The Smith and Devil

There was a brief moment between team RWBY seeing the White Fang and them falling back into the facility and sealing the door.

Brief.

But still long enough for the more quick-witted of the faunus to fire a shot off through the opening.

There wasn't time for the masked figure to line up a shot, which was likely the only thing to save Weiss from a bullet to the head, the shot instead hitting the wall behind her.

Bare seconds after the door had closed, before they could even start to suggest a course of action, there was an impact with the door.

An inch of red-toned blade penetrated the metal.

It withdrew, the sounds of metal on metal following swiftly.

"The door wouldn't hold me if I was determined," Yang decided uncomfortably, "we should probably find somewhere safe."

"One of the maintenance corridors?"

"Best not to discuss our plan out here, not when it is likely they can hear us miss Rose. Miss Schnee, you seem unusually quiet."

"That... that was Adam Taurus," she answered. "He's killed... I don't know how many SDC employees. The peoples he's attacked... barely any of them had any connection to the mines, what he claimed to be protesting."

The sound of the strikes against the door changed, the blade penetrating once again.

"If we don't get moving we'll be next!"

Weiss flinched away from Yang, before shaking herself.

"You're right. We need to move. Which way?"

"This way," Ruby decided, leading the way back into the facility.

[]

Ruby didn't have much of a plan beyond getting them away from the immediate danger as she lead the group through the corridors of the facility.

Oobleck had been right that she shouldn't have mentioned the corridors, now they were too obvious a route for the Fang to search.

Unless they could double bluff them. After all, there were so many of the maintenance corridors, surely the chances of them picking the same one were miniscule?

Except they would have to explore the corridor without any lights unless they wanted to give themselves away, and like Oobleck had mentioned in class faunus had much better night vision than they did, giving the Fang members an advantage if it came to a fight in the dark.

Unless they could be sure of throwing their pursuers off their trail, heading into the corridors would be little more than a death sentence.

So looking for a different exit it was.

To Mountain Glenn.

With all its Grimm.

When the sounds of fighting could easily draw the White Fang towards them, getting them stuck in a three-way fight.

A thought occurred to her.

"You don't think there are more White Fang out there?"

"Probably," Weiss answered from towards the back of the group. "Most White Fang aren't Huntsman level, so they make do with numbers. Taurus is almost certainly at the level of a Huntsman, but I couldn't say anything about his compatriots for certain. But I can't think of anything that would justify just the three of them being around here."

So getting them outside would be even more dangerous than she'd thought.

"I think we'll need to use the maintenance corridors," she decided. "They're our best hope to get clear of the Fang."

She dashed around a corner, only her Semblance-boosted reactions saving her from loosing her head to Taurus' blade.

"A bit late for that," he stated, stepping from the nexus into the corridor, even as Ruby flinched back into the midst of her team. "Tell me who attacked our base here and you get to live."

"W-we both know you aren't about to let us go," Weiss stated as bravely as she could, stepping to the front of the group. "Not after you killed workers transporting emergency aid to collapsed mines."

"Propaganda," he sneered. "We both know that the SDC doesn't care about its workers."

"He used the deaths of the workers to rally more faunus to his cause didn't he," Yang noted.

"Why wouldn't I use the lack of safety in the mines and the SDC failure to send people after them?"

"You're right, we can't trust him," Yang stated, readying Ember Celica.

"So be it."

Taurus readied himself to strike, only to suddenly shift his sword to block.

An explosion washed over him and the other Fang operatives, their aura protecting them from harm.

"I cannot let you harm my students," Oobleck declared, his thermos revealed as his weapon from the way it was smoking.

"That can't be good for the coffee," Yang muttered to herself.

As the smoke cleared it was revealed that Taurus had sheathed his sword for some reason, hand still on the hilt.

"What makes you think you have that choice?"

"Dodge, quickly," Oobleck called out, the team following the order automatically even as Taurus drew his sword straight into a slash.

As the blade cut through the air a beam of energy extended along its path.

The beam, clearly his semblance, cut through the wall and floor where it touched, the metal granting no more resistance than the air.

Ruby froze up for an instant.

A cut of that power would be enough to devastate her aura if not slice through it altogether.

"Got to take you out fast then," Yang declared, leaping towards Taurus with her weapons ready.

One of the other faunus intercepted her attack, catching her fist and buckshot on a blade-edged staff, before shifting it into some kind of sword with overly long handle and blade.

To bring his weapon to bear he was forced to step back, Taurus and their other comrade following his lead.

The third faunus also readied his weapon, some kind of machine gun.

With their current positioning he couldn't fire without risking his ally, while attempts to slip around to target the gunner or Taurus would see them face a stream of bullets.

While normally their aura would be enough to keep them safe from bullets, given their relatively low impact nature, but with the guns rate of fire, plus the gunners allies, the threat it posed here was much greater.

Yang claimed the front line against the guy with the staff-sword thing, the threat from the gunner preventing her from using her usual approach or Drei from helping.

Behind her Ruby shook her hesitation off and took aim with Crescent Rose, trying to take down Taurus or the gunner from safety.

Somehow the haft or blade of the guy Yang was fighting managed to intercept each shot, the consistency showing skill rather than luck.

"Clear," Weiss suddenly called.

Yang responded by jumping up and kicking off the Fang operatives chest, avoiding the wave of ice Weiss sent along the floor to try and trap the faunus' feet.

Unfortunately for the team, the sword guy was kicked clear of the ice and his allies jumped back safely.

"Nows our chance," Yang called out as she leapt forward, angling to make use of the opportunity posed by the gun being out of position.

The rest of team RWBY followed her lead, not wanting to let the Fang control the flow of the fight.

"Ladies, wait," Oobleck called out, trying to pull them back.

"Open fire," Taurus ordered, his operative following the order even as he raised the muzzle to position.

Bullets smashed the ice, tracing a line through the floor towards the Huntresses.

The ice cracked.

And the floor gave way, team RWBY and Oobleck sent hurtling into the darkness below.

[]

AN: It can be interesting to consider the differences between writing a book and fanfiction.

With a book, the length to the end is always apparent, while with fanfiction you only know how many chapters are left when it is finished, and without any concept of page numbers.

Further, fanfiction sites don't tend to let you place blank pages in the middle of a chapter, like books sometimes use to draw out the events of characters falling into the unknown.

Without the ability to insert blank pages, a fanfic author wishing to create the same impression needs to put something else in to fill the pages.

Like, for example, a mid-chapter authors note.

After all, we haven't even brought up what kind of smith the chapter title refers to.

[]

Adam Taurus brought up a hand to signal his operative to stop firing.

He had brought two White Fang members with unlocked aura and training to use it with him to test for a replacement for his previous partner, the latest in a series of candidates.

Not that he bothered learning their names until they proved themselves.

It was... difficult operating without a trusted partner to have his back.

But he had quickly realised that normal White Fang grunts were nearly as bad liabilities in a fight as she had proven herself.

The gunner needing a specific order to stop shooting (plus the command to start shooting in the first place) after the targets were no longer visible was a black mark on his part.

Still, even if the group were much below his level the two had managed to win.

He couldn't remove them from consideration like the others just yet.

"Wonder why they dug the space out," naginata guy stated as he bent over the edge of the corridor.

"Maybe they just found it like this."

"Enough. We're leaving," Adam declared. "They might have allies."

He chalked up another mark against the naginata guy in his head.

[]

There was a light flickering above her.

It took Weiss longer than she'd admit to realise it was real, not some hallucination.

Aura could be used to protect against most injuries, but concussions weren't among that list.

On the other hand, auras regenerative properties would see an all but certain recovery given time.

Time which she had been unconscious for.

She stood up slowly, testing her ability to move.

There wasn't any pain.

Not a good sign. There was no chance that she could have fallen that far without injury, even with her aura, so she must have been unconscious long enough to heal.

She took a look around for the first time.

She had fallen down a slope of rubble from a collapse some point since the Glenn had been abandoned.

Her side of the rubble was a section of corridor and some kind of poorly lit room with broken open doors.

There was no sign of the others.

"Ruby," she tried calling, her voice sounding small to her ears, "Yang? Professor?"

"Doctor," a muffled voice responded from beyond the rubble.

A wave of relief ran through her.

"The others are here," he continued. "We were the first to recover. We can't clear the rubble. When everyone is awake we'll search for a way round and a route out."

"There's a room here, I'll check what it's for," she called back, setting word to action.

From inside, without the flickering lights disrupting her vision, it became clear that this was some kind of lab, with a central computer with blinking light and broken glass cylinders.

"Something went wrong with the experiments," she muttered to herself, feeling glass crack underfoot as she approached the computer.

From where the chair would have been she could see that the computers keyboard was in bad shape.

About the only key she was confident would work was the enter key.

It didn't look like there was a self-destruct setup, so she went ahead and pressed the button.

The monitor lit up, a video file starting to play.

"-and the upgrade process has started to pay off," the figure on screen stated, the video clearly paused in the middle of playback. "The project is finally starting to make progress. However, I appear to have drawn unwanted attention, so I shall be preparing to relocate to another base. I cannot permit those without my foresight to prevent me from ending the threat of the Grimm! Log ends, Merlot signing off."

"He was planning to eliminate the Grimm? Then, did a group of Grimm cultists find him before he could finish his work?"

Presumably someone broke into the lab and smashed the tubes to deny them Merlots work.

Unless he escaped somewhere...

When they got out, they'd need to search for this 'Merlot'.

A thought crossed her mind and she brought out her scroll.

It was still in working shape, as she'd have expected from its price tag.

She checked to see if it could connect to the computer system.

There could be useful information still present.

Maybe a map of the facility.


AN: Okay, that earlier authors note was probably a bit mean of me, but as I said, it was about the only way to get the same effect. Plus the whole thing being bold should make it clear when it ends for anyone who wants to skip it.

And yes, it is the 'Grimm-smith' and devil, dr Merlot from the game (which I really should try and complete at some point. Trouble is I've never really had the internet connection for multiplayer, which it is quite built around).

I don't have too many plans to involve his Grimm in the story.

In other news, I recently discovered that this story is long enough to have been a novel, which was quite the surprise. Seems I just needed to focus on chapter by chapter updates to get that leve of work done.

Shame such a system doesn't work quite so well for commercial original works...