Fort Beacon, Close Quarters Kill House
5:54 hours
Day 3 of Hunter training for RWBY Squad
RWBY squad lines up at the locked entrance of the kill house; Ruby in front, then Yang, Blake, and Weiss. Ruby throws up a hand signal, and Blake and Weiss move over to the other side of the door. Ruby checks one last time to make sure everyone is in position, steps in front of the door, and kicks it, her AURA's heavy hydraulic legs blowing it straight off the hinges and into the wall across from it. She steps back to let Yang and Blake to storm the first room, taking out the three paper silhouettes with ease. Ruby enters the house, with Weiss bringing up the rear.
Inside the kill house, there is a door directly to their left, a hallway to the right going straight ahead, which has three doors going down it, and another door directly to their right, next to the hallway. Blake and Yang move towards the hallway, weapons raised, almost bumping into Ruby, who hesitates when she steps inside.
"Come on, don't bunch up," Weiss says. Yang fires her shotgun down the hallway twice, filling another paper target with 18 lead balls of buckshot, and moves down it while Blake breaches the door to the right.
"On me," Ruby orders Weiss, who grunts and follows Ruby to the door on the left.
She puts her back to the right side of the door, with Weiss standing directly in front of the door, and kicks it backwards, decrease the amount of force applied, in case there are "hostages" on the other side. Nonetheless, the door is blown wide open, and Weiss storms in, rifle raised. She automatically lines up her sights with one target, and puts three rounds into it, two in the head and one in the neck/upper chest before sidestepping to the right, making room for Ruby to join her, who unloads half of her pistol magazine into a second target. Suddenly, a third paper target, this one with a bad guy holding a civilian in front of him, pops up from behind a wooden barricade directly in front of Weiss. The white haired girl takes aim, making sure not to let the bullet fly anywhere near the hostage, and pulls the trigger. A nanosecond later, Ruby also fires, both bullets passing through the bad guy's forehead. Weiss turns to Ruby angrily.
"What the hell was that!?" she asks.
"Huh?" Ruby replies, confused. A buzzer sounds, marking the end of the simulation.
"That was my target!" Weiss says, almost yells, as Yang and Blake join them in the room.
"What happened?" Yang asks, reloading her shotgun. "Why did the test end early?"
"Ruby didn't fully clear the room and took my kill!" Weiss says.
"It was clear," Ruby defends. "I just wanted to make sure the target was hit."
"If I'm aiming it, then trust me, it'll be hit.
"It wasn't clear," Port says, entering the room.
"What do you mean?" Ruby asks, looking around the room. "Three bad guys, all dead."
"Four," Blake says, staring at the breached door. She pulls it open, and reveals an untouched silhouette hiding behind it. A block of wood on the floor kept the door from swinging all the way open to simulate where the body of the faunus would be. "Textbook Fed tactic, hide a guard next to the hinges of a door to ambush attackers." Ruby's shoulders sink.
"Alright, take five, squad," Port says, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. "I'm gonna rearrange the targets in a harder pattern. Maybe I'm just being too easy on you." The squad walks back outside the kill house, Weiss' criticism in Ruby's ear the whole way.
"What's wrong with you?" Weiss asks her. "You should've learned basic breaching tactics in Advance Infantry Training. This should be a cakewalk!"
"I'm a scout sniper," Ruby says, taking off her pistol and sitting down at a bench. "I didn't go through the kill house in AIT."
"Doesn't matter. Maybe if you remembered that you're not the only one in there and tried relying on your teammates, we wouldn't be on our sixth attempt at this."
"Speak for yourself," Ruby mumbles, standing up and walking over to a table with an ammo crate. Weiss huffs and sits in her place. Blake stands near her, hands still on her MP7.
"She doesn't even know how to organize a squad correctly," Weiss mutters to her, cleaning her Myrtenaster with a rag. "She brings in the shotgun first and sends it down the hallway alone, then lets you clear a room by yourself, then messes up her own room clearing." Blake doesn't say anything at first.
"Considering that her only experience with team leading is from a pile of textbooks she's read in the past three days," she finally says. "She's doing rather well as a team leader. I've seen officers pull worse tactics than that."
"Yeah, in the infantry maybe," Weiss scoffs. "We're Hunters, we need combat tested leaders that actually know what they're doing right now." Yang joins Ruby, who stopped refilling her magazine long ago, listening to every word.
"I personally enjoy doing this six times," she says, holding up her shotgun, smiling proudly. A piece of scotch tape with the word "Ember" written on it is attached to the stock. A similar piece of tape on her LMG as the word "Celica" written on it. "It means I get to use this beauty piece of art six times as long!" Ruby thinks for a moment, staring at the table, then turns around.
"No, you're right," she says. Weiss looks up, quizzical. "Weiss, what changes to formation do you suggest?" Weiss stares at Ruby for a minute, then says,
"Door breach, then Me, Yang, Blake and you enter in that order. Blake cloaks and clears the hallway, Yang clears the left room with a grenade, then Blake clears the left hallway room and decloaks. Meanwhile, you and I clear the right room, then we regroup and clear the final two rooms."
"Everyone got that?" Ruby asks.
"Roger," Blake says.
"Got it," Yang says. Port walks outside the kill house entrance and puts a new lock on the door.
"Targets are set up," he says, walking toward them. "Or have you decided that paper is too much of a challenge?"
"Form up, squad," Ruby says, slapping a new mag into her PLR.
"That's what I thought," Port says as RWBY squad walks passed him.
They line up at the door in the same order as before.
"Remember to cloak only when you're inside, Blake," Ruby says. "Your battery will only drain so much energy to fuel your cloaking system before automatically powering off."
"Roger," Blake says. Ruby takes a deep breath.
"This is the one."
She gives a different hand signal, and Weiss and Yang move to the other side of the door. Ruby kicks the door in, and it flies back. She stands back and readies her weapon as her squad funnels inside, smoothly taking out four targets.
"Keep the pace up," Blake reminds, flips a switch on her wrist, and her body gradually disappears as the light hitting her is modified by her suit. Her vaguely visible silhouette walks down the hallway, and she open fires on two targets, taking a few extra steps forward before firing, since it takes the brain an average of two to three seconds to notice the outline.
Yang is right behind her as she moves, then breaks off when she reaches her door. She raises her shotgun to her hip, blows a hole through the thin wood, takes out a flashbang, pulls the pin, and drops it through to the other side.
"Hallway clear!" Blake shouts.
Ruby gives a hand signal to Weiss, raises her pistol, and kicks her door in and moves straight in, shooting a target and moving to the side. Weiss joins her as Yang's grenade goes off. Yang storms in and unloads several shells into multiple targets, taking one out from a table before it could pop out.
"Clear," Ruby says, surveying the room. Weiss does the same, and repeats the word.
"Two coming out," Weiss shouts outside. The sound of Blake's suppressed MP7 rounds are heard from the end of the hallway.
"Form up!" Ruby orders as she and Weiss quickly walk down the hallway, Yang directly ahead of them. Blake is walking out of her room, her suit decloaking and her physical body returning to the correct spectrum.
Yang and Blake take the door at the end of the hallway, and Ruby and Weiss take the door across from Blake's room. Weiss and Yang each kick their doors in, and Ruby and Blake move into the rooms.
Ruby immediately pops a target in the back left corner, Weiss moves in, a hostage target pops up, she shoots the bad guy. Ruby notices the door is still ajar, and she whips it open. She puts three rounds into the target behind it, point blank.
"Clear."
Blake moves into the right side of the room, which is significantly longer than the other rooms, about the length of the hallway outside. She shoots two targets. Yang enters the room and turns two targets to confetti. Five more targets from varying lengths of the room pop up. Blake empties her MP7 into three of the targets, drops it and unholsters and aims Gambol Shroud in one swift motion, and shoots the remaining two targets in between where the eyes would be.
"Clear."
A buzzer sounds.
"About damn time, squad," Port says, entering the kill house from a side door in Ruby and Weiss' room. "I thought it would take you all damn night to get it right." Yang and Blake join them. Yang holds up her fist, and Blake bumps it.
"That was great shooting back there," Yang says. Blake shrugs.
"I've done it in the field before," she replies.
"Enough celebrating, get out there," Port says. "I gotta get these targets reset?"
"Reset?" Ruby repeats. "But, didn't we complete it?"
"Yeah, once. You're gonna do this course as many times as it takes for you to move like clockwork."
"Yes, Sir," the girls say, and walk back outside, this time more invigorated.
"Thanks for the help, Weiss," Ruby says with a smile.
"Uh, no problem," she says. "I'm gonna grab a few extra mags." She walks to the ammo table.
"Why'd you let her?" Yang asks Ruby, reloading Ember.
"Let her what?" Ruby asks.
"Let her call the shots?" Yang clarifies. "Isn't that exactly what she wants? To be team leader?"
"No, she doesn't want that," Ruby says. "She just wants this squad to succeed, and she thinks that being team leader is the only way to do it."
"Really? 'Cause that's not the vibe I got."
"Same," Blake says, who stands nearby, filling her MP7 mag with more bullets. "Especially for a poster girl for Schnee Armaments."
"Wait, poster girl?" Yang asks. Blake looks up.
"You didn't figure it out?" Blake asks. Yang shakes her head, and Blake smirks. "She's the CEO of Schnee's kid. Her whole point of being here is a PR stunt." Ruby frowns.
"I don't buy it," she says.
"Why not? She obviously wants team leader. Team leader of a Hunter squad means good news for Schnee." Ruby looks at the white haired girl. She's out of hearing distance, but she's fiddling with a magazine, reloading it slowly and with sluggish movements, clearly deep in thought.
"I just don't buy it,' Ruby simply says.
A few minutes later, Port walks out of the kill house and tells them they're up. RWBY Squad stacks up at the door again.