A/N: Alrighty, another chapter! This one originally covered the entire docks heist, but I decided to split it into two. Please enjoy, and as always, feel free to review and leave your thoughts!
Excerpt from "The Age of Heroes", by Weiss Schnee
It is hard to overstate just how hilariously ironic it is that our worst defeat occurred during the encounter where we were trying to flee. The moment the Arkham Knight arrived, we knew we had to abort our mission, retreat to a safe distance, and then call Beacon for backup. Our scrolls' SOS function was a great tool to call for help from Beacon, but that didn't necessarily mean that we would get that backup immediately or that it would even come at all if the professors were busy. That meant that the best option would have been to retreat.
Take away the ability to run away and we were five teenagers on a self-appointed crusade against a terrorist organization and a dangerous thief who had evaded law enforcement in multiple Kingdoms for over a decade.
Unfortunately, there was a key factor we didn't consider when we planned the heist: Blake's propensity for jumping into the fray as soon as she had a reason to. As the daughter of the former leader of the White Fang and a former member of its militant operations herself, her feelings on the Fang were always mixed - a part of her wanted to see them completely destroyed, yet she could never help but sympathize with their members, their struggles, and their livelihoods. It was a contradiction she never truly solved in her own mind, and this time around, it dragged all of us into a fight we were simply not prepared for.
Before I explain what happened in the fight, I have to ask one thing of you, the reader. I need you to remember exactly who we were at this point. We were second-year Beacon students, being trained to fight Grimm, who had decided to throw ourselves into a mission against a terrorist organization because our teammate had a personal connection to it. We hadn't been trained for any of this, but we thought that our year-long efforts meant we knew everything we needed to know. Perhaps if we had been more mature and been able to keep a stronger head, the battle at the docks wouldn't have become a battle at all and we would've walked away unharmed.
But we weren't superheroes yet, and we were already encountering our first supervillain.
Up to this point, the heist had been going perfectly. The hostages were out of the way, the White Fang grunts had subdued the security without incident, and now it was simply a matter of consolidating all of the goods and splitting them up among the bullheads to ensure minimal losses.
Then Roman decided to go off script and start taunting the White Fang to go faster for basically no reason.
If there was one flaw of Roman's that infuriated the Arkham Knight, that was the one. Roman was truly a strategic mastermind; he wouldn't have risen as far as he had in the criminal underworld if he were dumb, and he certainly wouldn't have been on the Knight's recruitment list if he weren't good at what he did. Roman's problem was that the second something went even slightly wrong, he assumed the entire plan was going off the rails and that only his intervention could prevent a full-blown failure.
In his time as a leader, the Arkham Knight had learned the importance of balance. While a timetable was the most crucial element of any plan and a leader had to be ready to step in to salvage it, what was just as important was the understanding that setting expectations too high only ensured failure. It was important to keep his people on a tight leash without choking them in the process; otherwise, they would try to speed up, get sloppy, and cause another problem.
Just like what happened while the Knight stared Roman down. As Roman got clammy from the attention on him, a White Fang thug walking onto the dock with a case of Dust in his hand tried to speed up and fell over. The reaction from the Dust was immediate - the Dust in the case exploded, only not causing a chain reaction because the case was designed to take the blast without opening and spewing the active Dust particles in every direction.
For all that the SDC had no safety protocols in its mines, they were certainly concerned with their profits and equipment and would make sure nothing could damage those.
The Knight continued to stare at Roman as everything ground to a halt. As Roman slowly realized that the Knight blamed him for the grunt's failure and subsequent loss of Dust, the Knight, his glowing mask betraying no emotions, slowly broke his gaze and walked towards the man on the ground. He had not moved a muscle, likely realizing that trying to run would only infuriate the Knight even further.
As the Knight approached the downed grunt, he only quietly muttered "Take off your mask". Rather than comply with the order, the grunt merely lay there, shaking in terror instead of taking off his mask, so the Knight quickly pulled a pistol out of its holster and held it to the grunt's head. "Take off your mask, now."
Realizing that this could only go one way, the grunt complied and pulled off his mask. A familiar face with a small pair of glasses greeted the Knight, making him sigh. "Perry, how many times have I told you it was your last chance?"
Perry quickly realized what was about to happen and, with no other option, begged "Please, I'm sorry, just give me one more chance to-"
The Knight shot him in the head mid-plea, rendering his begging pointless.
The Knight hated when such a solution became necessary. He knew more about failure and struggles than most, especially struggling while others point and laugh at your failure, so he hated when he had no more effective punishment options. Unfortunately, Perry had made similar mistakes in three other heists even before this one. There came a point when it was clear he was simply never going to listen and that keeping him alive would only further hold back their plans.
Luckily, today he had only destroyed one crate of Dust. Unfortunate, but recoverable, and if they got their full take from the ship, they'd still have more than enough - but even if they had a goal amount, they needed to get every speck of Dust they could, and losing an entire case of Dust immediately was still a loss.
The heist had ground to a halt because of the ruckus, especially with the hostages freaking out over the gunshot, so the Knight quickly recomposed himself and regained control of the situation. "This changes nothing!", his modulated voice echoed across the docks. "Get back to work. We can't stay here much longer!"
The Fang's soldiers took one more moment, as though they needed more time to comprehend everything that had just happened, and then went right back to work, gathering the final pieces of the shipment they needed before they could divide it up and leave.
Ignoring the fresh corpse he created, the Knight walked back over to Roman's shaking form. Such a performance was not just a reminder to the other White Fang members of what would happen if they became replaceable - it was a reminder to Roman what he was willing to do to people who stepped out of line.
For now, however, the Knight merely stood in front of him and said "Go to the hostages. They're causing a disturbance and need to be silenced. Keep them quiet."
Roman, far from the energetic showman, nodded his head like the meek little rat he was and walked over to the hostages. Normally, he would've been willing to put up a fight, but with Neopolitan currently occupied on a mission of her own, he had no convenient exit plan should he push the Knight past the brink.
Soon enough, he could hear Roman's voice in the distance as the hostages started to quiet down, no doubt being reminded that cooperation would be what got them home. The Knight could even hear one of his typical "calming" jokes, "You are all gonna have the greatest story to tell at breakfast in the morning!"
Roman was useful, but the Knight had to remind himself of that fact every time he went on his tangents. For how annoying his methods were, the hostages were calming down, so the heist was once more becoming as discreet as they needed it to be.
Of course, the gunshot had sped up their timetable, so they needed to adjust. The Knight would give the crew one more minute to grab any more Dust that they could, then it would be time to split the profit across the bullheads and bug out.
"Listen up!", he shouted to the crew. They all did the smart thing and kept working while he was talking. "Final split will be in T-minus 60 seconds. Grab your last crate of Dust and get out here now!"
As the crew began complying and bringing forward their final payloads, the Knight began walking back over to Roman and the hostages. With how sequestered the hostages were, the Knight had to navigate through shipping containers, but he knew where he was going and wouldn't get lost.
However, while he was turning a corner, he got a quick glimpse of two White Fang bodies on the ground before he suddenly felt a presence behind him. Before he could move a muscle, a blade was at his throat and a gun was held at his back, with a voice whispering "Don't move a muscle".
Anyone else in this position might be worried about who was attacking them or why. They might comply by remaining still and silent, hoping to receive demands and then walk away alive.
The Arkham Knight laughed, for he recognized the blade and the voice. "I was wondering when you would get here, Blake."
As soon as this mysterious individual had shown themselves, any thought of intervening in the heist fell to the back foot. For all that Team RWBY was notorious for jumping into fights, most would be surprised to learn that they actually scoped out those situations before making the first move, and they weren't in the business of picking fights with people they didn't know.
However, the situation had rapidly devolved out of control.
As soon as the White Fang grunt had dropped his crate of Dust, Blake knew what would be happening next. Summary executions had become routine ever since Adam had taken over; whether it was a failure, suspected treason, or even just getting annoyed on a particularly bad day, Adam liked finding reasons to take out his anger on his forces. It was one of the reasons why Blake had left in the first place.
And yet, from her position on the roof of the warehouse, Blake could do nothing but watch as the man killed the clumsy grunt.
In that moment, something inside Blake snapped. This was the organization that her parents had built - that she and so many others had given their livelihoods to. People she cared about had died for the cause, all out of a belief that maybe one day, their sacrifice would lead to the world they dreamed of where Faunus could truly be considered equals. These weren't evil people, they were desperate, just like she had once been, and now it was being turned into a Faunus murder den by two humans.
She couldn't have done anything to save this one without provoking the unknown opponent, but she could do her best to stay out of his way while still crippling his heist.
Without waiting for orders from her leader, Blake gestured for Sun to stay where he was and, ignoring his protests, jumped down into the docks. She had a mission of her own now.
The priority was picking off the thugs that were on their own, which would delay the group response for as long as possible and ensure that when there was a group response, their forces would be incapacitated. If everything went well, she could remove half of their combatants before the group consolidated with their Dust to split it up.
Landing on one of the storage containers with a silent feline grace that Yang would definitely make a pun about, Blake quickly surveyed the situation. Of the 14 White Fang grunts she had seen emerge from the bullheads, 8 were currently on the transport ship, meaning that six were within the docks themselves. Meanwhile, Roman and the mysterious man were currently by the consolidated Dust, meaning as long as she stayed quiet, she shouldn't attract their attention.
Of the six grunts not on the ship, three were within the container maze on the other side of the Dust pile, one was currently two containers away, and the other two were on either side of the container she was standing on.
Time to go to work.
After pausing only for a brief moment for the thug on her left to walk past her, Blake dropped to the ground directly behind him just as silent as before. Immediately, she wrapped Gambol Shroud's ribbon around the goon's arms and before he could make a sound, she ripped off his mask and put her hand over his nose and mouth. The goon struggled, but her strength far surpassed his, and soon enough he was out cold.
Already she could hear Sun and her Team frantically talking over their commlink, no doubt bemoaning her going off on her own, but Blake knew what she was doing. This had been her crusade since the beginning, and she wasn't just going to sit back and watch as some humans executed her fellow Faunus without intervening.
With the first goon down, Blake quickly jumped back over the container she had just jumped off of and landed on the other side. After repeating the same maneuver to knock him out, she jumped back onto the crate, closing her eyes so she could focus on the sounds. Over the sound of her teammates shouting into her comms, she could still hear the other thug two crates over, and another quick visual inspection showed Roman walking towards the hostages in the far corner of the docks and the thugs on the boat wrapping up their heist.
They'll be splitting up the profit soon. I need to work faster.
Quickly and quietly hopping to the next crate, Blake once again dropped behind the thug on the other side, but this time around, she simply hit him in the back of the head and knocked him out instantly. After slowly lowering the body so he wouldn't make any noise, she jumped back up to the crate, at which point she could hear Roman shouting something about breakfast to the hostages in the distance.
Three down, three to go. Now to cross over the Dust pile.
This was much easier said than done; the Dust pile still had the mysterious militant right next to it, on top of the remaining goons consolidating their loot. The other crate was too far away for her to just jump over it, and she couldn't sneak around with everyone looking in every direction. That only left one option, and luckily it was one she was sure would work.
No matter how many times it screws them over, they never look up.
Sure, she couldn't just jump over it, but there was an oh-so-convenient crane she could use to climb over. Once she was high enough, she could drop back down on the other side, with the Fang being none the wiser.
Using her ribbon to fling herself to the crane, Blake began climbing as high as she could as fast as she could. As she was about halfway up, she could hear the electronic voice of the militant from below.
"Listen up! Final split will be in T-minus 60 seconds. Grab your last crate of Dust and get out here now!"
That sped up Blake's timetable significantly. Subtlety was no longer the priority, she had at least three more people to eliminate before the fight inevitably broke out.
As she reached the top of the crane, she quickly yet silently ran across the top bar of the crane, and when she reached the end she threw herself off of it.
For only a moment, Blake felt the wind whipping around her face and body as she picked up speed, and she was brought back to her Initiation day. There were very few things that could bring Blake such strong joy, but in that moment of complete freefall, there was nothing else to think about. Nothing but the wind and the speed, it was one of the few things she and Yang had agreed on from day one.
The joy of falling, knowing that nothing can hurt you in the air.
Unfortunately, all good things had to come to an end. After a wonderful few seconds that felt more like a full minute, Blake landed on a crate far on the other side of the Dust pile. The man was starting to disengage from the Dust pile and walking in her direction towards Roman, so Blake had to be fast.
Luckily, the last three goons were close, two on one side of her crate and one on the other. She disposed of the single goon first, and within moments, she had flipped to the other side of the crate behind the duo. As they prattled on about something unimportant, Blake grabbed the side of their heads and smashed them together, knocking both of them out in one move.
And with that, Blake's time had run out. She could hear footsteps beginning to round the corner behind her, and from the heavy weight of the steps, it would be the militant she had seen earlier. There was not enough time to flee like she otherwise would, so she did the only thing she could think of - using her Semblance to leave behind a clone and get a boost, Blake jumped in the air, and as the clone dissipated, she landed right behind the man exactly as he turned the corner. With no other option left, as soon as she landed and before he could react, Blake put her sword at his neck and a gun at his back, keeping him still in two different ways.
"Don't move a muscle", she whispered. However, instead of complying with her demand, the man simply stood there and laughed out loud. His electronic laugh echoed throughout the docks, and Blake could hear and feel as everyone stopped at once. The world seemed to come to a complete halt as the man finally stopped laughing.
"I was wondering when you would get here, Blake", the man said, voice still sounding like it was coming off of telling a hilarious joke.
Blake froze, the exact opposite outcome she had been hoping for when holding this man hostage. The man continued talking like he didn't have a sword to his neck. "Let me guess. The men who weren't on the barge are down already, aren't they? Figures if anyone could be quiet about it, it would be you."
Blake tightened her grip on Gambol Shroud, trying to cover her sudden shaking. "You know who I am?"
"I know everything", the man replied. "I know that blonde hanger-on you carry around is out there right now picking up after you, I know your Team is terrified out of their minds wondering what they should do to help, and I know that right now, you're thinking, 'who the hell is this guy?'"
Blake did everything she could to mask her reactions, but the amount of accurate observations the man had made already was startling. She didn't even know if Sun had entered the fray, but he said it so confidently that she almost believed him, and she had no doubt that her team was endlessly debating what to do - she could hear Ruby, Weiss, and Yang over her commlink frantically shouting at each other, in the process making it impossible to actually hear anything they were saying.
On the other hand, the man was still clearly audible beneath her blade. "All those victories you've gotten over the past year, you must've thought we were getting predictable, when the only thing that has gotten predictable is you and your friends."
As soon as he was done speaking, Blake heard gunfire in the distance. If there was any doubt that Sun had gotten involved in the fighting now, it was evaporated. The man had already predicted what they would do before they did it and she was hearing the plan continue to go wrong in real time.
"If we're so predictable", Blake responded, forcing her voice to be calm, "then you know how this is going to end. The same way it always has, you run for the hills and we take the Dust you wanted."
Again, the man laughed. Again, a chill ran down Blake's spine as his electronic voice rang across the docks. "Blake, I've already broken up your little pattern just by being here. Did you think I wouldn't bring my own backup?"
Before she could consider the impact of that statement, the man was just gone from her hands like he wasn't even there - and before Blake could begin to understand where he had gone or how he had moved so fast, a ball of fire slammed into the ground in front of her, sending her backward.
The fight had broken out, and already Blake had been knocked down.
Ruby should have known that Blake would go on her own the second things deviated from the plan. It was how she operated, jumping into a mess and then fighting her way back out, and like a fool Ruby hadn't considered it when they'd made the plan. She'd gotten complacent, expecting everything to go on a routine without even considering something going wrong, and now everyone was panicking.
"What do we do?!", Sun was asking. "She's going to be seen, we need to be down there!"
"Keep quiet, Sun", Ruby responded, trying to keep order. "Blake is reckless but she's not trying to start a fight by herself. I can still see her, she's going after the ones on land. We can't stop her but we can wait until she needs backup."
"What kind of plan is that?", Yang asked, impatient as ever. "We're her Team, we should be backing her up."
"And she should have stuck to the plan and not jumped in by herself! She's already cleared half the dock, if we move in now we'll just mess up her plan." As she looked back out towards the docks, she realized she had lost track of Blake in her brief distraction. "Sun, can you still see her?"
Sun hesitated for a brief moment, though Ruby couldn't tell if it was because he was looking for her or if he was deciding whether or not to answer. "Yeah, I see her. She just jumped from the crane to get over the Dust pile, and this army guy is heading right towards her. He's going to see her!"
At this point, Weiss finally made her thoughts known. "Sun, I know you're scared for her, but you need to calm down. If we jump in, we have no way to get back out like she does. We have to trust her right now."
Ruby regained control of the situation. "Blake is reckless but she's smart. If she can get in and get out without being seen, she'll do it."
"And if she can't get out?", Yang asked. "What do we do then, Ruby? We need a new plan."
"And we're gonna need it now", Sun said into the comm. "She's holding him at sword point!"
"What?!", Weiss exclaimed. "That dolt actually attacked him?"
Before Ruby could respond, Sun continued. "It doesn't matter. I'm going in!"
And before anyone could say anything, Sun had jumped down into the docks. Ruby could hear Weiss calling out to him over their comm, but Sun continued as though he couldn't hear her. For all she knew, he had turned off his commlink anyway, so maybe he couldn't hear them.
Once more, the situation had continued to spiral out of control, and another member of their team had gone rogue. Once again, they had to pull someone out of a fire of their own creation, all while Ruby could only sit there and listen.
"Stop holding back and get out there, Weiss! We're already committed, we have to go in!"
There was gunfire on the docks. The fight had officially broken out. Everything had gone completely off the rails while Ruby listened to her teammates continue to argue.
"We should be sticking to the plan we specifically made in case someone became stuck in the heist! Go in, grab, retreat, what is so hard to understand about that!"
"Blake and Sun are down there right now and you just think we should leave them there alone?!"
No more. It was time for her to finally take control.
"Listen", she said, getting Weiss and Yang to stop arguing with each other. "You go in, get Blake and Sun out, and we get out. Understand? Weiss, put on your SOS so Beacon sends backup. I'll stay here to provide cover fire. On my mark, okay?"
Weiss and Yang were so stunned by the sudden change in tone that all they could do was nod. As Weiss set her scroll to SOS, she couldn't help but reflect on the way Ruby always took charge. It was always so easy to forget in their spare time because she still had some of that childish energy she had in their first year, but once the chips were down, a switch flipped and Ruby became a leader she always wanted to follow. She was always the perfect balance of finishing the mission but making sure they all got away alive and unharmed, especially in their constant fights against the White Fang.
"3".
But in Ruby's mind, all she could think about was the way Blake insisted on pushing her pet peeve. The one thing that always infuriated her was people going off on their own. Whether it was Blake, Sun, or someone else, the second someone tried to solve a group problem by themselves, Ruby's assertiveness rose with her anger at the danger that such a maneuver created.
"2".
In short, she was pissed. It was a feeling she didn't feel often and it was one she did not enjoy, but she was a leader. Her job was to give the orders and keep everyone alive, and it seemed like Blake insisted on making that as difficult as possible. She loved Blake like a sister, nothing could ever change that, but why was it so hard for her to just stick to a plan?!
"1".
Ruby had told Weiss several times in their first year that one of her inspirations for her style as a Huntress was the legendary Grimm Reaper. She had served as a model for her uncle as well, and since her uncle was her teacher, a lot of her style had passed to Ruby by proxy.
"Mark!"
In that moment, Ruby wanted nothing more than to channel her hero, but she had friends to rescue.
As Weiss and Yang leaped from the warehouse into the fight below, only one thing was on Ruby's mind - give her teammates cover so they could grab Blake and Sun and run.
If anyone got in her way, that was their problem, not hers.
The situation had gone so wrong so fast, and all Sun thought he could do was jump in and cause a distraction. While he was always willing to follow Ruby's lead - her crusade and leadership had been part of what led his Team to stay in Vale for their second year, after all - they all tended to forget that he was a leader for a reason, and the skills he had developed as team leader told him that they couldn't win this fight anymore.
From the short amount of time he had observed this new person, Sun picked up a lot about him. His armor, demeanor, and basic weaponry made his militant methods very clear. His pistols seemed to just be regular pistols without any of the flashy mecha-shift weaponry most combatants in Remnant relied on - they weren't also another weapon, they were just pistols. He was ruthless enough to kill his own men if they proved a problem. He had Roman Torchwick, a Huntsman-level combatant in his own right, ready to cut and run from the moment he started talking. But above all, he had the Fang following his orders without question or hesitation, meaning that whoever this person was, he had taken thorough control of the organization a long time ago.
In short, this person was a threat stronger than anything they'd encountered up to this point, and Sun could tell that a straight fight would not end well. Instead, he would distract the White Fang until Blake and the mysterious figure were separated; by that point, the rest of Team RWBY would have gotten involved, and the four of them could get Blake out of there. In a perfect world, Beacon would send backup and they might be able to take Torchwick down, but he'd take being able to get everyone out alive.
As he landed on the docks next to the ramp onto the Schnee freighter, he immediately swept his staff at a goon's legs, sending him falling to the ground. To their credit, the other Fang members immediately realized what was happening and began pulling out their weapons, but Sun was faster than the ones closest to him, and he whipped around to quickly smack both of them with the staff as well. As they went down, more thugs started coming down the ramp, while one stayed at the top to shoot at Sun now that his view was clear of friendlies.
As Sun split the staff into his nunchucks to deflect the bullets, he reflected internally, This is way more teamwork than they usually have. They usually just run one at a time, not split up to cover both ranges at once. What is happening here?
The goon stopped firing as the others reached him, so Sun slammed the nunchucks back into his staff, but before he could get to work, the mechanized voice he already dreaded was calling out to him.
"Sun!", the voice called. Sun turned around slowly, not wanting to risk the Fang getting trigger-happy and unloading into his back, and came face to blue-screen face with the militant. "You shouldn't have come here. Not even for her. You and your friends sticking your nose in our business is starting to make some people upset."
"Good!", Sun replied, keeping his cocky smile on his face despite the situation. "Always nice to hear I'm doing my job right."
The man simply laughed. "It's not you though, isn't it? It's Team RWBY. You're just along for the ride like a loyal little sheep."
Sun laughed, keeping up his cocky smirk. "At least I'm loyal to something! What're you loyal to, Dust and guns?"
"Your loyalty is pathetic. You're not loyal to an ideal or to heroism, you're loyal to a girl. A girl who doesn't know how she feels about a terrorist organization, much less her so-called friends. Is that something worth being loyal to?"
Sun frowned, angry at the insinuation he was making towards Blake. "What do you know about her, anyway? What do you know about friends? You kill your own men just for screwing up, is that loyalty?"
"Do you think I don't know you're stalling me, Sun?"
Sun froze, his muscles locking in tension. That had been his plan.
"I'm not like the others you've fought. I know how you all think, which means I know how to beat you. I'd say it's time for Weiss and Yang to join us, don't you think?"
As the man was saying this, Sun could see in the warehouse that Weiss and Yang were getting ready to jump into the fray, with Ruby looking like she was going to stay behind to provide cover fire. Before Sun could say anything to warn them, the two jumped out towards them, with Weiss using her Gravity Dust and Yang using Ember Celica to propel themselves forwards.
Without even looking back, the man made a gesture with his hand, sticking two fingers forward and quickly slicing to his right side. At the same time, a glyph appeared underneath Weiss and Yang and sent them flying to the sides of the docks in different directions, all while Sun could do nothing but watch and hear them scream as they disappeared over the shipping containers.
Sun could see into the warehouse and made eye contact with Ruby, with her own face mirroring his internal thoughts perfectly - what the hell just happened?
Meanwhile, the man was just continuing his smug quiet laugh, uncaring of everything that happened behind him. "Poor little Ruby, all alone on her perch, doing nothing but watching as her friends are split up. Can't even provide cover fire without risking hitting you."
"What are you talking about?", Sun asked. Ruby could absolutely provide cover fire, right?
At once, the man stopped laughing. Finally, that chuckle had ceased, and with it came an oppressive silence only his breathing could fill until he finally responded. "Sun, you're a Team Leader yourself." Sun filed that away under another thing about him the man had no reason to know. "Did you not realize that I was the one stalling you now?"
Any remark Sun might have made died on his lips as he quickly looked to his left and right. He didn't have to look behind him to confirm what had happened.
I'm surrounded. He must've had them circling around me while we were talking. They got up and around me without making a noise? Since when is the Fang that subtle? That's borderline military behavior!
The man stepped back out of the circle and two Fang grunts closed the gap immediately, not only ensuring he was surrounded but that Ruby couldn't take any shots without risking hitting him. Between Weiss and Yang being split across the docks and Ruby not being able to fire, Sun was on his own.
"Take him down by any means necessary", the man said. With his order given, the man suddenly disappeared as though he hadn't even been there. Some kind of speed Semblance? Illusions, like that Neo chick Roman always had around?
Sun had no time to consider the possibilities before the thug on his right started firing. As Sun broke his staff into his nunchucks to try to deflect the bullets, he got his signature smile on his face once more.
No matter how good the Fang had gotten, this was where he thrived, and he would show the Fang who was the boss just like he always did.
It's hard to describe what it feels like to have your own Semblance used against you. Now, to be clear, my Semblance is hereditary and was shared with my sister Winter, so I was familiar with having to face it. What I was not familiar with was having it outright hijacked when I was about to use it and having it essentially wrenched from my control.
It's a feeling I never encountered again because I never faced the Arkham Knight in combat after that night, but I remember it like it was yesterday. While it's hard to describe in layman's terms, our Semblances are a part of our Aura, which is literally our soul. A piece of my own soul was used against me. Even after everything else that has happened, that's a unique form of violation that is hard to put into words.
However, I'm grateful that he attacked me in that fashion, for in the process of doing so, the Arkham Knight overplayed his hand. While we did not learn his identity until the night Scarecrow attacked, we did get a vital piece of the puzzle that he had become. It wasn't enough to defeat him, but it gave us insight into his battle strategy that kept all of us alive so that we could eventually defeat him when it counted.
By attacking me in such a manner, the Arkham Knight revealed his Semblance.