Ch. 45 What comes up...
"And before we begin the third round of the semi finals, let us have a quick recap. To those only now joining us, you're watching day three of the Vital festival tournament. In these past two days many teams from all four of Remnant's Premier huntsman academies tried their skills against one another. But today we're here to watch the solos round, where one student from each of the winning teams is chosen to compete against each other until only one winner remains."
Roman sat at a café, with a large screen scroll in front of him. He dressed down today, choosing to appear as inconspicuous as possible while watching the TV broadcast the tournament to the café's patrons.
There were two major reasons he chose to be here rather than any hideout. One was the fact that Cinder gave considerable effort to rooting out his hideouts one by one. She was sneaky about it but Roman knew. By now he didn't want to be anywhere near those safe havens, just on the off chance that she'd figured something out.
It's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you.
The second reason was the view of the Amity coliseum up in the air. Roman both knew something would happen and didn't know what. What he did know was that Cinder started cutting him out of her plans. Him but not Neo who was tasked with sneaking all over the place and infecting specific infrastructure with the computer virus Cinder gave her.
Too bad Neo had made some competent friends.
That's what Roman was doing right now. Monitoring the network the virus created for things Cinder was doing with it, from accessing files to messing with the lottery system of the tournament, in order to activate the modified version of the virus to take over at the right time.
But for now, Neo was still in a perilous situation up in Amity and Roman couldn't do anything until she was safe, unless something really bad happened.
Cinder was currently messing around with the lottery, apparently pitting the Black kid against some Valkyrie girl. It wasn't too out of the ordinary, she messed around with all match selections so far, but Black being one of her henchmen was probably a part of whatever plan she had.
"Woah, never thought I'd see you without your bowler hat. What's with the beanie?"
Roman startled for a second, before the new arrival just sat next to him and ordered, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
"Whiskey cream coffee, no cream please."
"...I thought I'd try a new look, you know one that wouldn't get me arrested. How are you doing, Qrow?"
"Eh, same old same old. I'm just here to get a pick-me-up and watch the finals. Though both my nieces let their teammates take the spotlight. Actually, that's one of them."
"Valkyrie?"
"Yup, part of team RNJR."
"Well, I'm sure you'd like to know that my employer made sure that she'd go against her underling. If the Black kid is anything like his father, we may have a problem on our hands."
"Doubt it. The girl is something else."
"And miss Valkyrie closes the distance once more, using the considerable mass of her weapon to knock mister Black down a notch. After dominating the fight with his swift kicks the tides of the battle have turned against him. But Black gets up once more and in a desperate attempt… Oooh, mister Black's aura is broken with a brutal strike from miss Valkyrie's hammer. Mister Black is of course OUT and is sitting up in the middle of the arena as miss Valkyrie waves to the crowd… what is…? Cut the broadcast right now!"
The patrons stared in disbelief as the broadcast cut to commercial break. What they just saw was a brutal disregard to the rules of the tournament as Nora Valkyrie brutally crippled a promising huntsman.
"Well shit…"
"Something's off."
"Yeah no shit Qrow of course something's off."
Roman was about to say more when a message popped up in the corner of the scroll in front of him.
"Aw fuck."
"What is it?"
"Neo is with the bitch right now. Five minutes before she can run away."
"And that means…"
"That means five minutes before I can take away Cinder's control of fucking everything, you have no idea how much she has access to. This is months of prep waiting to blow up in our faces, literally."
"You mean the dust?"
"Yes, but don't worry, my semblance tells me the probability of overall success is good."
"How good?"
"Stop-everything-before-it-begins good."
=O=O=O=
Cinder, disguised in a nurse outfit sat down next to Neo, who was currently driving the ambulance. With a smile on her face she brought up her scroll and surveyed the reactions of people online.
It was chaos, people were in a panic, but the organisers were doing their best to keep the show going despite both Ozpin and general Ironwood going on record that the tournament should be paused until the situation clears.
The organisers however had a lot riding on this and there was just no way they would stop the event. Just arrest the girl and disqualify her, that way the tournament can go on as if nothing had happened.
"Just one more small push…" Cinder laughed to herself.
Soon she would launch everything. The train was ready to depart for Vale, Mercury would install explosives near the lift apparatus as soon as he switched out his legs. And she already knew who to pit against each other. General Ironwoods was a fool for keeping so many documents on his personal scroll. And a bigger fool for letting his scroll contract the virus.
As Cinder continued to cackle with laughter, Neo was struggling to keep her facade going. She needed to get out and fast. She had already contacted Roman to make sure he didn't fuck her over by starting early. Two more messages were sent soon after, written with one hand hidden under an illusion.
=O=O=O=
Jaune stood next to Ren as Ruby argued with the security currently escorting Nora from Amity to their room. She was under house arrest for the time being. Though from what Jaune had heard the higher ups knew something was up. Ozpin publicly said he didn't believe Nora did this of her own volition and Weiss was currently lobbying her sister and general Ironwood about Nora's situation.
Ren was silent, not because of any doubts, but because if he wasn't the searing rage barely kept at bay by his semblance would take over. Jaune couldn't do much other than stand by him in solidarity. This was beyond him and there was little he could do to help Nora right now.
A ping echoed from his scroll. Though when he checked it his suspicions of fowl play got confirmed. It was a message from Mint, or more precisely Neo. It was short. A single ambulance emoji followed by the word "HELP"
"Fuck."
Ren turned to Jaune, his whole demeanour twitchy and panicky.
"Fowl play and Nora isn't the only one affected. Stay with her and keep her safe, I need to go save Cardins girlfriend."
Without looking back Jaune ran off before either Ruby or the security guards could question him.
=O=O=O=
Neo took the first opportunity she got to just disappear. She was good at disappearing, you could say that was her whole job description. But if shit hit the fan she'd rather be with people that wouldn't stab her in the back.
And if they could make sure that none of their friends attacked her because of her involvement with this shit, all the better.
And so she found herself running through the maintenance hallways of the flying Coliseum, sending pictures of her location to Cardin, hoping he would find her. Though Arc would do in a pinch, so she sent the locations to him too.
"E7! She was at E9 last, right?"
"Shut up and keep going."
Neo's heart skipped a beat as she heard both the boys approaching.
Letting her illusion shatter she ran straight into her boyfriend's arms, ignoring his surprise and ignoring the blond one entirely.
"Sorry to interrupt your heartfelt reunion but we should probably get out of here. You can disguise yourself right? If you disguise yourself as my sister we can probably make it look like I dumped you on Cardin's team while I deal with the mess Nora's in."
=O=O=O=
"And with that unpleasant business behind us, let us pivot back to the tournament and let the next round do the talking…"
"Fuckfuckfuckfuck. She's active again."
"Didn't you already cut her off?"
"This shit is luck based, it can take over instantly or struggle through the encryption for minutes at a time."
"...damnit. What's the worst case scenario time wise?"
"Ten minutes-ish… look the one who made this is a genius but encryption breaking is a number guessing game."
"Shit, what's cinder doing?"
"She chose the next contestants. Nikos and… Damnit, why is that on the network! She opened all the cell doors. Taurus is potentially loose."
By now almost none of the patrons paid any attention to the TV broadcast. The panicking duo, one of whom was obviously a huntsman, pulled all their attention to themselves. And soon it was apparent that at least one of the names mentioned was true.
"And we have our next contestants. On one side reigning Champion of the Mistral tournaments, the invincible girl, Beacon Academy's Pyrrha Nikos. And against her, the rising star, the one woman army, Atlas academy's Penny Polendina."
"Polendina? Ain't that the one who wrote this? Why would Cinder pick her?" asked Torchwick, his beanie hat now discarded on the table, leaving his distinct orange hair in full view.
"There's something about her, but Atlas has her file under lock."
"Come on, come on! Why is this taking so long?"
Roman was panicking. His semblance "Don't tell me the odds" was telling him that odds were good, but the program that was supposed to take over Cinder's virus was taking far too long. Luck simply wasn't on their side today
=O=O=O=
Emerald was sitting in the audience, focusing on her task. All she had to do was use her semblance again and convince another contestant to hurt their opponent. This time for real.
Mercury was running around the insides of Amity and setting explosives down. And Cinder was preparing for the climax, the grand finale. Neo has disappeared. Emerald was pretty sure she escaped. No matter though. Cinder would hunt her and Torchwick later and they would get their comeuppance. The white fang was ready to go in and assist their leader, whom Cinder would let loose on the Altas soldiers stationed in Beacon.
All Emerald needed was an opportunity to make the Invincible girl lose her marbles.
=O=O=O=
Cardin and Neo, currently disguised as one of the Arc sisters, sat down next to Yang and Sky. They were supposed to cheer for Pyrrha in order to get Neo away from what was happening. To a degree it was all cardin thought of at the time.
That was until Pyrrha let out a terrified scream and activated her semblance in a panic.
Cardin was stunned as he saw the girl that helped them out with the virus get wrapped in the steel wire of her own weapon.
Penny fell, cut to pieces leaving her innards exposed. And as the light left her eyes the entire audience noted the lack of blood and the exposed wires.
Seconds later all screens at the colosseum as well as the international CCT broadcast turned black, before switching back on to show a black queen chess piece on a white background.
"This is not a tragedy. This was not an accident. This is what happens when you hand over your trust, your safety, your children, to men who claim to be our guardians, but are, in reality, nothing more than men. Our Academies' Headmasters wield more power than most armies, and one was audacious enough to control both.
They cling to this power in the name of peace, and yet, what do we have here? One nation's attempt at a synthetic army, mercilessly torn apart by another's star pupil. What need would A…"
The broadcast cut again, this time an orange smiling face faded onto the screen.
"I interrupt this illegal broadcast with a public announcement. My name's Roman Torchwick and the previous speaker is a terrorist. Well, this is what she gets for trusting a known cheat."
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
Yeah! Roman saves the day... potentially saves the day... makes the day not suck as much as it could... yay?
As for Torchwick's semblance the way I see it it isn't luck based like Qrow or Clover, but close. What I came up with is "Never tell me the odds!" a semblance about statistical probability. Roman knows the odds of everithing working out are good... unless they get unlucky...
Regardless, let me wish you all happy holidays if you celebrate. I got a nice pair of alpaca wool socks for christmas, which was a hisghligh for me.
In case you haven't seen it yet or are reading this later down the line, just know that I published one of the oneshots I've been sitting on for a while. So if you wan't to read something short, Jaune's AWESOME store has you covered.
Anyway I hope you enjoyed and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch.46 Fall of Beacon