Here's the next chapter, after what I hope is a much smaller break. Were definitely reaching the end now.
Seeing my team, JNPR, and a wide variety of Beacon's students in the crowd, all cheering me on, started to give me an inkling to the idea of morale and pride that human's base themselves on so much. Even if they were cheering for my success, and the success of their school, while I planned on destroying all that they loved, the small embers of pride in myself forced themselves alight, and I found myself grinning as I entered the arena floor.
The sky above us was dark and full of stars, a half-crescent waning moon providing light where the stadium's pylons did not. Over the screams of the crowd I could hear the roaring of the massive engines belonging to the Atlesian fleet that surrounded the arena. Even with their failure, a massive energy dome enveloped the top of the colosseum, near invisible to the naked eye. I was sure of its durability to lower Grimm's attacks.
My boots thudded on the tile floors as I strode to the middle. I had fashioned myself a new combat attire, wishing to make a statement for myself. This was meant to be a show, after all. My legs were something similar to a militarized version of sports armor, where the soft padding had been replaced by hard and shining metal plates that covered vital muscle groups, and the black fibers that made up the leggings were quite durable themselves.
My torso covered by a half-plate on my chest and back, and a black scale gauntlet that crawled down my right shoulder and ended at my wrist. The left arm was satisfied by loose plates of metal and pauldrons. On my back was a cloak that flickered with purple embers. Nothing for my head or eyes. On my back sat comfortably the weight of my sword, the pitch black metal carved by dozens of scratches and wrapped with white bandage.
My opponent, the twist-souled machine disguised as a frail, red-headed girl strode confidently across the arena, waving to spectators with a smile on her face. As we met near to the center of the arena and she stopped, I continued walking and outstretched a hand for her to shake. She cocked her head, but smiled and took my hand in her own. Both of our hands wrapped in cold, mine the cold of death, hers the cold of unforgiving steel.
"Well, looks as though our Beacon representative wishes to show a bit of sportsmanship before the battle begins. How nice." Glynda Goodwitch, having been assigned to replace Oobleck's seat next to Port, gave the announcement.
"Salutations! I wish a good and honorable fight between us. I am Penny." The girl greeted me and released her hand. I nodded.
"I'm sure it will be quite the show." I smiled, grinning with my teeth. If she was put off by the expression, then Penny did not show it. We returned to our corner of the arena as our battlefield was rolled for us. Of course, I already knew the outcome. Cinder had informed me of her grasp on the tournament's controls, and I had her pre-set the playing field.
"Northern Fangs. A deadly cold environment with plenty of hostile obstacles. Let's hope our contenders are ready."
As the announcement finished, I felt a cold chill sweep across the arena, intensifying until I could see my breath in puffs of vapor. Snow began falling and accumulating at an unnatural rate until we were ankle deep. Whipping winds created the sounds of screaming voices and pillars of spiked ice with razor-sharp fracture lines emerged from the ground.
In thirty seconds we were entirely within the Ice Fangs. A chime sounded, the starting bell, and Penny was off. I breathed deeply, taking in the cold air, and drew my sword. Penny flew towards me, half a dozen strangely shaped blades assuming a crescent formation around her. I crouched into an eastern draw-stance and she attacked.
Four of her blades swung in an arc to the location in which I stood a moment before and I 'drew' my blade, streaking out towards her leg in a flash of black. Two blades circled and blocked like an extended set of armor. Though my strikes were heavy, it seemed that each of her swords was offered the strength of a full huntress, and two was enough to deflect me.
Her previous strike rebounded off the ground and collapsed into a pinwheel of blades that scraped across the flat of mine as I defended myself. Each swing was strong, and the repeated blows numbed my forearms and stung my hands, and I allowed myself to be pushed back. Penny kept up the pressure, leaving two of her swords behind that began to glow with green energy, the other four began an oscillating drill of stabs at me, forcing me to duck and weave between them.
A searing pain caught my left flank as one of the swords left behind fired a green beam that hit true. I jumped backwards and upwards, testing her with a hail of summoned daggers not unlike a Nevermore's feather attack. Creating another pinwheel, this time bringing in all of her swords, she deflected them. Then the blades turned to me and fired more lasers at random, and I used a force rune to push myself quickly to the ground so I would have a surface to move on.
The droid's melee attacks resumed, but I buffered my false-aura and raw strength above what you would normally find in fully trained hunters. My upper limit for this fight. My upward arc blew two of her swords out of the way before another three clashed against my blade and stopped it. A final spiraled and cut a line across my cheek, narrowly deflected by my shielding.
I switched movesets, stabbing my sword into the ground and dragging myself into a kick angled towards my opponents stomach. The majority of her swords unprepared, I landed my first real strike against her. I made use of my momentum, curling into a shoulder-check that pushed her further away from her swords, even if only for a moment. Ripping my sword from the ground, I swung heavily in a horizontal arc, and used Jaune's little trick by blasting aura into it.
An attack that would have been blocked entirely by her blades was sent through the surface of the metal and into thin air, impacting her aura that flashed green with recovery. A thin cut was left in the front of her dress, but no blood. She began her retaliation, displaying discharges of energy that offered her a greatly enhanced agility as she closed the distance between us once again, leaving a plume of stirred powder in her wake.
I, however, refused to be put back on the defense. Within my left hand I summoned a shield with lines cut through it like a sewer-grate. A sword-catcher. She struck with three in a rotating wheel and as each strike hit my shield, I moved it slightly to the side before rotating the entire thing and burying it into the snow and soil. Half of her arsenal removed, I advanced.
Penny's defense was stalwart even still, and I attacked incessantly with swing after swing. She lacked the arms to fully stop my blows and launch a counter-attack, so she was pushed entirely on the defense, losing ground and being pushed further from her trapped swords. Her face had lost cheerfulness, now showcasing a grim excitement.
With a feinted swing and a flick of my boot I launched snow into her eyes. A dirty and crude trick, but it worked. Briefly blinded I slipped behind her and delivered a cut into the base of her back, or would have, if two swords had not shielded her with sparks flying from the forceful meeting of metal. In my surprise, her third cut me from ear to jaw, drawing a thin line of fire that leaked blood onto the snow. The crowd cheered and my team yelled reinforcements at me.
Those that shielded her pivoted and lashed out, I blocked with a summoned buckler shield and swept my sword at her feet. Penny jumped backwards and her three swords returned, firing another volley of beams as I rolled through the snow. Infuriatingly, I was pushed back onto the defensive. But I had another plan. It would be painful, bloody, and guaranteed that I take a less-than-preferred number of hits.
I placed my sword onto my back and rushed my opponent with bare hands cloaked in as much power as I could spare without compromising my defense. She returned the gesture and the distance between us was removed again. I allowed her the first strike, a blossoming arc of blades that was a few too many. Penny had retrieved her swords from my trap at some point.
The plan didn't change. I caught two of the swords in my hands, steel cutting my flesh, and launched myself backwards. Doing so, I caught my first good look at the swords. Thin silver threads connected them to her, some sort of anchoring mechanism. Then I felt their pull, changing my trajectory and hurtling me into one of the frozen spires, breaking it with my body and piercing me in multiple locations. Few naturally occurring substances are as hard as the ice found in the Fangs, they ripped through my aura and broke off spikes of ice within my body. Still, I held on until my feet hit the ground. The plan had changed into something a bit easier.
I left a control rune onto the surface of each blade and relinquished my grasp. The rune, impossibly small, offered me a kinetic connection. Over the next minute and with a dozen more wounds, I successfully planted a rune on every one of her swords. The fight was becoming drawn out, and my imposed limit of usable power was beginning to strain itself, but I finally had a real upper-hand.
Penny flew towards me, propelling herself of multiple bursts of energy and landed in front of me, blasting snow into the air as every one of her swords spread away from her, spiraling and slicing. I dodged the one towards me narrowly, and raised my palm. My skin burned with purple energy and each of her swords lit up the same. With so much slack in her threads after that attack, I could put the runes to use.
Outside of her control, no, overwhelming it, the swords drug outwards and away from her before doubling back. A terrible split of concentration was necessary to control all of them at once, and it gave me a new respect for her deftness. Still, they spun in wide arcs around her, winding and tangling Penny's limbs against her chest and sweeping her legs. I kept them moving until she was wrapped like a puppet, and spread my fingers. The blades anchored into anything they could find, burying deep and holding her suspended a foot off the ground.
I re-drew my sword and rushed her, and her immobility provided me an easy target. I struck hard and without limits, shattering her aura and body as my sword tore through her body and the strings that suspended her. I watched her, the shock in her green eyes, as the two halves of her body soared across the arena and slammed into a lone ice spire. Metal, not flesh. No blood. But still, a death.
My eyes turned a pitch purple as I exerted my influence over her body, and gripped a small crystal in my pocket. Her soul, one that would have been ferried across the boundary of life and death, was instead pulled and trapped. Such a broken, twisted thing, but I would fix her. I waited until all traces of life had left the prison of metal before my senses were allowed to return.
I expected outrage, screaming, even orders to apprehend me. But a shock had fallen over the crowd, blanketing them into silence. Nobody moved even an inch, and I realized that, for the moment, I had the spotlight. So I put on my best show.
Staring at the mangled corpse of Penny, I chuckled, almost imperceptibly, but it grew and grew until the entire arena was filled with laughter straight from my stomach. The crowd stirred, mouths being covered and eyes being shielded. I turned, facing the announcers, the cameras, and my team.
With a rolling stretch my clothing changed. The edges of my leggings and cloak became frayed, the metal of my armor growing jagged and burned, and my sword grew into its true shape. Gnarled teeth shattered out from the black steel and the bandages soaked with unseen blood. I raised a hand to my face, digging into the flesh and tearing.
The first time I had used this disguise, it was little more than a costume put together with only a moments thought. But I had refined it, every agonizing detail. Blood showered across the tile and revealed pale skin stretched like tan leather across my face. My eyes lacked pupils or any defined structure, shining with a purple so dark it was nearly black. My smile had split my cheeks and fresh blood poured down my face, the gap revealing lines of teeth that had been filed down into spikes. My hair grew longer and matted. I was a monster.
Some of the crowd began to scream at this point. My team had so many emotions between them. Fury, despair, incomprehension, fear. I looked them in the eyes for a moment, Ruby in particular, as she struggled to believe what she was seeing. Then I turned, facing the stadium, and began to speak in the gravelly voice that I had painstakingly crafted. It echoed, flooding and splashing against the walls of the colosseum like the roar of a bear.
"Now this is what ignorance brings. Not yours, not really. Most of the blame for this, and for everything that is about to happen, can fall onto the shoulders of your so-called 'leaders. They are the ones who have hidden everything from you. The origin of the Grimm, the wars and conflict between your kingdoms, even me. I've been here for so very long, walking among you for over a year. Your headmaster, Ozpin, he knew I was here. Perhaps not the specifics, but still, he knew. Yet no alarm was raised, no warnings made, and no resistance built. He let a monster walk your halls for a year, and you never even knew.
And now? Now you will all pay for your ignorance. Your arrogance. Let this be a wake-up call to all the other kingdoms, so full of citizens with the same arrogance and ignorance. Your problems are so much smaller than you realize. It has been too long since you've faced something terrible enough to jolt you out of this grandiose stupor. So, allow me to provide you with such a luxury."
I drew my sword and ascended to my first limitation of three. The strength of a hundred hunters surged through my veins, my muscles swelled and I thrust my sword upwards. A blinding flash of plasma careened into the energy barrier above Amity and, after the briefest moments of resistance, shattered it. Backups of electricity fried circuits and the lights of the arena flickered before being stabilized by auxiliary power.
I turned to my team, the members of each seemingly having comprehended the situation. Yang was burning with rage, flickers of tears in her eyes. Weiss was in shock, standing still as a statue. Blake wouldn't meet my eyes, her head on a swivel, taking in the entire situation. Ruby had the most pure reaction. She was openly crying, staring at Penny's body.
She slowly turned her head towards be, meeting my sneering face. There wasn't anger in her eyes, or rage, or any of the familial emotions. There was only betrayal, and the struggle to understand what she needed to do next.
JNPR sat next to them, all with much less blinding reactions. Jaune was surprised, afraid, but with some self confirmation behind his eyes. Ren was stoic, Nora was distraught. Pyrrha only stared at me.
"The fireworks are starting, and you've got a lot to do. I'll be in the city for quite a while. We can finish this in the courtyard. I know some of you are itching for it."
The crowed raved and poured out of the stadium as Grimm began circling the shattered dome. I spared one final glance to them before rushing one of the entrances, cutting my way out and leaving blood behind me.