Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. RWBY is owned by RT, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone. Rest in peace Monty, your vision lives on in us all.

Nani?! Two chapters in one day? Yes. I didn't realize just how short I made chapter 10 of V6, and well, you get this early since I have the day off, and have been writing since about 6AM... Alas this is simply more set up, gotta wait for that action.

CHAPTER 11

"Phase one: The Happy Couple are escorted onto an Atlas airship capable of carrying Siniy's weight, and that means the cargo Manta in the airfield." Ruby said, laying out the map, and pointing to the ship in question.

"Atlas is sending back a prototype tank that was being tested in Anima, so the airship it's on should be capable of carrying Siniy and that car out front." Terra said. Her insider access to Atlas systems provided useful for what was effectively an act of terrorism. To be fair the fate of the world depended on it.

Siniy, acting innocent, as he and Weiss boarded a normal manta craft, intentionally pressed his boot into the landing ramp on the first step, leaving a huge indent, making it known he would not be safe to fly in a normal airship. Turning around, he gave a fake smile of embarrassment, and Cordovin shook her head, then pointed out the cargo manta. "Animals." She muttered.

"Once Weiss and Siniy are directed to move, Weiss leaves Dead Drop on the now unoccupied manta."

Maria unzipped herself from Weiss's bag, and Rot appeared right beside her with Oscar. The two elders high fived while Oscar vomited over the side of the ship, just as the radio's began to blare. Maria plugged her eye's into the Manta's camera and HUD system, then smiled.

"That's when Rebel Red begins the distraction."

At Argus's first city bank, two security guards were catching up during the last few minutes of their shift. "You see that new X-Ray and Vav episode last night?" Suddenly the front door was kicked in, and there was a clattering on the floor, before a bright flash and a deafening bang blinded and disoriented everyone in the room. Bystanders screamed, and the two security guards were both shot in the chest by rubber beanbag rounds, their body armor taking the hit though severely bruising them and knocking them down. Clayton and Pale pointed their guns in the security guards faces, as Halcyone jumped up onto the bench inside the bank, and let off a burst of automatic fire into the ceiling. All of them had masks on, while Clayton's easy to recognize hat was left in the car, and his coat now with the red side facing out. Halcyone gave the classic robbery monologue for only the second time in her life.

"Get on the ground! This is a robbery! We are not stealing your money, that's all insured. We are stealing the bank's money. So if nobody plays hero, we all get to go home to see our loved ones. Now, I want the teller to open the vault, and empty the lien into the bags, unmarked. I can tell when the cards are fakes." Halcyone said, as Pale went with Halcyone to secure the cash with her, as Clayton kept the room suppressed with his imposing size and scary shotgun, the axe head detached and left in the car.

"Assault, robbery, stealing Atlas military property... What next?"

"Got the cash." Halcyone said, tossing her bag to Clayton.

"This is a lot of money." Pale said, as the trio left the building, and got into the General.

"Nearly 2 million lien." Halcyone said with a grin, as she started the car and did a burnout, the squad cars sounding off behind her.

"There they are." Clayton said, as Halcyone took off down the street.

Swerving right, as another Atlas security car cut them off, Halcyone cussed, and made it a point to reroute towards the wall. "They really want their money." Pale said, looking out the back window.

"Oh, they'll get it." Clayton said, pumping his shotgun and leaning out the window to take pot shots at the car directly behind them, putting beanbags into the windshields.

"I ain't had this much fun since I knocked over Vacuo's SDC deposit box with the old gang." Halcyone said with a smile, as she dipped the General left to avoid another car.

"Yeah, well they're going to be sending air after us now." Clayton said, reloading his gun.

"Yeah, well I haven't seen our friends yet… So." Halcyone said, as she sped up and winged a right to head back into Argus. With a giant grin the hyena faunus put her ACDC track into the stereo and began to jam out, as the squad cars gave chase.

Up ahead there were two more squad cars trying to cut the homemade muscle off, and Halcyone just hit the break and cut the wheel, then slammed the car into reverse, weaving it through the now frantically swerving cop cars, two of which crashed into each other, as Halcyone J hooked the General and started driving straight again. "I'm gonna vomit." Pale said, holding onto Clayton's seat.

"Not in the car!" Halcyone shouted as she handbrake turned to avoid slamming into a Squad car that did the same in a desperate attempt to stop the bright orange bolt of lighting on wheels. Halcyone just gave it some wheel spin and drifted around the parked car, as she flipped the Atlas Security members off. At this point, Halcyone was drifting The General around every corner, and managed to find a roundabout. Slipping in with the light traffic, she peeled rubber in a circle around a statue of a FFR general from Mistral as the squad cars tried to block every available exit.

"This is some of the best driving I've ever seen you do!" Clayton said, as he was half pressed into the door.

"Don't kiss my ass!" Halcyone shouted, feeling confused on her third time going around the statue. "What is the purpose of this circle?!" She asked, before whipping to the right, kicking the car up onto it's left side wheels, allowing it to effectively lean over one of the cars blocking their exit, before all four wheels met the road again. Now finding themselves to be going up the hill and the main road towards the gate with most of Argus's Security forces behind them, Pale tossed Clayton the other bag of lien. "You made your peace with god boys!?" Halcyone shouted as she hit the nitro boost. Rather than fight against the slope, the car only seemed to gain momentum, before all four wheels left the road at the top of the hill, and The General soared through the air over a crowd of people at the entrance to the city.

"WOAAAAAAAAAH!" All three of the vehicle's occupants screamed, as Clayton ripped open the bag of cash, spilling money all over the ground near the gate. Meanwhile the General went clear between the gap in the metal barricade and giant stone wall separating the city from the wilds of Anima. Landing with a jolt, Halcyone looked in the now shattered rear window to see a Manta behind them. The three took off their masks, and Clayton plopped his tricorn back on his head.

"Well that went well." Pale said sarcastically, resting his head against the back seat, trying not to throw up.

"Big distraction, nobody's dead, city keeps its money. I think we did pretty good." Clayton said.

"And with Rot acting as Maria's voice, the two won't sound or look out of place going after the General."

"And once Weiss and Siniy are out of Radar range…" Siniy saw his scroll signal go dead, and then slammed the two guards together, before restraining them. Weiss tied them to parachutes and the onboard emergency raft, then Siniy dumped them overboard, before assuming control of the ship, having been given a crash course by Maria and Halcyone.

"Blake and Yang can take out the Radar tower which has known technical issues, allowing everyone to circle back to the rally point unseen." Blake took out the few lazy and incompetent guards who'd never been in a fight since basic, rendering them unconscious or unable to reach comms to call for help. Yang gave her partner a smirk, then pulled out a connection cable, hooking one end to the radar terminal, and the other into her own scroll, which she interfaced to via her brain implant.

"Chippin' in." Yang said with a grin.

"If everything works out, we'll be in Atlas before anyone knows we left." Jaune said, rolling up the map.

"I love it when a plan comes together." Clayton said with a smile.

"Now then... Gather the goons, it's time to do hoodrat shit." Ruby said with a grin.

Qrow was in shock when he woke up in the woods. Clayton, Jaune, and Ruby in less than two hours had come up with a plan that would get them to Atlas. It was illegal, and the means to "borrow" the two airships wasmorally bankrupt, but if everything went right, nobody would be permanently injured, and at the end of the day any stolen property would be returned to its owner. It was more than just probably going to work. It was almost foolproof. And it kind of scared him that he couldn't come up with any reason to back out, other than it was highly illegal… And Qrow had done some illegal shit in his life.

However, no plan survives contact with the enemy… Siniy and Maria had both turned their vehicles around, but Blake and Yang hadn't checked back in to confirm the radar tower was disabled. "Blake?" Ruby asked. "Yang?" She called her team mate and sister on the group chat.

"It's Adam!" Yang shouted over the line, giving two words through her integrated scroll interface before cutting the call. Halcyone's eyes went wide, and the short haired blond girl changed her course to drive towards the radar tower, trying and give her girlfriend some back up in time.

Up in the air, it became clear that someone dropped the ball. Maria and Rot were in the clear though, a lie of The General having fled into the deep forest was enough to convince Cordovin they were returning after a mission failure, but Siniy and Weiss… "Manta Cargo 5-5, this Is Argus Tower, why have you circled back?" Cordovin asked over the radio.

"Drat." Weiss muttered.

Siniy picked up the radio mic and tried to clear his throat and get rid of his accent, mimicking Pale as best he could before pressing the transmit button. "Uhhh, had a sight misread on the fuel gauge when we left base, we're at a quarter tank and overladen with the big guy, makin' a return for refuel." Siniy said.

Cordovin narrowed her eyes from the seat of her command tower. Her two best soldiers failing basic radio procedures? Something had happened. "You… The Faunus?! What have you done with my pilots?!" Cordovin shouted. Siniy pulled the radio away from his ear in pain.

Maria, on the other end of the channel in her own airship, hot mic-ed when she saw the chance, and pulled out a bag from her cloak. "Hey Cordovin..." Maria took out a lighter. "Hear this?" She asked, taking a single blunt from her bag and placing it in her mouth, lighting it up, both inhaling and exhaling deeply so it could be heard over the radio. "That's the sound of me smoking up… In one of your airships!" Maria said, keeping the line occupied.

"Shit… Nora, failsafe protocol." Jaune said over his scroll. Nora smirked, as she stood up from her seat on the west cliffside overlooking Argus Airfield.

"It'll hit like a heart attack." She said with a giggle, as the front of Magnhild flipped open, and she fired all 6 of her magazine's high explosives down into the airfield. The soldiers on the ground, having turned their attention to the distinctive boom, could see the pink trails coming off of the projectiles from their posts, and immediately took off running towards the airfield gate for safety. The crackling of fire and wind dust echoed across the city as the 40mm's disabled or outright destroyed the remaining 3 airships in the field. Argus was out of air power, and would be unable to give chase to the now discovered heisters. Nora smiled, as she took off in a skip back to the rally point.

"Clayton, are you on the way to Blake and Yang?" Ruby asked.

"Hauling ass!" Halcyone shouted for her leader over the call.

Ruby breathed a sigh of relief, Adam was strong, she'd known that, but against 5 people the fight was leveled. "Maria, Rot, you have eyes on the base, did any Mantas survive?" She asked.

From her pilot's seat Maria looked out the window. "Oh no…" Maria said.

"What?" Clayton asked, over his scroll.

"Something big's coming out of the base!" Maria said.

"How big? What is it? Is it a mech?" Jaune asked, his mind rapidly trying to account for any assets he might have missed.

"It's not a mech…" Rot said, taking an educated guess as to why Argus imported a 20th of the worlds gravity dust annually.

Looking out the window once more, Maria saw that the base itself seemed to be rumbling. The road to the main island retracted away from the front gate, as the landmass began to rise from the bay. "It's the base. The base is levitating." She said.

As the island rose from the water, the hidden gun emplacements below its surface primed themselves, and the AA systems were all activated. Over communications and broadcast on the Argus base announcement system, Cordovin addressed her enemies from within, as she sat in the highest control tower of the now airborne island.

"You children have destroyed my airships, disrupted my security forces, and created enough chaos in my city to last a year… I will see to this fight myself." She said, as she directed her pilots to fly towards the cargo craft that was returning to the city.

Back at the rally point, Ruby looked up into the sky, seeing the Cargo Manta on it's way, and the floating island moving around the north east cliff. "Guy's… We're going to have to fight off Cordovin."

In the forest near the radar tower. Blake and Yang were ambushed by Adam, who'd been following them since they left Mistral. Yang was forcefully disconnected from the terminal, as she was tackled by Blake out of the line of fire. Seeing now that the bull faunus had interrupted her breaking of the radar network, Yang popped her knuckle spikes out, and gazed down Adam, who wore a hood to cover his face. "Is that Yang?" Adam asked, his tone falsely trying to convey surprise, though only the manipulative air surrounding it came out. "So you survived the fall of Beacon. Color me impressed. I figured after our little spat, you'd have bled out before I did…" Adam punctuated his sentence by throwing a bright red crescent of energy at the two girls with his blade, forcing them to evade the strike the only way they could. By retreating.

Jumping clear off the small stony ridge the tower was situated on, Blake and Yang fell towards the forest floor. Yang was prepared for her landing, and had her legs convert to their "ostrich feet" to help absorb the impact. Blake was less lucky, though she landed on all fours, she face planted, and Yang had to pull her up. "Blake?" Ruby asked. "Yang?" She tried again.

As Yang ran she spoke the only words that came to her mind. "It's Adam!" A shotgun slug whizzed past her head as she and Blake ran deeper into the woods.

"He's too strong to fight on our own!" Blake said as she struggled to use her aura and keep pace with Yang, who was staking strides twice as long as usual thanks to her augmentations.

"We don't have to, I have an idea!" Yang said, as she began veering off to the right, down the hill and away from the cliff facing Argus.

Author's note. A lot to unpack.

I put a little bit more planning into how the kiddos were going to get to Atlas.

If it wasn't obvious, with Halc being a gang banger, Pale being a mass/serial murderer, Siniy being an ex-convict with no love for Atlas, Blake being an ex-terrorist, Nora being herself, and the rest being shall we say... Disillusioned with people in charge, everyone is more or less ok with the plan being as illegal as it is. I don't write heroes well and I'm not going to pretend like my characters here are heroes as RT tries to. They do what they need to.

As for swapping the colossus with the island basically being a flying fort... Lore... Lore and Siniy+Pyrrha is an issue here.

Pyrrha is obvious. The mech is metal, this fight would be too easy if she really put her back into it or say got boosted by Jaune.

Siniy if he landed his cargo airship, could also potentially smash it on his own, it's literally just a bigger less mobile and less armed paladin, which is another thing... It's an anachronism.

The Colossus that is, is anachronistic, in that if this mech is a product of "Old Atlas" IE mid FFR war, back when Cordovin was say, only a 20 something LT, how the hell are the paladins a new technology, or some massive innovation in armor development?

Let me back track, and start with tech from our world. Usually, miniaturization of technology is the end goal of stuff like radios, phones, radar, and so on, but that is not usually the case with modern weapons or modern armor. Think of the tank. The original MK1 was essentially an armored tractor with machine guns, it was very simple, and small too, relative to tanks now. Then as time went on, they got bigger, more armor, better guns, and more powerful engines to move them, and so on. So how is it that the Colossus, this marvel of engineering which should put the Paladin to shame in physics terms, was made before them if all the previous tech to make them work, IE simple smaller scale robotics, and smaller armored units, were what was being made afterwards? It doesn't make sense, at least to me, or how armored warfare has almost always linearly developed.

Even with the justification that this thing was designed to kill deep water grimm, Pacific Rim style, it would make more sense to just make a heavily armed coastal fort. That and I just can't ignore that there would also be massive geopolitical consequences from the colossus's mere existence. Atlas after losing the Great War just starts making Metal-Gear type super weapons that can lob literal tons of volatile dust onto a target in minutes? And it's parked right on the border of another nation? Really? And this doesn't lead to sanctions? Or other kingdoms making their own weapons to counter it, like MG Ray being made to kill MG Rexes? A mobile fort on the other hand would be seen as less of a problem sort of like a battleship.

Now to be fair, I LOVE mech fights. Love them. It's why I kept the paladin's around for Siniy to slug it out with despite how much I think mechs on their own are stupid and are never presented correctly as an armored unit in fiction, which only gets worse as the machine gets bigger... Save for Metal Gears, and Titanfall titans they get it right... Like every time. So if you dislike the upcoming mobile fort fight, which is going to be a lot less... video game boss, and more modern warfare, I've got a few things in my back pocket. you should remember that file Cinder read back in Volume 3.