Dammit Sun, Neptune thought as he pulled Blake to her feet. Her eyes were hazy, and brimmed with tears, and Neptune doubted she would understand anything he said to her in this state. I swear, if I ever see you in Hell, I'll punch you in the face. Neptune mentally chastised his friend. He wrapped his arm under Blake's, carrying her beside him. She took steps, though they were hesitant and unsure, as if Blake had gone away and left him with an unthinking clone. He briefly wondered how long Blake could sustain one of her clones for, but brushed the thought aside. No point thinking about stuff like that anymore.
"Blake," He called to her softly, dragging her to the far door. "Blake!" He insisted, more forcefully. She seemed to respond a bit this time as Neptune pushed open the door of the small metal room. As he looked out of the room, a mass of White Fang bustled to and fro in a massive hangar, strapping war machines to transport cars and prepping dust planes for flight. However long they had been camping out here, they had obviously been ready to leave at the drop of a dime. And if they got away, Cinder would have control of all those war machines.
Why'd you get us involved with this you stupid monkey? Neptune grumbled. The White Fang were running around chaotically, so it was easy for Neptune to smuggle Blake towards the large doors that served as entrance and exit to the chamber. They were already beginning to open, and Neptune's feet grew heavy with dread. He had to find a way to get Blake out of that hangar and stop the White Fang from leaving. This was too much military tech for them to have. Of course, there were ways to get more, but if Neptune could also stop Cinder from leaving, there would be no one to start the war that the White Fang were so clearly preparing for.
Yeah, you're gonna make me do this, aren't ya buddy? Neptune asked Sun, who was, of course, not there. Always get your friends involved, huh? Neptune was not happy with his friend.
He pushed Blake in front of him, who seemed to be regaining some control over her body, probably pulled into the fight or flight mindset by the adrenaline crashing through her system. Neptune just hoped she could hold it together until she got out of the warehouse.
He slung his gun off his shoulder, powering it up so the crackling blue energy channel in the middle lit up. It was actually a massive dust crystal, modified to store electric potential energy. If a large bullet was fired through the chamber, the dust of the bullet would capture some of the energy of the chamber, holding it momentarily, before detonating on its target and releasing thousands of volts through it. It was a thing of beauty, his gun.
Too bad he wouldn't be able to use it after this.
He sighed, grasping the large crystal in the middle as he ran, making sure Blake was leading, keeping pace in front of him. He slid the crystal backwards, pressed the release mechanism, and the large dust crystal came free in his hand as his gun clattered against the ground behind him.
Blake whirled around to look at the source of the sound, but he just shouted at her "Go!" and she turned her back again, racing towards the door. He heard the scream of jets behind him as the first dust planes began to power up, and he cursed. If Blake would co-operate, which she never would if she knew what Neptune had planned, it would make his life a lot easier. Sun had sacrificed himself to make sure he and Blake could escape, and Neptune was going to make damn well sure that he would do something worthwhile with his life. Even if that might make it shorter.
As they reached the door, Neptune took a shaky breath, drawing a phial of dust from his back pocket. He could feel the loaf sized blue gem in his hand throbbing with power, but he knew it would need a catalyst to make it release its energy. Blake looked back as she crossed the doors' threshold, noticing that Neptune wasn't following.
"What," There was utter rage in Blake's voice. "Are you doing?" She hissed the last word loudly. Neptune knew why she was mad; he would be too. But what he was doing was necessary.
"We can stop all of this before it happens Blake." Neptune said, staring into her eyes. He saw something bright and yellow glowing at the edge of the fence, a hundred meters to their right. It was Yang, and where there was a Yang, there was a...
"Ruby!" He shouted, and there was a sudden blur.
"Neptune, don't you-"
"What?" Ruby asked, materializing next to Blake and interrupting her. A crease immediately fell across her brow. "Where's Sun?" She asked, and Blake froze next to her.
"He didn't make it. Ruby, I can end this now, but you need to get Blake out of here." Neptune insisted.
"Let me do it." Blake almost pleaded, and Neptune felt sympathy pang through him. Asking her to leave her boyfriend, then one of her friends, as they died, was not a kind thing to do. It wasn't fair, but Neptune was the only one who knew how dust engines worked.
"If you know where the dust intake, injectors and turbines all meet, be my guest." He said, and Blake glared at him. Neptune avoided her gaze and looked at Ruby, hoping she would understand. Cinder was dangerous, she had proven that, but she was still inside. She had even said that she had 'some military tech to pack up.' She wouldn't leave without her stores of weapons and military tech. He could take her, the White Fang, and all of her stolen equipment out at once. All he needed was for Ruby to use her semblance to get Blake out of there.
Silver eyes locked with his own, and Ruby looked at him sadly. A silent understanding passed between them, and Ruby reached forward to grab Blake's arm gently.
"Blake-" She started, but was cut off when Blake shoved the smaller girl away. She glared at Neptune with amber eyes, and he saw a tear streak down her face. He held her gaze without flinching, and she bowed her head, nodding.
"Okay," She choked out the word, then took Ruby's hand. The team leader put her shoulder behind Blake and tensed, and Neptune turned away and started running back the way he had come as he heard pavement crack behind him.
Fifty meters in front of him, he saw a dust plane taking off with cables attached to an Atlesian Paladin. He pumped his legs, jumping and grabbing the chest of the walker. He hauled himself onto the Paladin's head, then wrapped his hand around one of the cables. He tested it to make sure it wouldn't sway too much, then wrapped his legs around it and began to shimmy upwards. With one hand grasped around his crystal, it took him longer than he had hoped, but as he reached the plane's hook, the cables attaching to the Paladin were still slack. It hadn't been lifted off the ground yet. Neptune waited until the cable he was clutching began to go taught, and used the snapping of the wire to launch himself off the cable towards the jet's wing. He grabbed the sharp edge, making sure keep his dangling legs away from the pivoting jet that was shooting superheated air straight down. He hoisted himself up, then crawled into the center of the plane's roof. He knew there would be a latch for a small hatch on top, and low and behold, there it was.
It was a square panel, a foot and a half by a foot and a half, with a little ring in the center. Neptune reached down and twisted the ring sideways, unlocking the door, before pulling it towards him, raising the hatch. The humming of the engine grew louder as its bare innards were exposed to the air, and Neptune slid himself so that he was over the now open hatch.
The engine looked like a large black box with a few loops circling it, two pipes branching off to either wing, and one branch going further down to connect to a translucent white container. That was the dust storage, and the pipe that led to the engine was the intake. Neptune kicked that, and the pipe gave way to his boot, shifting slightly so that only half the pipe covered the dust storage. The plane dropped a little, the rotors squealing at the sudden drop in power. Neptune just kept moving. He slipped the phial of dust into the half he had knocked off the dust intake before moving back to the engine. He knew most of it was covered under the black box, but the rings stuck out from it.
The rings that circled it were the dust injectors. After being picked up from the storage container, the dust was pumped into the main engine, where it ignited and powered pistons, pumping them up and down, making the gears turn at thousands of revolutions each minute.
He kicked one of the rings, being careful not to hit any of the others. He had to hit it a few more times before it came loose. As he kicked it the last time, he felt it give way right before the plane lurched sideways. Neptune cursed, hoping the pilot would know to cut power to the other engine to right the plane. He held his breath for a moment as the jet careened to the side, and he heard something smash against metal, probably the Paladin and another war machine. A moment later the plane righted, and Neptune let out his breath.
He pried the broken metal ring away from the engine, leaving a perfect circle that would just barely fit the massive dust crystal in his hand. When his crystal entered the engine, it would be smashed by the pistons firing inside. When the resulting dust combined with the dust in the phial he had dropped in a moment ago, which should have stuck to the sides of the entire engine system, all the way out to the wings, it would cause a spontaneous reaction. The dust would ignite, blowing the engine to smithereens along with Neptune's crystal. And also probably his body, but he didn't think about that.
That wasn't the interesting part though. The electrical energy previously stored in the crystal would no longer be bound. The plane, now no longer grounded, would be charged. The entire engine system, or at least any metal parts of it. Of course, any of those parts touching the rest of the metal plane would charge as well. Then the dust that layered the sides of the transport pipes would rotors would blow, sending heavily charged shrapnel all throughout the room. The engine explosion would send the main body of the jet, also charged, flying in all directions. Anything that was touched by the falling pieces of metal would have millions of volts flow through them to the ground, frying anything organic and disabling anything electronic. If it hit the right parts of the machines, it could even over load them, and if a spark hit their dust stores...
Neptune dropped the blue crystal into the engine.
/
BOOM!
The explosion sounded through the air as Ruby squeezed her eyes shut. She knew what that explosion meant. She heard another chorus of explosions go off, and looked back to see parts of the warehouse walls fly out as parts of ruined war machines tore through them. Through the resulting holes, she could see the lines upon lines of military tech explode as glowing blue shrapnel hit them, electricity arcing through them to their neighbors and down into the floor. As the electricity hit about halfway down the machines, they would explode, obliterating anything around them. Ruby had no idea what Neptune had done, but it had been effective.
Smoke rose in heavy columns towards the sky, obscuring the stars and moon. Ruby, standing next to her team, looked at the sight in a mix of anger, sadness and relief. Anger, because Cinder, the woman who had set all these plans in motion years ago, had forced two of the greatest huntsmen in training to sacrifice themselves to topple her criminal regime.
There was relief as well. That it was over. Without Cinder, the organization would fall apart. She was undoubtedly the kingpin, the head of the snake, and without a head... Ruby looked at the smoke, realizing that the fires burning inside the ashen, skeletal remains of the war machines were making a pyre of victory. Despite the obvious win though, Ruby couldn't help but feel hollow.
More than the anger or the relief, she felt grief. It pierced the very foundation of her soul, making it feel as though someone had stabbed her in the chest with a white hot poker. Sun and Neptune were gone, and nothing in the world would ever fix that. No revenge, no amount of praying, no amount of grieving, would ever change the fact that two of Ruby's best friends were gone. Not gone, Ruby corrected herself sadly. Dead.
She briefly hoped that there was an afterlife. With the loss of her mother, Ruby had been acutely aware of death her whole life, and yet she had never given much thought to religion or what happened after death. It always seemed so pointless to her, seeming as there was no real answer. If there was anything afterwards, though, Ruby knew that Sun and Neptune deserved the best treatment that the afterlife could give them. She just hoped they would save her a cookie or two for when she got there, if it was there.
And then Ruby looked at Weiss and Blake. Weiss was staring at the flames with a cold, ice hard glare. She looked to be frozen in time, as solid as an ice sculpture. Ruby had seen Weiss put on a similar face before, when she confessed to Ruby how hopeless she felt about what her father had done to the Schnee Dust Company. Then, Weiss' face had frozen over for only the tiniest fraction of a second before lowering her head and her face returning to normal again. Now though, Weiss looked as if someone had removed the last warmth from her soul, allowing the ever present ice to freeze over her heart.
Ruby had worried a lot about Weiss over the years. She knew that the heiress was always on the edge, ready to plunge back into the icy ocean of isolation that she had known before Beacon. Team RWBY had been good for her; encouraging the young heiress to loosen up and relax, melting away that all consuming, unmoving ice. Neptune had been the biggest help though. He had shown her that not every kind word and gentle touch was a means to an end. Sometimes it was just because someone loved her.
That was gone now, and it would always be gone. Neptune's laugh, his confident, suave moves, his bright smile and his awesome blue hair didn't exist anymore. The only place they could be found now was in the memories of those who had known him. He wouldn't be able to touch anyone else's lives the way he had touched theirs, and Ruby knew he could have done a lot of good, if only he had had the time.
A tear spilled down her cheek, and Ruby didn't realize that she had been crying. She knew it was her duty to protect her teammates and make sure they were alright, but she allowed herself a brief moment of agonizing pain. She didn't want them to be gone. Neither of them had done anything wrong, and it just seemed cruel and unfair of the world to let them die. If this were one of the stories that Ruby had loved so much as a kid, the heroes would jump out of the ruins at any moment with grins on their faces and witty remarks primed on their lips.
But this wasn't some childhood story. Sun and Neptune wouldn't run up to the group, joke with them, walk back to Beacon and have a good time. There would be no more good times with them.
Then there was Blake, who looked like the entire world had shifted and left her in the dirt. It was the look of a victim, someone who had lost everything, and was just struggling to comprehend why. Ruby new Blake was no stranger to hardship. The White Fang had provided her with enough for a lifetime, and yet Blake had chosen to be a huntress. She had chosen what was probably the most difficult and dangerous job on Remnant, but Ruby doubted she was prepared for this. She didn't think that any of her team was ready for this. She wondered if anyone could ever be prepared for something so sudden and... Numbing.
The four of them stood there, staring at the wreckage, the smoke, the petering flames, and the last place they'd ever see their friends.
/
Ruby heard the sound of a jet.
She blinked once, looking for the source. There was the loud whirring of mechanical gears moving, and in the courtyard in front of the warehouse, Ruby saw the concrete start to split, two large pieces sliding a foot down and then to the side.
"No," Ruby heard Blake whisper beside her, but was too petrified to respond. It couldn't be what she thought it was. Beside her, Weiss collapsed to her knees, throwing her hands over her mouth. Ruby's jaw dropped in shock.
No, no, no, no! NO! Ruby screamed mentally, but couldn't find the air to form the words. They stuck in her throat, choking her up.
The concrete spread apart to reveal a circular hole, just wide enough to fit a dust jet's wingspan. As the concrete separated, the sound of the jet grew louder. As the massive hidden doors settled with a heavy thunk, Ruby saw the top of dust plane rise into view. She watched as the engines pushed it away from the ground until the entire body could be seen. In the cockpit, Ruby could see a petite woman with pink and brown hair and a white coat. She grinned at Ruby, as if to say 'nice try.' The plane began rotating, revealing the side bay door with a woman hanging onto the inside pole for support. She wore a deep red satin dress with reddish-orange flames dancing around its hem. She smirked at them with fiery eyes, and her ashen hair fell over her shoulder in loose curls.
It was Cinder Fall, the woman that Neptune had sacrificed himself to kill.
She wasn't dead, and that meant that this wasn't over.
/
Oh yeah... Neo can teleport. Sometimes heroic sacrifices don't have all the intended results, I suppose. I think there will only be three more chapters in this 'act' of the fic before I move onto the second one. This update is a bit shorter, but there's not a whole lot more I could add to this series of events. I think all of it takes place within about five minutes, so there's not much else to go off of. The next chapter will mostly consist of Jaune's point of view, next chapter consisting of Yang's, and then just a closing chapter for this 'act' that will help set up for the next. If you have any comments, ideas, criticisms or helpful advice, please let me know, or even if you're just enjoying the story! Thanks for reading!
-Unjax