Just barely got this out before bed. I have a meeting at work bright and early tomorrow, which will suck, but at least they're taking us out to a nice restaurant afterwards for someone's work anniversary.
Also, am I allowed to discuss current RWBY stuff in this thing? I guess I'll just say, I saw this last episode's surprise coming since Season 3, and I was ready for it the moment I saw a certain old man's hairdo and wheelchair. Makes this chapter a bit ironic.
11/7/2019 EDIT: I have learned a valuable lesson today. It's one I thought I learned a few years back, but hey, we all forget things. Anyways, in trying to keep up the biweekly schedule, I had failed to deliver on the climactic Penny fight, something xfel was kind enough to point out to me in a review. I've gone back and added a bit more substance to the fight, making it rougher on Cardin, that kind of stuff.
Chapter Forty-Nine: Cardin's Choice
Even from the waiting room in Amity Colosseum, Cardin could sense the tension in the stands. A distant rumble of excited, nervous chatter filled his ears as he sat at the table with Penny, waiting for their cue to enter the arena.
Penny watched the television, reading the subtitles as Oobleck reviewed the tournament thus far, their victories, Yang's disqualification, the semifinal matches, what abilities they had demonstrated thus far, all laid out for the audience, though no doubt they've heard it all a hundred times before.
"Are you sure I shouldn't forfeit?" Penny asked. "Or at least I could hold back."
Forfeiting would push the negativity over the tipping point, and the same would happen if they caught her holding back. Ironwood had warned him just that morning that the Grimm were massing at the edges of the capital, watching, waiting. One little push, and Vale would be crawling with Grimm.
The thought of him giving Vale that push, of letting the streets get overrun by monsters, made his hands shake. Yet, it had to be done. Doubts bubbled up in his mind questions such as what would be the point of living if everything around him was gone, or did he really want to be under Cinder's thumb for his entire life rattled his nerves. Cardin took deep breaths, forcing his mind to fall silent.
"The crowd needs a good show. If they came all this way and spent weeks longer than they should have stuck here, only for the finale to fall flat, there'll be riots."
"I see. Failure to meet expectations at this level would provoke a hostile response. I will endeavor to meet their expectations."
The intercom crackled overhead, and Professor Goodwitch told them to head out. At Cardin's direction, Penny went first. The crowd booed and hissed loud enough to make Cardin wince from his spot at the table. Once the crowd had gotten it out of their system, Oobleck started announcing his name. Cardin rushed forward, timing his arrival with Oobleck's words, and received an overpowering deluge of cheers as he walked into the light, mace raised high, waving at the crowd with his free hand. For a moment, there's nothing but the cheers, filling him with manic energy as though he were a tuning fork, held up to its resonant frequency until it too, resounded. Then the reality of his situation dampened his mood, and the smile that nearly dropped had to be propped up by tense, twitching muscles.
Port and Oobleck continued their commentary, but even with speakers in every corner of the stadium amplifying their voices, they failed to pierce the wall of thoughts shutting Cardin's mind in with his doubts and worries. He felt torn between wondering if it really was in his best interests to follow Cinder's plan and whether he could win against Penny. Even with her holding back her most powerful weapons and not truly out to win, even with the purple Dust Crystal throbbing like an echo of his own heart in the shaft of his mace, the fact remained that Penny was a machine, designed to outperform the organic life that it resembled, while Cardin was only human.
Cardin got startled when the whole crowd started chanting with the countdown. His hand squeezed the haft of his mace, and in that moment, he could feel the densely packed energy waiting to burst out at the push of a button. His finger trembled over it, tempted to end the battle in one decisive blow before anyone realized what would happen. Gritting his teeth, he made himself slide his finger away.
"Begin!" Oobleck shouted.
Penny's swords swooped into the air, pointing down at Cardin. Green light coalesced at the point of each one and shot towards him. Rolling, Cardin dodged the shots as they kicked up stones around him. Using his Semblance, he slammed his mace into the rock, cracking the arena. He kept at it, rolling and smashing, until the entire arena's surface was littered with crags and outcroppings of rock for hiding places. He hid in one and watched Penny's Aura meter as shots fired down at him, but her Aura didn't twitch.
After a moment, the blasts slowed. Two swords darted out from over his hiding spot. Cardin blocked them both with his mace, twisted one inside the spikes of his mace, and pulled. He felt the string connected to it stretch and quiver as he looped it around the rock. With a shove, he knocked over the boulder, trapping Penny's sword underneath.
As the crowd cheered, Oobleck said, "Looks like Mr. Winchester intends to leave Penny all tied up. Question is, will she let him?"
In answer to Oobleck's commentary, two of Penny's swords buried themselves to the hilt inside the rock. Stone cracked and groaned as the two blades heaved it up. Taking advantage of the opening, Cardin ran forward, leaping and dodging over her remaining blades to close in with his mace. He got one good swipe in before a whirlwind of blades sent him scrambling back.
The crowd exploded with excitement as Penny's Aura shrunk past Cardin's level, just barely in the green. She looked up at the board and smiled.
"Very good, Cardin," she said, "But you will have to do better than that to defeat me."
All eight blades formed a circle in front of her. The light from each one gathered in the middle, feeding an orb the size of Cardin's head. He could tell she was clearly giving him time to react, to dodge or attack before she could let the attack fly, but he felt stuck. Should he act surprised, let the attack hit him?
Before he could make up his mind, the growing sphere pulsed, blinding Cardin like a camera's flash. With a spike of terror, Cardin leapt towards the nearest crevice, falling to the bottom. A bar of light, hot enough to leave heat shimmers in its wake, sliced cleanly through the rock just over Cardin's head, carving through his hiding spot as though it were soft cheese.
His heart hammered in his chest. The thought of giving up at that moment crossed his mind. Throw the white flag, say he saw his life flash before his eyes or something just as sappy, and it would all be over. Would it even matter? So what if the city got overrun, it's not as though the Dukes would let themselves get destroyed. Surely they'd keep the chaos contained, paint Atlas as the villain in the whole thing, and get on with Cinder's agenda to slice up the world. In the end, how bad would that really be?
Yet, something about the thought sat poorly with him. He couldn't tell if it was some competitive instinct driving him towards victory, the stubbornness that came with the sunk cost fallacy pushing him to the end of his plan to win the Festival, or fear of Cinder's yet unknown end goal that made him press the button on his mace. As the chain unfurled, it lit up, dancing as the crystal's energy coursed through it.
With powdered Dust, the mace felt weightless, reacting to each flick of his wrist. This time, with a whole crystal powering it, his mace felt alive, reacting to his every thought, seeming to move before his hands knew what they were doing.
The chain snaked out of the crevice, wrapping around a rocky outcrop. Cardin yanked and retracted the chain. The world blurred around him as he soared out, zipped around the rock, and sprinted towards Penny, retracting the chain for a close-range strike. Surprise widened her eyes as she brought up her arms to block. The blow knocked her off her feet, and she went flying towards the stands. Before Penny fell out of bounds, four swords buried themselves in the rock, and invisible strings pulled her back into the ring.
"Almost, but not quite," she said in a low voice. With an imperceptible nod, she gestured towards the board. "I have nearly depleted my stores of Aura. One more hit like that should be sufficient.
Penny's swords rose around him, approaching from multiple directions. Cardin unfurled the chain and spun it in a circle, weaving multiple loops around him. Each time a sword swooped within his reach, Cardin flicked the chain, and the sword was battered aside. The others, hovering out of reach, charged shots, but the undulating motion of Cardin's chain deflected every shot.
Cardin stalled for time, rallying his wits to make a final decision. He could end the round with a twitch of his fingers, if he aimed carefully. Cinder's plans would be delayed, maybe for years, maybe weeks, and he would have Ironwood and Ozpin helping him. Maybe they would find a way to protect him.
He knew it wouldn't be enough. Cinder had all of Vale's resources behind her and whatever other connections she had, while Ironwood was hemmed in by bureaucratic protocols, cut off from his Council, spread thin across Vale's frontier towns, and under constant bombardment by the press, Ozpin was nearly stripped of political support from White Fang scandals, and his own father had given up resisting her.
Cardin eased up on the defense, feigning fatigue, letting the swords close in bit by bit. Concern flashed on Penny's face, and her own attacks eased up, just nipping at the ring of chain dangling in the air. The crowd hung on the edge of their seats, waiting in frantic anticipation for the next move.
A glint of green, floating behind Penny, caught Cardin's eye. He had first taken it for the flash of one of Penny's swords, but it was too slender and angular, and all eight of her swords were circling like vultures over him.
As it approached her, he recognized the shape. Ironwood's fragment of Life Dust, stolen from him within the past couple days, held by an unseen hand, crept up to Penny. He started forward a few steps and stopped. No one else seemed to see it. Perhaps it was an illusion, a ploy of some kind to distract him or lure him into some form of ambush.
He dropped his mace. Within seconds, a squad of Atlesian soldiers swarmed the arena. Confused murmurs rose in the crowd, but Oobleck, supplied with an excuse from Ironwood, told the crowd that there was a malfunction in the arena's Dust generator, and that they had to make sure the field wasn't contaminated.
Before Cardin could tell the soldiers what was happening, the Dust shard plunged into Penny's neck. Her body spasmed, and her eyes dulled for a moment. When the glow returned to them, they stared unfocused at Cardin. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.
A three swords shot at Cardin, far faster than Penny had made them move before. Cardin lunged aside, taking a sword across an arm. A stinging sensation crept up his shoulder as Aura deflected the cut. The soldiers pressed close to Penny, shouting for her to stop. With a sweep of her arm, Penny knocked three of them to the ground. Her swords hacked and sliced through the rest, leaving a mangled pile of bodies at her feet.
The crowd shied back, horrified at the sudden bloodbath. Oobleck shouted for everyone to leave in an orderly fashion, but a mad scramble for the doors had every exit blocked by impatient, screaming throngs. The crowd's terror rose to new heights as the frontrunners found every exit barricaded with thick steel walls.
The two Paladins strode onto the field, opening fire on Penny. The android stood unmoved as bullets rained down on her. Two sets of four swords hovered in the air, gathering light in two pulsating spheres.
Cardin scrambled for his mace and sent the ball flying towards her swords. One sword got knocked off its circular path. The light it had contained spilled out, shooting a beam off at a tangent to the spinning motion, crackling and sizzling against the barrier that protected the spectators before it swung down into the stadium, frying a slice out of the rock. The harsh, metallic scent of vaporized iron and carbon wafted out of the crevice.
The Paladins fired rockets and bullets at the other four swords, but their attacks had no effect. With a high-pitched whine, the light shot out from the quartet of swords, carving a Paladin like a block of warm butter. The pilot let out a sharp scream as the beam swept up his right leg and through his chest.
The remaining Paladin rushed at Penny, swinging at her with its blocky arms. Penny blocked the attack with one hand, and with her other, she grabbed the machine. She lifted it over her head, pried it apart until its seams pulled apart, and stabbed the exposed wires with her swords. The Paladin quivered and fell still as she tossed it behind her.
The swords struck at Cardin again. This time, he had his chain ready. He flicked his hand up and down, making the chain undulate along its whole length. The waving chain slapped aside six of her blades. For the other two that made it near him, Cardin wound the chain in a loop, snaring both swords inside a hastily tied knot.
Penny strode forward, nearly stumbling over the bodies at her feet. As she got closer, the swords pushed harder against his chain, forcing a path for the android. Cardin disengaged his chain, trailing it behind him before launching it like a whip at Penny. She sidestepped as the ball cracked the air next to her, hitting the ground hard enough to kick head-sized stones towards the stands.
With Cardin defenseless, the swords dove at him. He unfurled more chain and wound it around him, but he could only block two of the swords. A third glanced off his armored shoulder, and the fourth left a long scratch in his breastplate. The rest bit into exposed flesh, halted only by a wavering barrier of Aura. Angry red welts rose where the blades sawed against him, and a tingling cold sensation from Aura drain crept up his fingers.
Cardin swung the chain in a cyclone, snaring the cables that controlled each sword. The cords grew taut, and with a yank, Cardin pulled the swords away from him. Another flick pulled the cables up and over his head, dragging Penny with him. His chain sagged under her weight, but Cardin pushed his Semblance into the chain, willing it to grow lighter. The glow around the chain brightened until it hurt his eyes, and Penny shot into the air like a rocket. When she reached the top, Cardin slammed it down, putting all the weight he could behind the blow.
Penny hit the ground with a deafening blast. The whole stadium trembled under the impact, knocking people in the stands to the ground. The stone floor of the arena had split apart, exposing crumpled metal underneath.
Cardin peered over the edge of the crater, the chain twirled around himself in anticipation of another attack. As he examined the broken rocks, trying to find a trace of the android, a flash of orange and green moved in his peripheral vision. He turned, but Penny moved too quickly for him. Her fist buried itself in his shoulder, denting his armor and knocking him off his feet. He rolled and steadied himself with his chain, coming to his feet in time to block Penny's kick with his arms. The impact sent a spike of pain up his right arm, but he wound the chain around her and hurled her away.
When Penny got up, her chest unfolded, exposing half a dozen missile launchers. Rockets hissed as they shot out of her, coming towards Cardin in looping arcs. Cardin swung his chain in wild circles, trying to catch the rockets, but they nimbly avoided all obstacles as they homed in on Cardin.
Gunshots rang out above him, and one by one, the rockets exploded before they could reach Cardin. Ironwood leapt from the stands, landing in front of Cardin with his pistol drawn.
"Get out of here," he growled. "I'll cover you."
Beacon's professors ran onto the stage from the waiting area, Port brandishing his axe, Oobleck sipping from his thermos as it unfurled into an explosive club, and Goodwitch, brandishing her whip.
Seeing these new threats, Penny opened hatches on her arms and legs, revealing guns on each limb. She pointed her hands towards them, and dots of light flashed along the length of her arms.
"Take cover!" Ironwood shouted as he ducked under a crevice.
Cardin scrambled behind a rock, while the professors scattered. Cardin's rock cracked and groaned as the blasters pounded it to pieces. Cardin rolled just as the rock fell apart and blaster fire shot through where his chest was a moment before.
Goodwitch, floating above the stadium, gathered up small debris with her Semblance, forming a roiling cloud of rocks and metal around her. Shrapnel rained down on Penny, denting her head and back as the chunks tore through the last of her aura. Penny, undeterred by the damage, pointed up at her. A beam of light sliced through the cloud, hitting Goodwitch in the thigh and slicing her weapon in two. As she fell to the ground, Port leapt up and caught her with one hand while firing his axe with the other. From behind the door to the waiting area, Oobleck set up his mortar and fired it at Penny.
Ironwood fired six rounds out of his revolver, but even his high-caliber bullets only left dents in Penny's frame. Ironwood held up his hand to an earpiece and asked, "Have you figured out what is happening yet?"
Whatever the reply was, it made the General scowl. "If we can't shut her down remotely, then try rebooting her system. What do you mean, you already reset it?"
Ironwood was cut off when the swords swooped after him. He sidestepped most of the swarm, but three blades sank into his right arm, slashing his sleeve to ribbons. Ironwood batted them away, and the sleeve fell away completely. A synthetic arm, scratched and dented by Penny's blades, shone as he flexed its fake fingers.
"I have the Defender en route," Ironwood said. "Its cannons should be enough to destroy Penny without scuttling the stadium."
"We can't bombard the stadium," Goodwitch snapped. "Everyone's still trapped in here! We have to get them out of here and back on ground first."
"We can't wait that long!"
"We will have to." Goodwitch turned back to Cardin. "Get out of here, we can handle this. If you can, get out through the waiting area and break open the walls from the outside.
Cardin checked the crystal in his mace. The bottom had grown dull, and bits of ashen flakes drifted away from the crystal, but the top half still glowed with brilliant purple light.
He looked up at the stands. Most people were crowded around the exits, some remained in their seats, calling on Scrolls and taking footage, and a few had weapons drawn, ready to leap into action the moment the shields fell. Other students bearing weapons were wading through the crowds, trying to reach the exits, but the crowd was too tightly packed to let them pass.
A surge of adrenaline sent a shiver through Cardin's chest as he thought through his situation. He had hesitated too long in fighting Penny, and Cinder had written him off. Even if he lost, she would destroy him.
He could take Goodwitch's advice, find his father's money, enlist Junior's help, and flee the country. He might live a year, or two, or ten. He could hope Cinder would see no reason to hunt down a beaten opponent, that out of sheer disdain, she would let him live out whatever meager existence he scraped up in a different country.
Or, he could fight the killer robot and either die on the spot, or die the moment Cinder caught him, and maybe, just maybe, push back her plans for world domination a few weeks.
Taking a deep breath, he made his choice.
"This isn't about Penny anymore," he said, pointing up at the crowd. "We need to get them to calm down before the Grimm attack. I think I can do that." He turned to Oobleck and asked, "How fast can you get me a microphone?"
Oobleck disappeared for a few seconds, departing on a Dust-fueled rush and skidding to a stop with a microphone from the overhead booth in his hand. Cardin took it, tapped the microphone a few times to test the acoustics, and said, "Can everyone hear me just fine? This is Cardin Winchester, that Beacon student up against Atlas' killer robot."
The General shot him a dark look as he blocked a sword with his metal arm, but Cardin continued on. "You guys flew all the way here and paid out the nose for your seats, and you're leaving before the fight's even over? What, does some Atlesian toaster make you piss your pants!"
As his words echoed through the stadium, heads turned towards him. No longer shoving up against the door, the crowd dispersed, pushed apart by the nudges and shuffling of the tightly packed people. Pushed back into the seating aisles, some people sat down, and like a supersaturated solution, the people dissolved into the aisles and walkways solidified on the seats.
It took five minutes of boasting, berating the crowd, and insulting Atlas to restore some semblance of calm to the frightened masses, all the while stepping past his protectors and deflecting Penny's attacks with his chain. As his words ran on, he could feel the Dust faltering, its gravity-altering powers diminishing with each breath. His arm burned with exhaustion as the chain grew heavier and each stroke took more of his strength. Meanwhile, Penny showed no signs of slowing her assault, bringing light-based projectiles, explosive missiles, and floating blades to bear on his chain. His eyes went to the ports, with all the missiles bunched up in one spot. If one exploded prematurely, her whole frame would be torn apart. His hand went to the last of his Fire Dust, strapped to his waist.
"I appreciate the help," he said into the microphone to the professors, "But I think outside help is against the rules. Why don't you take a seat, and we can resume the fight."
Goodwitch stepped forward, ready to protest, but Ironwood put a hand on her shoulder. She scowled at him, but when he solemnly shook his head, she went away without a word.
Once he was alone, he turned his attention to the crowd. A few people were still huddled at the exits, but most had resumed their seats.
"Who's ready to watch me break one of Atlas' toys?"
Silence answered him. Cardin cocked an ear as he wrapped the chain around four blades, stopping them within inches of his head. "Come on, I couldn't hear a thing. Let's try that again! Who's ready!"
It started as a half-hearted cry, but as more and more voices took it up, it grew into a thunderous shout, goading anyone silent into joining their cries to it. A few of those voices took up a chant, shouting his name into the deluge of volume. The chant spread like fire, melting the raw noise and smelting it into a single, unified cheer.
Cardin strode forward, deflecting the onslaught of projectiles with his chain. He felt his vision narrow, blurring out the crowd and his surroundings, leaving only Penny, the projectiles hurtling towards him, and the chain. His hand stung with sweat and blisters as it guided the chain, waving and looping it to catch missiles, blades, and beams before they hit him. Most were stopped short, but a few beams threaded their way through, leaving welts and burns wherever they struck him. Sweat poured down his face, and he shivered from the cold creeping into his chest as his arm burned with fatigue.
As the light from the Dust wavered, the chain grew heavier, until he could no longer raise it high enough to cover his head. Using what scraps of Aura he had left, he pushed his Semblance into the crystal on instinct, fueling its dying power with his own soul. The light intensified, and through his hand, he could feel every link as they slid across one another. He no longer had to move a muscle. Just by thought, each link twisted into place, catching the tips of the swords, knocking beams aside, and snapping the metal casings on the missiles, exploding them a safe distance away from Cardin. With this surge of energy, his mace grew hot enough to burn. Cardin's palm sizzled as it gripped the haft, but the pain was lost in the sensation of metal links occupying his mind.
Once he was within ten paces of Penny, the missile ports on her chest started to close. Cardin sent the chain forward, snaring it underneath the retracting plates. Penny wrenched at the chains, trying to pry it loose, but Cardin used the distraction to close the remaining distance.
Still pulling at the chain with one hand, Penny gripped the chain closer to Cardin's haft and yanked. He let out a yelp as his feet left the ground, and he flew past his intended target. Penny's arm collided with Cardin's nose, sending a fresh shock of pain through his face as his new implant buckled under the blow. Blood gushed down his chin and filled his mouth with a bitter, metallic taste.
Using Penny's arm for leverage, Cardin pulled himself onto his feet and wrapped the chain around her. With a thought, Cardin's chain wrenched the arm behind her back, fastening it in place with a loop around her waist. Penny's right arm, still trying to pry the chain out of her chest, reached for his throat. A shift in the chain's gravity yanked him out of reach, but close enough for a final attack.
He had hoped to find a missile in the ports and set them off with some Fire Dust, but the ports were all empty. He had also hoped to find the Dust crystal that had set her off and remove it, but no sign of it remained in or on her. Maybe, like his own crystal, it would burn out over time, but until then, Penny would continue her rampage.
As he frantically searched Penny for a way to disable her, despair seized his heart. He leaned back, ready to run back to the waiting area, when a sudden inspiration, coming to him from the jingling links of his chain, drove him forward. He flicked the cap open on his mace, tipped the dying crystal into his hand, and plunged it at Penny's chest. The ashen end he held fell apart in his grip, but the luminescent point fell into one of the ports as Penny's chest snapped closed.
Penny's swords closed in on him. His Aura flickered, and the swords pressed through, drawing blood from shallow cuts. He put a hand on her shoulder and poured his Semblance into her, hunting for the dying Dust crystal. When he found it, he poured everything he had left into it, willing it to weigh down everything it touched.
The floating swords, stained with his blood, clattered to the ground. Though Penny remained upright, metallic joints creaked as she struggled to move. Her eyes dilated wildly, fluttering as her damaged program sought a way out of Cardin's trap.
Cardin turned away from the disabled robot, retracted the chain, and held his mace up towards the crowd. As the sensations from his Semblance ebbed away, he became acutely aware of the pins and needles stinging his scorched right palm. Gritting his teeth through the pain and fatigue, Cardin recovered the microphone and said to the crowd, "See? Couldn't have been easier to deal with."
The chanting rose to a frenzied pitch, nearly deafening him with its fervor and ferocity. Ironwood came out from the waiting area and walked up to Cardin.
"Impressive," Ironwood said, holding out his left hand. Cardin left it hanging there as he gave the General a frigid stare.
"Build a better robot next time," Cardin said. "This one was so boring the crowd nearly left."
Cardin's banter roused some nervous laughter in the crowd. The General frowned and said, "Thank you for taking care of Penny. I can take things from here."
Ironwood approached the android, but Cardin cut him off. Holding the microphone away from his mouth, Cardin said, "Penny has to be destroyed. They won't trust us otherwise."
The General's jaw clenched, and he stiffly turned away. As he left, Cardin lifted his mace into the air. The crowd's cheers rose to a fever pitch, and many people leaned forward, eager for the finishing blow.
Moments before he swung, the light in Penny's eyes flickered, and the lenses came back into focus. Her eyes darted around, but the rest of her remained frozen. When her gaze settled on Cardin, she asked, "What happened to me?"
"I don't know," he said quietly, keeping his lips from moving. He flexed his arms as if warming up for the blow, buying time for Penny's final words. "I think Cinder got you, somehow."
"Oh." She looked around at the broken Paladins and discarded bodies. "I did all that, did I not?"
"You did."
A tear dripped from her synthetic eyelids and rolled down her metallic cheek. Cardin hadn't known that the android could cry.
"What now?" she asked.
"I'll smash you to pieces. It should be enough to keep the Grimm from swarming Vale."
Penny bowed her head, movement restored as the crystal in her chest lost its power. "I understand. Please tell Ruby that I was glad to be her friend."
It took his Semblance lightening his mace for his trembling arms to raise it over his head. As he swung down, he switched it, bringing the weight of a Bullhead down on Penny's skull. Between Aura depletion and structural damage from earlier hits, Penny's dented head buckled under the powerful blow. The lights went out in her eyes. She fell back, limp, like a puppet with its strings cut, as the crowd exploded with applause.
In that tumultuous, rowdy stadium, Ruby wept into her mother's cloak as her two teammates leaned in around her, shielding her from the crowd's bloodlust.
Changelog:
11/7/2019 – added more substance to the latter half of the Penny fight.