Dousing The Torch
Penny wasn't here. She'd officially scared her off.
Weiss sighed to herself as she watched the dance play itself out. Soft, whimsical ballroom music played in the dance hall draped in hues of purple and blue from the lights she'd hung up. Confetti and streamers from the opening laid scattered and forgotten on the ground as students of all four years who could make it laughed and danced freely. The Grimm didn't exist here, only cajolement and merriment. Even the teachers managed to have some fun, though from how Professor Goodwitch so bluntly rejected Port's offer to dance, not everyone could so easily get into it.
She was currently one of them. Weiss would never admit openly that she was wrong about something like this, but Ruby was absolutely correct: the dance felt empty without having her whole team there, especially since one of her best friends was nowhere to be found. She was left greeting each and every person who came in, each and every person probably having a way better time than she was.
It certainly didn't help that her actual date was too busy building his strength up to speak to her at the punch bowl rather than actually doing so.
"Leave it to you to make a dance feel like a funeral," Adam commented from beside Weiss as she took a seat to rest.
"Now's not the time, Adam..."
"Are you certain? You don't exactly seem to be busy." He held a cup out to her.
Rolling her eyes, Weiss did not snatch the drink only out of fear of spilling it on herself. "Just because your 'date' ditched you doesn't mean mine has, too."
Adam grimaced. Oh, how he hated that stupid cover story. "She will arrive when she wishes to. Do tell, what did you do to scare your date off, then?"
"Apparently, saying yes in the first place."
"And what stops you from just going to them, instead?" His eyes watched hers closely, waiting for Weiss to inadvertently glance off someplace else and give him a clue to just who it was.
Weiss mulled it over in her mind and steeled herself. "You know what? You're right! I'll just..." She turned to where the punch was, and her face fell. Confused, the heiress looked around until she found Jaune hurriedly making his way up the stairs to the balcony, following a much more languid, almost depressed-looking Pyrrha. She flinched.
"He's busy."
Adam's eyes followed hers to the stairs. "... Jaune?" His tone betrayed no emotion, but Weiss could see the way his eye gleamed in amusement.
"Don't judge!" she huffed.
"He really was the only one who asked, wasn't he?" The brief flash of hurt in Weiss' eyes had Adam regretting that immediate response. Funny, how there was once a time when that was what he sought out. "My apologies—"
"No, no, I... I know what you mean. It makes sense: I'm the heiress to an entire company, part of one of the best teams in Beacon, as active as can be outside of school,"
"More than a little icy towards newcomers," Adam teased with a smirk.
"Yes, yes, that too. It doesn't make for a particularly approachable girl, does it? He was the only one who actually looked through all that." Weiss let out a soft sigh, watching a team of students laughing and chattering as one of them tried to tell some grand story. The sight of Emerald and Mercury watching them from the second floor didn't escape her.
"It sounds a lot like that Nikos girl."
Weiss shuddered. "No, at least I can have people talk to me without flinching... most of the time." The two fell into an uncomfortable silence for a few moments. Adam checked his Scroll: twenty minutes until their departure.
"Our dates ran off and our close friends are nowhere to be found"—and I'm out thirty lien, Adam thought to himself as he offered a hand to Weiss—"but that doesn't mean we can't have fun for ourselves, right?"
She looked from her juice to Adam before, with a sigh and a warm smile, Weiss took Adam's hand.
"What's a human doing here?!" A recruit girl with deer antlers shouted at the stage. Several more demands for answers were flung up at their leader and Torchwick both until the man relented and held up his hand.
"I'm glad you asked, Deery! I won't lie to you: humans are the worst. Case in point." Torchwick tipped his new, white bowler hat to the crowds. "We lie, we cheat, we steal, and we have this nasty little tendency to live through whatever gets thrown at us, so I can understand why you might want to see us all locked away, or better yet, killed." As Ruby and Yang looked curiously between one another, Torchwick began pacing to and fro across the stage as if he wasn't one wrong word away from being physically torn to pieces with his cigar trailing ash in one hand and his trusty cane in the other. It was just as impressive as it was unnerving.
Ruby took a sharp breath and nudged Yang's side. "Look! It's that girl!" she whispered and pointed off behind Torchwick. In the chaos of his entrance, the short stranger with hair the colors of Neapolitan ice cream had managed to slip on-stage to watch the crowd without even a single glance being thrown her way. Just like her partner, the girl had the nerve to smile at a time like this. Yang nodded and placed a hand on Ruby's shoulder: she'd be sure to keep an eye on that one...
"But! Before those claws come out, how about I let you all in on a little human secret?" The gangster leaned forward on his cane with a conspirator's smirk. "The only thing we humans love more than lording our power over others is seeing those without it tear each other apart. And how about that power, huh? The governments, the military, even the schools, all are run by a bunch of humans who want to see you and I thrown away like trash. They're the ones in charge, they're the ones pulling the strings, and they're our enemy!" He waved his cane around in time with his words, controlling the crowd's reactions like a conductor with his baton until jeers and cries had become excited mutters, even shouts of approval.
"They're pests that need to be dealt with! Fortunately, I'm the best exterminator around..." Torchwick took a drag from his cigar and turned to the curtain. "Oh, uh, no offense to any rodents in the room." He snapped his fingers, and the curtain dropped. Standing there, bristling with a myriad of cannons and adorned with the White Fang's insignia was the dreaded Atlesian Paladin. But it was not just any Paladin: the smooth armor, insectoid head covering its torso with four, gleaming slits for eyes and plates shielding its joints from damage marked it as a full production type.
The crowd exploded into cheers, gasps and shouts of awe. Even Ruby let out a strangled noise caught between a whimper and a squeal of adoration at seeing this metal beast this close before it was released even in Atlas. So caught up in the excitement surrounding the machine, Ruby did not even notice the dirty looks the cheetah faunus ahead of her kept throwing her way.
"Oh my gosh, the rumors were right!" Ruby squealed. "Are those seventy-six millimeter dual Dust cannons? It even has anti-air, rotating, independent ones mounted on the top!"
"Yeah, yeah, but where did he get that thing?!" Yang tried her hardest to bring Ruby back to reality.
"As some of you may have heard, this here is Atlas' brand-new defense against all the scary things in the world," Torchwick waggled his fingers, mocking the arrogance of Atlas. "Thanks to a partner of mine, we managed to snag a few before they... ah, 'hit the shelves.' Now, if you think we're going to do better apart, go ahead, fight the Torches. Hell, you can start with me!" He dropped the end of his cigar and crushed it under his foot. "But if you're really ready to crush Vale... this is the arsenal I can provide you."
The gangster looked across the crowd, his smirk betrayed by his hardened gaze. A challenge. "Any questions?" The only hands raised were fists pumped into the air from White Fang and recruit alike. In a frightening display, not a single one of the hundreds of White Fang and potential White Fang members there dissented, from the crowds to the guards above. Once more, all that was heard was a rumbling din.
Captain Almond did not even bother trying to calm the crowd, instead shouting over it altogether. "The Torches will be providing us with equipment in the southeast operation! All recruits, step up and choose your path!" Ruby and Yang were nearly bowled over by the wave of marching men and women, and luckily just before the cheetah faunus could start asking questions.
"We need to get out of here ASAP!" Yang harshly whispered to Ruby, but there was nowhere to go without sticking out like a sore thumb. The youngest's eyes searched the windows for the least protected.
"I could always use my Semblance and get to the windows, or..." Ruby was cut off by Yang nudging her and staring up at the stage. A pair of eyes, one pink, one brown, were staring dead at them. The mysterious ice-cream colored girl took her sweet time in strolling up towards Roman, eyes on them the entire time.
"Rubes, we need a plan—"
"That girl in the cloak and the blonde! They're spies from the Academy!" the cheetah girl shouted just over the crowd just as Roman pointed his cane over at them. The two could feel hundreds of eyes immediately scanning the area, and more and more locking onto them. They would never stand a chance even against that many recruits, let alone fully trained soldiers.
"Don't let them get away!" Torchwick shouted. The recruits around her stepped back, his cane's tip flipped open to form crosshairs, Ruby reached for her weapons, gunfire rang out—
And the lights suddenly shut off, plunging the warehouse into darkness so quickly that even the faunus needed to adjust.
"Follow me!" A hushed, yet faintly familiar voice called to Yang amidst the roar of confused questions and rage. Her eyes briefly caught black hair in the moonlight as she was abruptly dragged along and up onto the second floor's walkway in a single leap.
Ruby let out a squeak and started yanking her hand back as a second person started pulling her along. "Wait, hey, hold on, I can handle myself!" She sprung after Yang and the mystery girl towards another window, but a loud whirring drew her attention.
"I guess if you want something done, you gotta do it yourself!" Torchwick bemoaned, voice amplified through a speaker as, in the darkness, four red lights came to life. Thin beams scanned across the crowd and searched for a target, barely illuminating the shifting horde in crimson below just as it did the silhouette of the production-grade Paladin on the stage.
"Woaaah, it's like a concert's laser show!" Ruby gushed to herself.
Countless beams focused on her.
"Time to move!" A man shoved her right out through the window as the first soldiers fired.
Yang and her apparent savior crashed through the window and came rolling to a halt just outside. The blonde whipped her head around to see who this was and if it was someone who needed a good punch to the head: the White Fang mask had her deploying Ember Celica already, but the black hair, the white and black outfit, the cat ears...
"Oh, what's up, Blake? Wait, Blake?! What are you doing here!" Adam was going to kill them! The whole point was so that Blake didn't get offed by her evil team!
"Now is not the time for questions!" Blake said.
Right on cue, Ruby went flying out of another warehouse window, followed by Sun getting unceremoniously blasted out by a wave of bullets within. The hornet's nest that was the White Fang rally was buzzing now: weapons being cocked, voices shouting and the rumbling of over six hundred feet sounded like they were about to have an entire war's worth of soldiers on top of them any second, now.
"Okay, whatever!" Yang held her hands up. "We need to get back to Beacon freakin'... five minutes ago! Come on, we'll get on my motorcycle!"
"Yeah, I'm fine, thanks for asking!" Sun called after the two girls making a break for the bike. Ruby grumbled to herself and rubbed her head before finding herself being pulled along yet again towards a car. "You're coming with me, we'll meet up with them! Call the Ice Queen and the scary dude!"
The Paladin leaped clean out of the building from the roof in an explosion of shredded metal and dust, then slammed down onto the street hard enough to shatter the asphalt and stone beneath it. Sun and Ruby held their breath as they threw themselves inside the hatchback and ducked: they were out in the open and, while a car was definitely faster without wasting every ounce of aura they had, it was neither maneuverable or strong enough to take on a Paladin.
Torchwick looked at his right screen: an empty car with its lights on. Well, now he knew how some of those Beacon brats managed to get here in the first place. He loaded his cannon and looked left: already pulling off on a motorcycle was some blonde teen he'd never seen in his life and—oh hello? Was that the kitty-kat Cinder wanted to keep an eye on? Didn't need to ask him twice! The Paladin tore off after them, each step sending the entire street trembling.
Sun and Ruby slowly brought their heads up as Torchwick left, both panting from the stress. Ruby whipped out her Scroll as Sun took off in pursuit: they needed help now.
"So! Any smart plans?!" Yang shouted over her shoulder at Blake, the wind whipping past them as they shot through the industrial district and its old, drab buildings on Bumblebee. The streets here were empty with only a few parked cars left on the streets, and thank goodness for that, because Torchwick barreled through it without abandon, knocking cars into buildings and smashing against windows. Car alarms went off and the distant sound of workers in an uproar picked up in their wake.
"The streets here are cramped! Try to lose him!" Blake called back, hoping the Paladin didn't have some kind of sensitive microphones.
Yang waited until the last possible second, then whipped Bumblebee right around a corner, tires screeching and a dangerous amount of speed lost in exchange for the surprise. Just as the Paladin screeched to a halt at the end of the street, Yang turned again, and was gone from Torchwick's sight. Enraged, Torchwick swung the Paladin's gun into the building beside it, sending rubble pouring down across the machine without even making a scratch.
Huh, that was weird, Torchwick thought as the downpour of brick and stone ended, yet he still heard the occasional clank or crack of something striking the Paladin. He turned the lumbering machine to find that white hatchback he'd seen earlier driving towards it at full speed, Ruby leaning out of the passenger window and firing away with Crescent Rose. To her dismay, it didn't look like a single shot was doing any damage.
"Uh, hey, crazy stowaway guy!" she called to her mysterious driver.
"It's Sun!"
"Shooting it isn't working, what do we do?"
The Paladin suddenly whirled its entire upper body around and folded one of its guns out to form an arm swinging straight for them.
"DUCK!" Sun and Ruby screamed and dropped as low as they could without crashing the car into the nearest building. The sound of metal tearing filled the air for a split second before it was replaced with roaring wind. The two poked their heads up to find that the swipe had crushed the entire top half of the car, sending its top careening off into the distance, but luckily leaving them untouched.
The blonde monkey faunus let out a maniacal, nervous laugh as he looked behind him to see the Paladin storming right after them. "Well, I always wanted a convertible!" he shouted into the wind as Ruby, trembling, pulled herself back up into the passenger's seat. Practically born a sniper, Ruby immediately noticed the flashes of yellow and orange each time they passed a building: at least Yang and Blake were still nearby.
Yang scowled at seeing her little sister get hurt, but as they shot past a club and finally began to see more and more people wandering the sidewalks for the nightlife, Blake was noticing something different.
"Why isn't he shooting?" she muttered just loud enough to be heard.
The blonde threw a glance over her shoulder for her to continue, but focused much more on avoiding the first signs of traffic, swerving around cars before speeding up much further ahead. "I dunno, ammo?"
"He was aiming at Ruby before! I think... I think he might be avoiding the civilians! The freeway! If we get on there he'll have no choice but to retreat!" Blake sounded a mix of surprised and dismayed: surprised that someone like Torchwick would seemingly care about the people of Vale, and dismayed that such an act made him ten times more compassionate than the White Fang she left.
Yang nodded and accelerated, swinging left around a turn up ahead.
For barely a second, Ruby saw Yang shoot by across from her, waving her arm for them to follow.
"Sun, left!" With surprising skill for someone the same age as Yang, Sun sent the topless rally car drifting around onto the same street as Yang and Blake and punched the gas, quickly catching up to them. Already, they could see the gleaming, blue holographic railings of Vale's freeway system. Five roads twisting, turning and intertwining with each other like blood vessels above them, yet never managing to intersect. Just as Sun and Ruby pulled onto the ramp ahead of Yang and Blake, a blur of white and black suddenly dropped onto the street between them, sending a plume of dust into the air, a quake through the streets and civilians scattering into buildings.
Blake finally reached for her weapon. She wasn't worried and, from how Yang pushed Bumblebee even closer to its limit, neither was her new partner. The motorcycle was just thin enough to simply dart between the Paladin's legs, and as it passed, Blake grabbed Gambol Shroud, aimed up, and fired half of pistol's the clip at the joint of its leg and pelvis.
Orange sparks and flashes of light deflected the bullets on impact. Blake's eyes widened, and she remained still even as the Paladin once more twisted its entire upper body around to make—and miss—a swing at Bumblebee.
"It... that thing has aura!" she managed to force out as they, too, pulled onto the freeway and into safety.
"What?" Yang didn't have to shout at the top of her lungs now that they could slow down and cruise over beside Sun and Ruby, the latter of which was still crumpled in her seat from the near-death experience, false faunus ears flat against her head.
"When I fired at it, I saw flashes of light and no shots connected: how can a machine have aura?" Blake hissed.
"It doesn't!" Ruby chimed in. "It actually has a revolutionary new aura projecting system! It's so advanced, it can amplify and spread the aura of the pilot as an extra defensive layer if it's piloted by someone with enough control. But... I heard it was only a prototype! Even more than the Paladin itself!" She'd been watching the CCT network for a long time on info for the Paladin. And everything else Atlas had made, for that matter.
Blake furrowed her brow. "He must've been using a demonstration model... We need to get back to Beacon and tell someone!" Blake was surprised to find Ruby and Yang suddenly quiet.
She narrowed her eyes. "We... are going to tell someone, right?"
Torchwick had the sense of humor to laugh at himself as the solution to his problems sat labeled bright enough to stand out among the other buttons and switches. No wonder he couldn't shoot: he had the safety on! What a rookie mistake...
Just as Ruby opened her mouth to speak, she and every other driver on the freeway saw it at once: the colossal Paladin soaring through the air. Some wondered if it was another showing by Atlas, some were astounded by the alien machine altogether, others were ambivalent, but Ruby's mouth turned dry: there was no way Torchwick could chase them safely on the freeway.
Which meant he had no intention to do so safely in the first place.
The girls looked back just as the Paladin came falling from the skies and right atop another car, crushing it in a ball of flame that lit the road in orange. Blake closed her eyes and turned her back to the sudden death. The sisters, so used to only seeing Grimm perish, stared in shock.
"Hey! Girls! Come on, wake up!" Sun shouted to them as the Paladin took off towards them and the street became a frenzy: people were desperately trying to escape the madness ahead, damn the consequences and whoever was in their way. The monstrosity was already chasing them, sending cars flying through the railings and plummeting below with every kick of its foot. While the first car was not so lucky, automobiles of this day and age in Vale often were meant to be able to take a light Grimm attack with no casualties. Those civilians stood a chance. But the one Torchwick landed on...
A loud honk from Sun's car snapped Yang and Ruby out of their daze just in time for Yang to swerve out of the way of a line of heavy Dust cannon fire that tore holes into the road beneath them.
"How are we going to get to Beacon with this thing chasing us!" Blake called as a shell screamed overhead and detonated in the back of a truck, sending it skidding along the road until it tipped over the side.
Once again, Yang was silent. Ruby, however, had come to the same decision Yang already had: she shakily stood up in the car seat and deployed Crescent Rose into its full scythe form. Yang smirked, proud of her little sister, and looked back at Blake.
"We aren't going to Beacon," Yang said.
Blake was appalled. "What! We don't stand a chance against—"
"And neither do all of these people! Torchwick might not care, but we do!" Yang hissed as a shell crashed too close for comfort, sending shards of rock and even the steel reinforcement beneath scattering across her aura like shrapnel. "We're gonna put an end to this!" She punched the gas, banked along a long bend in the highway and turned to fire a trio of explosive shots that splashed against the Paladin's head. It showed signs of stumbling and, when the smoke cleared, there was a clear black mark across the mask. The aura coverage wasn't perfect.
Not far from this, Ruby noticed it and grinned. That meant they could win, and they needed to. Torchwick had to be stopped, no matter what!
Soft, cheery classical mixed in with hopeful chatter and even more hopeful flirting in Beacon's dance hall. The mood was light, airy and carefree and the room showed it from the balloons attached to anything those students could get their hands on to the soft purple and blue lighting almost specifically meant to calm. For many of those students, it was the happiest night of their lives.
Cinder Fall would agree with this notion, albeit for decidedly different reasons. Watching the students turn from near the punch bowl, she caught the eye of her two loyal subjects and partners standing above on the second floor. The door was practically flung open, though she couldn't see whoever had left. Her Scroll buzzed with a text, and Mercury nodded to her, waving his own.
["Adam and Weiss. In a hurry."] Perfect. Now, there was no one left to worry about but whichever unfortunate soul who would be the catalyst for their own plan.
A student tripped on a chair he swore was never there in the first place, splashing his own sugary drink all over Cinder. She glared down at him in disgust and anger, but by the time the boy picked himself up and pleaded with her not to be mad, the emotion had vanished. It was replaced by a soft, charming smile.
"Oh, no, it's nothing, I understand. I had a second dress just for that occasion." Cinder laid a black-gloved hand on the student's shoulder, and he looked like even that simple conversation had made his night.
Even with the front of her dress ruined, Cinder sauntered out of the dance hall. She had her alibi. All she had to do was go to the dorms in case anyone was watching, and then, the CCT.
It was the beginning of the end for Ozpin and his puppets.
This night was going to be wonderful...
A/N: Seriously, did anyone ever notice just how many people Torchwick probably murdered in cold blood just to chase RWBY in canon?
Comment and criticism always welcome.
