Big Issues
AN: As before, this chapter and the next few are on the darker side. You have been warned. Thankfully, I don't get too graphic with that.
Survival - Part One
Team BRNZ was in a really bad spot right now, Nolan had to admit. His team had been enjoying the festival as much as they could since their loss in the tournament outside of the training they had kept up. Stopping to sample foods from the various vendors had been a fun experience that had the boys laughing at how May would stuff her cheeks like a squirrel when she found something she really enjoyed. It was probably a good thing they had gotten the medicine to stop them from gaining weight earlier in the week and it was showing signs of working. If it hadn't, May would have likely eaten her way into a new wardrobe, her clothes were tight enough coming to Beacon to start.
Then everything went to shit.
They had seen the finals when the blonde girl had shot her opponent after she won the match. But with them being from Vacuo, harshness to an opponent was usually tolerated, if not encouraged at times to motivate them to do better. The common consensus being that surviving a beating proved one's endurance and that not working hard enough to survive would see to an early death. In Vacuo, nearly everything was a test of survival and that desensitized them to what they had seen. They did agree that the shotgun was a bit much but Mercury could have said something to the blonde that pissed her off, given her immediate switch of expressions.
Then there was the fight with the redheads. It was obvious to them that Pyrrha looked to be off her game compared to when they had fought her. Then there was the final standoff when she had been disarmed. They saw the fear on her face before she did something that sent the swords back at her opponent, the swords that cut her apart.
The takeover of the broadcast heralded the invasion of Grimm and the White Fang dropped in from numerous aircraft. Things were going fairly well for the team as they helped to escort civilians from the school until a pack of Beowolves found them and attacked.
Nolan had been nominated to stick with the civilians to get them to safety as Roy and Brawnz engaged the Grimm with May providing support fire. The plan was going well and the Grimm were being whittled down easily, saws cut through hide, claws tore into flesh, and bullets shattered bone. Then a Nevermore swooped through and grabbed Roy in its talons, flying off with the now screaming teen.
Brawnz tried to go after him but the Beowolves took advantage of his open back and pounced. May saw that her leader was in trouble and shot several of the Grimm, enough for Brawnz to pull himself free of the pack but his aura sputtered as it struggled to be maintained. The team leader made the choice to retreat and May gave him cover fire as he ran down the alley towards her.
Nolan was guarding the door that the civilians had ran into, a shelter for cases like this and had a view of his remaining team on the run. Brawnz stumbled as exhaustion hit him hard through the adrenaline, the Grimm seizing him in their claws and shattering his aura with ease. It was a small consolation that he died fighting, two of the creatures having their throats torn open by his saws and a third had its neck snapped before his blood splattered the walls and ground.
May had to deal with more of the pack coming after her, snapping off shots as fast as she could, no longer able to take the time to use her scope. Some were picked off at the distance until they grew too close and she ran out of ammo in her rifle. The Grimm closed in and the girl reversed her hold on the rifle, holding the barrel and deploying the axe blade within the stock and swung.
The first strike took off an arm and the follow up took its head. Another cut deep into a Beowolves chest. She kicked another away as she wrenched out her axe. She put her weight behind her next attack, cutting through the waist on another Grimm and ducking under a clawed hand before removing that hand from its owner. A sweep of her rifle took out its legs and while the Beowolf was on the ground, she stomped her foot onto its throat, crushing it.
But one had closed the distance on her blindside, biting into her shoulder. Her aura may have protected her flesh from the fangs, but she still felt the pain from the pressure and she cried out. Her blade bit into its skull, freeing her from its grasp but left her open for another to tackle her to the ground. A second leapt on top of her and tore the rifle from her grasp, leaving May defenseless aside from her aura… and that didn't last long.
Nolan saw it all and his last conscious thought was to slam the door behind him and lock it, hearing the Grimm outside slamming into the heavy and thick steel. The young man collapsed into a corner as the horrors of life and death began to hit him hard, alternating between hyperventilating and weeping for the rest of the night. The sight of two of his closest friends being torn apart in front of him and the third carried away to an unknown but almost guaranteed gruesome fate… and there was nothing he could do but watch.
Blake ran after the Grimm and specifically targeting the Alpha before it could gather up a pack; an Alpha was dangerous enough on their own. She ran around the corner just as it leapt up to dig its claws into the concrete, looking down at her and giving a bark, almost like it was taunting her before it kept climbing up the building. The cat was about to chase it when she heard a pained scream from inside the burning building.
Inside the cafeteria, she found an Atlas soldier who was being held in the air by the sword in his gut and sticking of his back. Her eyes went wide as she recognized the swordsman, the soldier being tossed off the blade to land unmoving with a wet thump on the floor. The masked face turned towards her, having noticed the movement through the shattered window.
"No…. Adam?" She was almost too afraid to move, too scared to do much more that watch as he took a few steps towards her as he began to smile. It was not a gentle smile she remembered from her younger days in the White Fang. Nor was it a pleased smile from when he had begun training her to use the sword and she had begun to master a move. Not the fond smile that he had shared solely with her when they were alone and growing closer. No, this one was the cruel one that she had seen on his face far too often, when doing or about to do acts that she wasn't proud of. It was one that promised pain and destruction.
And now it was being directed at her. That was the last thing she wanted to see but she should have guessed that he'd be here for this. Now that he had found her after over a year of being apart, she was fearing the worst already. Worse than what he was already doing now.
"Hello, My Darling." He says as casually as if he were complimenting the weather, his smile never leaving his face. That combination sent a fresh wave of fear down her spine.
All over Beacon, the students were fighting the Grimm. Jaune charged head on with an Ursa, bashing it in the face with his shield to stun it before cutting its throat and moving on as it choked from the lethal wound. Neon Katt had a Boarbatusk hot on her heels as she skated by until she got to a streetlight and used the pole to whip herself around and strike the monstrous pig in the side and encasing its legs in ice and letting it tumble into the nearby fire. Coco fired a few dozen rounds into a Griffon at point blank range as it swooped down at her. Arslan flipped out of the path of an Ursa charging at her from behind before going after a Beowolf that was about to blindside Coco, the Ursa left to take a grenade to the face courtesy of Nora. Pyrrha dealt with a small flock of tiny Nevermore that had decided that she was to be their next victim.
On a higher level, Ren opened fire into an oncoming Beowolf. Nadir shot a few rounds into a Creep before finishing it off with a slash of his blade. Reese raced up the collapsed wall of a building with a Beowolf chasing her until it found a window with its paws and fell through, when it tried to climb out Reese had returned to drive the blades of her board into its head. Fox dueled a pair of Beowolves by himself and dissected them in short order. Sage was making wide sweeps with his sword and cutting down any Grimm that came within range. Scarlet was watching his back and getting a few kills in.
Yatsuhashi, Sun, Bolin, Neptune, and Velvet had found themselves drawn into engaging with the Atlesian mechanized soldiers and making short work of the Knights. The rampaging Paladins were much more difficult but Yatsu had been able to crack two of them open with Fulcrum where Neptune and Sun could fire into the inner workings.
Yang was plowing through groups of White Fang and the occasional Grimm. She wasn't in the mood for crap like this and she had already rescued a few civilians from being shot by the terrorists. Her sister was unable to be contacted and was somewhere out in this mess. Her teammates too but she was sure that they were together and would take care of each other. Her other friends she was confident that they were fighting the Grimm however and wherever they could.
Penny was a good friend to Ruby, when they could be together, and Yang was sure that she would be needed to comfort her sister over the loss of her friend and the attack when this was all over. It didn't help that she found herself relating to Pyrrha with the events that had happened, having seen the fight on her scroll. Both of them having a sudden shift in their reactions, all due to seeing something that apparently wasn't there. It was almost obvious now that she saw someone else go through the same ordeal.
But Pyrrha had killed Penny. For as long as Yang knew the girl, Penny was just a weird girl who had poor understanding of social cues and seemed to be interacting with the public for the first time. Almost similar to how Weiss was when they first met but far nicer and seemed to have come from a much more sheltered life. But she was someone her sister was fond of, someone she was always keeping an eye out for, who had found some time during the tournament to talk with after being unable to hang out at the dance.
All of that ended by Pyrrha in a tragic mistake. One that was claimed to be orchestrated by the woman who spoke just after Penny's death in the arena. Where Pyrrha had last been seen collapsing to her knees in tears at what had just happened.
So many lives that Yang knew were lost already and more by the minute… and those were people she was sure she didn't know. But for those she did, she vowed that she would do her best to not lose them, one was already too much.
She sealed that promise to herself by imprinting her fist into the face of a faunus, his mask doing nothing to stop her knuckles.
Denko, Anya, and Talon finally made it down to the city on the last transport from Amity. They were immediately forced to deal with Grimm attacking the civilians gathered around the landing pads as the soldiers from Atlas had to fight against their own mechanical allies. After that bit of excitement, they had to split up.
"Anya, Talon. Help guide these people to the safe zone." Denko orders the girls.
"What are you going to do?" Talon asks.
"I'm heading towards the tower to help protect it. Meet me there once you drop them off!" The blonde tells them before running off before the sisters could rebut him.
Anya sighed that she had to deal with the public rather than going out to fight right away. "Alright people! Let's get you to the safe zone so we can get back out here and kill these Grimm!"
It may have been luck that they encountered few Grimm along the way to the docks but they found many Knights that had been defeated and stripped of weapons. Of course, there were more bodies of soldiers and civilians than anyone felt comfortable seeing. Not to mention the destruction of the buildings around them, windows shattered, doors broken, holes in walls, and some on fire. Homes, businesses, shops, and stands were now in varying levels of being ruined.
"Anya! Over here!" The red-eyed girl heard someone calling for her. Looking around, she found Itazura waving her over. She left it to her sister to take care of the civilians now that they were at the safe zone that had a perimeter established by soldiers and recruits.
"How bad is everything?" Anya felt the need to ask. If anyone would know what was happening, the little fox would.
"We've been setting up this place so anyone at Beacon has an evac point. We got anyone not defending the walls clearing a path to the hospital so we can take care of the injured. Some are setting up barricades and gathering weapons, Dust, and other supplies for the long run."
"You set all of this up already?"
"Not just me, got Councilman Kudzu to help direct things with a retired VDF General." She nods her head over to a man in a suit and another in an old uniform jacket that was thrown over his normal clothes. Both men appeared to be examining a display of the city and the forces attacking and defending it while giving orders to some runners who would relay it to where the orders were directed. From the looks of things, Kudzu was handling civilian affairs while the General was directing the newly formed militia.
"What about the rest of the Council?" Anya asks as she looked around.
"Last I overheard them, they are down in City Hall. Good thing that's on the way to the hospital." The faunus shrugs. "But where's Denko? I though he was with you?"
"He was until we landed. Ran off to help defend the tower while we played escort."
"Figures." Itazura lets out a humorless laugh. "Whatever, I'll be sticking around here, you go back him up." She hefts her shotguns to double-check the ammunition.
"Alright! What did I miss?" Talon asks as she ran up to the pair.
"I'll explain on the way. Let's go!" Anya orders her sister and they run off down the street and jump the barricades.
"Huntress! We got Grimm coming down Honeysuckle!" Councilman Kudzu calls out to the fox and she moved immediately. She was soon joined by a squad from the militia who watched her back from the barricades.
Anya and Talon ran through the streets, occasionally having to slow down to kill a Grimm that they ran across. Most of the Atlesian Knights had been destroyed by the Grimm or the occasional Huntsman in training who had decided to defend the school. At some point, the sisters found Team NDGO moving the opposite way.
"Out of our way! We're getting out of here!" Octavia yells at them as they run by, with a couple Beowolves chasing after them.
"Where do you think you're going?" Talon shouts at the team, even as she cuts into the Grimm.
"Going back to Vacuo, dumbass! I'm not risking my neck for this deathtrap!" Octavia seemed to be the spokeswoman for the team, or at least the only one who was willing to 'talk'.
Neither sister was willing to mention that Vacuo was full of dangers from the sun to the sands, from the creatures to plants that called the land home… but also that they were Huntresses; it was their job to go into dangerous situations and do their best to prevail.
"We'll let Theodore know about this later." Anya could imagine the punishment that the Headmaster would give the cowardly team.
On a high building's roof, three figures watched the death and destruction all around them. The Grimm overrunning the streets, some tearing down walls to get at the people inside buildings. Nevermore and Griffons swooped overhead with only a few Mantas from Atlas surviving and they were sure to be low on ammunition to stop them. Atlesian Knights and Paladins marched through the streets and shot at anything that wasn't Grimm or machine. White Fang gunning down almost anything that moved, with an emphasis on humans but shot at faunus as well. The Huntsmen and soldiers that tried to fight the three factions of enemies that surrounded them. The fires that burned to illuminate the night.
All of that was seen by them and two were smiling. "Beautiful." Cinder comments with the same tone one would use for a painting in a museum.
"It's almost sad." Emerald shook her head a bit, sounding a bit regretful. A few screams close by made her flinch.
"It's horrendous." Cinder adds, mockingly. She was proud to have orchestrated everything and loved to watch things burn. She turns to Mercury, who was holding a scroll to record everything and broadcast it to the world. "Focus on the Atlesian Knights"
"Oh ho-ho-ho… I'm getting everything." Mercury was taking a lot of satisfaction at the suffering of an entire city.
"Good. Continue the broadcast until the end." Cinder orders. An earthquake rocked the city, making the three stumble as the building shook under their feet. "You do not want to miss what happens next." She tells him with a smile. Another small tremor shook the ground slightly as Cinder began to walk away, Mercury ensuring that he got her full, thick and curvy form in frame as she did.
Emerald was the only one of them who seemed to be worried about what was going to happen. She wasn't privy to the full extent of the plan that Cinder and her Mistress had created, only the parts where she was required to act. Now, her orders were to stay with Mercury.
Ozpin had remained in his office during the invasion, trying to help coordinate the defense of Vale and Beacon with the Commanders of the VDF and Atlas thanks to the many cameras he had access to and the monitors he could have displayed over his desk.
A squad of Atlas soldiers advancing on a Death Stalker with their rifles firing in the courtyard near the docks, trying to keep it away from the newly formed Safe Zone, the occasional grenade exploding against its carapace. People on various buildings waving for help from the small drones that were flying around to get a larger view of the battlefield. Grimm climbed the buildings, drawn by the fear that the people exuded, only made worse as there were no Huntsmen or soldiers nearby to help them.
The battle in the air wasn't any better, few ships from either Atlas or Vale were left without the heavy firepower of the battleships could have provided or even a resupply. He had even seen the Manta that James had been flying crash into the city.
Ozpin hung his head as he silently cursed the situation that the school and city was seeing so much destruction in one night that only the most experienced Huntsmen could see in a long career. He cursed that so many lives had already been lost. He cursed that he couldn't have stopped this sooner, have seen it sooner.
Then he stood up with resolve, hiding in his office wasn't going to help anyone and he was needed to set an example of the intruders. As he walked around his desk after sending out a final message, he grasped the handle of Old Memory. As he walked towards the elevator that would take him down to the action, he gave his cane a quick swing, readying his arm for battle. Then the tower shook, making him stop as he fought to keep his footing.
"No!" Ozpin bit down a curse and ran into the elevator.
Down in the city, they felt the earthquake as it made the fighting pause briefly on the ground. Glynda widened her stance to keep her balance while Qrow stabbed his sword into the road to stay upright. The Grimm they had been fighting were already barely standing from their wounds when they were shaken to the ground.
Jaune was helping to hold one arm of an Ursa as Scarlet held the other. Sage had the beast gripped around the neck. All three of them had been blindsided together and had dropped their weapons in the confusion, resorting to bare handed combat against a foe larger than the three of them put together. When the earthquake happened, Sage took the opportunity of the Ursa's pause in struggling to snap its neck.
Outside of Vale, a mountain shook. Cracks filled the bare stone cliff faces as stones began to fall. A rockslide partway down the mountain revealed a large clawed foot with massive bone white talons and thick black scaled skin. More cracks and white spines pushed through the collapsing stone. Another area broke away to let a bright red eye peek out into the night-time sky and the moon above.
Then the mountaintop seemed to explode as the beast within shattered the thousands of tons of stone that had imprisoned it, creating a massive rockslide that crushed large swaths of the forest near the base of the mountain. The wyvern screeched as it flapped its wings for what may have been the first time in centuries.
The Grimm that made even the Goliaths look small in comparison began to fly, generating intense winds on the ground with every downstroke. It flew over the ruins of Mountain Glenn, drawing any Grimm that hadn't been part of the first wave after it, some of which were born from the globs of tar-like substance that fell from the wyvern's hide.
It didn't take long for the draconic beast to make it to Vale and it began to target Beacon itself, the surviving guns along the walls barely were noticed as it flew over. They may have shot at it as much as they could but a swing of its spiked tail shattered a large area of the walls top, including many of the gun batteries there.
More globs fell from its hide, spawning Ursa, Creeps, and Beowolves that were ready, able, and more than willing to begin attacking anything that wasn't Grimm around them.
Near the tower, the teams of JNPR and SSSN had gathered together to fight the new wave as a united front. ABRN and CFVY were doing the same not too far away but far enough to split the attention of the Grimm. SSSN ran forward to take on the Grimm ahead of JNPR, the latter team about to follow after when they noticed that Pyrrha hadn't moved at all.
Ozpin stood by an archway, several Grimm evaporating nearby, as he was specifically looking at the Champion of Mistral Regional Tournaments. The two locked eyes, apparently having a silent conversation but one that they may have had before. And the girl began walking towards her Headmaster.
"What is she doing?" Nora asks, as confused as the rest of her team about what they are witnessing now.
"I'll go find out. You two stay here and keep fighting." Jaune orders Ren and Nora before running after his partner. The pair didn't have much of a choice as Beowolves leapt at them, Nora slamming the lead Grimm into the ground with a crunch while Ren slit the throats of the pair following it.
On a tall building across the courtyard and across a street, Cinder stood watching the students fighting. She had noticed Ozpin arrive and how easily he dealt with the Grimm that attacked him; they were dead in a blink. But then a pair of the students broke away from the fighting to follow after him, raising her curiosity. As they left the battlefield, her eyes narrowed before finding her way down to follow the three.
Ruby braced herself against the wind as she stood on the hull of the Atlesian warship, watching as the Wyvern flew by screeching. Her cloak didn't so much flutter in the wind as it did try to pull her off her feet, making her somewhat glad that she had the additional weight to keep her 'grounded'. But the girl stood in awe of the massive size of the Grimm, not knowing that it was even possible that they could be so large. A swarm of Griffons following a bit after the Wyvern snapped her out of her daze.
Dozens flew overhead, too many to count and too many for her to fight on her own.
She had to jump forward as one Griffon slammed down on the hull. Ruby countered it immediately with a slice across the chest before a pair of cuts appeared across its shoulders, making it roar in anger and pain. The girl kicked off the beast and landed a short distance away in a crouch with Crescent Rose held behind her. The Grimm shaking off the pain and roaring.
They charged once more and Ruby dodged its talons to take its wings and slice into its spine while she was behind it. The Grimm collapsed and began to fade, the wings having been blown away already. Ruby leaned over to suck in some of the thin air when she felt like she was being watched.
Twisting at her thick waist and looking over her shoulder, Ruby saw a rather short and familiar young woman in an Atlas uniform standing not far from where the Griffon was evaporating. She had her scroll out and took a picture of the cloaked girl with a smirk as the uniform disappeared and was replaced from the feet first by what looked like a tumbling line of shattered pink glass shards traveling up her body. With the transformation complete, Neopolitan now stood there looking much like when Ruby had seen her the night her team had fought Roman in the Paladin… though she was much thicker than then.
Neopolitan gave her a wink as she hit send on her scroll.
Inside the bridge, Roman saw the picture that Neo had sent to him. A familiar looking girl with a red hood and round face and silver eyes. All with a caption of 'Guess who?'.
"Oh… you can not be serious!" Roman growled as he grabbed the scroll from the console and shoved it in his pocket as he spun his cane in the other hand as he marched out of the bridge.
Blake backed away from the window, fear filling her entirety.
"Running away again?" Adam asks. It wasn't a question of desiring an answer but one of mocking. He knew her far too well. He knew how she fought as he was the one who did the majority of her training. He knew her weaknesses, her fears, her strengths. He knew that she couldn't stand a chance against him.
"Is that what you've become, My Love?" He was prodding her emotions, her vulnerable spots that she tried to hide from the world by burying herself into her books and avoiding social interactions. The question did make her stop backing away. "A coward?"
"Why are you doing this?" Blake needed answers, even as she ignored the random person running behind her and the Alpha Beowolf she had chased here was now long gone.
"We were going to change the world. Remember?" He responds easily. It was a shared vague goal they both had as long as they had known the other. Many long talks over the years about the subject had changed slowly over their time together. "We were destined to light the fires of revolution!" That line and similar had become common to hear from the White Fang leader since he had taken over the Vale branch.
Adam stepped forward and slammed his foot on the chest of an Atlas student who the soldier had apparently been trying to protect, the young man letting out a grunt of pain but was unable to move from prior injuries. "Consider this… the spark." He had a flair for drama that made him delay, savoring the fear that Blake emitted and that he was about to kill someone from Atlas. He drew his red sword, Wilt, from its sheath, Blush, slowly.
With a grunt of effort, Blake leapt through the window and slammed the katana half of Gambol Shroud into Wilt, her weight and momentum pushing Adam off the Atlesian and further back into the burning building. Adam's feet found traction on the floor and kept his blade locked with Blake's, his height negating whatever advantage she had from her weight.
"I'm not running." She states as she uses both arms to push back at him, the taller faunus easily holding her back with a single arm.
The bull leaned forward and he spoke, his voice lowering and taking a very dangerous edge. "You will." It sounded like a promise. Without warning he pulled back on Wilt and kicked Blake in the gut, reversing her momentum from the unexpected lack of resistance and she fell to the floor, Gambol Shroud falling from her hand but not out of reach.
At the same time, a Creep had jumped through another broken window and charged at the fallen girl, the easy victim too much of an opportunity to pass up. A rifle barked and the Creep died from a headshot. Blake sat up with her sword in hand and looked to Adam with wide eyes, seeing him standing there with Blush still raised from firing the rifle/sheath to save her.
"But not before you suffered for your betrayal, My Love." Adam warns her as he lowers Blush and begins to close the distance between them.
Things back at the courtyard weren't going very well. Velvet had been knocked to the ground and she was slow to pick herself up. Getting hit by a Paladin would do that. The rabbit faunus didn't get further than her knees when Coco suffered the same fate and rolled into her with a grunt.
Neon skated by the fallen girls with Reese hovering at her side as they used their mobility to their advantage to distract and close distance on the few Knights that were left. They passed Arslan and Nadir as they battled a Griffon, the girl using her dart to create a leash to hold the beast down so Nadir could get some good shots into its chest. Behind it, Bolin had smashed one leg with his staff before having to break off to deal with a Knight that was far too close for comfort with an arm blade. He knocked it back and Reese decapitated the mech as she floated by, Neon freezing the arms and legs of a Knight following after the first.
A short distance from ABRN, Sun and Neptune were distracting a Paladin by themselves, the two boys firing their rounds into its hull as they dodged its return fire. Sage and Scarlet had been pulled away to deal with some Boarbatusk's that were rolling around and threatening to distract the others from their battles with more dangerous foes. Ren fired Stormflower into a cluster of Knights as Nora fired a grenade into their formation, throwing them all to the ground and easy targets for Ren to ensure that they stayed down before the pair moved to help Sun and Neptune with their foe.
A griffon swooped down to land in an open spot of the courtyard near where Fox and Yatsuhashi were chopping through a large group of Knights. Yatsu saw the larger and more dangerous threat and leapt at the Grimm, bringing his massive blade down onto the bony mask with a yell. Flynt backed them up by blasting some Creeps that burst from the nearby bushes, making Fox glad that he didn't blow that trumpet at him; ADA was already working overtime.
Another Paladin came marching down the courtyard's walkway, leading to Neon and Reese to weave her way between its legs and froze the feet of the mech to the stone. Weiss tried to take advantage of the incapacitation and leapt to take out some of its sensors, only for it to spin at the waist and smack her away.
"Weiss!" Neptune yells, reaching out as if to catch her but he was nowhere near the girl.
The Paladin broke through the ice and shattered the stones that stuck to its feet as it walked. It punched at Yatsuhashi, the large man bracing his sword with both arms as he fought the power of the machine, only to be eventually overwhelmed and thrown away to land near Fox and Flynt.
The first Paladin broke away from its battle with Sun and Neptune to attack Ren as he was distracted by the second mech entering the battle.
"Look out!" Nora screeched as she ran over to shove her best friend out of the oncoming metal fist, only to be hit herself and sent bouncing across the stone walkways.
"Nora! No!" Ren staggered towards the fallen girl, so distracted by her injuries that he missed the metal fist until it hit him and pushed him further from Nora.
Bullets began impacting the mech, making it turn its attention to where Neptune and Coco were unloading their rounds into its hull with Velvet watching their backs. Sun took the opportunity to dart around unnoticed and grabbed the fallen teammates, struggling to carry their combined weight in his exhaustion, but he got them out of the danger zone.
"Uh, this is bad." Neptune was quickly losing his confidence as their bullets had little effect, doing little more than scorching and giving it small dents in many places.
Without warning, Coco stopped firing and lowered her weapon. "Well, I guess now is a better time than any. Velvet!"
The bunny girl suddenly brightened up and began to look excited. "Really?!" If things weren't so dire, many would have called her cute with her fists raised by her face and not a trace of her normal meekness to be found.
"Just make them count." Her leader reminds the faunus, and it was hard to not notice that the older girl was slightly out of breath from the constant fighting since Amity.
Velvet gave her a nod as she squared her shoulders, adopted a determined expression, and marched towards the Paladin alone. The mech watched, seemingly confused as the girl who appeared unarmed walked towards it. Neptune had stopped shooting too, confused as to why Velvet was so special that she relied so much for Coco to let her know when she could fight and how much.
Weiss stood up shakily, but had seen and heard everything going on with the makeshift team next to her. "What are you doing? She's going to get hurt!" She truly had come a long way from the self-centered girl who had arrived at Beacon.
"Just watch." Coco replied simply, but full of confidence. That raised the eyebrows of both Weiss and Neptune, but they relented.
Velvet stopped a few paces away from the Paladins and her right arm snapped out, Anesidora lights up as it projected towards her outstretched hand. In moments, a hard-light copy of Crescent Rose had finished materializing in her hand and she gripped it deftly as if she had trained with the real thing as much as its true owner.
The closest Paladin fired a cannon at the girl, the stone walkway being reduced to rubble where she was. The girl herself had jumped high and twisted for additional momentum, the blade cutting into deep into the shoulder joint before she pushed off the mech to land on the ground. While crouching, Crescent Rose vanished but was replaced by Myrtenaster in her left hand and her stance shifted accordingly.
The Paladin spun on its waist once as it converted its damaged arm from cannon to hand and swung at the faunus with a punch capable of turning a truck to scrap. It was blocked by a domed hard-light shield that appeared to come from the copied weapon itself. Velvet then performed a couple of back handsprings to create some distance before landing in a very familiar tight stance. She launched herself straight at the mech with blinding speed and just as quickly struck at vulnerable areas like its sensors.
The sudden loss of visibility made the Paladin stumble and flail its arms. It was from those arms that Velvet changed her copied weapons again, this time to Ember Celica, as she threw herself forward to punch it in the 'face' hard enough to send it reeling and requiring a few steps to keep itself upright. Velvet landed on the ground again, rolling out of the fall and into a combat ready position, the gauntlets cocked and fired a shot from each with a pair of punches, the rounds of light exploding against its armor.
It retaliated with a sweeping punch and just as quickly, the bunny shifted again, ducking under the metal fist as a copy of Gambol Shroud replaced the gauntlets. Her return shot was to stab into the hand with the sword half as it retracted the limb, allowing herself to be carried and the ribbon to extend from the sword, wrapping around the legs several times over and the mech tried to track her, twisting at the waist.
Velvet finally let herself stop wrapping the legs and took a firm foothold on the ground as she pulled the ribbon tight, making the mech loose its balance and unable to adjust, it fell on its side. The second Paladin finally decided to intervene, reaching for the girl and lost part of its hand thanks to the cleaver cutting through a joint. It backed off a step and the weapon damaged it once more as it was thrown into its 'face'. Then it was pelted by dozens of hard-light bullets courtesy of the copy of Gianduja, forcing it to raise its damaged arm to serve as a shield as it stomped its way to her.
The Paladin punched with its good arm only to be matched as Velvet jumped with a twist, slamming a copy of Magnhild into the fist. The shock must have overloaded some of the servos in the limb as it began to spark at some of the joints and froze. A step on the arm allowed the girl to push off with powerful legs, bringing her high with the hammer to flip twice for extra force. The Magnhild came own on the shoulder, tearing it from the body with a screeching of sheering metals and snaps of fraying and sparking wires.
The bunny managed to land on the back, missing that the other Paladin was starting to get up. The copy vanished from her hand to be replaced by a small backpack from with 'Floating Array' emerged and the faunus flipped off the mech to land just behind it. With a swing of her arms, Velvet directed the multiple blades of light into the joints of the legs, cutting through one completely and severely damaging the other. The Paladin fell in front of her like a puppet with its strings cut and Velvet wasn't done yet.
She brought the blade back into a circle formation and they began to rotate as the shifted to gun mode, energy collecting in front of their tips, then she released it into the back of the downed mech. Blue energy of hard-light taken to its extreme bored through the armor and into its power core, causing it to explode in a brilliant display of light.
Velvet was spared from the worst of it thanks to the blast she was using and she paused her sequences to catch her breath. But while everyone had taken cover or blinded by the explosion, the other Paladin blindsided Velvet with a punch, sending the chubby bunny tumbling across the stones to stop near a somehow intact bench.
"Velvet!" Coco yells out to her best friend, fear for her safety clear in her tone before it turned to a growl as she raised Gianduja and began firing at the thing that hurt her teammate. Neptune, Nadir, and Reese were quick to gather near her and began firing their weapons at the machine.
Weiss had been amazed at the level of skill that Velvet had displayed. There was more than a little surprise to see her actually use her weapon and more yet to watch as the bunny didn't simply copy their weapons but mimicked how she and her friends used them perfectly down to how they moved. She clenched her fists in frustration and growled at the situation they were in and her friends being hurt.
She let out the frustration out by leaping into action, her sprint accelerated by her glyphs under her feet as she ran around the group shooting the Paladin, causing them to pause briefly as the flash of white passed by them. As she ran, Weiss saw that the Paladin was pushing through the hail of bullets and Dust rounds as it moved to finish off Velvet, the girl wasn't moving much. But there was also something else that that caught her attention, the glyph that was forming behind her. There was some surprise that it was specifically the summoning glyph that was forming, yet she had another goal in mind.
The Paladin reared its arm back to punch at Velvet, who was just starting to sit up when Weiss stopped in front of the girl. The snow-themed girl raised her sword and braced it with both hands, expecting the worst as she made herself a human shield as she closed her eyes.
The impact came but not how she expected as it didn't hit her, or even reach her. Opening her eyes, she saw that the metal fist was stopped by a massive white sword easily longer than she was tall- or even Yatsuhashi for that matter. That sword was held by an armored arm that emerged from the glyph.
"Huh?" Such a dignified sound for finally accomplishing a skill that had eluded her for so long, even if a partial success.
With a flick of its wrist, the arm turned the sword so that the machines fist slammed into the stones where it turned the pavers into gravel. The arm raised the blade and brought it down, cleaving through the armor to bisect the Paladin from top to bottom.
The halves fell as scrap and Weiss looked to the arm as it hung in the air from the glyph. Perhaps it was a good thing she had looked away then so that she didn't see the body within the machine that hadn't been under the pilots control.
A sudden flash made Weiss' eyes go wide again, only to see that Velvet had risen and taken a picture of her with a cheery smile.
The rest of the group gathered up now that the worst of the trouble had been eliminated and the arm faded away to nothingness. Congratulations for the various saves and assists were passed around as everyone caught their breath and reloaded their weapons, taking stock of their supplies and how low they were getting on aura after the numerous battles.
It didn't last long as they began to notice the sound of heavy feet pounding the ground met their ears and they felt the impacts through the ground. They turned to see yet another Paladin running down the walkway and tearing up the pavers as it slid to a stop as it noticed them. Its cannons locked into position as it began to stalk towards them.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Sun was the voice of their frustration for the moment before they all prepared to fight another round against the walking tank. At least this time, they didn't have any distractions from Knights or Grimm.
AN: To be honest, I wasn't expecting this chapter to be as short as it is but with everything coming up it made sense to break it up a bit. Also, with the one year anniversary of this series on this site coming up soon and nearly weekly updates, I plan to take a small break. It's not that I'm lacking the drive to continue but that I have other fics that I've been putting to the side in favor of this major project. I'll still be writing and I'd like to get a chapter or two of Empire Rising up during that break as well as some work on other stories that are only going on DA.
The break will only be a month and I do have plenty of notes to use for when I get back to Big Issues, probably a couple chapters worth that will largely have only loose connections to canon; filler, but important filler. But the break won't be starting until after this arc is done, so with the way things are going you'll get a few weeks of updates yet.
Still, reviews are welcome as always! I'll see you all in the next chapter!