*Legend 5*
Bringin' down the house
...
Clang! The Fallen Vandal caught Weiss with a blow that she only just managed to get her auto rifle in front of. She regained her balance as she surveyed the situation before her. By now, four Fallen Vandals had surrounded her on all four compass directions, but she was far from worried. Weiss focused her mind as she prepared herself for battle.
'Remember your training, Weiss,' she told herself. 'Head up; stock shoulder back; right foot forward...wait, not that far forward,' Weiss quickly corrected her posture as the Vandals closed in tighter around her. 'Slow your breathing; wait for the right time to strike; and...' While her left hand remained firmly gripped on her rifle, Weiss's right hand began to glow with a spark of Void energy; her Scatter Grenade. She tensed her arm as she prepared to launch the projectile at her enemies. 'Now!'
VROOOON!
Ruby had blinked out of the clear blue nowhere to strike the very Vandal that Weiss herself was targeting. Weiss was forced to violently alter the trajectory of her grenade as a result; sending it hurtling into the ceiling, where it destroyed a hanging light fixture. The battlefield was soon bathed in live sparks and fizzing wires.
Ruby, distracted by the commotion, was met with a Vandal blow that knocked her directly into Weiss. "Hey, watch it!" She shouted.
"Excuse me?" Weiss said indignantly. "You attacked out ov turn; I could have killed you!"
Ruby rolled her eyes. "You'll have to try alot harder than that..." she grumbled.
By this time, a flock of Dregs had joined in with their Vandal comrades, surrounding the girls on all sides. They readied their small shock pistols as they formed up closer together, chattering wildly with the anticipation of battle.
Weiss recomposed herself as Ruby loaded a fresh magazine into her Psi Umbra. The Guardians and creatures of Darkness sized each other up, waiting for the other party to make the first move. However, that move never came.
A sudden flare of wild electricity from the damaged light fixture above had ignited the ceiling. The power surge quickly spread through the wiring in the walls and set the hall ablaze. Everything was lost in a haze of smoke and confused shouting from The Fallen, as Weiss took the opportunity to beat a hasty retreat. "We have to go!" She grabbed Ruby's arm and dragged her from the scene, not caring in the slightest about her surprised resistance.
They ran through a series of corridors and passages, each looking increasingly unfamiliar, until they were sure they had put enough distance between themselves and The Fallen.
Weiss doubled over with her hands on her knees as she gasped for breath. Ruby, who thanks to her stamina training wasn't winded in the slightest, chose to vent her frustration directly onto her partner. "What was that?!" She cried. "That should have been easy!"
Weiss had recovered at that point and was ready to offer her rebuttal. "Well perhaps if you had exercised even the slightest amount of caution with the placement ov your blink strike, I would not have set the Cosmodrome on fire!"
Ruby scoffed at the statement. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I'm just surprised that someone who talks so much, would communicate so little during an encounter," Weiss said back, her irritation growing by the second.
Ruby folded her arms across her chest. "Well I'm sorry that you need my help to win a fight! I'm just fine on my own!"
"Well congratulations on being the strongest child to sneak your way into The Tower. Bravo!" Weiss put an extra emphasis on the last word, strongly rolling the 'r' as her native language would dictate.
In her head, Ruby knew Weiss had done this to get rise out of her; to make her lose her temper. And she fell for it; hook, line, and sinker. In her temper, Ruby pulled her silver-bladed hunting knife from her belt and charged it with a quick flash of her Arc energy. She sliced the electric blade clean through a nearby standing pillar, causing the ceiling above them to list just slightly. Her anger vented, Ruby followed Weiss through the corridors, only to be lead into an entirely different kind of problem...
...
Back in Vale's Tower, Glenda Goodwitch and The Speaker, Ozpin were busy monitoring the progress of their Guardian-recruit pairs. Ozpin tapped a few keys on his scroll as he switched between different feeds offered by each of the numerous Ghost-cams he had scattered about the worlds of their population.
The pair of Gunslingers, lead by Noel Vermillion, had just touched down on Venus, there to further examine the mysterious Vault of Glass. Ozpin had always kept a rather close eye on her since her initiation six years ago, and had watched her grow to become one of the leading advocates of her faction, The Future War Cult.
The Titan-Hunter pairing of Yang Xiao Long and Blake Belladonna were already speeding across the gray plains of The Moon, on the hunt to eliminate Fallen Servitors.
But even amongst all this, there was one pair that Ozpin was keeping a particularly close watch on. And it was then that his partner Glenda spoke her report. "Our last pair has made landfall, sir; Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee." Glenda shook her head in pity. "Poor girl," she said. "I can't possibly imagine those two getting along. Still, she's better off than having no one at all." This got a small rise out of Ozpin, as he looked up from his scroll to give her a 'You really think so?' kind of look. "I don't care what you see in her, that Ruby girl is not ready for this level of combat." Glenda closed her scroll as she looked out of the edge of Ozpin's open-air office and directly at the glorious view of The Traveler that it offered.
"I guess we'll find out soon enough," she said, half to herself. "At their current pace, they should reach the Skywatch in just a few minutes." Glenda turned to Ozpin in question. "Speaking of which, what did you set as the time limit this year?" Glenda's question had fallen on deaf ears. "Ozpin?"
It seemed to be no use. Ozpin had left off listening as he was absorbed in the sudden drama that had formed on the screen of his scroll. He tapped into the Ghost-cam's audio feed as he watched the events unfold.
...
Weiss had been pacing back and forth between the same two corridors for about five minutes now as she attempted to re-orientate herself in the wake of the Fallen attack. Ruby sat with her back to a wall, picking at a spot on the concrete floor with the muzzle of her rifle as she watched Weiss and her march of progress. "It's definitely this way," Weiss said for about the one hundred millionth time. She quickly retraced her steps as she turned in a different direction. "I mean, this way. It's definitely this way." Ruby knew that she was jut putting on a brave face and false confidence in an attempt to save face as the leader of this mission, but Ruby had long since lost faith in her. Weiss stopped just in front of Ruby's position and said, "Alright, it's official; we passed it."
Ruby finally picked herself up from the floor, fed up with this girl's bitchy know-it-all-ness. "Why can't you just admit that you have no idea where we're going?" She asked her.
"Because I know exactly where we're going!" Weiss retorted. "We're going to...Der Skywatch!" Ruby let out an exasperated groan, her impatience growing all the time. "Oh stop it!" Weiss snapped. "You don't know where we are either."
"Well at least I'm not pretending like I know everything," Ruby said, really driving the point home.
Weiss almost couldn't believe the audacity of this girl. "And what is that supposed to mean?" She said.
Ruby had finally snapped at that point. "It means you're a big stupid jerk and I hate you!"
Weiss whipped around with a groan. "Just keep moving," she said.
Ruby had the feeling that Weiss meant the conversation to end with that statement, but she wasn't going to let her off that easily. She was primed for a fight at that point and was all set to tell this little princess a thing or two; she even had a fairly good Weiss impersonation at the ready, but just then, Weiss's Ghost made an appearance between them. "You know, I could just lead you two to the Skywatch..." she said.
The two girls shared a look with one another. "Uh...right!" Weiss said, recovering first. "Lead the way, Windig."
And so, with the mediation of the Ghost, Windig, the trio made their way through the snaking buildings and tunnels that made up The Cosmodrome. Along the way, Weiss marveled at all the advanced computer equipment and lamented not having the time to fully investigate and play around with it.
Ruby just wanted to shoot something.
It was that thought that had given her a mental pause. So far, save for the encounter earlier, the Fallen resistance had been pretty much minimal, or non-existent altogether. Ruby remembered Cayde- saying that the Fallen house here was very small, and Weiss's inspection of the computer terminals upon their arrival to this place attesting to that theory. But Ruby couldn't suppress the suspicion that they were being lulled into a false sense of security by their enemies' relative absence.
Ruby didn't tell Weiss any of this as she was busying herself by playing the role of tour guide; telling Ruby of the functions of the various monitors and instruments that adored this place. As if Ruby didn't already know.
And finally, the two emerged out into the daylight after what felt like far too long. They were both hit with the same sight at the same time. "Wow! Just look at that Array dish!" Ruby said. Towering before them, like some colossal steel butterfly, was the Skywatches's array dish, set to the fully open position. This dish alone was capable of sending and receiving signals from all of their populated worlds.
"Erstaunlich..." Weiss breathed. Weiss recovered herself as she remembered their mission, which was not sight seeing. She took to examining every face of every wall that surrounded them. Seeing nothing on their eye level, Weiss performed a small hop in the air and then propelled herself upwards on a cushion of Void energy; her Glide. Weiss inspected the roof of the work shed she was now on and still couldn't find what she was looking for.
"What are you doing?" Ruby said, finally giving in to curiosity.
"We're looking for a Fallen house, right?" She said from atop the roof. "The best way to know we're near it is to find it's marking." Weiss then launched into a memorized rehearsal of what she knew about Fallen markings. "Every house has it's own marking unique only to that house, and no two are the same. The rank of the house's members can also be determined by these markings."
"House markings..." Ruby mused. "What, like this one?" She pointed her thumb at the wall she had been standing by the whole time, which bore an ugly red insignia of some kind.
Weiss's shoulders fell. "When did you? Never mind..." She said. She Glided down to Ruby's position to inspect the strange marking. Here, Weiss was in her element. Her Cryptarch training kicked in as she set about tapping keys on her scroll and setting Windig to scan the mark. Ruby remained silent during all of this, not wanting to disturb Weiss while she was in the zone.
After a series of clicks and swipes across her scroll screen, Weiss's analysis of the mark was complete, and she was horrified at what she found. Ruby picked up on her sudden tension. "What?" She asked.
If at all possible, Weiss's skin had flushed a shade whiter. "This house..." she whispered. "There's a Fallen Archon here..."
"Are you sure?" Was Ruby's response.
"Definitely," Weiss said. "We can't handle this alone. We have to go back."
"Are you serious!?" Ruby protested. "After coming all this way, you wanna turn back now?"
"Ruby, this is an Archon we're talking about here!" Weiss yelled, trying to get Ruby to see reason. "We are not equipped to handle this ourselves! We will go back to The Tower, tell The Vanguard what we saw, and they will organize a group of Guardians who can handle this."
Ruby was fuming. "I am not about to fail my initiation because you want to turn tail!" She practically screamed.
"Ruby..." Weiss had calmed down, she was now the exact opposite of Ruby's demeanor. Weiss rested her hand on the younger girl's shoulder. "I admire your courage, I do, but we're out of our league here. Not everyone passes initiation the first time. Some of our finest Guardians had to try three times to get in. Maybe, seeing this abnormal circumstance, they can arrange another test for you right away."
Of course, everything that Weiss just said made absolute sense. The problem was that Ruby wasn't listening. She shrugged off Weiss's hand and turned into the service building of the Skywatch. "Ruby stop!" Ruby ignored the call and kept marching. She honestly didn't care what Weiss would do to stop her. If she insisted on holding her back, then she would have no qualms about fighting her. Ruby had made this trip to become a Guardian, and Weiss Schnee, or some Fallen Archon were not going to stop her.
But just then, she stopped herself. Just outside the wide entrance to the Skywatches's control room, did Ruby stop dead in her tracks. Weiss had finally caught up to her at that moment and was set to give Ruby a talking to, but Ruby's raised finger in the air had stopped her questioning. Every one of Ruby's senses were on high alert. She slowed her breathing as she listened, looked, and even tasted the scene around them. Being a Hunter, Ruby could attune herself to any terrain with ease; she could see things differently, and envision the possibilities that her surroundings offered. Weiss had enough of being kept in the dark. "What's the matter?" She said.
Ruby motioned for Weiss to keep her voice down. "We're surrounded," she whispered in response.
"What?"
"We're being hunted," Ruby said, with a perverse relish. Weiss did a quick sweep of the area with her eyes, but saw nothing that Ruby was alluding to. "Weiss, go that way," Ruby said, pointing off towards her left hand side.
Weiss was set to argue, she was the leader of this mission, and did not appreciate taking orders from a recruit. But Ruby was intense, Weiss had honestly forgotten that despite Ruby's lack of a Vanguard rank, she had spent her entire life prior under intense training and preparation. She was ready for this.
Weiss nodded slowly and did as she was told, priming her auto rifle as she did so. Ruby herself continued strait into the massive opening that lead into the control room. She took slow steps, minimizing the sound of her footfalls. Once inside, she surveyed the large area with a few turns of her head, calculating every hiding place her enemies could have taken up. But just then, was when she saw it. A lone Dreg had wandered into the open. Ruby immediately swooped behind a nearby computer terminal, it gave her the perfect vantage point to observe the Dreg while remaining unseen.
The alien creature wandered about the space rather slowly; it clearly sensed no danger here. Boy was it wrong.
From her stakeout behind the terminal, Ruby flipped the hood of her red cloak over her head. Then she slowly unclasped her Psi Umbra-1 from her back and set about loading a fresh magazine and cocking the hammer. She did all this with slow and carefully purposeful motions, as not to alert her prey with all the metallic clicks and clangs the actions normally made. She set her rifle's stock to her shoulder as she took careful aim at her target. Time seemed to slow down around her as she calculated her shot. She trained the sights on the Dreg's head; one burst was all it would take. Ruby's finger tightened on the trigger, but before she could take the shot, there was a sudden phenomena to her left.
Unbeknownst to Ruby, there was an invisible Stealth Vandal that had been stalking her since her entrance to this place. Ruby, her eyes on the Dreg the whole time, had not seen it until it had come into her range. In one swift moment, the Vandal dropped it's camouflage. Ruby and the Vandal seemed to stare at one another for an eternity. Then, a wry smile lifted one corner of Ruby's mouth. "Clever girl..." she whispered.
In the next instant, the Vandal lunged at Ruby, it's laser cutlass slicing the air. But Ruby's incredible Hunter reflexes allowed her to easily evade the blow with a neat back flip. Whilst in mid-flip, Ruby unclasped her silver knife from her belt, and as soon as her feet hit the floor again, did she spring forward and bury the blade into the Vandal's throat.
The creature screamed and toppled over dead, but Ruby had no time to savor the victory. The Vandal's death scream had served as the alarm to the rest of the Fallen house, and in no time it's occupants came screaming up from every corner of the building. Ruby loosed her pulse rifle into the crowd of Dregs, felling as many as she could with quick precision bursts, but there were far too many of them. The Dregs returned fire, the electric bullets from their shock pistols burning holes into her chosen cover. "Weiss, I'm pinned down! I need help!" Ruby called to her partner.
And on cue, did Weiss respond. From up on high came a bolt of bright purple energy. It landed about dead center of the mass of Fallen and shattered in every direction like razor-sharp bits of Void glass. It was her Scatter Grenade.
Six of the Dregs were launched away from the blast zone, slamming into the walls. Weiss Glided gracefully from her position and opened up on the remainder of the enemies with her Marshal-A1. CHIT-CHIT-CHIT-CHIT-CHIT-CHOU! They fell easily to the automatic fire. Seeing the immediate threat extinguished, the two girls met in the center of the room. Weiss gave Ruby a small looking-over. "Are you alright?" She asked her.
That was the first concern for her well-being that Ruby had even seen from the girl, and it made her re-think her opinion of her...almost. "Never better," Ruby said with a smile. "Thanks for your help."
"I's my job," was Weiss's Weiss-like response. "Now do you think we can leave, before-"
Weiss's sentence was cut short by a sudden sound that echoed through out the control room. It was like thunder, and was accompanied by a vibrating rumble that shook the floor beneath their feet. And then, the far wall of the building exploded. Bits of cement and plaster rained down around them, marking the violent entrance of the houses' resident Archon. The creature was well over twelve feet tall, with four long arms, two of which held and enormous shrapnel launcher, primed in their direction.
Ruby was the first to get her act back together. "Holy Sh-!"
"Shoot it!" Weiss screamed.
They both emptied their rifles into the beast. The Archon laughed; it literally laughed at them; their basic weaponry doing little more than tickling it. The Archon returned fire, blasting them with red-hot bits of metal from it's weapon.
Weiss and Ruby sprinted behind a wide standing pillar for cover. The thunderous footfalls of their enemy was close behind. Ruby turned in concern to Weiss, who had taken a direct hit form the shrapnel gun and was one one one knee, hurting badly. "Weiss, are you alright?!" She panicked.
Weiss smiled through the pain. "I may not move as quick as you do," She grimaced. She took a deep breath and stood up again, all of her agony seemingly gone. "But I'm a Warlock; I recover fast."
Ruby nodded. "So what do we do about fugly over here?"
"Fight or flight," Weiss said. "And I'm choosing flight. Windig!" Weiss's Ghost appeared in her palm. "Send my Javelin from orbit, we need to get out of here!"
Windig acted on the order, twirling the edges of her shell about as she processed the command. But she ran into a problem. "It's no good!" She beeped. "The signal from the array dish is interfering with my own! I can't get through to the ship!"
Weiss's eyes widened. "Was!?" She cried.
There was no other choice now. Ruby readied her Psi Umbra. "Flight is out," she said. "Time to fight."
Weiss put her back to Ruby's as she readied her fusion rifle. "What do we do?" She said. Weiss decided to shelve her pride and put her faith into Ruby, who clearly had the much greater combat experience.
"How's your super energy?" Ruby asked. She was formulating this plan in a hurry as the Archon was closing on their position.
"It's ready to go," Weiss responded.
"I'll draw it's attention, and you bomb it from behind; it can't endure a direct hit if it doesn't see it coming."
"What if it can take a direct hit?" Weiss questioned.
"Then I got plan B," Ruby said. Too bad she had no idea what plan B was.
"What about a plan C?"
"I always wanted that gun..." Ruby said dreamily.
"Ruby!" The Archon had finally found them, and it was not happy.
"Go!" The girls dashed around opposite sides of the pillar. Ruby popped a few rounds at the creature, trying to divert it's attention, which worked like a charm. The Archon lumbered after her, firing shrapnel in her wake as Ruby lead it around in circles, waiting for Weiss to fulfill her part of the plan.
Which didn't take long.
Ruby could already see the enormous bolt of Void energy flying across the room, aimed true at it's target. Ruby looked the creature right in it's eye, or 'eyes', and said, "Sucks to be you!" VROOOON! She performed a quick blink out of the Archon's range of sight. And before it even knew she was gone, did the Nova Bomb slam into it's back.
There was a deafening and blinding explosion of purple energy that engulfed the Archon and nearly leveled the wall it was standing next to. Ruby and Weiss stood there panting for breath as the aftermath of the Void explosion slowly began to dissipate...to reveal a frightening sight.
The Archon was still alive.
However, it was caught up in the swirling vortex of energy that the Nova Bomb had left in it's wake. The creature writhed, twisted and screamed as it desperately tried to free itself from vortex. This was Ruby's chance. With no hesitation, she charged her knife and her body with a current of Arc energy and sprinted toward her target. The Archon saw her coming, but was powerless to stop her advance.
Ruby was an electric blur as she zipped back and forth, slicing every bit of the alien she could reach. The Void energy had vanished at this point, but the Archon was caught in a whole new kind of vortex. Ruby was merciless as she cut the Fallen leader down to it's knees. And then with a final lead, Ruby unleashed her "Showstopper", sending a vacuum of Arc energy clean through it's neck, severing it's head completely. Ruby landed gracefully on the floor, her red cloak billowing behind her as the Archon crumbled into ashes and then was gone entirely.
Weiss looked on at all of this from the other side of the room. It was only now did she realize that her mouth was hanging open. Ruby sheathed her knife as Weiss walked out to meet her. "That was incredible..." she breathed.
"No," Ruby said. "That, was easy." Maybe now Ruby had finally gotten her partner's respect. From the look on her face, she had that, and a little more. She looked Weiss right in the eye with a sly smile and said, "Guess who just became a Guardian?"
And they both laughed, partly from the joke, and partly due to relief that the mission was over, and more importantly, had been successful. Even in her elation, Ruby's thoughts quickly turned to her sister Yang, hoping that her mission was going just as well. But there was nothing to do now but to return to The Tower and wait. Today had been a long day.
*End of Legend 5*
...
A/N:
Okay, a few notes on the text here. After reading a well-worded critique of my story by user KCNederland, I decided to try to distinguish Weiss' spoken German characteristics a little bit more, as that was the character he or she, had the biggest gripe with.
As you have noticed, Some of Weiss' spoken letters have been italicized, this denotes their proper German pronunciation. For those who don't know, in German, 'W' at the beginning of a word is pronounced as 'V'; 'V' at the beginning of a word is pronounced as 'F' ; and 'S' is pronounced as 'Z'. Also, whenever other characters speak her name, this will also be italicized, as her name is literally pronounced as "Vice". And a final German note, The name of Weiss' Ghost, 'Windig' means 'Windy' in English.
Whew! Language class over! Just want to give a thank you to all the recent faves and followers, and anyone who takes the time to give my story a read. I'll post again...at some point.
-B.D. Skunkworks