A/N: Welcome back everyone! College kicked my ass to hell and back this semester, but now I'm pumping out another chapter. Part 2 of the docks heist! It was meant to be the final part, but you'll see why I decided to split it one further time. As always, please favorite, follow, and please leave reviews, I love reading those!
Excerpt from "The Age of Heroes", published by Weiss Schnee
Over the course of the few months the Arkham Knight was active, one of the questions we always had was how he had managed to so thoroughly take over Roman's operation as fast as he did. One month, Roman was the undisputed leader in the heists; one month later, the Knight had taken it over, whipped the Fang grunts into an effective military unit, and put Roman under his boot. The sheer turnaround in the power within the organization was truly incredible.
What we learned after the fact was that it was actually a simple answer: his Semblance. As far as we ever learned, the Knight simply walked into Roman's operation, gave a demonstration of power that made it clear he could take anything Roman had to give, and essentially said that the options were that the Knight could take control of the operation or he would wipe it out entirely. Roman, the scrapper that he was, obviously chose the former.
That was how the Arkham Knight ended up being defeated - take his Semblance away and he went from being a powerful physical and mental threat to being a child in over his head, just like we were.
There was only one obvious problem with that strategy: he had the Semblance, and we didn't have any way of getting rid of it. Nowhere was that more apparent than when he first displayed his power at the docks.
It took a moment for Weiss to shake off her discombobulation after she had been flung across the docks. Even with Aura, being slammed into a shipping container hard enough to leave a noticeable dent in the metal tended to do that.
She had no idea what had happened. One second she and Yang were jumping to give Sun assistance, the next she was flying in the completely wrong direction. She only had a brief second to get her Aura up before she was slammed into a container at full force, leaving her sprawled out on the concrete. Luckily, her Aura was strong enough that about half of it was still intact, which was letting the pain heal quickly.
Unluckily, she landed about ten feet away from another fight that somehow involved someone throwing around flames, so she didn't have time to relax before she was scurrying out of the way of the crossfire.
As Weiss furiously blinked and her eyes slowly came back into focus, the image in front of her slowly cleared itself up. She could finally see who was fighting - it was Blake, and the person she was fighting wasn't the militant they were so worried about. It was a woman Weiss didn't recognize, wearing a red dress and keeping Blake on her toes with a sword. Blake was striking wherever she could, but mostly she was using her Semblance to take some hits and run away, and the woman was simply too aggressive to give her enough time to flee.
It didn't help that on top of her clear mastery of the sword, every now and then the woman would throw a fireball of all things. From the looks of it, she had infused her clothes with Fire Dust and was using it to cut off Blake's escape routes any time she got too far away to strike. It was working, and Blake was clearly in a tough position.
Though not for much longer if Weiss had anything to say about it.
As Weiss stood up, she managed to make eye contact with Blake for a brief moment, which was all the two of them needed. As soon as they locked eyes, Blake used her Semblance one final time to escape from the woman and land next to Weiss, at which point the two of them immediately began their signature attack: Checkmate.
As they both moved forward to attack as one, the woman pulled out a second sword to deflect both of their attacks at once. Unfortunately for them, she adjusted flawlessly. As Weiss and Blake timed their strikes so they were never attacking at the same time to force her to think and act as quickly as possible, she kept deflecting every strike, whether it was Weiss's forward rapier stabs or Blake's lighting-quick slices, and even the occasional use of Blake's clones did nothing to create an opening. There were only two upsides - if they kept up the assault, they could force her to retreat, and their constant melee barrage meant she had no time to throw around fireballs anymore.
After only a few seconds of this, Blake let another clone take a hit, but instead of continuing to deflect, the woman finally used her flames once more. This time, it wasn't offensively; instead, she used them as propulsion to back away slightly, putting some distance between them. Weiss and Blake were ready to close the distance once more, but before they could, they heard an explosion right above their heads.
As Weiss looked up, she made several conclusions within the span of a few seconds. First, they were standing underneath the hook of the crane Blake had used a few moments ago to cross over the Dust pile. Second, an explosion had just gone off, presumably having been fired at the hook. Third, a very large container was falling right on top of them.
On pure instinct, Weiss quickly threw some glyphs both on top of her and Blake and directly underneath the falling container, using a small amount of Gravity Dust to stop the container's fall. As Blake jumped out of the way, the container came to a sudden halt mere inches over their head, giving Weiss only a second to step behind the container before letting the glyphs fall.
As the container fell to the ground, Weiss counted their lucky stars that their enemy didn't ambush them while they were distracted. Though dropping the container could've killed them and ended the confrontation, this separation was exactly what she wanted - with no enemy combatants on their side of the container, now was the perfect chance to gather their forces and flee.
As Weiss regathered her bearings from the fall and the fight, she turned to Blake, anger and fear warring for control of her face. "What were you thinking running in alone like that, you dolt?! You could've gotten yourself killed!"
However, before Blake could reply, both of them were stopped cold as they heard what sounded like a loud groan. As both of them realized the sound was coming from the crate that had fallen, they slowly turned toward it, all thoughts of escaping momentarily forgotten. Before either of them could move, the crate slowly lifted off the ground, a black glow surrounding it.
A black glow that was familiar, but impossible. That was Pyrrha's Semblance at work, but Pyrrha was back on campus. Her Semblance couldn't be here if she wasn't.
First, my glyphs went out of control, and now Pyrrha's Semblance is being used. What on Remnant is going on here?
Weiss knew they should run, that had been her goal the entire time, but before she could even move a muscle, the crate was thrown fifty feet in the air like it weighed nothing. As Weiss watched it arc to the side over the top of the other crates, she saw the dust clear on the ground and reveal what she was beginning to suspect.
The militant was standing there, blue mask as menacing as she expected, with his hands outstretched as if reaching out towards the crate and surrounded by a black glow.
Instinctively, Weiss knew what had happened. Why the glyphs had gone wrong, why this man seemed to be moving all over the docks in record time, why he was able to use Pyrrha's polarity to move the crate out of the way - there was only one logical explanation.
But before she could even begin to explain it, she heard a loud and familiar scream. The man heard it too, and as he looked to the right, he was hit in the face by a flaming ball of yellow. The man was sent rolling across the ground from the sudden punch backed up by the force of a 12-gauge shotgun, all augmented by an absolutely furious Yang Xiao Long.
Weiss should have been excited to get backup from her third teammate. Combined, the three of them could either force the man into a retreat as they seemed to have done to the woman, or they could hold the line and retreat themselves. Either way, they'd get away and put this disaster to an end.
Instead, Weiss was filled with nothing but dread.
"Yang, don't!", she yelled. "We need to go, now!"
As she feared, Yang didn't even react to anything she said. Between her heavy breathing, red eyes, and flaming hair, Weiss could only dread what was coming next because of Yang's ill-timed temper tantrum.
As Yang launched herself at the man's downed form, Weiss and Blake looked at each other and mentally sighed. They couldn't leave now, not while their teammate was dragging out the battle, but Yang's rage often made it hard for her to distinguish friend from foe, which meant that intervening between them could just make it worse. They couldn't fight and they couldn't flee.
All they could do was wait for one of them to come out on top.
And after Weiss had finally realized what made this man so powerful, she had a sinking feeling that Yang wouldn't be the one to win.
Everything that had happened tonight had made Yang angrier and angrier and angrier until everything had finally exploded. It wasn't enough that her partner had jumped into an active hostage situation because she couldn't figure out how she felt about the White Fang. It wasn't enough that Sun had ignored her sister and jumped in after her like the lovesick puppy he was. It wasn't enough that Weiss's glyphs had somehow sent her flying at what felt like Bumblebee's top speed, slamming her head first into a crate.
No, what had finally set her off was standing back up, glancing at her makeshift landing zone, and seeing a cluster of strands of her hair on the ground.
That was the last straw. Her teammate causing chaos and an enemy slamming her against shipping crates were all pretty par for the course, but no one touched the hair! Even her little sister had learned that the hard way when Crescent Rose had done the unthinkable.
Though she had felt bad enough to shell out for a gallon of milk for Ruby while she recovered.
Yang reacted the way she always did when someone touched her hair - her Semblance, powered by the bad landing she took, activated instantly, turning her eyes red and setting her ablaze.
She didn't know who the hell that guy was, but she was going to make sure he never hurt any of them again.
Using her gauntlets, Yang launched herself in the air towards the other side of the docks. She landed on a shipping crate in a three-point landing, quickly taking a look around at her surroundings. Looking down at the ground, she realized she was looking at the main Dust pile, with Sun battling around eight members of the White Fang. The man she was looking for was gone, and since he hadn't been where she landed, he had to be further into the docks than she was now.
She hadn't crossed over the main action of the heist, but Sun looked to be handling himself, so with another blast of her gauntlets, Yang launched herself into the air over the pile, landing on the other side and sprinting on top of crates towards where she could hear more fighting.
As she jumped from one crate to another, getting close to the battle she could hear, she suddenly saw a shipping crate being thrown into the air, arcing away from her and towards the water. No one on her team was capable of pulling that off, so it had to be the man she was after.
And as she finally reached the edge of the crates and looked down at the ground, she saw she was right. The man was standing across from Blake and Weiss, a hand outstretched to make it clear he had just thrown the crate. He was now looking towards her teammates, clearly preparing for an attack.
It was time for her to introduce herself, and Yang knew exactly how she would do that.
With a scream to let out all of the rage swirling within her, Yang jumped off the create straight towards the man. He had just enough time to turn and see her flying towards him before she punched him right in the face, firing her gauntlet alongside the punch just for good measure. The combined force of a Semblance-enhanced punch and a shotgun to the face sent him rolling across the ground, finally slowing to a stop about 40 feet away.
It was a good first move, but if he was allowed to regain himself, he could turn the tide, so she had to follow up as fast as possible.
Completely missing Weiss's attempt to retreat, Yang leaped forward, shooting behind her to give her even more force. As she closed in on the man, he got back up just in time to receive the punch, taking it in the gut and managing to stay relatively still.
From there, Yang couldn't let up. With her Semblance enhancing her speed and strength, Yang threw as many punches as she possibly could as fast as she could. Right hand to his stomach, left hand to his face, right hand to his shoulder, left hand to his ribs, every inch she could hit became a target. The man, aside from letting out a few groans, stood like a wall, but she could see that he wasn't able to reach his guns because of the assault, so she kept it up as long as she could.
However, as she felt her Semblance beginning to wane, she knew she had to act fast. Stopping her beatdown for only a millisecond, Yang reared back her right fist and threw it right at the man's visor, using one more shotgun blast to augment it. The man clearly wasn't expecting a hit straight to the face after the assault on his body, and he was sent flying back once more, only stopping when he landed against a shipping crate. He lay there, trying to stand up only to fall down once more.
Now was the time to finish him off.
With the last shotgun shell she had in her right gauntlet, Yang threw herself at the man, who was still shakily trying to get back on his feet. Closing the distance almost instantaneously, Yang called forth the last vestiges of her Semblance and threw one more punch right at his head, ready to finish this so they could get out of there.
And without looking up from the ground, the man caught her fist in his hand without so much as a flinch.
Words could barely describe the pure shock that rushed through Yang in that moment. Not because her fist was caught by someone else; as proud and confident as she was, she wasn't arrogant enough to think she was the strongest person on Remnant or anything like that (Pyrrha beat that out of her on a weekly basis). What shocked her was that, as the man slowly turned his blue visor up to look at her, there were flames coming out around him.
Pure black flames surrounded his entire body, especially around his head, like the silhouette of a demon come to Remnant. Without flinching or making a sound, he stood up to his full height, holding Yang's fist in his hand all the while. As Yang started using her other hand in a desperate attempt to get him to let go, he continued to stare at her, blue-screened visor flickering all the while, until he let out a small chuckle.
As she saw the black flames continue to pour out from his body, Yang could only stare wide-eyed in shock as the man said "My turn" and punched her in the stomach.
As soon as that punch connected, time seemed to slow for Yang. While she was sent flying across the docks, she could only think of one thing.
That was her Semblance.
He didn't have a very similar Semblance, or another strength-based Semblance, or anything like her Semblance at all.
He had her Semblance.
It was the only explanation for what had happened. Somehow, some way, he had her Semblance, and in her furious beatdown, she had charged it right up. It was the exact strategy she used against sparring partners like Ren who loved the "death by a thousand cuts" method - take a few small hits at first, use them to charge up her Semblance, and then go on the offensive with even more strength than before. That tried and true strategy had won her dozens of spars in Goodwitch's class.
But how could he have the exact same one? Even the flames surrounding his body mimicked the flames that she had when her Semblance activated. It wasn't just the same idea that taking hits stored up power for him to use, it was literally identical, and that couldn't be possible. Even a hereditary Semblance like Weiss's couldn't be identical - Weiss had gone on and on about how her sister could use summons like it was nothing, yet she had never been able to figure it out herself. It just wasn't possible.
And yet, just before she was slammed into a shipping crate for the second time that night, the only thing she could think was "so that's what that feels like".
Her crash into the crate was inelegant and harsh. Slamming into the crate and then falling to the ground, Yang tried to take stock of the situation, but her head was spinning from the impact and her vision was doubled. She had no doubt that if she had any Aura left after her Semblance was thrown back at her, then it was only in minuscule amounts, and it was desperately trying to prevent a concussion.
All that meant that, while she could see the man pull out a pistol and aim it straight at her, there was nothing she could actually do about it. She couldn't even stand, much less dodge out of the way. All she could do was hope that one of her teammates was nearby and they might be able to do something - maybe Weiss could throw up a glyph, or Blake could pull her out of the way with her ribbon. With how weak her Aura was, this could be it if the bullets hit.
Neither of those things happened, but instead, she had an even bigger stroke of luck. A purple glyph appeared in front of her, absorbing all of the bullets with small explosions. As the man stood there, seemingly confused, Yang slowly managed to get back onto her feet, looking on top of the crate behind her to greet who she knew to be her savior.
As she expected, Glynda Goodwitch was standing there with her riding crop extended towards the man like a sword, a fierce look on her face as she gave a death glare to the man who dared to shoot at one of her students. With her cape gently billowing in the wind, Yang could only formulate two thoughts.
The first was that Weiss's SOS call had clearly worked and their backup had arrived. Now, all they had to do was get Sun and Ruby and then retreat. Once they were a safe distance away, they could send out another ping from their scrolls and get an actual evac sent from Beacon.
The second thought was that Professor Goodwitch kinda looked like one of those superheroes from the comics Ruby read all the time. The cape definitely made an impression.
As the man slowly lowered his gun back to the ground, Goodwitch surveyed the scene with her typical impassive look, glaring at the man who shot at one of her students before looking down at Yang. Yang could see how quickly Goodwitch surveyed her for injuries, but she didn't get to say anything before her two teammates were suddenly standing next to her.
As they leaned down to check on their teammate, Yang watched as Goodwitch jumped down to the ground and got between them and the man, her arm and riding crop still held out as though it were a sword. Of course, in the hands of a professional huntress, a riding crop might as well have been a sword, so it was a moot point.
Yang could barely hear anything over the ringing in her ears, meaning all she could do was watch as the two combatants squared up while her teammates got her to her feet to drag her away. The man put his finger to his ear like he was talking in a commlink or something, only for Goodwitch to say something back. After that, she tightened her fighting pose, clearly ready to pounce at the man.
But before she could Yang was finally able to find her voice again while she was being dragged away. Just before she was out of sight of Goodwitch, she finally told the professor the man's secret.
"He can copy Semblances".
Goodwitch stilled, clearly hearing her despite the distance. As Weiss and Blake continued pulling her away, Goodwitch turned in their direction, still keeping that same determined look on her face. She said something back, but Yang couldn't hear her or read lips, so all she could do was repeat exactly what she already said, this time slightly louder.
"He can copy Semblances!"
Goodwitch's eyes widened for only a moment, so quickly returning to normal that Yang wondered if she had even seen it correctly. However, with Yang's piece done, Weiss and Blake had pulled her away from the fight and around the corner of the crates, separating the two of them before she could continue any further.
If Yang had to estimate, it would take her about thirty more seconds of walking before she'd be able to stand on her own, but the last dredges of her Aura were finally beginning to heal the damage to her midsection that punch had done, and once that was through, it could finally work on her head injury.
However, before she could quite get back on her feet, Weiss and Blake were slowly lowering her down to rest against another crate. Even before she was all the way down, Blake had already let go so she could sprint back toward the warehouse, leaving Weiss to finish the job of getting Yang to the ground.
That set off every alarm bell in Yang's head.
Still struggling to hold her head up, Yang managed to get her head all the way up so that it was leaning against the crate, still letting her recover despite the strain. As she quietly whispered "Where's she going", she could still only barely hear herself over the ringing in her ears.
That slam into the crate had dented her even more than she thought it did.
As Weiss put her face in Yang's view, the world finally started to clear up. In the distance, she could hear more gunshots and explosions, no doubt Goodwitch taking on the man who had shot at her. She could vaguely hear a bullhead, but she couldn't tell if it was arriving, leaving, or just flying overhead.
But above all, her hearing had finally cleared enough that she could hear Weiss's words, even if it sounded like it was coming from the end of a mile-long tunnel. As Weiss's face showed a fear Yang had never seen her show before, her frantic words finally registered in Yang's head.
"Ruby's not responding!"
Her adrenaline was spiking, but all Yang could hope was that it helped her heal faster. As it was, she could still barely stand.
There was her sister in danger, and there she was unable to do anything to protect her. It was the trip with the wagon all over again.
It had all happened so fast. She was ready to give Sun cover fire, truly she was, but then the Fang and the military guy had gotten so close she couldn't take a shot.
Then, out of complete nowhere, the man was standing right next to her knocking her baby out of her hands.
Without Crescent Rose, she wasn't a threat. She knew this, but there was still nothing she could do to counter it. He just moved too fast.
In another instant, he had her by the throat, lifting her with one hand until she was no longer standing on the ground. Without traction from the ground, she couldn't use her Semblance to get away, and with both hands trying to pry his own off of her throat, she couldn't break out of his hold either.
The man's cold electronic mask stared at her, but even without seeing his face, Ruby could feel his pure hatred raging through his every action. It was like she was gazing into the face of a demon sent to drag her down to Hell.
She had faced countless creatures of darkness, yet somehow he had the evilest energy she had ever seen.
As though he was discussing the weather and not choking her into unconsciousness, the man started to talk to her.
"You're going to give a message for me", he said. "I want you to tell your Headmaster that she's going to come for him where he least expects it."
Ruby had no idea what the hell that was supposed to mean or how he expected her to remember this later. Right now she was still trying not to die. He continued anyway.
"Then, I want you to give a message to Pyrrha Nikos."
Pyrrha? Why did this guy want her to talk to Pyrrha of all people?
"Tell her that the Arkham Knight is going to show the world she isn't as invincible as she thinks."
Ruby had so many questions. Why was she being used as the messenger? What did any of this mean? What did Pyrrha have to do with this? Who on Remnant was this guy?
But she never got the chance to ask any of those questions, because as soon as the man was done talking, he smashed his forehead into hers. Her Aura should've taken the hit - it would've hurt like hell, but it wouldn't have caused any immediate or severe injury.
Instead, she was knocked out instantly and dropped to the ground.
The ability to copy Semblances. It's difficult to overstate just how incredibly powerful such an ability is. Every Huntsman and Huntress depends on their Semblance to support their abilities; their weapon, fighting style, and Semblance are all crucial parts of making each fighter unique and strong enough to survive the Grimm.
And the Arkham Knight could simply look at someone using their most unique ability, a piece of their own soul that manifests itself to protect its user, and take it for himself. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: it was a violation unlike anything I've ever experienced, even after everything else I've faced since him.
How do you defeat someone who can take literally every special ability they've ever seen, the same abilities that people use to justify calling us "superheroes", and turn them against you in the blink of an eye? Where do you even start to combat such a threat?
In our case, the answer was to call in the strongest Huntress we knew.