Chapter Forty-Four: Derailed


"Gah!" Phoenix cried out as he was woken up from the nap he was taking and knocked out of his seat by the sudden shaking of the train. He was about to ask what was going on, but the cries of Grimm answered that question for him. "So much for catching up on sleep," he muttered as he put on his mask and ran to the door. "I'm starting to think I should be afraid of trains instead of flying. Something goes wrong almost every time I'm on one," he thought as he climbed the ladder. "There was that fight with the Silver Serpents and Basilisk on top of a train and that time with Qrow and the robots. I wasn't on a train in the Merlot incident, but train tracks were involved. Then there was the train that caused the Breach and now this."


Phoenix reached the top of the car just in time to see a Manticore grab one of the two Huntsmen who had been hired to guard the train. Phoenix pulled out his lighter and used it to send a blast of flames at the Grimm, killing it. Phoenix then drew his grapnel gun and used it to grab the now falling huntsman, pulling him back up onto the train.

"T-thank yo-" the terrified huntsman tried to say. He was cut off by the roar of a second Manticore. It lunged at him but was knocked back by an attack from Phoenix's swords in their shotgun form.

"Shut up and get inside before I have to save you again!" Phoenix ordered as he continued to hold the attacking Grimm off.

"R-right," the huntsman stuttered before making his escape.

With the huntsman out of the way, Phoenix could join the fight. The Manticore that had been stunned by his shotgun lunged at him again, but another shotgun blast finished it off. He tried to make his way to the others but was cut off by two more Manticores. A quick series of strikes eliminated the first one. He turned to face the second one, but his balance was thrown off when the part of the train that he was standing on opened up to reveal a turret. The Manticore took advantage of this and tried to attack him with its tail. Phoenix recovered just in time to avoid it. It then took flight and tried to attack with its fire breath. Phoenix grinned as he easily redirected the blast back at the beast. This grin was quickly replaced with a frown as he realized that the blast that the Manticore had been preparing hadn't been aimed at him. It had been aimed at the turret on the train. He switched his swords to their rifle mode and prepared to finish it off before it could do any more damage, but it retreated before he could attack. The reason for this was quickly made obvious when he heard Oscar yell, "Tunnel!" Being one of the people who was furthest back meant that Phoenix had plenty of time to make his way back into the train before the tunnel came.

Phoenix reached the others at the back of the train just in time to hear Ozpin tell everyone that the relic attracted Grimm. "Oz, are you serious?" Qrow asked.

"Why wouldn't you tell us that?" Yang angrily demanded to know.

"I-" Ozpin prepared to answer, but Ruby cut him off before he could, reminding her team that the Grimm pursuing them were the more of a concern right now. None of them seemed happy with this, but they didn't protest. "Get the passengers to the front cars," she told team JN_R. "You'll still mask the emotions and kill the turrets. We just can't come with you. If we cut the back cars with the relic, then we can lure the Grimm. We just need to make sure that the rest of the train makes it safely to Argus."

"Only if you promise you'll meet us there," Jaune replied, clearly reluctant to split the group.

"Promise," Ruby nodded in agreement.


It was decided that Nora would accompany Jaune and Ren while the rest of the group would stay with the relic. With the cars separated and Ren hiding the cars that held the passengers, the Grimm focused on the back cars. Phoenix and Qrow worked together to fight the Sphinx while the others dealt with the Manticores. While Qrow handled the Sphinx's head, Phoenix dealt with its snake tail. He managed to cut it off, but the two of them alone weren't able to do any significant damage to it. Seeing this, Phoenix decided that a change in tactics was necessary. "Ruby, you and your team help Qrow deal with the Sphinx!" he suggested. "Oscar and I will keep the rest of the Manticores off of you!" Ruby showed her agreement by ordering her team to ground the Sphinx. The two of them killed the Manticores. Phoenix killed the last one by redirecting a fireball that it had launched at Oscar back at it. However, doing this led to him missing a much larger fireball that the Sphinx had launched as it died. The resulting explosion caused the train to be derailed.


As always, this took WAY too long, especially for such a short chapter. I may add some more to this chapter before starting the next one. The reason is that a lot of my classes this semester involved writing. I didn't feel like doing even more writing during my free time. For some reason, I also decided to start working on an outline for a story about Phoenix's time as the Flaming Shadow that I'll probably never actually write.

I don't remember if I mentioned this before or not and am too lazy to go back and check, but the longest I'll go without any sort of update is six months. If I go longer than that without even uploading an incomplete chapter or something, then I'm probably dead. I know that I should update a lot more, but that's the best that I can promise.

I skipped over the scene at the train station because I couldn't think of enough to add to justify including it. If I come up with something later, then I'll add it. I decided to have Phoenix reference a couple of things that happened when he was the Flaming Shadow because why not. He also completed the events of "RWBY: Grimm Eclipse" by himself during his time as the Flaming Shadow. The first two levels were done by random teams that were at Beacon at the time, but he did the rest. The game can be completed pretty easily if you're playing by yourself, so Phoenix being able to do it himself seems reasonable. Before you ask, no, I'm probably never actually going to write that as a story either.

I decided to put a character summaries of Grant and Jenkins at the end of chapter 18 (Breach Battle), so feel free to check those out. Thanks for reading!