Due to an issue with the site, this chapter may not even show for some people. It's not related to my stories specifically and is happening en masse across the site. Probably a server issue of some kind.

On a side note, all those reviews, lol. Would you believe me if I said I had to search Senator Armstrong on youtube to even get the reference? I did love MGS1 and played MGS2 on a friend's console, but we didn't like being forced to play as Rayden and gave up at the point of the story where the VR was going crazy, colonel was acting out of character and Rayden had to fight naked, etc. To us, it had lost what made the game interesting in the first place – the plot. As such, I never saw Senator Armstrong.

It's the muscle ripping shirt bit, isn't it? Lol.

Cover Art: Serox

Chapter 37

The clones – or perhaps illusions – charged in, and Jaune pedalled back, trying to keep all six in his vision at once. Fields would have had ample opportunity to take Neo's Semblance while she was under his control, but be they clones or illusions, they were still constructs made from his Semblance. They were still susceptible to his. The problem was getting all of them at once. Two rushed in for him while the other four went for Blake, Neo, Weiss and a Yang who was struggling to her feet. While he didn't particularly care about dropping their aura and costing them their lives to save his own, he might still need them against Fields.

The first copy of Fields reached him and drove a fist into his crossed arms, proving himself true and knocking Jaune back. The second came from the left, swinging a foot toward his back. The chance of it being clones was just great enough that he chose to raise his own leg to take it, and the meaty thwack of flesh on flesh told him these were no mere illusions. If they had been, the others wouldn't be having any trouble with them.

The Fields in front fell into a boxing stance and threw two quick jabs, one of which Jaune parried and the second of which slipped through to hit his shoulder as he leaned away. Sweeping Mors up, he shot twice into the clone's chest, causing it to explode into confetti of all things.

"Semblances are strange things," the second clone said, driving a fist into Jaune's kidney. He buckled and swung back with the blade attachment on Mors, scoring a thin line on Field's thigh that yet again bled pink and white streamers. "There's no accounting for taste, I assume."

A Semblance that makes pinatas? Weird, but then Neo's illusions shattered into glass and he'd seen the missing girl from Blake's team leave rose petals behind when she moved. His own changing his eye colour into a swirling mass of viridescent light was similarly pointless. The biggest thorn in his side was how childish the Semblance looked. It hadn't been taken from a child, had it? He didn't want to imagine some poor kid trapped as a test subject.

The clone launched a quick attack; mostly punches, short jabs and ducking and weaving that really did work more like boxing than huntsman training. The blows came quick and sharp, focused on his head and neck, but as relentless as Fields was, they weren't impossibly fast or strong enough to shatter aura, let alone bone. Not strong enough to lift a girl up and throw her into the ceiling, either.

Could he only use one Semblance at a time? Strength and speed together would have been enough to overwhelm them, but Fields was back down to the level of a normal trained person. There must be a limit. Either he can't use two at the same time or it's too energy intensive. Fields had said aura and Semblances fought against one another.

"It looks like quantity won't be enough to deal with you," his assailant said, stepping away suddenly. The clone collapsed in on itself and tumbled to the ground in bits of colourful paper. Confused, Jaune looked around, only to see Team RWBY and Neo had dealt with all their opponents, and Blake was even helping Yang up. Right. Huntresses. They were better than him in a normal fight.

Did he tell them what he'd found? What if he was wrong or Fields heard and adapted? No, they weren't idiots. Jaune hurried over to Neo as Matthew Fields appeared back in front of his desk, leaning down to whisper in her ear. She cocked her head and nodded.

"An impressive performance," Fields said. "Expected of the next generation of huntresses. It really is a shame you had to step over the line. With the advancements Subject 000's Semblance offers, you may well have been some of the first recipients of promising Semblances."

"You took my sister!"

"Your headmaster took that which belongs to us. If you want to blame anyone, blame him."

"You fuck!"

The blonde roared her insult but didn't charge in this time. Fields noticed it and laughed loudly, walking forward. Blake and Weiss parted like water around a rock, keeping a decent distance as the topless businessman walked into the middle of the room. No one wanted to go near him. No one dared. Such was the danger with every huntsman; you didn't know what their Semblance was or how game changing it might be. It could kill you in an instant, allow them to become intangible or even fire lasers from their eyes. Fields had so many that all those options were possible.

"Amazing, isn't it? Here I am, an ex-soldier, yes, but half your training and ability at best, and you all back down before me. Semblances really are incredible. You can be disarmed of a gun, equipment can fail, and robotics can be sabotaged, but a Semblance is all but impossible to deal with." Fields paused as the first footstep sounded, as Jaune stalked purposefully toward him. The businessman smiled. "Almost impossible. Is this to be our fated one on one duel, Subject 000? The lead scientist against his own creation? I'll warn you that the old cliché of the scientist killed by his own creation is something that exists solely in fiction."

They'd soon see. Then again, Fields had forgotten something. They might be helpless once their auras and Semblances were down, two men reduced to street thugs, but the girls were not. "Attack when I have his Semblances down!" Jaune yelled, breaking into a sprint. He was close already, but it would only take another ten metres to put him in range and end this once and for all. Jaune's lips peeled back as he covered the distance. "Now-"

Fields stretched.

That was the only way to put it. His entire body seemed to stretch sideways like he was nine metres wide, like he'd been squashed flat. The parts of Fields closest to him blurred and disappeared less than a millisecond after, so fast that it was all a blur to Jaune's eyes. The man reappeared in front of Neo, elbow striking her face so hard her head snapped back, and she was launched off her feet.

"Neo!" Jaune chased after him. It still wasn't far, and speed alone wouldn't save Fields in a room that was only so big. His foot planted down, but this time it was the ground itself that seemed to stretch on ahead of him.

It was stretching. Stretching out and becoming longer, like he was in a dream or horror movie and the exit kept moving further and further away. Jaune pumped his legs, but what should have been about twelve metres was now closer to sixty, then eighty and a finally a hundred. The distance between him and Fields was getting longer and longer, impossibly so and far beyond the size of the room, which had also stretched out. It was now about twenty metres wide, but over a hundred long, the length of a running track.

What kind of Semblance was this? Jaune activated Null and cancelled it immediately. The world snapped back to its normal proportions, and the transition was a sickening one. His eyes – eyes that had been focused to a longer room – stung like he had grit lodged under his eyelids. His body lurched forward, unbalancing as his brain told him he'd moved a hundred metres in a second and tried to catch itself from a fall that wasn't happening. His stomach churned as though he'd driven over a hump in the road and was sailing downward.

Spatial manipulation? Distance control? Dimensional expansion? He had no idea, only that it had been used on him, so Null could invalidate it. What it couldn't do was stop Fields using it, however. The man was a good distance away from everyone, but he swung his fist and suddenly Blake's face was at the end of it, snapping aside. Strength didn't matter. He'd either minimised the distance to bring himself closer or caused Blake to appear in front of him, but either way it turned what should have been a painful strike into a devastating hammer blow that sent Blake sailing through the air. Her trajectory would have taken her into a nearby wall, but suddenly everything changed; Blake struck Neo as she tried to get up, knocking them both down in a tangle of limbs.

"Space and time are such interesting concepts. How can you trust your perception of the world if the definitions you're used to keep changing?" Fields turned to regard Weiss Schnee as she appeared behind him, rapier stabbing for his back. The girl suddenly shifted ten metres away, or maybe the space between her and him expanded ten metres. The rapier hit nothing, and Weiss stumbled on her landing. The next moment, the distance snapped back, and Fields yanked on her white ponytail, kicking her legs out from under her. "I've long wanted to sample the Schnee Semblance. We almost had it, you know. Ambrose Schnee was such a perfect subject, but for the once General Sol's interference. We lost a decade of research that night, not to mention the Schnee himself. Put out of his misery. What a waste."

He tutted and kicked Weiss away. Mors cracked and sent a bullet hurtling toward him. Fields could have tanked it on his aura, but he stretched the space anyway, putting what to Jaune's eyes seemed like miles between them, that point starting just outside Null's range. The bullet still flew exceptionally fast, pinging off the wall as Fields stepped aside with the seconds he'd bought himself.

"We did get our own back. Stripped of his power, his position and more. Alas, General Ironwood took Winter under his protection, our contingency subject. We've been keeping an eye on your brother, though," he told Weiss casually. "Waiting for him to unlock it. That won't be a concern now with you here. It's almost convenient."

Jaune knelt by Neo and Blake, rolling the groaning Blake off his partner and pulling her up. "Are you okay?"

"F-Fine."

He ignored Blake's response, helping Neo up. The mute girl nodded stubbornly, pushing off him and taking a ready stance. She made no move to attack Fields, however, knowing that with the ability to stretch space, there would be no catching him off guard. He could put miles and miles between them, and close that distance in a single punch.

"He can't manipulate the space around me if I have Null active." Neo nodded but reached out to tap Mors and then point at Fields. "He does have a gun. He shot at me before. Shit, you're right. If I take us all under my Semblance for safety, he'll just shoot us."

The bullet could come from any direction and any angle with his ability to warp distance and direction. It'd be impossible to predict and they'd have five minutes of reaction time. Jaune wasn't sure of the velocity of a bullet, but he was sure it was more than five metres per second. Much, much more.

"Then I need to get close! He's only a problem so long as he can access his Semblances."

"Obstacles…"

Jaune glanced down, not really wanting to address Blake at all, but forced to as she croaked for his attention and struggled up. "What do you mean?" he snapped. "Be quick."

"He distorts the space between two people. If that's at a hundred metres and you parked a car between you, then when he brings that down to one metre, the car is still there. You'd both hit it. I think…"

She thought. How useless. Then again, she might be right. The bullet he fired had retained the same shape and size as it travelled. It hadn't stretched into a mile-long bullet. The snap back was also so instant that no one could react, which meant it had to be close to immediate. Terminal velocity. Or even beyond terminal velocity, since this was already physics breaking.

"Neo. Ideas?"

The mute pointed upward. Jaune saw it without understanding, but Blake must have caught on. Gambol Shroud came up and she fired twice into the nearest wall, hitting the fire alarm button contained there.

The shrill alarm echoed through the building, making everyone flinch and look over for a second. The sound blared into the distance before a hiss on the ceiling was followed by the sound of running water. Moments later, droplets were sprinkling down like rainwater, sprayed from the overhead sprinklers. What difference that would make, he didn't know. A slip hazard maybe. Fields looked similarly unimpressed, throwing his foot up, the sole of his shoe extended, and closing the distance between him and Yang in a fraction of a second.

CRACK

Yang flew one way, shrieking. Fields was flung the other. A sound like a grenade going off echoed between them as water sprayed in every direction from the point of impact. The two combatants crashed down far apart, gasping for breath and clutching their sides.

"Even water is affected by physics," Blake gritted out with a feral smile. "Hitting a droplet fast may not sound dangerous but have enough of them and hit them fast enough and your body would lose its shape before the water molecules could. I expect that's what being hit by a water cannon feels like."

The room was full of water now, still raining down and leaving the floor damp. Matthew Fields was drenched through, his black and grey hair falling limp across his strained face. He stood, one hand on his side, and Jaune was sure that Semblance had been shelved for now. Even if it hurt both of them, he was one against five. They'd win out in the end.

"Clever," Fields gritted. "Very clever."

"Most people have a lifetime to get used to their weaknesses in their Semblance," Weiss said mockingly. "Its original owner would have never fallen for that. You may have a hundred or even a thousand Semblances, but you've not mastered any of them."

"Mastery is overrated when my options are limitless. Here's one you might recognise, Subject 000. After all, it comes from your own sister!"

The water in the air coalesced and grew into the shape of a giant hammer, giving them all the warning they needed to scatter before it crashed down, shattering the floor under the force of it. Yang lunged in, only to find herself swimming through a solid wall of water. It closed around her, forming a bubble with her at the centre, clutching her throat and slowly turning blue.

"Yang!"

"Damn it!" Lunging forward, he touched the bubble and activated Null, ending Fields' control over it. The water splashed down along with the girl, hacking and coughing for air. "Get close to me!" he yelled. "Don't let him catch you in the water!"

Weiss rushed over, using glyphs to give her the speed to duck and weave under the various lances and ropes of water lashing out at her. Those stopped within a few metres of him, splashing down on the ground as the water lost its ability to keep a simple shape. That didn't stop Fields surrounding them with it, though, building up more and more water around their position. He was going to slowly suffocate them.

"You may be able to think up clever solutions to a single Semblance, but your solutions can become my next weapon!" Fields shouted, weaving the water up into a large dome. His voice was distorted through it. "What will you do next? Drain all water from the air? I'll simply switch to a wind-based Semblance and rip you apart. Set the building on fire? I can control flames. Drop a bomb on me? Impregnable skin."

Swearing, Jaune started moving forward, wading into the water with his Semblance active, forcing it away as Team RWBY and Neo kept close enough to be under his protection. "None of this matters if you get me close," he told the girls. "And he's just a normal guy without all his Semblances. You have to have some way around this."

"My glyphs can speed you up," Weiss said, "But they'll end the moment you use yours."

"He'll kill me clones as fast as I can make them."

"Mine isn't any use unless I get close enough to deck him."

Useless. All of them. Jaune moved for the water dome, hoping to close it down before it could start draining their oxygen, but the dome moved with them, keeping a six or so metre radius around him so he couldn't get close enough to break through.

"Move for a wall," Weiss said. "He can't phase water through it."

"No, but he can use the wall as another barrier to air. Our best bet would be the window."

"That's on the other side of him! We'll never make it."

"Well stop panicking or you'll use up the air we have left!"

Teeth gritted, Jaune did his best to filter them out and think. Blake's hand touching his shoulder was the last thing he needed, and he slapped it away. That didn't stop her saying, "Drop your Semblance."

"What? He'll kill us."

"He won't know," she replied in a whisper. "We're distorted." The water. Of course! Fields couldn't see his eyes through it, and even if he could, Jaune could activate Null when the water closed in. Taking a deep breath, he released control, letting his eyes fade back to blue and everyone's Semblances return. "This is our best chance to think up a plan," Blake continued in a whisper. "We may well only have one chance to make this work."

/-/

The water dome expanded and then burst outward, shattered open by the sheer force of a ring of outward facing glyphs from the Schnee Semblance. Air rushed in and the party inside took their chance to split, Neo and Jaune running left, while Team RWBY hurried right, preventing Fields locking them back into a single prison.

"Dropping your Semblance, Subject 000? That's brave!"

Water hurtled after both parties, Team RWBY ducking behind the pillars on the left, letting the water splash off the marble. Neo and Jaune weaved around theirs, jumping over whips of water aimed at their feet. Mors snapped out and fired three shots mid-air, each punching through the water shield Field's brought up and impacting his chest. He staggered back with a grunt.

"My aura is still in one piece I'm afraid. The same can't be said for yours by now. You must have realised just how little your Semblance means." He launched a wave of water, forcing Jaune and Neo to backtrack, creating all the space Fields needed. "If you can get close, I'm done for, but I don't have to let you anywhere near me. In fact, I can create more than one type of barrier."

The water all over the room splashed down suddenly, heralding a change. Matthew Fields turned to Jaune and Neo, raising his hands high and then touching them to the ground. Thick, verdant vines tore out from his fingertips and rushed along the ground, covering a distance of seven metres before suddenly veering upward, growing toward the ceiling and spreading out across it to form a wall of plant life thick enough to slow them down.

Fields dropped that Semblance a moment later, leaving the barrier there and instead reaching out with both hands toward the pillars hiding three quarters of Team RWBY. He gripped at the air like he was holding two cans of soda, grunted and squeezed his fingers tight.

Marble split and stone cracked. Dust and debris rained down as the pillars crumpled in their middles, buckling under the weight of their upper segments and crashing down with a fair amount of the ceiling itself! Blake, Weiss and Yang scattered, the latter two shouting out in alarm as they dove and rolled to safety. As the columns were tossed aside, he threw his hands open and summoned two balls of flame, the first of which he sent back into the wall of vines, setting them alight, and the second he detonated just behind it, causing a shockwave which sent the flaming thorns and debris erupting out toward Jaune and Neo, forcing them to hunker down or be shredded.

"He's not letting them close!" Yang shouted angrily. "Damn it!"

"Of course I'm not. Do you think I'm an idiot? I know more of how that Semblance works than its owner does. It's been the sole focus of our research for over a year – hundreds of millions invested into understanding and replicating it. I am acutely aware of its properties, and its limitations." He swept his hand toward Jaune and Neo, churning up the ground as if some invisible line had been drawn, forcing concrete up like a jagged cliff face and locking off that half of the room. "I'd invite you all to surrender but I won't insult you like that. I have too much respect for our proud huntsmen and huntresses to believe for even a moment that you would give up. I also respect your loyalty to your team leader, which is why I shall endeavour to make your ends as painless as possible."

Team RWBY tensed, Weiss and Yang backing up. Blake was left alone, wide yellow eyes fixed on Fields before she scrambled up and lunged back toward her teammates for protection. Too little too late. In that moment she was separated from the pack, she had made herself vulnerable. Fields activated some form of speed-based Semblance, charging forward with electricity crackling in his wake leaving behind the path he'd used. His hand lunged in for Blake's stomach and her eyes widened in shock and alarm.

Glass shattered.

Fields' eyes widened as his fist buried itself not in Blake Belladonna's gut, but Jaune Arc's. He buckled all the same, but he had the presence of mind to bring his head up, bright colours swirling up into his irises as the electricity faded, as everything faded. Gambol Shroud pushed up into Matthew Fields' stomach.

"Checkmate."

One shot. Two shots. Three shots. Fields' body bucked with each, driven up as the dust round discharged at point blank range into his bare body. His aura offered nothing, and blood burst out the man's back. Jaune would have kept firing but for Fields recovering and twisting the gun away, bringing his own around for Jaune's head and forcing him to retract Null seconds before he tanked the return fire, forced back under the weight of it. It was enough. Fields staggered back with his aura activating, but his left hand could barely cover the holes left in his body, nor could they contain the blood oozing out.

"You… You…"

"Jack of all Semblances and master of none," Blake said, over from behind the flaming rock and vines alongside Neo. "You've never had to think about how to use your Semblances creatively. You just drop one the moment it stops being useful and pick up another."

"That's the difference between lab tests and live fire," Yang added with a feral grin. "Test subjects don't fight back. Now, I think it's time you told me where my sister is. While you still have time left to talk."

Matthew Fields staggered over to his desk and caught himself against it, leaning back with one hip while gasping for air. A faint white sheen covered his body as a new Semblance became active, probably one designed around healing or regeneration. Jaune doubted it'd work for so bad a wound, but just in case it could, he stepped forward and into range, cutting it off with a flash of his Semblance. Fields groaned and gritted his teeth, glaring at him.

"This won't change anything. Chivalric Arms is too big to fail. There are a hundred researchers who would step up to take my position. The Council of Atlas will elect another, and my work will continue. You remain the key. You and your family will never be safe."

"What happened to all that big talk of beating us?" Jaune asked. "That dried up fast."

"Hah. Hilarious." Fields grimaced. "Such a sense of humour. The difference between you and I, Jaune Arc, is not that I am a soldier, and you are a civilian. Do you know what that means? It means that I accept the possibility of my death in pursuit of a greater cause. I don't take it personally. You do. You rail against what you see as gross injustice for you and your family, never realising that all it really is, all your family ever were, was nothing more than a statistic."

Jaune brought Gambol Shroud up to the man's forehead. Team RWBY didn't try and intervene.

Fields smiled past the barrel. "Kingdoms throw away lives every day. Frontier villages, labourers, the sick and the elderly. You're not special, I'm afraid. That's why no one cared to note or mourn your family's disappearance. Just one more tragedy in an already cruel world. Mine, however, will have meaning. The mourning, the eulogies, the well wishes and the medals awarded posthumously. I hope you watch it all. Watch and see how the Kingdoms mourn the loss of someone who matters." His lips peeled back as he laughed. "Like you and your family never did."

Jaune Arc narrowed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. "This is for mom and dad."

Team RWBY looked away briefly as the gun barked once. Neo did not. The petite mute stared with barely contained glee, closing her eyes as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Gambol Shroud clattered to the floor a moment later, discarded alongside the body of Matthew Fields, CEO of Chivalric Arms.

/-/

"General Ironwood." Winter snapped a salute. "We have activity at the Chivalric Arms rented compound. A fire alarm has been raised, though no fire can be seen. Calls to the business are not being answered but lights have been seen inside. We have reports of gunshots. What are your orders?"

"There are no orders, Specialist."

Winter looked stunned. "Excuse me, sir?"

"I am prevented from investigating anything related to Chivalric Arms if you don't remember. I have no authority to order our men into their territory, or to move in their direction."

"Sir, it could be Null!"

"It could be. In fact, I expect that it is. Fields' arrival in Vale wasn't going to go ignored by him, not after everything that happened to his family. Still, my orders remain the same. I cannot order an investigation of their premises." He let out a long sigh. "My hands are tied."

"General…?"

"That said, I cannot take any observation over the area. If they are under attack, then I have no ability to interfere. I have also been told not to approach them." He turned away to look out the closest window. In the reflection of the glass, Winter could see the pleased smile he wore. "As far as we are concerned, there is no disturbance there. And even if there was, the Council has stripped me of any authority to intervene. I am sure Matthew Fields and Chivalric Arms can look after themselves, Specialist." Ironwood closed his eyes peacefully. "There is no need for us to worry."

Winter Schnee, Specialist of Atlas, stood silently, considering the words carefully before responding. "Understood, sir. I apologise for having troubled you. If the Council asks, I will tell them you held back from interfering with Chivalric's business, as per their request, and that they should forward the request through to Mr Fields directly."

The General chuckled. "You do that, Winter. And be sure to tell me how shocked they look."

Matthew Fields (aka Senator Armstrong) dead. After watching a youtube video of that fight I'm glad I didn't intentionally base Fields off him, because I'm not sure how I could make a fight be held in such a weird setting. That's MGS for you. I heard good things about MGS3, but by then I'd stopped with consoles and moved onto pc, so I never played it.

Next Chapter: 9th November

P a treon . com (slash) Coeur