Penny barely had time to defend Yang before 's first strike came down on them. However instead of following through, the strike glanced off Penny's daggers and redirected towards Blake. Blake was just as quick as Penny though, and Mr. Schnee found his blade lodged in the heart of nothing more than a crude imitation. In the brief moment it took him to dislodge his blade, the three girls went on the offensive.
Yang began to unleash rapid shots from her gauntlet, which Blake matched with her own pistol. Penny sent her daggers from all directions at the old man. Every shot found itself halted by bright white glyphs that Mr. Schnee had summoned in rapid succession. The ones that had deflected Penny's daggers had quickly turned black and draw the blades slowly but surely towards them. Yang noticed the danger and lent extra strength to Penny as she attempted to regain her blades. With their combined efforts, they were able to withdraw the knives before Mr. Schnee could enact whatever plan he had devised. Penny decided it would be unwise to attack him directly again for fear of being unable to retrieve her weapons a second time.
Weiss watched as her father and her team continued to dance around one another. It appeared to be an even fight, but she knew that her father had not come close to revealing his true abilities. She wished she could help her friends, but without her weapon she would only get in their way. However, she saw that Yang was sporting a new arm. Yang could be potentially holding a trump card of her own, or at least Weiss hoped so.
Yang was growing increasingly frustrated as she fought. None of them could seem to land a hit, Mr. Schnee's glyphs were too rapid and confusing. Yang had to get in close, but she had no idea how to do it without being trapped. She watched Blake hook Gambol Shroud to the wall, redirecting herself to avoid Mr. Schnee's dust enhanced thrust. Yang's eyes sparked with the beginnings of an idea
"Blake, Bumblebee!"Yang lowered her voice slightly, "Penny, charge it."
"Right!" Blake replied, throwing one end of her weapon to Yang. Yang began to run, the ribbon growing taught as Blake redirected her in a graceful arc. Mr. Schnee smirked, stopping Yang in her tracks with a simple glyph. To his surprise, the girl merely planted her feet and slung her friend over her head and toward him. Slightly frustrated, he caught the second girl mid flight in an attraction glyph. As he did so, his attention on his previous glyph wavered for the briefest of moments, which was exactly what Yang was hoping for. She jumped with everything she had, ripping herself from the glyph that held her. At the same moment, Blake twisted inside the glyph that held her in the air, using it as an anchor to swing Yang further towards their enemy. As Mr. Schnee realized his mistake, Yang yanked Blake down from the air and continued their assault. The girls twirled and spun their way forward, and no matter how Mr. Schnee tried he could not contain them both. They were moving too quickly, shattering has concentration. With one last swing, Yang finally found her trajectory, Penny mere inches from Mr. Schnee's jaw.
"Enough!" The man cried, and the girls found each of their limbs ensnared in smaller containment glyphs. No matter how they struggled, neither Yang nor Blake could move so much as an inch. Even Penny's blades were frozen in a circle around Yang's forearm. "While I must say I am impressed, this is where this game ends. You two pushed me further than I expected, but you are still only children. How do you expect me to leave me daughter in your care if you cannot make me so much as breathe hard?!"
"I'll see if I can fix that," Yang smirked cockily, "Fire." Schnee's head was engulfed in a bright light as Penny discharged pure aura. The old man flew back and his glyphs wilted as he landed. Yang and Blake figured they had one as the old man staggered to his feet. They were shocked as he smiled, wiping away a small trickle of blood from the edge of his mouth.
"Fair enough, I guess you are strong enough to at least be taken seriously. Prepare yourselves, girls!" With that, three bright rotating glyphs appeared behind him. Slowly, three massive knights emerged from their gateways. Weiss marveled at their sheer size, each was nearly twice the size of the one that her father had made her fight. As they began to enter the fray, it was clear that their speed also dwarfed that of her own knight. Yang, Penny and Blake managed to fend them off, but just barely.
Yang attempted to guard with Penny as two of the knights swung viciously from above. Yang managed to block them both, but the resulting shock cracked the floor in every direction, sinking Yang six inches into the ground. Blake maneuvered desperately as the third knight's sword sailed relentlessly toward her. She barely had a moment to breathe as the knight chased her, every spare moment used to fire ineffectively at its head. All the while, Mr. Schnee watched on smugly as he regained some of his aura.
Slowly the battle shifted back in the girls' favor. Penny used her blades to trip up one of the beasts as Yang toppled the other with a single massive blow. Blake managed to unbalance her enemy with a well placed shot. She capitalized on the opportunity, wrapping her ribbon around its neck and pulling it to the ground. Throughout, Mr. Schnee's expression remained unchanged. Both girls lept towards their fallen enemies, intent on ending them. Neither of them managed to reach their mark; Mr. Schnee sped rapidly first to Yang, batting her effortlessly way from his summons. Before Yang had even landed, Blake had been knocked away as well. As the girls rose, wincing in pain, the knights returned to Mr. Schnee's side.
"I was going to let you leave peacefully," he said sadly, "but it seems you need a lesson on how the world works." The girls assumed defensive positions as Mr. Schnee re entered the fight.
Weiss watched in grim fascination as her father began to pick apart her two friends. There were simply too many enemies to deal with; whenever Yang or Blake got the upper hand on an enemy, two more would come to its aid. Unless something changed soon, Yang and Blake were done. Weiss realized with a sinking feeling that the only thing that could affect this battle now was her, but she had nothing to do it with. Without a weapon she only had her semblance, and her father's dust enhanced glyphs would swallow her weaker ones in an instant. But she couldn't just let this slip by! This could be her only chance at rejoining her team. She couldn't hold back now.
Yang was bleeding profusely as her normal arm pushed back against one knight's blades; Penny was trying desperately to fend off Mr. Schnee without losing any of her blades to his glyphs. Blake was trying desperately to find a chink in her enemies armor while simultaneously avoiding rapid swings of a sword the size of a small airplane. None of them were prepared as the final knight swung down on them, attempting to knock them off their feet with blunt force. The blow stopped some five feet in the air, suspended by another blade that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. All parties were momentarily transfixed as another, smaller knight rose from the ground and unleashed a barrage against its larger foe.
Weiss's legs quaked with the effort of the summons, but she had finally called her knight. She was surprised at how well it seemed to be performing, it was managing to hold its own if not outright beat one of her father's apparitions. Not that she would question her good fortune, her knight was meant only to serve as a momentary distraction. It was time for phase two. While her glyphs would normally be consumed rapidly by her father's if she attempted to mitigate them, she believed she had a plan to avoid that altogether.
"Blake! Yang! Bumblebee!" They did not need to be told twice. Dodging a few more swings from their enemies, Blake threw half of her weapon to Yang once again. They began to rapidly twist and turn their way towards Mr. Schnee.
'Not this again,' Mr. Schnee thought exasperatedly, 'Are you really naive enough to think this will work twice, Weiss?' He prepared to catch the girls once again in his binding glyphs, but for the second time that day Mr. Schnee found that he had miscalculated. Whenever he attempted to track and snare the two girls, a glyph would appear and redirect them away. He watched in astonishment as the entire lobby filled with bright white glyphs just before his intended snare point. 'I might have taught her a little too well, she's predicting my every move'. In a desperate move, he attempted to call his unoccupied knights to him, but in his heart he knew they would be too slow. As the girls reached him he had one final thought, 'it looks like I underestimated you, daughter.'
Yang and Blake had rapidly closed the distance to Weiss's father. "I'm sorry daddy," Weiss muttered sadly before casting a sphere of glyphs around him. Yang and Blake used their own momentum and the ribbon between them to create a whirlwind of blows in the small sphere containing them and Mr. Schnee. Penny added her own blades to the mix, the storm of blows turning to an almost constant pressure on Mr. Schnee's aura. Within seconds it was done, Mr. Schnee slid across the ground as his glyphs and aura began to fade. He managed to pull himself up on his elbows and spit out the blood in his mouth.
"Father!" Weiss ran to her father's side while Blake and Yang stood menacingly above him. "I'm so sorry! I thought your aura would protect you more!" Weiss began to cry as she hugged her father.
"Weiss," Mr. Schnee took a slightly labored breath, "that was impressive."
"Wh-What?"
"You proved me wrong. Now help me up, my legs are a bit shaky." Weiss helped her father to his feet and he leaned on her slightly as he stood.
"As for you girls," he said to Yang and Blake, " My apologies for my comments earlier," he glanced around the destroyed lobby, "I may have let things get out of hand. Can you forgive me?" Yang and Blake stared with a mixture of anger and bewilderment at the man for a few seconds before Yang extended her hand.
"No hard feelings," she said as she shook his hand. The man moved his hand towards Blake, who made no move to reciprocate.
" With all do respect, sir," she spat, "you have need to ask forgiveness for a lot more than a few rude comments." Blake stalked away as Mr. Schnee sheepishly withdrew his hand. It was a look Weiss rarely saw on her father's face.
"Father, does this mean I can go with them?" Weiss asked hopefully. She was going regardless, but she hoped she could do it with her father's approval.
"Yes, dear. Your team certainly seems to be better than any defense I can provide you. I was foolish to believe I needed to protect you."
"So can I go get Myrtenaster ?" She asked hopefully.
"No."
"No?!"
"No. Myrtenaster is an amazing piece of technology, but in the end it is only a cheap recreation of a far greater blade. You have earned the original. Come with me. Girls, Weiss will rejoin you in a moment. We just need to go to my office for my moment." Weiss walked her father slowly over to the elevator, where they hit the button for her father's top level office. The doors closed as her father shifted his weight to the wall and wheezed. "I think your blonde friend broke a rib."
"Will you be okay, father?" Weiss asked, concerned.
"I'll live, that was the first good fight I've had in awhile. It was weirdly invigorating. Your friends are quite impressive fighters."
"Yeah."
"I don't think the faunus one likes me very much."
"No, she doesn't really."
"I see," they took the rest of the ride in silence. The entire time Mr. Schnee had a look of serious contemplation on his face. As the doors softly chimed, he began to limp towards his desk. With a few keystrokes at his terminal, a thin painting behind his desk depressurized and slid downward. Her father turned to the open panel, grasping the blade in within.
"This is our family's namesake, Weiss. The great blade, Neuschnee." Her father held the most beautiful weapon Weiss had ever seen. On first glance, it appeared to be a rapier made out of diamond, but on closer inspection it glowed with a foreign energy. "It is made entirely of dust in its purest form. Reusable with no dust loss, it is weapon practically designed for a Schnee. Whatever process used to create it has been lost, despite research by generations of our family. It is the only blade of its kind."
"And… And I can have it?" Weiss asked, disbelieving. "Wouldn't it be better suited her, or even with Winter?"
"No. Winter is an exceptional fighter, but I have never seen from her what I saw today. You summoned a beast who by all rights should have been crushed by my own. Somehow you pushed that creature beyond what it should be able to do, and with no dust I might add. I have never seen a Schnee do what you did today," he smiled, " you are truly worthy to wield this weapon." Weiss teared up slightly at the praise and grabbed the hilt of the weapon. She smiled as she hefted it, Myrtenaster had certainly been modeled after it. The balance and weight was nearly identical to her former blade. "Nothing has ever been able to break Neuschnee in generations of testing. Though there is no way to know for sure, it is safe to say that this blade is practically unbreakable." Weiss took a few practice swings across the office. " The dust the blade is formed from is the most basic form of dust, the glyphs carved into the hilt is what decides what form it will take. All forms of dust can be mimicked by it."
Weiss turned back to her father, tears still leaking from her eyes. Without a word she walked to her father and embraced him. He truly did believe in her. He quickly returned the embrace.
"Stay safe, my child."
"Of course, daddy."
Weiss emerged alone from the elevator, Neuschnee in hand. Yang whistled appreciatively at the glimmering sword.
" Fancy, Weiss."
"Are we ready to go?" Weiss asked, ignoring the lighthearted jab.
"Don't you need to pick anything up from home?" Yang asked, a pleading look in her eye for some reason.
"No, I can leave right now. Why?" Yang blushed slightly embarrassment, and for the first time since seeing them Weiss smelled her companions.
"Well, me and Blake kind of need a shower."
"Agreed," Weiss said, going slightly paler from the stench, "we'll stop by there before we leave. What's your plan after that?"
"What else," Yang said gleefully, "we go find our leader."