The Random Hand of Fate

by TheMightyTeaRex

"Destiny is not set in stone. It only takes one grain of rice to tip a scale, one pebble falling into the sea to start a tidal wave; Every action, no matter how small has an effect on the future. So, tell me... do you believe in destiny?" Real-world SI. First-time fanfic. Rated M for violence, gore, swearing, smut (later on) and alcohol. Warhammer 40K characters in Remnant.

25. Adam Bomb Baby

Apologies for the lateness of this update, life has been busy now that school is out. Hunting for a job, prepping for a vacation, et cetera. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this Chapter, as it is another long one (16.5K long) and is heavily inspired by the pacing of Volume 5 (wink-wink).

The intellectual properties of RWBY and its associated images, iconography, terminology and characters are a copyright of Rooster Teeth.

The intellectual properties of Warhammer 40K and its associated images, iconography, terminology, characters, places objects and etc. are a copyright of Games Workshop.

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In Memory of:

John "Totalbiscuit" Bain

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Chapter 25: Adam Bomb Baby

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"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."—Joan Didion

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The morning light of Remnant's sun cascaded through the weaknesses in the thick cloud cover, the windows and down onto the assemblage of groggy, hungry Huntsmen and Huntresses-in-training. All were in various states of wakefulness and some were even in various states of dress; some were still in pajamas, others were gussied up in their Academy uniforms, while others still were dressed for a casual day. Most of them were busy with breakfast, the buffet that morning bountiful with waffles, pancakes, rolls, muffins and other bread goods, as well as the usual; a very noticeable stack of pancakes stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the masses of singular waffles, cups of fruit, plates of bacon and eggs and more. Some were busy with homework, either late or early, some working on personal projects or working on their love lives; word was that the lead girl on Team CPPR asked Cardin—Cardin, of all the people in the world—out to the Vytal Dance. Some were getting mail from family, some were catching up with friends old and new, it was a veritable microcosm of all life that sat under Remnant's sun.

Ruby Rose, on the other hand, was busy staring up at the sky in thought.

Cloud-covered summers were uncommon in Vale, and to most native citizens of Vale it was both an omen of a good harvest in what few farmlands of the Kingdom, and an omen of incoming disaster. It made sense, in a way, as the loosely-packed soils of the farmlands had a habit of suddenly washing away as the rains got worse and worse, taking farms, livestock and crops once the land finally hit a saturation point. Granted, the saturation point was rarely reached, but every decade or so some poor farmer's house down in the farming towns like Redhearth would note one morning that his barn just moved thirty feet towards his house, and everyone would fly into a panic. Ruby had only seen this once, but according to Dad she was only 4 that summer and that isn't exactly an age old enough to remember anything.

As much as she enjoyed a sunny day, Ruby had to admit that sometimes a cloudy day was good for its own kind of smiles. And it being a weekend, now was as opportune a time as ever to find those smiles.

She yawned as the last vestiges of sleepiness slowly left her mind, their clawing grip being pulled loose by the sweet sugary goodness of chocolate chip muffins with bacon and milk. Around her, her teammates and their sister-team groggily readied themselves for the weekend. Weiss was polishing off a cup of coffee and some scrambled eggs, Yang had just downed her fourth waffle smothered in syrup, and Blake had finished a sizeable slice of a cantaloupe and was now sipping from a glass of tea. JNPR was seated across from them at the same table today, each of them having just gotten their own meals, with Nora's pancake tower hovering tall over the assembled student body as the rest of her team stole a pancake or two from the double-digit stack.

And at the foot of their table sandwiched between Ruby and Ren, his plate taken by an apple, a cut of ham and a pastry, was Jacob, his head buried in Yang's notes from a few days ago. A steaming mug of tea sat beside him, a few sips missing from the top, probably brewed to its own saturation point by now. He had some bags under his groggy eyes, though the caffeine would probably see to the latter condition in due time. There was a concentrated furrow to his brow, one that also looked kind of worried to Ruby in all honesty. Jacob's head was leaning against his fist as he was reading Yang's notes, each word seeming to cause some manner of thought to cross his mind.

"So, uh, what're everyone's plans for today?"

Jaune's question got Ruby's attention easily. "Huh? Oh," she replied after a second of hesitation, "We were gonna spend some time down at the auditorium for combat practice," she replied on behalf of her team.

Yang swallowed a quarter of a waffle and cleared her throat. "Maybe you were, Rubes, but I was gonna spend this weekend relaxing and getting ready for the Dance."

"The Dance is in 2 weeks, Yang," Weiss replied as she daintily dabbed a napkin across her face, "there's no way you should be this late preparing for it!"

Yang leaned back, kicking her feet up on the edge of the table. "Don't worry, Ice Queen," she said calmly, "I'll be ready to steal every boy's breath away."

"Oh, I don't doubt it," Nora said after swallowing an entire pancake in one go. "Isn't that right, Jacob?"

Ruby couldn't help but laugh as Nora's snide comment force her big sister to blush brightly and Jacob to glance up from Yang's notes. After a second, everyone besides Jacob was giggling at Yang's expense, though Jacob was wearing a small, coy smile.

Yang only rolled her eyes in response. "He's not a half-bad kisser," she said matter-of-factly, "but I've kissed better."

Ruby bit her tongue, a snigger in response wanting to escape her throat. Sometimes, Yang would bluster to impress people, though they were more embellishments rather than outright lies; She had only kissed one boy before Jacob, and that was five years ago with a boy who was three months her junior and was the geekiest kid in all of Signal's freshmen class that year.

"I could make so many not-safe-for-work jokes about that sentence alone that Jeff Dunham's puppets would drop their collective jaws," Jacob muttered from behind Yang's notes.

Again, the table erupted into laughter, sans Yang. "Jeff Dunham?"

Jacob seemed to pause as if he had misspoken. "Oh, right, he's a ventriloquist comedian from back home," he said, "You guys wouldn't have seen him, I may tell one of his jokes one of these days... in a more private location."

As the rest—sans Blake for some reason—continued to laugh, Yang nodded hesitantly before turning her attention back to the rest of the group. Ruby watched Jacob closely as he continued to read, his features now showing the faint traces of alarm. Something about the saurian Grimm was surprising him and maybe even terrifying him to some degree if the raised brows he sported were any indicator.

"Well," Pyrrha said as she nervously cleared her throat, "Jaune was offering to taking us all out to see the newest Spruce Willis movie before we go out and get our outfits for the Dance. Considering I want everyone to be in something they like and look good in, I'm springing for it out of my own money."

"Oh, look at you, P-Money's flexing her bank account," Yang said teasingly. "You gonna take that lying down, Weiss?"

"Hush your mouth, Yang," Weiss replied with a tone of indignation. "I think that's a lovely thing for Pyrrha to do. And yes, I suppose I would not be against putting my allowance to good use... but I'm sure that you have plenty enough to purchase your own dress."

Weiss' jest received a humongous round of laughter from the rest of the table, with even Jacob snickering at her stinging retort. "Ooh, Ice Queen's spitting fire this morning," their oldest companion replied as he glanced up again for only a quick second. "And Yang's just getting pounded over there—or, wait, I mean, ah shit, wrong choice of words!"

Jacob turned a bright red as he planted his head in the notebook. There was a sudden mist of water spray that reached Ruby's face as Nora burst into a gut-busting roar of laughter. Ruby turned and found everyone sporting bright red blushes, with Weiss, Pyrrha and Yang blushing brightest of all. Ren held his head in his hand as it seemed that the implications buzzed over Jaune by metaphorical inches; he seemed to realize it was something dirty, but the exacts eluded him so early in the morning.

Ruby couldn't help but giggle herself, her own blush spreading.

Jacob raised his head from Yang's notes and muttered embarrassedly, "Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Sigmund Freud to the cafeteria, please."

Another round of laughter from Nora, with Yang joining in. "Sorry, big guy," Yang said through her laughter, "I don't date men three years my senior."

"Fair enough, back home you'd still be a minor and I'd get The Book thrown at me if you did," he answered, snapping the notebook closed and handing it back to Yang. "Speaking of books, here's this back, by the by. Gotta be honest, I never expected Grimm to have forms like that. Makes you wonder what other forms these bastards come in."

"Yeah," Nora said, "they have some terrifying forms... not that we're scared or anything they can throw at us, right, Ren?"

Ren nodded at her comment, but Ruby didn't let the distant look in his eyes go unnoticed.

"Fair enough," Jacob said as he sipped from his glass of tea, "we're now the ones who are supposed to beat them over the head, ergo, we should know... no fear of them."

Ruby noticed that something about his own sentence bothered him tremendously if the tone he took on at the end of it.

"Well, it's not like these types of Grimm come strolling into town every day," Jaune said, "The most we have to deal with right now are Beowolves and the occasional Ursa, right?"

Jacob grimaced in reply. "For now, yeah, we're pretty damn lucky. But I shudder to imagine what it will be like when and if we finally do meet one of these things," he said before taking a big bite out of the cinnamon roll on his plate. "And knowing my own luck, I just jinxed us," he muttered just low enough that no one outside of Ruby, Ren and probably Blake could hear him.

Why do you have to be so pessimistic sometimes, Ruby thought to herself as her smile faltered a little. "Well, when we do finally fight them, we'll all have each other, right?"

There was a collective nod and/or reply of some form of confirmation, aside from Blake for some odd reason. All eyes turned on Jacob as he sat there, quietly.

He took a second to stare down at his plate. A smile crept across his face as he let out a chuckle. "I guess we will," he answered as he raised his mug.

Ruby smiled earnestly and brought her carton of milk up too. Ren offered up his own mug with Yang and Jaune joining in. One by one, they "clinked" drinks together before drinking deeply from their assorted drinks.

"Ooh-rah," Jacob said as he guzzled his tea before setting it back down, now only a third of it remaining.

"There's the word again," Nora noticed, "I hear you say it every so often, but I've never heard it before. What's it supposed to mean?"

Jacob chuckled nervously. "It's, uh, it's basically our army's way of saying, "damn right" or "let's go" or whatever we want it to, really, it's all situational at best."

"That makes absolutely no sense," Blake deadpanned from across the table.

Jacob shrugged. "I don't disagree, but that's how they do it."

"Well, getting back on track," Weiss said with an unusually nice demeanor, "What does your weekend look like, Jacob?"

Again, a shrug. "The most I've got is that sometime today Vulkan and Titus want to meet with me, though for what is beyond me."

A few confused glances crisscrossed the table. Jaune leaned over and cocked an eyebrow at this new information. "Pyrrha's uncle?"

"Maybe they wanna teach him some of their tricks or something," Nora suggested.

"Eh, maybe, Nora," Jacob replied, "actually, that's probably the case. I mean, I have no idea, but it's as good a guess as any."

"Oooh, being all mysterious," she replied before turning, grabbing Jaune's hoodie and flipping it up over the top of his head against his protests. Jaune scrambled to pull his hoodie back down as Yang laughed at the two of them.

And out of the corner of her eye, Ruby couldn't help but notice a nervous but thoughtful look on Pyrrha's face as she stared back at Jacob.

What's that all about?

"Well, regardless, they asked to meet me on the edge of the campus. But that's later today anyhow. Digressing back, this morning I've got nothing, my schedule's empty as Cardin's skull."

That got a few chuckles. "Well, you could come down with us and train for a bit," Weiss offered. "I know you train with Pyrrha and Jaune in the evenings, but maybe you should look into training against more than just standard "sword and board" fighting techniques."

Jacob's brow cocked upwards. "Looking to mop the floor with my face again, Schnee?"

"Maybe, maybe not, it all depends on whether your fighting truly has gotten any better."

Ruby looked back and forth between them as a few seconds of silence took up the space around the table, only stirred by the din of the rest of the cafeteria.

"...Alrighty then, you've got yourself a sparring partner." Jacob said with a smile. He drank again from his tea, a sizeable gulp now. "Let's see how well I do against you this go around."

Ruby felt her smile grow across her face. It was about time that they had a rematch, by her reckoning.

"This'll be fun to watch," Nora said happily as she shot her hand up enthusiastically. "All in favor of seeing their fight first say I!"

"I suppose it's worth waiting a bit to see the movie," Ren said as he sipped from his tea again.

"Oh yeah," Yang said as she slammed a fist into her other hand, "that I can agree on."

Ruby turned and looked at Jaune and Pyrrha, the former trying to interject as he held up tickets in protest. But Pyrrha, despite smiling as brightly as she always did, seemed to be mentally preoccupied, Ruby practically able to see the metaphorical gears turning in her back of her mind.

"...and I'm thinking afterwards, maybe I fight Ruby for a change, eh?"

Ruby shook her head she found herself caught in a question unaware again. " Uh, what? Oh! Oh, yeah, that's sounds like fun!"

"Right. Let's just hope I'm up to the task of fighting a speedster," Jacob said as stretched his arms forward, an audible pop ringing out from the direction of his shoulder. "Bloody hell, I'm getting old and I'm not even twenty-one yet."

They continued to chat about various things for a bit, save for Nora who was finishing up, the Valkyrie was only halfway through her mountain of pancakes.

"Hey, guys," Jaune said as he finished a glass of orange juice, "there's something on my mind and... I wanted to run it by you guys."

"What's up, Fearless Leader?" Jacob replied, now leaning back in his chair.

"So, that guy you encountered with Mr. He'Stan earlier this week—First off, I've completely forgotten again, what was his name?"

Ruby felt a seriousness descend upon them without warning. She shifted and looked over at the rest of the group, only to find Ren and Nora staring at their team leader with deathly seriousness in their eyes. Jacob looked uncomfortable, shifting forwards in his chair. "You mean Eliphas the Inheritor, right?"

"Yeah, that guy," Jaune said. "I know Blake said that he was meeting with the White Fang and that Lampwick guy, right?"

Everyone nodded solemnly before Jacob corrected, "Torchwick, his name's Torchwick."

"Right, whatever, my point is this: I thought the White Fang hated all humans, right? So, what are they doing allying with a human criminal mastermind and a pyscho like him?"

The group around the table seemed to be in unified confusion on the matter. Ruby had pondered the same thing when she wasn't busy over the last few days but had come to no conclusion of her own. Why was that supersized, tin-can wearing, clearly-evil psychopath allowed to even have an audience with the White Fang.

She looked over at Blake. The same exact look on her face as she had in the days before: a look of thoughtful bafflement. Even the former White Fang agent couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Ruby felt another uncomfortable squirm rise up her back. She didn't like remembering that Blake was a White Fang member. It felt dirty to say and even dirty to think. Actually, it made Ruby's mind wander to what may have been had Blake not become disillusioned with the White Fang's cause.

No, no, don't you dare, Ruby Rose, she chastised herself, think happy thoughts, don't let the what-ifs get you like with Dad...

Jacob tented his fingers, a grim look in his eyes as he stared down at the table. "Whatever it is, it's a regular... Chaotic jamboree over there, in all honesty. If the White Fang is siding with Eliphas and his... Eightfold Path, we should expect they're gonna harass the city... or worse."

Silence again, only this time It seemed like the room around them had quieted too. The lot of them looked onwards at their eldest comrade, with Ruby joining them. She held on him, his coffee brown eyes holding a mental storm in place in the skies of his mind, lips tight in thought, brow furrowed.

But out of the corner of her eye, she felt as though she saw other eyes on them. She glanced aside and found herself meeting the concerned and curious stares of team CFVY.

Ruby smiled and nodded to give them some relief; their newly-rebuffed doting on the freshmen—both in regards to Teams RWBY and JNPR and their youngest teammate as well—had them regularly eating with Velvet, rather than risk the chance of more encounters with Cardin.

Ruby's thoughts turned inwards after receiving a wave from Velvet. He's right, sorta. So many bad people getting together, they have to have something sinister in mind for Vale; but what?

There it was again, that negativity and bristling fear. Ruby closed her eyes and thought of good times with Yang and Tai, classes under Uncle Qrow, hanging out on the edge of her group of friends at Signal.

"Well, whatever they're up to," she said after a second, "It's nothing Teams RWBY and JNPR can't handle, right?"

She was met with a myriad of looks. Apprehension and doubt from Blake and Jaune; determined smiles from Yang and Nora; looks of contemplation from Ren and Weiss, and even a sympathetic smile from Pyrrha.

"Damn right we will," Yang said. "There's nothing we can't beat, right guys?"

After a second's hesitation, the rest of the table answered with some form or another of "yes", all in some variant tone and inflection. Only Blake and Jacob didn't reply, both looking off into the distance in contemplation.

"One can only hope, I guess," Jacob said.

Blake said nothing, continuing to sit in quiet contemplation.

Ruby bit back a sigh. After three days of her staying more quiet than normal, this was honestly starting to fray even her nerves.

"Well, here's to hope, then," she said as she raised her milk carton up again.

Jacob stared at it for a second. A laughing snort left his nose as he brought his nearly-empty glass to meet it.

"Here's to hope," he replied, a small smile on his face.

To Ruby, it wasn't much, but it was enough to give her a smile of her own. "To hope."

---

"I really hope you've prepared for fighting me!"

Clang! Cling!

"Have you noticed how badly I'm doing against her?! I'm having serious second—Jesus!"

"Pay attention, you idiot!"

A blur of white rushed at him, a sharp blade whizzing past his cheek as he rolled out of the way. He brought Cadia up to block another attack as he remained on one knee, catching Mytrenaster with its spinning teeth as he gunned the engine. Weiss didn't follow up her attack, instead leaping backwards to yank the sword from the steel blades. She spun on her toes like a ballerina, swiping up into his chin as his Aura bore the brunt of the damage. While it did spare him some of the pain and having his head sliced open like a pear, his Aura spared him neither the rest of the pain nor the inertia of the impact; he was sent rolling end over end backwards, coming to a stop a few feet away with his face in the floor and his stomach with it.

Jacob lifted his head and blinked hard. His vision was taking a bit to refocus, but he could easily make out Weiss darting towards him again, rapier drawn back to stab at him again. He rolled to the side again, Weiss' blade imbedding itself into the auditorium floor. As he rolled he spun back onto his feet and slashed wild and wide, the blade now back in its saber-like form. He miraculously made impact with her shoulder just before she could leap backwards. Weiss' Aura flared at the impact site, but she hardly budged outside of a reflexive recoil. Weiss backed away as Jacob returned to his feet and also backed off, putting a good fifteen or so feet between them.

They sized each other up. Jacob's breathing was heavy and his brow was well and drenched with sweat. Echoes of pain from intercepted attacks still rang out here and there as his heart worked overtime in response: even with his Aura-infused body he was still fighting the fatigue.

Weiss, on the other hand, was better off by a long shot. She showed very few signs of tire; no panting, no exhaustion in her stance, the only thing that was visible was the sweat pouring off her own brow.

Poised, controlled and precise against wild, barely-coordinated and blunt. Even Jacob was seeing the writing on the wall at this point.

But at least he could lose and still take her Aura down a peg.

He reached for Titan, hanging loosely at his hip from his belt—

Wait.

He patted the spot where Titan was supposed to be. Nothing.

Where's Titan!?

Weiss smirked as she twirled in place and conjured a blast of Ice Dust from Myrtenaster. She launched it upwards, the projectile arcing over his head before exploding into a hailstorm mid-arc. Jacob couldn't roll out of the way, forcing him to transform his chainsword and attempting to block the rain of ice bearing down on him. His slashes hardly hit their target, ice shards the diameter of half-dollars pelting him relentlessly for a solid ten seconds. He stumbled out of the area of effect and wheeled on the spot, expecting Weiss to come careening through the ice and get him in the chest like their last duel.

He wasn't right this go around.

A wall of fire seared the hailstorm out of sight, rushing at him like a pyroclastic flow but brighter. He lept backwards as his heart in turn leapt into his throat, his feet scrambling backwards to get distance from the flames. Desperately, he slashed with Cadia, hoping he could make even the tiniest gust of wind would part the burning wall like the Red Sea.

He tripped and started plummeting backwards. Seconds ticked by at a snail's pace.

The flames parted, revealing a blur of white snow and cold steel. He didn't even have time to blink.

Suddenly, blinding pain in his forehead, like an icepick had pierced his skull. He went flying backwards, tumbling end over end again before coming to rest on his back, head towards the ceiling.

A claxon went off above them.

He tilted his head backwards as he suddenly noticed all of the light in the room was brighter than he had previously noted.

His Aura read at 8% to Weiss' 40%. The match timer was stopped at 24:18.

He lost. Again.

But that was less important than the horrible throb in his forehead. He cradled his brow and covered his eyes to try to block out the pain.

There was a sound of heels walking towards him.

"And that's 2 and 0, Mr. Muller," Weiss said, the hint of laughter in her voice. "Are you alright?"

"...Define 'okay' for me, Ms. Schnee." He opened his eyes slowly, seeing what it was that was in her hand, only to be greeted by the sight of Weiss standing over him, hands at her hips, sword holstered in its loop-scabbard. He fought the urge to roll his eyes as he said, "Once again, I came short of beating you, this time not even doing as well as last time."

She smirked. "You used up your bag of tricks on your first fight," she said. "Although, that shot at my feet was pretty clever."

Jacob huffed. "Not clever enough it seems."

More footsteps rang out from the side before he was surrounded by the whole of RWBY and JNPR coming down from the bleachers. Yang stood directly over his head while Ruby and Blake stood at hhe side. JNPR was mirroring the action to some exent of their own, with Jaune overhead and the others at Jacob's sides. "Are you alright," asked Ruby, "That looked pretty painful."

"I was just wondering about that," he said as Yang offered him a hand up, "What the hell was that?"

"A new strategy I was testing out for use the Vytal Festival," she said as he returned to his feet. "A good first test, in my opinion."

"Yeah, successful test," Jacob replied through the ache in his forehead. "You ought to come up with a name for it once you've tested it on better Huntsman than I; and that list is longer than Vale is wide."

Yang groaned in ire. "Why do you always put yourself down?"

Jacob sighed and fought an eye roll. "Acknowledging where you are on the metaphorical food chain isn't exactly putting myself down, Yang."

"Okay, Ruby cover your ears, but that is bull," she replied.

"Yang!" Jaune replied.

"Well, it is! Jacob, your first fight together lasted about 5 minutes at the most; this time you lasted nearly fifteen, and this time without even using your bombs!"

Jacob had no response for her; she was right, sorta. It had been around... a month and a half, maybe even two months, something like that since the two had their exhibition to the tune of a thunderstorm. Since then, they had both trained to even greater levels than before—theoretically at least—and had led to their current spar taking as long as it did.

But still, Jacob had come short of victory by a humongous amount. At this rate, he would be more of a hindrance to saving Pyrrha than a boon.

"I still came up short, Yang," he said. "I need to do better if I'm gonna pull my weight, especially considering... you know."

A tiny hand latched onto his shoulder. "You still did great," Ruby said. "It's slow progress, but it's still progress."

But it's not enough progress for where I need to be, Jacob thought to himself. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, the pain now dimming to a low throb over his sinuses.

"Hey," Nora said with a joshing tap on his shoulder, "you'll get there eventually."

Another sigh. As much as he wanted to feel good about his progress... how could he really?

"Jacob."

He stopped moving as another hand reached out to the small of his back. The lingering ache in his forehead began to fade, any sense of tire in his arms and legs fading with it. He glanced over his shoulder to see what was going on. Pyrrha and Ruby were both glowing with their Auras, their eyes closed in a meditative way, as if they were concentrating.

"You can't be serious, guys."

After about twenty seconds, the glow around Ruby and Pyrrha subsided. Jacob pulled his Scroll from his jacket's chest pocket and pulled up his Aura. It was now back to 75%, and Jacob had a pretty good idea what theirs' would look like if he pulled up their Auras.

He turned and noticed Pyrrha holding her head just as he had been earlier. Jaune was standing closer to her now, a hand on her shoulder. "I'm alright," she said as she looked up and met his eyes.

"You didn't need to do that," Jacob replied.

"But I wanted to," she replied softly. "And Ruby did too. If you keep beating yourself up over these small defeats, you'll never see your victories for what they are: progress."

Her words rang out in Jacob's head, but to him they still felt hollow, though not because of her. He grimaced in thought.

"Try again," Ruby piped up, "but this time against me!"

Jacob cocked a brow. "Really? 'Mr. Slow-as-molasses' against the speediest Huntress to ever be?"

Ruby only kept smiling as she produced something from behind her back. The glint of Titan's frame came into view, like a snide smile about ready to say "I told you so". She held out the Bersa in her hand as she only replied, "You won't know if you don't try."

Jacob looked back between the gun and the girl. "How'd you get that?!"

"You dropped it during that last roll before Weiss' hailstorm," she said.

Nora came up to his side and grabbed his shoulder. "Come on, you know you want to give her another go," she sang in a tease.

"Nora—"

"Please, Jacob," Ruby said with a hint of a plea in her voice. "Just one more round."

The two locked eyes, Jacob's cynical brow and grimace squaring off against Ruby's puppy-dog eyes and smile. This wasn't an unfamiliar situation for him, being an older brother and all, but where he could handle his little brother's placations, Ruby was in a whole different league. Maybe it was the anime proportions, maybe she was legitimately so sweet it cut through his defenses, maybe it was his older-brother instinct surrogating Ruby for his brother, but whatever it could have been was eating through him like a shark through chum.

Jacob sighed and dropped the face. "Goddamnit, I hope you're right."

A few minutes of configuring and reloading later, the two stood opposite of one another on the auditorium stage. The board read 75% for both of them, though for Jacob that meant his Aura pool was more along the lines of half of her pool and 75% of his normal Aura pool. Coupled with her speed, her glass-cannon fighting style and the fact that hiding in her veins was some form of ancient Deus-Ex-Machina power—and by extension packing a plate of plot armor akin to a fallout bunker—Jacob could say to himself that he would be well and truly fucked.

He sighed heavily. "Don't go easy on me, Ruby. I wanna work for my food, so to speak."

She only nodded and smiled with determination. From behind her back she pulled out Crescent Rose in its gun form before beginning to spin it around her right shoulder. The weapon expanded, each flourish revealing more of the war scythe that it formed in melee before she slammed it into the ground blade first, the scythe form fully revealed. The momentum of the blade spinning had kicked up a light gust behind her, the wind whipping her cape forewards and to her left. It was a regular selection-menu pose, right out of a game like For Honor or SoulCalibur.

Jacob took a deep breath. "Alright then, I'll play along," he muttered under his breath. He drew Cadia in her saber form and in the same motion tapped the button to change her into her chainsword form. He turned and bore his right shoulder forwards and left shoulder back, the chainsword hefted up over and behind him like a scorpion's tail, Titan pointed forwards and tilted to the side; All he needed to do now was say "hello there" or something of the like and the reference was complete.

They stood in silence. Ruby smiled smugly.

Jacob looked into that smile and felt a weight fall from his shoulders, even if it was only a tiny weight.

He smiled back.

Fight like hell, Muller.

DING!

Ruby rushed forwards without warning, a hurricane gale of black and red, leaving a trail of rose petals in her wake. Jacob blinked in surprise and she went from 40 or 50 feet out—the auditorium stage had been expanded a week earlier—to maybe 20 feet out.

He saw Crescent Rose's blade pop out from her left side, looking like it was meant to bisect him. He swung Cadia just as she came upon him, scythe meeting chainsword at his side in a burst of sparks. She stopped in midair for barely even a half-second before the roar of the built-in sniper rifle sounded off; Jacob felt his arm nearly be wrenched out of its socket. He spun to unlatch himself from the scythe as she went screaming away from him to the right, the blade missing his Aura by an inch.

Ruby broke her flight as she impaled the floor beneath her about 10 feet out, the inertia in her flight sending her spinning on the spot before she swiveled back into a spinning roll directed at him.

Jacob felt his stomach leap into his throat as he sprang backwards, transforming Cadia a snapping off a few shots with Titan. Two pinged off of Crescent Rose, but a third made impact, slamming into her back. The momentum she had built was suddenly weakened as she stumbled in midair out of her spinning ball of death. Ruby hit the ground with a roll and came out of it with a wide left swing, catching Jacob's arm. The momentum forced him into half of a spin, his balance failing as he made for the floor. He reached out his gun-filled hands and leaned into the fall, somehow managing to land instead on his ass in a half-baked forward roll.

In the back of his mind, he realized, Hey! Haven't done a somersault since I was a first grader!

But outside, his mind was more preoccupied with pouring rounds into Ruby. The clips loaded were filled with Lightning Dust cartridges, the electrical output dialed down from usual due to concerns from Ozpin about the last few sparring matches leading to temporarily-paralyzed students.

Still, Ruby wasn't one to take chances, spinning Crescent Rose to reflect the shots aside like the scythe was a helicopter blade. She didn't advance, seemingly caught up in deflecting as much as she could.

There was an audible cry of annoyance from Nora in the bleachers. "Use your bombs, silly!"

Jacob didn't want to, mainly out of principle. Yang was right all those weeks ago; he needed to stand on his own two feet as it were and he couldn't rely on bombs forever. Even then, it would kind of be cheating against Ruby.

A shot ricocheted past his head. She was closing in, looking like she wanted to strike from above judging by her occasional glance up to the roof.

Sorry, Yang.

Cadia stopped firing as he dropped her and reached into his denim jacket's pocket. Whatever IED it was he didn't care, considering the ones he had made most recently were concussive and flashbangs—no smokescreens this go around.

He threw it up into the air, the priming pin still latched onto his finger. He covered his eyes out of concern it was a flash.

Turns out he was right. A combination of Lightning and Fire Dust exploded into a flash bright enough for him to see it through his eyelids. Jacob heard Ruby cry out in surprise; She hadn't expected that.

He tore open his eyes without a second guess as he grabbed his pistol again. He leveled the twin pistols and squeezed without hesitation.

One, two, three, four, five shots slammed into Ruby, three into her arms and the others square into her chest. She stumbled as she blinked the brightness away, only to come out of her daze and straight into a spin that threatened to pierce Jacob's head with her scythe's blade.

He rolled away as the blade sang past his ear. He stopped and squeezed again, only to hear the click of an empty magazine. "Ah shit," he said as he stared at the drawn-back frames of the gun, hungrily begging for more ammunition.

His eyes caught a glint above him. Crescent Rose came screaming at his face point-first. He squawked a terrified scream as he rolled again, the blade impaling the floor where his nose had once been. He scrambled to his feet and dropped the empty clips as he did so, only to fumble with the new clips for a few seconds. Ruby fired the rifle, .50 caliber rounds threatening to slam into his torso.

"Ease up, you two," cried Weiss from the sidelines.

Jacob ducked and weaved before going to ground again. The new clips finally sealed in place and with a pull on Cadia's slide he was at least halfway back to being able to fight. He racked Titan's slide. Titan was suddenly yanked from his hand by an unforeseen force, the pistol sailing to the side of the auditorium.

Jacob cursed under his breath. He couldn't turn and go after it, otherwise Ruby would get him in the back. But he couldn't fight with just a lone pistol.

Cadia changed into her sword form as he lunged inside of Crescent Rose's reach. He hopped over the blade as it swung for his legs and came at Ruby with a massive cleave. She squeaked in surprise as she sidestepped the blade, her scythe now swinging wildly in response.

Head, arms, legs, torso, Jacob reminded himself as the fight became a CQC brawl. He began slashing at her, slash, slash, slash, each made in the hexagon Pyrrha had taught him to slash at, only to keep meeting Crescent Rose blow for blow. A swipe at her arm was met with Crescent Rose's frame, a wide swing to her head met air as she ducked. On and on this went for what felt like a solid minute, Ruby unable to attack back thanks to her weapon's built-in range.

But Ruby could have easily darted back and started shooting at him again. She either had forgotten or she was going easy on him.

The latter could not be an option.

He pushed himself, his swings getting faster but wilder. Each swing felt like his arm would rip out of his shoulder socket from raw centrifugal force. Ruby looked more than a little concerned in response, but still seemed as though she was pinned down.

Come on, come on, back out, he pleaded mentally to her.

She finally blacked out in a flurry of petals, swapping Crescent Rose back into its sniper rifle form. She squeezed off a shot, two shots, three shots as she darted away, one catching him square in the chest. The raw energy of the .50 caliber slug smacking into the Aura above his heart echoed with pain as he was sent backwards. He landed on his butt and slid across the field, skidding to a stop after 15 feet.

Some part of his mind conjured Eliphas in his mind's eye, threatening him with that meltagun again.

He got to his feet just as another 50-cal slammed into the ground where his feet had been. Without hesitation he swapped back to Cadia's pistol form and returned fire, the two now trying to outgun one another. On the ground 10 feet to his right was Titan, but Ruby's shots were blocking him off from retrieving the Bersa. He darted towards Titan, but he felt another shot breeze past his nose, only tickling his Aura with promises of pain as it passed.

"Jesus!" He screamed as he screeched to a halt, arms flailing in circles to stop him from falling over. Another bang and another gust of wind tickled his neck.

Instinct kicked in as he dove for the gun. He slid into grabbing range and scooped it up without a second's hesitation, yanking back the slide to receive the encouraging click of a chambered shot.

"Come on, kick her butt," cried Nora.

There was the audible sound of a punch a second later with a cry of "Ow!" from Nora again.

"Get in there and kick his ass, Ruby," Yang retorted.

Jacob rolled to the side as Ruby continued to shoot at him. With a spin he was on his feet again, leveling his sights without a second thought and cutting loose.

But as he fired, he noticed a pattern. While Ruby seemed to either be corralling him with her shots or intentionally missing, Jacob couldn't get a bead on her to retaliate. She was zipping around too much, the battlefield becoming a swirling vortex of rose petals in her wake. A shot would ring out, she would dart away from the source, another shot that zoomed by him. He'd snap a shot off but she would dart away before the bullet was even shot.

Jacob was shooting the breeze at this point, and he was going to run out of ammo soon if he wasn't careful.

A 50-cal slug slammed into his knee. He felt the whole leg seize up in pain as he hit the ground in a kneel.

The barrage stopped. Ruby hung in midair for a half of a second before she fired Crescent Rose behind her, turning into a red comet of cuteness and pain.

Jacob snapped Cadia into her chainsword mode and swung.

He blinked.

CLANG!

He opened his eyes to the sight of Crescent Rose's barrel lodged deep into the chainsword's teeth. Even with how large the barrel of the rifle was, the teeth were still deep enough and spaced out enough to snag the gun between them.

Jacob didn't give her the chance to back out. He twisted hard with Cadia, the teeth aligning to take the scythe along for the ride. Ruby's grip was strong, but not strong enough as he twisted it out of her hand and sent it flying back behind him.

Jacob dropped Titan again and reached into his pocket. Turned out that he was wrong earlier: Ice and Fire, a smokescreen.

He popped its pin off and dropped it at his feet.

Ruby's silvery eyes lit up with surprise. A sharp bang and a sudden smokescreen some 30 feet wide obscured them both a second later.

Jacob swiped at her but she ducked around behind him if the gust of wind was any indicator. He heard Ruby's footfalls retreat away from him as he returned to his feet with Titan in hand again His leg was still throbbing in pain; adrenaline was numbing it but that could only last so long. He followed her footfalls and heard her stumble ahead of him. He followed and saw her just outside of the blast radius.

Evidently, she saw him too, as she looked back and seemed to spy Crescent Rose behind her. She moved to run and grab it only to have a .308 slam into her side, her Aura crackling to life. The impact stunned her long enough—merely a second, really—for Jacob to snap off two more shots into her chest and another into her face. The last one in her face seemed to stun her even more.

He saw the pain on her face as she whipped back, her Aura flaring in response to the assailing bullets. Seconds felt like minutes. His mind roared to life as he assessed his situation, coming to a startling conclusion:

He was in control of the fight.

Something piqued in the back of his mind. A memory flashed of a finishing move.

One Titus did for an execution in the Space Marine game.

He stepped closer, expecting her to back up; she was still stunned, but it was fading fast as the clarity returned to her eyes. He wrapped a hand around her back and pulled her in closer to the chainsword.

He gunned Cadia, her whirling teeth roaring to life. He slashed into her stomach, prepared for the worst.

Even with her Aura still up, the feeling and sounds made his adrenaline-numbed stomach turn in disgust.

Cadia's teeth bounced across her Aura, digging in and tearing at it as if it were a wall of concrete protecting the squishy flesh beneath. Ruby screamed in surprise and pain as Cadia and Jacob both roared. It held for a second or two, but between hearing Ruby's screams, Cadia's roars and the thrumming pulse of his own thundering heart, it felt like it lasted an hour. A horrified thought crossed is mind: If he held for too long, he'd turn her insides into puree.

He had enough. He pulled back and cut the engine, Ruby doubling over and falling to the ground, her hands clutching her stomach.

Jacob looked down at his handiwork. His pulse was the thunder of a hurricane, his stomach a roiling sea, lungs heaving, brow soaked with sweat and his hands shaking in both terror and adrenal shock. Sure, he had used Cadia's chainsword form before, but that was against Grimm, who he had no sympathy for. Against a human, he had never made contact, everyone wisely ducking away or deflecting it. He had never made actual contact with another person before.

Cadia clinked in his shaking hand, laughing at the thought, almost.

Overhead, the klaxon sounded off. "And that's the match! Mr. Muller wins with a... rather brutal final attack."

Jacob's shaking didn't stop as he looked up at the source.

Captain Titus was standing in the doorframe, watching Jacob intensely.

Jacob was confused and scared all at once.

...I won?

He looked upwards at the board. Ruby's Aura had plummeted to 5% while his own skirted 18%.

"Oh... look at that... I won." His ragged breaths cut through his sentence as he suddenly felt an urge to sit down. He dropped Cadia on the ground and dropped to both of his knees beside Ruby. She was on the ground face-up now, still groaning in pain as she held her stomach. An old instinct took over, one he was too familiar with thanks to being being a big brother. "Ruby, are you okay? Talk to me."

She was quiet for a bit as he heard footfalls come up to them. "...I suddenly have questions as to why you haven't won before," she groaned. "Cadia should have won a fight like that hands-down with how her teeth felt."

He saw Yang's boots appear in his peripheral vision. "You okay, Ruby," she asked as she offered her baby sister a hand up. Jacob felt a firm but small hand lift him back onto his feet; Nora's boots were a dead giveaway as to who it was, though he turned and noticed a smiling Pyrrha on his other shoulder... though her smile seemed tinged with some manner of worry.

"Yeah and no," Ruby replied as she got up with Yang's help. "No, it turns out Cadia actually... actually kinda hurts to get hit by."

"I'll say," Weiss replied, a nervous edge beneath her joking tone. "Any more of that and... well, let's not focus on that aspect."

"I knew it would do damage to Aura 'cause of, well, being a mini-chainsaw," Jaune said with a tone of surprise, "but it just kept dropping."

Another set of footsteps joined them. "As was expected," Titus said from behind them as they turned to hear him. "Chainswords are a nasty weapon to encounter. You're lucky that your Aura was as high as it was at the time."

"Uncle," Pyrrha asked, "what do you mean? Have you... seen this before?"

Titus didn't respond at first. There was a look in his eyes, and Jacob had a good idea what it meant. "...I've seen similar," he said. "A long time ago."

Jacob didn't need to play mind games to know what he meant. Footage of Space Marine was more than enough example of what he really meant.

"Anyway," Yang said, "you were gonna say something else, Ruby?"

Jacob heard Weiss mutter something about rudeness beneath her breath.

"Oh, right, other than, well, the ache, I feel good. And Jacob should too."

Everyone seemed to glace around before turning their sights on Jacob.

"I suppose that's true," Weiss answered in earnest. "Congratulations on your first victory, training status notwithstanding."

To some it would have come across as a backhanded compliment, but coming from Weiss that meant something. "Thanks, Weiss. Yeah, I guess... I guess I won."

Nora slugged him on the shoulder with a hoot and said, "damn right that was a victory! Woot!"

"It was a good fight," Ren admitted. "Certainly both entertaining and enlightening to watch."

The rest muttered amongst themselves, with Ruby, Pyrrha and Jaune flashing him big smiles and a thumbs-up from Ruby.

Jacob felt the potential terror ebb away. It only shrank away faster when he felt a legitimate smile grow on his cheeks.

He finally won a duel.

He turned to Titus, however, and was met with both a smile on the outside and an underlying glance of incredulity in the look in his eyes.

This was gonna need some explaining.

---

"That was an attack straight out of the Codex Astartes, Mr. Muller."

"Would you believe me if I told you that I learned it from you in all actuality?"

"...I presume there is a, movie about one my missions? Or perhaps a novel?"

"...It's from a video game, sir. It's about the Graia Incident."

Silence for a second. "I see," Titus replied with an intrigued tone. They continued walking in silence, the sun now peeking through the fading cloud cover over the city. Even for a late afternoon it was a pleasant temperature outside, the sun hardly beating down as he was used to back home.

Perfect weather for a stroll with an Ultramarine to meet with his fellow Imperials for a late lunch.

Damn that's still a weird sentence.

"Considering what we have read in your Codices, I have a feeling that it may be a… non-canonical game, if what the book implies is the truth."

Jacob grimaced. "What do you mean, sir?"

"Please do not play dumb with me, Mr. Muller," he replied with a sigh that betrayed an eye roll. "Considering that Cato Sicarius—whom I remember as the 4th Company's Captain—is the Captain of the 2nd in your book, Uriel Ventris is 4th Captain in the book whereas he was 3rd Captain when I left Macragge for Graia, et cetera."

The grimace never left. "Honestly, Captain, I don't even know what defines 'canon' anymore."

Titus chuckled. "I suppose that's a fair assessment. Nevertheless, I can't lie that my curiosity is peaked."

Jacob found himself pondering the same thing as they continued towards the Wharf District. Captain Titus wasn't wrong in his own assessments. In the 40k tabletop, the pompous, Mary-Sue asshole known as Cato Sicarius was the acting 2nd Company Captain of the Ultramarines, and yet Captain Titus was supposed to be the 2nd Captain too. Granted, Cato had been 5th Captain before he was 2nd, supposedly, but according to Titus he was now 4th Captain and Ventris was 3rd Captain. So what happened to make him Captain of the... the 3rd? Or the 4th?

Jacob clutched his head as the numbers danced in a circle in his mind. "Okay, trying to piece that together is making everything feel like I'm on a merry-go-round," he muttered aloud.

Another chuckle from Titus. "Again, understandable. But my comment still stands."

Jacob fought the dizziness as he began to answer him. "I think the game developers wanted a Captain who wasn't an outright square with Mary Sue-levels of plot armor," Jacob replied, "so they... invented you, I guess, or just... imagined another continuity or something."

"Plot armor?"

Jacob sighed. "Let's just say that after a fellow by the name of Matt Ward—an obsessive Ultramarine fan—became a part of the tabletop game's dev team, well, the Ultramarines went from having Captains as equal in power as most other Captains to having... Captains survive battles with his Company against ten thousand Orks on Black Reach with only combat knives and chainswords." The clenching of his jaw as he said that last statement would have cracked a steer's tibia like a fortune cookie.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Titus look at him with a lone raised brow and a mouth open in question. "That raises so many questions I could not begin to list them all off before nightfall."

"All the better we discuss it when it doesn't boil my blood," Jacob said in reply. "But, actually, let's get back on the original topic. You saw my whole fight, right?"

"Yes, yes, both fights, actually. Admittedly, that first one against Ms. Schnee had me rubbing my temples."

Jacob pinched his brow in embarrassment. "I sucked hard, didn't I?"

"Sucked isn't the word I would have used, but it's on the money for what I would have meant."

Jacob sighed. "She's damned good at putting her glyphs to use, especially after watching me, I think."

Titus looked over at him. "And what makes you think it was you who gave her the idea to use the ice as a veil to her next attack?"

"Well, come on, Captain. Last time she and I fought, I dropped smokescreens twice on her head and they worked well enough that we were neck-and-neck for a short time."

"A good observation, but anyone can come up with that idea when push comes to shove. A lesser-used tactic in the Codex Astartes suggests that a Rhino carrying a Devastator Squad should activate its smoke launchers before the Devastators get out and open fire."

Now Jacob's curiousity was piqued. "Really," he asked. "The only tactic I knew about from the Codex was the Steel Rain manuever."

"Oh yes," Titus replied with a grimace of his own, "Steel Rain." He took a deep breath through his nose.

"You don't care for it?"

"Oh no, it's always been a sound strategy of the Codex Astartes," he said, "but no other Captain besides myself seems willing to deviate from it. As much as drop pods are expendable, you end up on a battlefield with no vehicular support in the immediate vicinity unless you land close to your battleline, which completely negates—"

"—which completely negates a drop-pod-based deep strike in the first—"

"—In the first place!"

Jacob and Titus glanced at one another. They both chuckled.

"Well, I wouldn't know much in regards to setting up an army properly in all honesty." Jacob said with a sigh. "On the tabletop—at least when I could actually play back home—I have only won a single game in the 7 months since I got started actually playing."

Titus turned and looked at him with a curious glance. "7 months seems like a short time to learn as much as you have," he said with a hint of doubt.

Jacob nodded as they continued onwards. "Well, I started learning about 40k much earlier. I started playing Dawn of War almost a decade ago, and even by then it was about 5 or 6 years old; I played it and all of its expansions, but I wasn't one for models at the time, so I turned down the tabletop game. "Board games are for people with no TV," I think I said once when I was a young brat." He chuckled at the irony of his younger self's statement. "Actually, come to think of it I was amazed that I was allowed to play that, since it was a Mature-rated game, what with all the gore and such. Anyway, a few years later and your game Space Marine came out, but by then I had moved on to other game franchises and... I just kinda forgot about it."

Jacob sighed heavily as he continued. "Then, about a year and a half ago now, I picked up your game on a sale and thought I'd have a go at it. By then I was going a lot more art-type stuff, so after playing through the campaign and a a week's worth of the multiplayer, I thought, 'hey, why not grab a few models and paint them up. Even if I don't do an actual army, it might be fun.' So, I did; and my wallet has been drained of probably a thousand dollars since then, building my Marine army and my Guard army... and neither are anywhere near complete."

Silence from both of them as they continued onwards, the sounds of a living city buzzing in the backdrop.

"What Chapter?"

Jacob glanced up. "Huh?"

"I didn't recognize your Marine's colors," Titus said. "If I had to guess... Characharadons Astra? Perhaps the Angels Revenant?"

Jacob hummed a single chortle. "Actually, Captain," he began, "Since the game first began it has been common for someone to come up with their own Chapter and then use a tactic from the original Codex chapters."

"Ah, so you made your own. What do you call them?"

"I actually waffled for a while on what to name them; eventually I noticed my colors were all like those you see in a thunderstorm, so I started doing 'Storm-Something'; Storm Wolves, Storm Angels, Storm Reapers, et cetera. I've finally pinned them down as 'Storm Wraiths'."

"Storm Wraiths. I like it," he said. "Rolls off the tongue, ominous, still fits most Chapters' naming schemes. What parent Chapter?"

Now there was a question he didn't have an answer for. "I, uh, actually, I haven't decided."

"...You're serious."

"Look, a lot of the tactics are nice and even more of the First Founding Chapters have cool lore! I am literally stuck between the Raven Guard, the Imperial Fists and the White Scars for which Chapter Tactic I prefer, cut me some slack!"

"Why not the Ultramarines?"

Jacob felt it was a loaded question, but he would answer it anyway. "Because Ultramarine players—despite their fairly huge population amongst players as of now—are the black sheep of Space Marine players. Blame Matt Ward for those shenanigans of his, they're the reason everyone leers at Ultramarines and their players."

"From what I read in your book, the ability to reroll 1s to hit on a particular squad type of your choice would prove more than worth it."

"Well, if I had the 8th Edition Codex for Space Marines, maybe it would be an even better rule since they were simplifying everything for new players."

They continued their discussions for the next ten minutes, going back and forth about the Marine Chapters that Titus knew and Jacob spilling some of the secrets that were known. It turned out that otherwise his timeline was not very different from that of the original 40k timeline: Goge Vandire and his Galaxy-scale Reign of Terror, the Ecclesiarchy assuming command, the various Black Crusades Abaddon went on, even the Badab War was supposedly the same with the Lamenters and Mantis Warriors and all the other Chapters who sided with Huron now on Penitent Crusades of their own.

Fortunately, nothing new, but at the same time, sadly, nothing new; no real compare-and-contrast moments for Jacob to learn about, no new foes for the Imperium to tangle with, nada.

The ten minutes passed and they arrived in front of the Harbor and Hearth, the savory smell of meat and fresh bread making Jacob's stomach cry out in anguish.

"Oh, this is gonna be so good," he muttered to himself.

They entered and were immediately met by a young Faunus waiter at the door. If the tail was any indicator, she was a monkey Faunus just like Sun was, albeit one of black fur rather than gold.

"Hi," she began, "May I help you?"

Titus stepped up. "We're part of the He'Stan party. We were a bit late, I'm afraid."

"Oh! Yes, they're upstairs on the balcony," she replied, "Follow me please."

Jacob couldn't help but notice a strange nervousness from her as they followed behind. She seemed to glance back at him in particular once or twice.

Maybe it was his paranoia, but he could swear that his Aura was prickling from its slumbering state.

Beset with the sight of a massive collection of tables all combined together to host a feast. Around the super-table sat the entirety of the Imperial population of Remnant as far as Jacob was aware. Cain and Spinoza busy talking from the center of the mass—presumably swapping stories about their days in the Schola Progenium if Jacob had to guess—with Darnath Lysander on her left side and Vulkan across from him. Logan and Gabriel seemed to be having a minor argument of some kind at the opposite side of the table from when Jacob and Titus now stood, though it seemed to be of little severity if the flashes of smiles they shared were any indicator. Lysander's daughter was sitting beside her father, Cain was staring hungrily at a menu, and at the far end of the table Vulkan sat beside Mira, both discussing something of their own.

"What's this," Titus announced loudly, "You started without us?"

Everyone looked up and gained various levels of smiles. A chorus of greetings and cheers met them.

"About time," Angelos said. "We were wondering if you had gotten lost on the way here!"

"Oh yes, you would know all about getting lost in a city, would you Gabriel?"

The table erupted into laughter. Gabriel managed to save face with a cocked brow and a smile that when combined asked the unspoken question, Really? Going there, I see? "In my defense," The Blood Raven began, pointing his fork at Titus, "I was drunk and it had been my first night in Mistral."

Another laugh around the table. Jacob had a good base idea of what he meant, but it was still a vague image he would ask about later. "Uh," he stammered, unsure of whether to greet them with formality again or informality.

Play it safe, he thought. Formality it is.

"Chapter Masters," he began cordially with a weak but still genuine smile. "Captains. Commissar. Inquisitor. Good to see you all again."

For a second, he was worried that the friendliness in the room would dissipate the second he had spoken up. For the most part he was proven wrong.

"Please, Jacob," Mira said with a bit of a chuckle, "There's no need for formalities."

"As much as we appreciate the gesture," Vulkan said, "You're one of us. Come, sit down, get something to eat. You've got to be starving."

Jacob let out a breath he didn't know he was holding in. "Uh, thank you." He walked over to one of the chairs available, in this case the one beside Vulkan and Gabriel near the end of the table, while Titus took the seat opposite of him between Mira and Vulkan.

Jacob took a conscious deep breath this time. He let his body go a bit slack as he let all of his nervous muscles unclench themselves.

The waitress came by and got orders from everyone, Jacob noticing that she still seemed to shy away from him a bit until the end. He ordered a simple burger and fries and before he could even say thank you, she was walking away at a brisk pace.

Again, his Aura bristled a warning that he quickly brushed aside. You're just being more paranoid than usual, he thought to himself, relax for a change.

About that time, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Gabriel was staring at him with a bemused yet hawkish look in his eyes. Jacob did what he can to avoid meeting his gaze; the thought that Jacob was sympathetic to the Dark Gods clearly was a thought still running around in Gabriel's head.

"So," Vulkan began, "Where were you two anyhow?"

"Mr. Muller was preoccupied with a sparring match between a few of the members of Team RWBY when I had arrived," Titus replied.

"Really," Gabriel said, "All things considered—no offense to you intended, Mr. Muller—those girls are quite a daunting opponent to face for someone so new to the Huntsman game."

Even if it was a verbal burn, Jacob still felt a strange sense of awe hearing the voice that Paul Dobson had created talk about him directly. Jacob, of course, still registered it as a critique of his skill, albeit a rightly-assessed one in the back of his mind.

"Gabriel," Mira said half-warningly, "I'm sure Jacob did perfectly fine fighting them."

Titus grimaced a bit. "Against Ms. Schnee, I'm afraid he was thoroughly beaten."

Gabriel chuckled once.

"Against Ms. Rose, however, he won the fight with a rather Astartes-like attack," he announced. "One that he told me he learned from playing... playing a video game about the Invasion of Graia."

Several sets of brows rose in response. "A bloody video game," Logan asked with a laugh. "First a tabletop game, now video games. What next, a movie?"

Jacob held his tongue. The less that was said about Ultramarines, the better.

"What kind of attack was it," asked Gabriel.

"Well," Titus began, "it was a crude attack, mostly; she had been stunned by a couple close-range shots he had hit her with, so he bought her in close with one arm and, well, applied Cadia's chain to her stomach."

There was a cringe of pain that echoed around the table.

"Oh hell," Darnath said with a chuckle. "Is she alright?"

"She was fine when we departed, but I think Mr. Muller was a little shaken."

"Well," Jacob began, "it's kinda the first time I've gotten purchase on something other than a practice-Grimm. I honestly wasn't expecting that considering Creeps can get sliced like butter with a hot knife; but regardless, I mean, hearing Ruby cry out like that kinda... sank my stomach down towards my feet."

Almost the entire table nodded in response. "For those who actually use chainswords, you never forget your first kill with one," Cain replied. "My first kill was an Ork Nob who was already shredded by Chimera fire when I reached him."

"Dark Eldar Corsair on Bogden II," said Darnath.

"Heretic guardsman on Cadia," said Mira. "Was abandoning his post, turned out to have fetish of Tzeentch on his person. I still remember that pride I felt when I stood over his shredded corpse. Emperor's teeth, is it weird to think about."

"Anyways, I actually have been meaning to ask you about that," Jacob said as he turned to Titus. "From what you saw in our duel, how bad is my swordsmanship?"

Titus seemed to suddenly be analyzing Jacob like a battlefield map, a cold tactical deliberation in his eyes that betrayed the small smile he wore. It made sense seeing as he was an Ultramarine, but it still had Jacob dreading the answer. "I, uh, I hate to say it," he began a second later, "But I don't think a chainsword is the right weapon for you with the way you're using it."

Being told that by Captain Titus stung more than Myrtenaster. "Well, that's disheartening."

There was silence as the table observed them. Ciaphas cleared his throat. "As much as I don't want to unnecessarily pry," he began, "How bad was it, in details?"

Titus sighed. "As I said, he fights too much like an Astartes with it when he doesn't have the necessary build for it."

"Swings it more like a club?"

Jacob chimed in as Titus answered, "Yep."

"And by that logic he is definitely putting in the commitment to the strike, but it's too much?"

Titus seemed to hum and haw about it as Jacob tried to understand what he meant. "Mr. Muller can't really find that happy middle ground, I'm afraid. That strike against Ms. Rose was good, but otherwise he seemed to either hesitate or to put too much into the swing, as I saw earlier in your fight with Ms. Schnee. But his biggest problem was actually using it at all; every time he attempted to use it, it was either for utility rather than actual damage, either controlling their movement—often to his detriment, ironically—or yanking their weapons away if he could."

Jacob audibly scoffed. "I wish I was that coordinated," he said. "Outside of yanking Crescent Rose out of Ruby's hand or blocking an attack, every one of those attacks was meant to be a desperate attempt at a cleaving strike. I will admit I forgot to gun the engine once with Weiss, but otherwise they were all supposed to—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on," Cain interrupted. "You're gunning the engine? Just flat-out?"

Jacob grimaced. "I should be feathering it, shouldn't I?"

"Not necessarily," he replied. "Feathering it does no good, but flat-out gunning it give it no chance to sink in. Best thing to do is either to not hit the engine at all or rev it a bit so it can hook on."

"I designed his chainsword with beginners in mind," Vulkan said as he sipped from a tall glass of water. "It's supposed to be based off the Hell's Teeth design we used as Astartes; serrated, curved teeth, casing to protect against kickback, lightweight trigger, et cetera."

"A Hell's Teeth-pattern!? Bloody hell, Vulkan," Cain replied, "Those are designed with brute force in mind!"

Vulkan shrugged. "It seemed like something an Imperial would enjoy using; and at the time I was wondering if Jacob was an Imperial."

"Yes, but—"

"Gentlemen,"Gabriel said forcefully. "Perhaps instead of arguing about his weapon, perhaps we should argue over who to train him properly in the ways of chainswordsmanship. Judging by the lack of comment on his baseline swordsmanship and his marksmanship, it seems he at least has basics down to brass tax, as it were. Am I guessing wrongly, Titus?"

Titus shook his head. "No, his marksmanship seems decent enough, at least when not dealing with opponents as fast as Ms. Rose. Granted, his precision is a mixed bag, but his accuracy is better than most first-year Beacon Huntsmen. "

"Oh please," Jacob snorted, I am not that good. Sure, back home I used to do a lot of recreational target shooting, but that's different than any manner of training these kids got."

"It's as sturdy a baseline as any other," Mira offered.

"Admittedly, Mr. Muller, there's nothing really to comment about your swordsmanship; Pyrrha's training is serving you well, all things considered."

"Considering this is Pyrrha Nikos we're talking about here," Vulkan said, "You'll be mopping the floor with your opponents in no time if your training continues."

"I suppose. Granted," Jacob added, "if my fight today had been against, say, Pyrrha, then I would never beat her in all honestly; she'd probably just keep waxing the floor with me."

Rey rolled her eyes from the other side of the table. "Pyrrha is good," she said with a bit of a laugh, "but you know as well as I do she puts too much into her Semblance; one of these days there'll be an opponent not wearing metal on them and she'll be in a rough spot."

Jacob tried to mentally process that. At first he wanted to reply that Pyrrha did not rely that much on her Semblance, only for his memory to shut him up as it played Mercury and Emerald's analysis of Pyrrha's fighting in Extracurricular.

"Her Semblance is Polarity. But you'd never know just by watching."

"After she made contact with my boots, she was able to move them around however she wanted. But she only made slight adjustments."

"Just enough to make it look like she's untouchable. She doesn't broadcast her power, so it puts her opponent at a disadvantage."

"And Cinder's weapons and gear contain no metal, only cloth, —some Dust maybe—and some kind of glass. Even her shoes are glass, just like little Cinderella in the fairytale. No wonder Pyrrha lost her battle."

As he ended the sentence he realized he had been speaking aloud, albeit in a mutter. He looked around to see the rest of the table watching him intensively.

Jacob looked around and noticed the room around them was starting to fill up, but only a few tables seemed to be in conversation. The rest sat in disquieting silence.

"Right, Pyrrha's assailant; future assailant, rather."

Jacob was pulled back into the conversation by Titus' comment. His gaze met the sight of the Ultramarine, crestfallen, staring down at the placemat in front of him. Mira's hand held his arm tightly in assurance as her own brow furrowed.

"I recognize her now," Mira said. "She's posing as a student from Mistral. You, RWBY and JNPR have her as a 'classmate' for the Vytal Festival."

Jacob huffed through his nose. "Don't remind me."

"Then she has the Fall Maiden's powers," Gabriel said deep in thought, "correct?"

Jacob nodded solemnly. He noticed Vulkan and Cain also looking crestfallen now.

"Well, we at least know who our would-be usurper is. The good news is that she failed at her initial task; the bad news is that she is no doubt seeking out Amber to complete the power transfer."

The prickle of his Aura returned. Jacob felt a pit grow in his stomach; what was he missing, and why was his Aura trying to alert him to it?

"But," Logan said as he set his water glass down, "we now have an advantage since we now know what they're going to do. Mr. Muller?"

All eyes turned on him. His nerves began to waver again. "Well," he began lowly, "first of all, are we sure that it's safe to talk here, y'know, in public?"

"We've discussed things in private here before," Vulkan replied. "The owner is well acquainted with our need for privacy. Notice how well the acoustics are dampened in this room?"

Jacob took a second to listen as he looked around the room. Even though there was a sizeable count of patrons around them, it was no noisier than a theater just before a movie; a bit of chatter, but hardly above a background din. "Nice," he said lowly. "Regardless, this is still kinda high-profile."

"Nevertheless," Gabriel said, "Vulkan's choice comes with some advantages too, considering no one would dare to attack in a public place only a mile and a half from one of Vale's major police stations. Anyway, let's focus on the matter at hand; Ms. Fall and her plans."

"You mean Salem's plans."

A few of the Astartes stiffened in response to her name. Vulkan grimaced and Titus huffed.

Jacob more or less recoiled into himself in response. "Is her name a taboo myth or something?"

"No," Vulkan said, "but we've all had encounters with her forces now. Most of us were concerned that she was the one behind all of this, but now hearing it from you, we can confirm everything is tied together."

"And, uh, what about Ms. Lysander? Delia, right? Or, uh, do you prefer Rey?"

The girl seemed to swirl the question around in her mind for a second. "Rey," she said after a second. "Only mom and dad call me Delia; do it again and I won't hold back a beating."

Somewhere in the back of Jacob's mind, the Marneus Calgar of If the Emperor Had a Text-To-Speech Device called out, "You beggin' for a fistin' boy?"

"Fair enough, Rey," Jacob said. "But my concern—"

"Mr. He'Stan filled me in a few years ago," she replied, "to answer your question. It was after I encountered this... really monstrous Grimm outside of Mistral."

Jacob's stomach jumped. That can't be the Nuckelavee she's talking about, right? He filed that query away for future reference. "Okay then, you're up to speed. Anyway, so you guys want the baseline from me, right?"

Several nods from around the table responded.

He sighed. "Well, brace yourselves on this stuff."

So, he told them. He spent minute after minute giving them the baseline and the key details of what would happen leading up to the end of Volume 3—really, that was his top priority whereas the stuff some 6 or more months after that could be dealt with in time. One would pipe up with a question and he would answer with what he did know, at least to what the show had informed its audience of thus far.

Jacob looked down at his watch at one point near the end. He and Titus had arrived at the restaurant at around 1:00, and the clock was now 15 minutes shy of 2:00; since then, their meals had arrived and been consumed with ease. Even the waitress' demeanor seemed to get better somewhat, though there was a still a nagging tinge of fear to her when she approached him. Hell, even a few Faunus in the same room seemed to shy away from eye contact with him.

Jacob started wondering if the White Fang were soapboxing against the Huntsmen as a moonlight gig.

He leaned back in his chair as he said, "So, that's all I can really say. I just went over every key detail, every plot point, every misstep made by both Ozpin and our intrepid young heroes. Are there any other questions?"

The rest of the table sat watching him in analytical comprehension, visibly weighing things within their heads. Jacob had to be thankful that the Imperials he was with right now were the more sensible and tactical bunch rather than, say, Grimaldus or Gabriel Seth. Not that those guys wouldn't have been cool to meet.

"If anything, I have one in particular," Titus said as he kneaded his hands together over an empty plate. "How much would you say has or will change based on what is different alone: our existence here, your existence here, how much has changed because of these variables?"

Jacob sighed. "Not much thus far, I'm afraid. Including us, some new players are in this fight, even if most of us here have been fighting this battle for a long time. Outside of that, things have remained relatively canonical, and that's both scary and fortuitous for us."

"Do tell," Vulkan said flatly.

Jacob shifted and cleared his throat. "On the one hand, the continuous adherence to canon on my part could also mean that once we reach the point where we—really, I should be say that they're my own preferences rather than yours since you probably have different ideas on the matter, but anyway—where we want to start deviating, it could very well no longer a be negotiable; events will happen in that order and there will be no way to stop it. A fixed timeline conundrum, to use sci-fi terminology."

He paused for a second to let it sink in. The Imperials watched him while their minds clearly considered his conundrum.

"On the other hand," Jacob continued, "Adhering to canonical events gives us a tremendous advantage, and that is the advantage of being a step ahead of our enemy. This is something even Salem is probably not familiar with, and that we can use to our benefit."

"But if we capitalize on it," Logan said, scratching his 5 o'clock shadow, "won't that change things?"

Jacob shrugged as he answered, "Yes and no. The trick is allowing core events to occur while minimizing the downsides and still herding them along a particular path. Basically, we gotta act like we're Tzeentch, but without the Chaos Demons and the malignancy and everything that makes a God of Chaos. We have to scheme and hope that the dice rolls come out on top for us, because if they don't then we are up the creek without a paddle."

Logan suddenly looked agitated. "Sneaking around and scheming when we know who our enemies are and what their plan is? I don't like it."

"We should reveal them and capture them," Gabriel replied. "Then we avoid this entire headache, the city is saved from the invasion, and Pyrrha is also saved."

"That may be," Jacob replied, "But it could backfire on us and Salem instead launches an even greater attack further down the line, packing enough Grimm and White Fang members to level the city and everyone in it, Huntsman or not. As much as I want to go with your plan, Master Angelos—Gabriel, sorry—the variables become exponentially more difficult to deal with. We know what's coming and can minimize damage, in theory at least."

"With Eliphas assisting the White Fang, I have no doubt that we should expect to see Chaos Marines amongst their ranks."

Jacob grimaced. "True, Eliphas the Inheritor is here, somehow. Have any of you encountered any other Chaos leadership?"

"A few of us have," Logan replied. "I myself have been dealing with a renegade from my own Chapter."

Must be Svane Vulfbad, Jacob assessed in his head as he nodded. "Anyone else?"

"There have been on-and-off sightings of the Iron Warriors Legion symbol amongst raided villages on the borders of Vacuo," Darnath said with a concealed snarl. "One of Perturabo's sons is no doubt out there, though he hasn't revealed himself yet."

"A few years ago I encountered a former Alpha Legion lord in Mistral who had been building a force of collaborators and spies in Mistral's underbelly," answered Titus, "but I managed to take his head from his shoulders in short order."

"If by 'short order' you mean you were on his case for 6 months," Mira said with a smirk.

"There have been other sightings of marks that are familiar," Vulkan replied in finality for the group, "but most have been dead-ends; a Red Corsair tattoo on a sellsword in Mistral, a World Eater maw carved into the wall of a raided village, even the signs of Emperor's Children that are so distinct and disgusting I would loathe to describe them even in private company."

Jacob had a good idea of what he meant, and it sickened him. He shook a bit as he said, "So, Eliphas is the only Chaos Marine that we currently have any direct confirmation of in regards to his existence?"

A collection of nods confirmed his suspicions.

Jacob ran a hand through his hair. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. "What about other Imperials? Who else is out there?"

Everyone seemed to hesitate on the answer, though Jacob could see that they seemed to know the answer. They still don't trust me entirely, he thought to himself. Understandable, but not helpful.

After a second, it was Cain who answered him. "There are a fair number of Imperial Loyalists scattered across Remnant," he said, "and they hail from practically every corner of the Imperium. Mira and Titus have a friend back in Mistral who flies their Valkyrie for them, a Legionnaire from Armageddon. She's mean as an Ursa and twice as strong, and she's now on her way with said Valkyrie. Meanwhile I have been communicating with an old friend of ours, and he was supposedly to arrive on Monday. He's a former apothecary of the Red Scorpions Chapter, but a lot less neurotic than the rest of his brothers in regards to 'purity'."

Jacob nodded. A former apothecary. Good, a medic will be more than welcome.

"One of my old classmates from Haven was a Loyalist Astartes as well," Lysander replied, "A Storm Warden Chaplain, still acts like one to this day. He runs alone these days ever since his team broke apart, but I still have his Scroll number; said he'd be in town in time for the Dance, and from what you told us it sounds like he couldn't arrive at a better time if he tried."

Jacob scratched his chin. "A Chaplain, huh? That'll be nice to see, watch him beat some sense into some heretics. Anyone else from the 1st Founding Chapters? Dark Angels, Blood Angels, White Scars, Raven Guard, Iron Hands?"

"There are members from each of those Chapters," said Mira, "but most have informed us that they can't make it due to personal problems. Some will make an attempt to reach us, but they make no promises; Librarian Sugodai of the White Scars, Chapter Master Severax of the Raven Guard, Captain Khafs Mesruc of the Iron Hands, et cetera. Oddly, we have yet to encounter a Dark Angel."

Corvin Severax, another deceased Chapter Master. Killed by... not Farsight, no it was, uh, Shadowsun, right, Shadowsun during the Damocles Crusade.

"Well, knowing their plight and their broody behavior, it's no surprise," Jacob replied with a devious smile as he mentally double-backed to the Dark Angels; out of all of the Loyalists, he loved teasing Dark Angels players about what happened on Caliban. "Considering their past, it's no surprise that they probably seek out either a bloody war-like path or try to atone for what happened on Caliban through simple livelihoods, at least as far as I'd wager."

Most of the group looked around at one another in confusion.

"Oh, right, The Dark Angels keep that secret. Let's just say that it wasn't only the White Scars who were split half-and-half between loyalties during the Horus Heresy, and their unusual habit of Black Templar-like behaviors are a side effect of them eternally atoning for their 'sins' and whatnot. They're harder on themselves than I am on myself, and I hate being proud of things; makes me feel like an asshole-in-training."

"…And as for the Blood Angels," Titus began, almost hesitantly, "Well, judging by how prevalent he is in the Blood Angel rulebook, you are not going to like who it is."

Jacob wondered and worried in unison at that. What did they mean by that.

"Titus," Gabriel said almost sternly, only to be interrupted by Mira.

"Gabriel, please." She looked Jacob in the eyes. "Our Blood Angel contact is... Chapter Master Dante."

Jacob's world suddenly felt like it was sitting at a Dutch angle. "Dante!?"

Several of the Astartes harshly shushed him. He oblidged, but didn't stop with his freakout, now lowering his voice to a hiss. "You mean to tell me that the Blood Angels are now bereft of their longest-lived and strongest Chapter Master since Sanguinius Himself was alive?!"

"Calm down, calm down," Cain replied.

"Oh my God, my brother would lose his mind he found out about this," Jacob said as he ran his hands through his hair. "Does no one in your version of 40k have plot armor, or just other people?"

They knew his question what rhetorical and thus said nothing in response at first. About that time, the waitress came up to them, offering checks to Vulkan and Titus. Then she turned to Jacob and offered him the check for his meal, gingerly holding it out as though he would take her hand with it. He took it and set it down on the mat in front of him as he continued to massage a massive headache now forming in his temples. Oddly enough, it felt Aura-spawned, as if the warning bells it had been giving off had returned in full force.

"Uh, Mr. Muller," Vulkan began, "look at your receipt."

"Give me a minute, Vulkan, this headache's getting worse."

"Muller," Gabriel said forcefully and lowly, "you need to look down."

He glanced down at his receipt. The first thing he noticed was the price, no different from most restaurants back on Earth.

Then he noticed the handwritten message at the bottom.

White Fang in the building. After you, sent to kill you. Get out NOW!

Jacob felt his lunch shift to attempt to leave his stomach. He looked up to meet the gazes of everyone else.

Vulkan was startlingly calm, showing him the same message written on his receipt. Titus and Mira, both looking pale and jumpy, showed the same on theirs. Logan, Darnath, Gabriel, all of them had the same thing on theirs.

Jacob glanced around. How many of the other patrons were White Fang? Hell, while some Faunus were easy to spot—a pair of fox ears on a pale redhead in the back behind Titus, a massive bear Faunus whose size and ears stuck out like a sore thumb over Angelos' shoulder from where Jacob was sitting—others had more covert features, like Blake's friend Ilia had.

"We make for the front," Vulkan said in a hush. "Muller, you and Rey stay behind me. Logan, Gabriel, you're on point as we leave, Titus and Mira take the flank. Darnath, Cain and Luce, the sides."

"Like hell I'm sitting in the middle like a VIP," Jacob replied. "I'll take point, they'll single me out the most."

"Why's that," Vulkan asked.

"Because I'm the one who killed a new, untrained White Fang recruit."

Silence consumed even the breath that left their lungs. "Okay," Vulkan said, "I'll follow right behind you. Rey and Gabriel, you're up with him. The rest of us take the middle and flanks."

Jacob nodded. "Act casual, I don't think they know we've caught on to them." He took a deep breath. He stood up.

Half of the heads in the room turned to look at him.

Jacob reached into his mind, trying to conjure the flame to reawaken his Aura. He felt a tiny flicker, but the damage from his fight with Ruby hadn't fully begun to recover.

He was sitting on, at best, 25%, and that was if he had trained his Aura a little bit more.

Maybe taking point was a bad idea.

He took another deep breath as everyone else got up from their seats around the table. A half-dozen Astartes, an Inquisitor, a Commissar, and a Guardswoman stood up, hiding their contempt for their newly-found enemy. Rey, on the other hand, seemed to barely suppress a snarl as she glanced around them.

Jacob motioned for the door as he felt a nervous sweat crawl down his forehead. Each step was weighed down by tension as the room's eyes followed them to the stairwell. Jacob felt as though he was in a minefield; one false move, and the whole building would erupt into a firefight.

He started down the stairs, the sweat building. He fought the urge to fiddle with Cadia and Titan, but he couldn't help but hold his hands at his belt beside them. "Easy does it," he said to himself, the others doing well behind him.

They reached the bottom of the stairwell and began to walk faster towards the door. Almost to freedom—

A cloaked figure stood up from a seat in the front corner and moved towards them. Jacob moved for Cadia, yanking her out as he heard the sound of other guns leaving their holsters and chambering their payloads.

Duck, his Aura cried out.

A crossbow popped out from beneath the cloak, an arrow of energy loaded. With a twang it sailed, looking for purchase in his head.

He ducked and it sailed, pinging off of Vulkan's bright green Aura.

Hell descended.

Gunfire erupted throughout the building, some normal patrons taking to the ground out of the corner of Jacob's vison. The cloaked figure's crossbow morphed from beneath the flowing cascade of felt and reappeared as two daggers in the assailant's hands. Jacob pulled Titan and fired, the bullet sailing through the air and slamming into their shoulder. They didn't stop.

Jacob pulled Cadia and snapped her into her sword mode, just as the cloaked assailant made a spinning leap at him, blades turning into a razor-like dervish.

Before he could blink, a yellow shield popped in front of him, followed by Rey, her Remnantine power cudgel in hand. He blinked as he was tossed aside by the Lysander girl and when he opened his eyes the assailant had traveled five feet forwards, blades bouncing off her boarding shield. Rey ducked under the shield as the dervish continued, the assailant's attack turning into an accidental vault as he swung out beneath and slid back behind them. She brought her cudgel up and around the head detaching—no, revealing an attached chain in the handle. A flail for the daughter of Darnath Lysander.

All of this in the time he had to blink; it was as if the world had been in slow motion, like a bad Wachowski film.

Real speed came crashing back down on him and the cloaked figure as Rey's flail slammed into their back and threw them into the floor. Jacob looked back and saw she had spun into a superhero landing pose, only to whip her power flail around and catch a deer Faunus clean in the face. Jacob blinked and she was spinning in the air, the momentum of her attack throwing her into the air with stupid levels of control. She righted and swung, catching another off guard.

Jacob was pulled from watching her dance the Skull-Fracture Samba as Titus slammed into the wall beside Jacob, holding the bear Faunus from upstairs in a headlock. He spun around and slammed the Fang goon's head into the wall before kneeing him in the back, all the while holding an Astartes-sized knife in his hand. There was a flash as the Faunus' Aura quickly failed before Titus moved to the nearest window and introduced him to it. The Faunus went limp, Aura still crackling from him; he was unconscious, but he was not gonna feel good when he got up. A guy big cat Faunus—the spotted ears were a giveaway—lunged at him with a mallet, only to be gunned down by a burst of Fire Dust. Jacob tracked the source back to Mira, who sported a very-clear laspistol and dagger.

She turned to look at Jacob and screamed, "Get up, Jacob!"

All around Jacob, the fight was raging. Vulkan had produced a spear and was spinning it in a way not unlike Pyrrha did, only the spearhead was clearly on fire if the trail it left was any indicator; Gabriel had manifested his hammer and was swinging with it at anything he could, the calculatory nature of his swings betraying his intent of crowd control. Darnath had his shield and hammer too, the Fist of Dorn smashing its way into a Faunus guy's head and leaving a headless corpse where it had been.

Seeing a headless corpse in RWBY's animation. Didn't expect to see that, Jacob said as he watched the lifeless body tumble to the floor.

Beside Darnath, Luce was swinging with her weapon; Jacob now was able to spot it as being none other than a Crozius Arcanum, the golden wings and skull flashing devilishly with each swing. A blur of pale blue flashed across his vision and pulled it along for the ride, revealing Logan shoulder-charging a Faunus girl into a wall. There was a sickening crunch as her Aura broke before Logan cried out, "Gabe, catch!" He tossed her into Angelos, who swung his hammer hard and fast enough to send her into the roof, particularly an exposed and splintered beam. The sliver of wood that suddenly grew from her stomach was a clear sign of her long-term prognosis.

Jacob stood up as another Faunus girl lunged at him with a barbed dagger. He gunned Cadia and swung.

She flew aside, her side split open by the teeth. She slammed into the wall and fell limp.

Another kill, this time on Cadia.

Jacob's world spun horribly as he observed his kill. He felt sick, but he shook his head and did his damnedest to imagine something else as he turned to survey the fight. An iguana Faunus—evident by the tail—was rushing at Titus while his back was turned.

Jacob leveled Titan and fired once, twice.

Another Aura-less goon dropped as the bullet of Lightning Dust pierced his hip, sending him to the ground in a pained heap.

Jacob looked around again. A mouse Faunus was wrestling Rey to the ground, knuckle dusters gleaming in his hand.

Again, Jacob leveled Titan without hesitation and fired. This time the bullet slammed into Aura in the man's side, knocking him over. Rey spun around and slammed her reformed mace into his stomach, the man clutching his stomach in agony before he went limp on the ground.

Jacob turned and saw the rest of the Fang goons running out the front as Logan gave a teasing chase.

One of them—also hooded and cloaked—he noticed stared back at him as he ran away.

Jacob's stomach lept up into his throat as a flash of spiky red hair and a black-handled sword peeked out from beneath the cloak. The figure dashed out the door at breakneck speeds, sprinting down an alleyway and fading into the shadows.

Jacob turned back around to assess the damage. The rest of the room was full of the dead and he hurt, with the Imperials standing over their defeated enemies.

Jacob was shaking again as he watched them, though this time he seemed less shaky than with Ruby. Must be that I ran out of adrenaline, he decided. But, still... I killed another White Fang Faunus today. Goddamnit.

He dragged himself to the rest and called out shakily, "Is everyone alright?"

A headcount revealed no significant injuries, as most of them had Auras of sizeable strength. Only Titus had taken a significant hit, and even then his Aura hadn't dropped below 80%.

Through his shuddering breaths and shaken nerves, he stuttered, "Goddamnit, goddamn them all to Hell. Another one's fucking dead because of me."

"It was in self-defense," Vulkan replied, holding his shoulder. "They went after you and you defended yourself. It's okay."

Jacob took a second through his ragged breaths to process Vulkan's words. "It was in self-defense," he said, trying to sound assured of himself. "It was in self-defense."

Suddenly, someone darted from the kitchen and began to make for the exit. Mira seemed to become an automaton, shooting just in front of them to stop their escape. "Hold it right there," she ordered, the voice of an Imperial Guardswoman burying the kindness Jacob was getting used to hearing. "Turn around slowly."

The figure turned. In the distance the sound of police sirens were steadily growing louder. It was the cloaked assailant from earlier. AS they turned, they shrugged their shoulders and discarded their cloak. She was a rodent Faunus of some kind, the long and pointed tail behind her suggesting she was a rat Faunus. Over her face she wore the usual White Fang mask, a Grimm's visage complete with red, glowing visors disguised as eyes.

In her hand was a fob.

On her chest were what looked like sticks of dynamite.

Jacob felt his face grow clammy. He dared not move.

He'd made plenty of Allahu Akbar jokes back on Earth, he supposed it was only time for karma to return the favor.

She screamed as Logan lunged at her.

"For the Fang!"

Click!

Searing light.

Concussive forces.

An ear-shattering KRAKOOM!

Jacob felt the force of the blast lift him off his feet and back ten feet into the wall. He slammed into it back-first, his Aura shattering as the concussive blast pummeled his body. Had his Aura not been there, the blast would have killed him outright.

Granted, his Aura didn't stop the blinding agony that now rippled through his torso. He collapsed to the ground in a heap, body paralyzed with pain, body too tired to let out much more than a pained moan.

He slowly righted himself against the wall, every muscle north of his feet protesting movement of any kind. He looked up to see the Imperials dusting themselves off or collecting themselves off the ground, Auras flaring as they absorbed the damage and groans of mild pain coming from a few of them. Sunlight was coming in through the now-nonexistent front wall of the restaurant, shining down on a black scorch mark where the Faunus girl had been.

Jacob felt a horrid sense of exhaustion clamor across his mind as Cain came over. "Are you alright, Jacob?"

Jacob responded with the quippiest thing he could say. "Permission to catch some winks, Commissar?"

"Denied," he said with a sigh.

Jacob's head slumped against the wall as the exhaustion exerted it's will. He remained awake as best as he could.

He still failed as unconsciousness beckoned him under.

"Damnit..."

---

Well... that was a thing.

Granted, I had a different version of this planned out initially that had Jacob pass out from a concussion... again, but then it started to dawn on me that he would really need to look into whether or not he was getting concussion damage from all these head wounds. So, this was option #2.

So... on that note, I suppose I should wrap this up. Next chapter, we see the ramifications of this and just how everyone will react to this; will Jacob lose trust with some, will he gain trust with others, will things sketchier as more Imperials show up?

All of these and more in the next few chapters. Granted, the next month or so will be busy with a 2-week trip around the West Coast, but I will be bringing along my laptop since I also have jobs to put in for, classes to sign up for and chapters to write!

As always, reviews, critiques, favorites and follows, they are all helpful to the story, so please send some this way to let me know what needs to change or needs to stay the same and I hope to see you all in the next chapter. Buh-bye~!

---

Also, as I am writing this part in bold here, it grieves me to say that John "Totalbiscuit" Bain is no longer with us. After fighting for so long, he has passed and is no longer in pain from his growing cancer, and the world is a little darker without him. I may have not agreed with him on everything, I may have been both critical and easily-swayed by him at different times in my years of knowing what gaming reviews actually entailed, but here's the greatest truth of the matter:

Without him, I would have never started Warhammer 40k. The stuff that Jacob said? Really only half-truths of how I really got into Warhammer 40k, simple artistic licenses I made of my origin into 40k. It was really all because of him.

Without his review of the Space Marine game, I would have never bought; I would have never wanted to learn more about the world of The Grimdark Future; I would have never started collecting the models, I would have never played all the other games from Games Workshop, I would have never met the friends I have now or had a hobby for me and my brother to bond over, I would have never been where I am now-for better or for worse-had it not been for Mr. Bain. And I will never have the chance to say to him personally what I say now to him post-mortem.

Thank you, Mr. Bain. Thank you.