A/N: I really wasn't expecting to get a chapter out this week, but here it is. Enjoy!
Weiss knows full well that it's incredibly dangerous to be a hero, but this is the first time it really sunk in. She raises her hand and tries to summon a blizzard, or at least some wind to knock the mech off balance, but nothing happens. She concentrates, then hastily ducks a stray bullet from the fighters on the street below.
All Weiss is doing here is surviving, and barely. She tries again to cast something, pivoting on one leg and touching her rapier to the ground, but the mech swings one of its arms at her again, the arm splitting and folding into two separate appendages as it strikes.
Of course, now the mech needs more arms. Weiss ducks the first arm's strike, then backs up straight into the second arm, which jerks and hits her in the small of the back, knocking the wind out of her and sending her flying. Weiss tries to get her breath back and control the air around her for a soft landing, but there's too much wind. She lands on her feet, at least, and manages to slide across the pavement while turning around and raising her sword again.
Weiss pulls a cartridge of Ice dust out of her pocket and shoves it hastily into the hilt of her sword. Ruby lands next to her in a blur of red, and turns to her.
"I'll try to get to the head. Plan C."
Weiss nods and concentrates all of her energy on the tip of the sword. Just imagine the ice as an extension of yourself, and direct it like it's a muscle.
Ruby sprints onto the wave of ice that forms against one side of the street, running on an almost vertical wall, boots striking splinters off the surface. Weiss concentrates on forming the ice in front of Ruby, almost closing her eyes. Nothing else, just her and the ice. Just her and the ice.
A storm of bullets around her, that Weiss instinctively flings up a wall of ice to block. Ruby stumbles and ends up vaulting clumsily across the gap and into the mech, anchoring herself with her scythe.
Weiss raises her hand again to protect the others from an attack, then stumbles when the pounding in her head intensifies until she can't stand. She's overused her powers, and in training she'd always stop now, but she has to keep going. She has to keep fighting.
…
Ruby plants Crescent Rose into the metal plating of the mech, hard enough to split it and nearly yank her arms out of their sockets. She hangs by the handle for a moment to catch her breath, long enough to peer through the windshield and see Roman Torchwick's laughing face.
Of course all this was his fault.
Ruby flips upward to balance on the mech's head for long enough to remove her scythe, then vaults off as an arm flies toward her, slashing at it but glancing off in the process. Another two robots, the smallish kind, are behind her, and she slices one in half before she lands, then uses the momentum from that swing to raise the scythe and block the bullets from the next one. The robot collapses before she can hit it, revealing Blake.
She's back, at least for now, and she's helping Ruby out, and Ruby's not going to worry too much about the details since they have stuff to fight.
"I'll distract the mech. Checkmate, use attack pattern A."
There's a faint cough from the earpiece, then Weiss's shaky voice.
"I – don't think I can," she rasps. "I overused my powers to get you up there, and there's a bullet in my leg. Sorry."
"Yang?"
No response from her earpiece. Two arms swing towards them, and Ruby ends up in a desperate sort of fencing match, scythe versus fists, until Blake manages to tie the two arms together and tangle them up. The arms are still dangerous, but now they're a blunt club more than anything else.
Still kind of bad, as it turns out. Blake dodges to a rooftop and vanishes into the shadow, reappearing in flashes. Ruby dodges out of the dead end as soon as she can, because the mech is much less mobile than they are, and that's their main advantage.
The street is a mess of half-melted walls of ice that Ruby has to duck hastily around while retreating, and stray shotgun blasts from the two strangers fighting smaller robots a block or so away. Ruby mentally runs through her playbook of options. Fire won't do much against a mech this size. Ice might slow it down, but not for long. Lightning Dust would be helpful, but she's out of cartridges.
That leaves Gravity. And honestly Ruby's going to take any plan crazy enough to work at this point. She folds Crescent Rose into a sniper rifle and continues to duck behind the walls of ice, dodging away again when they shatter, loading. She has to time this right.
As one fist the size of her body flies toward her, Ruby pulls the trigger and prays.
The recoil sends her flying backward, skidding across the street. She digs her heels in as much as she can, and hastily unfolds Crescent Rose to plant it in the ground and stop her slide. A ball of energy, seeming to suck the light out of the air around it, hits the arm with a roar of sound. The arm dissolves up to the second joint, taking out most of the guns.
Three arms left, and one more cartridge of Gravity Dust. Ruby hastily loads and fires Ice Dust at two of the remaining arms, trapping them together and unable to fire for a few seconds, and fires Gravity Dust again at the free arm.
Torchwick is anticipating her moves now, focusing well even with Blake's calculated shots to the joints of the mech. Ruby's projectile tears off the hand of the mech, then veers off course and hits the asphalt. All the remaining guns reload and begin firing, the bullets tearing through the remaining Ice Dust almost instantly. Ruby runs.
She gets a solid concrete wall between her and the mech by diving into a side street. The two fighters she doesn't know are in front of her, swinging exotic weapons into smaller robots. One, a blond carrying what look like nunchaku, flashes her a grin.
They're not Ruby's problem now. Step one is just to stop Torchwick from destroying everything; capturing him would be a nice bonus. Ruby pats her pockets, hoping she has a few Dust cartridges she's forgotten about, and peers around the corner.
Yang lands in the middle of the street, a firestorm momentarily swirling around her feet. She grins broadly and cracks her knuckles.
"I was worried there wouldn't be any left for me," she says.
The mech swings one enormous fist at her. Yang grins, plants her feet, and punches back.
The fiery explosion of metal parts makes Ruby hastily duck behind the wall again, then rush out to block the attack of a robot that's going for Yang.
"Plan B," she shouts into her earpiece, praying that her team understands.
They do.
Yang sprints away from another explosion as Blake steps out from the shadows and hurls her weapon. Yang catches it and keeps running, stretching the ribbon to its furthest extent, then turning. Blake skitters across the street in her wake, still managing to be graceful as Yang lets go of the ribbon just as she turns to face the robot. The tension of the ribbon propels her forward faster than the mech can block, landing a blow to it that makes Ruby's ears ring.
Unfortunately, that hit isn't enough to destroy the mech, like Ruby was hoping. It's badly damaged, but mostly intact, and intact enough to hit Yang with its one remaining arm, flinging her like a rag doll across the street.
"Yang!" Ruby calls, rushing toward her. Her sister can't die now. Not now. Just not now, not Yang, not this.
Yang is propping herself up on her elbows by the time Ruby reaches her, grinning. There's blood soaking through her shirt, but she's alive.
"Hey there, Rubes," she says. "We got him, didn't we? That was all us. We took down a Titan mech."
"Yang, you are bleeding to death," Weiss says. Ruby looks up to see her limping out of a building, looking a lot less put-together than usual. Her face is even covered in soot.
"I'm not dying," Yang says. "Just a few bruises, and maybe broken ribs, and a couple internal injuries. I should probably get to a hospital, but I'm not going to die here. You okay there, Weiss?"
Blake rushes forward to help Weiss along, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.
"Does this mean you're back on the team?" Ruby asks.
"I guess so," Blake says, dragging Weiss a few more feet.
Ruby's team is back together, and even if two of them won't be in fighting shape for a while after this, that's the best news Ruby's had for a long time. She has all of her friends back.