Hey everyone! Been a bit! Sorry about that, but one of the reasons for the gap between my last update and this one was because I wanted to post these next several chapters as an ununterrupted chunk, with a week in between each. (So, the next chapter will be next Saturday, and so on and so forth until I'm done with this chunk.)
The reason I planned to do this will rapidly become clear as the next few chapters hit your screens, but the short, spoiler-free answer is:
If I waited months between each of these upcoming chapters, I sincerely believe you guys would find a way to hunt me for sport.
Less ominously, for Tyrian's section –capitalizing pronouns is a sign of deification, usually to show one's reverence towards the deity in question. Thus he uses She/Her instead of she/her when referring to Salem.
Ah, Vale.
Truthfully, Tyrian had no real opinion on Vale –or Atlas, or Mistral, or Vacuo… or any of the settlements, really. His interest lay solely in his Goddess and fulfilling Her wishes.
But as Her most holy blade, the divine punishment She sent forth to punish the insolent and strew doubt and dismay in their path, Tyrian would admit that he had preferences for how he was used –or more specifically, who he was used on.
It was due to dear Cinder's incompetence that he and the good doctor had been pulled from their respective assignments to aid Her plans here in Vale, and it had to be said, Tyrian had been enjoying his task of stalking the wilds of Mistral for Hunters who'd been led astray far more than this assignment cleaning up Cinder's mess in Vale.
Switching from hunting Hunters to attacking mere civilians had been irksome, doubly so when he had been ordered to let some of them crawl away. Not even the knowledge that he carried one of Her tokens –an item personally blessed with Her most sublime magic– was enough to take away the sting of disappointment. Of failing, however obliquely, at the task She had set him to.
Truly, he had almost been willing to grant Cinder the smallest sliver of respect: she was an indigent girl down to her very marrow, but there was spite in her, and a visceral need to inflict her own pain and woes upon others –both qualities he enjoyed. And she had volunteered for this most holy of tasks, personally carrying the fight to that blasphemer who so arrogantly sat atop Beacon's tower and schemed like he had any right to impede Salem. She had spun a plan that was intricate and beautiful in its glorious destruction and for that, he might have been willing to at least tolerate her presence.
But then Cinder had to go and bungle everything up, dragging him and Watts off of their own missions which She had put them on, which in turn fouled up the whole machinery of their Goddess's divine plan.
Ohhhh, Tyrian was so upset with Cinder!
But his Goddess had commanded his presence here, so, resent Cinder though he might, to Vale he came. Tyrian would never disrespect Her wishes in the littlest of things, never mind something as important as this.
And, he tried to cheer himself up, at least he was striking a far more decisive blow against the Hunter academies than merely picking off stray graduates.
Tyrian loathed everything to do with Her pitiful, wretched enemy, of course, but the academies he particularly despised. Training people in the art of the hunt was one thing –he gloried in it– but then forcing them to blunt their knives and soften their fangs against Grimm?
Bad enough that they were an affront against Her most numerous and most loyal servants (and oh, oh it hurt him so to admit the latter, but their minds had room only for destruction, and his was liable to distraction and failure). But worse, it was also an affront to the very teachings that the aforesaid academies bestowed. They gave their children blades and spent years honing them into living weapons, capable of great wonders with their Aura and their Semblances and their skills, and then –then, after so long whetting them into tools primed for destruction– then they swatted those blades out of their children's callused hands and said no.
No, you mustn't use all your hard-won talent as it was meant to be used.
No, you mustn't kill –even though it was all you were taught over these last few years.
The sheer hypocrisy was enough to make Tyrian's lips twist. All of these bright little beacons, steadily fed a diet of murder and mayhem for four years –longer, if they were trained at the preparatory schools– and then they were told not to create their own. They were handed battleaxes and then told to use them to cook, to bury their blades into the mundane routine of clearing out Grimm to protect people. They were told to shelter, to shield, when all they'd been taught was to attack.
And people called him insane. Hmph.
All of that nonsense irked him, to be honest. People became warriors because they craved conflict, and here all the Hunter academies were universally trying to turn their students against their own nature. Ridiculous. Pathetic.
But now Tyrian was blessed with an opportunity, not only to carry out Her will, but also to spark a wondrous conflict for the students and staff to enjoy, and it would not do for his own prejudices to spoil the mission She had bestowed upon him.
…and if the students and staff members didn't enjoy his conflict, he didn't particularly care, since all these people served Her perennial enemy and thus deserved to die in the most exquisite agony he could conjure.
His tail twisted slightly in delight from where he had it wrapped around his waist, chitinous joints clicking with all the relief of cracking his knuckles –indeed, it served a similar purpose. He was not worried about the noise being caught: the people cheering and stamping in the countless massed stands were making even the sturdy concrete and steel floor of the colosseum vibrate subtly under his feet. Besides, he was tucked away in the opening of one of the lower hallways granting entrance from the competitor portions of the arena, and there was no one closer to him than a dozen meters.
Bellows and cheers washed over him, but all his attention was focused –as it had been focused for some time now– on the arena floor itself. He watched the competitors there with all the intensity of a circling wolf, his eyes moving from one body to another, testing, seeking weaknesses to exploit.
He dearly wanted to fight the young Pyrrha Nikos, who had –to the surprise of no one– qualified as a finalist, but Watts had been suspicious of her team's last-minute entry to the festival and sternly warned him off of her –and the members of one Team RWBY, who had regrettably been knocked out of the competition earlier.
Such a pity, that was. Nikos was the kind of champion fighter who would be a delight to play with, unflinchingly skilled and yet with an all-too-soft underbelly of youth and naïveté. He doubted she had ever tasted blood on the battlefield. How would she react if he sliced it out of her? If she had never known loss, what kind of enormous fear would shadow her eyes if he slaughtered her, beat her down like she was a mere trainee, before going in for the killing blow?
Tyrian's tongue flickered over his lips as a shudder ran gently all the way down from the nape of his neck to the barbed tip of his tail. He'd never killed someone who was so infamous for being invincible before. Watching her taste doubt and then defeat for the very first time would have been exquisite.
Equally fun was crushing the arrogance of youth, destroying their cocky sense of immortality, as he had with the team of charming young men from Mistral. He liked Mistralians in general –they gave excellent sport. It wasn't even his bias as a local –Atlesians were all cold control, and although the Vacuoans gave far greater challenge, there was no sport to it. They were stoic. Unflinching. Death was death, and that was something they faced every day: he wanted his opponents to squirm. It wasn't fun unless they squirmed.
But the good doctor had forbidden him his fun, and knowing that She would be displeased –was already displeased– with their progress in Vale, Tyrian had reluctantly conceded the point. He could not mar their plans any further. If it was Watts merely being a stuffy spoilsport, then perhaps, but he would not impede Her plans.
It was bad enough that he'd have to swing by to pick up Cinder later today. Truly, by his and Watts's talents combined, they could have removed the erstwhile Fall Maiden from the Atlas battleship far sooner than this, but She had said –and Tyrian had agreed even more fervently than usual– that Cinder deserved to languish a little for her detestable failure.
Alone in the cramped confines of her cell for weeks on end, doubts would begin to creep in, no matter how unshakeable her confidence. She knew that Salem could have had her out with a snap of Her fingers –so why hadn't She retrieved her? Was her failure being rewarded with abandonment? Would she be punished with assassination?
Unseen by all and uncaring if he wasn't, Tyrian allowed himself a toothy smile. Truly, those doubts feeding on Cinder's mind would be a worthy torment indeed, especially considering that her little acolytes would be put equally off-kilter by the unexpectedly long wait for their rescue. Perhaps this delay would make the lot of them more zealous when he finally did release them, more prepared to do whatever it took to ensure Her goals were seen through.
And if not, well…
He had no doubt that She had apt punishments in mind for Cinder and her coterie, when they returned to Evernight.
He allowed himself the smallest breath of a sigh, anticipation and disappointment mixed. It mattered not that he was crouched in the opening of an empty hallway several meters beneath the banks of roaring, cheering, foot-stamping stadium seats: Tyrian had more than enough experience to know that even the tiniest of things could spell the difference between disaster and victory in combat.
And the warriors fighting in the ring –distant though they were– were keyed up to the highest extent. This was, after all, the final event of the Vytal Festival, a fight that might very well launch –or ruin– their careers as Hunters. Qualifying for the Vytal Tournament was a high enough honor –it was only open to students from the four major academies, and only eight teams from each school– but winning it, or even just making it to the final rounds, was the hallmark of extraordinary talent. All of their senses were likely sharpened to the keenest edge, every nerve drawn tight with attention.
Under those circumstances, it would not do for him to spoil the surprise by prematurely giving himself away.
At long last, he thought he had selected an appropriate target. If Tyrian had not been cloaked by Her most holy artifact, an onlooker would have seen his motionless form shift for the first time in many minutes, slowly rising from his predatory crouch.
He rose to his feet, careful to maintain his near-silence, and with a sharp click, the sharpened blades of The Queen's Servants sprung forth on his wrists. He was not so amateur as to deploy them beside his target, of course. Invisible as he was, sound was the only thing that would give him away, and trained as Hunter students were, they could not fail to note the distinct shnick of mech-shift locking into place. Especially during a fight with stakes such as these.
The roar of the crowd swam up to engulf him as he moved swift and silent over the now-empty stretch of cold metal that covered the Dust generators and the environments they formed. The central area, once the safety zone, had been raised to form a dais, and it was in this arena that two students dueled. He had chosen carefully: a second-year student clad in brown and gold, moving in a series of acrobatic flips and kicks around her opponent. Two velveteen-soft brown rabbit ears bobbed about her head, and each of her movements was swift and sure, executed with confidence.
But there was something about her –a subtle tension in her shoulders that ratcheted tighter with every louder boom of the crowd, a brief flicker in her deep brown eyes when they slid off her opponent and landed on the ranks of cheering spectators. A tantalizing hint of weakness, a hint of a soft place in which to sink his blades.
And besides, she was a Faunus. That would fit in nicely with the White Fang's attack and the rumors Watts was so kindly stirring on the local chat forums about targeted assaults on tournament guests and participants.
Though he had ghosted across the open space of the arena with the silence of an owl on the hunt, the metal platform echoed under the impact of his feet as he lightly jumped up to their level. It was just a faint thrum, the kind of brief impact that was sensed more than felt, but nonetheless, his target's ear twitched once and her eyes flicked in his direction as the vibrations of an impact ran under her feet. Her opponent, too, did the same, but seeing nothing, and feeling nothing more, their attention turned away from the edge.
It all took less than a second, and it was debatable that the cameras even picked up their mutual quick glance to the side before both trainees' eyes returned to their fight.
Tyrian's tail constricted briefly around his waist, a conscious effort on his part to keep it from curling and twitching in glee and potentially alerting his latest victim. He was better at ambushes than that.
He spent a moment watching the rhythms of their fight as the Faunus girl conjured a familiar-looking spear made of Hard Light Dust and began using it in conjunction with some equally familiar moves against her opponent as the crowd roared in a mixture of shock, elation, and disapproval. Tyrian's smile widened and his pupils dilated in glee: it seemed he would fight some form of Pyrrha Nikos, after all. How fortuitous. Truly, She must favor this plan, to give him such luck.
Anticipation built in him as he wondered how he might go about it. Take this young lady here –bending and twisting and jumping with such lithe skill– if he took The Queen's Servants and hooked them oh, so delicately around the tendons in her ankles and then stripped the blades up those graceful legs of hers, how would her teammates react? How would they fantasize, craving and thirsting for his blood, cradling their fallen friend as they cried out for vengeance against him?
How much would he enjoy seeing the fiery rage turn to ashen despair on their faces as he cut through them like a hurricane, leaving them trying to crawl away like the mewling pathetic children they were before his blades finally pierced their hearts?
Tyrian contained his giddy laughter only by the greatest of efforts, and sternly reminded himself to focus. She was counting on him to finish carrying this plan through –he would not fail his Goddess.
Timing himself precisely, he crouched and readied his blades, before lunging forward as the gleaming points of The Queen's Servants hammered home into the soft arch of flesh behind the girl's knee. Her Aura –as helpfully displayed on the large screens overhead– dipped by some five percent, but her opponent, who was bearing down on her spear with a pole arm of his own, only felt his opponent suddenly stumble and yield.
He drove her down into the ground as her cry of pained surprise became a yelp –but she was good, and tangled his weapon with her own, wrenching him to the side even as she fell and giving herself time to roll clear. She quickly came to her feet, backing away, and Tyrian watched her shake her head a little, ears flapping, as she flexed the knee he had hit. A look of confusion and uncertainty had bloomed on her expressive face: she knew another person could not be in the ring, as the judges had not cried foul, and yet something had driven her to the ground. Did her opponent have a Semblance he had not yet demonstrated?
If her opponent was ignorant as to the cause of her stumble, the audience was entirely unaware of it. So far as they were concerned, his weight had driven her down, and they cheered as the two circled each other in the ring, weapons at the ready, studying each other with more focus.
Tyrian was calculating as well, thinking of exactly how much Aura his target had reflexively spent to ward off his attack and how best he could leverage what little she had remaining. Her opponent launched into a blistering series of attacks and feints with his spear, probably thinking he sensed a weakness in how her legs has buckled earlier, and she met him, uncertain at first, but growing steadier as she fended off his attacks with success. Tyrian flowed around the two of them easily, matching his footsteps to theirs whenever he could to hide his presence. They were only children, after all: easy to predict, easy to manipulate.
That didn't mean he could dart right in, however. He would have to wait for another opportunity, and it would not do for the boy to encounter resistance as he lunged at the same time as Tyrian and hit him with that spear. His Aura would hold, of course, but it would give the game away.
And Tyrian was enjoying this game so very much.
He cut away at the rabbit girl's Aura in quick stabbing taps and short vicious slices, timing his attacks to the boy's and watching her stance weaken, the uncertainty flickering brighter and stronger in her eyes as her confidence began to drain away –alongside her Aura. He could hear mixed boos and encouraging shouts from the Beacon section of the stands, extolling her to greater efforts.
A particularly loud trio of voices frequently reminded her that she was better than this, and he could hear the frustration and confusion simmering underneath their strident tones. They could not understand why she was putting on such a poor showing, and his grin bared teeth as he saw the rabbit girl wince, her ears wilting slightly as she caught those shouts.
Insecurity. Oh, how he loved it!
"Tyrian. End it," Watts's curt voice suddenly muttered in his ear. The microphone was turned to its lowest setting, and yet Tyrian still bared his teeth in a silent snarl of outrage. How dare the good doctor interrupt his fun! "You've been seen, or at the very least, Ironwood's on the alert. One of his students is insisting there's an extra person in the ring, and I don't think the soldiers can hold her back for much longer."
Tyrian's eyes flicked around the wide gulf of the arena, and sure enough, he could see a girl in a blur of green and cream and brilliant orange hair arguing with the guards on the edge, near another entrance.
Oh, my. Caught already?
Then it was truly time to end this –and investigate just what kind of Semblance could see him beneath the veil of Her magic. He may have to pay that young lady a visit later to make his upset feelings clear. He had been having such fun.
Tyrian called his own Semblance to him, feeling his eyes burn purple, and lunged one last time. A streak across her chest opened a wide rent in the Faunus girl's Aura just as the second girl burst through the ring of guards, pounding towards them with oddly heavy steps, and Tyrian ducked and spun under the thrust of the boy's spear.
With her Aura hovering just above ring out, such a move was intended merely to push the girl back, with the added hope of knocking her out of the running literally or metaphorically, either by physically knocking her off the platform or by burning through the last of her Aura.
But with the sudden gap opened by his Semblance, the point of the spear struck home and lodged in her chest, bringing a sudden gush of blood and a deafening buzzer overhead as her remaining Aura flooded towards the gaping wound and her reserves dropped perilously close to zero.
Competitive excitement instantly changed to dumbstruck horror on the boy's blood-spattered face as a dead silence fell across the stadium. A moment later, as he truly realized what he'd done, he instinctively jerked backwards, yanking the spear from the girl's chest as she collapsed to the ground in another fountain of blood and he staggered back, mouth agape.
Tyrian was already away, avoiding the splash of blood that would mark his steps. He leapt from the dais –and immediately had to duck as something bladed viciously split the air overhead.
"Stop right there!" a voice called. It was imperious and determined, but also very young, and he turned to see the orange-haired girl who had pushed past the guards, running towards him at a dead sprint. Her eyes were quite distinctly focused in his direction, and he let out a short, soft hiss of annoyance through his teeth.
Pesky Huntress cadets.
He gathered himself and turned to face her, knowing that he had already accomplished his Goddess's task as the screens in the arena turned red with Watts's virus, and the prerecorded video began to play a few moments after. He could dispose of this overconfident little girl quickly, before anyone really noticed –any attention still focused down here was locked on the bleeding figure of the rabbit girl and the boy beside her, who was frantically trying to staunch the wound in her chest.
"You will not hurt anyone else!" the trainee told him fiercely as she skidded to a stop between him and the platform, a collection of jagged swords whirling around like a halo behind her head, and Tyrian indulged himself in a derisive cackle.
"Not if you're strong enough to stop me, little girl!" he giggled, knowing no one else could see and no one else was close enough to hear, and splayed his blades as he sank into a combat crouch. "Let's find out!"
Penny felt sick with guilt as she chased what was almost certainly Tyrian Callows through the abandoned lower service hallways. She had known someone was probably going to interfere with the match, she had seen an infra-red silhouette where none should be, and yet she had been unable to convince the area guards to let her through with her military clearance in time to stop Velvet from-
She shook her head. Velvet was not dead, she couldn't be. Jaune had soared down into the arena on his Hard-Light shield and raced for Velvet's downed body a heartbeat after she'd broken through the guards. He was ahead of even the medics. Velvet would be fine.
And Penny needed to focus. Tyrian Callows was skilled, more than skilled enough to punish her for even a moment of inattention. It did not help that Floating Array was a weapon designed for combat in large, open spaces, and it was difficult to spin the blades the way she wanted –and needed– to keep him at bay.
Vambraces with curved wrist blades, short range, indication of two gun barrels above the knuckles, she thought, letting her combat analysis program run at full speed as she deflected and dodged his swiping attacks as best she could, continuing to try and push him deeper into the bowels of Amity, away from other people. Sharp, probing attacks. Incredibly flexible and fast. Uses agility to come in at unexpected angles and dodge erratically: movements incredibly unpredictable. Fluidity during said movements indicates a high level of skill and practice.
His tendency to slap aside her swords at the very apex of their swing and lunge in close with his stinger or his own blades told Penny that he, too, was a skilled analyst of his foes, and that it had taken him a very short time indeed to figure out her major weakness: in the comparatively tight quarters of the service hallway, Penny had a difficult time angling and swinging her swords, and she was ill-suited to using them at close range.
Yes, this man was dangerous, and even though she could not be poisoned –even though his Aura-disrupting Semblance would only let him pierce through one layer of fabric and synthetic flesh before he hit her solid metal chassis– Penny was worried. As her friends' news of the future had proved, being a robot did not mean that she could not be damaged: only that it took more effort to damage her, and this man –out of anyone– seemed the best suited to do so.
"Heeheehee…" An ecstatic, slightly thin cackle ran along the hallway, skittering in faint echoes like a parade of crawling spiders. "Oh, what fun! Are you enjoying yourself, little warrior? Little Huntress?"
Penny's sword blades, whirling in a vertical disc, screamed against concrete and steel pipes as he dodged by a whisker, rasping up sparks in their wake before slamming into the far wall.
"You'd best hurry!" the same manic voice called as it faded slightly with distance, and Penny tugged on her strings as she ran past and turned the corner, pulling the embedded swords free as she followed that hazy silhouette on her infra-red scopes. "Who knows what might happen to that poor girl out there if you don't hurry?"
Penny's lips tightened even as her analysis program added another note.
Enjoys taunting his opponents. Likely seeks to emotionally destabilize me: any further comments should be ignored as meaningless. Responding, positively or negatively, will only encourage him. Do not engage.
She could hear, distantly, the rumble of thousands of thudding movements above them, and the Atlas comms were alive with a stream of chatter that she did her best to ignore, trusting that her split processing would alert her if anything important to her current task came up. Whatever was happening up in Amity, she had to trust her friends and General Ironwood's forces to see it through.
Penny had a serial killer to catch.
He did not slacken his pace as he ran past the larger space of a four-way crossroads, nor slow as they dashed past some of the rooms that stored the excess Dust for the arena biomes. Given Tyrian Callows' projected psychological state and what Penny had noted thus far in their fight, it was extremely unlike him to forgo causing more damage or turning to face her: he was likely trying to escape the floating colosseum entirely, then, and Penny made a mental note of that, before messaging aforementioned note directly to General Ironwood's personal Scroll.
His response informed her that several airships would be shifted to guard the landing bays nearest to her location, and reinforcements were en route. There were, apparently, numerous Grimm swarming the area, but so far the Atlesian forces were managing to keep them away from Amity.
Penny refocused her attention up ahead as her target ducked around another corner. Her skidding feet kicked up more sparks on the ragged concrete as she let herself slide like a baseball player and then kicked off again, barely losing an iota of speed as she rounded the corner herself and continued in hot pursuit.
As she ran, Penny mentally reviewed her findings thus far. She needed to delay him long enough for reinforcements to arrive and his exit to be cut off, but he was far too agile and far too quick for her to catch with her swords and strings even if she wasn't at close quarters, and she didn't have any other way of stopping him by force.
Perhaps she could do something to ignite his temper. Those who taunted others so incessantly often did so to hide insecurities of their own, to make themselves feel powerful and secure, and they tended to pick the weakest targets or strike at perceived vulnerabilities in order to maintain their fragile egos.
The person she was following seemed to fit most of those criteria, and according to Ruby and the others, Tyrian Callows had reacted to even implied insults against Salem, and he had allegedly lost his temper several times during RNJR's first fight with him.
Admittedly, Penny didn't know if said reaction would mean he would lose some of his edge or if it would galvanize him into finishing her off, but it was a risk worth taking, since either option meant he would not be running away.
So she thought a moment more, gathered her previous experience with Ilia and Whitley and her preprogrammed psychology manuals, and then shouted after the retreating figure, "You will not get away with this! If you're too afraid to face a trainee, then we will find and beat your master easily!"
There, that should do it: a mix of insulting his courage and indirectly belittling Salem by the same token, without any hint of an inadvertent reminder that his goal was to escape her. If Tyrian Callows was as determined to stamp out anyone who challenged him as he had seemed, then this should be-
There was a snarl and a burst of gunfire almost simultaneously from up ahead, and Penny jumped back, reversing her momentum on a dime and thus barely escaping the bullets that strafed the concrete walls and floor around her. A moment later, he was inside her range, blades swinging, and Penny slapped one aside one and hastily lifted her arm to block the other, her feet grinding back against the floor as his matched wrist blades caught on her elbow and his weight slammed into her. She might be nearly solid metal, but he was larger than she was, and the leverage was currently all on his side.
"You dare imply that you would be able to even gaze upon Her Grace before you were cut down?" he hissed, and Penny felt something hard and jointed wrap around her ankle. Her mind raced in the few microseconds she knew she had before he pulled her foot out from under her, making use of the superior processing power granted to her by her mechanical body.
This was almost certainly a Faunus's scorpion tail, which meant that her opponent was definitely Tyrian Callows. His combat style and all that she had gleaned from him thus far told Penny that he was probably going to try and rip her leg out from under her, and then strike without mercy while she was downed. It would be a humiliating end to the fight and something to underscore the vast difference in skill and experience between them, both things that he seemed to enjoy.
How to deal with that, though…
His deliberately-unpredictable maneuvers made striking out at him before she fell a risky choice, but he did not seem to realize yet what she was. He likely thought her ability to see past the magic or technology that hid him was a Semblance, and since she had managed to keep him from disrupting her Aura, he would not have been able to tell that her durability was merely innate and not an efficient use of aforementioned Aura.
All this and more raced through Penny's mind in a fraction of a second, and then she was moving before he could. She let him shove her back, slamming both feet against the ground as she launched herself in an impromptu somersault backwards at the same moment. Braced as he was to yank her back with his tail, he was caught off-balance by Penny throwing herself into his move, and best of all, his tail was still wrapped tightly around her ankle as she went.
Using all the strength in her metal-jointed body, Penny swept the corresponding leg out and back behind her as she landed, jerking the invisible assassin forward into the perfect strike of her fist. Not needing to worry about breaking the nonexistent fragile bones in her hand –and feeling somewhat upset at what he'd done to Velvet– Penny aimed for his face.
Aura flared with a sound like spitting electric currents as she nailed Tyrian Callows in what felt like his nose, and she ripped her ankle out of the grasp of his tail as it instinctively spasmed. While Aura could protect you from harm and blunt the force of strikes, Penny's robotic body and computerized combat reflexes meant that her punches were more like the precisely-calibrated strikes of a jackhammer, and anyone receiving that to the face, Aura or no, was also going to receive a disorienting flash to their brain that –briefly– sent their nervous system haywire.
It was one of the many reasons she generally avoided hand-to-hand combat. With her enhanced reflexes and superhuman processing, it felt a lot like cheating, especially when those systems were combat-only and thus could take even her friends by surprise.
Mindful that he would lash out the second he recovered, Penny quickly bent her legs and jumped backwards like a grasshopper, and thus narrowly avoided the venomous hiss of his wrist blades as they sliced through the air –directly where her neck had been– a microsecond later.
Note: excessive amounts of Aura in hand and weapon during last attack. Likely an attempt to use his Semblance.
If she had stayed where she was –and if she had been made of flesh– his Semblance would have split her Aura like paper, and then that attack would've torn her throat out on the spot. Penny gave an internal shudder as she landed a few meters away.
"Surrender," she said aloud, projecting a confidence she did not have as she brought her blades around to whirl behind her in an arc. Perhaps –maybe– he would see sense. "You will be granted a fair trial in Atla- er, Vale?"
Penny felt the urge to blush. Where were international criminals judged? She really ought to remember that. Too much processing in too short a time…
"You will be given a fair trial," she temporized, and that low, manic giggle began to build deep in his chest again.
"Surrender?" he choked, his laughter building as it trembled on the edge of every syllable. "Oh, my. Dear girl, why on earth would I do that?"
"Maybe 'cause she's got backup," a familiar voice rasped, and Penny perked up as she heard the whirring click of mecha-shift weapon being engaged behind her, likely to expose the barrel of a gun. "Pull whatever she gave you off and chuck it down the hall, nice and slow, and maybe we can all still walk away from this."
"What makes you think I'm here at all?" Tyrian cackled, and Penny narrowed her eyes, swiftly running another full check of all her sensory systems. No, he was still there on infra-red and on sonar; a man-shaped silhouette taller than she was, with a prehensile tail. She could even make out the rough edges of his clothes as Tyrian gave another cracked giggle, his tail twitching. "Maybe I'm just a figment of your guilty imagination, Qrow Branwen."
"Kid," Ruby's uncle said, and Penny understood him perfectly as she twirled one sword around her wrist and threw it like a lasso at the same moment he pulled the trigger and buckshot boomed, forcing Tyrian to dodge left.
Her flung sword intercepted the serial killer's path perfectly, cutting the strings of a necklace bouncing on his chest. Penny was not sure if that was the artifact that granted him invisibility, but it seemed a fair guess, since he wore an open shirt and had seemed to eschew any jewelry beyond his piercings in the file photos.
Sure enough, Tyrian Callows shimmered back into existence as the pendant clattered to the floor, and Penny beamed with pride. He snarled at both of them, though, and Penny felt her smile wilting at the sheer amount of venom and hatred in those piercing yellow eyes. Actually seeing the expression on Tyrian Callows' face for the first time, Penny was not at all sure if she wanted to continue fighting him alone.
Qrow Branwen's presence felt very bolstering all of a sudden as he stepped forward to stand at her side, still holding that enormous broadsword of his with the blade hinged downwards, revealing two shotgun barrels.
"Like she said," Qrow rasped, and Penny could sense the smirk at the edge of his mouth. "Surrender."
Tyrian was not laughing any longer. His eyes narrowed as he let out a needle-like hiss, building up into a low snarl of rage. His eyes moved from Qrow to her, and knowing that he would pounce on the first sign of vulnerability he saw, Penny kept her eyes steady and her stance firm even when her knees trembled with the urge to step back a pace at his expression.
There are two of us and one of him. This is fine. Everything will be okay.
"Surrender," Qrow said, and now there was an edge to his voice as she noticed the same thing she did: namely, that Tyrian seemed more angry than defeated and it was possible –even likely– that he'd attack. "You've got nowhere else to go."
"Oh no, nowhere else," Tyrian agreed, his voice a low and deadly rasp. "But why would I want to?"
The last words were torn from him in a vicious grunt as he lunged for Penny, perhaps assuming she would be the weakest of the pair –despite her brave face– due to Qrow Branwen's longer experience as a Huntsman.
Penny swung her swords, blocking the lower pair of wrist blades that aimed for her hip and catching the other pair on her crossed arms. Her grounding heel dug into the concrete as his sheer force and momentum shoved her back, and Qrow's weapon boomed again in the small space as she felt some of the stray buckshot pepper her Aura.
Tyrian disengaged from her with a snarl, and Penny stiffened as she saw his tail lash out –but not at her. Nor at Qrow, even, but at the pendant Tyrian had dropped on the ground. His stinger pierced it, and both Penny and Qrow jumped back as the pendant cracked and a sudden rush of noxious smoke filled the corridor, reeking of tar and sulfur.
There was a skitter in the darkness, and Penny leaped to place herself in front of Ruby's uncle, whose eyes would be blinded by the fog –but it turned out that she did not need to. Tyrian's footsteps were receding, heading further out of Amity, towards the service landing bays. Penny reeled off another message stating such and sent it to General Ironwood, before turning to her companion, who was coughing harshly in the billows of smoke.
"Are you alright?" she asked, and he nodded, eyes streaming as he pulled his open shirt up with one hand to cover his mouth and nose.
"Yeah. M'fine," he grunted, voice raspier than ever. He nodded to the corridor ahead. "Lead me through?"
"Affirmative," Penny said, and stepped back to his side, reaching up to take his non-weapon elbow. She began leading him forward, although they paused for a moment by the pendant itself as a thought occurred to Penny and she tore some strips from her clothing to wrap it up.
Although the reddish smoke was unnaturally thick, it also dispersed rather fast, and they weren't more than a few dozen meters down the corridor before Qrow let go of his shirt and stepped away from her, and together they proceeded at a faster pace. Given the layout of Amity and Tyrian's obvious intent to escape, they could make an educated guess as to which docking bay he was headed for, and made their way towards it with all speed.
Unfortunately, it seemed that they were too late.
Thanks to her prior warnings –and the general level of paranoia amongst the tournament planners, this time around– the landing area had been empty of any workers, but the door had been forced open, and Tyrian was obviously no longer here. When Penny cautiously approached the gap and poked her head out, her sensors screamed a warning and she had to jerk back before she could be hit by the dive-bombing Nevermore that swept past.
Qrow clicked his tongue and hissed sympathetically as he saw this.
"Rode out on a Grimm, d'ya think?" he asked, moving to slide his sword back onto the magnetic clasp on his back. Penny nodded glumly.
"I have informed General Ironwood of his escape," she said, and glanced at him anxiously as they turned to head back up to the main sections. "Situation report?"
"Your girl in the woods says that there's a decent amount of White Fang forces headed this way," Qrow said, and if she weren't robotic, Penny might find it hard to keep up with his long-legged strides as he jogged back through the corridors. "Plenty of Grimm, too, but Atlas seems to be holding them back enough for the evacuations from Amity to go through."
"And what about Cinder? That was her voice on the video, wasn't it?"
"Eh, yeah, but it doesn't look like the prison ship was disturbed, so it's probably fake," Qrow drawled, and then shrugged. "Doesn't really matter though, since people could still hear her going all 'blah blah kingdoms care more about beating each other in a tournament than keeping you safe,' 'blah blah overzealous competitive tendencies resulted in fatalities,' 'blah blah human pride is why the Faunus aren't running a kingdom,' 'don't trust each other, blah-de-fucking-blah'."
Penny did not think he was reporting that verbatim.
"What do we do now?" she asked.
"We're not taking any chances with the Maiden, so Ironwood had his people on the airship batten down the hatches and get ready for a bit of extrajudicial force. Ruby and her partner went up to reinforce them in case anything went wrong before they…"
"Before they what?" Penny blinked anxiously. For answer, Qrow made a brief gurgling noise and drew a line across his throat with his thumb.
Oh. They were going to kill Cinder before she was rescued, then. That was… well, that made strategic sense. Unfortunately. She hoped Ruby and Weiss wouldn't have to see it happen. Though maybe they would enjoy watching this particular person die…
"Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to sort things out over here," Qrow continued. "Getting people off of Amity, clearing out the Grimm, and I believe Yang and her partner are gonna go with Ironwood's people to sort out some unfinished business with the White Fang."
That was good. Penny nodded, cautiously, and then they were engulfed by the bright light of the colosseum again as they burst out onto the arena floor. It was almost empty now, with most of the audience having been herded into the relative safety of the internal corridors and the remainder clustered around the entrances to the main thoroughfares, waiting for more space to open up so that they too could cram themselves into the hallways.
The chatter on the comms, as Penny followed Ruby's uncle across the arena floor, indicated that evacuation efforts were underway and going tolerably well. The Grimm were numerous, and those numbers were growing by the moment, but General Ironwood and Professor Ozpin had been preparing for this, and there were plenty of nearby military ships that were stationed conveniently enough that they had to do only a little maneuvering in order to get into a protective formation around both Vale and Amity.
There was a cluster of people by the competitor stairwell they were heading for, although most of them seemed preoccupied, carrying or clustered around a figure on a white stretcher. Only one person, in fact, stayed behind as they moved out towards the emergency airships, and Penny's heart jolted as she got close enough to see that it was Jaune. His sleeves were soaked in blood, and there was a spatter of it on the normally-pristine white enamel of his armor.
"It was touch and go for a bit, but I think Velvet's gonna pull through," he said once the two of them were in range, knowing that that was what they were most concerned about as their pace slowed and Penny came to a brief halt. "What'd I miss?"
"Salem's managed to initiate the Fall of Beacon, but I doubt she'll get far with it," she answered as the three of them turned to climb the stairs. "Half of her advantage was in catching us unprepared and unawares. Even with the White Fang and the Grimm combined, there aren't enough forces to pierce through Atlas's military when they're already in formation, particularly when we don't have to fight off the Paladins at the same time. Barring any unpleasant surprises, the only real trouble we have will be the cleanup and trying to make sure none of Salem's inner circle can slip away."
"Kid's right," Qrow rasped. "There's a bigger Grimm horde out there than has ever been seen in Vale's history, but between Ironwood's army and the favors Ozpin called in to have as many Hunters as possible on standby, we should be able to handle it without things turning into a massacre. It'll be bloody, make no mistake, but if things hold as they are, we can handle it. At the very least, there's a lot less Grimm than there were last time."
"Last time there was enough to wipe out Beacon and most of Vale in one night," Jaune replied gloomily. "'Less than that' isn't exactly a comforting margin."
Pyrrha's heart was in her mouth and her fingers were white-knuckled as she held onto the overhead strap of the Bullhead thundering towards Beacon. She had done her part to calm her fellow finalists, telling them to go and help people evacuate before she raced for the rest of her own team, but tension still bled through her muscles as she remembered the glimpses she had caught of Jaune kneeling by Velvet's side and Penny steadily driving her invisible opponent out of the arena and down into one of the service hallways, where he might be trapped.
It had not been her on the arena floor and it had not been Penny's torn and shredded form at her feet, but Pyrrha had still tasted the metallic tinge of panic in her mouth as Cinder's voice purred over the speakers –had Watts broken her out somehow, or was this a program he'd made to ape her voice? What did that mean for them?
Under the memories of twisted giant gears and an ashen tower, the words Cinder was reading off became a mere background hum: an implication of the academies fighting for ascendency and placing pride over defending people from the Grimm, of their vicious attempts to win by trickery resulting in the injuries and death of their rivals, of human pride being what had resulted in the token appeasement of Menagerie for the Faunus after the war they had won, of other things that Pyrrha heard but didn't care about because the gist was Cinder was successfully strewing fear and uncertainty across Remnant.
Pyrrha tightened her grip on the standing strap and took a deep breath, throttling down her panic and replacing it with the steady, glacial calm of a practiced Huntress. With most of the civilians either evacuated or on their way to it, the trainee teams had been given the choice to flee with them or head towards Beacon to defend it alongside their classmates and the graduates who were –somehow, oh so conveniently– on site.
Most of them, Hunter cadets that they were, had chosen to stand and fight.
Team RWBY and their friends had already split up, Weiss and Ruby heading with Neopolitan for the airships, and Blake and Yang and Penny temporarily riding with them in this ship before they went to reinforce Ilia and the others fighting to keep the White Fang from reaching the school. But Team JNPR had reunited before boarding the emergency airships, and they were sticking to Pyrrha's side like glue.
Unsurprising, considering what had happened last time.
Tension and anticipation and sick fear climbed in her stomach as the airship screamed through the skies, heading for Beacon and its towers. She wanted to fidget, to obsessively check over her weapons again and again for the slightest notch or the most minuscule misalignment of a Dust cartridge, but she had been doing that all throughout the day and knew that they were fine, that they were better than fine; that they, like her, were in the perfect physical condition for a fight.
It didn't help.
It didn't help, especially as the Bullhead swooped in for a steep and rapid landing and the bay doors slammed open. Everyone jumped out, one after another, and barely had the last student hit the grass than the doors were sliding shut again and the Bullhead was veering off, heading back to Amity.
"We'll try to meet you guys here if something goes wrong," Yang said, gears whirring as she deployed her gauntlets. The other students were already gone, running off towards the shrieking cacophony of the Grimm as they swooped, charged, and just generally harried Beacon's defensive forces. "Yeah?"
"Yes," Pyrrha said, and looked to her team as the other three ran off, leaving them standing alone on the strip of open ground near the landing pads –the pilots weren't caring about precision drop offs, not now.
Something trembled in her heart, then; a teetering, a tipping point, an uncertainty, a sensation like a pair of polished bronze scales about to slip forever out of alignment.
A choice that she was about to make.
It was a choice she had worked on through long nights of staring at the patch of moonlight sliding across the ceiling of their dorm; of long years hitting and stabbing and slashing at practice targets, trying to eke out the smoothest movements, the most efficient flow, until her Aura was spent and her hands were sore and aching. A choice she had thought on and made thousands upon thousands of times, a crossroads she had found herself at before each competition and when she had first stretched out her hand to sign the papers for a Beacon application.
"Ozpin's defending the vault, right?" Pyrrha asked, and her tone alone was enough to draw her team's worried eyes. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, lifting her chin to look them each in the eyes, defiantly. "Ruby and Weiss have gone to eliminate Cinder, but there's every chance that something can go wrong. I would like to go down to the vault and take Amber's power in case the worst should occur."
Their eyes widened slightly. They knew, as well as she did, what this request meant. They'd all seen her future: the future that was supposed to end here, tonight, because she had gotten entangled with the Fall Maiden and her transfer of power.
"Pyrrha-" Jaune said, fear bleeding into his voice, and she swung to look at him.
"We are the best people to do this," Pyrrha said, holding his agonized gaze with her own, striving to keep her own trepidation hidden, to show only the conviction that had caused her to make this choice in the first place. The two of them had failed before, in the future that now wasn't, to protect Amber and her power. She would see to it that they did not fail now.
This was her choice, her decision to make. He had gifted her life back to her, and the choice they had both made –the deal they had agreed upon there, in Beacon's courtyard– that it was her life, to live as she pleased. Pyrrha knew what she was risking here: but if she let her fear of risk control her, she would have never started training to become a Huntress.
"Fine by me," Nora said, suddenly breaking into their moment, and her expression was harder than Pyrrha had ever seen it as Nora slung Magnhild around to curl her fingers around the grip. "Let's do this."
When Pyrrha glanced to Ren, his eyes were full of a dark, unyielding calm, like a forest before a storm broke overhead.
"We also have a score to settle with Cinder Fall," he said quietly, and the corner of his mouth curled up in the barest ghost of a cold, deadly smile as he met her gaze. "After all, you're our teammate."
"I'll call Ozpin, then," Jaune said, which was a good distraction, since Pyrrha felt tears beginning to well up in her eyes at how much her teammates cared for her. Despite the fear trembling at the edges of him, Jaune's own smile was decidedly lupine as they all looked at him. "Let's give her hell, if Ruby and the others don't finish her off first."
Pyrrha smiled, and it felt right, as her teammates stood beside her under the growing shadow of evening, shoulder to shoulder with their weapons drawn, ready to face down whatever threat there may be. It felt so, utterly, perfectly, right.
She almost had to fight the urge to grin when Jaune handed her his Scroll and she lifted it to her ear.
"Ah, Miss Nikos." Ozpin's voice might have been triumphant in any other life, but it was not in this one. Pyrrha only heard despair mixed with an empty, forlorn sense of pride –pride in an exemplary student; in a martyr so faithful that she would walk to her death a second time, just on the mere chance that she had become strong enough to face and defeat destiny itself. "I must admit, I had hoped you would reconsider."
"Then you don't know me very well, professor," Pyrrha replied evenly, and then took a deep breath. "I want to do this. I have to do this."
"What happened then was not your fault. And even if it was, it was a mistake you cannot erase."
"I don't care," Pyrrha said. "I will do this, and I will make sure that she doesn't get the power twice."
Ozpin sighed.
"You know the way?"
"Yes."
"Then I shall await you and the rest of your team. And I will ask you to hurry, as I'm not sure of our margin of safety should things go wrong."
Mercury's Vytal Festival had not been going as planned. Which was like –okay, fine, whatever, plans failed. It was one of the many things that Marcus had spent a long time and a lot of effort to drill into his head: circumstances changed, mistakes happened, intel was misleading, and all of those things led to a failure in someone's plans. Your plan, your boss's plan, it didn't matter: the difference between good assassins and dead assassins was whether or not you could adapt to a failed plan and think on your feet.
When they'd been snapped up by Atlas, Mercury hadn't been able to think.
Well, that wasn't strictly true –there'd been a part of his brain steadily chanting oh fuck oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck oh shit the whole time. He'd looked to Cinder for his cues, but she was caught by surprise and angry, which was no help. He'd waited for her to blast the soldiers surrounding them with the Maiden powers, or order Emerald to max her Semblance to let the three of them slip away, or insist that this was just another mistake and lull the soldiers into a false sense of security, or something –but she hadn't.
She hadn't, and because he'd been a fucking idiot and waited for her to tell him what to do, he'd missed his own chance to fight through the ring of soldiers and make a break for it.
Mercury had fumed over that the whole time they were booked and then shuttled up to this damn airship. Saying he didn't know what to think was bull: in that split second between "you're under arrest" and the cuffs, he'd thought up a ton of options that the three of them could use to escape, but he'd used none of them because he'd thought Cinder would know better, would give him orders he could follow.
Instead, she'd been caught up in her expected surge of emotions and hesitated just an instant too long, and he was left stuck in this dumb fucking cell on this dumb fucking battleship because he was enough of a dumb fucking idiot to rely –however briefly– on someone else.
He'd kept quiet, after that. The Atlesians only made a cursory attempt at interrogating him and Emerald, focusing most of their energies on Cinder –who, thankfully, had recovered from her initial gaffe and was deflecting as best she could while they stalled for time. Stalling or not, though, they were still stuck, and Mercury was in no way interested in drawing either the animosity or the attention of their captors. Neither option would end well for him.
Held as they were under strict observation, so far Cinder hadn't been able to issue any orders to them or Torchwick, who was a few cells down. (Thankfully, the prick had to act like he didn't know any of them, which at least cut down on the bullshit that Mercury and the others had to listen to.)
Mercury wasn't altogether certain of just how much he'd follow those orders, though, considering Cinder's mistake. He'd followed her because it'd seemed like the best option at the time: but with the three of them in a jail cell and Beacon very much running fine, best no longer looked quite as good as it once had.
When you're outclassed, wait and watch for opportunities. He'd learned that one ages ago, and for once, it wasn't a lesson Marcus had taught to him. Not intentionally, anyways. Marcus had only learned just how thoroughly Mercury had taken that idea to heart when Mercury had put a Dust round through his damn lying chest.
When he was in way over his head like this, the best thing to do was hunker down, wait it out, and keep a keen eye out for anything he could use to his advantage. Given the slightest chance, Mercury was out of here, with or without Cinder and Emerald as need be. He'd miss needling Em a little, sure, but between a small luxury and survival, Mercury would pick survival every time.
To that end, he spent most of his days in his cell exercising. It was a tiny cramped closet, but he didn't need to build and maintain muscle mass in his legs anymore –fucking thanks, dad– and there was at least enough space to stand and do vertical push-ups with his hands against the wall or door. He even, on days when he felt particularly bored and there was nothing happening outside, managed to contort himself into a handstand.
Something was happening in the corridor outside now, though, and Mercury abandoned his efforts to work up a sweat and leaned against the door, trying to peer through the narrow slat enough to see what was going on. The Atlesian soldiers on the ship were pouring into the brig…
All of them.
A fine, cold sweat prickled down the back of Mercury's neck as his instincts started screaming at him, watching the wave of white armor flood down the hallway. Something was wrong. Something had gone really, really wrong in their calculations somewhere, and now someone was going to pay for it. This many soldiers shouldn't be here, now. There was no reason for any of the prisoners to have such a big escort –or even all of them at once.
Especially not when every single one of the white-armored soldiers had their guns in their hands rather than holstered safely on their belts.
Fuck. Fuck. Had Ironwood really gotten so frustrated with Cinder's deflections that he decided to just execute the lot of them at once? International protocol would have a thing or two to say about that, particularly when none of them had gotten a trial, but Ozpin's faction had always had a habit of ignoring such niceties for the so-called greater good, according to Salem.
Politics weren't important right now. What was important was whether or not Mercury was about to be shot, and what he could do to defend himself if so. Dodging was impossible in the confined space of the cell, but they wouldn't want to riddle their precious prison bulkhead with bullets and potentially weaken the structural integrity. If this was about to become an impromptu firing squad, they'd take the victims out into the corridor to do it.
Mercury was agile, but as he wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers while also trying not to move enough to draw any attention to himself, he knew that he might soon have to put that agility to the greatest test in his life. If he could just avoid the volley of bullets –not even avoid them entirely, just enough so that they didn't trip up his legs and his Aura caught the rest– and managed to break out of the ring of soldiers fanning out in front of the cells, he might, maybe, barely, have a chance to make it out of here alive.
But gods, he would have to be fast, and he would have to be supremely lucky.
They were surrounding Cinder's cell first, though, and Mercury wondered how Emerald was taking this as the Atlesian forces all put their rifles to their shoulders and one stepped forward, cautiously, to punch in the code to open up the door.
This was about to get bloody.