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.
CHAPTER 3 PART 2.
The Actual Battle.
The three teams all sat in their separate manta craft, as each one shook in the air under turbulence. Aside from the finer details of the mission, it could have been considered a milk run. They had to clear out an old SDC mine, the dust inside being what Ironwood need to launch Amity. There was a geist lurking around inside, and that was their main target. Rot, Maria and Oscar would be sitting this fight out, opting to keep the lamp safe in Atlas, leaving Qrow to tag along with the Ace Ops.
Once the three aircraft had reached the mine, the two standard craft, and one with Siniy rigged to the bottom via tow cables, halted, and hovered in the air for the teams to drop in. Halcyone tossed the Pilot a CD, and told him to play it over the PA system. "ACDC, blast it!" She said as the doors of the airship opened. The pilot shrugged, and played the music. Team SPGL began jumping out, as Siniy detached from the bottom of the craft. "THUNDERSTRUCK BABY!" Halcyone shouted as she backflipped out of the vehicle, the music blaring as she fell.
Speeding up to catch her team as they fell, Halcyone joined Clayton, Pale, and Siniy, making a circle formation to increase drag before they spread out. Clayton was the first to land. Aiming for the buildings around the mine, he was able to grab a hold of one of the pipes in his fall, and slide along it with both hands, before flipping off at a corner, and tucking into a roll.
Pale, using a much more conventional method to land, pulled the ripcord on his pre-packed parachute to slowly fall, and crumpled into the snow before getting up.
Siniy, struck the ground full force, and bounced once before sliding along the gravel road nearby, shrugged off the impact at three fourths aura.
Finally, Halcyone threw her blade towards an icy outcrop, and once it stuck true, she braced herself to land against it. Once her feet connected, she rode the weapon like a board, as the blade cut through the ice, before finally she slid to a halt, kicking up snow.
The four grouped up with Team RWBY, who had all jumped before them, and took much more flashy approaches to their landing strategy. "Aww, that was boring." Yang said, having watched the team descend.
"They flew a tank to Mantle, I think they've shown off enough." Weiss said, as Harriet and Marrow of the Ace Ops landed behind them.
North of their location, Team JNPR was landing with Elm and Vine. Nora and Ren had used the recoil of a grenade blast to arrest their momentum, and relied on aura to take the rest of the force of the fall. Pyrrha and Jaune took the most direct approach, simply slamming into the mountainside with their shields, the unique metal of Pyrrha's making a hollow gonging noise upon impact. "Good job kids, maybe you won't get yourselves killed yet!" Elm said excitedly. Pyrrha looked at Jaune with a raised eyebrow.
"She knows we've killed bigger and more numerous grimm than what lay inside the mine, right?" Pyrrha asked. Jaune just shrugged.
Back with Teams RWBY and SPGL they each gave their new scrolls a once over. They all knew these were not only more than likely bugged, but tracked, and controlled. Limiting their use would be a priority if they wanted to remain low profile around General Ironwood. Yang glanced around at everyone's new hair, wondering if she should have changed hers up… Na, that was blasphemy. "I like the braid Blake." Yang said, complementing her partner.
"Oh… Thank you." Blake said, unsure of how to feel. Normally people didn't compliment her on specific aspects of her looks, not even Pale, he just acknowledged she was attractive and left it at that, which might have had something to do with not admitting he liked her ears… He still needed some time before he was going to overcome his issues.
Siniy stepped past everyone, and grunted as he looked at the entrance of the mine. Weiss stepped up beside him, and held his free hand. "I hate being underground." He muttered, his face remaining stoic despite the fear he was experiencing, Weiss's presence calming him. She knew it was her family's company that made him afraid to enter the mine, years spent being tortured in such claustrophobic spaces, especially for someone of his size. Weiss was frankly surprised he put up no resistance when he heard about the mission.
"It's ok big guy, we need you out here protecting the LZ, nothing comes in, nothing comes out." Clayton said, clapping his friend on the back. Siniy nodded, and sighed in relief. Weiss gave him a reassuring smile, before she started walking into the mines with her team.
"Stay safe My Angel of the Morning." Siniy said to her in Cyrillic.
Weiss turned to him and smiled. "I will Darling." She returned. The far off roar of a Sabyr caught Siniy's attention, and he rested his gun's bipod on top of an old dust crate, a small grin coming across his face.
The combined teams of RWBY and SPL along with Harriet and Marrow stepped into the mine, only to be faced with a cave in. "Well that's not good." Clayton said, as gunfire echoed from outside, their big friendly giant fending off the grimm they'd attracted.
"It's just a cave in, we'll report it and see what the plan of action is." Marrow said, practically shooing Clayton away back to his team.
"Can't tell if it's recent or caused by the original explosion that shut the place down." Harriet said to her partner as the two teams gathered. Blake's ears twitched when she realized she knew about the mine she was in.
"I… I've heard of this place. There was a dust explosion, one of the most recent major incidents in an SDC facility in over two decades." Blake said, remembering what Ilia had told her about her parents deaths.
"I remember this… Well, I remember how furious Father was." Weiss said, looking at one of the many empty dust crates in the entrance. "I… I wish I could take it all back, all the years of pain my family has caused the faunus. Everything I've ever said about you guys, and even the complacency." Weiss said, trying to apologize while at the epicenter of suffering for so many.
"This society is set up for faunus to be at the bottom. Humans are willing participants, they benefit from doing nothing to help us." Marrow said, trying to butt his way in with the slightly younger crowd. The three faunus standing next to Weiss all gave him a look, and Pale scoffed.
"Says one of the few faunus in the entire Atlas Military, a Special Operations unit at that." The sniper said, as he swapped the bolt of his rifle out to put the Pietro conversion in.
"I'm on the Ace Ops because of my semblance and my skills as a huntsman being well recognized." Marrow defended.
"So you admit the system didn't bar you from service or treat you differently because of your tail?" Clayton asked rhetorically.
"You're defending him on that?" Marrow asked the ape faunus.
Clayton shrugged. "I don't think the system is racist, I think the system has a lot of racist people in it. Don't like 'em, replace 'em one way or another." Clayton said, raising his shotgun and shaking it.
"That doesn't mean there aren't major laws that are exploited to oppress the faunus." Marrow said, crossing his arms.
Blake chuckled. "Oh don't argue law with Clayton." She said, trying to warn Marrow.
"Even with the current "progressive" counsel that's "on their side," Faunus are worse off in Atlas than anywhere else in the world because they are still being looked at as a separate entity from humans, instead of being viewed as "people" by law. It's all a political tool. The laws that are used to target faunus in Atlas don't just target them, they target the poor exclusively. What few faunus live in Atlas proper, aren't hampered by the laws that are imposed on Mantle, because it's not about race, it's about elites keeping power. Whether or not non-government entities discriminate against Faunus is irrelevant." Clayton said with a shrug.
"What are you, some sort of anarchist?" Marrow asked.
"Classic libertarians actually." Ruby said, pointing to both Clayton and herself.
"They're the anarchists." Weiss said, pointing to Yang then Halcyone.
"Anarcho-capitalists." Yang corrected.
"Fuck yeah. No laws, no limits." Halcyone said.
"OK, but how does such a wildly unregulated political stance deal with humans abusing faunus?" Marrow asked.
"It doesn't, because it lets the faunus just do their own thing like everyone else, that's kind of the point." Pale said.
"You're on our side with this one?" Halcyone asked her teammate in amusement.
The sniper shrugged. "I don't have much of an opinion on things really... Well, not anymore." Pale said.
"Using laws and regulations to prop up the faunus like in Vale, while nice on paper, ultimately just makes them dependent on the state, which in turn gives the state more power. If we want equal treatment, we have to prove we are worthy of it, same as humans have to." Clayton said.
Marrow shook his head. He'd tried having a race relations conversation with the wrong group of faunus and friends. "Anyway, I came over here, because Harriet found a hole, we're fairly certain we could all fit through it, but those of us with good vision in the dark are going first." Marrow said, everyone looked at Blake, and Halcyone.
"Right." Blake said, popping the "T." Blake walked over with the rest of the group, and Halcyone chuckled.
Blake got down on the floor, and crawled through the tight hole, her back scraping up against the low ceiling the whole way. Halcyone got down and followed her, the thinner girl having no issues in the tight space. Well, having an eyeful of Bellabooty in leggings right in front of her might have been considered an issue if it wasn't so pleasing to look at. "Pale you lucky bastard." Halcyone thought. Marrow followed closely behind them. Once the three had pulled themselves out of the hole, and into the rest of the cavern entrance, they started checking for any dust in the walls that might cause further damage to the ceiling.
"It's clear." Blake shouted through the hole to Harriet. One by one the rest of the group crammed themselves through, with Clayton having some difficulty due to his size. Yang and Ruby pulled him out, and the rock tunnel crumbled after he was pulled free.
"Well at least we know the grimm aren't leaving the mine through here." Clayton said with a shrug.
The 9 man team continued through the shaft of the mine. Pale started planting his bouncing betty's all the while in the event any grimm snuck up from behind them. All was calm, until it wasn't. There was a slight rumbling, then from the walls and ground all around them sentinels (a form of giant arthropod grimm,) burst through the stone. "Ew." Yang said flatly, as everyone rushed forward to kill the threats. Ruby was the first to connect an attack. With Thorn Burst she sliced clean through the center of one of the grimm crawlers, liquifying it, before she cut another up the middle with Crescent Rose. Weiss slashed and stabbed at the ones that got too close, using a little application of fire and water dust to steam boil one at a distance. Clayton jumped over her head, and transformed his axe into it's bayonet form, sinking the blade into the belly of one of the monsters. It shrieked in pain, before he cranked off 3 shells into its gut, and with one of his chokes on the muzzle (the duckbill specifically,) he cut it in half, allowing him to then fire another three rounds at one that tried to sneak up on Ruby.
Halcyone let one of the bugs get close enough to bite her, only for the hyena faunus to grab one of it's clicking mandibles, and swing Road Rage into it's armored faceplate repeatedly. Behind her, Pale's .30 caliber carbine repeater was plinking away at the few further away sentinels down the hallway. One tried to sneak up behind him, and he drew his revolver to kill it, only for Blake to slice it's head off for him. Pale nodded at her in thanks, and put his handgun away to continue picking off the further away targets. In the tunnel behind him, several AP mines were set off at once. Beep beep- The trigger. Sweeeeeeer- The jump charge that put them at about gut level. KABOOM- the detonation. Pale smirked at his foresight.
Marrow and Harriet double teamed two of the big bugs, the speedy woman slamming them into the wall. There were still plenty more to come, and Yang had yet to use her new weapon. With most of the grimm now in front of them leading deeper into the mine, and more coming from the walls, Yang gave some friendly advice. "Everyone, get down!" She shouted, before slamming a 30 round drum into her right arm's attached shotgun. Heeding her warning, everyone either dropped to the floor, or ducked. Yang held down the trigger, and let all 42 rounds she had on tap from the drum and belt rip, the mix of regular shot, and the special frag rounds shredding through the remaining centenals with a continuous, THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD. Halcyone, being closest to the gun, had to cover her ears to shield her from the muzzle report. One by one the giant bugs were blown to pieces as Yang started walking through the tunnel, gritting her teeth as she fought with the weapon's recoil. One last sentinel burst from the floor and was split down the middle by the last four rounds Yang had. Silence fell over the tunnel. Everyone looked at Yang as they got back up. She blew smoke away from the muzzle near her fist, and smiled.
"Damn that thing's loud!" Halcyone said, as she pushed herself off the floor.
"What?!" Pale asked, his ears ringing a little more than usual.
In the north tunnel, team JNPR could hear the echo of the firefight in the mine below them, and it was time they got into a spat of their own. The team came to a decline in the tunnel, and began to slide down. When they saw the sentinels burst through the floor at the end of the ice slope, Elm and Vine used their semblances to root themselves to the walls and floor, while Team JNPR just went right on in. Jaune led the charge, barreling into the small cluster of sentinels in the front, ramming them with his shield fully extended to it's riot configuration, the gravity dust he'd fed it, shoving them back into the tunnel. Nora sailed over his head, her roundel shield acting as a massive projectile with her behind it. Crushing one of the stunned grimm against a wall, she spun quickly to slam the head of her hammer into another. Ren put his new grapples to use, and flung himself into one of the sentinels before filling it's carapace with bullet holes.
Pyrrha threw her new shield, the black and bronze disk of metal a blur, as it bounced off the walls at incredible speed, before slicing clean through two of the grimm, leaving their upper bodies writhing on the ground in a death throw. Pyrrha shot the two stranglers in the head twice each, and caught her shield as it returned to her.
Elm and Vine finally came down the ice slope. "Wow, you kids just charged right in!" Elm said excitedly.
"Yep, that's kinda our style." Jaune said with a halfhearted shrug. Elm and Vine just walked past them, and Jaune gave Pyrrha a look of indignation at being ignored for cleaning up the sentinels for the Ace Ops. Pyrrha shrugged, and put her shield back on her arm as they followed the specialists deeper into the mine.
The three separate teams converged in the center of the mine, each from a different point of entry. "Oh, I don't like this." Pale said, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stick up and his leg giving off a phantom pain.
"Careful, the amount of raw fire dust in here could blow up the whole mountain if any of it's detonated." Vine said.
"Yeah, I'm not trying to be vaporized today, melee weapons only. Pale, you're the exception, load some of those nitro whatever metal rounds, and don't shoot anything that's covered in dust." Clayton said.
Pale smiled. "Big roger." He said, swapping his Pietro repeater to the original bolt for greater precision, and manually feeding a single hand loaded round into the chamber.
"Ok, where is the geist though?" Jaune asked, before they felt a rumbling from above them. Looking up, everyone saw that the grimm had possessed large chunks of machinery and infused it's body with gravity dust, allowing it to stick to the ceiling.
"Oh come on." Nora said, as the giant ice grimm fell from the roof, crashing through a minecart track that was suspended over the floor. Everyone realized that with the gravity dust inside of the monster they would have to be even more cautious than they'd originally planned to be.
Team JNPR along with Ruby and Clayton had killed one of these abominations before. Their game plan hadn't changed much. Nora and Pyrrha charged forward, as Jaune used his shield as a springboard for Pyrrha, launching her into the air with a gravity shove. Clayton had taken off on three limbs to get to the high ground to his left. Climbing up the wall of the mine, he was able to jump up onto the grimm's back, sinking Kingslayer's axe head into a section of ice that didn't have any dust. Ruby grabbed Pale, and flew him up to a perch above the fight with her semblance, and then dropped back down to assist Blake and Weiss.
"Weiss, pull it's torso up. Blake, slice it's legs off with me once they're exposed." Ruby said to her friends. Not sitting idly by, Elm dropped down to the floor to grab one of the giant's legs to keep it in place with her semblance, as Vine used his own to pull one of its arms, exposing the black body of the grimm. Pyrrha was in the perfect position to cut its arm off. Throwing Molon Labe at the geist's arm, the flying metal sliced clean through the limb, bounced off the floor and returned to her. Pyrrha landed on the minecart bridge Vine was on, as he slowly dropped the arm.
Clayton, now stable enough on the giant's back, pulled a chunk of gravity dust off of it. "I hate this stuff." He said, shoving the dust in his mouth, and cracking it with his teeth, allowing his semblance to absorb all of the crushing effects the dust was trying to impart on his body, as he inversely became weightless. Swimming through the air, he was now able to play safety on any chunks of dust that were sent flying, like say, the one that came off of the grimm's body from Pyrrha slicing it's arm off. Catching the dust, and putting it in his messenger bag, Clayton saw as Harriet grabbed a chunk that flew low.
The rest of the team on the ground ran circles around the geist trying to keep it's free arm and leg distracted. The giant slammed it's remaining arm into the floor, and Nora saw her chance. Jumping into the air she slammed her hammer into its hand, driving the rock into the solid ground. As the demon tried to pull itself free Marrow took a chance and cut through it with his boomerang. Another chunk of dust went flying, and this time Halcyone caught it, and ran it to safety. "Weiss now!" Ruby shouted. Her partner spun the cylinder of Myrtenaster, and with a small application of gravity dust, pulled the back of the creature upwards against Elm's rooting. Both Blake and Ruby jumped forward with her semblance and once separated, the two blades they wielded cut through the grimm's leg at two different places. Another chunk of dust went flying, fire this time, and Ren swung with his grapples to catch it. Weiss dropped the giant grimm onto it's back, leaving it's face completely exposed as it flailed it's one good leg.
From the outcrop above, Clover flicked out Kingfisher, and sat on the edge of the rock. Casting his line, the leader of the Ace Ops, snagged the edge of the giant grimm's face, and yanked on the fishing pole. Without much effort the grimm came free from its body, and this was the moment Pale had been waiting for. Cheek weld, proper sight picture on the irons, identify the grimm's beady yellow eye, finger on the trigger, exhale, and squeeze. With a boom, Pale's bullet ripped through the face of the ghostly grimm so fast that the energy generated pulled it's body off of its original course to follow the bullet's path, sending it's head back and causing it to fall to the floor before it sublimated. Everyone looked up to see Pale sitting on his stone vantage point, most having forgotten he was there. Sliding down to the floor with everyone, he got a high five from Halcyone.
"Uh, guys?!" Clayton asked, still stuck in the air. "I'm feeling kinda sick up here." He said, as the effects of the gravity dust he'd eaten were still lingering, though now without the control he once had. Ruby just chuckled at her boyfriend, before rose warping up to pull him down to the ground.
AN: This and the prior chapter were originally going to be a single chapter before I saw just how long it had gotten by the time I'd finished going over the new outfits and equipment. It's not like in V4 where I had 3 seperate parts to spread it over, or only one team to really describe like in V1, so it took up a huge chunk of the chapter, and rightfully so. It was a gear up montage of sorts, with a dramatic preamble of the teams trying to sort out how they feel about Ironwood. Trying to do the outfit descriptions as soon as they'd have been otherwise relevant in the field like in TV just wasn't going to happen with the medium. Imagine stopping mid battle, every time a new feature on Pale's rifle was used, just to explain it.