The front door opened slowly, the hinges creaking as it slowly opened into a dark and empty front hall. The view through the highly-expensive and custom made sniper-scope didn't show anything other than the fact that there were an extra two heat signatures in the house than the previous year.
The two he was looking at seemed to be near the back door while the other two made motions to get ready.
"Delta, we have two at the back." He spoke into a microphone that hung in front of his face.
"Roger that, Bravo. Alpha has the flank." Was the reply.
He watched the two digital red blotches on his scope as they appeared to discuss something. He slowly turned the focusing knob on the scope so he could get a better picture of their interaction.
All of a sudden, his vision blurred as the scope flared brightly at him. A huge shock wave slammed into him as it tore the air with a loud clap.
As he recovered from the concussive force of the explosion, he looked up to see the girl's younger sister with a smug smile gracing her lips. He slowly reached for his sidearm but the girl was too quick.
The dull, repeated thwack of the paint-ball gun sounded until nothing but air hissed from the held trigger.
"Not bad, short stuff." He said as he got up and rolled his shoulders. He spoke back into his headset before clicking it off. "Bravo downed by little red. I'll be at Cynthia's if you need me."
He walked quickly away from Ruby down the street as Weiss came up behind her.
"Is that really all we have to do?" Weiss asked, not expecting eliminating an opponent to be that easy.
"Basically, but he was the guy with the useless semblance. He's the first one out every year." Ruby said, reloading her gun with a can of fresh paint-balls.
"Did you ever think it might be because he has better things to do?" Weiss asked with a raised brow.
"Nah, what could be more fun than a paint-ball fight?" Ruby asked seriously, looking at Weiss.
She opened her mouth before thinking better of her intended response. Instead she settled for a simple shrug.
"Alright, now we start to launch our counterattack!" Ruby announced enthusiastically. "So, two of them are probably covering the back yard because that's Yang's territory and she can be a handful. That means there's one guy that's doing floater work."
"Excuse me? Floater?" Weiss asked, not quite understanding where Ruby was coming up with her terminology.
"Oh, it's a gaming thing." Ruby explained. "A floater is that one guy on the team that goes back and forth between units to assist where he's needed. Basically, now he should be on our trail because we eliminated one of the units."
"In other words, we should move." Weiss said as she pulled Ruby out of the way of a volley of paint-balls.
"Hold on!" Ruby smiled as her semblance carried them down the road to the center of town.
Once there, they stepped into an alley that ran between two of the handful of shops that crowded one side of the street across from a junk yard. The sounds of a compressor and an air powered drill sounded from the garage to the side of the piles of scrap metal, echoing over the frozen landscape as people walked past. One lady looked into the alley as her group passed and turned back to her group who all walked started walking quickly.
"Well, so much for using crowds to help." Ruby sighed. "For some reason nobody likes it when we use them as shields in our paint-ball fights."
"I wonder why…" Weiss rolled her eyes. Even she was trying to see the point of this urban warfare. She looked at Ruby who looked honestly baffled and shook her head. Maybe I should explain later.
The two girls stayed quietly in the alley for what felt like forever. Weiss realized after only a few minutes that despite the chill in the air, she was quite relaxed as she simply leaned beside her girlfriend, her shoulder gently resting against Ruby's. If nothing else, it was time spent with the most important person in her life. Time she was terrified would be cut before long.
"What are you thinking about?" Ruby's voice broke the silence and Weiss looked over at her leader.
"Nothing worth mentioning." Weiss responded, not wishing to show Ruby how afraid she really was.
"With the look on your face, even a stranger could tell it's not nothing." Ruby laughed a little. "So what's up?"
"Really, Ruby. It's nothing. I'm just thinking about the wedding again." Weiss admitted, knowing Ruby'd understand.
"Oh…" Ruby responded, falling silent. The silence was heavy and awkward until Ruby seemed to find the words she wanted to say. "I guess me telling you not to worry isn't going to help anything, right?"
Weiss shook her head in denial. Even though she wanted so badly to tell Ruby that it would help, she knew it was a short term fix. Once her mind started to wander, she'd inevitably return to running the possibilities of her future through her head.
"Well, I really can't say anything except not to worry." Ruby admitted. "And that you don't just have me to help. We might not have been together for very long, but I can guarantee you that Yang has your back. Not to mention my dad and uncle would do everything to help you if I asked."
"I suppose that does help a little bit." Weiss admitted, hoping Ruby was right about her family, even though she'd never actually met any of them other than her sister yet.
"So just don't worry. Even you said there was nothing to do until your sister came through with the contract." Ruby continued. "And you can add your sister to the list of people who'll help. Along with JNPR. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to lend a hand if we needed."
"Okay." Weiss laughed a little bit at Ruby's enthusiasm to recruit almost everyone they knew to help her solve her problem. "That's enough of that for now."
"Did I cheer you up?" Ruby asked with an excited grin.
"I suppose you did." Weiss smiled, putting more pressure against Ruby's shoulder to support her words.
"Good. Then make a solid glyph half way between you and the end of the alley on my mark!" Ruby said, picking up her gun and leaning back against the wall. She pressed herself as flat as she could and looked past Weiss. "Now!"
Weiss acted as instructed, throwing up a glyph to catch a volley of paint-balls. One managed to fly past her glyph before she got it up and hit the ground just in front of Weiss's shoe, exploding in a streak of luminescent orange.
Weiss watched as her glyph turned from clear and white to multicolored in a matter of seconds. At the same moment she lost the clear hole she was looking through, her scroll vibrated.
"Blake's down." Ruby announced as she checked her own scroll. "Yang's on her way to point C."
"Where's that?" Weiss asked, focusing most of her energies on maintaining the glyph even though the barrage had stopped.
"The house in the woods. It's a small abandoned shack about fifty feet into the forest on the other side of town." Ruby explained. "We'll lure them there and make the final stand."
Weiss nodded, knowing Ruby was following some pattern she'd obviously done before. She listened closely and could hear the quick crunch of foot steps approaching on the other side of her glyph. She could barely make out the odd pattern of two sets.
"They're coming from the other side." Weiss advised Ruby.
"Then let's fly!" Ruby used her semblance to quickly jump between the two buildings and gain the roof of the shorter one.
Weiss weakened her glyph to the point where barely a single touch would destroy it and prepared to air step to the roof Ruby was on. She didn't have to wait long.
A fist with a short club smashed through her glyph, sending the powdered paint into a blinding cloud as the guy stumbled with his excess momentum, having expected the glyph to be stronger. She summoned her glyph as the second guy shot a volley of paint-balls blindly into the alley. Weiss barely dodged them as she flew towards the roof. Ruby's hand caught hers, pulling her over and onto the roof.
"Now we run!" Ruby announced as she took off to the other side of the long roof. She stopped behind a furnace vent and turned back as Weiss came running after her.
The two guys jumped up to the roof a second later, as if they'd both used the same springboard. Ruby unleashed a volley of well aimed shots at them, making them dodge and move for cover as Weiss cleared the halfway mark.
"Drunk running, Weiss!" Ruby called as she quickly reloaded. Weiss swerved to the side as paint-balls started flying at her and amazingly missed or exploded around her feet as she kept running.
Weiss blindly shot her paint-ball gun backwards to where she thought the two were shooting at her from, though her aim was dreadful at best. Ruby popped back out of her cover, this time she was pacing each shot as if she was aiming carefully. Behind her, Weiss heard one of the guys curse and the barrage around her slowed.
Ruby stopped shooting for a moment just as Weiss reached her, her eyes wide. She launched herself at Weiss and the two started to fall over the edge of the roof just as something large and hard slammed into them.
Weiss hit the wall of the neighboring building, cushioning Ruby in her arms and dropping her weapon as Ruby did the same. Thankfully, the impact wasn't hard and her aura absorbed most of it without a problem. Then they were falling.
Weiss screamed as they tumbled through the air and suddenly, with a crack and final tumble, she found herself laying beside Ruby and facing the sky.
"Ruby!" Weiss started panicking, her winded lungs crying at the force of their landing.
"Fine." Came Ruby's reply. "Get the guns. We only have a few seconds."
Weiss struggled to her feet and found the two paint-ball guns, now somewhat scratched up, laying only a couple feet away. She took them both and turned to look at Ruby.
She was leaning against one of the walls, holding her leg that appeared to be fine, but that didn't mean much.
"You're hurt." Weiss stated, crouching beside Ruby. "Let's just surrender and go home."
"No. A rose never surrenders!" Ruby argued, struggling to her feet. "Give me my gun."
Weiss handed over the weapon reluctantly as a plan formed in her head.
"Come on, we have to get to Yang!" Ruby said as she took a step away from the wall. She cried out in pain as she stumbled back to the wall, breathing heavily.
"You're not going anywhere fast with your injury." Weiss stated firmly, placing her hand on Ruby's shoulder. "But if it really matters that much to you, I'll help."
"It does." Ruby nodded, glancing up at the roof overhead.
Weiss sighed and held out her gun for Ruby to take. Ruby took it questioningly as Weiss stepped closer.
"You'll tell me if I'm hurting you, right?" Weiss asked quietly. Ruby, seeming to understand her intention, nodded. "Then all you have to do is lift your leg."
Ruby nodded as Weiss wrapped her arms around Ruby. She placed her head beside Ruby's and lifted the girl off the ground. She steadied herself with the new weight and then started to move.
Ruby had her good leg wrapped around Weiss's back and her bad leg hanging out of the way while she kept one arm around Weiss's back. Her other arm held her gun at the ready for when the guys would get off the roof and give chase.
She didn't have to wait long.
"Swerve!" Ruby ordered as she watched one of them land in a crouch and aim down their sights. The short, controlled burst of paint-balls flew past them harmlessly as Weiss moved to the right. Ruby squeezed off a single shot, but the bouncing of Weiss's running made it difficult to aim. The ball ended up hitting the ground a few feet in front of it's target.
"We're a hundred yards out, can you get us there quick?" Ruby asked, wishing she hadn't landed badly on her leg.
"Reach into the pouch by your ankle. Get the green vial." Weiss instructed. She felt the slight snap of the button when Ruby fumbled the pouch open. Weiss realized it was the first time she'd ever let Ruby, or anyone for that matter, take something from her clothing's storage and felt a wave of intimacy grip her as she also realized how much trust she had in Ruby that she hadn't even thought twice before issuing her command.
"Here." Ruby closed the pouch and reached behind her to place the vial in Weiss's hand.
"Hold tight." Weiss said as she picked up her pace while she uncorked the dust.
Weiss used a small glyph to toss the vial in front of her, letting the dust fan out as she summoned a glyph that absorbed the dust and glowed bright. She jumped as she approached and landed perfectly on the glyph's center. Her momentary stop had paint-balls landing on the ground around her and Ruby as she leaned forwards and braced herself for the liftoff.
"Weiss!" Ruby panicked as the paint-balls grew more accurate and she moved her arm to fire a few in response.
Weiss activated her glyph and felt herself flying as fast as she was capable of going, the weight of Ruby creating more drag than she'd anticipated. Ruby dropped the gun she was firing at the sudden momentum and braced herself tightly against Weiss as she watched the world fly by in reverse.
It wasn't as fast as Ruby could run, but she was amazed at the strange feeling of moving backwards at their speed. Their momentum dissipated as they approached their goal and Weiss almost stumbled as the ground turned from pavement to gravel.
"Head to the back of the house, Yang'll be there." Ruby instructed.
Weiss followed the directions and rounded the house, noticing that the trees were growing so thick that it was amazing they were just at the very edge of the forest.
"Stop, let me down here." Ruby said quietly just as Weiss approached the corner.
She leaned Ruby against the wall and Ruby peeked around it with the remaining paint-ball gun. She fired a quick burst and a groan echoed from the other side.
"Told you that you didn't have time to mess around!" Yang's voice shouted in triumph along with the sound of another paint-ball gun.
"Meh, this was getting a bit old to be honest. Raphael is the one who insists we do this." The boy responded as Weiss and Ruby rounded the corner. "Looks like you could use a hand."
The boy approached Ruby and easily lifted her up against her protests and deposited her in a chair that stood on the back porch of the house. He collapsed himself into the chair next to it as Yang came up beside Weiss.
"Don't worry about it, they're just gonna watch the finale. But… sort of disappointing it's you and me." She said with a light punch to Weiss's arm.
"So how did Blake get eliminated?" Weiss asked, deciding to deal with her feelings about the boy sitting in the chair later.
"She put on the vest and shot herself." Yang replied. "She said she was getting to a good part in the book she was reading."
"Sounds like her." Weiss agreed. "What's the plan of action?"
"What do you mean?" Yang asked, confused. "Win of course."
"No, I mean…" Weiss realized then how much she'd been relying on Ruby's intelligence on their opponents up till then. "Oh… Right."