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.
Volume 7
"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." Montesquieu.
CHAPTER 1
"Please continue to Atlas docking bay Omega-12, a security team will meet you there. Over." The ATC said as the two airships flew among the other mantas in the air.
Weiss didn't like the way things were looking, and Siniy liked it less. "Guys, we need to get out of here." Weiss said.
"But we just got here, why would we leave?" Jaune asked over the scroll call.
Siniy spoke up. "This isn't just the home fleet. What you are looking at is the entire roster of Atlas' carrier cruisers. You thought three guarding Vale was overkill, imagine 20… Ironwood must have pulled the entire military home…" Siniy said in his mother tongue.
"And they've never been placed this aggressively around Atlas before." Weiss added. "Half of them should be docked."
"We stick out like a sore thumb. Atlas ain't tryin' to welcome us, they know we're in a stolen airship. The second we land, we all gettin' arrested, or worse fired on." Pale said, clutching at his missing shoulder, and clenching his teeth.
"Then what do we do?" Oscar asked over the call.
"Put some distance between us and the fleet." Weiss said.
"Maria, go low. Take everyone down to Mantle, we'll see you in a few minutes. We're going to go poke the hornet's nest." Clayton said, as Halcyone pulled up, and made a higher speed pass by one of the cruisers. Without warning two Atlas light fighters deployed from the nearest carrier.
"Yup, they knew." Pale said, as Halcyone pulled out and towards the mountains east of Mantle.
"Those fighters are gaining." Pale said, before the cargo manta's missile warning system started beeping.
"That'd be heat seekers." Siniy said, before everyone started strapping in.
"On it." Halcyone said, before flipping a few switches, and punching the flare deployment. Behind the cargo manta an ark of bright fire dust flares burned in the air, and the heat seekers diverted towards them, detonating behind the craft. A second pair of missiles were launched. "Hang on!" Halcyone said with a grin, as she began to put the cargo craft into a barrel roll, the missiles streaking past the airship, and colliding with one another. Once Halcyone had levelled the aircraft out, 25mm auto cannon fire struck the right wing, setting the engine on fire.
Halcyone looked out the window and then at her leader before speaking. "Ladies and germ, if you look out the right window you will see our craft has caught fire."
Clayton and ruby looked out the window, then at each other. "No plan B." Clayton shrugged, as everyone filled into the hold as the missile warning started beeping again. Halcyone, grabbing her stuff from the trunk of the General, gave the good old boy a final send off via salute, before she crammed into the only safe place on the airship with the rest of her team.
From the bridge of the nearest carrier, a captain saw the missile impact, blowing the cargo manta out of the sky. He shook his head. It was a valuable asset to lose, but whoever stole it also had access to a prototype tank, and there was no way he was willing to risk that thing being taken for a joyride in Atlas. Seconds later he got a report from the pilot that just shot down the cargo manta. "Uh, sir, we have chute deployment on the Predator tank." Looking back out of the observation window he sat in awe.
"I do not believe it… Reengage."
Inside of the now falling tank, Halcyone was rubbing her head. "Owwwww." She groaned.
"Everybody ok?" Clayton asked, as he turned on the red interior lighting.
"What are the chances they think we're dead?" Pale grunted, as he pulled himself into the gunner's seat.
20mm shells bounced off of the frontal armor of the tank, making a loud clanging noise, indicating they were being shot at again. "Not very likely!" Weiss shouted over the ringing in her ears from the sound of the tank being struck. She was being held in the empty cargo and troop compartment in the back with Siniy, the two crammed into all of the seats.
"Hey if we're under 20,000 feet we can still breathe right?" Ruby asked. Clayton just smiled at her as he put himself in the commander's seat.
"What do you mean 20,000 feet?" Siniy asked in confusion.
"Fire up the weapons systems." Clayton said with a smile, and without waiting for confirmation on what he heard, Pale turned on the tank's autoloader, and put a shell in the breach, as Halcyone got into the driver seat, preparing to detach the parachutes when they made landfall.
"Hey Weiss, it's a little stuffy, I'm gonna pop a window." Ruby said to her partner, before she cranked open the top hatch. 20mm rounds whizzed by, and a few put holes in one of the three parachutes suspending the light tank in the air. Ruby decided to do something about that. She planned on using crescent rose but the mounted weapon she immediately saw to her right would do better. An M2, similar to Siniy's own M3 was mounted to the turret. She'd never gotten to fire one before, but always wanted to. "Yeah!..." She said, racking the charging handle. "What you got bitches!?" She shouted at the passing fighter, as she started shooting, hitting one of them as they made a pass, causing it to start smoking. "What you got!?" Her shouts of challenge turned into nearly maniacal laughter as she rode the lightning, swinging the gun around to fire at the other fighter.
"Let me have a turn Ruby, come on!" Halcyone yelled up to the red reaper, peeking her head into the turret basket as more 20mm rounds bounced off of the tank's armor.
"This is insane!" Weiss shouted.
"Are we seriously trying to fly a tank!" Siniy said loudly over the gunfire.
"Technically we aren't flying." Clayton shrugged.
"Because we're falling!" Weiss shouted, as the .50 cal fire continued from above them.
Ruby gazed down the second fighter as it tried to joust her. Raining bullets and spitting muzzle flash, Ruby managed to clip the wing of the fighter, which made it lose control, sending the now destroyed airship into some of the parachute lines keeping the tank up. "OH SHIT!" Ruby shouted, nearly falling out of the turret had she not grabbed onto the machine gun's spade grips. "Clayton, we're in trouble!" She shouted, crawling back into the tank, as it started falling bow first.
Behind the tank, the fighter pilot ejected and deployed his silk.
"Awesome!" Halcyone shouted, as everyone braced themselves.
"Pale, main gun, and make ready." Clayton said.
"WHAT THE HELL AM SHOOTIN' AT?!" He asked loudly over the wind now whipping by the open hatch.
"We're gonna use the gun's recoil to slow us down, it's still gonna be a rough landing." Clayton said, before Siny cut in
"If we are to hit the ground, unpacked snow is our best bet, there should be embankments, close to where the mountains east of here start, the frost is plentiful and softest there. It should break our fall!" Siniy shouted, keeping Weiss from tumbling into the turret, as he strapped her and himself into the troop compartment with a cargo net.
"I don't know about this." Pale said to his leader.
"Just trust me." Claytons said, before checking the onboard computerized map. "Rotate the turret 82 degrees."
"Fire in the hole!" Halcyone shouted, getting back into the driver seat. As the turret basket started moving, Ruby contorting to sit on Clayton's lap to keep out of the main cannon's way.
"Fire!" Clayton said.
"GET SOME!" Pale said, pulling the joystick's trigger. The entire tank shifted sideways.
"Fire!" And again the tank was shoved by the gun's recoil.
"Are they trying to shoot us down?" The carrier helmsman asked the captain as one of the rounds from the tank flew below their airship.
The captain sighed. "No, they're trying to fly that tank."
Inside of the tank, most of the team whooped and hollered, while Weiss was screaming in terror as the vehicle shook and jostled as it fell. "We're flyin' a tank!" Halcyone shouted back at Weiss and Siniy.
"You can't fly a tank you dolt!" Weiss shouted at Clayton, as the tank was shoved again.
"Bring turret full front, and wait." Clayton said. Pale rotated the turret, as Halcyone got to work on remotely closing the hatch.
"It's been an honor gentleman! The greatest ride is always the last one!" Halcyone shouted, as everyone but Weiss was cheering as they fell.
"FIRE EVERYTHING!" Clayton shouted.
"COME ON BABY!" Pale yelled, as he laid on the trigger, the cannon firing as soon as the auto loader closed the breech.
Every few seconds the tank seemed to stop falling, and the feeling of weightlessness overcame the team and a half, and after 10 more rounds put into the ground, the tank finally hit the snow. True to Siniy's word the unpacked layer of frozen moisture was soft enough that even though a rough landing, the tank was in one piece, and so too were it's crew, if a little bruised from the impact. The tank fell backwards onto it's tracks, and once upright, Halcyone released the locks keeping the tank to the parachute pallet, and started up the engine. "Any landing you walk away from." She chuckled, then winced in pain, before pulling the tank off the pad, plowing through snow before reaching the rocky tundra at the base of the mountain.
Yang had pinged Ruby with a location for them to link up in Mantle after frantically calling to see if they survived the crash. The airshow being a spectacle on it's own to the population of the undercity, Team JNPR and the BY of RWBY had seen everything from the ground once they landed. After a short drive, the team and a half found an entrance.
The gate guard looked up from his control room to see the tank approaching the city's entrance. He stepped out as the vehicle stopped, only for the turret to turn, and the main gun to lower directly in front of him. The guard stopped, as the driver's hatch popped open, and a short haired blond spoke to him. "I'd open that gate if I were you."
The tank was given access to the city, moving freely down the street, treads digging into the asphalt slightly as it went. What AK-200's on patrol in the under city that noticed the tank all ignored it. With Atlas markings and no handlers on the ground, the machines did not recognize it as a threat. The people of Mantle who were used to seeing military machinery, thought nothing of it as well, other than the fact Atlas was putting light armor onto their streets.
"This place is awful." Halcyone said, looking out the drivers hatch at a truck full of filthy miners going by. "I've lived in the slums most my life, and I wouldn't want to live here… Frickin' cold." She grumbled.
Siniy scoffed. "Mantle is problematic. Years of financial neglect after the Great War, and a poor relationship with it's overlords…" He looked out the back door's periscope to see Atlas above them. "And one can imagine that the conditions have not improved. All the buildings you see? 50 years old. Prometheus academy? Least funded in the whole world. 60% of the world's current dust production, the most limited access to the stuff. The list goes on." Siniy huffed.
"Mantel's where all the faunus in the kingdom live too huh?" Pale asked.
Siniy nodded. "Faunus in Atlas are rare. Faunus in Atlas academy are rarer. Socioeconomically, faunus can not afford to move to Atlas, and even when they can, usually they are treated like shit unless they are one of the top 20%. There are no laws in place limiting them from doing whatever they please because they are faunus… But there are laws in place to limit them because they are poor." Siniy said with a shrug.
"Atlas doesn't have a Bill of Rights like Vale and Mistral, Pale. The people here are subjects not citizens. The government can do whatever it wants to whoever it wants, be it racially motivated, or purely for its own self interest… And nothing stops them." Clayton said.
"Mistral has a Bill of Rights?" Pale asked, genuinely having never heard of it.
"A restricted list but yeah, it exists. It's modeled off of Vale's, but is a list of permissions to the citizenry instead of restrictions against government. Basically, in Vale so long as there's no law that says you can't do it, do it. In Mistral, if there's not a law that says you can, don't. Ass backwards, but I'm not in charge of the place… No wonder so many people keep trying to make their own cities in the rest of the continent though." Clayton muttered.
Halcyone halted the tank at the location Ruby was given, and with perfect timing too. Team JNPR, Blake, Yang, Qrow, Oscar, Maria, and Rot were all about to enter a corner clinic. Halcyone "parked" the tank, and everyone filled out as she wound it down. The two sisters hugged in reunion, and everyone but Siniy went inside the clinic, the polar bear man all too used to being unable to fit through Mantle's historically tiny doorways.
Maria knew the doctor that practiced at this particular clinic. She was his favorite patient after all. Cybernetic eye replacements were a rarity, and hers were old and delicately crafted. "Sorry to break the pleasantries, but who exactly is this?" Clayton asked, looking the old man up and down.
"Oh, please forgive me. My name's Pietro." The elderly man said with a smile and a tip of his flat cap
"Pietro's the one who made my eyes. Whenever he's not too busy helping build the future of Atlas, he's down here in Mantle, helping people like me." Maria said.
"Disabled people… Not to get in the way of figuring out what exactly is going on in Atlas, but you a good doctor?" Pale asked, stepping out from behind his partner, showing off his cauterized right shoulder stump, and a shirt covered in blood.
Pietro's eyes went wide. "Oh my!" He shouted, his mobility chair walking over to Pale. "When did this happen? It looks recent." Pietro asked, as he put on a pair of gloves.
"About 5 and half hours ago…" Pale said with a shrug though wincing.
"Does it still hurt?" Pietro asked.
Pale shrugged, though winced again. "Sir, this ain't the first time I've lost a limb." He said, pulling up his left pant leg, revealing his peg. "Could say I've got a good pain tolerance."
"Right… Um, well we'll need to get you some proper care first, but… You seem remarkably stable." The old man said, as he pulled out a roll of gauze and bandages to keep the wound clean. Pale sat down on the exam table and took his shirt off so the doctor could do his thing. "Is anyone else hurt?" Pietro asked.
Clayton sort of raised his hand and tilted it back and forth, his wound was healed, but he wouldn't be surprised if he had some sort of infection from the contents of his intestines leaking into places they shouldn't.
Yang showed her mangled right arm, and hung her head.
Pyrrha remained completely still, before Jaune raised her arm for her. "She was sort of blown up. I tried healing her with my semblance, but she was so banged up from the explosion that most of it went to dealing with... Inside bleeding? I know that's not the word, but you know what I mean. She hasn't been able to hear anything since it happened." Jaune explained.
"Oh..." Pietro said, looked around the room.
Qrow spoke up to break the silence. "What exactly is happening in Atlas right now?"
Pietro scratched his head. "Well. After Beacon fell, General Ironwood got… Paranoid, is honestly the best word to describe him. Our own drones were turned against us. For someone to do that, they'd have to be a genius, or one of our own, or both. He didn't want to take any chances. And after Weiss Schnee was deemed to have been kidnapped and the White Fang was blamed, everything shut down. The border closed, the military was called home, more patrols in Mantle, of course with the drones, since all of them were pulled out of Atlas after the fall of Beacon. Things have never been this bad, and the counsel's so scared, they'll do whatever Ironwood thinks is right." Pietro said before sighing, then noticing something. "Hold on a moment…" He didn't see it at first, but the long haired blond in the duster, her hands and feet, they were his work, work he'd spent days on. Creating a perfectly measured body for the girl whose injuries at the fall of Beacon reminded him of his daughter's own. "I know you, Miss Xiao Long… The 6 million Lien woman, from Team RWBY, I created your prosthetics." Pietro said, before looking around, and realizing just who everyone was. "Miss. Schnee? The Pyrrha Nikos? And you... " Pietro turned to Pale. "You must be Pale from Team SPGL." The old man said. Everyone in the room sort of exchanged worried looks. Pyrrha felt her hand twitch towards her kopis pistol seeing her team begin to look nervous, and being unable to hear what the doctor was talking to them about.
"You… Know us?" Clayton asked. Pietro chuckled.
"Well of course I do. My daughter's told me so much about you." Pietro said. Pale was trying to piece the puzzle together in his head. He didn't get far. Mantle's warning siren began to blare over the silence in the room. Jaune sighed.
"Can't catch a break today." Pale said, tossing his shirt back on, as everyone followed him outside. Pyrrha lagged behind, unable to hear the siren, only just noticing that her friends were moving behind her.
Siniy was already posted up behind the tank, the crowd of screaming people running around the corner of the next intersection. "They are playing our song!" The giant said loudly, with a smile as he cocked the bolt back on Two Theaters.
"Think the city has enough drones guarding it?" Clayton asked.
"Not in the slightest." Halcyone said.
"Mantle has better walls and air defense than Vale, so how'd grimm even get into the city?" Yang asked.
"I'm betting Sabyrs. They can jump damn near 30 feet and climb pretty good. They get over the wall from time to time." Siniy said.
Everyone readied their weapons, and those who were without, or were too injured, being Yang, Pale, and Blake crammed into the tank. Pale jumped into the gunner seat, and Yang poked out of the turret, the M2 still ready to rock, though with significantly less ammo. Blake kept the back troop door of the vehicle clear with the pistol form of Gambol Shroud. Up front, Siniy was ready to lay down hatred with Two Theaters, Yang's use of the mounted gun accompanying him, along with Pale's coaxial 7.62 MMG. As the grimm, (Sabyrs as Siniy predicted,) came running round the corner, they were met with a proverbial wall of lead. Keeping the bursts of fire in short intervals, the three gunners kept the intersection clear from three directions. Avoiding friendly fire, the gunners broke their shooting once their teammates took over.
The sabyrs were no match for any of them. Pyrrha and Jaune, as usual, worked in a near perfect harmony with their blades and shields keeping each other covered, and providing crowd control, despite the champions' recent deafened state. Nora had stepped off of Jaune's shoulder to get in an overhead smash, and Ren slid between them to fire a burst of bullets into a grimm that was about to sideswipe them. Jaune gave his teammate a nod, and the two returned to the slaughter keeping the left flank clear.
Halcyone and Clayton were two ax crazed choppers. The big gorilla faunus and the Vacuo mad woman were getting in close on the right side of the intersection, and cutting the sabyrs to bits. In between the mag dumping the two did, Clayton used his strength to throw Halcyone into one of the beasts, and she cut it in half. Ruby zipped by, and sliced everything in her wake with Crescent Rose. She could have tried to use her eyes again, but after her most recent attempt, she decided to take Maria's advice to heart. Mastery of her fighting skills and her semblance would do her more good than some magic power, and she needed to test something. Approaching one of the sabyrs at high speed, Ruby warped into a visible cloud of petals, then sped up, and thinned her matter out more, the flakes she was made of turning into razor sharp blades. With a burst of grimm blood, Ruby solidified, having blended the monster in an instant. "Fuck yeah…" She said with a fist pump. "I dub the move, Thorn Burst."
Clayton nodded at the literal liquefaction of her target. "Brutal." He said, before chopping one of the sabyrs' heads off.
Blake for her part was having a hard enough time covering Weiss's back as she held off the unguarded ass end of the intersection. With little more than an underwhelming pistol she couldn't do much outside of trying to score head shots, which she was finding to be difficult. "How the fuck does Pale make this look so easy?!" She shouted, shooting half a magazine into the face of one of the big grimm cats. With that one dead, she gave herself a second to breathe, before a small herd came around the corner. "Too many, not enough firepower." Blake thought, before the turret of the tank rotated and the giant cannon went off. The round hit the first few grimm and went clean through them, then about in the middle of the horde, blew up, liquefying a fair number. The stragglers that were merely stunned got back up, only to be cut down from green laser fire from above them.
Everyone looked to the sky, and Pale from inside of the tank, adjusted the gun to look at what was flying above them. Doctor Pietro came out of the clinic now that the alarm had stopped blaring, and Maria watched from the door as the doctor approached the figure landing in front of everyone. "Penny…" Pale said, leaning back into his seat within the tank.
"Penny?!" Nearly everyone outside of the tank asked, as she walked towards everyone. Pyrrha hadn't heard the lazer fire, and turned to face her friends seeing no more grimm to fight.
"WHAT'S GOING ON!?" Pyrrha asked loudly, before she saw the girl that she'd ripped in half at Beacon. "OH..."
"Salutations Team RWBY, Team JNPR, Team…" Penny realized that of Team SPGL, she could only see Clayton, Siniy, and Halcyone. "Team SPGL… Is Pale not with you?" She asked, before the white sniper came out from behind the tank, a look of disbelief on his face. He was seeing a ghost.
"Penny." Pale said breathlessly.
Penny grew a huge smile, and without any warning used her newly integrated heel mounted dust jets to rocket over towards Pale, stopping just before she tackled him, then gently gave him a hug. She'd seen his recent injury and did not want to agitate it… And she'd gotten a lot better at not crushing people when she hugged them. Pale just took a second to collect his thoughts. Except he couldn't. She was back. The little ball of positivity and sunshine was back, and he couldn't believe it. Until he wrapped his arm around her, feeling the same hair, the same synthetically grown skin. It was her, and it clicked, as he buried his face into her shoulder and shed a tear of relief. "Built, not replaced... You survived, and Dr. Pietro..." Pale said, turning his head to the man, not releasing Penny. "You built her didn't you?" Pale asked. "Rebuilt her after the fall?"
Pietro chuckled. "She wasn't going to let a little ripping to shreds stop her. The minute I had her plugged into a power source she was already coming up with designs and improvements before I could put her arms back on."
Blake, out of everyone there was not seeing the same wholesome image of a little ball of positivity hugging a crying man… She saw a girl that should have been dead, hugging the guy she'd just started dating… "So that's what real jealousy feels like." She thought, as the two separated.
"After I was repaired, I became Mantle's official protector. I can't wait for us to catch up, it has been far too long." Penny said, before the city's warning siren kicked back on. "I will have to wait. Loveyou,gottago,seeyousoon." Penny said rapidly, before kissing Pale on the cheek, and jetting off into the night sky. Pale just followed the small trail she left, before turning to face the rest of the group, seeming lost, before his eyes went wide, and he tackled Halcyone out of the way of a bolo that was sent flying at her. From the rooftops multiple net guns and more gravity bolos were fired or thrown at everyone, entangling the three huntsmen teams, then Qrow and Oscar along with them.
"What the fuck!?" Pale shouted, as Siniy ripped the much too small net off of his dented helmet. He let out a roar, before three more nets covered his torso, locking together to bind him. The giant fell over, and struggled to rip the restraints off of him, fighting against the crushing weight of several times the planet's own gravitational constant.
Amid everyone's struggling, Pyrrha was screaming bloody murder from under her own gravity dust net as she was held in place, unable to push against the far too heavy netting with her polarity. She'd only gone quiet once Jaune had wormed his way over to her, and pressed his own forehead to hers in an attempt to calm her.
5 uniformed Atlesians jumped off of the roof. "Good work team." Clover said to the rest of the Ace Ops. Siniy huffed now that he knew who it was. General Ironwood's poster child "specialists" of Atlas.
"What is the meaning of this?" Pietro asked, turning his chair around to face the Atlesian soldiers, as they took everyone's weapons, and shook them down for contraband. The dog faunus of the group was the one that patted Halcyone down and took not only her rifle, but her boot knife.
The second he put his hand on her thigh he asked a question. "Is that a weapon?"
Halcyone chuckled. "That's my penis." The clearly inexperienced man just backed away looking horrified.
"We didn't do anything!" Yang shouted, as the bald one removed her prosthetic hands.
"Well, we got a report of two unauthorized airships entering Atlas airspace, followed by a report about one being shot down, followed by a report on rogue prototype equipment showing up in Mantle, and we found unlicensed huntsmen and huntresses, using unlicensed weapons, next to said rogue tank." Clover said, throwing the entire book at the group.
Clayton was resisting his detainment hard. "Vale Bill of Rights Amendment 4. The right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!" He shouted as the big woman tried to keep him pinned to the floor as he was handcuffed. "You fucking tyrants!" He continued, gaining no favors.
"License my ass, we were defending ourselves, you bitch whore!" Siniy shouted switching to Cyrillic before he was electrocuted by the gravity net.
"Oh, Imma' shoot one of you sumvabitchs when I get out of these irons. This is cruel and unusual." Pale threatened, as his good hand was awkwardly cuffed to his good leg behind his back. They were not read any rights, just shoved into an air prison transport, and taken up to Atlas.
Rot, Maria and Pietro just stood by and watched the three teams being taken away, or in Rot's case, listened to it happen. "Fucking Atlas." the blind man muttered.
Author's note.
I un-apologetically love the A-Team movie and decided the most jump the shark scene (someone did the math on if the tank and the people inside would survive, and the result was "it's plausible") would be a perfect base to introduce our protagonists to Atlas with.
And for once in a good long while we get to see Ruby be a gun nut that gets to play with a new toy. I've gotten to shoot a Browning M2 .50 cal before on a few occasions, and it is exactly as fun as Ruby and the A-Team depicts.