! Um, no offense—"
"None taken."
"There's gotta be something we can do!" Nora shook Robyn by the shoulders, eyes shining with hope. "Come on, you've got a Semblance, don't you? Some kind of super cool limit break move?"
Robyn let out a rueful chuckle, which immediately turned to a coughing fit. Gods, but it hurt to laugh. "Not unless you want to ask it a true/false question."
"Aww." Nora was briefly discouraged, but quickly perked up again. "Then what about Lightning Dust? Got any Lightning Dust?"
Ren shot her a warning look. "Nora..."
"Lightning Dust, huh?" Robyn pried open the crossbow's magazine. "My explosive bolts have some. Those are the red ones." She pulled out a handful for exposition purposes. It was actually a mix of Fire and Lightning that produced the effect, but this was hardly the time for pedantry. "There's not much—" Nora interrupted her by snatching the bolts from her grip. "Um, why did you ask?"
"Come on, there's no way that's enough." Ren said. Nora kept eyeing her fistful of arrows, taking deep breaths as though to psych herself up for something. "Wait, don't—!"
Too late. With a mighty yell, Nora stabbed the bolts into her left arm. As in, straight through her skin and into her veins, like a junkie shooting up with heroin. Robyn and Ren could only stare in mute horror. Even Nora seemed shocked by what she'd done for an instant, before she started to scream. "AAAAAHHHHH!" She crumpled to the ground, hammer dropping from her hand with a clang. Blood and pink electricity streamed from the wound, and Robyn gasped as she realized what was happening. Dust, like many drugs, was vastly more potent when injected directly into the bloodstream, but the side effects...there was a reason hardly anyone did it. Not unless they were incredibly brave or incredibly insane. She wasn't sure which one this girl qualified as. "FUUUCK!" Nora convulsed, electricity now arcing over her whole body. "The pain! It hurts so much worse than I thought! AAAAHHH!"
"Nora—agh!" Ren tried to help her up, but the moment he touched her a bolt of lightning blasted him back. He landed on his rear six feet away, his previously sleek dark hair now resembling a dandelion. "N-Nora!" he sputtered in shock (yet again, no pun intended).
Nora's eyes snapped open, her natural turquoise replaced by an unnatural solid pink. "STAY BACK!" The words came out distorted, crackling with static in a way no human voice should. Then she resumed screaming. "AAAAAAA—" She lurched upright as if pulled on invisible strings. "—AAAAA—" The hammer was back in her hand. Robyn could have sworn it had flown there, rather than her picking it up. "—AAAAA—" She turned and charged the Goliath before anyone could stop her, not that they would have succeeded what with her being electrified and all. It tried to move out of the way, but it was slow, far too slow. Nora seemed to leave a trail of neon light behind as she closed the distance in a blink. "—AAAAA!" In a single bound, she leapt up at the its head, leaving the imprint of her sneakers in the asphalt. The sound of her impact was surprisingly soft, a little pop barely audible over the general din. One could almost think nothing had happened, if not for the neat person-sized hole in the giant's face. The Goliath swayed. It lifted one trembling foot, before pausing mid-step as though it had forgotten what to do next. A final dying wheeze escaped its trunk; then its knees buckled and it slumped to the ground with unfitting gentleness.
"Nora?" Ren seemed to have lost the ability to say any other word. "Nora!" He jumped to his feet and ran up to the massive corpse, with Robyn stumbling along behind. As they approached, a fist burst out of its chest like an alien parasite, the rest of Nora following in a fountain of gore. She was covered head to toe in filth and blood, a mix of the Goliath's and her own. Her left arm was a bleeding, burnt-looking mess. Yet still she stood, proud and unbroken and smiling. Fading sparks danced around the hammerhead as she raised it triumphantly to the heavens. She threw her head back and let out a wordless roar, so loud that the Brothers could probably hear it in their astral halls. In the moment, she looked half dead but half a god. Robyn resisted the sudden urge to genuflect. As for Ren, he stared at his partner as if he'd never seen her properly before, a flush creeping up his cheeks. The urges he was feeling were probably quite different. Despite everything, Robyn couldn't help but smirk. Well, well. Perhaps those two had a chance after all.
"Hey guys." Nora spoke, and the spell was broken. She was a mortal girl again, small and injured and very, very, tired. "That...that was cool and all...but if I ever try it again, slap me."
Ren nodded. "Um, I'll do my best."
"And Robyn..." Nora slurred. "Thanks. I'd vote for you." Then she fainted.
The Sphinx plummeted like a shooting star. Below, the rooftops of Vale rushed up at a rather alarming rate, while above, the cloud of missiles corrected course and homed back down towards them. Normally Winter was quite proud of her homeland's advanced military tech, but right now it was seriously annoying her. "Ahem, Miss Schnee?" Glynda Goodwitch said in her ear. "Perhaps you should slow down?" Marrow made his opinion much clearer by screaming at the top of his lungs. Oh ye of little faith, Winter thought. She'd been doing this since she was fifteen, when she killed her first Nevermore large enough to ride, and she hadn't gone splat once. In fact, some of her best memories were of joyriding through the night above Atlas with only the stars for company. It had a way of making all the stress that came with growing up Schnee feel very far away, and sometime during those nights she had begun daring to dream that one day she would be permanently free of it. Good times.
Back in the present, she eased her mount into the space between two tall buildings before finally pulling out of the dive. It leveled out, so close to the ground that its talons decapitated a particularly tall Beowolf, before accelerating again. They were going way over the speed limit, but she doubted anyone was going to write them a ticket. In hindsight, they ought to have approached the breach site at street level to begin with. That would keep them out of the Paladins' visual range as long as possible, much like a soldier running through a trench. Multiple explosions went off overhead as missiles bombarded the rooftops, followed by a shower of debris. What looked like the top floor of a skyscraper crashed into the road behind them, crushing several dozen Grimm. Winter grimaced. Hopefully anyone inside had evacuated. If not, they were probably very dead. She grimaced further when three balls of light flew down the resulting gap, having managed to thread the needle. Again, she cursed Atlas's scientists for being so good at their jobs. It wasn't so fun being on the receiving end. "Orders?" Penny said calmly. The robot girl shifted in her seat, a sword in either hand. "Shall I intercept?"
"Stand by." Winter said. She'd rather not risk Penny here if she could help it. They needed her firepower for the plan to work, and she was banged up enough as it was. One more hit in the wrong place could ruin everything. Besides, Pietro Polendina was going to be furious enough already; if he found out they'd used his beloved daughter as a missile shield to boot...well, she shuddered to imagine it. Maybe Marrow could—wait, did his Semblance even work on projectiles? She'd only ever seen him use it on living things, well, and robots too, but a missile was a different case, right? Like, it was an inanimate object, but weren't robots also kind of inanimate? Well in any case, if he could he probably would have done it already. The dog faunus might be wet behind the ears, but he wasn't a moron. To make matters worse, a T-shaped intersection was coming up ahead, a row of townhouses blocking the forward path. Could she even stay ahead of the missiles if she slowed down to take the corner? And if she did, then what? A bird could hardly outfly a rocket in the long run, no matter how fast...
No, she thought. Screw that.
"Hold on!" Far from slowing down, she gunned the Sphinx toward the oncoming wall. "And duck!" she added. Stay on target, stay on target. Almost at the last second, the summon flipped by ninety degrees. She pressed her face to its back as it plunged sideways into the tiny slot between two houses. The fit was tight, so tight that its claws and spikes scraped the walls with a nasty grinding sound (or would, if Marrow's renewed screams hadn't drowned it out). Boom. Boom. Boom. Three blasts came in quick succession. For all their fancy tech, Atlesian missiles still relied on a proximity fuse in the end, and physically couldn't squeeze through such a narrow space. The explosion did little more then toast their rumps a little; Winter was about ready to sigh in relief when the shockwave hit. It rippled through the houses on either side, and to her alarm she heard the sound of mortar cracking. Gods! What kind of substandard building codes did Vale have, that their houses couldn't withstand a measly missile strike or three? She willed the Sphinx to move faster, but there wasn't much thrust it could generate while stuck sideways. Before she could think of a fallback plan, or fully contemplate how lame it would be to die from being squished by a big rock, the collapsing walls suddenly stabilized. Everything around was glowing a mysterious purple. "I got it!" Glynda shouted. A equally purple and glowing wave of rubble swelled below them, pushing them through the gap and out to the street on the other side. Winter let the Sphinx flop on its belly for a second while she gasped for breath. A pair of underwear had somehow ended up on her head at some point during that sequence, and she flicked it away with a scowl. Had they blundered through someone's laundry line? Did people not have dryers in this city? "Everyone all right?" she asked.
"Yes ma'am." Penny said, unperturbed.
"Y-yeah..." Marrow said unsteadily.
"Yes." Glynda said with slight disapproval. "You know, I think my Semblance could have handled that better?"
Oh. Well, now Winter felt rather silly. Without saying a word, she spurred the Sphinx into flight again. They had a lot to get done, after all. No time to sit around and litigate the mistakes of the past, certainly not. She turned towards the direction of the breach, before realizing she had no idea where that was. Look, keeping track of her cardinal direction and dodging missiles at the same time was a tall order, all right? She sneakily cast her gaze about for a street sign, but found none. Had they been destroyed in the fracas, or did Vale just not have them? What sort of barbaric city was this? "Oh, are you lost?" Penny said helpfully. "Take the second right, then the third left."
"I'm not lost!" Winter insisted. "But thank you." Of course Penny would know. The robot girl probably had the entire street map of Remnant written to her memory banks. In comparison, her own fleshy human brain felt uncomfortably inadequate. Swallowing her pride, she followed Penny's directions, and sure enough, after the specified turns she found herself gazing on the scene of the crime again. Their current trajectory would carry them across the face of the breach, right to left. The smoke and initial rush of Grimm had cleared out, giving an unobstructed view of the tunnel mouth. Within, row upon row on red eyes glowed as they patiently waited their turn to emerge. If she looked closely, she would see how the trail of eerie lights stretched all along the tunnel's downward slope until it vanished in the dark, perhaps all the way back to Mountain Glenn. She did not look so closely. What was she, a freaking tourist? Besides, that was more Glynda's concern. Her primary focus was the dozens of shiny robots loafing around while Grimm scampered around their legs. Disgraceful. "Marrow!" she barked.
Marrow whipped out his pointer finger with a flourish. "STAY!" he cried. The crowd of Paladins froze partway through raising their weapons. At the same time, Winter drew her sword and shot a beam of Lightning Dust over her shoulder. "Penny!" she shouted next. The android gave her a crisp salute, glowing pale gold under the effect of the time dilation glyph. "Aye-aye, ma'am!" There was a blur of spinning swords, and then the whole world turned green. A blindingly bright laser flew towards a group four Paladins. Thanks to Marrow's Semblance, they were forced to stand there like sitting ducks all in a line, not even afforded the chance to shoot back. The laser lanced through all their heads in one go, which promptly exploded. What remained was a multi-million Lien pile of scrap metal lying the street. Pietro Polendina had not oversold his daughter's abilities, not one bit. The late and mostly unlamented Doctor Watts would no doubt spin in his grave to see his rival's creation destroy his own so easily. Winter had no clue what had possessed him to build a mech with cutting-edge weapons and armor, and still put all the vital systems in the head. It just seemed like a poor design decision, even if she was thankful for it. Vreem! Vreem! Vreem! Penny's swords continued firing in their sped-up cadence, and more Paladins fell every second like wheat before the reaper's scythe. Any Grimm in the direct path died instantly from their flesh vaporizing. Those nearby were not so lucky; they burst into flames from the laser's passage, and the night split with shrieks as they burned alive.
So the party made their merry way down the street, obliterating everything in sight. The sheer ease of the slaughter made Winter vaguely uneasy. This felt less like a real battle, and more like a montage of war crimes from a gritty Faunus War film. All that was missing was the ominous orchestral soundtrack. When they passed the tunnel entrance, Glynda waved her riding crop and muttered under her breath, as if she were a witch by nature as well as name. The various chunks of rubble nearby flared with purple light and began to levitate, from large slabs of concrete down to the smallest pebbles. At least a hundred tons of accumulated detritus poured into the tunnel mouth. The growls of Grimm went suddenly silent as they were buried. It was an awe-inspiring sight, so much that Winter raised not one but both eyebrows. Hm. Perhaps it was tempting fate to think so, but Team WGMP (whatever that spelled) might be a little overpowered. Aside from the missile incident everything had gone just as planned, better even. Now in a work of fiction, this would be the point where things went absolutely pear-shaped—maybe a dragon would burst out of the ground to devour them, or all her limbs would randomly fall off. But in reality, nothing of the sort happened. The last pieces of Glynda's seal slotted into place with a satisfying rumble. "Pulling back!" Winter announced. She turned the Sphinx down a smaller street to the left. Penny fired off some final lasers as the time dilation glyph wore off, while Marrow kept his finger up until they passed out of visual range. "Well, that was fun!" Penny said brightly. "It went surprisingly well, did it not?"
"The benefits of planning, Miss Polendina." Glynda told her. "That is how missions should go."
Penny tilted her head curiously. "Is it? In my experience, there is usually a great deal more screaming and unexpected fires—"
Glynda sighed. "I would advise against following my students' example. Some of them...have a talent for chaos."
Winter could easily imagine who. Starts with S, rhymes with table? Shaking her head, she brought the Sphinx in for landing. "Take a second to rest, recharge, whatever you need. We're going right back in—" She was interrupted by a lone Paladin stomping out of a dark alleyway. Before they could attack and end its miserable existence four different ways, the entry hatch opened and a familiar face popped out. "Hold fire, it's me!"
Winter's eyes narrowed. She was sorely tempted to turn that stupid grin into a popsicle, but restrained herself. It wouldn't be professional. "What are you doing?"
Qrow shrugged the mech's massive shoulders. "Watching your flank for you, Ice Queen. I gotta say, this tin can's growing on me." He gestured to the alley behind him, where the broken remains of a few more Paladins and a lot more Grimm lay. "I got, like, forty kills in this thing!"
"Forty-four." Penny said with an innocent smile. Qrow's own smirk turned down at the corners. "Show-off." he grumbled.
Winter snorted. "And how are you controlling it, exactly...?"
"Oh, that?" The Paladin's big hand waved dismissively. "Cut open the hatch, overrode the autopilot, and just started pushing buttons. Figured it can't be that hard, if they let you Specialists do it." He rolled his eyes at Winter's incredulous expression. "Hey, look, it hasn't exploded yet—um, actually hold that thought!" He immediately bailed from the mech. The instant his shoes touched down on the street, it blew up in what looked like a shoddy CGI fireball. When the dust cleared, not a trace of the Paladin remained. "Whoops. Talk about bad luck, huh?"
"..." Winter felt a vein pulse in her temple. She was just going to pretend that hadn't happened. "...let's go destroy some more robots. Um, no offense Penny." she said lamely. They took off again, leaving the bird-man behind. The breach was closed for now, sure, but they still ought to eliminate the remaining Paladins in case they tried to shoot it back open. Plus it never hurt to reinforce a barricade. Another distant explosion rang out, but no one so much as batted an eye. Truly, it was remarkable what people could get used to on short notice. The party emerged back onto the battlefield, weapons and Semblances ready to rip, and...they found the surviving Paladins lying completely motionless on the ground. Talk about an anticlimax.
"What happened?" Penny sounded almost disappointed.
"I'm not sure." Winter admitted. "They should have continued operating unless the central command node was destroyed, but that's on the General's flagship—oh." She recalled the recent explosion, then put two and two together. "I suppose that settles that."
"Is—is it over then?" Marrow asked in a trembling voice. Somehow, he was breathing harder than he ever had during the actual fight. "Did we win?"
"The battle is far from over," Glynda cautioned him. "but our main mission is complete. You did well."
"Oh. Good." Marrow wheezed. He doubled over and voided his stomach contents all over the professor's back. The horrible noise went on for a good ten seconds; the fact that no one said a word the whole time made it seem far longer. Even Penny seemed stunned into silence. Judging from her face, she had gained a newfound appreciation for her own nice, clean mechanical innards. Glynda's eye twitched once, twice, three times. "Are you finished?" she finally said.
Marrow whimpered, tucking his tail between his legs. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I don't know what came over me, I swear I never get motion sick normally—"
"Next time," Glynda began with a long-suffering sigh. She unfastened her ruined cape and threw it away. "if you're dealing with nerves, go in a bucket beforehand. It helps more than you'd think." She got a miserable nod in return. On that horribly awkward note, they moved on to the dreary chore of mop-up duty. Penny meticulously impaled each fallen Paladin on her swords just to be safe, while more sounds of destruction came from the middle distance. This time there was splashing water mixed in, and that was enough for Winter to look up in mild concern. Had a random tsunami struck the city? The idea was absurd, but only marginally more absurd than what had already happened. Or maybe they were under attack by a giant sea monster. She had always thought it would be cool to be able to summon a Leviathan.
"Gods." she mumbled. "What can it be now?"
Adam's head snapped back as a metal fist socked him in the jaw, and all James felt was relief. The bowels of Amity Colosseum were so haphazardly laid out that he'd nearly despaired of finding the correct room from Yang's message. With every passing second, his fears of arriving only to find two murdered children had mounted, not that it was an excuse for blindly charging in as he had. His old drill sergeant would have twisted his ear off for his stupidity, then had him scrubbing toilets for the next week. He was well aware that had the sword stroke fallen on the other side of his body, he'd be bleeding out on the floor right now. But call it luck or destiny, he was not. He was alive, he was fighting, he had made it in time. Well, mostly in time. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Yang and her partner both lying on the floor. Qrow's niece didn't look to be seriously hurt, but the other girl—yeah, that ear was not growing back. Also, had she always been a faunus? "Run!" he shouted. They had been brave, so very brave. Adam Taurus was a notorious terrorist with multiple Huntsman kills to his name, a longtime fixture of Atlas's Most Wanted. For two first-year students to survive this long against him was a feat worthy of a medal, but a grown-up was here now. It was time for James to do his duty.
Time for him to be the hero.
As his opponent stumbled, he grabbed him by the coat and pulled him close again. That punch would have shattered the skull of a normal man, but Adam recovered quickly enough to drive a knee up hard between his legs. His face went slack with surprise when James didn't react in the slightest. 'Ironwood' had taken on a whole new meaning after his mishap, put it that way. It had taken a lot of therapy to come to grips, but at least it worked to his advantage now and then. For his efforts, the terrorist got a forceful headbutt to the nose. There was a loud crunch as Aura and cartilage gave way, but he made not a peep. A murderous lunatic he might be, but a wimp he was not. Adam headbutted right back, and the general was forced to hastily turn aside. Two sharp horns gored him in the cheek, narrowly missing his still-organic eyes. The blow made him see stars; some people accused him of having a hard head, but any truth to that was purely metaphorical. Adam used the opportunity to grab onto the hilt of his sword, drawing a foot of red steel from James's body before he managed to close his mechanical hand around the blade. The two men engaged in a brief tug-of-war. Adam twisted and jerked his length as he tried to pull it out, while James tried to keep it trapped deep inside. Their bodies heaved to and fro, both of them letting out almost animalistic grunts. The tatters of James's coat and shirt slid off in the struggle to leave his bare torso exposed. The left side of his body was chiseled muscle, but to the right of his sternum was an expanse of gleaming metal. There was a great gash from shoulder to waist where the red sword had cut; sparks flew and oil dripped from it, but not a drop of blood. Adam ground his teeth at the sight. "Cheater!" he hissed. It was far from the first time someone had complained that being half metal gave James an unfair advantage. Those people had clearly never felt pain from a limb that wasn't there, never had to suppress their revulsion at an alien being of cold metal being fused to their very flesh. If they thought it was unfair, he would retort, he would happily pay for them to undergo the procedure themselves. Funnily enough, no one ever took him up on the offer.
Not, of course, that he told Adam any of that. They were here to throw hands, not throw words. Sensing an impasse, both reached for their sidearms at the same moment. Adam went for the sheath on his belt, and James for the black gun holstered at his hip. It was like a showdown at high noon in a Vacuan cowboy movie—and just like in the movies, the lawman proved a quicker draw than the outlaw. It would have been rather embarrassing if the gun clicked empty, but James had enough wits to remember whether he'd fired six shots or only five. Due Process sprang free of his pants and deposited its magnum load all over the faunus's face. The Gravity Dust shot sent Adam sharply in one direction, while the recoil sent James the other. The thin strip of metal that connected them bent under the force; James slammed his fist against the flat and crack! something gave way. They stumbled to opposite ends of the room. "WILT!" Adam shrieked, with as much agony as if he'd lost an arm or an even more precious body part. His sword was still in his hand, but now measured barely a foot in length. The rest of it was still stuck in James. "You'll pay for that!" Throwing the broken sword away, Adam snatched up his sheath instead. A shotgun blast rang out as James turned around. Pellets tore into his left leg, the flesh one, and his ragged Aura couldn't keep them all out. It barely even hurt—after what he'd gone through, a mundane bullet felt like a bee sting—but mechanically, something inside simply stopped working. He fell to one knee, his own shot flying wildly off target. He was suddenly aware of how heavy his damaged right side weighed. Of how labored his breathing was with only one working lung—
There was a bang and a flash of golden flame. Adam went flying with a scream. He landed in a crumpled heap against the wall, red Aura flickering, while his shotgun-sheath clattered to a stop a few feet away. A hand grabbed James by the elbow and hauled him upright. "Hey. I got you." Yang was grinning, despite the spectacular black eye she sported to go with a half-dozen other scrapes and bruises. "Dude keeps forgetting I'm here, for some reason." James nodded in thanks, then aimed his gun at Adam's prone form. "It's over." he growled. "Surrender."
Adam groaned loudly before rolling over with visible effort. From the way he moved, it seemed like he'd broken a rib or six. His white mask now bore a large crater around the right eye, and his black coat had a scorch mark in the rough shape of Yang's fist. "You're right." he coughed. "It is over." His face split into a smile. There was not an ounce of humor or good cheer in it, only bloodstained teeth and the fury of a wounded beast. "Over for all of us!" His clenched right fist fell open. Within was a small box with a red button, which his thumb had already pressed. James yelled out and tackled Yang to the ground on reflex, visions of suicide bombers dancing in his head. Cornered White Fang had been known to pull that trick, and it had cost Atlas more than few good soldiers. If that detonator was linked to something bigger, though, then ducking for cover would do little to save them. All he could do was wait and hope the students had come through. "We'll burn together!" Adam howled. "Suck on that, Ironwood! You think the White Fang will roll over like before? No! If we go down, we'll leave you nothing to lord it over! Nothing but ash and bone! The faunus will have this world, or there won't be a world anymore!" He stopped his painfully edgy rant when he realized it had been ten seconds and nothing had exploded yet. "What?! Where's the kaboom?" He mashed the detonator like a man rage-pressing elevator buttons. "Not again!"
"Aww, performance issues?" someone said from the doorway. The voice evoked images of berets and sunglasses and giant machine guns. A moment later, Coffee or Chocolate or whatever her name was stepped into the room. She'd lost her hat and glasses at some point, but she still had the gun, and that was all that really mattered. Following closely were a blue-haired boy brandishing a trident and a rabbit faunus girl brandishing...a camera? All three of them were inexplicably soaking wet. "Coco!" Yang exclaimed.
The gunner waved at her. "Yep! Uh, sorry we're late." She jabbed her thumb at the blue boy. "Blame Neptune. He was in charge of directions."
"I wasn't!" Neptune protested.
The rabbit girl ignored their mini-argument, staring at something on the floor. "Oh no, Blake!" she gasped. One of her faunus ears twitched in sympathy. Oh yes, Blake had been lying there unconscious this whole time. James had nearly forgotten about her. "Wait, since when was she a—?"
Adam had been silent throughout the exchange, his face turning from white to pink to red to purple. "DAMN YOU!" he finally exploded. "How? What did you do with our bombs, you bastards?!" His frame shook with impotent wrath. "Did you seriously defuse them all? A bunch of kids? In minutes? That's such bullshit!"
It hurt to laugh, but James couldn't help it. "Of course not!" he scoffed. The idea was absurd. Despite what TV shows said, bomb disposal was far more complex than cutting the red wire. Every bomb was different, and those made by amateurs (like the White Fang) were especially unpredictable. Standard military procedure was relocate the device to a safe place and conduct a thorough examination via robot first. An in situ manual defusal was borderline suicide, only done when there was no other option; even experts blew up more often than not when they tried it, to say nothing of an untrained schoolchild's chances.
It was very lucky, then, that they did have another option.
"We threw them out the windows."
Somewhere in Vale, an old man sat behind the counter of a Dust shop. The doors and windows were boarded up, and a shotgun lay across his lap. Despite the storm raging outside, his face remained as stoic as if carved from stone. He and his shop had seen much in their decades of business. He had been held up by armed robbers, caught in the middle of gang shootouts, and endured the blathering of countless senior citizens demanding to see the manager. What was a little Grimm invasion on top of that? They would survive. They would rebuild. They always had.
Something beeped sharply overhead, and then the entire roof exploded.
The old shopkeep dusted himself off with a sigh, then shuffled wearily off to fetch a broom and dustpan.
"Out the windows." Adam repeated with almost childlike wonder. "The windows..." He slumped to the floor in defeat. "But, um, are you sure you got them all?" he said hopefully.
James snorted. "Don't frighten us, Taurus." Mind you, he was bit surprised by that too. Their search had been quite hastily organized, and it seemed plausible they might have missed a spot, but apparently not? Still, he wouldn't question a bit of good fortune. Gods knew they could use it. "If anything was going to happen it would've—"
Kaboom! The walls of Amity shuddered. James swore as his bad leg buckled and sent him sprawling. Him and his big mouth. The White Fang's bombmakers were either incompetent, or trolls of the highest order. "Haha! YES!" Adam shrieked over everyone else's cries of alarm. "Die, trash!" The floating stadium lurched under their feet as it plunged down towards the surface of Remnant...at about the speed of a lightly leaking balloon. There was a round of relieved sighs, one that James happily joined in on. Whatever bombs they'd missed had only chipped the arena's Gravity Dust crystal, not shattered it; that, or the White Fang were even worse at their jobs that he'd thought. He preferred to think it was the former.
"We ought to be going." he said. He flapped a metal hand at the bull faunus. "Take him in, children."
"Gods damn it—" Adam cursed, right before Yang punched him in the face and Neptune blasted him with the trident for good measure. "—aaAAaaAAaa—"
It got a bit harder to understand him after that.
What the hell happened? Qrow thought. He would have said it out loud if he weren't currently a bird. He'd witnessed the splashdown himself, yet he still suspected that Winter had been right and the alcohol was finally catching up to him. What else would explain the sight of Amity Colosseum half-submerged in Vale's harbor, like the world's largest pool toy? The stadium had landed on a section of the docks, demolished it like a fat man sitting on a flimsy chair, and punched through to the water below. Though he couldn't prove it, Qrow had a strange feeling this was the same dock where Ruby and Yang had fought the White Fang last semester. Some places were simply cursed with bad luck. There was a loud sloshing noise as Amity settled, its bottom anchoring into the seabed. Flying closer, he could see water flooding onto the arena floor, though the main airship landing pads remained barely above the surface. His keen bird eyes picked out several figures standing there, one of them particularly tall and shiny. Oh, good. Maybe Jimmy could answer some of his many, many questions. He swooped down, transforming back to a man at the last second and sticking the landing on the tilted deck. "Hello there." he said with a grin, then noticed just how bad the general looked up close. Now Qrow was no doctor, but he was pretty sure that wound would have killed a normal man incredibly dead. Yikes. Ironwood's breathing was shallow, and he was leaning on a muscular student for support. "Uh, rough night?"
Ironwood's helper turned pale and started gibbering incoherently. Qrow rolled his eyes. That joke was getting old, for fuck's sake. "Yeah, I turn into a bird, whatever." he said dismissively. Jimmy glared disapprovingly at him, but chose not to complicate the matter further. "You should see the other guy." he grunted. He gestured behind him, where more people sheltered in the shadow of the stadium's concourse. Qrow noted the unconscious bull faunus with a half-dozen weapons pointed in his face, and the one-eared cat who lay close by, but only one person in the crowd truly caught his attention. "Yang!"
"Qrow? Qrow!" Yang looked up from her fallen partner. They ran towards each other, meeting in the middle with a hug that felt like a minor car accident. He couldn't help but wince at the state of his elder niece. Nothing requiring urgent medical attention, thank gods, but her battle scars were plain to see. "Oh gods." he gasped. "Your hair!"
"What?!" Yang reached up to check. Her hand quickly found the part where her blonde locks had been shorn to nearly shoulder length, as if by a sharp blade. "FUCK! That bastard! When did he—RAARGH!" Her eyes flashed briefly red before she took a deep breath and they reverted to purple. "I mean, damn. That sucks."
Qrow raised an eyebrow. "You're taking this remarkably well."
"Oh, I'm very fucking furious, but I can prioritize." Yang growled. More deep breaths. "Have you seen Ruby? Heard from her? Anything?"
He frowned. "No." he admitted. A knot formed in his stomach when he realized who wasn't here. The fear on Yang's face reminded him of her father's expression, when he'd learned a different Rose was missing all those years ago. "What happened?"
"Damn it!" Yang swore again. "She went up to Beacon, her and Jaune and Pyrrha. Said they'd go find the twins, and that Ozpin wanted—something, I don't even know what!" She swung a fist helplessly at thin air. "I should have gone with her!"
"He what?" Qrow squawked. What the hell, Oz? This wasn't what they'd agreed on! The plan was to keep Ruby out of the whole Maiden mess and...put someone else's daughter in mortal peril instead. Okay, so maybe he was a big fat hypocrite, but still. "Hold tight. I'm going in there." He ran back out onto the landing pad, with Yang chasing and shouting demands to take her along. Ruby Rose would live to see the autumn and winter of her life, this he swore. He would not fail the daughter as he had the mother. He would save her, like he had that day in the woods; hell, he'd save the whole lot of them while he was at it. The cereal mascot, the generic guy, the lesser Ice Queen, even the Raven-in-the-making. Just this once, everyone would live, just like in the fairy tales (the happy ones, not the ones that involved copious bloodshed). He squinted up at Beacon, trying to peer beyond that all-concealing shroud of smoke...
Deep within, he thought he saw the faintest flash of silver.
all right, who died?
- Yes, Nora just stole Hazel's trick, no wimpy-ass pain numbing Semblance required.
- rip Robyn getting added to the story just to get bodied
- Team WGMP might be a little too OP? Starting to realize why Marrow and Penny never fought together on the show...
- I wonder if the readers are starting to think I have a vomit fetish...I swear, that isn't the case (pls no kinkshame)
- Is it ethical to dispose of bombs by dropping them on a potentially populated city? Who knows? It seems rather in character for Ironwood, either way.
- Yang might have kept her arm, but I felt the need to take away something in exchange. Consider it #CharacterDevelopment for her to get over her hair obsession, or whatever.
- rip Blake spending a whole chapter passed out on the floor