Managed to get this out, somehow. I think its because A) fight scenes go really fast and easy for me, and B) I haven't started my field service hours, which will suck up quite a bit of time. I've also been looking forward to writing this chapter for a while! Its the conclusion to the first arc, as it were, and one of the quickest ideas I had dashed out when I began to framework this self-indulgent AU.
Also, in the Roman Holiday backstory novel, the closest person to Torchwick in Mistral was a human woman by the imaginative name of Chameleon (Cammie for short), whose Semblance was the ability to change the color of her skin. She gets a crush on Roman after he covers for her and its heavily implied that he indulged her crush at least once even though he wasn't as interested, as he mentally admits to stringing her along and she tells him that "I finally realized I was just a side thing, too." when he is revealed to have been scheming behind their boss's back. Torchwick being Torchwick, he would naturally use this information to mess with Ilia, a chameleon Faunus.
Also, Remnant's pantheon is...frustratingly vague, shall we say. Qrow implies that there are multiple religions, but not many people actually worship, and he and Ruby both have cross accessories worked into their outfits at one point or another. You'll perhaps have noticed my attempts to gel with that in how I have people invoking gods (plural) rather than god/God (singular), since the God of Light and the God of Darkness are literally the only named ones we have and they SEEM to be prominent. Anyways, nobody get on my case about Ruby knowing/using the word "devil," because the God of Darkness doesn't seem to be a Satan expy and sometimes you have to say the thing directly to get your point across, no matter how much it hurts from a worldbuilding perspective. Remnant has ninjas and coffee for the same reason. (The "right hand of the devil" line is also a direct quote from the 1999 The Mummy movie, by the way, which everyone should watch at least once.)
Jaune thought, somewhat hysterically, that his team was very much taking the position of "ominous puppetmasters" as he paced and paced and paced, back and forth on the warehouse roof they were waiting on, fully-armed and eyes turned towards the docks. They were six or seven blocks away from the docks themselves, far enough that hopefully his team wouldn't notice anything untoward about the fight, close enough that if Team RWBY needed help –which he doubted– they could actually get there in time to help.
Team RWBY were good. Academically, he knew this.
Instinctively, every nerve was fighting against him just standing here and not drawing his sword and rushing to help his friends, not charging over the rooftops and throwing himself in front of whatever new threat was barreling towards his family. It went against everything he had trained for, everything he had the others had fought and bled and died for, and all that nervous energy demanded an outlet as he paced, fraught with tension, a slight distance away from his team. They were tense, but still a lot calmer than him. They didn't know the stakes. They didn't know that this was a fight that they could lose.
Jaune remembered how this had gone the first time around. He hadn't even witnessed the docks fight firsthand, just been woken up by Nora shrilling about their favorite team being on the news and hearing Ruby's "we totally didn't mean to blow up so much stuff" guilty babbling at breakfast. It had been almost fun, just another quirky adventure that Team RWBY had had without them. Nobody got hurt, the Dust was insured, and life moved on.
The Breach had been scarier, but even as he and the others rushed to the scene, even as he sweated through his gloves at the idea of fighting live Grimm with real stakes, Jaune had been unconsciously confident. After all, it was the middle of Vale –as long as he and the others could hold the line for a bit, there were swarms of teachers, transfers, and upper-year students to come back them up. All they had to do was make sure that the Grimm didn't hurt any civilians, and hey, wasn't that their whole job? Obviously it had been terrifying, but there was…a detachedness to it, if that made any sense. It was like a video game: kill the enemies as they spawned, protect the non-players, and victory. Victory was such an ingrained part of that mental thought process that the idea that he might lose, that maybe if he swung his sword wrong and Pyrrha and the others didn't get there in time he would die, didn't even enter Jaune's head. It was a possibility that he knew intrinsically, and yet…really, how could that happen? How could he be so unlucky? That sort of accident just didn't happen more than once or twice a generation, and he had his team to watch his back. He had Pyrrha to watch his back.
As dismal as his skills had been when he'd entered Beacon, Jaune still had the unconscious arrogance of the victor. As often as Cardin had beat him into the ground during spars, as shaky as his skills were when fighting Grimm in the forest –barring a horrific accident, there had never been even a moment when he was truly in danger of losing his life. Being hurt, maybe, but not killed. His classmates and teammates were there to back him up, and as humiliating as those spars had been, it wasn't like Cardin was seriously trying to kill or even injure him. Because of those handicaps, those advantages, Jaune unconsciously went into every fight with the assumption that he would either win, or it wouldn't matter.
And then, the Vytal Festival.
And then, Pyrrha.
Suddenly, the schoolyard assurances Jaune had grown up with had been torn away. Suddenly, he was fighting enemies that wouldn't take it easy on him, because there were crucial things at stake. Suddenly, he was facing killers that could think, and plan, and scheme, instead of charging blindly at him with slavering jaws. Suddenly, Beacon taught him its last and most cruel lesson, that victory was never assured and sometimes everyone you loved didn't make it back after a fight.
Loss was possible, and it could hit hard, at any time, with little to no warning, and take anyone away, no matter how skilled.
His friends, his team, they didn't know that right now. They were tense, as befitted Hunter cadets about to (possibly) engage with an unknown foe, weapons ready and close at their sides, but they were far more relaxed than he was, content with waiting. They just understood that there would be "baddies" to face, simplistic and as easy to defeat as a videogame, and that they were only taking on a nebulous sort of risk in preparing to come to the aid of their friends and fight against hardened criminals. For them, this was just another adventure, a happy story to tell when they would get home, as they all assumed that they would. They didn't know the risks. They didn't know the stakes.
They didn't know that it could be Cinder down there, arrogant and with only half the Maiden power, but Cinder all the same, the woman that had killed Pyrrha, the one who had torn out Penny's life and forced him, forced Penny to make the choice to die by the hand of a friend and thus ensure her power went to someone good. This was the woman who had brought Beacon to its knees, who had plunged the world into a communications blackout, and she could just be –down there, slaughtering his friends with Torchwick and Neopolitan and all the rest of the White Fang, as Jaune stood here like a lump, like the idiot hanging in a tree as his friends fought for their lives.
He clenched his hand around the pommel of his sword and paced harder.
Waiting like this was the worst part of a mission, knowing his friends were good but struggling to trust them to handle everything themselves, to somehow account for all the variables the enemy could put out and come out victorious. Academically, Jaune knew the whole plan they'd cobbled together front to back: they'd spent a good few months hammering out the kinks, after all. He and his team would wait as reinforcements, because Jaune would have found some way to tell them about things before the semester officially ended and the White Fang came to rob the docks. Blake would nudge Sun and/or Ilia in the right direction to investigate the docks themselves, and then wait with the rest of RWBY for the other Faunus to call them. Once it was confirmed that the White Fang was there and engaged with the enemy, Ruby would call him and then dip out with Weiss, kiting around the edge of the fight to find and draw away Neo while Blake and Yang would go to reinforce Sun and Ilia.
Knowing all that didn't make waiting any easier.
Penny had been an unexpected monkey wrench in their plans –Blake had mentioned her friend Ilia and explained what had happened on Menagerie, and everyone had agreed that it was probably better to pry her out of the White Fang ahead of time, but running into Sun and Penny on her way to talk to Ilia had been…disruptive. Obviously, Jaune was happy that she got to meet Sun again, but they'd originally planned to have Blake nudge Ilia to investigate on her own, perhaps with Blake accompanying her, and the presence and obvious interest of an Atlesian had twisted that possibility out of commission. Blake had instead pleaded with Sun to keep an eye on Ilia and pulled Penny aside, gravely explaining the situation and why it was so important that Penny not go to the relevant authorities with this information.
Jaune was glad that Blake had been the one to do it. His palms still felt slick thinking about her –blood blood it's not blood, just sweat– and he didn't think he could face Penny without viscerally remembering that moment, that sobbing wrench as he plunged Crocea Mors through her flesh. He'd- he'd tried to hit humans before, most notably Cinder Fall, but this was the first and the only time where Jaune had actually felt what it was like to stab his weapon into an actual living person. The memory still sickened him, the nauseous panic choking him, the screams and fleeing people around them, Penny so frail and fragile and pale as he knelt above her, the trembling hesitation as he clasped his sword with both hands and raised it point-down above her body, locking eyes with Penny as I could save her I could really save her we just need more time ran frantically through his head, but they didn't have the time, Weiss was alone against a fucking Maiden with low or no Aura, and then he closed his eyes in resignation and the sensation as he plunged the sword down with a scream-
Jaune swallowed thickly against the prickling nausea rising in his throat, trying not to gag as he closed his eyes.
That had been his friend.
He'd had months to cope, months to try and forget, months to fight against the sickening pressure closing in around his skull and the way his hand shook when he imagined that moment, and none of it helped. His friends tried to talk it out with him, but none of them could get very far in that conversation without crying, and they didn't have much time to be alone without his team intruding. And it wasn't like he could get a therapist, wasn't like he could walk into the Beacon's mental health office and say 'I killed one of my best friends in order to help her pass a hereditary power onto an ally, but now she's alive again because time turned backwards, so technically she's fine. How do I learn to cope with the memory of what I did?'
To a certain extent, Jaune was looking forward to whatever answers Jinn would give them with relief, no matter how crushing it may be, no matter how horrific the truth of what had happened to them was. At least then he wouldn't have to pretend anymore. If this was a dream, at least he'd know that. If it was an alternate dimension, at least he'd be able to face the future squarely. If it was time travel, at least he could be happy in knowing that his team was all together.
According to Blake, it'd been easier than she thought to convince Penny to keep quiet about Ilia being part of the White Fang, and their…somewhat less-than-rulebook investigation at the docks tonight. Jaune supposed that that made a certain kind of sense. As far as he could remember, Penny had been pretty young, mentality-wise, when she'd first met Team RWBY, so give her a chance at making friends and having a normal social life, and she was willing to throw away a lot. It felt disgustingly manipulative, but between feeling bad and Ilia not getting arrested and feeling bad and Ilia being thrown in an Atlas jail cell…well, Jaune would grit his teeth and be practical.
He was clinging to the fact that they weren't manipulating Penny with malicious intent –that they were telling her carefully edited truths because telling her the full truth wouldn't help anyone– even though he knew from Ozpin's example that that was a slippery slope to go down. The problem with withholding information based on your judgment of another person was that it was based on your judgement –and that could be wrong. Obviously Ozpin was well within his rights to not tell Ruby and the rest of them about the whole Salem situation when they were first years, because they were all overgrown kids and they could have easily been corrupted, frightened away, or killed. Not telling them the full story once they had fully and clearly committed to the fight –that was a mistake, a bad judgement call based on Ozpin's centuries of paranoia and betrayal. He had been acting on habit rather than judging the characters of RWBY and JNR for himself.
The especially unfortunate thing about doling information out based on judgement calls was that you didn't know you had made a mistake until the consequences walloped you in the face.
Jaune had told his team as much as he dared –that there were enemies working against the Hunter academies, that Lionheart was very probably a traitor, that there was an illusionist on the enemy side. That was more than enough information to base their assumptions on, enough that they'd be prepared to fight anything up to a Maiden, and ready to deal with and accept news of further conspiracy. Portioning out the information little by little, that seemed like the best way to deal with this. Jaune hadn't told his team anything that wasn't true, but he had left out a lot of information, information that he could dole out the closer they got to their goal of contacting Jinn. Hopefully, by the time they asked the fatal question, his teammates would be able to accept and understand the information she gave.
Now Jaune just had to cross his fingers and hope that that was the right course of action to take.
His ears practically twitched as he caught the faint sound of a Dust flare exploding in the distance, and Jaune's back teeth ground together as he turned around for some more frenetic pacing. This was fine. This had to be fine. Ruby and the others were Huntresses, there was no way that even Neo and Cinder and all the baddies combined could wipe them out without at least someone on the team managing to send off a warning of some kind. It was fine. It was fine. It was fine.
"Jaune?"
Muscles that were wound tight with tension spasmed briefly as he came to a halt, before Jaune exhaled shortly and turned to his partner with a wan smile.
"Yeah?"
"Are you…doing okay?" Pyrrha asked, tentatively reaching for his shoulder with one hand. Nora was hovering at the edge of the roof with one hand over her eyes, peering excitedly into the distance and practically vibrating with the urge to charge off and investigate. Ren was standing nearby, slouched against the wall of the rooftop exit as his eyes scanned the skyline around them, one hand on StormFlower. Jaune appreciated that. He could always count on Ren to stay focused on the mission.
"I…yeah, sorry." Jaune mumbled, consciously taking another deep breath and trying to unwind all the tension in his body, his shoulders slumping slightly. He pried his hand off of its vice-grip on the pommel of Crocea Mors, reminding himself that being overly tense before a mission could sap his strength and energy and that was just as bad as being unprepared. "I'm just…this is a lot."
"We should put our trust in Team RWBY." Pyrrha told him, smiling a little. "They're strong, and they seemed confident that they could handle this."
But confidence doesn't mean anything, Jaune wanted to cry at her, confidence doesn't mean jack against an opponent that's stronger than you are or even an opponent on your level if they catch you off-balance enough-
He took another deep breath.
"I know." he said. "I know, we should trust them. I do trust them. Its just…stressful, waiting here and hoping nothing goes wrong."
Pyrrha smiled –a sad, knowing little smile.
"The worst part of a fight is always just before it begins." she said. "You see it a lot in tournaments. I always hated waiting in the locker rooms or out in the hallways before we were sent in –my stomach used to get tied up in knots."
"Heh. Careful. You'll disillusion all your fans." Jaune said with a slight smile, nudging her arm with the back of his knuckles. "Experiencing nerves and all like a regular human."
Pyrrha had spent enough time hanging out with him and the rest of the team –not to mention their weekly game nights with Team RWBY– that she giggled rather than wilted at that joke, hiding her mouth behind her hand. When she finished giggling, though, she looked aside, shyly tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as her green eyes lowered to the ground.
"That reminds me…earlier today, when we…you know…"
Jaune's throat caught as she trailed off, and he swallowed hard and looked away, fixating on the docks with an edge of desperation.
"Y-you can call it a date if you want." he managed thickly. "I mean, if you want. Only if you want. I'm not, I don't wanna, uh, abuse my leadership position or anything-"
"I want to." Pyrrha said quickly, and now they both studiously avoided each other's gaze, blushing. Jaune was fairly sure that Nora was splitting her attention between eagerly scanning the horizon for explosions and keeping on eye on the Nikos-Arc drama unfolding on the rooftop. "I just…I was wondering, does that have anything to do with this, tonight? Were you worried that one of us wouldn't come back?"
Yes, of course, because Jaune was used to going into a fight and knowing that Pyrrha wasn't there anymore, and wouldn't be there ever again. He was used to their romance being a quick and fleeting thing that had blossomed at the very end of their time together as friends, a realization from him and a quiet, longtime yearning from her that had been brutally massacred in the ashes of Beacon. He'd realized that Pyrrha had feelings for him at the dance, but he hadn't wanted to say anything during the festival itself because that kind of emotional entanglement could throw them all off game, and then, and then-
And then there wasn't any time at all, just a quick kiss that left him grasping as he was shoved away into a locker and sent flying into the night-
Jaune swallowed again, the walls of his throat catching painfully. They'd never had the chance to have a relationship, because by the time they had anything, Pyrrha was about to die.
So yeah, he'd wanted to go on a date. He'd wanted to take her out for coffee in Vale (neither of them knew a damn thing about coffee dates, alternating between sheepish laughter and an air of shy, shared exploration), and he'd wanted them to go on walks together and play games in an arcade and gods, just be teenagers for a little bit, just snatch at those tantalizing shreds of normalcy that the semester before break offered him. He'd wanted to fall in love with his partner, Pyrrha Nikos, the normal way, the way she deserved.
"Y-yeah, a little bit." he admitted aloud, shifting a little from foot to foot and lacing his fingers together, twisting and pushing his hands outwards to crack his knuckles. "I just…I wanted us to have something, in case this all goes wrong. You know? I wanted us to…have that. Have this. Have something normal."
Pyrrha blushed harder and dimpled a little, probably at the inclusion of 'normal.'
I wanted to have a last farewell. I wanted you to know how I feel in case I'm the one that dies this time. Jaune added silently.
"Well, we do." Pyrrha said, and squeezed his shoulder. "And it won't go wrong. Our friends have us, and they have each other. They can handle this, and if they can't, we'll be there to back them up."
No, Blake had said, Ilia wasn't impulsive.
No, Blake had said, Ilia definitely wouldn't do what she had done and plunge right into trouble.
Past Blake was a total liar.
Thankfully the docks weren't aflame by the time Yang and her partner charged onto the scene, but honestly, they weren't far from it. Torchwick certainly wasn't helping, his cane aimed towards Ilia as Dust flares tore up the concrete docking area. Ilia was scampering and leaping from ground to crate to wall like an acrobat, barely keeping ahead of his shots, and even though she was avoiding the big cargo crates full of Dust, it was probably only a matter of time before someone hit something important and the whole place went up. Yang wasn't entirely certain what Ilia had tried to do –she didn't seem like the type to take someone hostage to instigate bargaining, for example, or the sort of person who would start hacking away at her former comrades if they abandoned her perception of the mission– but whatever it had been, Torchwick clearly took exception. The rapidly changing light caused by the whistling flares made it almost impossible for Ilia to change her skin tone and blend into the shadows around the docks, and the cane-wielding criminal was clearly aiming to kill as he slowly boxed her into a corner.
Sun was doing his best to back her up, but he just as clearly had his hands full with the White Fang grunts, ducking and dodging and whirling his staff like a madman as it cracked against their Auras, and occasionally spinning his weapon into the two separated forms to light up his surrounding enemies with a barrage of gunfire. He was holding his own, but that was all he was doing, and if Torchwick gave Ilia up as a lost cause for just a few seconds, the situation for Sun could turn deadly.
"Help Ilia!" Blake cried as they ran, already reaching for Gambol Shroud, and Yang nodded, cocking her gauntlets as her partner split off towards Sun. The structural integrity of the docking area was already fucked all to hell thanks to Torchwick, so a few more bullet holes wouldn't matter on the city council's repair budget. Yang therefore threw her arms back and shot into the ground without remorse, launching herself forward in a blur as she twisted in midair, bringing her elbow back for another blow. The first indication Torchwick had of her presence was Yang's fist slamming into his ribs with an explosion of her Dust cartridge, sending him flying with a crash of bending metal into the nearest shipping crate.
Yang's mind was already zooming into overdrive as she cocked her arms back, ejecting the cartridge with a tinkle as her world narrowed to this fight, this opponent, this moment. She'd only ever fought Torchwick when he was inside a Paladin –she didn't know a thing about his typical hand-to-hand.
His Aura hadn't even flickered when she'd hit him, so it had to be fairly strong –he'd tanked a hit from a Dust bullet, after all, a hit that had sent him flying into a metal wall hard enough to dent it. Torchwick was smoking lightly from where he slumped against the slightly-bent portion of the shipping container, but Yang knew that that wouldn't last long, especially since he was already stirring, his grip firming on the cane that he had managed to keep ahold of. Not dropping his weapon even when bodily blindsided out of nowhere –another sign of a potentially tough opponent.
"Oh, man." Torchwick blinked and shook his head lightly, half-using his cane for balance as he straightened himself up. "Hey Blondie, you get the number of that Bullhead?"
"Same number as your jail cell, asshole." Yang quipped back, and heard the scamper of Ilia's feet heading towards them.
Torchwick groaned, and proved that he'd heard the same thing as he pushed off towards Yang and brought his cane up in a single fluid movement, clearly trying to finish her off before he re-engaged with Ilia. Within the first few exchanges of his cane against her gauntleted arms, Yang had his basic style pegged –even when walking off a Dust impact, Torchwick was quick, and he used that quickness to his advantage, probing at her defense with rapid, decisive strikes as he tried to burn through her Aura and send her flying.
Which was the wrong fucking tactic to take with Yang Xiao Long.
Yang gritted her teeth and ignited her Semblance, feeling the muted thuds of impact turn into a roar buzzing under her skin, a fire that burned brighter every time Torchwick's cane cracked against the Aura on her arms, and once on her cheek as he tried to backhand her.
And then Ilia arrived in a blur of movement and shadow, a silhouette that Yang could only vaguely pick out by the position of a telescoping rapier laced with bright yellow Dust vents. Now Torchwick had to divide his attention between the two of them, and Ilia was already hard to spot. Unfortunately, he proved more than up to the task, twisting sinuously and flipping his cane so that the business end jammed abruptly into the chameleon Faunus's stomach –something Yang only figured out when he pulled the trigger and Ilia was sent flying, her grey form suddenly visible as it shot across multiple meters of ground and her camouflage failed to keep up with the change in lighting.
Ember Celica roared, and Torchwick was prevented from following up on that strike by a hail of Dust bullets as Yang's fists flew, creating a deadly barrage that he either had to deflect or dodge. The ginger criminal chose deflection, Yang's shells whining and sparking off the metal of his cane as he twisted his wrist to catch every shot. Yang caught movement out of the corner of her eye, but it was movement in a familiar color, and she didn't let up as Ilia slid in again, abandoning her camouflage.
"How? How did you see through me?" Ilia snarled as her slender blade flickered out, clanging against his guard, and Torchwick grinned.
"Well, you see kid, I had a thing with a lady named Chameleon a few years back-"
Yang felt the cold metal curve of the handle swipe around her wrist, violently tugging her arm sideways, and stopped her swing before the kinetic sensors engaged and she shot Ilia by mistake.
"-and let's just say she was way better than you." Torchwick finished as she ripped her arm free and he spun his cane, leaning to the side at the same moment to avoid the simultaneous swipe of Ilia's electrified whip, before he fired point-blank at the ground between them. Ilia and Yang jumped back to gain some distance as the concrete exploded at their feet –even if that did give him an advantage. Yang could tank a hit like that, but she couldn't take that many hits of that magnitude before her Aura ran out, and Ilia definitely couldn't take more than a few before her Aura broke entirely.
Torchwick's green eye moved between them both as they landed, measuring, even as he continued to speak in a voice laced with jaunty disdain.
"Come to think of it, kiddo, you know who your mom was? 'Cause I gotta say, the resemblance is uncanny, even if we were both humans."
"You-!" Ilia turned red, literally, crimson spreading across her skin as her freckles, eyes, and hair flashed yellow with rage.
"Hey. Don't let him get to you." Yang warned her, putting a hand out.
"Yeah, brat. Didn't anyone ever tell you how to speak to your parents?"
"SHUT UP!" Ilia roared, swinging her rapier-whip as it telescoped outwards and the sizzle of bright yellow Electricity Dust lit up the night.
"Woah!" Torchwick ducked under the arc of it –a wise choice, given his cane was made of metal and choosing to block would have ended…poorly. In the same moment, however, he spun his cane around so that the curved end was pointed towards Ilia, firing out a grappling hook that wrapped around her ankle. A grin showed under the brim of Torchwick's hat before he yanked, bowling her over onto her back.
Yang's charge turned into a slide as she ducked under the errant swipe of the falling Ilia's weapon, but then she was straightening up and raising herself on her heel as her elbow pulled back, ready to clock Torchwick's face with all the force of her speed, momentum, and bodyweight –not to mention her muscles, Semblance, and the Dust rounds inside Ember Celica.
She had time to see Torchwick's black-rimmed eye widen briefly before her fist smashed into his cheek, sending him staggering back with a thunder of Dust. He was tough, she had to give him that –a lot of people's Aura would have broken by now, but he'd taken a fully-charged hit from her once before all this, a hit that had taken apart an Atlesian Paladin. He could take a few normal strikes from her, even charged with Dust.
Yang gave a full-throated battle cry, not giving him a chance to recover as she hammered against his defense with a barrage of punches, before Torchwick managed to twist his cane in the right direction as it cracked against her cheek and sent her staggering back. A sharp whistle was all the warning Yang had before an explosion of fiery needles burst over her heart, molten Dust splashing over her chest and arms as Torchwick's flare detonated against her Aura and sent the fire humming along her bones raging to new heights. Yang's eyes flared red as she was sent flying back, her feet skidding over the ground as she landed, and the strands of hair tossing around her face as she slid were starting to glow gold. She didn't know when he had retracted her grappling hook, hadn't been paying attention –sloppy, very sloppy, just because she remembered Torchwick being weaker than the enemies she had been used to fighting after the Fall of Beacon.
Ilia hadn't moved in to directly support her when Yang was throwing punches at Torchwick, mostly because that was what you did when you had a partner whose fighting style you didn't know and didn't want to commit friendly fire, but when Yang was sent hurtling back, Ilia was streaking right in through the gap, her whip-rapier flicking rapidly against Torchwick's cane in a series of darting probes. He deflected well, well enough that Yang knew that Ilia would be in trouble if she didn't help soon, and Yang's gauntlets snapped out behind her with another yell as she was sent flying back towards them. She timed her attacks to Ilia's, firing down at the ground just before the dueling pair and sending herself spinning over Torchwick's head, forcing him to engage on two fronts as she landed on his other side and swung for the criminal's ribs again. His Aura might protect him from direct damage, but Yang could still give him one heck of a bruise.
She still remembered Ruby's account of the first time they'd fought at the docks.
Nobody took pot shots at her baby sister and got away with it. If she had the opening, she'd go for his fucking balls.
Yang probably wouldn't get that opening, though. Torchwick had an unbelievably solid defense and besides, Yang's style of hand-to-hand meant that low blows literally weren't her thing. Hitting below the belt meant bending, and fighting with her fists meant that any kind of bent position left her open and vulnerable, unless it was a quick tuck-and-roll to build momentum. Same with kicks –oh, Yang knew how to kick, and she'd become a much more agile and much less top-heavy fighter after Beacon, but it still wasn't her main style of attack.
But thinking of Ruby meant thinking about the other players in this fight, and Yang gritted her teeth a little as she ruthlessly dragged her mind back on task. Blake and Sun would be fine –they'd kicked ass under these exact same circumstances before. No, Yang was worried about Weiss and Ruby, and she was worried about them dealing with Neopolitan on their own –or, well, almost on their own.
The fact that they were dealing with the mute assassin –if Neopolitan was here at all– was made clear by the fact that neither Yang nor Ilia had found themselves with six inches of steel buried in their back. Whatever Neopolitan's relationship to Torchwick was, it was clear that she was fiercely protective of both him and his memory, and seeing him threatened now, giving ground as he twisted and blocked his cane frantically against their matched blows, would have sent Neopolitan down on top of them like a Nevermore. Oh, he was holding his own, but he was just holding his own –Yang was a Huntress-level fighter, and she had Ilia as backup. The fact that Torchwick had his hands full with defense and hadn't even been trying to counterattack in the past minute meant that sooner or later, they'd wear him down. Reinforcements would come eventually, drawn by the sound of gunfire and battle cries: he was fighting to disengage and escape, now, and they all knew it.
Barring a horrific twist of luck, they had this fight in the bag.
Yang needed to focus on that and leave the rest to her team.
Ruby's heart pounded against her throat as she and Weiss raced through the darkened streets of Vale, feeling giddy with adrenaline. This was it. This was the first real test of their leadership, of the ideas that they had brought back with them and intended to use to change the future. Right now, Yang and the others were keeping the White Fang busy, but if Ruby had pegged Neopolitan's personality right, then the other girl would be watching and waiting for the one thing, the one threat that she knew would be coming. Neopolitan hadn't forgiven her in the years after the Fall of Beacon, and Ruby doubted that a few months would have softened her opinion any further. No, if she assumed that Ruby hadn't fallen, hadn't remembered anything, she'd be here, because it would be her one and only chance to catch the young trainee out away from her team and the protective halls of Beacon.
And if she assumed Ruby had fallen with her, well, Ruby was a hero. Heroes tried to stop the bad guys, so naturally, she would try to use her foreknowledge to try and stop the huge robbery going down at the docks tonight.
So yeah, the chances were very high that Neopolitan would be here at the docks tonight, and between her and Weiss, they stood a very good chance of pinning her down long enough to at least try to talk things out. And if Weiss wasn't enough as backup…
"Are you sure you don't need my help in apprehending this criminal?" Penny asked as she blitzed along beside them, running just as fast but with no outward sign of exertion. Another little tick that Ruby really should have noticed either when they'd first met. "I'm combat ready!"
"I need to talk to her before we try to arrest her." Ruby panted. "If she doesn't listen-"
If she didn't, Neopolitan was a big enough threat to warrant killing. Ruby had never bloodied her scythe before, but if it was for the fate of Remnant, she'd clench her teeth and do it.
"-we'll figure something out." she finished aloud.
"This business of clandestine problem-solving is quite marvelous!" Penny chimed as they turned a corner, and Ruby saw the half-familiar shape of the warehouse they had first climbed to get a good look at the situation. "I am happy that you're including me in your adventures to help uncover a conspiracy."
Ruby still felt a guilty little twist in her heart when she thought of that. When Blake had returned from her meeting with Ilia with Penny in tow, Ruby had had to bite down panic, and not just because Penny had apparently witnessed the meeting between the two Faunus. She hadn't even been able to see her beloved friend die, but to know she was still alive-
It was fine. This was fine.
They'd actually spent a nice afternoon together, inviting Penny to share in Team RWBY's games and politely ignoring how quickly she picked up the hang of the system. The real difficulty had been in talking her out of taking the news of their so-called "discovered conspiracy" to Ironwood and Ozpin. Penny was an earnest, somewhat naïve soul, and due to not having a proper childhood to draw experience from, when she saw a problem that she didn't know how to handle, she would consult her programming, her pre-logged knowledge, and her encyclopedic knowledge of the legal system to determine a proper course of action. Rules were really all she had at this point, since her experience with people had been so lacking, and Ruby didn't blame her in the least for using the rulebook –any rulebook– as her instruction manual for dealing with things.
Basically, Penny was what they called a Lawful Good on the alignment chart for Goblets & Grimm.
And the problem with her being such a by-the-rules person was that when Penny saw something illegal, her natural response was to take legally-approved actions –namely, detaining and then delivering the perpetrators to the nearest law enforcement office. When those perpetrators were Blake and Ilia…well, they had problems.
Thankfully, Penny was also a fundamentally good person –and, you know, a person– and when she got experience with actual people, she was more than happy to see the shades of grey that the legal system and her programming didn't cover. When Ruby had explained that Blake was trying to help Ilia, and that Ilia was a good person caught in a bad situation, Penny had instantly redirected from "Shouldn't we tell the police?" to "How can I help?" When Ruby further explained that spreading the information they had to someone in authority might alert the baddies and let them escape, Penny had been positively eager to shut up –and help them do something about the situation.
Thus, and not without an inner twinge of guilt, Ruby had fed Penny the same half-truth Jaune had told his team: there were criminals arriving at the docks tonight, and Ruby and her team wanted to catch them in the act and pry some information out of them. Accustomed to military protocol, Penny had seamlessly fallen in with their plan, not troubled at all by the fact that Ruby told her to wait on a certain street until she and Weiss came to fetch her, and then to come with them and not act to arrest any of the White Fang or other criminals that she saw, but defend Weiss and Ruby while they did their thing.
So here it was, everything coming to a head, all the things that they had told their friends and all the plans that they had made thus far. Ruby made nervous eye contact with Weiss as they plastered themselves against the back of the building, and her partner gave her a firm nod, blue eyes gone cold with determination. Ruby gulped, then seized the ladder and began to climb.
"C'mon, Penny." she said, and heard a clang below her as Penny seized the metal ladder. Ruby's palms felt slick with sweat as she climbed, and she breathed evenly in and out a few times, calming herself with the long practice of a Huntress. She could do this. She could do this. It was just fighting someone and trying to get them to talk –er, well, listen. Ruby didn't think that Neopolitan could talk.
And she could do this. She was a Huntress, by all the gods, and she had her friends to protect and the world to save. She'd spent months rehearsing her arguments, weeks workshopping them between four other people to look for holes and to offer second opinions. Neopolitan would see reason if she was here, surely. Ruby could make her understand that what she was doing was bad.
Ruby lightly sprang up onto the roof, not seeing anyone, not that that meant anything. Neopolitan did use illusions, after all. She reached behind herself and swung out Crescent Rose, expanding her baby to full, glorious battle form as Penny hopped up onto the roof behind her, and walked forward. Everything looked like it was going according to plan –Sun was leaping after a flickering shadow that Ruby guessed was Ilia, both of them heading straight for Torchwick, who seemed fundamentally unaware that he had an audience. Well, he was a thief –he was sneaky like that. He might very well know that Ilia was running towards him, and was just getting ready to catch her by surprise with a sudden turn.
Ruby took a deep breath, gathering air for her original shout of "Hey!" –and then her reflexes twanged like a badly-tuned piano wire and she ducked backwards, bending almost horizontally on sheer instinct as a rapier stabbed through the air above her where her heart had been, propelled by a brownish-pinkish blur accompanied by pale streaks of white. It seemed that her guess had been right on the money –and now she had to survive the consequences.
Flooding herself with Aura, Ruby whirled into a cloud of rose petals and zipped backwards to give herself room and draw her opponent away from the edge, reassembling herself in the center of the roof with Crescent Rose at the ready as Neopolitan shoved her palm against the ground and flipped, landing neatly and with her parasol held towards Ruby, sharp tip extended. Her face was a mask of hatred, and Ruby swallowed a little, realizing all over again what an immense task she had set for herself.
"Okay, listen-" she began, but Neopolitan's lips peeled back in a snarl and she launched herself forward. Ruby shoved Crescent up to block the piercing thrust, but Neopolitan used her stance against her, sweeping a foot behind Ruby's ankles and yanking them out from under her as Neopolitan quickly reversed grips on her parasol and stabbed downwards. Ruby flickered out of Neopolitan's way with her Semblance, moving only a foot or so away before she rolled to her feet and swung Crescent Rose in a diagonal slash. It didn't catch Neopolitan and she honestly hadn't expected it to –Ruby wasn't fighting to kill, not yet.
Neopolitan's dainty heels clicked down on the flat of Ruby's scythe, but then her pink-brown eyes darted suspiciously around as there was a minute change in the air around them, the beginning of a slight, almost imperceptible hum. Neopolitan's eyes widened, and she backflipped off of Ruby's scythe instead of pressing her attack as her image shimmered and disappeared in a flash of white. Ruby adjusted her grip on Crescent Rose cautiously in that moment of silence, looking around to make sure that she wasn't about to be ambushed as she began to shuffle backwards, planning to put her back against the edge of the makeshift "arena" that she and her team had planned to create.
Okay, so it looks like this part of the plan is still on track too…
As gunfire cracked and the White Fang shouted below, the rooftop of this warehouse was an incongruous island of pseudo-peace, quiet and grey and still. This was helped in no small part by the presence of Weiss, who had taken a knee by the ladder up to the rooftop and stabbed Myrtenaster into the ground in a guard position. Both her hands were wrapped around the hilt, and Weiss's eyes were closed in profound concentration as she used the Dust in her weapon and her Semblance to create a ring of black Gravity glyphs that surrounded Ruby and presumably the now-disguised Neopolitan. Penny stood beside Weiss, her back to the kneeling girl as Floating Array spun around her head and shoulders, ready to defend them both against anyone that might try to interfere.
When they were workshopping this idea, Weiss had offered to create one big Gravity glyph rather than a ring of them, something that would stick both Ruby and Neopolitan in place, but Weiss's glyphs spread outwards from a central point and they had worried about whether or not they'd be able to catch Neopolitan in the gravity field before she noticed something was wrong and retreated. Smaller glyphs were easier and faster to create, and Weiss could spam a lot of them before getting tired. By using some premium-grade Dust, she could quickly and effectively create something of a fence, a makeshift barrier that would trap Ruby and Neopolitan together in the same space and give Ruby room and time to talk –or deal with her– without Neopolitan getting away.
Ruby kept backing up until her left foot hit what felt like a solid wall of air, suddenly dragging down like she had stepped back into mud, and she smirked slightly as she pulled it back and stepped forward half a pace.
"You're not gonna be able to force yourself through without Dust." she called to the empty-looking rooftop, knowing –or at least praying– that Weiss had managed to close the circle before their target had gotten out of it.
Her heart leapt as the crystal shards of Neopolitan's Semblance fluttered away in a humanoid shape a few meters away, revealing that she had tried to escape out through a point in the circle closer to the edge of the roof –tried and failed, as Neopolitan angrily wrenched her foot out and back from the spinning Gravity Glyph and turned to glare at Ruby. Neopolitan pinched her fingers and viciously dragged them sideways, and Ruby took an educated guess at what she meant –oh, Weiss could hold her here, but only as long as Weiss had the Aura to back up her Semblance.
"We just wanna talk." Ruby said, trying to sound as placating as she could when Neopolitan blamed her for the death of her…friend? Family? Both? "That's all, I promise."
Neopolitan's glare turned needlelike.
"Look, we both know that you have no reason to trust Cinder or Salem-"
Ruby yelped and dodged as Neopolitan suddenly launched herself at her and the range turned from comfortably safe to far too close for Ruby to be secure with, her opponent flipping and twirling like an acrobat as Ruby tried and failed to avoid getting hooked on that parasol and flung about like a first-year trainee –or stabbed as Neopolitan swiped Crescent out of the way and came in with that needle-sharp tip. Ruby was better than she had been, those first two times she had fought Neopolitan, but that was because she had experience with the shorter girl's style and had come prepared to deal with it, had trained specifically to try and work against it for all of these long few months.
"-we want to work together!"
Neopolitan's eyes narrowed into slits as she let out the first sound Ruby had ever heard her make –an enraged-sounding hiss that whistled out from between her clenched teeth like a snarl. Her next slashing swipe tore a line along Ruby's hip and stomach, and if not for Aura, she'd have been gutted. Ruby managed to give herself a little breathing space as she whirled Crescent in a figure-eight, making Neopolitan lightly leap backwards as she balanced her parasol over one shoulder, before she landed and swung it off to point directly at Ruby again.
"Just listen to me!" Ruby shouted at her, lowering her scythe a little. "You want Torchwick to stay alive, right?! There's no reason for us to go after him if he's on our side!"
There was something there, a slight flicker in Neopolitan's eyes, shift of her parasol as it perhaps lowered the barest inch, before steel came back into her eyes and she brandished it again. The message was clear: she wasn't playing games right now, and Ruby swallowed as her hands tightened on Crescent Rose.
"We have a plan." she added hurriedly before Neopolitan could attack again, with was a bit of an exaggeration, but whatever. Any port in a storm, and any bargaining chip when it came to saving lives, even the lives of decidedly-not-nice people. That was all Neopolitan and Torchwick were, really –not nice, but not entirely evil either. Just career criminals in way over their heads. "We can deal with Cinder together, and we'll leave you guys alone after, I promise-"
Without warning, Neopolitan lunged at her again as Ruby was forced to frantically defend herself in another whirlwind frenzy of spinning steel and clanging blades, before she split apart into three clumps of rose petals that zoomed around Neopolitan and re-fused behind the assassin as Ruby skidded backwards a little.
"Maybe you can kill me, but you'll still be charging right towards the future you're trying to avoid!" she cried in frustration. "Do you think Cinder's changed at all? Or is she just going to throw you both away the first chance she gets again!?"
Neopolitan turned towards her with an angry snarl, flipping her parasol up for another attack as Ruby readied her aching arms to defend herself.
"I get that you're mad at me, I do!" she continued desperately, falling back under the other's withering assault as Neopolitan's parasol danced and wove through the gaps in Ruby's defense, moving Crescent Rose in frantic circles, twirls, and arcs as she tried to keep from being killed or otherwise incapacitated on the spot. If she was hurt, Weiss would pull down the circle of Gravity glyphs, but if she did that then Neopolitan would probably flee and they didn't have any idea of how to find her again except at the Breach. "But I didn't kill him, I swear! It was a Grimm!"
Something in the way Neopolitan's furious face twitched told Ruby that that was close enough. Ruby might not have pulled the trigger, but she had made the gun, sending Neopolitan off flying into the sky and leaving Torchwick alone and emotionally-compromised while he was surrounded by aforementioned Grimm.
Ruby was sent flying back with a yelp as Neopolitan's parasol slammed into her diaphragm, skidding on her back several meters as she luckily kept ahold of Crescent Rose. Her pulse jumped as Ruby recovered and managed to twist up onto her knees, but then she wheezed as two sharp heels slammed into her chest, forcing her back again as she tumbled head-over-heels along the ground. Ruby clenched her hands around Crescent Rose and tried to roll with it, but then a sudden dragging sensation made itself known along her side as she realized that she had rolled onto the edge of the glyphs. Panic spiked through her as she hastily used her Semblance, blindly reforming herself in the center of the roof just in time to see Neopolitan's heels skid over the ground where she had been, the other girl landing in a sort of sliding crouch as she swung her weapon around and the steel point of her parasol raked over the ground, rasping up sparks.
"I don't get you." Ruby wheezed as they paused for a few seconds to measure each other, staring at the other girl, whose face was still twisted with a visceral, abiding anger. "Why do you want to destroy the world if you live on it?"
Neopolitan's set expression twinged a little, again, but this time it was uncertainty rather than fury. Slowly, almost begrudgingly, her hand slid inside the pocket of her tight brown slacks as she stood up straight. She pulled out a Scroll, flipping it open and typing something out one-handed as she continued to stare Ruby down. If not for the fact that she had demonstrated that she was more than willing to jab the point of her parasol into Ruby's throat, Ruby would have complimented Neopolitan for that kind of dexterity.
Message finished, Neopolitan's thumb shifted and pressed another button.
"That's what the boy said."
The boy…?
Ruby's eyes widened.
"Oscar?" she croaked as her heart froze, thinking for one horrified second that Neopolitan had tracked him down and-
But no. No, she couldn't have. Oscar had lived in a farm in the middle of Mistral, and criminals didn't do well outside of big cities –crime built negativity, after all. Oscar had nothing of fame about him. Until Ozpin popped up in his head, he was safe, thoroughly blanketed in anonymity. Ruby knew him personally and even she doubted that she'd be able to track Oscar back to where he had lived before answering the call of adventure and coming to Haven. Besides, Neo was talking about Oscar agreeing with what Ruby had just said, which meant that Neopolitan must have witnessed something when Oscar was held captive inside that giant flying whale. After all, he hadn't fallen in the Central Location with the rest of them.
Neopolitan inclined her chin slightly in agreement to Ruby's query, eyes still narrowed.
"Salem wants to die." Ruby said, leaping on this opportunity with both hands –er, metaphorically speaking, that was. If Neopolitan wasn't going to try and kill her, Ruby would take advantage of that for as long as she could. "She wants to collect the Relics from under the schools and bring them together while humanity is divided, so that the gods will judge us and wipe Remnant from existence. I-it's the only thing that can kill her, she thinks."
Neopolitan raised an eyebrow. And is it? her expression seemed to say.
"I don't know, but –Remnant includes you." Ruby said desperately. "It includes Torchwick a-and stealing and Dust and literally everything you care about! If you help Salem, you're trying to end it all! Forever! Why do you want that?"
Salem was smart, yes, Ruby had seen that. Viciously cunning and all too used to using people's flaws against them, but when it came to dealing with her as an enemy –treating her as a BBE, as the final boss, as the greatest personal threat to Remnant…that was the wrong angle to take.
Salem was a force of nature, a calamity just as much as she was a person. She was conventionally unkillable, had powerful magic, and could only be delayed a few hours at most. If she chose, she could have personally laid siege to every settlement on Remnant and won: what did walls do against a woman who could control weather to a far greater degree than mere Maidens? What did Huntsmen, Huntresses, and Hunters do against a walking dominion that could bring hordes of Grimm with her? What did munitions and Semblances do against a being that could regenerate endlessly and that no Dust or weapon or Aura could kill?
Salem could've wiped humanity out all over again, if she chose to. She didn't because- because-
Because twisted as it was, maybe even the evil witch-queen of the Grimm had hope. Hope that if she sowed enough chaos, caused enough hatred, that maybe when the Relics were brought together and the Brother Gods were summoned, they would find this world unclean and Salem could finally rest as they ripped apart her and everything in existence, destroyed existence itself. What did it matter to them? They were gods, and reality was but clay for them to mold. They could wipe the slate clean and start anew with as much qualms as Ruby had when she pressed Delete Character on a game to start a new file.
So what did it matter to Salem that she was destroying the world just so she could die?
With a goal as vast as that, with something as total as extinction, Salem didn't give a damn about any of the rest of them. Maybe she never had. She certainly wasn't going to take half-measures in her attempts to bring about the end of the world, no matter what she promised her followers. They might see Salem as an unstoppable force, but they also thought they saw someone who could be reasoned with, who wanted something less than the utter and total destruction of the world itself. They thought that as long as they served, Salem's indomitable will could be channeled into advantages for themselves, that she would make something new after she burned everything down, and give them pride-of-place within that new world.
Better the right hand of the Devil than in his path.
But Salem wasn't someone that could be reasoned with, because she was utterly, terrifyingly sane, and she wanted nothing less than death, and knew that her death could be caused by nothing but the gods. To that end, she was like a wildfire, a conflagration, and fire didn't listen to orders like "This far and no further." It burned without restraint, until it had consumed everything around it.
"I-if you think Salem's the best option, she's not." Ruby continued stubbornly. "Maybe she is stronger than us, and older than us, and smarter than us, but you and Torchwick like to gamble, right? What's better odds –knowing that if Salem wins, the world's destroyed for sure, or that if you side with us and we all work together, it only might get destroyed?"
Neopolitan glanced towards the Gravity Glyphs circling them. Weiss was holding on, but she was starting to look tired, sweating just a little as her breathing increased. She might be able to hold this for another minute or so, but no longer, not if she wanted to keep enough Aura to defend herself when the glyphs went down. Neopolitan glanced back to Ruby as she began typing out a new message with her thumb.
"Who says she'll get it done in our lifetime?"
"Who says she won't?" Ruby argued. "She already got two back when- back when we fell. Cinder recovered them before she destroyed the Central Location."
She saw Neopolitan's fingers tighten on the handle of her extended parasol.
"Look, I know you have no reason to trust us." Ruby said. "And we have no reason to trust you. But that doesn't mean we can't work together. My team and I are planning to take the train to Mistral, to Haven over the break –you can come with us! We have the same goals here! We both want to live, and we both want the people we care about to stay alive. We both want Cinder dead, and we both want to stop Salem from destroying the world. There's no reason for us not to cooperate!"
Neopolitan's glare flattened, and she jerked her chin towards the docks below.
"Is there a nice way to say I don't really care one way or the other about him…?" Ruby mumbled sheepishly, then caught herself and gulped. It was kinda true, though: as much as she winced to admit it, she had maybe sorta forgotten about Neopolitan's existence, never mind her relationship to Torchwick, before the other girl had shown up in Atlas. And then, well, the threat Neopolitan posed had been more than enough to drive any vague memories of her long-dead boss out of Ruby's head. What did she care about Torchwick? He was a small-time crook who had died without ever knowing who and what he worked for, just another cog in the engine of destruction that had destroyed Beacon –a mere minion of a greater evil who had left nothing of himself behind when he'd died.
Or so Ruby had thought.
Because Neopolitan was here, and she seemed very interested in renewing her threat as Ruby blatantly admitted that she didn't care about what happened to the man she had once gotten killed.
Ruby yelped and ducked out of the way as Neopolitan's parasol speared towards her, the world flipping upside-down as she used every scrap of agility she had to avoid the flurry of blows the incensed woman was dealing out, knowing that each solid strike would wear away at her Aura and if she got hit too many times-
Neopolitan would kill her.
She would definitely kill her.
Ruby didn't bother trying to argue her point anymore –she needed air for dodging and for blocking, and besides, Neopolitan looked in even less of a mood to listen than before. Ruby gulped as she realized that she might…she might have to kill this person, here, now, or at least try to. All it would take is a quick flicker with her Semblance as she hooked Crescent Rose under Neopolitan's chin, feet planted in the shorter girl's back, and a pull of the trigger and the momentum from the gunshot would be more than enough to…
Chills slid down Ruby's spine. The thought of that sickening jolt, that crunch of broken Aura and spray of blood, made her hands shake. That was a person that she would've just killed, a living, breathing person with thoughts and hopes and dreams and loved ones, people that she cared about. Maybe not good people, but people all the same. Could Ruby do that?
She had to.
She had to, if she wanted Remnant to be safe, because Neopolitan posed far too big of a threat to their plans otherwise. If Ruby wanted this to work, if she wanted them to be able to get to Haven safely, she needed to make sure that Neopolitan wasn't working against them, and if the petite criminal didn't want to ally with them…
She'd have to do it.
Ruby swallowed around the gritty nausea in her throat and firmed her grip around Crescent Rose, exerting herself a little more as she twirled her weapon, the scythe flowing through the air as she blocked and deflected Neopolitan's hail of strikes, the two of them dodging and jumping and twisting as they blitzed back and forth around their small circle of roof, keeping away from the edges on sheer instinct as they focused all their attention on their opponent. Neopolitan was bendy enough that if Ruby wanted that for-sure killshot, she'd need to whittle down her Aura a little bit, make sure it was something Ruby could cut through along with muscle and bone and viscera as Ruby's fifteen-year-old body sliced through the other girl's neck. She'd gotten a little stronger than she had been the first time she was fifteen through all that training, but there was only so much Ruby could do to change her mass, and nothing at all she could do to change her height.
And then, even through the thunderous sounds of Dust explosions and screams from below, Ruby heard it –the dying hum of the Gravity glyphs. Her heart froze even as she cut Crescent Rose in a vicious slice that Neopolitan had to crouch to avoid, sliding in through Ruby's reach as her parasol angled towards the young Huntress's heart. Ruby slipped aside, though, with a quick sidestep as she twirled Crescent in order to not lose momentum, bringing it down in an overhead swing that Neopolitan leaped back from.
And then she kept going, streaking along the roof in a patter of high heels as she crossed over the empty space where Weiss's glyphs had been.
"No!" Ruby cried in frustration, activating her Semblance to rush after her –only to crash headlong into an illusion made of glass shards as the image of Neopolitan's body shattered mid-leap over the edge. Ruby quickly flowed backwards onto the roof, whipping her head around, because if that wasn't Neopolitan and Weiss was on low Aura-
Weiss was fine, whipping Myrtenaster up into a ready position as Penny blinked, her green eyes lighting up and moving in slow sweeps over the rooftop as Floating Array spun like a jagged halo behind her back. Then Penny blinked again, her eyes going dull, as a disappointed frown twisted her face.
"Subject has fled the area." she announced, and Weiss slowly, cautiously lowered her sword as Ruby's shoulders slumped.
"What now?" Weiss asked, stepping over to join her leader, and Ruby swallowed.
"I-I told her where to meet us if she wants to defect." she said, trying to hide her bitter disappointment. "And I did my best to convince her. Now…I guess we just wait and see. Hopefully she'll see reason. Maybe."
"There was nothing that you could have done." Penny said, her voice much softer as Floating Array folded and tucked itself back into her backpack, before reaching out to put her hand on Ruby's shoulder. "I'm sure you were wonderfully convincing."
Ruby offered her a small smile, trying not to show how much it hurt just to look at Penny. At least she hadn't heard the bulk of that conversation, hadn't been paying attention to what Ruby had been saying or the lack of verbal responses from her opponent. She'd needed to keep all her attention on Weiss and the fight below, which was exactly according to plan.
"Yeah. Well, I guess we'll find out, huh?"
The fight was going great.
The first time this all had gone down, Blake and Sun had been able to rout the White Fang on their own, with some assistance from Penny in taking down the Bullheads. While Penny was supposed to be up on the roof protecting Weiss while Ruby tried to talk down a psychopath, Blake and Sun were right here, and they had backup in the form of Yang and Ilia. And besides all that, Blake and Yang were Huntresses who had whet their teeth on conflicts far more deadly and enemies far more skilled than a group of untrained mooks who'd barely had any Aura training. Torchwick was a slightly bigger threat, but again, Blake and Sun had been able to fight him to a standstill before, and that was without two more years of brutal training.
Just how much they were dominating this fight became clear when Torchwick batted Ilia aside with his cane, the metal rod cracking against her Aura, and Blake immediately shot through the gap with Gambol Shroud drawn. She was dual-wielding, which she hadn't done in a while, but then again, fast as he was, Torchwick wasn't the kind of enemy who could take advantage of the split attention you needed to wield a weapon in each hand. He was forced to very quickly twist his cane to defend himself, narrowly avoiding taking Blake's katana to the throat and her cleaver to his side. Torchwick tried to leap back to get more room, but Ilia had already recovered and was swinging for him with her crackling Dust whip as Yang's fists came in from his other side.
Before they could inflict too much damage, though, a flare shot out from Torchwick's cane and exploded at their feet, sending everyone flying. Yang and Blake landed and slid backwards in a crouch, weapons at the ready, but Ilia cartwheeled over the ground in a semi-controlled tumble before she managed to recover herself. If Torchwick had thought to take advantage of their lost momentum –not to mention the sudden range between him and Yang, a melee fighter who was currently his strongest opponent– he was wrong, since a volley of gunshots cracked through the air, Sun spinning his nunchaku like a pair of windmills as he dashed towards the taller criminal to engage and keep him off.
Yang and Blake immediately launched themselves off to help as Yang caught Ilia's grey shadow leaping up to skitter along one of the cargo crates out of the corner of her eye. Smart –between the three of them, they had Torchwick boxed in, and Ilia coming down from above could prove decisive. Yang might have worried about the fact that they were leaving their backs open to Torchwick's reinforcements as they ran to attack, except that if Sun and Blake were helping out, then that meant that all the White Fang grunts were dealt with.
"You kids really-" Torchwick twisted like a viper as Sun's staff shot past his ear and Ilia's downwards-stabbing whip burned a tear across the back of his white coat. "-do not-" He flexed his wrist, trying to tangle Yang's arms with his cane as Blake's sword clattered off the edge. "-know how to quit, do ya?!"
"Tough talk coming from the only guy left!" Sun said, and Yang saw a subtle flicker of movement in Torchwick's face as he gritted his teeth, before he turned slightly to ward off Sun's staff and his expression was hidden by those long bangs. Knowing what she did, she knew that look wasn't concern for his subordinates –it was fear, thinking of what Cinder would do, knowing what she would say, if he blundered the robbery this catastrophically. And it was a blunder, since all the White Fang members were down for the count and he –and possibly Neopolitan– were the only ones who would come back from the raid at all, never mind lacking all the Dust they had planned to seize.
Too bad.
Blake's ears pricked up as Yang clenched her fingers and the curved kite-shaped plating on the top of Ember Celica flickered once, lapping over her knuckles as there was a small click, like that of when she reloaded or cocked her guns.
"Back!" Blake cried, suiting words to deeds and leaping backwards as Sun and Ilia hastily followed her example. Torchwick's eyes followed after them for a split second before refocusing on Yang as she swung for him, firing off a devastating volley of quick, sharp punches. She didn't care what connected or what he dodged, as long as he caught some –and she also didn't care when Torchwick spun his cane up, deflecting her left-hand punch, and the heel of his own hand caught her squarely in the chin. No, Yang staggered back a few feet, letting his momentum carry her rather than fighting it as her Semblance hummed like molten lava beneath her skin. She fought down the urge to lose herself to it and just charge at him. She had a plan, after all.
Torchwick swung his cane up as soon as he had the room for it, pointing the barrel directly at her.
"Nice try for glory, kiddo." he panted. "But this is the end of the line for you."
"Heh." Yang grinned and pulled both arms back, clenching her fists. A rapidly-increasing beeping sound filled the air, and Torchwick glanced down towards the several small capsules stuck to his cane, capsules that were flashing red in time to the beeps.
"Oh for f-"
An explosion ripped across the dock space, and Yang heard the sharp hollow clang of a body hitting metal –and the clatter of a cane landing on and skittering over the ground, which had been her original goal all along.
"Ugh. Y'know, Blondie, most bruisers at least have the decency not to also be smart." Torchwick coughed amongst the settling dust and smoke. "Just my luck that I got the all-rounder package, huh?"
Did he still have his Aura up, even after all that? Yang's eyes darted sideways to Ilia, who had her rapier-whip out and a vengeful expression. She and Blake had mostly been taking it easy in the fight up until now, but if Ilia felt incensed enough over the betrayal of the White Fang's ideals –and Torchwick's taunts– that she would try to kill him…well, they would have to do something. Sure, yeah, maybe that'd direct Neopolitan's vengeance away from Ruby, but that would also mean that she was gunning for Ilia instead, and as skilled as the other girl was, Yang still didn't like her chances at surviving that one little bit.
Her shoulders relaxed a little as she saw Torchwick stagger to his feet with another, smaller figure standing in front of him amongst the settling dust –but only slightly. After all, if Neopolitan was here after talking to Ruby, then that could mean a lot of things…including the fact that Ruby was dead.
Yang's fists clenched, and she launched herself forward with a cry –strictly to seem normal in front of Sun and Ilia, of course. It was no good, though, and she'd expected it to be no good, as her fist shattered the twin images of Torchwick and Neopolitan with a faint tinkle of glass. When she glanced to the side where his cane had gone, the ground was empty and the smoke moving oddly, so Yang figured that they were looping around to pick it up behind Neopolitan's Semblance. There was a moment where maybe she could interfere with that, shatter the illusion…
"Guys!"
…but then Ruby called out, and Yang let them go with a terse sigh.
It was over.
She turned to face the rest of her team as Ruby, Weiss, and Penny picked their way over the slumped White Fang members. They all looked fine, though the subtle look of worry on Ruby's face told Yang that the plan to convert Neopolitan, or at least subvert her evil nature, had not gone the way Ruby had hoped. Oh, well. They could deal with this just like they dealt with everything else: together.
"Oh, man." Sun groaned, putting one hand on the small of his back and cracking his joints loudly as their little group gathered together. "Talk about brutal. Is Vale always this exciting?"
"Ordinarily, no." Weiss said, pushing some of her bangs back with one hand. "Ah, are you four alright? Blake, Yang, and…Sun and Ilia, wasn't it?"
Yang was once again given a choice to admire the patented Masterful Schnee Acting that Weiss had been given the option to display all through this past semester as she looked at Sun and Ilia and spoke their names as though she'd only heard them once or twice before. There was a moment of expectant silence as Ilia stared the Schnee heiress down –Sun, nonchalant as ever, blinked bemusedly at them both– before Weiss lowered her head, making Ilia's eyes widen a little.
"I am truly sorry to have gotten the two of you caught up in our efforts to unveil this conspiracy." she said, apologizing as formally as she would to a business partner in a ballroom. Yang rolled her eyes a little, catching Ruby's gaze as she did. Yang got that it was important to Weiss to make it clear that she had nothing to do with her father's shady business practices, she really did, but sometimes Weiss's ultra-upper-class childhood came out in the weirdest of ways.
"Penny, I think we can call the police now." Ruby added, glancing down at the unconscious terrorists. "Unless…you don't want to, Ilia?"
"I-" Ilia hesitated, passing a hand over her face as she stowed her whip on her belt. "I don't…want to, but we should."
"I'm sorry." Blake said, her eyes softening a little as she put a hand on her friend's shoulder.
"No, y-you were right, this is…not what we should be doing. Its not." Ilia said, taking a deep breath. "I mean…why do they need so much Dust? Why are they working with a human like Roman Torchwick, of all people? He called us- he called them animals, but they were still following his orders, and there's no way anyone from the White Fang would let a human talk to them like that unless-"
"Unless the orders to work with him came from higher up in the White Fang." Yang said grimly.
"I managed to get some stuff out of one of the people they were working with while the rest of you guys were busy." Ruby said, lying through her teeth and once again thanking her stars that Penny's attention had been occupied elsewhere while she and Neopolitan fought. "We can talk about this more later, but apparently there's something in Mistral that they're after –something at Haven. That's why they corrupted Lionheart, because they want access to the thing beneath the school."
"Damn." Sun folded his arms behind his head, letting out a slow whistle. "When you guys stick your foot in a conspiracy, you really stick your foot in a conspiracy. What do we do now?"
"Police forces have been informed of the situation and are en route." Penny announced to them all, lowering the Scroll that Yang could tell even from here that she had forgotten to actually dial. Well, it was Penny –presumably she had a way of contacting and accessing the CCT network within her own systems. "If we do not wish to be scolded for reckless endangerment, some of us should probably leave."
"Speaking of leaving, I'm out." Ilia said, though she looked half-choked to say it. Yang could understand that –according to Blake, the White Fang had been Ilia's lifeline, been her life, for many years now. Abandoning that cause must feel horrible, and abandoning it because the people she trusted and worked with had turned out to be corrupt must feel even worse. "I-I'm out, I'm done, I'm not working with the White Fang anymore."
She shivered and looked at the ground.
"Though I don't know what I'll do for a place to stay."
"If you need money for that, I have plenty." Weiss said instantly. "And if you need protection…"
"She can stay with me!" Sun said from beside the other Faunus, clasping his arm around Ilia's much-thinner shoulders and squeezing her tight to his side as Ilia jolted in surprise. "The White Fang won't take actions against me 'cause I'm a Faunus, and they won't think to look for her with me because you're the team that's poking around their business! Its foolproof!"
"Don't you have a team?" Yang asked, raising an eyebrow. Ilia stiffened slightly in the monkey Faunus's grip, looking even more against the idea than she had when Sun had ambushed her with his side-hug. Honestly, the way she looked right now reminded Yang of a rebellious toddler being squished against her older brother, with all the faint horror and visible discomfort that came along with it.
"Oh, they'll be fine with it." Sun said breezily, waving his free hand in a dismissive gesture. "Team SSSNI! Uh, unofficially, of course."
"Sunny?" Ilia asked disparagingly from his side, and Sun grinned, clasping her tighter.
"Dude, of course! Since its Team SSSN normally. Now, its SSSNI!"
Ilia groaned a little, but she looked thoughtful when her despair had ended, biting her lip and looking down at the ash-streaked ground. While the White Fang's more…aggressive faction was still just a minority within the larger organization, the fact that Ilia had been here would eventually reach them as news trickled out from the soon-to-be-prisoners. When it did, they'd begin to think. Adam was the head of that brutal faction, as far as Yang knew, and when he heard that Blake's old friend had begun to sever ties with the White Fang as well…he wouldn't take it lying down. Suspicions would no doubt begin to swirl in his head, and he was in Vale. He could investigate personally, take action personally. For that matter, so could Torchwick and the nebulous people he worked for and with –nebulous to Ilia and Sun, anyways. While Ilia was an experienced fighter, she wasn't Huntress-level, not even close. Her enemies had been Grimm, robots, and the occasional armed guard. If it came to a straight fight, Adam would wipe the floor with her, and whoever he was working for or with had to be of equal or greater power to himself. Alone, Ilia would be incredibly vulnerable right now. She needed protection. She needed allies.
"Fine." she sighed after a few minutes. "I'll stay with you, Sun."
"Great!" Ruby chimed, pulling out her own Scroll as the flashing lights of the police cars began to streak brightly across the walls of the nearby buildings and they all heard the crunch of tires. "I'll call JNPR and let them know we all made it through okay. Guys, tonight was a mission success!"
If you like my work(s), please consider supporting my book! The Business of Creation is a fluffy and wholesome collection of short stories in which the gods' process of creating their fantasy world is examined from the very moment of its beginning, and you can support it by moseying on over to my profile page and the link there to buy an electronic copy from one of several sites, or by just leaving a five-star review to boost the book's prominence in its category. The more profits it brings in, the more time (and less stress) I have to work on fanfiction!