Yo!

Things are getting pretty intense, huh? I hope you guys enjoy the next few chapters, they're quite the doozy.

Chapter 45

Emerald was barely fast enough to bend beneath that initial blow, swinging her legs around like a pendulum to try and built momentum enough to get out of the way of Penny's follow-up kick. She failed, and had the wind driven out of her gut as punishment.

She hit the ground hard, trying to ignore the way that several people around her screamed in fear, giving the Grimm that had begun to enter into Vale's walls even more energy, even more power. If it had been possible to quell this before, it was feeling less and less so every moment.

She realized she needed to move as she heard a whirring on the wind, and managed only by the skin of her teeth to avoid having her aura chunked considerably by Penny's blades, which dug into the concrete ground of amity with an audible 'thunk'.

Somewhere, off in the distance, she could hear Ruby's voice. It sounded very vaguely like she was trying to talk to her, to say something to her. Perhaps that was important, but in that exact moment, she had to focus entirely on Penny.

Because from only these few opening moves alone, Emerald could tell that a fight between the two of them was not at all in her favor. She was a trickster, a thief. She was not a juggernaut like Penny was, someone who could take any number of hits, no matter how extreme, and come out the other side still fighting.

Emerald was far too fragile for that.

The sounds of terror and combat and death filtered through the air. The blazing of bullhead engines, the low rumbling of Amity's own emergency thrusters firing, trying to carry it to a more defensible location, the sound of Atlas' carriers firing on the Grimm approaching. It was a deafening cacophony.

Penny, at the very least, seemed oddly focused on her specifically. She wondered if that had something to do with Penny herself being close with her, or if it was simply a quirk of her being the first being that Penny's system – or whatever it was controlling her now that the Queen's virus had taken her over – had seen upon its takeover.

Either way, it meant that nearby civilians were mostly spared from her wrath. She did her best to keep Penny away from where many were trying to load themselves into bullheads to be shuffled off of Amity, and instead, took her back into the arena, vaulting one of the railings in order to avoid the blades which soared just over her head.

She hit the lower-level running, ignoring the way that her ankles cried out at her. Already, her body was tired. Already, it wanted a break.

She had a feeling it would not be getting one for quite some time.

Penny wasted no time catching up to her, her blades cutting patterns into the air as they scythed through the bleachers of the colosseum, slicing them in twain like a stick of butter. Emerald swallowed on nothing, trying to gauge where, exactly, she could lead Penny to so as to have the best chance of victory.

She knew, above all else, that with Penny on her tail, she wasn't leaving Amity. Not unless she wanted to jump from the edge herself, and try and commandeer a Grimm on the way down. No, if she tried to get into a bullhead, the entire thing would be ripped apart in seconds, and even if she might have some slim chance of survival given her aura and training, the many civilians loaded in alongside her would have no such luck.

She needed to isolate her first and foremost. After that, she could worry about winning.

Except could she? Could she truly afford to not consider herself in a battle that she was, undeniably, set to lose?

She wouldn't have even thought about this when she'd first arrived at Beacon. Wouldn't have considered other people's safety in the same discussion as her own. After all, she was a survivor. Someone who had made it through things that most others had perished because of. It was her who deserved to live, was it not?

She was different now. That was obvious at a glance. She had people around her who she genuinely considered her friends. She had a far more even, workable relationship with the woman she admired, Cinder. She had someone to look to as family. Someone who had wanted her when no one else ever had. Not for her skill, or her semblance, but for her.

And she had someone who adored her, too. Someone who looked at her with bright eyes and a wide smile, who saw only the best in the world. And she wasn't going to let this rotten world take that from her.

If Penny was still in there, if her consciousness was seeing all of this without being able to do a single thing about it, then she knew without doubt that if Penny hurt someone, or worse, killed someone, then she'd never get over it.

Emerald would not allow that to happen.

And so, with one final pirouette, she landed atop her final destination. Penny landed just behind her a moment later, her blades primed to reach out and strike at her.

They were both stood in the middle of Amity's arena. Were the matches still ongoing, their faces would be broadcasted to all corners of the world. As things were…

As things were, this was a match that only they would ever know happened.

"I… don't know if you can hear me, Penny." Emerald spoke as the automaton stepped towards her. "I can't even tell if there's anything I can do for you. I don't… really know that much about this virus. I just… I need you to snap out of it. Or even… even resist this, as much as you possibly can."

Her cries fell on deaf ears. Penny was, at the end of the day, a machine. She had done her very best to resist before, and it had not been enough. She had tried so hard… so hard, and–

Penny blitzed towards her, the metal of the arena floor superheating as she somehow glided atop it via some odd propulsion. She looked like an ice-skater, and her blades mirrored her movements like long, flowing sleeves.

Emerald tried something, then, in her panic, that she was not certain would work.

She held up a hand, focused her aura, and then reached out towards Penny with her semblance.

She had grown so used to the feeling of her semblance taking effect over the years. When she'd first unlocked it, it had been in a time of upmost panic. The older she'd grown, the more powerful, the more versatile it had grown alongside her. A piece of herself, her desire to show only what others needed to see, and nothing more.

Emerald was nearly overwhelmed by the throbbing of her head. It felt like someone had taken a pick and was hammering it over and over again into her skull. It was a familiar feeling, something that came about when she overextended her semblance, but it had never been anywhere near this bad.

It nearly toppled her over in an instant, that feeling, and suddenly, she was completely on the backfoot, barely able to avoid the blades that sunk into the metal ground right in front of her.

Unfortunately for her aura, she was unable to dodge the following kick.

To say that it hurt would have been an understatement. She could feel her aura plummet in strength, dropping from what she estimated was an easy eighty-five percent or so down to what could've been as low as forty. She was flung backwards, flying the length of the arena and landing in a heap after rolling to a stop.

She could barely breath, let alone move, and yet Penny would not give her the moment she needed. She forced herself onto one knee, grit her teeth, and fired off shots from Thief's Respite.

The dust rounds, to her surprise, hit home, and quite hard. It seemed that whatever program or internal logic was currently running Penny, it was not as clever as she had been. It had run straight at her, even after she had drawn a ranged weapon and pointed it at her.

That might just have been the opening she needed. To remember that at the end of the day, she was fighting an android.

Nothing more than a machine.

So she stood back to her full height, taking the moment to breathe that her weapons had bought her. She was not at all surprised when Penny, seemingly undaunted, charged right back at her, forcing Emerald to raise her own weapons in their blade forms.

And she continued to fight against one of her closest friends. Against a girl who understood her so well, who genuinely loved her, as a friend, as something more. She dodged, and ducked, and bobbed, and weaved.

And she began to realize something that had her face paling.

That there was a very real chance that one of them wasn't getting out of this alive.

/

Mercury was running before he had any concept as to where he was running to.

He leapt multiple rows of bleachers at a time, taking advantage of some of the more obscure functions that having robotic legs allowed, which was to say that he had built-in pistons that propelled him forwards, and that could, given enough power, overclock themselves to allow for some inhuman feats.

This was one of those times where he needed to be a bit inhuman.

All around him, the world was going to shit. Grimm were dive-bombing the stadium, attacking civilians, the Atlesian Knights, and even some of the hunters in training – albeit with far less luck than they were having elsewhere. Mercury himself had to battle back a griffon that made to attack him with a single fist, knocking the thing into the ground as he used it as a spring board to make it to the elevation of the landing pads.

He needed off Amity. First and foremost, that was his goal.

He winced as a shot pinged against his aura, and he didn't bother to turn around to see who it was that had shot at him. It was Blake. He knew that without checking.

He would force her to at least take the fight to a melee against him if she was so intent on chasing him. He pushed his way into the crowds all rushing towards the many bullheads that were, apparently shuffling the various peoples towards Beacon Academy. It was supposed to serve as some sort of bastion against the attack, and a rallying point for a counter-attack.

What the people planning such a thing didn't know, of course, was that this attack, if it was sticking to what their plan had been, had predicted such an event. Cinder's plan had a second stage, where Beacon itself would come under fire by the White Fang.

And given that they were here, he wasn't sure Beacon was safe at all.

Then again, when Mercury thought about it, that didn't mean he shouldn't go to Beacon. At the very least, he knew Cinder's goals lied that way, and if he wanted to understand what was going on here, then he needed to make his way towards her.

He might've gone a bit native, but he wasn't that far gone.

So he forced his way onto an evac shuttle, grabbed onto one of the emergency handles atop the ceiling, and tried his best to keep his heartbeat steady as the ship took off into the air. All around them, the sounds of combat grew dimmer, but did not cease. The screams of the creatures of Grimm, their braying and cawing, only seemed to become all encompassing, swallowing the roar of the engines in an eerie way.

And then, of course, Mercury felt a metal gun barrel press against his back.

He couldn't help but smile.

"You're not planning on executing me in the middle of a crowd of civilians, are you?"

"No," Blake murmured just loud enough for him alone to hear. "But the moment we're out of here, I'm taking you to Ozpin."

Mercury nodded his head subtly, having expected such. The sounds of the fifty or so people who'd been crammed into this single shuttle like sardines in a can were more than loud enough that their little conversation wasn't overheard. Everyone was saying something, whether that was simply talking themselves into a panic, or praying to some higher power for salvation.

Mercury himself wouldn't bother. The gods had never answered his calls when he was a child, stuck with a murderer and made to feel like he was nothing, while his legs were sawed on and metal was grafted to him, so he doubted they'd suddenly respond now.

"So, what's your plan for once the bullhead lets out?" Mercury made idle chatter, seeing as they were trapped for a good five or so minutes in here. "Going to escort me like this, gun pressed to my back?"

"I don't see many other options, aside from shooting your legs out from under you." Blake went silent a moment. "Although I've a feeling that might not be terribly effective against you."

He laughed mirthlessly. "Yeah, you'll have to come up with something else there. I'm afraid my father beat you to the punch on that one."

He couldn't see Blake's face, facing away from her as he was, but he felt her hand shake somewhat as the barrel of the gun against his back shifted minutely. He wondered what it was that she felt, what emotions were running through her head right now.

Perhaps it didn't really matter. But then, Mercury had started to like thinking about such things in recent times. It was easier to admit to that now, how much he'd begun to enjoy just getting to live the normal, boring, teenaged lifestyle that he'd been denied his whole life. He'd played silly little games, and hung out with other idiots just like him.

And now that it was all over, that it was all ending, he could finally admit that to himself.

Funny how things worked out like that.

Their shuttle rumbled suddenly, and the many people inside with the two of them shook with fear. Mercury himself kept a straight face throughout. If the bullhead went down, then he would likely survive by way of his aura. So would Blake.

Albeit they'd likely be the only ones.

"How could you, Mercury?" Blake's voice called to him once again, and he found himself focusing on it as he felt the barrel begin to shake once again against his spine. "How could you ally with Adam for this!?"

He'd not even thought about that. About what hearing the man she'd once loved being responsible for all of this must've been doing to Blake. He could feel that dread within her in her voice alone, and he could not blame her for that, not really.

"I didn't choose to, if that's what you're asking." Mercury felt she deserved some explanation, especially given that it was too late to stop any of this from transpiring. "I never made the calls. I just followed."

"That's worse!" Blake said, pushing the barrel of Gambol Shroud into his shirt, balling the material up as she forced him forward an inch or so. "At least if it had been your decision I–" He heard her take a deep, steadying breath. "Who is it? The ringleader."

"Can't tell you that." He admitted. "I'm not going to risk them figuring out I told you."

"Scared for your life?"

"Scared for yours."

Blake didn't say respond to that. At least not immediately. Mercury could feel in his gut that they were descending, rapidly approaching their destination. Beacon Academy was close, so very close to them. And once they landed, their battle would kick off yet again.

"So what? You're going to claim you're worried about me after this!?" Blake snarled. "How many people, Mercury? How many people are going to lose their lives today? A thousand? Ten thousand!?"

"It wasn't us."

"What the hell do you mean it wasn't you!? You said it was your plan that–"

"We backed out." Mercury shook his head. "We weren't going to pull this plan at all, we had– something happened. Adam, or Neo, or… someone took it from us, and is using it now."

"You admit you laid the groundwork–"

"Damnit Blake, yes, if it makes you so fucking happy, we came up with the plan," Mercury snapped, gritting his teeth together. "But what the fuck do you want me to say now, huh? I didn't want this; this is the last thing I wanted. I don't know what you want from me!"

"Go to Ozpin! Tell him everything you know!"

"And when he has me arrested? Or worse?"

"Give him enough information, and maybe he won't."

Mercury snorted. "Yeah, somehow I don't think it works like that."

Mercury felt as the bullhead touched down, and his posture shifted subtly to be able to make a break for it. He funneled some of his aura into his back, prepared to make a getaway, and then the doors opened.

And his eyes widened as he saw three White Fang members, with guns poised towards the many people inside, snarl victoriously.

And Mercury just sort of… moved.

It wasn't really a conscious decision. He had pushed the two people between him and the doors out of the way before they could so much as react, and he funneled his aura away from his back, and towards his front. Both of his fists were laden with it, and he primed a few bullets into the chambers of his legs.

The first shots that were fired impacted against his left pectoral, a fatal wound against a civilian, but nothing to a huntsman with aura. The second hit him square in the neck, which would've knocked the wind out of him had he any need to take a breath. As it was, he didn't particularly care.

He made it to the first one before he even knew what hit him, breaking his wrist as he ripped the gun from out of his hand, and then kicking him aside to be dealt with later. The second one tried to follow up on that, but Mercury slammed his right fist into his gut, and watched as the man doubled over, the air evaporating from his lungs. The third made one final attempt to shoot the civilians in the bullhead, but…

Mercury's shot fired first.

The final White Fang fell to the ground, completely still, just a moment later, their blood oozing onto the pavement beneath them.

He was panting rather terribly, the hit he'd taken to his neck affecting him now that he needed to breathe. He could barely focus on the way that he heard some vague, terrified screaming from behind him, which was probably the civilians reactions to both being at death's door, and seeing someone be killed right in front of them.

They'd better be getting used to both very soon, or they were going to be having a rough day.

He was moving the moment he heard the sound of Gambol Shroud cocking.

The shot hit him in the shin, which still drained a bit of his aura away as he didn't want any of the metal in his legs being damaged. He vaulted off of the landing platform and rolled into a run as he landed on Beacon ground. Blake fired off another two shots, one missing barely, another hitting him in the back.

He couldn't stop. He knew that. Blake was faster than him in a straight dash, but then, he'd never been about playing fair, and he wasn't going to start now.

Then again, he doubted Blake was going to, either.

And yet, as he ran from his pursuer, he realized just how bad the situation was. He could see numerous huntsman and huntresses in training fighting off mechanized Atlesian soldiers, including what seemed to be several Paladins with White Fang soldiers inside. His breath caught as he watched a young woman no older than him be battered back, knocked into the walls of Beacon, and slumping to the ground. Her teammates rescued her in the nick of time, but it was far too close.

And then he heard it, the sound of screaming and rasping steal. He heard a voice he recognized among the carnage, a nasally laugh that sounded so self-righteous, so horribly full of itself, and Mercury felt his face paling as his blood boiled.

It was him.

Standing amongst the ruins of Beacon's cafeteria was Adam Taurus, his blade drawn and wet with blood. Mercury found he did not want to know just whose it was, nor did he want to have to interact with the man in any way. And yet, as he turned around, his masked face looking towards Mercury, it was with an animalistic smile that he addressed not him, but…

"Well, well, well." Adam spoke, and Mercury heard the sound of footsteps behind him ceasing. "It's good to see you, Blake."

Mercury turned to see his pursuer standing ramrod straight, her entire posture frozen in place. She looked like a deer caught in headlights, her eyes wide and her hands shaking. Gambol Shroud, her weapon, seemed almost forgotten in her hands.

"And look who it is," Adam said, this time addressing him. "Cinder's lapdog."

He bit down on his bottom lip as Blake turned to him, and he forced himself to stare ahead, at Adam, and not look at her. That would confirm Cinder in Blake's mind as the ringleader. That much was obvious. There wasn't a lot Mercury could do about that now, though.

Not when Adam Taurus was standing right in front of him, angling his blade so as to go right for Blake.

"It seems my Blake is hounding you, Black." Adam spoke, taking a few steps forward that echoed throughout the burning building all around them. "I have a proposition that I think would benefit the both of us…"

Mercury felt his veins turn to ice, even as he turned and backed away, making it so that he could see both of them, Adam, and Blake, in his vision.

"I'll tell nothing of your master, or any of your involvement, to anyone I might encounter," Adam offered with a sick smirk upon his face.

"If you help me regain what is mine."

/

General Ironwood was breathing hard and heavy by the time he managed to board one of his personal team's shuttles, and started to make their way towards their main cruiser, hanging above them in the sky.

Everything that could have gone wrong had. The entirety of Vale was under attack, and it was, in his eyes, rather clearly Salem's doing. But all of this, all this destruction, couldn't simply have come from outside. No, no, they had someone within, someone inside who'd been responsible for all of this.

They'd called him paranoid, but it was him who'd been right. He'd always told them that–

Mettle took over for a moment as he was made to calm down, and as it deactivated, he allowed himself the briefest moment to process the emotions filtering through him. Though he'd have rather died than admit it, he was feeling above all else a real, palpable fear. Not for himself, but for the many people below, those he'd not been able to save, those aboard shuttles he'd seen be dragged down. Those who were still on the ground, being attacked from above.

The Grimm were here en masse. He imagined that, with this much fear in so concentrated an area, it would not be long before a behemoth or ziz-class Grimm appeared. He'd never heard of one appearing in his lifetime, but they'd said that during the great war, during the worst battles, giants had arisen from the sea, descended from the sky, appeared as if from nowhere from within the very earth.

That barely mattered to him, though. If he could make it back to his flagship, they could manage to slay whatever monsters appeared. More than anything, he was focused on the fact that the Atlesian Knights, hell, the entire AI system they had setup, was compromised.

It was the virus that had been uploaded to the CCT. He knew it without even having to check. But regardless of what he knew, it did not change that multiple Atlesian cruisers had been shot out of the sky, that his own ship, his flagship, had fired them down.

And yet… there was something odd about the way his ship hovered in the air without moving. How the Grimm avoided it, how it did not fire at them, or anything at all.

Like it was waiting.

He did not think such a thing was coincidence.

Nor did he find it coincidental that he and the small team he'd assembled were able to fly their way to it, and enter into the docking bay. He had his men fan out throughout the area, while he himself would make for the bridge. He had full confidence that he could face any agent of Salem's head-on. It might present some difficulty, but he was not a general of Atlas for his pencil-pushing expertise.

The dull hum of his ship had once seemed so comforting a thing. It was odd to consider anything of that nature now; of comfort, of simpler times, but it had been something reassuring that he could count on. Something he'd grown used to. It felt disturbing now, like an eerie note that steadily grew louder and louder, higher, and higher, that any second, some beast would round the corner, and he'd–

The door to the bridge opened, and Ironwood's eyes widened as he took in the two figures standing there, all on their lonesome.

"Welcome, welcome!" Roman Torchwick, of all people, addressed him, bowing and placing his hat over his heart. "General Ironwood, might I say that it's good to see you with that look on your face for a change. You're a lot more approachable when you look like you've just shat a brick. Ah, but where are my manners, this is my partner, Neopolitan, you may've heard of her."

The woman nodded her head at him from her place in his captain's chair, a sinister smirk upon her face. He had half a mind to whip out Due Process now, but then, they hadn't let him and his men onto this ship for nothing.

"What is it you want, Torchwick?" He inquired, his brow furrowing against his will. "If you wanted to escape, I'm afraid you should've done it the moment you broke containment."

"Escape? No, no. I'm afraid you're going to let me and my partner here escape in exchange for something rather valuable."

A plea bargain?

The woman named Neopolitan nodded her head, still with that insufferable grin on her face.

"We do not negotiate with terrorists."

Neopolitan held up a single finger, which seemed to indicate that he should wait.

"I think you'll find negotiating with these terrorists a good idea. The conditions of this little bargain are worth their weight in gold, Jimmy." Roman Torchwick spoke, leaning on his cane, and trying to act haughty. "Trust me on that one."

Ironwood keyed into something in that moment that he'd not at all been expecting. Roman Torchwick was the one talking, which, normally, would've made it seem like he was the one calling the shots. But he could see the way that the man's brow was sweating, the way his lip was wobbling.

He was unsteady, unsure.

His companion, on the other hand, had a straight posture, and little doubt about her features. She was certain of herself, of what she was doing.

This wasn't his idea, then. It was Neopolitan's.

That information did little for him in the moment, but he supposed it might mean something at some point down the line.

"Fine. I'll hear out your terms. Talk."

Neopolitan grinned in a rather smug way, and then reached into her pocket, pulling out a scroll. She began to type something into the screen, and though he initially thought that she was fucking with him, it was also very possible that she simply could not speak, given that there was no evidence the woman had ever done so before in any of Atlas' or Beacon's encounters with her.

Finally, after a minute or so, Neopolitan finished. She cracked her neck with one hand, smiled devilishly, and then held the scroll out to him.

His instincts warned him against taking the device, thinking it some kind of trap. But then, it if were a bomb, or any other such kind of trick, he could simply use his metal hand to tank whatever blow was meant for him. He reached out with his inhuman side, and took the device.

It did not explode, or attempt to burn his skin, nor did it inject any poison into him. It was just a scroll with a notepad app open.

And on it was a message.

'We receive amnesty. We are not followed, or tracked in any way. We are not recorded as having been a part of this attack. Our involvement in any subsequent investigations as a result of information we give you is left out.'

It was an almost ridiculous list of conditions. The kind of thing that a high-ranking criminal might ask for when giving information on the rest of an entire syndicate. Likewise, if this Neopolitan girl expected him to cave to such frivolous demands, she had better have a damned good response.

'In return, we offer the following. We will give you the key to turn off the virus.' The words read. 'We'll give you the location of the guard I'm currently impersonating so that you can go and rescue her. We'll spare the remainder of your men here, and…'

Ironwood's eyes widened.

'I'll give you the identity of the mastermind behind this entire plan.'

End Chapter 45

Not a ton to say atm. I guess I've officially moved the update-day for Paved to Sundays, then? Not sure.

Anyways, that's enough for me today. MSI starts up this week, and as always I hold out hope for NA league of legends, knowing full well that they will find some hitherto unforeseen way to disappoint me.