Chapter 12

"Weiss! Grab the target, he's atop the tree to your left!" Ruby yelled as she pushed herself to her feet, tears threatening to emerge from her eyes.

Weiss simply nodded, summoned a glyph, and flew above the tree line. At this point, all of the members of Team RWBY had reached an understanding as to the importance of the mission above all else. Passing the Hunt was the only objective and, to do that, the target needed to be secured.

Ruby slammed the blade of Crescent Rose into the ground, aiming the barrel towards the Grimm that were emerging from the trees. "I can barely hold up Crescent Rose…We have to get to a more easily defendable location." Ruby looked at her burned arms and around the area as she pondered her next move. They were in a sizable area of treeless space due to Yang's psycho episode, which had burned down most of the vegetation.

Yang, tired and almost unable to keep herself upright, managed to get herself into the best fighting stance she could muster. "Damn chainsaw…" she thought.

The Grimm began racing toward them. Ruby and Yang began firing off rounds, hitting the beasts one after the other. Blake could only occasionally see through the trees well enough to fire a round. Weiss was crouching next to the target, "Where do you want me to take him?" she asked over the network.

"Is the slaughter house still available?" Ruby asked. The Grimm had gotten close enough that firing at them with their weapons was no longer effective. The sisters had resorted to using guerrilla warfare, running through the forest and jumping through the trees to evade certain death.

"Negative. The White Fang are using it as their command center." Blake said.

"And the soldiers that were here first? What happened to those guys?" Yang asked.

"They fell back, but I can see airships landing in the distance, so we can safely assume they're regrouping." Weiss stated.

"Any ideas where to hold out?" Yang asked.

"We could probably defend the house." Blake said.

"I agree. It's also quite close to the docks, so we won't have to run out of cover very far to get to the exfil point." Weiss explained.

"It'll take a while for me and Yang to get there. We're not moving at full speed." Ruby stated. "Weiss, take the target and make your way over to Blake. Defend the house until the airship arrives." Ruby ordered.

"Fine, but you had better make your way over there soon." Weiss scolded as she activated a glyph under her feet and the target. They both began to levitate and were soon on their way toward the house.

As Ruby and Yang were fighting the hordes of Grimm, Ruby was noticing more and more blood coming from Yang. Eventually, she noticed the wound on her side had blood running from it, despite it being a closed wound. "Yang probably doesn't have enough energy left to fully cauterize the wound, so it keeps opening. Not to mention that her kidney (or what's left of it) needs to be removed before it starts rotting inside her." Ruby thought worryingly.

Ruby wasn't fairing all that well either. She figured she had a few broken ribs, some internal bleeding, and the burns and shrapnel. She was surely not going to last ten minutes of fighting…if you could even call it that. Yang and Ruby's guerrilla warfare was hardly warfare at all as it consisted more of them hiding and evading the creatures, occasionally killing a few that caught on to them.

Looking at her scroll, Ruby saw that Weiss was the only person with enough energy to actually continue fighting. Ruby and Blake were very close to a red aura level, whereas Yang was clearly not fit for battle. The level 16 simulation, however, had overridden the tournament rules that the Hunt was supposed to abide by. Now, unless your life was in immediate danger, the outside would not intervene.

Eventually Yang and Ruby managed to meet up in the forest, hardly twenty meters from where their battle started. "How're we gonna get back to the house?" Yang asked, not using the network.

"I don't know. What we're doing now, hiding and occasionally running, will take too long. And even if we did make it to the field, there's no cover between the trees and the house, so the White Fang will just shoot us. Going around through the trees, assuming we make it through the Grimm, will just result in us being attacked by the regrouping soldiers…and we're in no shape for a real fight." Ruby explained.

"We could go back through the water. To the pipes, I mean?" Yang wondered aloud.

"There's sewage in the water. And with all our wounds, we'd just get a nasty infection." Ruby answered.

"Shit…literally. So, what now?" Yang asked, seemingly unworried.

"I think we just have to hold out here. If we head north, we can ambush the soldiers and mostly prevent them from getting to the fields. So long as we don't get into an all-out firefight with them, we should be okay." Ruby said, ignoring Yang's horrible pun.

"Yeah, I figured we'd have to stay behind. So what, we stop the soldiers but the Grimm get through? Or the other way around?" Yang asked while reloading Ember Celica.

"Yes. We let the Grimm reach the field, but the White Fang are between the house and the trees. So, they'll have to start fending off the Grimm." Ruby explained.

"Oh, Okay. So the White Fang and Grimm are occupied by each other and we stall the Atlesian-speaking-guys. So, hopefully, Weiss and Blakey just have to wait." Yang said while cocking Ember Celica.

"Exactly." Ruby answered while reloading Crescent Rose.

"Why not let the soldiers through and stall the Grimm…at least they don't have guns." Yang asked.

"The soldiers will use the forest to their advantage to flank and ambush the White Fang...and we know they're actively looking to get the target back from us. The Grimm aren't smart enough to do that and they don't care about the target." Ruby explained.

"True. Good thing the Grimm are stupid…we'd be fucked if they ever got smart one day." Yang said, remembering the importance of the target.

"Ruby, I just arrived at the house and met up with Blake. When are you two going to get here?" Weiss asked.

"We're on our way Ice Queen, we just had to stop and powder our noses." Yang said as the sisters began making their way north in intercept the soldiers.

"Ugh, just hurry up. And tell us when you're getting close to the tree line so we can provide covering fire." Weiss answered.

"No probs. How're you holding up Blakey?" Yang asked.

"I'm in pain, but probably not as bad as you." Blake answered.

"I'm only feeling a little pain, because of my semblance, though I am getting weaker so the pain is getting progressively worse. But tomorrow…oh God! I don't even want to think about it!" Yang said sarcastically.

"I can't believe your joking at a time like this." Blake said with a slight chuckle.

"Sorry to interrupt, but I can see Grimm heading into the fields." Weiss said.

"Weiss, don't show yourself. Just stay in the house and defend the target, and Blake, if anyone tries to make their way in. Blake, take off your bow and start shooting the Grimm. Only the Grimm." Ruby ordered.

"No problem." Blake said.

"Already on it." Weiss stated.

"Remove my bow so the White Fang will see my ears when I start firing at the Grimm. As long as they don't see Weiss, they'll think I'm on their side. Brilliant." Blake thought. The girls were no longer surprised at how good of a battlefield tactician Ruby was. She might be immature at times, but during a fight, she was someone you would follow on the road to Hell.

"From here on out, radio silence until the airship arrives." Ruby said before silencing the network.

"Rubes…stop." Yang whispered. "Up ahead, there's a group of soldiers." She said.

"They're scouts, looking for a way to get their mechs through, probably. Let them pass; when they find a way through, we'll set a trap for them." Ruby said after noticing the support equipment the soldiers were carrying.

"If that's what they're doing, I know where they'll choose to go. C'mon." Yang said as they worked her way around the scouts, unseen.

Yang and Ruby made their way to a river about thirty meters in front of the scouts. "Water's real calm and shallow; only about thigh-deep. But the river runs all the way up to the slaughter house turning a water wheel." Yang said. "And if we follow the river the opposite way, we'll get back to the ocean…and be able to see the docks. Can probably make it there in a few minutes." She finished.

"Perfect." Ruby said as she reached into three of the pouches on her waist belt. She pulled out six square devices that were only missing a cylindrical component. "These are bombs that Weiss made for me. Load them with a certain type of Dust and watch the magic happen." Ruby explained as she pulled out one of her magazines containing ice rounds.

Like she had been doing it all her life, she dismantled six of the bullets, revealing the actual lead round and the ice-dust that launched it from the rifle. Fortunately, her .50 caliber rounds used the same size cylindrical dust chamber that the bombs used. After dismantling the rounds, she put the bullets back into one of her pouches, loaded each of the bombs, and began placing them at regular intervals about ten feet apart.

"Ruby, into the trees." Yang half-whispered after Ruby had placed the last one. Like clockwork, the soldiers began to appear with four mechs mixed into the mass. Ruby and Yang watched as the soldiers stopped to talk and slowly began marching into and around the river, with the mechs walking into the river as well. "Tell me when." Yang whispered as she loaded her left gauntlet with her long-ranged slugs and her right gauntlet with a new custom ammunition of hers: Pulse Slugs.

Originally, she had two types of rounds colored-coded by their effects. The orange colored shells were designed to carry a flame-dust-filled slug over long distances, immediately combusting on impact. The small amount of dust that fit into the slugs was, by no means, weak to people, but posed little of a problem for mechs. The red colored shells were filled with a flame-dust and sulfur mixture, creating a much larger fiery blast at the expense of long ranged fighting, due to the lack of a propellant. She used the red shells during close quarters combat.

Her newest invention used a combination of (from bottom to top) an anti-matter propellant, a pulse generator, and entirely encased a fragmentation casing filled with flame-dust. Upon impact, the pulse generator would activate creating a pulse wave equivalent to over one thousand kJ of energy while also creating a fiery blast from the dust. These slugs were colored yellow and they were deadly.

Ruby wanted to wait for all four mechs to be in between the bombs that had been placed. As soon as the last mech stepped into the kill zone, she activated the bombs. They all went off at once, causing the water to instantly freeze up to about five meters away from the kill zone. Some of the soldiers were frozen dead by the explosion, but most were simply dazed. The main goal, however, had succeeded: freezing the mechs' legs in place.

"Fire!" Ruby said as she began firing Crescent Rose at the soldiers below. Yang began attacking the mechs with her pulse slugs, which were proving very effective. The first shot took one of the farthest mech's arms clean off and damaged the torso; the second hit the torso and nearly eradicated all of the hardware inside of it. The mech had completely stopped moving and the pilot attempted to step out only to have his head taken clean off by a round from Crescent Rose.

Without missing a beat, Yang began fired rounds toward the other three mechs, while jumping from tree to tree to avoid their almost random shots. The mech in the middle had his anti-matter compression tank hit, rupturing it and allowing air to enter. This caused another explosion, completely destroying that mech and damaging the two next to it.

The last two pilots decided to abandon ship and tried to exit their machines, but Yang had noticed. Ruby's Crescent Rose made short work of the pilot on her side, while Yang fired a pulse round toward the pilot closest to her. "Definitely overkill." Yang thought as the pilot's body exploded into hundreds of chunks, coating all of the remaining soldiers in gore.

The few dozen remaining soldiers were in shock, and Yang was about to take advantage of that. She pulled her arm back, ready to rain Hell on the remaining soldiers until a bullet ripped through her right arm, shattering her elbow. "GOD-FUCKING-DAMNIT!" Yang yelled as she fell to the ground from the tree. She hit the ground, with her front facing downward, causing a few ribs to break, her side wound to reopen, and a dislocated right shoulder and ankle.

"Yang!" Ruby yelled as she caught sight of the soldiers closing in the form of backup. Though they were still about thirty-forty meters away, a few snipers were getting into position. "One, two, three, four…four snipers, one in position already." Ruby thought as she fired off a round, hitting the sniper square in the chest. The other three couldn't even get into position before they were missing limbs of their own.

When the soldiers by the river had realized what was going on, they tried to rush Yang altogether. Yang picked up her right forearm, with her left arm, aimed toward the base of a large tree and fired another pulse slug at it. The tree fell down, possibly killing a few of the soldiers, but definitely buying her some time by cutting off their route. The recoil of the pulse slug reverberated through Yang as her body ached. She lifted her left leg and smashed her boot down on her right ankle, reconnecting the bones, with a devastating amount of pain.

"Yang! Reinforcements are coming, let's go!" Ruby yelled. The river soldiers were finally able to narrow down her general location. They began firing and one of the soldiers threw a grenade up into the trees. The grenade exploded after Ruby had jumped away, but the force still managed to hit her, propelling her farther than anticipated. Her cloak caught onto one of the branches and her arm had gotten tangled into one of the ripped holes of the cloak. The angle at which it was caught caused her right arm to instantly snap backward.

She threw her left hand over her mouth to muffle her screams since the soldiers had lost track of her. Fortunately, her arm was probably the only reason that she didn't get strangled by her own cloak. Ruby used her left arm to pull on the cloak, causing it to rip free from the branch and she landed onto another branch safely. The soldiers had given up looking for Ruby, assuming they'd killed her and were making their way around the fallen tree.

Yang, still on the ground from the pain, shoved herself to her feet, and managed to jump into the trees. Not believing Ruby was dead but worried nevertheless, she jumped from branch to branch, ignoring her pain. She managed to catch the sight of Ruby yanking on her cloak and landing onto another branch.

"Where in the hell are you two?" Blake yelled over the network, breaking radio silence. "The airship will be here in two minutes. Get over here now!" she shouted.

"On our way." Ruby half-whispered.

Yang jumped down from the branch above her sister and hugged her tightly. Knowing her sister was alive made it so where she was no longer ignoring her pain. Yang's aura was devastatingly low and after looking at the scroll, she saw that everyone was running on fumes. "I guess some of the Grimm got into the house…or the White Fang figured us out." Yang thought. "Let's go." She said.

"What happened to you two? Why have your auras dropped?" Ruby asked as the sisters made their way through the forest, following the river back to the ocean, each step magnifying their already unbearable pain.

"Some Grimm began entering from the other side of the forest, behind us. We didn't notice. The White Fang retreated into their airships, so we were left fighting the Grimm alone. We've retreated into the pipes under the house and are making our way to the docks from inside." Blake explained.

"What happened?" Ruby asked.

"I'm fine. The objective is awake and walking. But Weiss…" Blake tailed off.

"Weiss?! What happened?!" Ruby yelled.

"She's alive, but unconscious. She didn't notice the Death Stalker from behind her. Its' stinger stabbed her from behind under the right part of her ribcage, and threw her to the ground. While lying face down, it stabbed her again in the area between her right shoulder, right breast, and right collar bone. I cut its' stinger off, filled her injuries with bio-dust, picked her up, and told the target to follow me underground." She explained.

"Oh God…" Ruby whispered as tears began to swell in her eyes and started rolling down her face.

"We'll be there soon. You sure you're good, Blakey?" Yang asked.

"Yes. A few stitches and I'll be fine. The worst thing that happened to me was probably that gunshot." Blake explained.

"That's good to hear." Yang said as the sisters reached the ocean. They immediately began running in the shallow, ankle deep water toward the docks. "I can see the airship! Where are you three at?" Yang asked.

"We're waiting at the pipe's opening at the docks." Blake answered.

"We can see the docks…we're about a minute out." Ruby said.

Blake stuck her head out of the pipe and saw the two running in the distance. "I can see you two. The Grimm have noticed the airship and are following it to the docks. We'll only have one shot at this!" Blake said.

The airship lowered itself and was hovering right at the end of the docks. "C'mon. Go, go, go!" the pilot said.

Blake, carrying Weiss, walked out, raised Weiss above her head and laid her on the docks. She then pulled herself up onto the docks and offered a hand to the target, which he took, pulling him up as well. The target ran to the ship and boarded it. Blake picked Weiss up and ran to the ship, also boarding. "You guys need to hurry! I see the Grimm closing in!" Blake yelled over the airship engines.

Yang looked to her right and saw the field full of Grimm making their way to the docks. She aimed her good arm and fired her long distance flame slugs at the house and field. The house caught on fire, as well as much of the dry grass and hay in the field. "That'll slow 'em down!" Yang said.

"The second one of those things makes it to the docks, I'm taking off. You've got until then to get here." the pilot said.

"Dick." Yang said as she looked at her sister, who had clearly one thing on her mind: Weiss.

As they ran, they could hear the roar of Grimm getting closer. Some of the creatures had made it passed the fire and had even noticed to the sisters running. An Ursa had made its' way over to them, but a shot from the airship went clean through the beast's eye. "Good shootin' Blakey!" Yang yelled as they reached the docks.

"Shut up and get in!" Blake yelled back as yang fired downward from her good arm, propelling herself up onto the docks. Ruby used her semblance to seemingly teleport onto the wood and both ran to the ship. As soon as they boarded, the ship began to rise high into the air and accelerate. Ruby took no time running to Weiss' side and placing her head in her lap, crying the whole way. The wound close to her stomach was about three-four inches in diameter, and the one close to her shoulder was about two inches in diameter.

"We done?" Yang asked as they flew over the house.

Suddenly, a Nevermore flew out from the trees and grabbed ahold of the rear stabilizers of the plane. The creature began to flap its' wings, pulling the back end to the ship upward as it did.

"Fuck off!" Yang yelled as she fired her good arm at the creature, missing due to the shaking of the aircraft.

Without a moment's notice, an RPG went soaring through the air and hit the Nevermore on its' side, killing it. The explosion caused the airship to begin spinning out of control, causing Yang to fall backward into the ship and hit her head. Fortunately, the ship was hardly damaged by the blast and managed to reorient itself, however, a second RPG came soaring through the air coming right toward them. A shot was fired out of the canopy of the ship, not toward the rocket, but to the side, before exploding in the air. The rocket then began to head towards the explosion, going way off course, due to the greater level of heat the rocket was detecting; it was basically a flare.

Blake and Yang looked back at Ruby and saw her holding Crescent Rose in its compact-rifle form, with a glyph at the end of its' barrel. "Photon glyph." Weiss said as she looked out through the door with her head still on Ruby's lap and Ruby holding her rifle with her left hand.

"Flares are loaded." The pilot said.

Soon after, three more RPG's came flying out from the woods toward them. "Flares out. Flares out." The pilot said as the flares were deployed keeping each of the rockets from hitting them. When they were safely out of range, the pilot gave a thumbs up and said "Mission: successful."

With that, the simulation came to an end. The shield generators lowered and the false landscape they had just been in disappeared, replaced by the barren arena and an audience screaming their names. They realized that they were, in fact, in an airship, but not a military one. This was a normal transport airship that had been loaned to Beacon for the Weekend for the Hunt.

The airship landed in the middle of the arena and the girls stepped out, seeing the medical staff running toward them. They began to work on Weiss immediately, but before the medical staff could take them away, Professor Ozpin stepped up to the stage and spoke, "Congratulations, Team RWBY! This simulation took place in an area designed after an abandoned farm in the Mistral outlands. Hopefully, you fully understand how easy it is for a mission to take an unexpected turn. This simulation is so advanced, that even we did not know how this would transpire. To be honest, if this were a real mission, and there was a hoard of Grimm closing in on this location, we would not have sent an airship. We would have bombed the area, regardless of your presence. It sounds cruel, but, ultimately, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. As you know, our professors have been grading you on your time in the simulation earing you an overall average of 71%. You may have successfully completed the mission, but I am afraid that we have received no requests from any potential administrators to take you due to this mediocre grade. I'm sorry ladies, but unfortunately, you–"

"Pass."

Team RWBY's eyes went wide, the audience looked around, but Ozpin had his glare directly upon one man. Following his eyes, one by one, the audience found the source of the voice. He stood tall, his head held high, and his eyes focused on the group of girls in the center of the arena. He did not pause, nor falter, as he folded his arms across his chest the sun glaring off of his medals. The Knight-General.

"You pass…barely. But, that is not good enough and we're going to change it."