STRINGS
"So let's go over the first stage of our plan again." Ruby's voice stated as her group with Weiss, Blake, Nora, Penny, and May were all approaching the locked fence to a sealed off facility that seemed to have large tubes poking out of it.
"We're going up to Atlas through a means we'll find in this facility, there we'll meet with a contact of my Dad's in the command Center, William." Penny's voice explained while May slashed open the lock on the gate with her weapon, allowing the others to pass through.
"After which he'll guide us to Ironwood's terminal where my Dad can remotely get us the launch confirmation we need to get Amity operational." she finished.
"And we'll leave before Ironwood's wise to us even being there." Weiss's voice affirmed as the group entered the facility, surprised to see robots walking around in it.
Blake instinctively drew out her weapon, but Weiss put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, these robots only take orders from the SDC, not Atlas. SnowShoe shipping is a subdivision of the SDC focused solely on shipping."
The faunus took a deep breath, her ears folding down while she put her weapon away.
"Is there any dust-related building your family doesn't own here?" Ruby asked mockingly.
"Well, my Father's certainly seen to it." Weiss admitted with a sigh while May began walking around.
"Well, he's rotting in a cell now for what he did." May commented.
"We just need to find the right pneumatic tube to get us to Ironwood's command center." Weiss started looking around.
"Pneumatic what now?" Nora was confused.
"You know, those tubes that are going from here to Atlas?" May spoke up.
"Oooh, those tubes…"
"We're gonna have to ride one up to Atlas." Blake explained while she began walking around the facility.
"Oooh… Sounds fun!" Nora grinned watching as the robots mindlessly continued loading crates into the various other tubes.
Ruby noticed that Penny was hanging back from the others and looking down at her hands. "Ruby?" she noticed her staring now.
"Yes, Penny?" Ruby walked over to her.
"Was it right for me to take the Winter Maiden's power?" she asked. "I mean if I hadn't, Cinder would have gotten it, but it was meant to be Winter's power… She had been trained to take these powers that I now have."
Ruby wasn't sure how to answer this one. "It was a rough moment. The most important thing is that Cinder didn't get the powers. Even if they were meant for Winter, the maiden chose you. That makes you just as deserving of those powers as her."
Penny then glanced over at the others working to find the right path up toward Atlas. "Are The Ace Ops, Ironwood, and Winter still going to be our friends after all this is done?" Penny asked her. "I'm not doubting our course of action, because it's the only real option we have with the potential for saving both Atlas and Mantle if our message gets through, but…"
Ruby put her hand on Penny's shoulder. "Whatever happens, Penny, you'll always have us by your side." she pulled her friend into a hug that she gently returned.
"Thanks, Ruby."
Weiss walked over to one of the open tubes and glanced at the sign above it. "This is the one!" she waved the others over. "Okay, so all we're gonna have to do is sit back into the pneumatic tube like this and-"
Before Weiss could anymore, Nora hit a big red button she saw on a nearby control panel, launching Weiss up the tube, screaming.
The others simply stared at Nora who couldn't help but laugh a little. "Oops."
Footsteps are the sound that Arthur Watts awoke to in the interrogation cell as the door opened up, General Ironwood stepping inside to directly speak with him.
The Doctor attempted to raise his arms up, but found them both magnetically cuffed to the table. "James… I see that you're doing well today. How's the new arm?" he taunted before Ironwood slammed a fist down onto one of his hands, making him grunt in pain before laughing. "If you think I'm going to tell you anything, you're sorely mistaken."
"It was worth a shot." Ironwood stated as he then looked at his scroll. "Let's go over your list of crimes against Atlas and Remnant as a whole. Hacked the Vale CCT system with a virus, hacked Atlesian property during the fall of Beacon, rigged an election, doctored massacre footage, and let's not forget all you did before you were with Salem. The Paladin incident is still fresh on my mind, you know."
"I could say the same too, James." Watts chuckled as he stared at Ironwood's White Arm. "I forget, was it where you got that arm? Or was it for one of your legs?"
"I thought you died that day, Arthur.. One of our most brilliant minds, gone because of some shortsightedness with his own creation, I should have known you were faking it. Someone as smart as you wouldn't make an oversight like that." Ironwood sat down across from him.
A smile formed on the disgraced doctor's face. "You compliment me so much James. But might I ask, what the point of listing off my achievements is?"
Taking a deep breath, Ironwood pulled up footage on his scroll of the fight with Cinder and Penny from the previous night before pulling up her schematics as well. "I need your skill again, Arthur." he explained. "Pietro went with the kids, so as far as you're concerned he's as much of an enemy to us, as he is to you."
Watts's mustache twitched a bit now as well as an eye when he saw Cinder ruining everything by letting her lust for power consume her again, but Ironwood's words with regard to Pietro resonated with him. "I'll do it, but only if you admit to me, that Pietro is a hack."
"If that's what it takes, yes, I agree with you about Dr. Polendina. He's nothing more than a traitor to this great Kingdom and its people." Ironwood released the restraints on Watts who rubbed his wrists before offering a handshake to Ironwood that the general didn't take. Instead he had the same pair of guards from earlier escorting Watts out of the room.
Blake's ears were still ringing from her impact upon arrival at the command center. "I never wanna do that again." she groaned while she fixed her shorter hair back into it's floofy bob.
Weiss was tugging on Nora's ears. "OW, OW, I SAID SORRY!" she whined before Weiss let go of her and sighed.
"Alright, we made it over, where's William?" Ruby asked Penny as the door out of the room opened up and a lanky and pale man with brown hair and hazel eyes, wearing the technician's uniform approached the group.
"Are you Penny's group?" he asked with his slightly familiar sounding accent.
"That would be us, sir!" Penny saluted. "Friends, meet Mr. Scarlatina, he's one of my father's friends that works here!"
"You can just call me Will." he explained while scratching the back of his head.
"Wait… Scarlatina? You mean like Velvet?" Blake asked him.
"You know my daughter?" he was surprised. "I mean of course you would if you were watching the Vytal Festival…" he looked around at the group quizzically.
"She was one of our classmates." Ruby affirmed with a smile.
"Oh, it was you guys her team was mentoring! How has she been?" he asked, hoping for an answer.
"We kind of haven't seen her since Beacon's fall." Weiss confessed.
"Last I heard, her team was sticking around Vale to help out." Nora added. "I'm sure they're fine. They're one of Beacon's toughest!"
Penny approached the door and stared down the long bridge to the elevator. "No hostiles detected." she assured everyone.
Will scratched the back of his head and sighed. "I'm kind of glad my daughter's not here. I just hope I'll get to see her again."
"I'm sure you will, Mr. Scarlatina. Now then, you're gonna help us get to the terminal, right?" Weiss asked.
"Yeah, but we're gonna need to sneak you around securit-" before he could say anymore, May had cloaked them all with her semblance that even muffled any noise given how Ruby was cut off from speaking to him.
May quickly uncloaked them and smirked. "I got them covered on that end. I'll get you as close as the terminal, then I'll work on securing a ride out of this place." she explained. "So which way are we going anyways, Robo-girl?"
Will was about to explain, but Penny cut him off. "We'll cross the bridge, then go left, straight, right, straight, left, up, up, right, straight, right, right, straight, left, left!" she was pointing for each direction she gave as the others just stared. "My name's Penny by the way."
Ruby couldn't help but stifle a laugh while May simply just pouted before cloaking everyone except for Will with her semblance.
They followed him down to an elevator where he used his credentials to get inside. After which, they now had to wait to get to the appropriate floor. "The terminal's in the back of an old tech storage room." Will explained before quickly hushing when two soldiers entered the lift. "Eheh… Going up?"
"Academy level." the female soldier responded.
"I see." The lift finally came to a stop on the group's floor. And Will stepped outside, but not before Nora's hand slipped out of the barrier and pressed every single elevator button on her way out.
One of the soldiers glanced at that. "Wait, what?-" the door closed on them.
Will continued further down toward the Central hub, when May stopped, uncloaking herself from the group. "Sorry, this is as far as my semblance can take you right now… I don't have enough aura to secure us a ride out of this place otherwise."
"It's no problem, May. We'll just need to just be really sneaky." Ruby assured her before Weiss pointed into the command center as it opened, showing the Ace Operatives inside discussing among themselves.
"Ace Ops…" Blake's ears folded down.
"There's no way we'll sneak past them without your semblance, May." Weiss turned toward her, but she had already left. "And I guess we're on our own now."
"Fret not, Weiss, there is still a way we can sneak past them. Ruby's semblance is our key." Penny explained.
"It is?" This was certainly the first time Ruby was hearing about this.
"Yes, haven't you realized it while using your semblance? You're able to carry others with you by negating their mass." Penny reasoned. "If you're quick enough with it, we won't be noticed."
"There's a problem with that idea, Penny." Nora pointed out. "The Ace Ops are still there and I doubt they wouldn't notice the blur of red…"
William took a deep breath. "Then I'll provide a distraction."
"You, Mr. Scarlatina? But we need you to let us into the room." Ruby argued.
"There is another way we can do this still." Penny spoke up now. "I doubt Ironwood's had the time to wipe my Dad's credentials from the system."
"But, Penny if you do that you'll-" Weiss was cut off by Penny.
" -almost certainly be found out by Ironwood. But we'll still have time to get what we came here for, and go before security gets too tight for us to escape."
"That's actually pretty smart, Penny." Ruby smiled.
"I'll just need to tell Dad to pick up his pace." Penny chuckled a little.
The decided group then looked over at William who was looking at the watch on his wrist. "Watch an expert at work, kids. You'll know when it's time." he entered the central hub and sat back at his terminal while everyone else hid behind a wall, just out of sight of one of the cameras.
The tensions in the room were high as the technicians and other experts were looking on any kind of weakness for the Whale that they had given the designation Monstra.
Will needed a distraction that would get the Ace Ops out of the room long enough for Ruby's group to get through. Scrolling through what he had access to at his terminal, he decided he'd make a little mess of things that the Ace Ops would no doubt have to go and clean up.
An alarm would suddenly go off, alerting everyone in that hub to an error pertaining to the dust shipments they were still receiving from Snowshoe Shipping.
"I told them to shut off our connections to that damn Mantle facility!" Harriet grunted in annoyance before she sped down the hall with her semblance.
"It's probably just a smashed crate." Elm reasoned while walking behind her.
"We best be thorough, as I'm sure General Ironwood doesn't want to take any unnecessary risks." Vine followed behind Elm and Harriet.
"Guess I'm going along too." Marrow groaned as he ran off behind them and just past Ruby's group as she smirked and with her semblance, swept everyone up with her and sped through the door before it closed.
They continued, speeding around the door to the stairway that led straight up to the bridge before the terminal.
Will let out a sigh of relief as he got back to his regular work so as to not raise any suspicions.
Penny approached the terminal and her finger folded back, revealing some sort of connector she could use. "Once we do this, we're going to need to keep our guard up." she explained as she inserted the connector into the terminal and the door opened after approving of Dr. Polendina's entry.
The room was empty, full of a few old and out of use terminal stations, and decommissioned Atlesian Knight models.
Blake's ears folded downward when she recognized those specific older models.
There was a large tarp covering another decommissioned piece of equipment stored by the back of the room that Ruby stared towards curiously.
Penny pulled up a chair before getting in front of the Terminal and closing her eyes, taking a deep breath in. "Dad, I'm ready for this. You can remote in now."
It was sudden but her eyes dilated and turned a slightly yellowish tint while she began working on getting them approved. "This should only take a moment." Pietro's voice responded through Penny, leaving the others to just sit and wait.
Blake knelt down in front of one of the Atlesian Knights. "I remember these things."
"They look tougher than the newer ones." Ruby crossed her arms.
"They aren't, despite all that they could do." Weiss interjected. "These older models just don't run as well as the newer knights. And well, the public perception of them wasn't good despite how many years we used them."
"No kidding." Nora rested her foot on one of them now. "With all that red and black, you'd think these things are like Grimm."
"Well whenever my family bought out some of these for security, their main intention was intimidation." Weiss admitted.
"I could see that." Ruby was still glancing at the tarped weapon. "I wonder what that is…" she started to approach it curiously before Pietro spoke up.
"I'd recommend not touching anything in this room girls."
Nora immediately fell backwards, onto a swivel chair at the doctor's warning.
"While all of this stuff is inactive, touching something might cause a defense system to go off." Pietro reasoned while he kept typing. The others soon pulled up chairs to wait.
The door into the central hub of the command center opened up, revealing General Ironwood and Arthur Watts standing side by side, with two guards notably training their guns on the doctor.
Will's eyes widened in surprise as he watched Ironwood march Watts over to a terminal just down the room and sit him down on it. "Now then, you're going to get to work on identifying any weaknesses in Penny that we can leverage against her."
"Fine…" Watts stretched his arms out before beginning to search through the data he was provided before noticing something on the system. "That's peculiar…"
"What is?" Ironwood leaned closer to the screen and noticed it as well.
"Seems our dear friend, Pietro is gallivanting around here."
Ironwood's eyes narrowed. "Ruby. Meaning Penny's most likely with them." he was now looking around the room for the Ace Ops who were nowhere to be found, so he called them.
"Ace Operatives, where are you?"
"Just checking on-"
Marrow was cut off by Harriet. "Wasting our time checking on a false alarm. Something happened with our shipping system of dust supplies from the crater apparently, but actually it was nothing at all." she sounded annoyed.
General Ironwood was lost in thought for a moment before he realized. "We have intruders in our facility! We need you back here in the hub immediately!"
Watts smiled when he realized where they were. "James, if I may make a suggestion." he pulled up the footage of the room that Ruby's group was gathered in. "How about we put some of that old junk of your's to use?"
The door into the prisoner hold opened up with seemingly no one there, which confused the three prisoners before May Marigold uncloaked herself. "Robyn!" she ran up to her, much to her surprise.
"Did you come here for me?" Robyn sounded confused.
"Actually I was looking for a ship." May explained. "I've roped myself into a plan with those kids, they're gonna try and get Amity running to broadcast a call for help."
She was starting to look around the cell for any weaknesses. "Stop, May." Robyn insisted.
"What? Are you crazy? I'm gonna get you out of here!-" she was cut off by Robyn.
"You have to go, there's no way you're breaking me out of this cell." Robyn insisted. "Your mission matters far more than I do."
"But-" May stopped herself and took a deep breath. "Still giving us commands, even behind a hard light wall, huh?" she chuckled. "Anything you want me to tell the others?"
"Yes." Robyn smiled. "To keep fighting, I'm sure I'll find my own way out of here."
May started towards the door, cloaking herself with a semblance before suddenly uncloaking before she got to the door. "By the way, your weapons are being stored just down the hall back to your left on the 3rd door to the right."
"Thanks." Robyn saluted May as she vanished again before sitting down.
"Why did you just send away our only chance at escape from this mad house?!" Jacques demanded from her.
"Well when's that legal team of your's coming for you?" Robyn taunted him with that again, much to his chagrin.
Blake spun around in her swivel chair, tiredly, while Nora just leaned on her chair looking at the ground.
"I hope the others are doing alright." Blake confessed, worriedly.
"I'm sure they're fine." Weiss assured. "Even though I've never seen Ruby and Yang get this mad at each other before."
"Well I mean… They have Jaune, he's a great leader, and Yang can easily protect them in a fight if need be… And Ren…" she paused, her happy-go-lucky composure breaking.
"Nora, are you okay?" Weiss seemed concerned.
"I don't know what the deal with Ren is… Every time I've tried to be honest with him about how I feel, he's pushed me away, and now he won't even talk to me. We've been together for so long, practically all of our lives. I feel like I don't understand him, let alone myself." she confessed.
"I can understand feeling like that." Blake's ears folded down. "Back when I was in the White Fang I was so attached to Adam that I felt like most of who I was, was with him. But I was wrong. I know you and Ren have something more real and honest than what I had with him. I didn't realize who I was till I had time to figure out for myself and now I have you and everyone else." she offered Nora a smile. "Ren can be a part of who you are, but… He's only just a part of the greater whole that makes up Nora."
"I don't know who I am without Ren… That's pretty sad, huh?" Nora laughed half-heartedly.
"Well, maybe now's the time for you to find out who just, 'Nora Valkyrie' is." Weiss sat up in her chair. "Do something only you can."
"Like what? Be strong and hit stuff?" she scoffed.
"I just have to… There we go." Pietro finished what he needed to get done. "When Penny gets to Amity, we can run the launch sequence, which instead of requiring the General's Terminal for approval, we'll instead use the imprint we cloned onto Penny from this terminal."
Penny's eyes reverted back to their natural green as she stood up from the terminal. "After the launch, I can help you all with the evacuation efforts!"
"About that…" Pietro's voice spoke up from in her head. "Maria and I were hoping you'd stick around here after the launch to ensure things keep running smoothly."
"But my friends need me here, don't they?" Penny sounded conflicted now as her face turned to one of worry.
"We'll be able to handle things on our own Penny." Ruby assured her.
"Besides, it's best we keep you as far away from Salem and Ironwood as possible." Weiss reasoned.
"We should probably just get going right now before discussing anymore." Blake insisted as some alarms were starting to sound off that made her ears fold down.
The door opened before them as they started toward it, only to halt when they saw the Ace Ops standing on the other side. "You guys." Ruby's eyes narrowed as she brandished Crescent Rose now.
"Well, well, if the runts aren't back for more." Harriet cracked her knuckles.
"Did you forget who won that last fight?" Weiss taunted while pointing Myrtenaster forward, Marrow seemed notably nervous when he saw Weiss.
"Where's the blonde?" Harriet asked.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Nora slung Magnhild over her shoulder.
"You know Penny… Winter's hurting a lot because of what you did." Harriet crossed her arms.
"But that was-" Penny was cut off.
"That power was meant for her and you stole it like a no-good thief."
Ruby grit her teeth. "Well would you rather it have fallen into Cinder's hands?! Or did the General just conveniently leave the part where she attacked out?"
"If you don't shut up right now, I'm going to throw your ass into a cell next to your Uncle!" Harriet slammed her foot onto the ground.
"Harriet-" Vine tried to talk her down but she wasn't done.
"Your Uncle's a murderer! And I'll make sure he pays for what he's done!" she transformed her exo armor out now as Ruby glared forward, readying her scythe before Penny stepped out in front of her.
"You leave my friends alone!" Penny's eyes flared up with the maiden powers before the door suddenly closed between her and Ruby's group, leaving her out there with the Ace Operatives.
"Fell for it." Harriet smirked as Penny readied herself.
"Penny!" Ruby was about to try and hit the door with her scythe when it suddenly became electrified. "We need to get through!" she looked around for some kind of control panel for it, when suddenly the large tarp at the end of the room began to move, which instinctively made Blake draw out Gambol Shroud.
Several lasers shot out from the machine under the tarp that caused everyone to scatter, the tarp burning away and revealing an Atlesian Spider Droid.
"We gotta help Penny!" Ruby insisted now.
"She can handle herself, she's a maiden. Let's focus on dealing with this thing." Weiss stepped in front of her, with a ready stance.
"Right." Ruby sped around the large robot, firing shots off from Crescent Rose to distract it while Blake latched Gambol Shroud onto one of it's cannons and reeled herself towards it.
It attempted to headbutt her, but instead hit a fire clone that exploded in its face, destroying a couple of shoulder-mounted guns on the machine.
Some of the older Atlesian Knights in the room activated just as Nora transformed Magnhild into its grenade launcher form and took aim at the larger bot.
They aimed their weapons at Nora, but instead struck the wings of a partially summoned Nevermore. This averted Nora's attention to the other threats in the room and she started attacking the smaller robots, slamming her hammer through the torso of the first one that tried to run at her.
Ruby attempted to hook Crescent Rose around one of the Spider Droid's legs, but it simply lifted it up and kicked her in the face, slamming her through a crate.
"There's a weak point under the neck!" Blake explained as she lunged for it again, bounding off of a leg and slashing at its face, but one of the cannons fired on her, forcing her to back off.
Weiss was helping Nora with the several other smaller Atlesian Knight units that were scattered about the room and trying to get the jump on the others. She stabbed through the head of one that prepared to shoot at Ruby while giving Blake a boost off of a propulsion glyph as the spider droid attempted to step on her.
Nora started to fire on the large Spider Droid with Magnhild's Grenade Launcher form when a couple of knights rushed straight for her. One managed to strike her in the gut with a kick while she caught the other one's bladed arm. They both were soon blasted apart by a couple of shots from Crescent Rose as Ruby got up.
"Weiss, Blake… Monochrome." she commanded her teammates who nodded to each other.
Blake landed herself in front of Weiss who focused herself on creating a glyph while Ruby kept the Atlesian Knights away from her, and Nora was distracting the big one by strafing around it and firing at it, each shot getting destroyed by cannon fire.
Weiss's eyes opened wide as the summoning glyph changed to show the mask of a Sabyr Grimm on it that appeared right under Blake.
"Ready?" Weiss smirked.
"You know it." Blake stood firm as the two Sabyrs appeared beside her and she pressed the trigger on Gambol Shroud, the dust having affected the summons as they were now glowing yellow with electricity dust before she rushed forward with them.
The Spider Droid quickly diverted it's attention to the oncoming attack, kicking Nora into the wall right next to the electrified door. It managed to destroy one of the Sabyrs, but the next shot only hit a stone clone created by Blake while the next electrified Sabyr summon successfully tackled the Spider Droid, electrocuting it and seemingly frying it as it collapsed to the ground.
Ruby cleaved through the last older Atlesian Knight model and sighed in relief while the others walked over to her, unaware of the droid starting to slowly reactivate.
"You're coming with us now, Tin can." Harriet sprinted right toward her but was soon blasted back by a powerful gust of wind as Penny floated upwards, her swords appearing behind her and now firing on all of the Ace Ops who had to dodge around her attacks.
Marrow started firing on her, but his bullets would only strike a pair of swords that swung around to perfectly deflect each bullet.
Vine decided to take the smarter approach by jumping under the bridge and attempting to ambush her from behind with his weapon, but she blocked it with a single sword, forcing him to back off while she boosted herself toward Elm and Marrow, the latter of which was holding onto Elm for dear life due to the intensity of the wind that Penny was creating around herself.
Penny knew she couldn't take her chances with Marrow and threw three of her swords at him, two of which were deflected by Elm, while the other was successfully blocked by Marrow himself.
Harriet quickly sped back up to Penny and attempted to punch her, only to hit another sword she left in front of her to guard herself in the case of Harriet attacking her like that.
Vine now threw Thorn in her direction and she deflected it back to him while Harriet threw out punch after punch toward her, each punch only making contact with one of Penny's swords while the other 3 started to fly back towards her. "We need to stop fighting each other!" Penny pleaded with them as she created a storm of hail that rained down on the Ace Ops.
"She's trying to wear down our aura!" Elm noted as she raised an arm over her head to block the ice particles from falling on her eyes.
"Holding back's gonna cost ya." Harriet remarked coldly as she pulled herself back, Marrow's weapon flew right at Penny and struck her directly from behind, sending her flying into Elm's arms as the storm stopped now.
Penny struggled in the larger woman's gasp before stopping seemingly.
"She's not done yet." Vine warned the others as a bolt of lightning struck the middle of the bridge between Penny and Harriet, causing the latter to jump back when a powerful gust of wind forced Elm to let go of her.
The Winter maiden now boosted herself forward, off of Elm and right at Harriet, kicking her off the bridge and forcing Vine to rush to her aid before she could fall.
Elm ran at her with her hammer raised, colliding with one of Penny's swords now as the girl was actually struggling to hold the hammer back with just one sword, that would be until another sword stacked behind it, now holding more firm before another, and yet another sword were starting to force Elm back while Marrow held his finger forward.
"STAY!" he commanded, but his semblance only actually affected Elm, much to his surprise as Penny had seemingly vanished.
In reality, Penny had boosted herself into the air above the range of Marrow's semblance and flew right at him, firing two lasers at him, one was deflected, but the other struck his shoulder, making him drop Fetch to the ground.
"We're done here." Penny affirmed as Marrow held his shoulder.
"I wouldn't say that quite yet." Harriet's voice stated from behind Penny as she turned around, now with Elm and Vine by her side.
She ran toward Penny, who threw out all of her swords at them, Vine deflected one sword thrown Harriet's way with Thorn and Elm knocked another out of the way with Timber.
Harriet slid under another two and pulled on the string of one, successfully sending Penny in her direction as she slammed a fist into her gut., launching her right back where she started on the bridge.
Penny forced herself up. "Please, if you really say you're our friend then help us!" Marrow pleaded as he started to pick himself up along with his weapon.
"I-" Penny felt herself backed into a corner, she knew her mission with her friends mattered, but she didn't want to hurt the Ace Ops either. Looking at the three approaching her, she knew there was one approach she could try that might get them to clear out and create a path for the other's escape.
All six of her swords now hovered in front of her now while she sat up on one knee, creating a powerful gust of wind to stop the Ace Ops from stopping this oncoming attack of her's.
With one hand outstretched, she prepared her powerful laser attack as the beam of energy was starting to focus.
Harriet was running as fast as she could against this powerful gust of wind, but it was no use.
Vine was holding onto the railings with his semblance to keep himself from being blasted away and Elm was rooting herself with her semblance.
The laser had finally finished charging up, but before it would fire out…
"STAY!" shouted Marrow as he pointed a finger forward, while his other hand was holding onto the railing.
Penny was frozen by Marrow's semblance, the momentum and energy her swords had built up was gone, and in her shock, she had stopped her storm.
"Nice work there, Marrow." Harriet thanked him while catching her breath.
"Yeah? Well, you're welcome." he panted heavily while keeping his finger pointed forward at Penny.
"We got this from here." Elm assured him as she began to walk over toward Penny with a pair of gravity bolas in hand.
Ruby was walking over to Nora who was in a daze. "Was I a help?" she asked Ruby.
"Well, without you, Weiss and Blake definitely wouldn't have had the time to charge that attack."
She offered a hand to Nora, before her eyes widened and she pulled Ruby right next to her, as a shot fired out from the Spider Droid's cannon.
"It's still not dead?!" Weiss sounded annoyed as she sped right for it, bounding off of a propulsion glyph to stab at it, only to get shoulder charged by it, knocking her to the ground.
"Weiss!" Blake ran over to her as the Spider Droid began to charge up it's large laser, combining all of its cannons together..
Ruby stood herself up and started firing at the Spider Droid, in the hopes of diverting it's attention.
Nora's ears were still ringing from the shots that were so close to her and Ruby as she pulled herself to her feet, resting on her hammer while watching Ruby's attempts to attack the large robot.
Looking back to the electrified door beside her, she had an idea. "Be strong and hit stuff, Nora…" she muttered under her breath.
Ruby landed on the Spider Droid's shoulder and unloaded shot after shot into it, before it buckled under her, and launched her off. She hit the ceiling hard and landed on the ground as the spider droid again attempted to charge it's laser.
Blake had just managed to get the dazed Weiss back onto her feet, when they saw that Ruby was in danger.
It was then that Nora made her move, slamming her hammer onto the electrified door, charging herself up as the electricity started to surge throughout her body, and even cause a power surge in the whole facility for a moment, diverting the Spider Droid's attention to her.
It moved toward her as quick as it could, but Nora was faster, slamming her charged hammer onto the ground with immense force, the force of the blast destroyed the blocked off door as well as completely fried the Spider Droid's innards, leaving a crispy, electrified husk on the ground.
A blast door flying at her was definitely something Elm wasn't expecting as it hit her and the other Ace Ops before they could reach Penny.
Penny groaned while standing herself up and turning toward the open door where she saw Nora
Nora was breathing heavily as her aura shattered, and the scars from this overcharge of her semblance stayed. "That was awesome…" she remarked before falling over.
"Nora!" Penny called out and was about to run for her when she heard the sound of Harriet, kicking the destroyed door off of herself.
"You're not going anywhere, tin can!" she threatened as a red blur suddenly appeared between Harriet and Penny.
Ruby, Weiss and Blake stood between Penny and the Ace Ops.
Penny picked Nora up and even her hammer despite how electrically charged up it was.
As The Ace Ops were prepared to fight the members of RWBY, they received another comms message. "What? But they're right here!"
Harriet grit her teeth as her focus moved toward Penny, who was holding the wounded Nora.
Vine threw Thorn Ruby's way, diverting her attention with a string of attacks while Elm fired homing rockets in Weiss and Blake's direction that they had to dodge around.
Harriet went straight for Penny who raised up her swords defensively around herself and Nora, but that was exactly what Harriet was after.
She grabbed onto the handle and Blade while Penny prepared the other lasers to fire. Harriet yelled and pulled as hard as she could on the sword with the help of her exo-suit, severing that sword from it's string and running back towards the other Ace Operatives with it in tow. "We're done here!" she stated as they looked at her.
"Right!" Elm started to pull back, helping Elm up while running as well. Harriet and Vine were quickly behind the pair.
"Yeah, you better run!" Ruby shouted while holding up Crescent Rose defensively.
"That seemed very suspicious." Blake remarked as she turned towards Penny and Nora.
"We can worry about it later, right now let's just get out of here and get some help for Nora." Weiss insisted, and the others agreed, taking the injured Nora along with them as they began to make their way to the hangar.
Ironwood's eyes narrowed as he watched the camera footage of Ruby's group fighting their way out of the facility, with Penny's aid and eventually reaching the hangar.
"Well, it was certainly worth a shot, don't you think, James?" Watts chuckled. "Those older models were always pretty poor when it came to energy consumption, not to mention other glaring weaknesses…"
"I'm sure you saw that Harriet got what you asked for." Ironwood turned to face him now.
May uncloaked the ship she had managed to nab and waved the group over. "How'd it go?" she asked. "I mean the alarms do kinda make that obvious..."
"We got what we came here for." Ruby assured May as Penny floated into the ship with Nora in tow while the others got in and they flew off.
"So, Atlas still had a few of those spider things, huh?" May remarked. "I'm not surprised." the ship's windows folded downwards.
"Can't I just come back to help after the broadcast?" Penny frowned.
"We promise you Penny, we'll be fine." Ruby assured her. "And we'll see each other again before you know it." she pulled the girl into a hug that she returned, her eyes briefly met with Weiss and Blake who gave assuring nods.
"I'll see you guys soon." Penny smiled before jumping out of the ship and flying off.
May closed the ship up and turned back toward the others. "I'm gonna have to shake these guys following us, but while I do that, I don't suppose you know anywhere we can go to help your injured friend out, right? We don't have the kind of supplies that would help her out in her condition down in the crater."
Weiss furrowed her eyebrows and let out a sigh. "There's one place we can go, even if I don't really want to go back there…"
The ship made a sharp turn as the ships following them made an attempt to pursue…
"We've got what you requested." Ironwood placed Penny's sword down in front of Watts who smiled as the Ace Operatives entered the room, now joined by Winter who wore shoulder pads and a bracer over her injured arm.
"Thank you, James." he glanced at the other Ace Ops who clearly didn't like the idea of working with him. Winter seemed the most visibly disturbed by this decision from the general, her hand, gripping the handle of her weapon tightly.
"So what did you need this for anyways?" Harriet asked.
"To put it simply, we're going to plant a virus into her." Watts began. "Her swords function off of a similar frequency to that of the CCT Tower, as in, we can gain access to her from just one of these swords. Once the CCT signal is strong enough."
"We're going to give her commands with this virus." Ironwood added to Watts's explanation.
"Yes, but we'll have to let Amity launch like those kids want before we can do that. Which gives me all the time I need to create what you want me to cook up for you." Watts chuckled. "What are the exact commands that you want me to give her?"
Ironwood paused in thought for a moment. "Two commands. I need her to open the vault and self-terminate."
Winter's eyes widened in shock, while the Ace Ops all held varying expressions of surprise at this set of commands.
"She's become a liability." Ironwood stated flatly. "It's best we take her out of the picture before the power falls into Salem's hands. Is there a problem with that?"
"N-No sir…" Winter looked him in the eyes, her gaze hardening as long as he stared at her before he turned his attention back to Watts, who was beginning to disassemble the sword.
"You know what they say… If you can't beat them, make them beat themselves." Arthur Watts laughed, clearly applying this to far more than just Penny.
Commentary: I'll let you guess WHY this chapter became the longest chapter out of these first 4 I wrote.
I added a whole new fight scene into it, bringing back a classic from the Black Trailer in the form of a Spider-Droid and those old Atlesian Knight models.
On another note, I did introduce William Scarlatina into this chapter, who is actually a canon character from the novels. All we really know is that he's Velvet's Dad and he works as an Engineer for the Atlesian Military, so I think it's reasonable to assume the Command Center is where he'd be working during the events of Volume 8.
As much as I loved the silly office stuff with Bill(the true villain of the show) it just did NOT fit with the tone I wanted to go for in this facility, it's supposed to be a military-run compound, not just a normal office space. The engineers and technicians working there should be extremely high strung as Ironwood's forcing them to work overtime to search for any possible weakness that Salem's Monstra might have.
Speaking of the General, well there's a 3rd strike on him, working with Watts... If this was baseball he'd be out or something. Jokes aside, I did want to have some kind of mention of the Paladin Incident that the show's alluded to with being how Watts faked his death. I also figured that it's likely an event where Ironwood likely lost another one of his limbs.
I do like how the fights turned out with Weiss and Blake's new team attack and Vine actually using his weapon a lot more here than in canon where he used it all of 1 damn time.
Nora's still unfortunately injured here, but at least she got to take a cool giant robot down with her. Which I am aware that a very common complaint with some upcoming story events in canon is how static Ruby's group becomes and I do plan on making use of that time for them to some extent in the very least.