The Operator rolls her right shoulder back, dodging the stab of a robot that had been patrolling the halls even as her left hand comes around and grabs the haft of the bladed staff. 'I wonder how it'll respond if I do this,' she thinks, swinging the Redeemer Prime up at the center of the haft, splitting it cleanly in two, before completing her shoulder roll by pulling the now stumbling robot past her.
Quickstepping back to give the robot space, she takes the free second to reload the nearly empty revolver on her hip, observing the robot turn back towards her, holding the staff like it was never broken in the first place and charging at her again
'They're not that smart. If they can't identify a compromised weapon, then they might have substandard AI. On the other hand, I'm in the path of an easy retreat, it might be trying to bull rush past me to get to a resupply station.' The Operator calmly jumps up and to the side, jumping once off the wall to dodge the wild, uncontrolled swing of the robot as it rumbles past her. 'Nope, it's turning back around again. It just wasn't programmed to diagnose or otherwise deal with a damaged weapon.' Pulling the other pistol off her hip, she fires a salvo of shots at the thing's "eyes" before it can charge again, smiling internally when she puts out the sensors with her 2nd and 4th shots. 'Will it retreat now?' she thinks.
The robot drops to its knees, but doesn't power down. The Operator is confused for a few seconds before sensors on the Mesa pick up several beeps emanating from the robot at the 25,000 hertz range. 'A distress signal?' the Operator thinks, before it starts speeding up. 'Seriously?' she thinks, even as she turns and yells "Everyone, get back!"
Blake is already half turned, the bow on her head flattened as the rest of teams RWBY and JNPR exchange alarmed looks as the Operator takes off, leaping forward in a corkscrewing spiral and landing just behind the students, joining them in their sprint down the hallway for a few seconds before she yells "DOWN!" as the beeping becomes nearly a constant sound.
The students all dive for the ground, even as the Operator turns around to observe the explosion.
It's not very big - more of a crack than a boom. It breaks the chest and backplates into several large pieces, throwing them a few feet. One of the arms is torn in half at the elbow, but is otherwise intact, while the other limbs are mostly intact, if detached rather roughly.
Privately, she tells Ordis "Respond in public." Publicly she says "Ordis, analysis. How and why."
Standing up and dusting herself off, Weiss says "I can answer the how. That was the size of explosion you expect when you intentionally destabilize a lightning dust crystal of the size you would need to power a robot like that."
"That's great. Now why would it self-destruct?"
Ordis pipes up from a speaker on the Operator's left shoulder. "From what I can figure out, these robots are meant to be deployed in groups. It would seem that you damaged that one badly enough that it would be STUPID not cost-effective to repair it, so it self-destructed in a minor way that would be unlikely to damage nearby compatriots."
Everyone is silent for a few seconds, trying to digest this information.
The Operator breaks the silence. "Seriously? The thing could still walk, so it still had value as scrap and spare parts for cost-effective repairs. If it was a scuttle charge like you say, then why not make it bigger and add a longer delay so that allies could get away better, and have it check last known sensor readings and have a smart detonate that only goes if there's no allies in the area?"
Dr Merlot's voice breaks in over the PA. "Because why would I want to reuse parts from a robot that failed in its duties? Survival of the fittest is the only law there is, and if a robot falls, it was obviously unfit!"
The Operator stops, stilled by confusion for a few moments before she gestures to the equally befuddled students to follow her - Weiss grabbing the datamass again - as she says "They're robots. They all have the same amount of intelligence and the same amount of strength in their arms. They all follow the same plans. The only survival of the fittest here is when you iterate on the design manually."
"They are not 'all the same!'" Merlot's voice exclaims out of the speakers. "The parts are not identical! They may be made from the same plans, but they are different between each robot! If a robot fails in its duty, then it was obviously unfit and should be eliminated permanently, in the same way that genetic defects such as a second head on a snake is removed from the gene pool!"
Realizing that she's got the mad scientist ranting, the Operator asks "Then what are you doing with the Grimm?"
"The Grimm are apex life forms! They require no sustenance, live forever if not killed, and the longer they live the stronger they get! As a species, they are far more fit than humans, as I realized when I was younger and researching ways to stop them. Therefore, it is only right that I help make them stronger."
Shaking her head, the Operator realizes that the flashing waypoint ends at the doorway just ahead. Turning to the students, she says "We're at what should be a hangar. Don't damage any craft if you can avoid it unless I tell you otherwise. We might need it to leave once the mission is complete."
Stepping into the massive hangar, Veldt already at high ready, the Operator sees nearly two dozen security robots and one cargo bullhead. One of the robots sees her, sounding another ultrasonic alarm and alerting the others to the intruders. 'Flanking tactics could work, that alert made them all focus on one entrance - wait, hold that thought' she thinks.
The robots start to charge, and the Operator calmly calls "Cover!" as she flips the gilded pistols on the bottom of her wrists into her palms, index fingers sliding into the chamber and sealing while her thumbs twist up and inhumanly far back before her right thumb slams down on the back of the right pistol, forcing void energy to take the form of a bullet that flies past the dashing Pyrrha, who intercepts the closest robot to the Operator as the bullet pings through another - it doesn't disable it, unfortunately.
A line of snowflake glyphs appears in front of a group of four robots, spitting out dozens of icicles at a 45 degree angle, anchored to the ground like icy stakes as the Operator's left thumb slams down on the back of the left pistol, sending another projectile out. The robot in the front of the group of four attempts to slash the icicle in front of it and keep going; it fails to do so and instead runs itself through the more thinly armored midriff on the impossibly tough, sharp ice. The other three see this and stop for a moment, before starting to reroute around the obstacle
A third shot snaps out from the pistol as Jaune barrels past the Operator, shield held high in front of him, charging forward and ramming into the leg of a robot with his shield and tripping it up.
The fourth shot rings out as one of Nora's grenades flies past, staggering a robot with its explosion.
The fifth shot flies out as the Operator snaps into another kata, a shot from Crescent Rose flying over her
The sixth shot rings as Yang comes crashing down on top
The seventh shot flies
The eigth shot
The ninth
The ten
The
There's no longer any meaningful distinction in between the shots that fly from the Operator's Regulators - it is a constant stream of hardened Void energy, literally ripping the robots she aims at in half. The Operator sees the robots that Weiss had cut off finally rounding the edge of her obstacle; she snaps into another kata as she switches her aim, tearing through them like a chainsaw through butter.
Snapping through the katas at inhuman speeds, she spots Pyrrha rolling away from the robot she had been holding in place. A thought and motion and there's a storm of projectiles punching a head sized hole through the chest of the robot.
Jaune's robot starts getting back up before a flurry of bullets destroy the head; remembering what happened previously, Jaune starts stabbing his sword through the neckhole into the chest.
The stream of bullets ends, and the Operator holds position for a moment as she sweeps the room, checking to make sure she didn't miss any. Assured of success, she deactivates Peacemaker, her Regulators flipping back onto her wrists even as she reaches for the Veldt once more. Privately, she asks "Ordis, can we copy that audio alarm and broadcast it ourselves?"
Ordis immediately says "No. The sounds are too high in hertz for the Warframe's onboard speakers to synthesize the alert."
The Operator checks her energy reserves, thinking 'Two thirds and climbing. Those robots are not cannon fodder by any stretch of the imagination, they were about as tough as a heavy gunner.'
Jaune walks up, nervously asking "Um. How much of your energy did you burn through?"
"About half," the Operator replies absentmindedly. Raising her voice, she asks the students "Does anyone know anything about temporarily disabling bullheads?"
The students exchange looks, and nobody says anything.
"All right then. We'll use the datamass to give Ordis access to lock up the systems electronically. Set up defenses, this'll take a bit of time." The Operator steps into the open door of the cargo bullhead after taking the datamass from Weiss, thinking 'He has cameras with microphones, so he knows what I'm doing. If he attacks us with his robots, then this is probably his best method of escape. If he doesn't, then he has another escape plan. Then again, he might just attack because we're locked into position - or at least, he thinks we are.' Privately, she asks Ordis "How long should it take you to lock up this thing's electronics?"
Ordis responds immediately, saying "Seconds at most, Operator. A simple rolling quantum encryption would require the entire system to be wiped and restored from backup in order to make the bullhead operational again without the code - at least, it would with the technology these PRIMITIVES people have available to them."
"Give me an assessment. If I were to say out loud 'we have three minutes before the hack is complete,' would Merlot order an attack?"
"OF COURSE HE WOULD. There is a robot bay two and a half minutes away."
"Two minutes then. That tells him 'we'll be here long enough to hit, but you won't be able to get force concentration."
"That sounds excellent, Operator!"
"As long as you're in there for those two minutes, see what you can find."
"Will do!"
Slotting the datamass in, the Operator sees the lights on the board of the bullhead light up before she turns and leaves the cockpit. Exiting the craft, she says "Two minutes until the hack is complete. I want eyes on each entryway. Call out anything you see." With that, the Operator turns and leaps fifteen meters straight up, bouncing twice more off the side of the cargo bullhead before grabbing onto the edge and pulling herself on top.
Turning to Ruby, Jaune asks "Honest question. Are we even needed here? Tenno seems to be perfectly capable of doing this mission on her own, and we're just slowing her down since she has to protect us."
Ruby chews her lip, still watching the doorway they picked. "I don't know. I think she could probably do this mission herself, but she might not be able to do as much?"
"Not do as much?" Jaune asks, boggle-eyed. "She dismantled four robots on her own in the time it took all eight of us to destroy two of them! She was toying with that lone robot in the hallway, and she completely annihilated the group of them here in the hangar!"
Ruby shrugs. "I mean, yeah. She's dangerous, but you heard her. She can't do that too often. It ate through half of her reserves of whatever."
"I don't-" Jaune says, before being interrupted as Ruby suddenly deploys Crescent Rose, aiming down the hallway and snapping off a shot.
"ROBOT!" she yells as the trail of the bullet tumbles off at a wild angle, and a moment later the Operator lands and slides past the pair of team leaders, rifle shouldered and aimed down the hallway.
"Watch your hallways," the Operator calls out calmly to the other students, even as she opens fire. "Don't let us get flanked."
Ruby notes that most of the bullets the Operator is firing at the first of the robots coming down the hall aren't deflecting off the armor a moment before she sees the leg come off the leader, causing it to fall and trip up the two robots following it.
Immediately upon seeing that, the Operator calmly slides her rifle onto her back even as she corkscrew leaps forwards, pulling a revolver off her hip with one hand and the Redeemer off her back with the other. The hallway is too dark to see what's happening clearly, but the flashes of light that correspond with deafening BOOMs are enough to see that the robots are losing that fight.
It's barely been ten seconds before the Operator returns. "Corridor clear for now. Call out any more that show up." Behind her, a newly headless robot self-destructs.
"Okay," says Ruby even as Yang hollers "Bots!" from the doorway she's watching with Weiss.
The Operator disappears, jumping away towards the yell.
Jaune stares at where she used to be before turning to Ruby and gesturing down the hall. "See what I mean?"
Privately, the Operator asks "Did you get anything, Ordis?"
"Flight logs. This thing hasn't been flown for nearly two years. I pinged the systems, it's still in good shape and ready to fly with a few minute's notice."
"Can you fly it remotely if we have the datamass slotted in?"
"OF COURSE I CAN."
"Good. We'll probably need it for extraction once the mission is complete," the Operator says as she removes the datamass. "Any progress on collating the data from the research logs?"
"Some, but not enough. THIS GUY IS CRA Doctor Merlot is insane, as you may have figured out from his speech over the intercom earlier. His research logs aren't much clearer. I have figured out that one of the large areas is filled with the mutagen that he injects into captured Grimm."
"Set a waypoint."
"Waypoint set."
The Operator steps out of the cargo bullhead, throwing the datamass at a surprised Weiss as she says "Alright, we're going to head out. Follow me, and hang onto the datamass. We'll still need it."
The hallways are eerily silent as they jog towards the large room. Nora finally speaks up, sounding almost disappointed, saying "I thought there'd be more robots."
"He's probably holding most of them back to protect himself," Blake says.
"I hope he is," the Operator says. "Having all of the combat capables in one area would save a lot of time in killing them. Now quiet, we're almost there, and I'd like to try and maintain surprise for as long as possible."
Silent once more, the group carefully moves forward until they finally reach the end of the hallway.
The cavern before them is massive. Dim lights attached to the ceiling above are far enough away that the light is mostly diffused, resulting in most of the light coming from large glass tubes with a glowing bluish-green substance inside of them. As they watch, another glob of liquid is siphoned out of one of the tubes, heading elsewhere in the complex. A slight slope ensures that the Operator and Huntsmen are looking down upon these machines. Oddly enough, the room seems empty and unguarded otherwise.
Blake murmurs "Isn't that stuff the same color as the mutations on the Grimm?"
Softly, the Operator replies "Yes. We should destroy these, to deny him the ability to mutate more Grimm in the short term." The Veldt snaps up from low ready, firing off five shots at the closest tube. To her surprise, the tube doesn't break or even start leaking, although it does spiderweb. "Must be bullet resistant. Nora, shoot a grenade at the one I've shot," she orders as she reloads the Veldt.
With a bang and a screech, Nora fires a grenade from Magnhild, impacting perfectly on the center of the damaged area. With a loud boom and crashing of glass, the tube shatters and spills its contents onto the floor.
"Good," the Operator says, "Now we know-"
"Oh, clever little things you are," Merlot's mocking voice booms from the speakers "You've managed to figure out how to destroy my mutagen holding tanks. And it seems I have no robots in place to defend them, oh what an error. Oh well. I guess I'll just have to press this button here. I was hoping that you'd enter the room properly before I did so, but this will just have to do."
As he says that, a massive door on the far wall of the room opens up, and from inside comes the clanging of metal and the excited noises of Grimm.
"Hold onto the datamass unless it's that or your life, Weiss. Expect mutated Grimm in large numbers. Stay mobile. Do not attempt to bunker up in the hallway, that plays to the Grimm's strengths. Stick together. I'll clear as many as I can before they reach us."
The creeps are the first one out of the newly revealed doorway. As expected, they were mutated.
The Operator waits for a few moments before she fires one shot at the leader of the charge, going in the right eye and out through the stomach. The creep stumbles to a stop, shivers for a second, and explodes, knocking nearby creeps off of their feet and killing a few more. Unfortunately, the creeps are smart enough to realize the hazard this causes, and after a second round of sympathetic detonations, none more die.
But the Operator's goal was met. The forward momentum of the creeps had been stalled, and they were now perfectly inside the range of her Regulators. Flipping them up into her hands, she immediately starts shooting down at the mess of mutated creeps.
It's a display that would make an artilleryman weep. Wherever the Regulators shoot, there's an explosion a second later. The Operator ends Peacemaker as the last explosions finish, noting that she has only half of her energy left.
A few seconds after the silencing of the Regulators, a howl rises up from inside the room beyond, and a dozen mutated beowulves come rushing out, baying in excitement. More worrying is what follows them – a mutated Beowulf Alpha.
Merlot's voice comes down from the loudspeakers. "George there used to be my greatest creation. He may not hold that title anymore, but he is perfectly capable of showing you why the Grimm are the superior species!" He gloats.
The Operator takes a few shots with the Veldt at "George's" head, but the beast is smart enough to lower its head enough so that the only places the Operator has to shoot at that aren't incredibly thick bone plating are bouncing up and down so fast that hitting them would be more a matter of luck than skill. Wanting to save what energy she has left in case Merlot has another surprise for them, she places the Veldt on her back, drawing a Vasto Prime in her left hand and the Redeemer Prime in her right as she says "I'll take the big one. Keep the others off of me."
Fighting mutated beowulves was hard enough when the student huntsmen had the numbers advantage. Without it? Seemingly all they can do is try to dodge both the swipes of the ones engaging them in melee while also making sure that they don't jump into the path of the acid that they can throw.
Blake is doing the best on her own; being able to drop shadow clones means that she can distract the Grimm and even strike back when she finds an opening. One of the three that are chasing the elusive cat Faunus is limping from a blow to a rear leg thanks to her efforts.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jaune is flagging. The comparatively heavy armor, sword, and shield he uses slows him down in the first place, and he simply doesn't have the same amount of stamina as the rest of the students even if he had lighter equipment. Pyrrha knows this and is back to back with him, making sure nothing can take him by surprise, but that doesn't stop him from being a little too slow to hop over an eruption of acid, making him stumble and yelp as his aura sizzles for a moment before the trail evaporates.
Before the beowulf in front of him can take advantage of this, a burst of rose petals appears behind it, slashing Crescent Rose at its hamstrings. With a yip of pain, it spins to attack Ruby, but Jaune seizes his chance and leaps forward, stabbing it clean through the back with his sword. It immediately slumps and falls, nearly tearing the sword out of Jaune's hand before he manages to recover it from the slowly dissolving corpse.
Ruby can't stay for long as her beowulf chases after her, swiping at her cape as she disappears with a cloud of rose petals once more. Jaune, freed from the melee for a moment and gasping for breath, takes the time to look around at the fight.
Looking towards the middle of the room, he sees the Operator engaged in a close range dance of death, attempting to get at the unarmored underside of George while adroitly dodging its counterattacks. A few scratches on the mutated beowulf alpha are bleeding, but there's no substantial damage done to it yet – there's no relief from Merlot's experiments on that front.
Glancing around at the rest of the students, he sees a beowulf with its feet frozen to the ground courtesy of Weiss, who is working with Yang to hold off two unimpaired beowulves.
Ren is having a similar fight to the Operator and George, ducking and flowing around blows while trying to line up shots, with a similar lack of any damage beyond cosmetic.
On the other hand, Nora is being pressed back hard, and is unable to find any room to swing her massive hammer aggressively, forced to block with the haft and make weak jabs with the head and butt instead.
Upon seeing this, Jaune looks over his shoulder, asking Pyrrha "I'm going to go help Nora, are you all right on your own?"
Pyrrha responds with a quick "Yes" as she stabs Milo at her beowulf's shoulder, simultaneously deflecting a swipe of its claws with Akuo.
Jaune immediately starts moving as quickly as he can towards Nora, as silently as he can in his armor and with how tired he is. It pays off as the beowulf doesn't notice him and continues to press its attack on Nora until he leaps forward, stabbing his sword into its back.
Unfortunately, this doesn't kill it, and with a howl of pain, it twists around, tearing the sword out of his grip. Fortunately, this makes him stumble, making the claw deflect off of his back armor instead of hitting him squarely in the back, throwing Jaune to the ground on his stomach.
Rolling once, Jaune raises his shield to protect himself from the mauling he's about to receive before he hears Nora's roar of triumph as Magnhild swings down like a sledgehammer, crushing the head of the beowulf into pulp on the cave floor. Jaune sighs in relief as he starts getting up. "Thanks, No-" BOOM Jaune is interrupted by the sound of the Redeemer firing off again. Snapping his head around, he sees that the Operator had apparently managed to land a solid hit just below the ribcage with the blade, then pulled the trigger, firing the cannon and blowing through the chest, throat, and most of the head while the recoil ripped it down to the groin of George, it's green tinted guts spilling out even as it begins to dissolve.
The Operator is already moving towards Blake's fight while Merlot screams in rage, firing a revolver rapidly with her right hand while simultaneously reloading the revolver in her left hand. The mutant she's firing at turns to face the Operator, making its last mistake as the third bullet from the revolver in her left hand slams through an eye into its braincase, dropping it like a puppet with its strings cut.
Jaune finishes standing up, recovering his blade and hastening over towards the beowulf that's still trapped in the ice, if only barely, before Ruby calls out "Jaune! Tag in!" as she starts running toward him, still dragging her beowulf and having just slashed at Ren's, giving him a few uncontested shots at his.
Jaune sighs, turning to face Ruby and bracing himself low and forward, shield angled like a ramp. Realizing his plan, Ruby continues to run directly at him, cape billowing and blocking the beowulf's vision of him until an instant before Ruby would run into him, she turns left hard with the help of her semblance. The beowulf, nearly 75 pounds heavier than her and without the aid of a speed semblance, cannot match the turn.
Jaune grunts as he feels the impact of 175 pounds of angry beowulf on his shield, but remembering his training with Pyrrha he works with the momentum to push it up and over him, throwing it onto its back on the ground, sword already stabbing at its vulnerable underbelly.
It howls in pain, scrabbling to try and get from the impaling blade until Ruby reappears, an uppercut swing of Crescent Rose decapitating the Grimm. "Thanks, it was really dogging me. I couldn't get enough time to get a good swing in with Crescey," Ruby says, turning to look at the fight in time to see Blake finishing off the one she'd wounded earlier as the Operator slashes the blade of the Redeemer through the last beowulf's throat, causing it to collapse and begin dissolving.
'That claw I traded hits with deflected off my shield, but the acid on it went through it like there was nothing there,' the Operator thinks. 'It didn't do a lot of damage – mostly cosmetic. But I should avoid trading hits like that again.' Even as she turns to ask the students if anyone's injured, she hears the sounds of chains clinking on pulleys as Merlot's rage filled voice comes over the intercom. "Phil. Kill them."
Turning and pulling the Veldt off of her back, the Operator peers into the inky blackness of the holding cell room. She sees movement, and it's something big. Bigger than anything she's fought other than the J-3 golem or Orb Mothers. Then she sees the bobbing green stinger.
'He's mutated a giant Deathstalker and named it Phil,' the Operator thinks, half in disbelief. Out loud, she says "Screw it, we don't have time to waste," bullet jumping forward and activating Peacemaker as soon as she lands.
Before the guns can spool up, she sees the stinger snap forward and a massive glob of acid comes arcing out flying straight towards her. 'Shit,' she thinks, immediately canceling Peacemaker and backflipping away from the glob.
A moment after she lands, she sees the glob of acid land where she was standing, creating a nice two meter wide and one meter deep crater. At the back of her perception, she can hear Merlot cackling like the madman he is, presumably gloating over the greatness of his creations again.
"Stay back," the Operator tells the students. "You'll just get in the way and put yourselves into unnecessary danger. If you want to help, take shots at it from range." Without looking back, the Operator leaps forward, taking shots at the Deathstalker's eyes. 'I need to take out the stinger. Can't just chop through it, that didn't work on a smaller one with Garuda's Claws. Means I'm going to need more than one good hit on it. That means I need to get on it. Having taken out one of its largest eyes, the Operator watches as it raises it's pedipalps to protect its eyes. 'Good, it's limited its own vision,' she thinks, replacing the Veldt on her back and grabbing the Redeemer. 'Under, over, or around? Not over or around, that'll let it reacquire me. Means I have to go under and hope that it's too slow or stupid to drop its body onto me.'
Diving forward under the shielding claws, she slides underneath it's belly. 'Ooh, unarmored,' she thinks, pushing the Redeemer up against its belly as she slides and firing two shots into its vulnerable flesh, ripping gaping holes into it and letting ichor start dripping out as the mutant roars in pain.
Exiting out from under the Grimm, she leaps straight up, grabbing onto the tail two armor segments below the stinger with her left arm.
Phil goes ballistic upon feeling this, flailing his tail around in an effort to get her off and scrabbling around on the floor. The Operator can't line up the Redeemer with a tail joint due to this movement, but her grip is too tight to be dislodged that easily.
'Come on you stupid animal,' the Operator thinks. 'Use your brain. You have claws, you can grab me, stab it down. I'm right here, you'll be able to grab me and hold me in place for the sting.' A series of bangs comes from where she'd left the students, presumably adding some supporting fire. She doesn't have time to check.
With a scream of what she can only assume is rage, Phil finally strikes. And strike he does, nearly throwing the Operator off of her perch as it buries its stinger into the ground. 'Well, that's certainly convenient,' the Operator thinks. 'I don't even have to bait it into keeping it's stinger down' as she presses the barrels of the Redeemer to the tail joint, triggering four blasts in rapid succession before quickly dismounting to dodge the grasping claws.
Landing lightly on her feet a few meters away from the reach of Phil's claws, she waits impassively as it attempts to free it's stinger until with a mighty heave and spluch, the weakened joint tears apart.
Phil screeches and spasms in pain, accidentally taking out one of the containers of mutagen as it stumbles around, ichor pouring from the tail stub. Finally, it recognizes the Operator and starts charging, attempting to bull rush the cause of its pain and mutilation.
The operator waits until the last moment before cartwheeling to the side, using a snapping claw as a sliding platform as she lands, Redeemer pointed perfectly at the leg joints. An extremely quick, inaccurate, but effective salvo tears two of its legs off before bullet jumping high and flipping in midair to gain space. Vaguely, she hears Merlot screaming in anger once more but ignores him.
Phil can't maintain his balance with only one leg on the left side of his body, and is forced to drag himself around with his fully functional right legs. Turning to the students, the Operator says "Nora, Yang. Get in here and help me end this thing. Watch the claws."
Nora lets out a loud war cry, charging down the slope at the severely maimed death stalker as Yang looks to Ruby for approval. Ruby nods, and Yang follows behind Nora.
The rest of the fight is simple cleanup. Robbed of its mobility and primary weaponry, Phil can do nothing except screech in pain and ineffectively thrash about at its assailants as they bludgeon and blast away at him.
Nora deals the final blow, getting up on top of the now exhausted Deathstalker and planting the spike on the back of Magnhild deep inside of its head. It finally stops struggling and starts dissolving.
Privately, the Operator says "Ordis, I need your best guesses for where Merlot's command center is. Now."
"I DON'T KNOW my best guess is that it's this room here, Operator," Ordis says, popping up a map of the facility and highlighting it.
"Waypoint it." Turning to the students who have reassembled behind her, the Operator says "While we were fighting, Ordis identified a probable command center. We're moving there now. Follow me." With that, the Operator turns and sprints off, following the waypoint.
A few minutes of running ensue before the Operator turns a corner and immediately backflips back to where she'd come from, a veritable storm of bullets flying down the hallway she'd occupied a moment ago.
"Ordis, what was that?"
"Oh, so that's what the light armor variant was for. I couldn't find any weapons for that design," Ordis mutters. More loudly, he says "They are lightly armored, but seem to be armed with machine guns roughly equivalent in power to a Gorgon without spool up time. Your Veldt will TEAR THEM APART be sufficient to destroy them, none of their armor plate is thick enough to take a direct shot from it."
"Projectiles only? It's like he wants to make it easy." Turning to the students who are finishing sorting themselves out after the sudden stop, she says "Find cover or get down. There may be ricochets," before activating Shatter Shield, causing a green layer of energy to overlay her form before she rolls out into the hall, ending in a crouch in the middle. Taking a half moment to aim even as the first bullets start flying at her, she begins methodically picking off robot heads as the bullets that hit her harmlessly deflect off of her shields.
It's a massacre. The 16 robots guarding what is almost certainly the control center's door attempt to resist, but are hopelessly outgunned. 16 shots of the Veldt later, and the Operator watches impassively as the last of the robots finishes their self-destructs.
Reloading the Veldt before placing it on her back, the Operator turns to the students once again. "The target is either in this room, or will have left a way for us to find where he went. If he is in the room, be prepared for a desperation gambit. Capture if possible, kill if necessary. Any questions?" she says, drawing both revolvers.
Ruby asks "Uh, are we needed in there? You've been doing most of the fighting yourself."
"This is your mission. I'm here to keep you alive and assist in mission completion. You should be there for the capture of the target."
The other students are silent, and the Operator turns to the metal door and keypad next to it. Privately, she asks Ordis "Did you get the key code by any chance?"
"No, but going by wear pattern, the code is some combination of 3, 5, 5, and 8."
Quickly keying in a few permutations of the code unlocks the door, the bolts holding it closed receding into the walls. The Operator winds up a straight kick and kicks the door in, rolling through immediately after, coming up guns pointed at an unarmed and alone Doctor Merlot.
"Put your hands up. Now," the Operator orders coldly, barely noticing the students filing in behind her.
"It's cute that you think you're in control, stranger. I don't think you realize that I have a trump card to play," Merlot says, smiling.
"I won't ask again. Put your hands up."
"Ooh, you really don't want to do that," Merlot says, raising a pair of clenched hands on either side of his body. "You see, in one of my hands is a dead man's switch. This switch is hooked up to the facility's self-destruct system. If you kill me, this entire facility goes up in smoke. Even if you aren't killed by the explosions, there is no way that you could dig out before starving or dehydration. So what's going to happen is you and those kids are going to step aside and let me pass. I will leave and you will not follow me."
And the Operator remembers.
"This dead man's switch is connected to a bomb, located inside of the tribute quarters. If you kill me, all of those innocent people die. If you let me go, they live. Simple as that." This Orokin had survived the initial purge by virtue of being not at the ceremony honoring the Tenno for defeating the Sentients.
I don't even have to think. I lunge forward, fast as thought, staking the hand and the switch to the wall with one Fang while the other stabs and twists into the gut.
I wasn't fast enough. I feel rather than hear the explosion of the bomb he promised.
The Orokin gasps out "Why?"
I don't answer verbally, but I try to justify it to myself. If I let him escape with those tributes, they were good as dead. Or worse, they'd be used for Continuity, erasing everything that they once were and leaving a bodyjacker in their body.
But deep down, I know that I killed those people. Yet more blood on my hands. Yet another charge to be laid at my feet when it comes time for final judgement.
The Operator snaps back to reality. No time has passed, but she knows what she must do.
The Operator's aim shifts, pointing one revolver at each of Merlot's hands, and opens fire, pulling the triggers at inhuman speeds.
The first four shots are blocked by Merlot's aura, but it shatters even before he can flinch. The remaining eight shots all pump into Merlot's unprotected hands, blood, bone, flesh, and metal spraying out as the hands are mutilated.
Once the Operator is finished firing, the mangled mess of flesh, blood, and bone that's left more closely resembles roadkill than a human hand. Four magnum rounds through each hand has ripped them apart, and his left hand isn't made any prettier by the shards of metal and wiring intermingled among the flesh.
It takes a moment for the screaming to start, but when it does, Merlot is loud, dropping to his knees and cradling the mangled remains of what was once his hands to his chest as the Operator calmly reloads her revolvers. Turning to the students, she says "Target disabled. I need two tourniquets."
The students all look in varying degrees of shock and fear at the Operator as Merlot's screams start to peter out into wailing. The Operator sighs, walking up to Ren and calmly asking again "Could you please give me two tourniquets from your bag of medical supplies?" Ren shakes himself from his shock, quickly reaching into his medical kit and pulling out the requested items.
To Weiss, the Operator says "Please slot the datamass into that console. It should be the security console, and it will let Ordis give the shutdown command to any remaining security," even as she kneels down, strapping the tourniquet onto Merlot's left wrist tightly, repeating the process on the right as Weiss slots it in.
Yang finally breaks the silence. "What the FUCK!?" she yells.
"I had two options. Let Merlot go and trust him to keep his end of the deal, or attempt to destroy the switch before the self-destruct was triggered. Possible outcomes: If it was a bluff, he either escapes or this situation occurs. If it wasn't a bluff and I let him escape, he blows it as soon as he reaches minimum safe distance and we all die. If it wasn't a bluff and I fail to destroy it, we all die. If it wasn't a bluff and I destroy it, this situation occurs."
"That doesn't make it right!" Yang yells angrily, stepping forward as her eyes shift to red and her hair begins to smolder.
Ordis helpfully chimes in publicly, saying "Remaining robots returning to docking stations and powering down. There is an armed self-destruct and the timer had roughly three hours left. I wasn't able to disarm it, but I was able to set it to detonate 24 hours from now."
"No. It doesn't make it right. But it was necessary to complete the mission." The Operator stands up. "It wasn't as big a risk as you think it was. Humans aren't wired to kill themselves. He was always going to hesitate before releasing the switch, and that gave me enough of an opening."
Pyrrha speaks up. "I could've held the switch closed with my Semblance, miss Tenno," she says tentatively.
"That would've been useful to know two minutes ago. What's done is done." The Operator grabs the sobbing Merlot, throwing him over her shoulders like a bag of potatoes. "Let's get back to the hangar. Ordis, can you open the hangar doors from here?"
"Already begun, Operator. You may retrieve the datamass."
The Operator nods to Weiss, who quickly pulls it out. "Let's move. I've got sedatives aboard the Itzal that will keep him quiet until we return to Beacon."
Ren stands up, blood on his hands. "I've managed to stop the bleeding with bandages, removed the large metal shards, and taken off the tourniquets. His hands won't die from lack of blood flow, but I don't think they're salvageable. The doctors will probably have to amputate. There's too much damage," he says as he washes off his hands with some bottled water poured by Ruby.
Ruby looks slightly sick, having been Ren's assistant for the field dressing and seeing the damage up close. "I don't understand. She was so friendly whenever I was helping her with putting her ship back together, and when we met her the first time in the forest after the initial holdup thing. She was like an entirely different person. Just… she was pretty always in control of the fight. It was terrifying."
"Multiple personality disorder?" Weiss mutters.
Blake shakes her head as she moves to give Ruby a hug. "I don't think so. She seemed the same, just more... intense?"
"She blew a man's hands apart in cold blood and gambled with our lives," Yang growls, eyes still red. "She's a monster."
"I don't think she's a monster," Ren says. "Remember what she told us about her life after she revived Nora? She has next to no memory of her life before her cryosleep. Since she's been woken from that, she's pretty much been constantly fighting or traveling to the next fight. I think she's mentally broken. Imagine if your entire life was spent fighting."
"Every time she spoke, it was short and to the point. Always related to the mission. The only exception to that was when she was convincing Ren to let her help treat Nora," Pyrrha says.
"A lot of the more veteran fighters in the White Fang were like that," Blake says, still holding Ruby from behind. "They'd be great people when they weren't on a mission, but once they were on one they would only focus on their objective."
Weiss speaks up again. "I'll say this. After seeing her fight, I never want to be her opponent."
Yang's eyes slowly turn purple again. "Yeah. I'd always been thinking in the back of my mind that she was underestimating us when we came across her, but after seeing her fight? She'd mop the floor with Qrow, to say nothing about us."
"Maybe if you got Glynda and Ozpin together they could give her a good fight?" Jaune ventures.
Ruby shakes her head. "She's above even Elite Huntsman level. You'd need a full team at that level to even have a chance. And even then I'd bet on her."
An uncharacteristically sober Nora nods in agreement. "Yeah. The best way to fight her would be to not fight her. Blow her up from far away."
Yang turns to Ruby. "I think you should stop going to help that... thing with the repairs. I don't trust it."
Ruby shakes her head, shrugging off Blake's encircling arms. "No, Yang. I think that I'm probably the closest thing to a friend she has. Maybe having a friend will help her."
"What about Ordis?" Ren asks.
"She seems to treat Ordis more like a partner, from what we've seen," Weiss says. "They both trust each other implicitly, and she frequently does converse with him, but I don't know that I would call that friendship. They just… work together."
As the Operator flies near the cargo bullhead on her Itzal, she comms Ordis. "Ordis, I remembered something from before the cryo. I need to talk with you once I get back and complete the debrief."