Chapter 5: "They're Just Humans"
The city of Mountain Glenn was an interesting place. Underground, it nevertheless managed to be an airy, open space with frankly an excess of space. The desolate avenues provided a decent enough area to stretch one's legs in and the White Fang were all too unnerved by the silence and emptiness to venture far from the areas they had set up shop, meaning Mato had most of the space to himself. With Mato having standing orders to remain within the caverns, he made the most of it.
Exploring the ruined city had become his new hobby. Ostensibly he was doing it to patrol for Grimm incursions into the caves but really the main attraction was that it kept him away from Torchwick. For reasons Mato didn't really understand, despite his colossal failure at the rally Torchwick had become de facto leader of the White Fang contingent at Mountain Glenn. Perry and Bruno were both meekly taking orders from him now, along with everyone else. And Torchwick had promptly let that go to his head.
"Where are my paladins? There were supposed to be a dozen of them here to be loaded onto the train. I know it might be hard for you to count, but zero is a lot less than twelve."
"They aren't here because we don't need them."
"Really? Then where, pray tell, are we going to get the firepower we need?"
"I am here. I am worth twenty of those mechanical toys."
After that argument and half a dozen similar ones, Mato had started spending a lot more time outside the camp's confines. It wasn't like he was in any way needed; everyone was focused on repairing that old train and stuffing it full of weapons and explosives. They were taking their sweet time about it; they had been here two weeks now and they still weren't finished. Though from what Mato had gleaned everything didn't need to be ready for another ten days or so, so they should be fine anyway.
Mato, having no interest in hefting crates around, was staying out of it. He was instead entertaining himself by exploring the tunnels and caves that comprised the ruined city of Mountain Glenn. The city had an exciting history, the brief explanation Mato had been given was that it was an expansion of the city of Vale whose residents had been summarily slaughtered by Grimm that invaded. Mato's observation that this made the entire city one giant mausoleum had been largely unwanted by his fellow new residents of Mountain Glenn.
It was rather depressing, however, to see firsthand just how weak the human race really was. Slaughtering Grimm en masse should not have provided any real difficulty; as far as Mato could tell even the weaker hunters he had faced wouldn't have had too much trouble warding off small armies of Grimm. But, history had proven Mato's assumptions were false. He was beginning to consider humanity to be a worthless species. Weak in battle and with the knowledge to only develop primitive technology, there just didn't seem to be any value to human lives.
Speaking of worthless humans, Mato returned to the camp from one of his explorations to find Torchwick indulging in his usual foolishness. It would seem the girl with the red cape they had encountered earlier had somehow tracked them to the caves. She had been caught and now Torchwick was making an ass of himself brutalizing a defenseless opponent. Seeing her use some kind of high speed movement technique, one that bizarrely left what looked like flower petals floating behind her, to escape and leave Torchwick staring dumbly at her retreating form was almost amusing enough for Mato to let her go. Almost.
Mato announced his arrival by body flickering behind her and pulled her up short by the collar of her cape. He lifted the squirming teenager and turned back to the group. "Torchwick, if you're going to screw around you can at least not let our prisoners make a fool out of you."
"I had everything under control." Torchwick replied indignantly.
"I'm sure." Mato said. He would have said more, but the sound of an explosion caught his attention. He rotated in its direction, still holding up the struggling hunter. There was another, much stronger explosion that shook dust loose from the ceiling.
"What's going on here!?" Torchwick demanded. A group of White Fang came around the corner, clearly running for their lives. And if Mato was a betting man, he'd guess they were running from the other group that came around after them. They were Red's three friends, an older man with glasses Mato assumed to be the leader, and a dog.
"Guys!" Red called out to them. Mato leapt into the air, getting a clear shot without the White Fang being in the way. He drew back his arm and whipped Red forward like a screaming missile. The screaming stopped when she was caught by the blonde, though at the cost of her being bowled over and both of them being on the ground. Mato moved while he descended so that he was about ten meters away from them.
"I see you weren't wise enough to take my warning." Mato chided them. "I didn't expect that you would place so little value on your own lives. If I'd known, I'd have just killed you back then and spared us all this trouble."
Red appeared to be ignoring him. "Guys, Torchwick's got all sorts of weapons down there."
"It's true." Mato confirmed. "They're all loaded up on the train if you want them."
"Why?" Glasses asked. "These tunnels are all sealed. The tracks just lead to a dead end."
A screech over the announcement speakers preceded Torchwick's voice. "Get to your places, we are leaving now!" With a hiss of steam, the train began to move.
"Apparently not." Mato said drily.
"We have to stop that train!" Red declared.
Mato snorted derisively. "Good luck with that."
Red, now once again armed with her scythe, charged forward. Before she could swing her heavy weapon Mato was already driving a palm into her chest. She flew backward as her comrades began their own attacks. Mato readied himself for them, only to jump backwards to avoid the wave of flames that shot towards him.
It was Glasses. Flames flickering at the end of his odd staff-like weapon, he positioned himself between the girls and Mato. "You girls go on ahead. I'll catch up with you after taking care of things here."
Mato raised an eyebrow as the girls broke off and began to run for the tunnel. Someone's feeling confident. He frowned at Red's receding back and darted over in front of her again. "And who gave you permission to leave?" He drew back a fist.
"I did!" Mato had to leap backward to avoid another gout of flames as Glasses nearly struck him with his staff. For something like fire, Mato would need to maintain a barrier of ki over parts of his body to avoid being burned. It wasn't really something he could do while facing down a multitude of enemies all at once. In addition, Glasses had very nearly kept pace with him back there. Mato had been faster, but not by much.
Mato made no moves to stop the quartet as they disappeared into the tunnel. Staring Glasses down, he looked for any possible weaknesses to exploit, but nothing was readily apparent. He was a physically powerful enemy with a dangerous weapon, likely the most challenging opponent Mato had met on Remnant. Still, he was only human and should fall easily enough.
Glasses, likely thinking of his subordinates going after the train, started them off with rushing forward, sweeping his staff across and sending waves of fire rolling ahead of him. Having seen that particular move twice before, Mato was ready for it. He slid under the current of flame and launched a kick upwards, which Glasses dodged. Mato used his momentum to spin into a punch, but it met the staff before it could hit flesh. Glasses drove an open palm blow square into Mato's chest, sending him backwards. The hit hurt a lot less than the knowledge that Mato had actually let one of these humans land one on him.
His budding anger was interrupted when a furry blur came out of nowhere and sunk its teeth into Mato's arm. It was the damn dog. Mato let out a half strangled yelp and waved his arm around, trying to dislodge the vermin suckered on to him. When that failed he thought things through a little more and threw a quick punch with his other arm. Its bite loosed from the hit and Mato was able to fling the dog off, with enough force that it would have slammed into one of the ruined walls had not Glasses moved quickly to catch it.
It's rather shameful to use so much strength on a mere dog. A quiet voice inside Mato's head admonished. It wasn't even a big dog.
It bit me. A much more petulant voice retorted.
Glasses gently set the demonspawn canine down on the ground. From behind his spectacles, he was finally looking serious. He and Mato both charged forward as one and met in the middle with a furious exchange of blows. Throughout the flurry of punches, kicks, and staff strikes, neither fighter landed any real hits on the other. They broke away, Mato's failure stinging worse than anything Glasses had done to him. He ought to have bowled over this human by now. Were the older hunters really this much stronger?
An explosion rocked the air. What is going on back there? Wafting back through the tunnel came the stench of Grimm. Mato's eyes narrowed. Was Torchwick really having so much trouble with the enemy he was trying to lure Grimm in to distract them? He must be getting desperate. Or did he simply not care?
Either way, unchecked Grimm presence didn't bode well for the White Fang in the tunnel with him. Mato had to get over there quickly and that meant settling things here, now.
"What's your name?" He asked his foe.
"Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck. And you?"
"Mato." He took a step back. "I owe you an apology, Bartholomew. I've been trying to smash you into the ground and that's just insulting to a man with your skill."
"Well don't feel too bad." Bartholomew replied. "I've been trying to trounce you myself."
"Have you?" Mato didn't really believe that but decided to let it go. "Well, I've run out of time to keep messing around." For the first time since he arrived on Remnant, Mato assumed his opening stance. "So, if you want to keep holding back that's fine with me, but I'm gonna start fighting."
Mato shot at him closing the distance until at the last second body flickering to the side and aiming a kick at Bartholomew's neck from the side. His shin slammed into the staff. Bartholomew's eyes widened behind his glasses at Mato's glowing hand. He bent backwards, the ki blast just barely missing him. However, from that position he couldn't exert much strength, so Mato powered through his kick and sent the man flying. Bartholomew regained his footing and skidded to stop, but his expression looked a lot more desperate than it had previously.
It wasn't like Mato had gotten significantly stronger or faster; he had already been using much of his power. There was just a world of difference between flailing around with no greater purpose than to hit the enemy and actually using skill and a trained fighting style on them. Though Mato's own style was designed to counter opponents more powerful than him, the fluidity and precision it brought to his movements still dramatically increased his effectiveness even against a weaker foe.
Bartholomew took the initiative with a massive wave of flames. Mato shot a weak burst of ki, enough to punch a hole, and charged through. He threw a punch, which Bartholomew backed away from. Mato continued a relentless advance of punches and kicks, Bartholomew withdrawing just out of reach of each one. Mato's attacks got wilder and fiercer the more he missed, driving to a single, finishing blow. Finally, he overextended himself.
Seeing his enemy off-balance, Bartholomew lashed out with the strongest strike Mato had seen from him, accompanied by a hammer of fire. Just as Mato had expected.
Instead of smashing Mato with all his strength, Bartholomew wasted his energy hitting nothing but air. The saiyan had neatly withdrawn and let the attack swing by, his 'opening' nothing more than a feint. But Bartholomew's opening now was all too real. Mato punished it using body flicker to close and slamming his elbow into the man's stomach. The impact threw Bartholomew back through a ruined wall, ruining it a bit more with the hole he created.
The pile of rubble shifted as Bartholomew stood back up again. He had lost his glasses and looked rather unsteady, but Mato was still impressed. He had half expected that hit to do the older man in. Instead, the doctor was staring him down with grim determination. For now.
Mato cracked his knuckles. "Shall we continue?"
To say Ruby Rose was having a bad day would be an understatement.
Losing Crescent Rose and being captured by the bad guys was not a great start, being used as a human baseball wasn't an improvement. Getting Crescent Rose back and meeting up with her friends was a step up, but it was immediately followed up by a desperate and failed attempt to stop the runaway train. After being in a train crash, she was now fighting for her life against an army of Grimm currently invading the kingdom.
All in all, she's had better days.
Unfortunately, the fight wasn't going very well for them. The members of Team RWBY had scattered throughout the plaza in an attempt to contain the Grimm, or at least draw their attention. It was working, more or less, but it meant that the four of them were all fighting alone against seemingly infinite numbers of Grimm. For each Grimm they killed, another popped out of the hole. Ruby had driven closer to the hole, trying to ease the pressure on her teammates. If they could clean out the other Grimm, then the four of them could maintain a loose perimeter around the breach until reinforcements arrived.
Ruby spun, Crescent Rose a whirl of death around her. Black limbs rained down as she hacked apart the crowd of Grimm surrounding her. An on rushing Beowolf was bisected and with her follow through she beheaded another coming up behind her. She raised the scythe and shot a young Nevermore out of the sky and spun around to impale a Creep. And another half dozen Grimm rose out of the hole.
There was no end to them. Even Ruby and her friends couldn't fend them all off while still keeping them from rampaging through the city, not without backup.
A Beowolf stuck its head out of the hole. From this distance Ruby really couldn't tell, but it looked as though its eyes widened in surprise before vanishing back below ground. Rising out of the ground in its place was the White Fang warrior, the one with wild black hair and a tail coiled around his waist. Tucked under his arm were the limp bodies of Zwei and Professor Oobleck.
Ruby opened her mouth to say something, likely a shout at him to let them go, but a growl from behind her reminded her was a little busy at the moment. She whirled around to see an unusual Beowolf. Most Beowolves had heads, not smoking stumps at the end of their necks.
The White Fang spoke from behind her. "Well, this is a mess." Ruby turned to see him regarding the plaza turned warzone with a dispassionate expression.
"A mess you made." Ruby said bitingly, only the presence of her pet and teacher in his hands keeping her from attacking him. She would have said more but a charging pack of Grimm demanded her attention. Before she could raise Crescent Rose to fire though, the White Fang swept his hand out in front of him in a wide arc. Following the path of his hand, a wave of energy raked the ground and blasted the Grimm to pieces.
"Rude." He said softly. "I'm trying to have a conversation here." He looked back to Ruby. "Anyway, I didn't come here to argue. I just wanted to return these." He threw Zwei and Oobleck at her feet. Ruby's heart leapt into her mouth, but she quickly confirmed they were both merely unconscious. "The tunnels are getting a bit too crowded for taking naps. When he wakes up let him know that if he wants a rematch I'll be up for one." He turned to leave.
"Wait." Ruby wasn't sure why but she felt driven to ask. "Why would you do this?" It didn't make sense. Why let hordes of Grimm into the city then go out of your way to protect someone from them? The White Fang paused but didn't answer her and with a shake of his head he dropped back into the tunnel. The murkiness underground lit with a flash and Ruby felt a faint rumble shake where she was crouching.
In the sky, an explosion and a high pitched squeal announced the arrival of Nora followed by the rest of Team JNPR. Ruby shelved her confusion and with a grunt of effort hoisted Professor Oobleck onto her shoulder and scooped up Zwei. First she needed to get these two somewhere safe.
Mato rooted through the pile of rubble, but with no real expectations. From the looks of things, most of the White Fang had been driven from the train either by the attacking enemies or to avoid the impact of the crash. They were then fallen upon by the Grimm flooding into the tunnel and subsequently eaten. The few survivors were the ones sheltered by the train wreckage and rubble keeping the Grimm away. Mato had started with those piles near the end of the tunnel, after clearing the area of Grimm, and had managed to pull out a scattered few still breathing. Now that the breach into the city had been sealed, however, he had moved on to checking the much smaller piles of rubble created by the initial explosions and was having much less success.
Mato let the boulder he was hoisting up crash back down onto the ground. There was no one left, not alive any way. He torched the remaining bodies, better cremation than being Grimm food, and returned back down the tunnels to the ruined city. Not all the White Fang had boarded the train; a scant few had remained behind holding up their positions in Mountain Glenn. Now it fell to them to keep the few survivors from the train alive.
Mato slipped into the field hospital and watched silently as one of the ad hoc medics tended to Bruno, the larger man having withstood his injuries through what Mato assumed to be pure obstinance. The medic, a young man with amber hair who was in charge solely by virtue of being willing to issue orders to the others rose from his patient and met Mato at the door.
"Any others?" He asked, sounding torn between wishing that there were and hoping that there weren't.
Mato shook his head. "None. This is it."
"Damn." The medic glanced back at his fellows still hard at work applying bandages and supplying basic painkillers to those conscious. With no one left having any real medical training, that was what they limited to. One of the people Mato had pulled from the wreckage had been so far gone that the 'medics' could do nothing but look away as Mato snapped her neck to make her passing quick. "I thought things would be bad, but not this bad."
"You were expecting this?" Mato asked. He suspected he already knew the answer, but hoped he didn't.
"Yeah." The medic answered, dashing his hopes. "The breach plan was always going to be dangerous, but it shouldn't have been a complete suicide mission. Damn Huntsmen." He ran a hand through his hair while laughing bitterly. "To think I was actually disappointed at having to stay behind."
Mato had to make sure before he acted. "So what happened, sending the train into the center of the city to let armies of Grimm in after it was always the plan?"
"Yep." The medic looked confused at Mato's expression. "Wait, you didn't know?"
I had been actively avoiding any opportunity to be told that. Mato might have said. Instead he merely shook his head and said "No. No I didn't."
As if from a great distance, Mato heard the sharp crack again.
"I'm leaving." He said to the medic. "I don't think there are many Grimm left in the area after what's happened, but I wouldn't assume this place will be safe for much longer. As soon as you can you should get everyone moving."
"Wait." The medic called out to him as Mato began to walk away. "Where are you going?"
Mato didn't answer him, taking off towards one of the openings to aboveground opened by the bombed train cars. Upon reaching the open air he shot straight into the sky until he reached the clouds. From this height, he could see the city of Vale off in the distance. In the light of the setting sun, the smoke still rising from the middle of the city looked almost beautiful.
Mato turned away. He had business elsewhere.
Weariness pervaded through his body as he flew. His fight with Bartholomew had taken more out of him than he thought any human could. Then he'd had to fight through all those Grimm and scour the length of the tunnel for survivors. He was decidedly not at full strength.
Mato banished those thoughts. Even tired, he still had more than enough power to blow anyone away, everyone if necessary.
As Mato reached Alpha Camp, on the way in he spotted rows of paladins standing dormant. Another piece of his work that would need amending. He ceased his flight and dropped out of the sky. His graceful landing in the center of the camp concealed that he had fallen the ten or so meters to the ground in free fall to conserve energy. Some nameless White Fang member approached him. "What happened in the city? We heard the breach plan went ahead, but it should have been too early. Why'd you come back here, shouldn't you be helping to make sure everything goes smoothly?"
Mato ignored the questions. "Where's Adam?"
The White Fang didn't seem to catch Mato's mood. As others came closer he continued his interrogation. "Why did you guys go early? We weren't ready to capitalize on the chaos you caused. You should have-"
He was cut off by Mato's fist crashing into his head. As he fell backwards the others around them leapt backwards, some pulling out guns or other weapons. Mato repeated himself.
"Where's Adam?" He asked again, his voice deadly soft.
Fuchsia emerged from the crowd, face hard. "Why do you want to know?"
"To kill him, if I don't like his answers." Mato answered truthfully.
"You think we need to answer to you?" Someone in the crowd asked. Mato turned to reply but the words died in his throat. His mouth hung open and his eyes widened.
Oh shit. Mato thought, as he stared at the full moon.
AN: With all the excitement (and having been living underground) Mato completely forgot to keep track of the lunar schedule.
Reviewer Responses: Jackalope89: It's not so much that Mato saw Yang go gold as he saw her already be gold from a distance while he was focused on someone else entirely. He didn't really get a good look at it, but he will in the future.
shadows being: Well, he's having a bit of a falling out with the White Fang, but this has only made his friend situation even worse.
6tailedninja: I think this is a common misconception. The idea of the Super Saiyan being a transformation into a blond super powered state wasn't known to the saiyans before Goku became one. When he was beating the tar out of Jeice and Burter, Vegeta suspected Goku had already become a Super Saiyan and after getting powered up from his near death experience he was convinced he was now a Super Saiyan.
Raos: I'm conflicted about writing pairings, as romance is not really a strong suit and there's currently no way to develop any organically, as our protagonist is currently making enemies of almost everyone. Maybe later on in the story we'll see some. To your question I don't want to give away the plot too much so I'll just invite you to keep reading.
Guest(s): I'm glad you guys like it. I hope you stick around and enjoy the show.