With Friends Like These.
In a hallway in the research facility, Winter is looking at the Wanted notice on her Scroll. Edelgard and Penny is standing behind her, looking concerned. Just what was going on?
"Weiss. What did you do?" Winter asked in concern for her sister.
"The General is leaving Mantle to perish?" Penny asked.
Winter sighs "He's saving Remnant. We can't let the Relics fall to Salem".
Winter begins walking ahead.
"But all those people we just protected, they won't survive" Penny said as she looks over her shoulder
Winter continues to walk "We don't have time to-".
Penny glares at Winter "That doesn't bother you?".
Winter stops walking and stands with her back to Penny and an upset expression on her face.
"What about your sister? Our friends?" Penny asked.
Winter collects herself and turns to face Penny "My personal feelings don't matter. We have orders. I'm to retrieve the power of the Winter Maiden so we can access the Relic. You two are here to ensure my safety. Now come on. We've already lost enough time".
"It should matter" Penny argued.
"Penny..." Edelgard said silently
Winter thinks for a moment. Her expression softens, and she walks over to Penny "Penny. The general is making hard choices so we don't have to. For the good of all, not just a few".
Winter takes Penny's hands, but Penny pulls her hands away.
"Penny I don't like this anymore than you do. If I could do whatever I wanted I would've stopped this. But like Winter said, our personal feelings can't distract us from the bigger picture. Sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the greater good" Edelgard said.
Penny's expression did not change "I do not see what is good about any of this".
Winter watches as Penny walks ahead "On that we can agree".
Edelgard sighed as she and Winter follows Penny down the hall toward a door guarded by Atlesian Knight-200s.
"Please, think about what you're doing" Weiss said.
Team RWBY, Lucina, Severa and the Ace Operatives are standing in Ironwood's office.
"You heard the general. Until this is sorted out, you're under arrest" Harriet brings out her Scroll and hits a button. The blue lights throughout the room turn red, and metal covers the windows.
Yang looks at the windows, then at Harriet "Really?".
Vine steps forward, raising a hand "Please. Don't make this difficult".
Blake steps forward "Don't make us have to get out of here by force".
Yang deploys her weapons, and Blake and Weiss draw theirs. On the other side of the room, Vine activates his Semblance while Ingrid, Harriet and Elm draw their weapons.
Marrow waves his hands "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We're not actually going to slug this out, are we?".
"We're not doing anything. They decide what happens next" Harriet said.
Ruby walks over from Ironwood's desk to stand with her teammates and transforms Crescent Rose into scythe form. Marrow sighs and draws his gun.
"You think you're going to stop us" Harriet scoffs "We're the best Huntsmen in Atlas".
"You were. Then you trained us" Ruby uses her Semblance to rush past the Ace-Ops, smashing straight through the door, and Harriet angrily chases after her with her own Semblance.
The remaining members of RWBY along with Lucina and Severa charge forward and clashes with the Ace Ops; Yang fights Elm, Blake fights Marrow, Weiss fights Vine, and Lucina and Severa both fights Ingrid.
Ruby zooms across the foyer and up the stairs, stopping in front of the elevators. Before she has a chance to do anything, Harriet catches up, rushes around her, and kicks her in the head, knocking her against a pair of elevator doors hard enough to dent them. She then begins walking toward Ruby.
"Come on Harriet! We're playing right into Salem's hands! You know we need to be working together" Ruby pleaded.
"Oh don't give me that crap!" Harriet brushes her nose with a thumb "I had you kids pegged right from the start".
Harriet zooms forward with her Semblance again. Meanwhile, Yang and Elm are descending the stairs form Ironwood's office into the foyer. Elm is blocking a rapid flurry of punches with her hammer, and Yang manages to punch her in the face, knocking her the rest of the way down the stairs. Yang then propels herself forward with the recoil from her weapons, ready to punch, but Elm uses her Semblance to stand her ground and then swings her head to headbutt Yang. She then slams her hammer into Yang, sending her flying through a doorway. Vine uses his Semblance to chase Blake, who is swinging around the foyer with Gambol Shroud in kusarigama form.
Blake lands on the floor with a roll and dodges as Vine sends his energy arms toward her. Yang ducks under one of his energy arms and leaves a trail of small bombs as Elm chases her around the room. She detonates the bombs, but Elm is unfazed. Yang continues to run around the room, while Blake resumes swinging around with her kusarigama. Vine finally manages to catch Blake and tosses her to Elm, who catches her while using her Semblance. She holds her hammer's pole against Blake to keep Blake pressed against herself.
Noticing Blake has been captured, Yang stops running and faces Elm and Vine.
"If you come peacefully, we won't hurt you" Vine said calmly.
"Speak for yourself! They betrayed us!" Elm said in anger.
"You're betraying the people you've sworn to protect!" Blake shot back.
"It's not worth it, Blake. They're just following orders now" Yang said.
Infuriated, Elm throws Blake against a wall and charges toward Yang. Vine sighs and uses his Semblance on his feet to raise himself up to a ledge.
In Ironwood's office, Weiss uses her glyphs to swiftly move around the room, slashing at Marrow with her rapier, but Marrow keeps blocking with his boomerang. He throws his boomerang at Weiss, and she deflects it, then stabs the tip of her rapier onto the floor, using Ice Dust to create a thin layer of ice in a triangle in front of her. While Marrow tries to keep his footing, Weiss switches Dust types and sends a horizontal arc of fire toward him. He leaps over the fire, singing the tip of his tail as he does so. The ice melts, and a mist forms in the room.
"I know you Schnees are used to getting what you want. But it's time to let this one go!" Marrow said before multiple glyphs appear and begin shooting ice crystals at him and blocks them with his boomerang.
"This is my home. And I'm not giving it up without a fight" The mist clears, and Marrow sees Weiss standing atop Ironwood's desk. She swings her rapier to the side, striking a pose while her Arma Gigas summon stands up behind her and readies its sword.
In another room, Ingrid successfully holds of both Lucina and Severa at the same time. Spinning her lance, Ingrid deflects one of Severa's blows and kicks her in the gut, making her slide back. Lucina goes in for a strike, but Ingrid blocks it, before slamming the blunt end of her lance in to Lucina's face and sent her away with a kick to her chest.
"I knew trusting you all was a mistake" Ingrid said with clear venom in her face.
"Funny, that's kind of what I feel about you and your so called friends" Severa said.
"We gave you everything! We kept you out of prison, gave you a place to stay, helped you train! We gave you your huntress licences! We gave you our trust! But you just kept taking and taking! Only to stab us in the back just because you couldn't look past your damn morals!" Ingrid said, growing angrier by the second.
"Better than having no morals at all" Lucina said as she stood ready.
"Besides, you are stabbing thousands of people in the back. People who trusted you to help them. You are the real traitor here!" Severa added.
Ingrid growls before angelic looking wings made of pure light rose from her back, blinding Lucina and Severa before Ingrid charged forward, using the length of her lance to slam in to both their guts and sending them flying in to a wall.
"Shit! She is tougher than she looks" Severa admitted.
"Being the adopted daughter of General Ironwood has more than a few perks. Like being trained by several of the greatest huntsmen and huntresses from around Renmant. Including the legendary Byleth" Ingrid said.
Lucina stood up "She was trained by Byleth... No wonder she's so good".
"Yeah, but we still got her outnumbered, so let's put her in her place" Severa declared.
"Arrogant traitors!" Ingrid shouts as she attacks them again.
Ruby zooms across the foyer with her Semblance and stops at the top of the staircase in front of Ironwood's office, with Harriet chasing her. Harriet leaps over the stairs and kicks Ruby in the chest, knocking her into the office, just in time for her to see Marrow throwing his boomerang toward Weiss. Weiss readies her rapier, but Ruby uses her Semblance to rush to her side and deflect the boomerang with her scythe. Marrow catches the boomerang.
Harriet rushes into the office and stops beside her teammate "Marrow! Cut the crap, will you!?".
"I'm trying to arrest her, not kill her, Hare. You're being excessive!" Marrow argued.
The two duck under the Arma Gigas' sword as it swings toward them.
"It's not excessive if it's necessary" Harriet said.
They hear the characteristic sound of Ruby's Semblance, and Harriet looks over at Ironwood's desk, where she can only see Weiss, the Arma Gigas summon and some falling rose petals. Behind her, Ruby is already on her way through the door, and Harriet growls and chases after her.
Yang holds onto Gambol Shroud's ribbon, and Blake swings her forward, sending her flying toward Elm, who attempts and fails to block Yang's punch. Yang turns around and rushes toward Elm again, but Elm roots herself with her Semblance and slams the top of her hammer into her, knocking her backward. She hears a gunshot behind her and turns and leans just in time to see the kusarigama form of Gambol Shroud flying toward her. She sets her hammer down, grabs the sickle with one hand and the ribbon with the other, and pulls, jerking Blake through the air toward her. She picks her hammer back up, spins it, and slams it into Blake's torso, sending her flying straight up into the air where she is caught by Vine's Semblance. Vine slams Blake into a stone square in the wall, cracking it and causing her Aura to flicker. He proceeds to hold her there.
Seeing this, Yang gasps and then returns her attention to Elm, diving under Elm's hammer as she swings it toward her. Elm then swings her hammer down at Yang, who grabs the hammer's pole and then shoots Elm in the face, sending her flying backward. Yang then fires at Vine, who attempts to block with his free arm, but the bullet bursts into a small explosion, causing him to cry out and loosen his grip on Blake. Blake breaks free and drops down to the floor.
"Time to wrap this up, Vine. They've had their chance. Don't be soft" Elm said.
Yang stands beside Blake and tosses Gambol Shroud back to her.
"Are you telling me? Or yourself?" Vine asked as he uses his Semblance to grab chunks of the broken part of the wall, and Elm looks annoyed.
Blake and Yang exchange a look, smiling at each other. Yang readies her weapons, and Blake unfolds Gambol Shroud into katana form. The two then rush forward, Yang using recoil to propel herself.
Elm swings her hammer horizontally at them, but Yang ducks down and slides under it, while Blake backflips and then grabs onto the hammer's head, using the momentum to fling herself into the air past Elm. The two run from Elm, and Yang uses her recoil to dodge the stone chunks that Vine throws at her before finally catching one of the chunks. She rapidly attaches several bombs to the chunk and tosses it into the air. Above her, Blake is dangling from the ceiling with Gambol Shroud's ribbon and kicks the stone toward Vine, who knocks it away with his Semblance. He then uses his energy arms to catch Blake as she begins to drop from the ceiling.
Vine pulls Blake over to him and soon finds that, not only is her back covered in the bombs that Yang had attached to the stone, but she is actually a clone. The clone vanishes as the bombs begin beeping, and the blast from the explosion sends Vine into the air. Yang shoots at the floor, using the recoil to send herself up toward Vine. As she passes him, she steals his bolas from the back of his belt. Once she is above him, she throws the bolas down, wrapping it around him. She then uses recoil to send herself spinning down toward him, grabs his legs, spins through the air, and sends him hurtling toward the floor. The impact sends a web of cracks through the floor and breaks his Aura.
Yang lands on the floor, and Blake drops down from a ledge on the wall. Elm looks down at Vine and then looks at Blake and Yang, surprised. Ruby, Harriet, Marrow and Weiss briefly stop their fights to look over at Vine. Ruby and Harriet have moved their fight back to the hall with the elevators.
Marrow turns to look back at Weiss, and his eyes widen upon seeing the Arma Gigas summon preparing to swing its sword down at him. He moves out of the way, and Weiss creates glyphs over the bookshelves along one wall, with ice spikes sprouting from the centers of the glyphs. As Marrow lands on his feet, she creates another glyph, which blows him toward the ice spikes, and he barely manages to avoid hitting any of them. He then leaps out of the way as the Arma Gigas swings its sword down, shattering the ice spikes he was surrounded by less than a second ago.
The Arma Gigas continues to swing its sword through the ice spikes as Marrow makes his way across them. He throws his boomerang, sending it curving through the air toward Weiss, who deflects it with her rapier.
He catches it, then snaps his fingers and points at her "Stay!".
Weiss is forced to freeze in places, but her Arma Gigas still rushes toward him, smashing through the ice spikes. Marrow leaps from the ice spike he was standing on, landing on the floor. The Arma Gigas moves in front of him and raises its sword, and he snaps his fingers and points at it just as it begins swinging the sword down at him.
"Stay!" The sword stops just above his head, and he takes a moment to catch his breath.
Weiss creates four glyphs and channels Fire Dust through them to send four fireballs through the air. The fireballs converge and slam into Marrow, knocking him to the floor and breaking his Aura.
Harriet uses her Semblance to repeatedly rush around the room, up and down walls, passing Ruby and attacking her each time. Finally, she stops behind Ruby, leaps into the air, and punches her in the back of the head, knocking her down with enough force to crack the floor. She stands over Ruby with her feet to either side of her and pins Ruby's arms to her back.
She grabs her bolas, and Ruby looks back and uses her Semblance, splitting into two blurs that both move behind Harriet. One of the blurs moves past the hand that Harriet is holding her bolas with, and by the time Ruby reappears behind her, Ruby has tied the bolas around Harriet. She then punches Harriet in the back of the head with a confident smile and lands on one knee over Harriet's back. Harriet swings her head back, headbutting Ruby in the face, then gets to her feet and begins sprinting with her Semblance.
Yang, who is holding onto the kusarigama form of Gambol Shroud, swings Blake overhead toward Elm, who has rooted herself in place with her Semblance. Elm pushes the pole of her hammer at Blake, who uses it to bounce herself up into the air over Elm and swings her kusarigama at her. Elm turns and swings her hammer at Blake as she drops down, only for Blake to create a clone to take the hit and propel herself into the air. While Elm continues to attack Blake, who shoots at her, Yang fires explosive bullets at the floor all over the room, creating deep cracks.
Blake then uses her kusarigama to swing away from Elm, who turns to face Yang and roots herself in place again. Elm notices that the ground beneath her feet is loose and lifts her foot to find that the floor is completely shattered. She glares at Yang and spins her hammer, deactivating her Semblance. Yang propels herself forward with her weapons' recoil, and Elm shifts her hammer into its rocket launcher form. Yang stops herself just short of Elm, activates her Semblance and punches the floor, creating an outward blast that sends Elm flying into the air and shatters the floor even more.
High above them, Blake kicks off from the sky light to send herself toward Elm, and Yang uses recoil to propel herself upward with her Semblance still active. As the two pass Elm in mid-air, Yang punches her and Blake slashes her with her katana. Elm screams as her Aura shimmers, and her Aura finally breaks when she lands on the floor in a very painful looking position. Blake and Yang land on the floor behind her, and Yang deactivates her Semblance.
Ingrid was starting to be driven back by the combined assault from Lucina and Severa. She grits her teeth as she uses her light wings semblance, blinding the two huntresses again. Ingrid kicks Lucina in the face before unleashing a barrage of strikes at Severa with her lance. Severa did her best to defend herself, but her sword and shield were knocked out of her hands, Ingrid swings her lance at Severa's legs, knocking them out from under her before delivering a downward strike wish smashed Severa in to the floor.
Lucina charged back in, Ingrid blocked her sword strike, but Lucina quickly kicked her in the gut sending her back. Lucina noticed Ingrid closed her eyes every time she used her semblance, which gave her an idea. She helped up, before making subtle hand motions at her eyes and then pointed at Ingrid. Severa understood and nodded. She grabbed her shield and threw it at Ingrid who easily knocked it away, but doing this left her open for Severa's now bare hand to touch her face.
"Let's see how you like it!" Severa said, Lucina quickly shielded her eyes as Severa used Ingrid's own semblance.
Turns out Ingrid wasn't immune to her own semblance, as the sudden flash blinded her long enough for Severa to deliver a hard punch to her gut, knocking the air out of her, before following up with an uppercut to her jaw. Ingrid was sent in to the air as Lucina leaps towards her, her sword glowing as she used her semblance. Ingrid barely had time to hold up her lance to block the strike... But it did little as Lucina's sword cleaved Ingrid's lance in two and Ingrid herself was sent flying in to a wall with enough force to leave large cracks.
Ingrid's aura breaks as she fell of the wall and on to the floor, unconscious.
Ruby shoots at Harriet who continues to speed around the room. Harriet then leaps forward, wraps her legs around Ruby's neck, spins around and slams Ruby onto the floor. She and Ruby get up, and Ruby dodges as Harriet flips through the air toward her. Ruby backs away while Harriet speeds toward her and then uses her Semblance to flee as Harriet attempts to kick her. Harriet stops and pants, and Ruby readies her scythe. Harriet charges her Semblance and screams, her eyes flashing yellow. She makes a mad dash toward Ruby, only to slam her head against an ice wall that suddenly sprouts up from the floor.
Harriet falls over, and her Aura breaks. Ruby looks over to Weiss, who is standing in the doorway with her rapier pointed toward the ice wall. Ruby and Weiss watch as Harriet stands up, panting with her eyes heavily dilated. Her eyes roll back, and she collapses, unconscious.
Soon afterward, Ruby drops Harriet onto the floor in the foyer "We have to stop Ironwood. If he can't access the Relic, he can't move Atlas".
"We just have to get to the Winter Maiden" Weiss said while dragging an unconscious and bound Marrow across the floor, and Blake and Yang are carrying an unconscious Elm with her arms over their shoulders.
"Blake and I will look for the others" Yang said.
"I'll go with you" Severa said as she and Lucina carried Ingrid.
"But our Scrolls don't-" One of the elevators makes a ping noise, and Ruby gasps and turns to look, her eyes widening.
Pietro and Maria come rushing out of one of the elevators. Maria has her Scroll in her hand, with the Wanted notice on the screen. They stop and look at The girls, who are staring at them, frozen in very guilty poses. Weiss drops Marrow's feet.
"This is the part where they ask us to help" Maria said.
Lyre, Bernadetta, Jaune, Nora and Ren are looking into a dorm room that has broken AK-200s on the floor and black marks on the walls.
"Oscar must be around here" Nora said as she hurries off, calling out for Oscar "Oscar! Oscar?".
Oscar walks out from around a corner in one of the nearby hallways, and Nora notices him.
"Oscar! You're here!" Nora excitedly runs over to Oscar, who looks at her with a friendly smile.
Suddenly, Oscar's voice comes from down the hall that he had just come from "No!".
Nora gasps and looks in the direction of the voice in confusion, while Oscar looks down the hall in annoyance. Another Oscar, who is covered in filth, rounds a corner from down that hallway, charges forward and punches the first Oscar in the face. A pink, glass-like Aura passes over the first Oscar, revealing him to actually be Neopolitan in disguise. Neo goes flying down the hall and rights herself in mid-air, landing on her feet. The Relic of Knowledge bounces on the floor next to the real Oscar, with a clanging sound. The others hurry over, and they, along with Nora, draw their weapons, and Oscar picks up the Lamp.
"This crazy girl showed up and attacked me. But she looked like someone else" Oscar said.
Frowning, Neo points Hush at them with the hidden blade protruding from the end.
"Neopolitan" Nora said.
"You know her?" Oscar asked
"We haven't exactly heard good things" Jaune answered.
"Yang told me about her. She used to work for an now dead criminal from Vale" Bernadetta explained.
Oscar holds the Lamp close, and Neo narrows her eyes at them.
"I hope it will be painless for her" Winter said.
"You said your personal feelings do not matter" Penny reminded.
In Fria's room, Winter, Edelgard and Penny have gotten Fria into one of the pods of the Aura transfer machine. Penny is using a Scroll.
"They won't change my actions. What I'm committed to. The power of the Winter Maiden and the Relic must be kept from our enemies. Even if it means she dies" Winter walks over to the pod, and she and Penny look at Fria "But yes Penny, we must still acknowledge our personal feelings, wrestle with them. It ensures us that we're on the right path. It's what makes us human".
"I think… I think I understand" Penny said.
"Glad you do Penny. When things are at their hardest, we will need each other" Edelgard said.
They hear the sound of an explosion, and the room shakes.
"What was that?" Winter asked.
There is another explosion, and the room shakes once again, rattling Fria's teacups. There is a third explosion, and an alarm starts going off. Although she is unconscious, Fria moves her head a little.
Winter hurries out into the now darkened hallway. Red lights that run along the ceiling are flickering on and off, there are broken AK-200s on the floor and the walls have black marks on them. At the end of the hall stands Cinder, who smirks and shoots a fireball at Winter. Winter's eyes widen, and she rushes back to Fria's room, dodging the fireball. She uses a hologram panel with a number pad on it to shut the door and draws her sword, but the door is blasted out of the wall immediately after. The explosion knocks Winter and Penny to the floor, and Cinder walks into the room through the large hole in the wall with a fireball in her palm.
"Hmm. Three of Ironwood's puppets. Lucky me" Cinder said.
Winter and Penny get up, and Winter points her sword at Cinder "Cinder".
"So you are Salem's servant who caused the tragedy at Vale. You know, I'm glad you're here. Now I can make sure you pay for everything you did" Edelgard declared as she pulls out her ax and shield.
"Brave words for a drone. Let's see how well you melt" Cinder said.
"You were responsible for Beacon. For what happened to me" Penny said.
"It was unfortunately temporary. Now step aside or there won't be anything left to salvage this time" Cinder aims the fireball at Penny "What do you think of that?".
"I think…" Penny clenches her fists and narrows her eyes. Her swords emerge from her back and hover behind her as she uses her jets to float into the air "It gives me personal feelings".
She points the swords at Cinder. This fight might determine the fate of the entire kingdom.
.
Tell me what you think.
