O00000O00000O
Chapter 12: Black and White
O00000O00000O
Better strap in, this one's a long one.
O00000O00000O
Alex didn't go back to his dorm that night. Neither did Blake for that matter. In fact, neither returned for the next few days. When Delsin woke up to find his partner's bed vacant for the third day in a row, he simply sighed and went for his shower. Like it or not, he still had classes to attend, starting with another one of Professor Port's "Tales of Manliness."
A few things had changed in the days since their Faunus partners disappearance. Weiss was noticeably quieter and less opinionated. Ruby was a little depressed. Understandably, given that two of her friends were gone after a fight with her partner. Yang did her best to stay near her, loving big sister as she was, but Alex and Blake's absence was taking a small toll on her as well.
For his part, Delsin didn't miss him too much. In fact, the last few days had been some of the best sleep he'd gotten since his arrival. Since had didn't have to deal with his partner's awful snoring, Delsin had since been able to reclaim his lost sleep schedule. Even still, he kinda hoped his friend would come back soon.
Delsin was just about finished with his shower when there was a knock on the door in the other room.
"Be right there!" he called, still soaked.
He turned off the shower and waved a hand over himself and quickly drained the water from his skin. As fast as he could, he slipped on some pants and hurriedly went for the door. Whoever was on the other side knocked again.
"Hang on, I'm coming," he said.
He opened the door to find Velvet standing on the other side holding holding a small metal box.
Before she could say anything, Velvet caught sight of the Conduit without his shirt. Whatever words she was going to say froze in her throat. Her face turned bright red and she suddenly took a very keen interest in the floor.
"Is this a bad time?" she managed barely.
Delsin looked down to see he wasn't wearing a shirt. He smirked and moved to get one, quickly and quietly putting it on.
"Better?" he asked.
Velvet looked up, her face still a little red. She cleared her throat.
"Here," she said, holding the box out to him.
Curious, Delsin took the box in his hands.
"What's in it?" he asked.
"Open it and see," she replied, smiling.
He did as she said and opened the box. He smiled when he saw that it contained several chocolate chip cookies with little smiley faces drawn on with icing.
"Aww, these are adorable," he said.
"Thanks, I made them myself," Velvet replied.
"You did?"
"Yatsu's not the only one on our team that knows how to bake."
"Cool."
He picked one up and took a bite. It was actually a lot better than he expected, and he'd expected it to be pretty good.
"God, that's good," Delsin said, his mouth full of cookie.
Velvet blushed again, though much softer this time.
"I gotta ask though, what's the occasion?" he asked.
Velvet smiled softly.
"You've helped me a lot. Not just lately but literally since we first met. I wanted to find a way to say thank you, and this is what I came up with,"she explained.
Delsin returned the smile.
"Thank you Velvet."
Delsin picked up another cookie and scarfed it down.
"There's a few in there for Alex too," she said, interrupting his third cookie, "Make sure to leave him some."
"Didn't you hear?" Delsin said.
"He's missing, yeah. Any idea where he is?" she asked.
"Not one," Delsin replied.
He looked down at the cookie tin, then smiled as an idea came to him. He covered the tin and placed it on his desk.
"You wanna blow off class and help me look for him?"he asked.
Velvet smiled and nodded.
O00000O00000O
Alex awoke on his perch on top of a building in downtown Vale, the sun showing it to be about noon.
He hadn't had the best few days. After he took off, Alex flew around Vale to clear his head. It didn't help much, and he knew that if he went back in his current state, he was more than likely going to end up doing something he'd regret. So, when he finally felt tired, he simply picked a rooftop and passed out.
Over the next few days, he spent his every waking hour doing anything and everything he could to relax. It took him all of two hours before he gave up and went to go blow stuff up in the Forest of Forever Fall. After two days, he had managed to level a rather substantial area, along with any accompanying Grimm.
All of that brought him to where he was at the moment. After he got up and stretched, he checked his pockets.
"Damn. Out of Dust," he thought.
He briefly considered heading back to his room to get some more, but he decided he wasn't ready yet. Instead, he pulled out his wallet and checked it out.
"Alright, let's go get some."
A minute later, and he was in the air again. It took him a while to find a Dust shop that was open, which was not surprising given the rash of Dust robberies they'd been having. Still, when he found one, he walked right up to the man at the counter.
The cashier was an old man, one he had seen on many occasions running various stores around Vale. He hadn't caught the man's name yet, but he didn't particularly care at the moment. He was just there to get a few crystals and go.
He walked straight to the counter and pulled out his wallet.
"Can I get a case of your cheapest Fire crystals please?" Alex asked.
The shopkeeper tilted his head sideways, curious.
"I just need Dust. I can take it from there."
The old man shrugged and held up a finger, then turned and reached for a small case of ten crystals. He put it on the counter. Alex opened it and checked. When he found everything to be in order, he smiled.
"That works, how much do I owe you?"
The shopkeeper started to punch numbers into the register. At that moment, the entry bell he had hooked up over the door rang. Neither of them were paying much attention.
At least, not until there were guns in their face.
"On the ground," a voice said from behind Alex, "Both of you."
Almost immediately after, Alex felt the familiar cold sensation of a gun pressed up against the back of his head. He turned his head slightly so he could get a better look at his assailants, but before he could go more than three degrees the gun pressed further into the base of his skull.
"Eyes forward."
Alex started to get to his knees, and the shopkeeper quietly followed on the other side of the counter. When he was on his stomach, the assailant spoke again.
"You so much as twitch, I will put you down."
Alex did as he was told. Normally he would have taken these guys down by now, but he wasn't alone. In the time it would take him to turn and survey his immediate area, the shopkeeper would more than likely either be a hostage, or dead.
And there was still another problem. He was powerful, sure, but the majority of his abilities required open space to use effectively. If he were to fight to the fullest extent of his abilities here, he would likely end up destroying most of the store.
The shopkeeper could see the struggle on his face and used his head to gesture upwards toward the back of the store. Alex caught on and smiled when he saw where the gesture led too. Security mirrors had been installed in all four corners of the store.
With one eye, Alex looked into the mirror positioned in the back right corner of the store. In the mirror, he could make out that the crew was a team of four. One was by the door and another was standing between him and the shopkeeper, evidently on crowd control. The other two were emptying out the Dust in the store into various cases and tubes.
Alex smiled. In fifteen seconds, he had a plan.
O00000O00000O
Alex launched a sweep kick from the ground. It connected with the back of the crowd control guy's knee, though that wasn't the goal. He used the force of the swing to carry him upwards and get his feet under him.
As he spun, he ripped the gun out of the man's hand and smacked him in the back of the head with it on his second pass. He then stopped, aimed at the lookout and fired, nailing the guy in the shoulder. He went down and as his grip loosened on his weapon, Alex pulled it toward his open hand telekinetically.
One of the looters dropped his bag and leveled his gun at Alex. The other got creative. He reached into his bag and pulled out an Earth Crystal. With a flick of his wrist, the creative looter activated the Crystal and attempted to trap Alex's legs. Alex only barely dodged, one of Blake's Shadow Clones taking his place less than half a second before he would have been trapped.
It was not a great move. First, it gave the looter with a gun a perfect shot at him, with him unable to avoid, nor the capacity to block in the time it would take the shot to reach him. The looter pulled the trigger and let loose three shots right into Alex's chest. Second, the knockback effect from the bullets hitting his Aura sent him flying back into a display case full of high quality Water Crystals.
Alex was a bit disoriented, and he had dropped both guns when he got hit. But his training kicked in and he got to his feet, scooping up one of the Water Crystals from the display. He moved it behind his back and activated Ilyanna's Semblance. For him it would take five seconds to shift it, but he could buy that much.
"So, who's brilliant idea was it to rob a store in downtown Vale in broad daylight?" he asked.
No one said a thing. Alex felt the crystal finish changing behind his back and he smiled.
"No takers? Well I guess it doesn't matter. You're all going to jail anyway."
With that and a dash of Ruby's speed he swallowed the newly shifted Lightning Crystal. The three robbers opened fire, but Alex had already moved. Now he was beside all three of them, facing the outside window.
His smile widened.
"Try this on for size!" he shouted, "Thunderwave!"
Alex thrust his hands forward, expelling a wide wave of static. Not enough to kill, but more than enough to send the three remaining assailants flying into and through the window.
Alex followed them out after they landed a good six feet outside the store. Then he reached into his pocket and puled out his Scroll to call the Vale Police Department. But before he could make the call, he heard something land at his feet. He looked up to see the guy on crowd control had woken up. Then he looked down to see that he had also thrown a stun grenade at his feet.
Before he could react, the grenade went off, blinding him and leaving him disoriented. Unbeknownst to him, the last robber and his friends managed to escape, though no one there was quite sure how.
Still disoriented, Alex tripped and fell over. When his head hit the concrete, he blacked out. The last thing he remembered seeing was the small red wolf head on the back of the robber's jacket.
O00000O00000O
Five minutes later, the shopkeeper woke him up from his collapsed state on the sidewalk, a sad expression on his face. He helped Alex to his feet and they both turned to survey the damage.
The front windows were broken, and the display case that Alex had been propelled into had dominoed into at least two others. Plus there was the damage to the floor from when one of the robbers got creative. It wasn't a terrible loss, but it wasn't great either.
The shopkeeper sighed and hung his head.
"You know, this is twice in three months that I've been robbed. Maybe I should move out of the Dust business," he said, the first thing he'd said since Alex had seen him.
He turned to Alex.
"Thank you young man. You saved my merchandise and probably my life. Consider those Crystals you wanted on the house."
Alex smiled softly.
"Thanks," Alex replied.
"No trouble really. I'll call a contractor and have them repair it. Should be redone in a couple days. Besides, I've got other stores to run."
The shopkeeper started to walk back into the store, a sad look on his face.
"If you want, I could stick around. Help with the repairs. I've got a Semblance that can fix a lot of the damage," Alex said, feeling a twinge of guilt.
The man looked back at him quizzically.
"How?"
Alex raised a hand.
"Just watch," he said.
He activated Glynda's Telekinesis and scooped up the pieces of glass from one of the broken windows. It took him a few minutes to find how all of the pieces fit together, but he did manage to completely fix the window. The shopkeeper smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
The police showed up less than a minute later. They quickly cordoned off the area then pulled both Alex and the shopkeeper into the store to give their statements.
"So, what happened here?" the officer asked.
"Well, I was buying a few crystals from the low quality rack when four guys came in to the store with guns. They told me to get on the ground, and I did," Alex said.
"So when did the fighting start?"
"While I was on the ground, the shopkeeper gestured to the security mirror over there. That let me see the four robbers. Once I'd gotten a good enough look at them, I jumped up and went to town on them."
The officer looked skeptical.
"So you're telling me, one kid managed to chase off four armed robbers, without getting himself shot in the process?" he asked.
Alex frowned.
"Yes, one kid, who happens to be a student at Beacon and one of the top ten first year students there, managed to chase off four armed robbers without getting dead," Alex replied, a hard edge in his tone, "and the shopkeeper can and will confirm that."
The officer sighed.
"Right. You got any idea who they were?"
"I didn't see their faces, they wore masks, but as they were running away I saw something on the back of one guy's jacket."
"What?"
"A red wolf head, with three claw marks going through it. The symbol of the White Fang," Alex answered, his tone serious.
The officer's eyes widened slightly, but his face remained a picture of indifference.
"Great. More of this street level crap, and just after we get a tip they were moving out of it," the officer said under his breath.
Alex's head perked up at that. He was about to ask what the officer meant when something stopped him.
"Wait, that doesn't make sense. Assuming that the tip was accurate, which given the nature of the White Fang's goals is a good assumption, he's right. Why would they still be doing street crime if they had plans for a bigger operation?" he thought.
The memory of a crime scene from a few days earlier popped into his head.
"They left all the money again," he remembered one of the detectives saying.
Alex's eyes went to the register. It hadn't been touched. In fact, as he recalled, they had told the shopkeeper to get on the ground without so much as even asking for money.
"Dust. The goals of these crimes has been Dust, not money, and this is the only Dust shop open in this entire area of the kingdom. Still, that doesn't explain why they robbed this place when they-"
He cut himself off when the pieces he'd been circling started to click into place.
"Unless... what if the robberies were the trigger for the bigger operation?"
At that moment, the logo on one of the crates of Dust on the ground caught his eye.
The Schnee Dust Company logo.
Alex looked at the assorted police officers circling the store as the last pieces clicked into place.
"Even if I told them what I'm thinking, I doubt they would believe a kid," he thought.
He quietly ducked out of the store and started to walk away.
"Which means, I need to find someone who will."
With that, he opened his wings and took off to find Blake.
O00000O00000O
Delsin sighed and jumped off the rooftop he was standing on. With his Smoke power active, he landed right next to Velvet.
"Any luck?" she asked.
"Nope," he sighed, "Buildings here are too short for me to get a good view. Can't see more than a couple blocks."
"Darn. Moving on?"
"Guess so. No point in staying here."
"Where to next?"
Delsin shrugged.
"No idea. This ain't really my thing," he said.
"We'll find him eventually," Velvet replied softly.
The pair continued along. It had been three hours since their search began, and still they had yet to find even a trace of their feathered friend. By now Delsin was getting a bit frustrated with their lack of results.
"Maybe we should call the police?" Velvet suggested.
"I'm tempted. This is getting annoying," Delsin replied.
They kept walking, only for Delsin to stop them a minute later.
"What is it? Do you see something?" Velvet asked.
"No," he started, "But this place feels familiar. Have we been here before?"
Velvet looked around. Her eyes quickly fell on an alleyway just across the street. She pointed at it.
"Over there," she said, smiling.
Delsin followed her hand to the alley. While it felt familiar to him, he couldn't place why.
"What is it?" he asked.
Velvet giggled.
"It's where you first saved me, silly," she said with a smile.
When he saw just how pretty Velvet looked when she laughed, for once, it was Delsin's turn to blush, if only for a moment. He quickly hid his face and walked away. Velvet smiled and followed him. As they continued walking, several hours passed and the pair found themselves at the scene of a crime.
The area was cordoned off with police tape and with the number of policemen milling about, Delsin couldn't quite make out the specifics of what had happened. His curiosity piqued, he ventured over to one of the men standing near the edge of the tape.
Delsin had seen him around. In fact, he recognized him as the owner of the Dust shop he and Ruby had saved on his first night here.
"Hey," Delsin started, tapping the older man on the shoulder, "What happened here?"
"I was being robbed, but one of my customers stepped up and chased off the robbers," he said. He smiled and gave Delsin a knowing look, "Seems to be happening a lot to me recently."
Delsin smiled.
"Yeah. Guess so. So where is this mysterious hero?" he asked sarcastically.
"I think I saw him fly off when the police were done getting his statement," the old man replied.
Delsin and Velvet immediately perked up.
"Wait, flew? Are you serious?" Delsin asked.
"I know it sounds silly, but I swear the kid had wings. Flew off that way a few hours ago," the man said, pointing down the street.
Velvet had been searching the area ever since the old man said the word "fly", and something caught her eye.
"Delsin look!" she said pointing to the ground twenty feet away.
The pair quickly walked over and found something on the ground where Velvet had been pointing.
A pure white feather.
Delsin smiled.
"Alright. Clue number one, here we are," he said.
O00000O00000O
"Did I miss anything?" Sun asked, jumping onto the rooftop.
"Not really," Blake replied, "They've offloaded all the crates from the boat, now they're just sitting there."
"Cool. I stole you some food," Sun commented, handing her an apple.
"Do you always break the law without a second thought?"
"Hey, weren't you in a cult or something?"
Blake glared at him.
"Ok, too soon."
If their conversation was going to go anywhere else, it would have been cut off by the massive gust of wind that accompanied the Bullhead that passed over them.
The heavy transport did a small circle around the interior of the dock before touching down between several shipping containers. The offload ramp quickly extended and the passengers began to disembark. When they came into view, Blake inhaled.
"Oh no," she said quietly.
"Is that them?" Sun asked.
"Yes, it's them," Blake replied sadly, her eyes locked on the insignia on the back of one of the passenger's jackets.
"You really didn't think they were behind it, did you?" Sun asked.
"No, I think deep down I knew," Blake said, "I just didn't want to be right."
At that moment, a voice cut through the sound and got her attention.
"Hey!" the voice called, "What's the holdup?"
A man exited the Bullhead. It took her a moment to recognize him, but since his face was displayed on every clean wall in the form of wanted posters, a moment was all she needed.
"We're not the most inconspicuous bunch of thieves at the moment," Roman Torchwick said, "Soo, why don't you animals pick up the pace?"
Back on the rooftop, Blake was very confused.
"This isn't right. The White Fang would never work with a human. Especially not one like that," she said.
She whipped out Gambol Shroud and jumped off the rooftop.
"Hey! What're you doing?!" Sun exclaimed as she ran off towards the thieves.
Blake crept silently and swiftly through the gaps in the shipping containers. Like a shadow she wove herself between the gaps to come up right behind Torchwick. With another step and a clever use of her Clones, she suddenly stood right behind the red headed criminal, with her blade pressed against his throat..
"What the?!" he shouted, "Oh for f-"
"Nobody move!" Blake shouted, just in time for two of the White Fang members to step forward and brandish their weapons.
"Whoa! Take it easy there little lady," Torchwick said as two more of his compatriots ran forward, surrounding her.
Eyeing both sides, Blake reached up and yanked off her bow, revealing her cat ears.
"Brothers of the White Fang, why are you aiding this scum? Have you truly fallen so far as to ally yourself with this monster?!" she asked accusingly.
The Faunus lowered their weapons nonchalantly, while Torchwick merely laughed.
"Oh, kid. Didn't you get the memo?" he asked sarcastically.
"What are you talking about?" Blake retorted.
"Well, the White Fang and I are going in on a joint business venture together," he replied sardonically.
"Tell me what it is or I'll put and end to your little operation," Blake said, tightening her blade against his throat.
At that moment, another Bullhead flew in overhead.
"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a little operation," he said with a smirk, surprisingly audible even over the roar of the Bullhead's engines.
With that, he pulled the the hidden trigger on his cane.
O00000O00000O
Delsin and Velvet had been following a few clues when they heard the blast.
It wasn't a big explosion, but it was loud.
"What was that?" Delsin asked, the sound having shocked him.
"I'm not sure," Velvet replied, her head tilted in the direction of the noise, "It's hard to tell from just the sound."
Delsin started to look around, scanning both the immediate area, as well as the sky above for any indication as to the source of the blast. His eyes quickly caught on to the smoke billowing into the sky from somewhere south of them, and for just a moment something caught his eye.
A pair of pure white wings.
"Velvet, what's over that way?" he asked.
"The docks, I think," she replied.
Delsin switched to his Concrete power.
"Alright then," he said.
Without warning, he picked her up in his arms.
"Whoa!" she exclaimed.
"Hang on tight!" he said.
With that, he Boulder Dashed off.
O00000O00000O
Blake stood in awe as the explosion enveloped her. Normally one would be afraid when staring into an oncoming barrage of fire and stone, but at just this moment, fear was nowhere to be found in her mind.
Of course, Alex standing in front of her probably had something to do with that.
The bird Faunus stood with his wings out stretched and a Glyph projected widely in front of him. The blast that normally would have shredded their Aura like tissue paper, simply stopped and passed around the two of them, like a river around a stone. When the blast subsided, Alex collapsed the Glyph and stared down his opponents.
"Hope you don't mind if I cut in. You were threatening my friend after all," Alex said, his eyes locked on Torchwick.
"Well, looks like the little kitty made friends with the bird. Isn't that cute," Torchwick replied.
He looked at his men.
"What are you waiting for?! Kill them!" he commanded.
His henchmen, including another four that had jumped out of the second Bullhead, charged. Alex quickly ate a Wind crystal, and stomped his foot. As his hair turned a light shade of green, and his foot touched the concrete, a huge gust of wind swept forward and knocked them back.
The goons with guns planted their feet and opened fire. Alex raised his hand and telekinetically blocked the shots, but there were a lot of them. Roman saw him start to buckle and raised his cane. The tip flipped open and he opened fire. Alex managed to catch the shot, which seemed to be just a jury-rigged round made from a much larger Dust crystal than most rounds commonly used.
But Torchwick wasn't done. He signaled the Bullhead pilots to open fire, and under a new hail of bullets, Alex's defense was crumbling. He raised a Glyph wide enough to cover them both, but that left them vulnerable to shots from the ground, as using telekinesis to catch bullets was a task that would take more focus then he could spare at the moment.
Blake had noticed and did her best to keep the close range guys off Alex's back. She was doing it very effectively, and when Sun joined them on the ground, no one could get near them. Unfortunately, many of the goons with guns had gotten smart and decided to stay at range. They were giving them a lot of trouble.
The four men with guns kept firing, and when Torchwick started firing alongside them, Alex almost took a Dust round in the chest.
"Monkey dude!" Alex shouted.
"Yeah?!" Sun replied over the concussive sound of his gun-chucks.
"You think you can take the big guy? We can't win like this!"
"Got it!"
Sun bolted off to deal with Torchwick, leaving Alex and Blake to deal with the other guys on the ground, more of which had been seemingly just popping up out of the woodwork.
Alex was about to say something when he noticed the guns had let up from above. He looked up to see chunks of concrete had torn through the barrel of the turrets on one of the Bullheads. He smiled. In the next moment, the remaining Bullhead stopped firing, the barrel having overheated. In that moment Alex dropped the Glyph and mustered every bit of magnetic and telekinetic force he could generate.
With one mighty swing, Alex levitated one of the shipping containers and sent it careening into the Bullhead that still had a working gun. The container slammed into the Bullhead and sent it crashing into the water. With that cleared up, Alex turned his attention back to the ground troops, just in time for a certain beanie sporting graffiti artist to land next to him.
"Took you long enough," Alex said as he unleashed a gust of wind and knocked down three advancing enemies.
"Well, you know I don't know the city all that well. Took me a while to find you," Delsin replied, unleashing a Concrete Barrage.
Blake fell back to regroup with Alex, only to be surprised by Delsin.
"Delsin? What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Now's not really the time," Velvet said, her face a little green from Delsin's unorthodox travel arrangements. She pointed to the sky, calling their attention to the three new Bullheads on approach.
"She's right, we need to wrap this up now. Any ideas?" Alex asked, his joking manner gone in an instant.
"Yeah, you guys take the sky, we'll take the ground," Blake said.
"Sounds good to me," Delsin said.
"Yeah, but you may need to go help Monkey Boy. He'd having a bit of trouble with Torchwick," Alex said.
"Got it, now go!"
With that, Alex took off, Delsin right beside him.
They landed on the cockpit windshield of the first Bullhead.
"HI!" Alex said, waving.
While he had them distracted, Delsin punched through the glass with his Concrete-enhanced fist. From there, he unleashed another Concrete Barrage, aimed right at the control console. With the console destroyed, the pilots quickly abandoned the Bullhead. Delsin and Alex quickly followed suit.
They were about to hop to the next one when a beam of green energy sliced through them both. When they turned to find the source, they saw none other than Penny, standing cheerfully with a ring of swords around her, a shocked Ruby beside her, and a host of unconscious White Fang grunts surrounding her.
She smiled and waved at them, and they soon landed.
The assembled students regrouped, surrounded by the unconscious forms of over seventy White Fang troops.
"Well," Alex started, "I think that we might have managed to scare them off for good."
Blake shook her head.
"No, they'll be back," she said, "but next time, we'll be ready for them."
O00000O00000O
When the fight was over, they called the police. They came and took the White Fang members into custody, Roman Torchwick having managed to slip away in the chaos. After that, they stuck around, though they wouldn't say why.
Weiss and Yang arrived soon after, having followed the sound of explosions. Blake tensed at Weiss's approach. She stood, ready to defend herself and apologize, but the moment she opened her mouth to speak, Weiss raised a hand to silence her. The heiress walked right past Ruby, who had jumped up to try and calm the sour mood of her partner and stopped directly in front of Blake.
Then, without a word, she pulled the cat Faunus into a hug and whispered: "I'm sorry."
Blake visibly untensed as she heard that. After a moment, the two parted. Alex then stepped up and walked over to Weiss, and this time it was her turn to tense, though she did a much better job of hiding it.
Alex didn't say a word. As he stood in front of Weiss and Yang, all the eyes of Team RWBY and his partner in the newly named Team CNDT (Conduit) on him, he simply looked at the heiress solemnly. Then he cracked a smile and gave her a big hug, the first time he had ever reacted positively to her presence.
"Much better," he said, just loud enough for her to hear.
The the rest of the people gathered all smiled, the somber mood of the evening now officially dissipated. Alex looked around to see that both Sun and Penny had disappeared, but at the moment he didn't care.
"So, now that everyone's done with all the hugging, are we all back together now?" Delsin asked.
Alex quickly grew a sly smile.
"Yeah, we are, but we are nowhere near done with the hugging," he said slyly.
Delsin took a step back.
"Don't you dare," he started.
"Group hug!" Alex shouted and he, Ruby, Yang, Blake, Velvet and even Weiss tackled him in a group hug. Delsin struggled a bit at first, but when he realized there was no way out, he surrendered. And so, for one brief moment, all of them were happy.
O00000O00000O
After the fight ended, unbeknownst to anyone present, a security camera on one of the warehouses died softly.
Far away from it all, a man was suspended in the air just over a pool of fresh water.
The man had a shaved head and a scar around his right eye. He wore the tattered remains of a pair of navy pants and a white t-shirt in equally bad condition. Normally, he also wore a blank expression.
Not today.
Today, as he opened his left eye and shut down the security camera, a smile crept onto the man's face. It was his first smile in seven long years.
It had worked.
The man closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, checking the security system. No one was watching. He cut the feed and looped it, then returned his mind to the present moment.
"Let's try this again," he said, a southern drawl coloring his tone.
His eyes snapped open, and his entire body sparked with electricity.
O00000O00000O
Eugene was hurt. His powers were empty and his healing factor was at it's limit. As he stood there, barely breathing, he gave one last defiant look into the eyes of the DUP agents in front of him.
The leader smiled evilly.
"Finish him," the man said.
And as the shots rang out, Eugene closed his eyes and waited for the end.
CHAPTER END
HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE! MANIACAL LAUGHTER! This was one of the chapters I really wanted to get to, and now we are finally out of Volume One! I tell you, I didn't sleep at all last night just to make up this fight scene. I really hope you enjoy it, especially the little something I left for you at the end.
Other updates, we passed 100 followers, and guys, seriously, thank you so much for the support, it means a lot.
Second, shout-out to TenWing for giving me the winning name. Congrats man.
Finally, and arguably the most importantly...HYPE FOR VOLUME 5! Ok, enough with the excessive capital letters. But still, comment your hype!
See you in Chapter 13!
