A/N: Man did college run me through the wringer last semester, and combined with some good ol' fashioned writer's block. I'm finally finished with the docks heist and ready to move on to more setup moments!

Excerpt from "The Age of Heroes", written by Weiss Schnee

As the battle raged on, the only consolation was that we had called for backup from Beacon, so we were simply stalling for time or a retreat rather than an outright victory. That's hard to call a major consolation when your leader is taken out in the middle of battle while you're separated from them and then you can't contact them by the time you're finally making that retreat.

Professor Goodwitch's arrival should have been the arbiter of good tidings, but instead it only made us realize just how far things had gotten out of hand. Even at our most overzealous, we had never actually needed the backup before, and even after the backup arrived, we were still scrambling to make sure our leader was alive, much less in a condition to retreat.

And the entire time, Sun was being held up by half a dozen White Fang grunts, when previously he had been able to defeat upwards of twenty in minutes.

Overall, there's no point in further talking in circles about what happened that night. We lost. We did learn the Arkham Knight's Semblance, but we lost.

The first in a string of losses that would set the stage for that fateful Halloween night.

Glynda's night had been going as well as it could be, all things considered.

Yes, she was still reeling from the information Qrow had provided at the meeting, and she was far from pleased to learn that Tyrian Callows was still alive and potentially active. Ozpin having known that information and not having done a truly thorough follow-up did not help.

But at the end of the day, they had more information than they acted like they did. One of Salem's agents had revealed themselves, a second had been identified, and contrary to James' bullheaded assertions, they had a relatively solid plan of action. They were checking their databases for any potential Semblance user who could match the man's profile, and in the meantime, they were keeping the students on campus without causing a panic. Team CRDL's loss was more than regrettable, but it hadn't been for nothing.

Glynda knew it said something about her that she was willing to put her students' death against the "greater good", but such was the life of a Huntress. She lost colleagues and students every year. It never hurt any less, but she could take some solace knowing that their deaths had aided them, however inadvertently. She would never go along with the propaganda that their deaths weren't in vain because that implied CRDL sacrificed themselves on purpose, but it hadn't left them empty-handed.

There she was, going in circles like she did any time one of her students died. It didn't matter whether it was an active student or someone who graduated ten years ago, it hurt the same every time. The only kind of solace she could ever take was in the times when their deaths weren't for nothing. If that was just her undergoing mental gymnastics, then so be it.

As it was, Glynda was continuing their objective in a new way she'd only just thought of. Beyond detentions and bars, there was another thing that she viewed as a crucial step: informing the local police. The Vale Police Department, despite their issues capturing foes like Roman Torchwick, could still be valuable allies if they were included in any way. Obviously, she couldn't tell them everything, but she could let them know to be on the lookout for reports of a masked military-trained man and that he was to be considered armed and dangerous. Huntsmen cooperating with the police wasn't incredibly common, but the police in Vale had come around over the past decade or so.

Before then, the idea of cooperating with the VPD was incomprehensible. They were legendarily corrupt, with almost every officer being on the take for some local crime lord like Junior Xiong or even the international ones like Malachite. The people lived in fear of them, and the only thing keeping the Huntsmen from intervening was threats from the Council. It was like a Ponzi scheme, with everyone focusing on protecting themselves instead of the people.

Then, one fateful holiday season, the Police Commissioner had been murdered. No one had ever been caught; the suspects had ranged from the likes of Xiong to upstarts like Roman Torchwick because the murder was done so inconspicuously. Glynda didn't know which was more unfortunate for the police - that the killer had never been identified, or the man who replaced the Commissioner.

James Gordon had cleaned up the police department with ruthless efficiency. In five years they'd gone from an extension of the criminal underworld to a group Ozpin had happily called allies.

The meeting she had just come from only reinforced that belief. While Commissioner Gordon had been unable to attend on such short notice, a high-ranking officer named Aaron Cash was, and the meeting was as productive as she had been hoping. Now, the police were on the lookout for the suspect. In the short term, it probably wouldn't mean much, but the more they could restrict his movements, the better.

In the meantime, she was returning to campus. It had been a long day and she'd done all she could, and as she set her foot onto the returning bullhead, she couldn't help but long to finally go to sleep.

And then the SOS had rang out on her scroll.

She didn't even have to look to find out who it was. The SOS system was a borderline archaic function that had been instituted a decade ago after a student had gotten killed in the Emerald Forest during a training attempt gone horribly wrong, but it had literally never been used. The system had far too many downsides to be useful - the location services were spotty at best, the professors could do nothing about where they were when it was activated, and in the time it took a professor to get to the problem, the problem would either resolve itself or the student would be dead. The only reason the system had even been suggested, much less implemented, was just so they could say they did something in the wake of the student's death. There was almost nothing the professors could do and the students knew it, so they simply didn't put themselves in the situations where it would be needed in the first place.

And then Team RWBY joined the Academy and threw all semblance of logic on its head.

In their first year alone, they'd used the SOS system around 15 times throughout their war against the White Fang. Every single time, just like Glynda predicted, the problem would be resolved by the time she got there, and Ms. Rose would justify it by saying "better safe than sorry". In that regard, she agreed with her student, but it never clicked that maybe they shouldn't be put in the situations where it was required in the first place.

In hindsight, Ms. Rose had been grieving too much to care, and the others had been so worried about making it worse that they never stepped in.

For now, all that there was to do was order the bullhead to head toward the SOS's location instead of back to Beacon. Luckily, her reputation proceeded her even with the bullhead pilots and he shifted directions without a word, going from Beacon back towards the dockyards.

The plan was simply to have the bullhead do a fly-by, drop her off, park in any nearby spot it could find, and be ready to extract the Team if necessary. It was the same plan she'd used every other time she had to assist Team RWBY, so no reason to reinvent the wheel now.

As the bullhead sharply banked over the docks, Glynda jumped right out the back, spending only a brief second hovering in the air before she was in free-fall.

As she was falling towards the docks, she had only a few seconds to take in the situation, and what she saw was a mission that had clearly gone out of control. Right away, she knew that this was nothing like the other times Team RWBY had called for her assistance; this time, they were actually going to need it.

She could see Mr. Wukong engaging several members of the White Fang, but he appeared to be holding his own, so she refocused elsewhere. She then saw something infinitely more distressing than Mr. Wukong's situation; Ms. Xiao-Long was currently flying across the docks, having been sent flying by an attack from an opponent.

And as she slammed into one of the shipping crates, Glynda could see that the figure who attacked her was the same man who attacked Team CRDL. This man was here, right here, and attacking more of her students. It was her worst nightmare come to life in a single day.

As she used small glyphs to slow herself down and land on the shipping crate her student had just slammed into, something else briefly caught her eye behind her, and it immediately forced her into a moral dilemma.

Just beyond Mr. Wukong, she could see Roman Torchwick running away with a crate of Dust in each hand. Mr. Wukong had missed it given the fight he was in, meaning the snaky thief had, per usual, managed to sneak away. Now would've been a perfect chance to finally get the thief off the board and interrogate him. For over a year, law enforcement and Ozpin's inner circle had been scratching their heads over how to find him and why he had joined forces with the White Fang in the first place; none of it fit his usual MO or his psychological profile. In short, it made no sense.

But between catching the thief or stopping the other figure from shooting one of her students dead, there was no real decision to make.

As soon as she heard the first gunshot, she immediately turned back around and, with the aid of her Semblance and a little Dust hidden within Disciplinarian, created a light shield in the form of a glyph. The bullets impacted the shield and exploded harmlessly, leaving the man slowly putting down his gun while Ms. Xiao Long's teammates ran over to bring her back to her feet.

As they did so, Glynda jumped to the ground, landing between her student and the assailant. The man reacted immediately, reaching to the side of his head to speak into a comm unit.

"Goodwitch is here. Full retreat, now."

So, the man knew who she was, and the reaction to her arrival was a full retreat. He knew just how capable she was. Good to know.

"If you know who I am", she began, "then you know I'm far from a pushover. You killed several of my students. I will see you brought to justice for that."

The man in front of her laughed, an electronic distortion ringing through the air. "You can try, professor."

The way he said that word, professor, like he was mocking her, was the last straw on her patience. If he thought that going into teaching rather than active duty had slowed her down at all, then he was about to be in for a rude awakening.

However, before she could prepare a barrage to attack him with, she heard a voice from behind her. She could tell it was Ms. Xiao Long, but it was quieter than she had ever seen the rambunctious teenager.

"…Semblances."

So quiet that Glynda couldn't actually hear what she said. Doing her best to keep one eye on the man across from her, even as he stood still as a stone, Glynda turned her head just enough that she could see Ms. Xiao Long being dragged away by two of her teammates. Ms. Rose was nowhere to be seen, but Glynda could only assume she was somewhere in the chaos for now.

"What did you say?", she asked, hoping Ms. Xiao Long would repeat herself.

She looked incredibly delirious. While Glynda could only guess what had happened before she arrived, it was obvious she was nursing a dangerous head injury. She couldn't tell if her Aura was still functioning, so she had to rely on her students getting their teammate to safety - but Ms. Xiao Long clearly had something to say, so she hoped that she could be heard.

Luckily, she could be heard, as she repeated herself by shouting "He can copy Semblances!"

That… that explained so much.

Glynda couldn't stop her eyes from widening as a crucial piece to the puzzle put itself together. While they had ruled out Tyrian Callows as a suspect in Team CRDL's murder, they had agreed that Callows was likely serving Salem, and that the true killer was also working for Salem. If the man here could copy Semblances, that explained how two people with a virtually identical Semblance could be active at the same time.

This confirmed so many of their suspicions right out of the gate. It might even be enough to make James calm down.

On the other hand, now she was face to face with a brutal murderer who had the power to copy Semblances, of all things. It explained so much, but it also turned this man into easily the most powerful person she'd ever dueled in terms of raw power.

As she slowly turned her head back to face the man, trusting that her students would get Ms. Xiao Long to safety, Glynda was already mentally going through strategies that she could use to fight this man, but each one proved ineffective as soon as she thought for longer than a second. There was always the same crucial flaw to each strategy: she had literally no idea what he was capable of with an ability like that.

As loathe as she was to admit it, the best way for her to fight him was let him attack first, get a reading of his capabilities, and strike back when he gave her an opening.

And so, as Glynda finished turning back towards him, she put her riding crop back up towards him, ready to throw up a defensive glyph at a single moment's notice. The man mirrored her, pulling the hammers back on both of his pistols with the click resounding around the space. For that brief moment, neither of them dared to move a muscle, the world fading away as they waited for the other to make any sudden movement so they may spring into action.

In the metaphorical staring contest, the man blinked first, quickly raising his right arm to fire his gun at her.

Glynda formed the full glyph she had been waiting to release, blocking the bullets she knew could kill her in one hit if fired correctly. As three explosive bullets hit the glyph in rapid succession, the smoke briefly obstructed her vision, but not enough to hide her view as the man in the distance suddenly disappeared from his spot.

In the next moment, he was standing next to her, bringing one of his guns down to punch her in the head. She quickly flicked her riding crop upward, parrying the hand away with a quick application of her Semblance.

Time to get to work.

Roman Torchwick had precisely three roles in this heist. None of them were exactly his specialty, but hey, when you had somebody like the Arkham Knight breathing down your neck and sending your partner across the damn Kingdom so you can't even think about disobeying, you had to make do with what you had.

First, he was onboard to corral the White Fang if they started to stray from their objective. Then the Knight decided to take that away from him when he actually did it, so there was that.

Second, he was to use his charm to keep the hostages calm if they started to get wily. There wasn't a guarantee it would be needed, but if the Knight did something like, say, execute one of the Faunus on the spot, that could happen, so it would be up to Roman to keep things going smoothly with the hostages.

Third, he was in charge of getting the Dust away from the dock if the plan went tits up.

Kinda like it was right now.

Usually, those brats sticking their noses in his business led to brawls, but never had they led to the chaotic free-for-all that they did here. The Knight had done a damn good job of separating the Team all over the docks, which gave Roman exactly the opening he needed to fulfill his end of the job.

As soon as he heard fights starting to break out, Roman left the hostages with one final shushing gesture, crossing through the maze of shipping crates to make his way back to the Dust. As he weaved his way through and tried to avoid any of the fighting, he took a glimpse to his left and saw he had succeeded, as Cinder was busy keeping some of the brats busy on her own.

Perfect distraction.

Not stopping to watch Cinder rain down hellfire - even if he loved to see somebody else be on the other end of it for a damn change, especially one of the brats - Roman continued navigating his way through the crates, laser-focused on his goal. The Knight would punish him even more than he already had if he failed, and Neo was way too far away to bail him out.

He kept going even as he heard an explosion behind him that sent a crate falling to the ground, nor did he turn around when the same crate was later thrown into the air. All he cared about was getting to the Dust.

As he reached the edge of the crates, he paused to get a bearing of the situation around the Dust. As when he left, the monkey boy was still fighting the goons the Knight had whipped into shape. He'd taken down two more, but there were still four giving him a hard time.

Credit where it was due, the animals were doing way better than they ever had before. Right about now, the kids usually wiped the floor with everyone he brought and Roman had to step in. Now, he was actually going to get away without even engaging the brats. Perfect win all around.

As the monkey kept navigating the fight around the Dust pile, Roman analyzed the situation as best he could. Most of the Dust had been split across two of the three bullheads they had brought, and the pile in front of him was meant to go into the third. It appeared that the pilots of the other bullheads were waiting for the order to retreat before they bugged out, but the engines were still on, so they were ready to go at a moment's notice.

Perfect.

As fast as he could, Roman sprinted out from the crates and towards the fight. The monkey saw him coming and even widened his eyes while trying to adjust his stance, but while he was switching his nunchucks to his staff, an animal came up behind him and hit him in the back of the head. The kid recovered as expertly as he usually did, but this time around, the thug retaliated with gloves that… seemed to be carrying electricity?

Wherever the hell the Knight got his damn toys, Roman never bothered to ask, but maybe he needed to follow up on that little tool.

The electric charge threw the monkey off his game, and that gave the other three grunts the chance to gang up on him. His weapon was too big to take advantage of, but it quickly descended into a scuffle while the monkey was trying to get away and the others wanted to get him on the ground.

That was Roman's chance.

Without breaking his stride, Roman sidestepped the scuffle and made a rolling leap. As he was rolling forward along the ground, he reached out with both hands to grab the two remaining cases of Dust he could take. There was no way he could grab every case, but the Knight had made it clear that if the job fell to him, he was supposed to take one case in each hand and leave. Obviously the care wasn't for Roman's well-being in the long run, but it was just the most practical option.

As Roman completed the front roll, he stood back up and continued running, never breaking his stride on his way to the bullhead. With the monkey occupied elsewhere, there was no resistance, and Roman quickly entered the bullhead while slamming the button to shut the door behind him.

As if one of the Brothers was looking down on him, right at that moment the final order came over his earpiece.

"Goodwitch is here. Full retreat, now."

Roman could have laughed from the relief he felt that they could finally get the hell out of dodge. Instead, he merely shouted "Time to go! Get this hunk of junk in the air!"

As one, the three bullheads all began lifting off, splitting off in different directions to make tracking their movements that much more difficult. They'd finally gotten away from a heist with no major casualties, and if Roman's calculations were right, then they'd recovered enough for "Phase One", whatever the hell that meant, to finally conclude. Finally, there was going to be something to do beyond just stealing every speck of Dust he could possibly find.

As the docks faded away into the distance, Roman stood back up from his seat, loudly yelling to the pilot "Hey, let's pick up the pace a little bit! I wanna get back to the hideout before the sun comes up."

Normally, Roman got no response, but then, to his horror, he heard a very familiar clacking of footsteps leaving the bullhead's cockpit. Those weren't just a familiar set of shoes, it was a very familiar set of heels.

"Oh Roman", a familiar mocking voice rang out, "do you think I don't know how to pilot a bullhead? After all, I once got you out of a spot of bother just like tonight, did I not?"

Cinder fucking Fall. Just his damn luck.

But there was no way in hell he was going to roll over like she always wanted, so he laughed like she was. "Oh, Cinder! The last I saw you, you were still fighting two of the brats. I see you made it here just fine so they must be ash by now."

Cinder, of course, gave him the same laugh she always did, the one that screamed "I am calling you a child" without using those exact words. "Roman, those 'brats' have never been a problem for me like they were for you. You may be a snaky little thief, but I'm in charge of this little operation for a reason."

Nowhere in the snark did she say she actually killed the brats, so she was dodging admitting she hadn't beaten them either.

Hypocritical bitch.

Completely missing Roman's brief moment of satisfaction, Cinder continued on. "But they don't matter right now. We have the Dust we need and then some, so we have some business to attend to before we move on to the next steps of the plan."

"Which I assume I don't get to know?", Roman asked. Stated, really. It had been that way since day one.

"You'll know what you need and nothing more", she responded like she always did. "For now, all you need to know is that we need to visit a place I never thought I would ever take you."

Cinder turned to walk back to the cockpit as though that explained literally anything, so Roman called out "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

Cinder paused, for the first time taking a moment to decide how to word what to say next. That more than anything else showed him that whatever she was about to say, she didn't want to be saying it but was, for once, not going to hide something from him.

"All I will tell you", she began, "is that you will see things you thought impossible, and if you so much as look anywhere I don't tell you to, you'll wish your punishment was up to me."

With that, Cinder went back to the pilot seat, sitting in the chair to monitor the auto-pilot as they started flying away from Vale. A brief glance at the dashboard showed that the bullhead had far more fuel than it should have, indicating that they were about to go far off the beaten path.

All in all, Roman couldn't have wanted to be there any less.

Par for the course ever since the fire bitch walked into his life.

After a long and exhaustive battle, Sun finally knocked out the last White Fang member he had been fighting all night.

This was… ridiculous, frankly. Last year, he could take out Fang grunts by the dozens in single moves, and now he had spent ten minutes struggling against six of them. They had gone from basically nonentities to genuine threats in less than a year.

It made no Brothers damn sense.

But neither did that man in the mask.

Everything he had said to Sun had been bothering him for the entire fight. He knew a lot about Sun. It made sense for someone aligned with the White Fang to have all of that information on the people who had been thorns in their sides for a year, but Sun had only been directly involved once - the first time that Blake had run away, almost a year ago in a place almost identical to these docks. Everything after that had just been him keeping an ear to the ground, taking logical guesses based on things that were happening in the city. There was no reason for the man to know he existed, much less his name, and yet, the man knew everything.

He was being watched, it was the only explanation. But how long had he been watched without ever realizing anything was wrong?

The more he thought about it, the more scared he got, and now wasn't the time to be scared. There was still a battle to be won, though now that he wasn't clouded with the fog of his battle, he couldn't help but notice that the previous gunshots seemed to have stopped. The odds of that being a good thing were not exactly high.

With nothing else to do, Sun left the Fang grunts on the ground and sprinted to the containers on the side of the docks, hoping to reunite with any of the Team he had come with or maybe with whatever backup had flown out of that bullhead he had seen earlier.

The crates were a maze, but luckily, it only took him a few twists and turns before he saw a familiar black mane standing over her partner. Yang looked like she was barely conscious, and Blake was frantically trying to calm her down. Or maybe she was trying to calm herself down in front of her, Sun couldn't really tell from that distance.

As he ran to her side, he made sure to yell before he was near her so he didn't scare her by accident. "Blake!", he yelled, making her turn her head towards him. Instantly, he saw her shoulders sag a little bit, but she remained on guard.

As he closed the distance, he asked the first question he had out of many. "What happened? Is Yang okay?"

Blake let out a deep breath, trying to control herself. It was hard for him to watch. "Yeah, Sun, she's okay. She took a really bad hit to the head, but she'll be fine once her Aura comes back. Are you alright?"

Sun forced one of his usual laughs out. "Of course I'm okay Blake, you think a few White Fang grunts are gonna get me down? I'm too awesome for that."

Blake gave a chuckle, but he could see just how forced it was. Maybe now wasn't the time for self-aggrandizing, even if it was just to make her smile.

Especially since it was a bald-faced lie and those grunts had actually given him a run for his money.

It was only then that he felt the need to ask his next question. "Where's Weiss? I saw her get sent flying this direction, is she okay?"

With this, Blake's face fell again. "She's okay too. She went back into the warehouse to check on Ruby. She hasn't been responding to our comms, but Weiss said she seems okay, just unconscious. We have no idea what happened."

That unfortunately made a tragic amount of sense. With the entire Team separated, it made sense to go after the isolated sniper and take them out of the equation. But, as morbid as it was, Sun already had one question he would never dare to ask aloud: if Ruby had been left unconscious, why was she still alive? Ruby was the leader of their operations, and if there was a way to cut them off out of the gate, killing her would be it.

They wanted to keep her alive, but why?

So many questions, and nowhere they were going to find the answers. Not tonight. For now, all that Sun could do was stay with Blake as Yang slowly recovered, all of them coming to terms with their loss.

Roman got away with the Dust, their new adversary had almost killed two of their members, and all they had to show for it was six unconscious nobodies. Sun could only hope that Starr didn't hear about this, or he'd never hear the end of it.

As Ruby slowly felt herself wake back up, all she could could see and hear was a mush of sights and sounds. Her head was pounding in a way she had never felt before, and her limbs weren't responding to any of her attempts to move. Nothing was clear, nothing was happening. One second the man in the mask had been holding her by the throat, and now she had no idea what was going on.

She'd been knocked out. It was the only explanation.

The vertigo she was feeling even while laying still almost made her vomit, but she kept herself as still as possible and kept her eyes shut to stay as steady as she could. It didn't help much, but she at least felt the sickness fading away a little piece at a time.

Is this how Jaune always felt in airships?

Even that brief thought of her best friend made everything she was feeling worse, so she shoved it to the side.

On top of everything else, now she had to cough, and all the focus she had put onto keeping still did nothing to stop that from coming out. As she began hacking away, hoping that there was no one around who still wanted her unconscious, she tried to open her eyes one more time. Luckily, her Aura seemed to be giving her the assistance she needed; by the time she opened her eyes, her vision had stopped doubling and started coming back into focus. As she tried her best to sit up and look around, she suddenly felt hands on her shoulders pushing her back down to the ground, but before she could do anything, she heard Weiss's voice. It sounded like it was coming from the other end of a tunnel, but it was clearly her.

"Hey, take it slow", she was saying. "You've been unconscious for a while now, you need to lay down."

As her senses continued to clear, the blurry vision suddenly revealed white hair that Ruby would recognize anywhere. It didn't matter that she still couldn't clearly see her face, that was Weiss, and Weiss wasn't a threat.

She tried to ask what had happened; instead, all that came out was an incomprehensible groan. And yet, the wonderful partner that she was, Weiss somehow understood what she needed anyway.

"The battle's winding down. Torchwick is nowhere to be found but we've got some of the White Fang that got left behind." Weiss suddenly stopped for a moment, which for her could only mean she was about to give some very bad news. "They got away with a lot of Dust, and we don't know what happened to the man in the mask. We lost, Ruby".

Ruby had already figured she would be getting news like that after she woke up, but for Weiss to outright say it like that? It was really bad.

As Ruby's vision cleared up just enough to see Professor Goodwitch running up behind Weiss, her continued tiredness finally got to her and she fell unconscious once more.

I could go on and on about the night at the docks if I wanted to. How it was the first time we met the Knight, the man responsible for the creation of the Justice League. The fear I felt when I saw Ruby unconscious, especially for the split second that I thought she might be dead. All of the warning signs we missed because we were so focused on staying alive that we missed the bigger picture, forcing Professor Goodwitch to take that job in our stead.

The amount of lives that wouldn't have been lost on Halloween if we had been prepared for him.

Instead, I don't wish to belabor the point. Rather than focus on the docks, I want to shift gears a little bit and do what we should have done at the time: focus on the bigger picture. The Dust at the docks was not the only target that night.

At the same time that the Arkham Knight and Cinder Fall were attacking the docks, four future supervillains were convening for the first time in Mountain Glenn.