I wanted to do something to commemorate yesterday, but since I didn't want to make things weird by adjusting this update by a day...
Anyway, on to commemoration. It would've actually been slightly late to begin with, because I deliberately avert my eyes from my old stories as much as possible and forgot the date, but yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of my very first finished fic! (The ten-year anniversary of when I first began writing fanfiction would've been the 28th of March.) Happy decennial anniversary to me being a fanfic writer! Whoo!
But yeah I began writing fanfiction as a middle-schooler in 2013. Pray for me lads.
Team RWBY were of mixed opinions when Ozpin announced to them that they were going to be accompanied by a member of the faculty, just like this was any other training mission, and that he'd given Professor (er, Doctor) Oobleck a precise of their whole… situation.
On the one hand, well, at least they were still keeping their cover of "totally normal students" and staying under Salem's potential radar. None of them were precisely sure of how much –or how little– Oobleck and the other faculty members knew about Ozpin and Salem and the Relics, but whatever Oobleck knew was enough for him to, apparently, take Ozpin's statement that Ruby and the others had information from the future at face value and treat them accordingly.
On the other… well…
What they were trying to do here would be a lot easier without official witnesses.
The skies were slate-grey and gloomy as the Bullhead roared through the air. Tucked behind the shielding bulwarks of her sister and Blake as Weiss engaged Doctor Oobleck in a distracting, spirited back-and-forth about the history of Dust towards the front of the ship, Ruby Rose was texting furiously in the back of the cargo hold.
Remembering how bad the connection had been around here before, she'd brought a signal-booster with her, tucked away in her backpack in place of Zwei. After all, it wasn't like she needed help in "accidentally" discovering the underground parts of Mountain Glenn…
Look, I'm sorry! She typed out. I had to give Ozpin something, and this is the only "something" we knew about! It was on the mission board to begin with, so there was gonna be a team sent out here anyways!
Neo's reply was a string of angry emojis. Ruby could only hope that the knife at the end was exaggeration.
Yeah, I know, I'm not happy about it either…but we're coming NOW, so…
The ellipses on Neo's end flickered for several moments before her message arrived.
Fine. Fine. This managed to work out before, so this time we'll just…improvise. It said. You think you can reenact your performance?
Ruby hummed thoughtfully. That could work –just fudge their lines and mimic their actions from the first time they'd been sent to Mountain Glenn, and everything would more or less go the same way. Find the train, bust up the train as it shot towards Vale, and then maybe kill all the Grimm before they rampaged in the city. Nothing would really change, and hopefully this would give Ozpin the solid, tangible ammunition that he needed to finally put Cinder behind bars.
If it didn't, Ruby was about 90% certain that some of her friends would drop any and all pretensions of civility and start a manhunt for Cinder and her entire cohort with their own two hands. Certain members of Team JNPR came to mind.
"You guys think this is a good idea?" she whispered, tilting the Scroll to show Blake and Yang as they leaned in against her shoulders. Yang sucked her teeth as one of Blake's ears gave a twitch.
"I think we can definitely handle fighting the White Fang." Blake said after a moment. "But are we sure this's a good idea? The bodycount if we mess this up…"
Ruby swallowed.
"I say we go for it." Yang sighed. "I mean, we don't really have a better option, do we? We've gotta deliver something to Ozpin, but if we actually stop what Torchwick's doing before they even start, both he and Neo are gonna get whacked. They're probably on thin ice with Cinder already, and if they legitimately get caught by the authorities…"
Ruby chewed on her lower lip, then typed out her answer.
That sounds like a good idea. So, same as before, except this time we pull our punches?
Neo sent back a slightly-ominous smiley-face emoji.
"Ooh boy. I hope that means she agrees." Yang said from above Ruby's shoulder, mirroring her thoughts. Ruby nodded, her thumbs already moving in a reply.
We're not going at this seriously though, right?
:)
We're not trying to actually kill each other this time, right?!
:)
Ruby closed her Scroll and shut her eyes, whining in defeat as the wind whooshed past them.
Seeing Mountain Glenn again was… nostalgic. And not in a good way.
Ruby spun Crescent Rose as she tore her way through the charging pack of Beowolves. On her sides, she could hear Yang's gauntlets and Blake's pistol cracking as they shot their way through the horde. Fewer and fainter, she could hear the chimes and ripples of Weiss's glyphs as she wove between the Grimm like a dancer, using her glyphs for platforms and boosts as her sword plunged and flicked through gaps in their bone plating to pierce deep into joints.
It felt like being displaced.
It felt like… Atlas.
Not even the Atlas that any of them had known, but what Ruby knew Atlas would have become after the completion of her plan to evacuate everyone through Ambrosius's portals. An empty land of rubble and cracked stones, with empty shells of fractured buildings rising in crumbling piles against the sky. Grimm, Grimm, and more Grimm, hurtling themselves from the ruins with ravening jaws and sharp talons. Sorrow and loss drifted in the air like a grey smog, with the scent of chill stone and spent Dust acrid on her tongue.
This was what Atlas was-would-wouldn't be, and Ruby was not comfortable with that feeling.
Still, every Grimm she cut down now was a Grimm that wouldn't surge towards the city, either now or during the Fall of Beacon, and Ruby took comfort in that as she hacked and sliced and shot, clearing a space around her.
"Well!" Doctor Oobleck chimed as the last black ashes faded away, swinging his arm with comfortably-familiar verve as Team RWBY all lowered their weapons. "The headmaster was most certainly not exaggerating when he spoke of your skills, young ladies! Excellent! Most excellent! Now-"
With a whoosh, he was at Ruby's elbow, making her yelp and wobble on her heel as the flat leaves of a large map suddenly unfurled in her peripheral vision, almost smacking her in the side of the head.
"-judging best based on your memory of past events and of the current events leading up to it, where on this map would you say would be the most accurate reflection of our enemies' current location?! If we are to confound their dastardly deeds, it would be best to act with utmost speed! Come, come, Miss Rose, speak up now!"
"Agablagh-"
Her mouth flapped uselessly a few times on reflex before Ruby steadied herself. Doctor Oobleck's manner of speech was just as disorienting as it had been when she was a student: even when you could (roughly) follow what he was saying, he still talked so fast that it still took a hot few seconds for your mouth to catch up with your brain so you could make a reply.
"I, uh." She grabbed the edge of the map he held and pulled it so she could see a little better. "Um… I think it was somewhere over here?"
She jabbed her finger at a certain portion of the map. The truth was… Ruby's memory of where she'd fallen through the surface of Mountain Glenn was more than a little fuzzy. To be brutally honest, she'd forgotten most of her supposed route there the same day it had actually happened to her –the excitement of the Breach, dealing with the Grimm, and then the euphoria of (she thought) finally dealing with the baddies once and for all had driven any thoughts of how she had gotten to where the ground had cracked beneath her from Ruby's head.
Add a few years and a complete lack of attention originally paid to which streets she'd wandered down while looking for a place for Zwei to relieve himself, and all Ruby was sure of was which quartered section of the map they'd camped in on the night she'd fallen down to Mountain Glenn's lower levels.
That was the tricky thing about memory. Ruby could remember every last agonizing detail of the moment the black glass arrow had sunk into Pyrrha's chest with crystal clarity, from the feel of the tower rubble beneath her knees to the scent of ashes and hot metal in the air, but the frantic running battle between there and when she had landed on Beacon's grounds again was a blur. What path had she taken to the tower? Who had she and Weiss passed on the way? Had they been winning? Losing? How many bodies had she seen, and where?
"What do you guys think?" Ruby asked, looking up from the map at her teammates as they cautiously gathered around. "We were right here, right?"
By mutual unspoken agreement, they weren't mentioning that Cinder's minions and the White Fang were currently working below Mountain Glenn. It might seem logical to sneak through the fallen city beneath the surface, but Ruby was reluctant to do anything that might stir the original order of events –and on a less personal level, she and the others weren't at all sure what or who was waiting for them as sentinels around Torchwick's base camp. Directly dropping straight in, as Ruby had done, would be both easier and faster.
Now all they had to do was get to the spot she'd dropped in from, and everything would be just dandy.
"I think it was right about there." Weiss said, sheathing Myrtenaster as she came to stand beside Ruby and Doctor Oobleck, looking at the map. Her pale finger pointed in agreement with Ruby's, towards the sector they vaguely remembered stopping in during their original mission. Despite having them tussle with Grimm for most of the day, Doctor Oobleck had been very systematic, quartering off sections of the city and having them sweep said sections one by one.
"Very well then! Let us set off at once –and remember, young Huntresses, keep sharp!" Oobleck said, folding the map up again so quickly that it almost caught Weiss's finger as she jerked back. "You may have passed this way before, but overconfidence has been the demise of many a Hunter stronger than all of us put together! Keep your eyes peeled! Stay alert! Our environs may very well be crawling with all sorts of enemies both Grimm and otherwise!"
We know. All of Team RWBY thought, but didn't say.
Still, they followed in Oobleck's wake as he led them off towards that sector, forming a V shape with him at the head. As skilled as Team RWBY was compared to their peers, Oobleck was still a graduated Huntsman with many years –maybe even decades, Ruby was crap at judging adults' ages– of missions under his belt. As Huntresses, it was natural to defer to their more experienced colleague. After all, even with everything that had happened in Atlas, they were still junior Huntresses, with less than a full year of being licensed.
Yang and Weiss had his flanks, with Ruby and Blake trailing behind at the end of the formation, ready to move in support if anyone needed it. Oobleck moved fast enough, he needed the two who would best support him at his side –Weiss with her glyphs, and Yang with her durability and power. With Blake and Ruby fanning out at the end, they would be able to reinforce the others ahead or act on their own to cut off a flanking maneuver, depending on the enemy and said enemy's formation.
Ruby wasn't worried about the White Fang attacking them out here, actually. They had no reason to go above the surface of Mountain Glenn, except maybe for a supply drop or a change in shifts, or to clear out the gathering Grimm. Mountain Glenn was absolutely overrun, so once they had created a relatively safe sector underground, the White Fang (and Torchwick) would need a truly urgent reason to leave that protected zone.
The nasty thing about the Creatures of Grimm, as untrained civilians occasionally found out, was that they had a tendency to swarm. Kill one stray Grimm, and the sound and stress of battle would lure more –and then more, and then more, until an errant Beowolf turned into a whole pack and your resulting panic sealed your fate. While most of the White Fang were better-trained than the average resident of any kingdom, that didn't change the fact that at the end of the day, most of them were still little better than angry civilians with heavy weaponry. They wouldn't be wandering around on the surface of Mountain Glenn without a very good reason.
No, what Ruby and the others would almost certainly have to watch out for here would be the Grimm themselves. There had been Goliaths here, before, although they were distant and wandering about in their heavy, ominous way. While Ruby didn't think any of them were stressed enough to attract said creatures, there was simply no way of telling what the Grimm would and would not do.
She rubbed her thumb over the comforting, bright red metal of Crescent Rose. Ruby was also confident that they could take most Grimm down without a fuss, but small battles had a way of adding up, and she didn't want to confront all the Grimm and then Torchwick and the White Fang and then whatever else might be waiting for them at the end of the tunnel. She only had so much Aura, after all, and there was mental exhaustion to watch out for too.
They made it to the relevant quarter without incident, and Oobleck unfolded the map again as Ruby and the others leaned in around him.
"I dunno…" Ruby mumbled, scratching the back of her hair. She looked up at the ashen, rubble-strewn street ahead of them. Mountain Glenn's streets all more or less looked the same, and it had been dark when she'd taken Zwei away from their camp. "I mean, I think it was further in…?"
"You walked away from our camp after we were bedded down for the night." Blake said, and looked at Oobleck. "If you were taking a real group of trainees out here, and we'd been fighting Grimm for most of the day, and we ended around this area, where would you try to camp?"
"Hmmm… hmmm… most vexatious, no doubt. What a conundrum!" Doctor Oobleck hummed to himself, rubbing his chin as Ruby took the edge of the map. He released it entirely, starting to ignore them as he darted back and forth, gesturing sharply and speaking to thin air.
"Assuming the standard pace set by a novice team of Huntress trainees, combined with the learning that would have no doubt been worked into their fights as they combated Grimm amidst the ruins, calculating further the time of day and the original intended purpose of the mission…"
Team RWBY exchanged glances and sighed fondly.
"Aha! I've got it!" Oobleck finally shouted, zipping back to them and almost bowling Ruby over as he snatched the map from her and lifted it up, spreading the leaves out wide. "I think here would have been the spot that I would've previously considered most advantageous, taking into account both your inexperience, the possibility of enemies, and the need for an option of emergency escape!"
They all considered the place he was pointing to. It was in a square just a stone's throw away from the main road of Mountain Glenn, in the remains of what had probably once been a constructor's cabin. It would be easy to defend, and if they were overwhelmed, easy to stick to the main street when they made their retreat back to Vale.
Ruby scratched her head and hummed. This was harder than she'd thought… it looked vaguely familiar, but that might be because it was where Oobleck had had them camp last time, or because her eyes had caught on it when they were making camp.
"Yeah –I mean, I guess." she said. "It's as good a place as any to start."
Although they couldn't warn Oobleck about the presence of the White Fang without looking suspicious –Ruby and the others were claiming that their memories of the event were fuzzy, fragmented by time and trauma– they were still very cautious as they began systematically searching the quadrant. White Fang aside, there were certainly plenty of Grimm here, and it paid to be sneaky.
So Ruby watched as Oobleck slipped through the streets with the rest of them, growing impressed by how quietly he moved, how surefooted he was as he climbed through various ruins with one hand on his weaponized thermos. Now this was a practiced Huntsman. Always with a keen eye on his surroundings, his stance rock-steady no matter how or where he moved, and no unnecessary chattering. Ruby had gotten so used to scowling about her memories in Atlas that she'd forgotten what it felt like to look at someone more skilled than she was with nothing but admiration.
Heck, as the long months of last semester passed by, she'd gotten so used to wincing at her fellow students in combat class that she'd almost forgotten what it was like to see someone more skilled than she was.
Since Oobleck had originally divided the map into squares a group of trainees could easily search, it didn't take long at all, comparatively, for them to come upon a street that Ruby remembered a little more clearly.
"Hang on a sec…" she murmured, and the others paused.
"What is it, Miss Rose?" Oobleck asked, and Ruby squinted.
"I'm not sure." she answered. "Wait here?"
Leaving them in the shadow of a skeletonized skyscraper, Ruby began to cautiously make her way out into the street itself. There were several small clicks behind her as Yang and Blake readied their firearms, and Weiss slashed Myrtenaster down by her side when Ruby glanced over her shoulder, ready to cast whatever Glyphs she needed.
"See anything, Rubes?" Yang asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Maybe." Ruby said, turning back to the street. She walked out a little further, meandering now –though still not without a sense of caution– as she turned in slow circles. "It looks a bit familiar…"
"Familiarity is good, Miss Rose! That implies that we are growing closer to our ultimate quarry!" Oobleck said, looking cheered. He and the others followed after her, coming to a halt a few meters away as he pulled out the map and Ruby's team remained on guard. Oobleck marked their location with an X in pencil, and swiftly folded the map up again, sticking it in his pocket. "Is there anything in particular that stands out to you as familiar, Miss Rose?"
"Hmmm…" Ruby stepped forward, looking this way and that. She was growing more convinced by the moment that this was where she had followed the White Fang grunts to… and this was where she had dropped through into the lower level of Mountain Glenn.
And as tightly as her nerves were wound, her body was keenly attuned to every shift in the environment around her, and she felt it this time as the road beneath her feet began to crumble and shift downwards. Ruby opened her mouth.
"Well, it looks like -ack!"
The jolt was just as heart-stopping as it had been last time as the ground beneath her feet suddenly gave way and dropped her into a black abyss, although Ruby's shriek this time was more of a startled squeak as she plunged down like a rock through the hole in Mountain Glenn. She heard her teammates cry her name above her, but this time Ruby was ready for the landing, and flexed her knees as she hit the ground unharmed, but in an explosion of dusty earth.
Pulling some of her cloak up above her nose and mouth, Ruby hacked and coughed as the shower of dust slowly began to settle around her. She looked up, and sure enough, there her teammates (and Oobleck) were, silhouetted dots of color against the bright sky high above.
" 'm okay!" Ruby called up, somewhat muffled by the fabric around her mouth.
"Great! Most excellent, Miss Rose! Now, if you would endeavor to ascend back up to our level-"
"I, uh, I think there's something down here, though!" Ruby called back to him, sweating a little. "Just gimme a sec, I'll go check it out!"
"That is doubtless the underground remains of Mountain Glenn that you are currently espying- wait. Oh, my goodness gracious, could it be true? Mountain Glenn's planners sought to increase space by tunneling and building underground, but those spaces were overrun by the Grimm in no short order and continue to be infested to this day! If a criminal syndicate was bold enough, however, it would make quite the effective hiding spot!"
Ruby left Oobleck to ramble to himself as she lowered her gaze and looked around. The underground portions of Mountain Glenn were even gloomier and more forlorn than the wrecked buildings above –those, at least, had the benefit of sunlight. These shells of ruined buildings were just as grey and empty, but the lack of sunlight and the rocky walls surrounding them made it seem like they would melt into dust at any moment, a lost and mummified dream of an abandoned city.
When Ruby peeled her ears to the utmost, she thought she could hear distant clinking and voices that were not Oobleck's down below. Speaking of…
"Miss Schnee, Miss Xiao Long, please contact the Headmaster immediately! At once! We must let him know of the possible trail that we are following in case it leads to our pitiable demise! In the meantime, Miss Belladonna, could I request your assistance in lowering me down? We must search the area slowly and carefully in case there are any miscreants about! Miss Rose, please remain where you are!"
Ruby rolled her eyes a little, but fondly.
She stepped aside as Gambol Shroud came whirling down to stick into the dust with a soft thunk of pierced dirt, and helpfully put her boot atop it, keeping the line taut as Blake pulled at the other end. A few minutes later, Oobleck came rappelling down, using the straps of his backpack like a zipline to reduce friction. Dust puffed out under his feet as he let go to avoid landing on Ruby, hitting the ground a few feet away with a grunt.
"Most excellent job of finding our targets' possible base, Miss Rose!" he cheered, slinging his pack back around and dusting himself off. "Now we need only wait for your teammates before conducting a more thorough search of the area."
They had to wait a few moments for Yang and Weiss –whoever picked up their Scroll first– to finish calling Ozpin, but soon Weiss was sliding down the ribbon using her sash-belty-thing as a similar strap, landing neatly beside Ruby. She busied herself with retying it as Yang slid down on her belt, and Ruby finally stepped off Gambol Shroud, letting Blake pull it back up and presumably hook around the edge of the crumbling hole. Blake followed the rest of them a moment later, plunging down on the other end of Gambol Shroud's ribbon before she landed and twitched the string, knocking her weapon loose and retrieving it.
"Given the acoustics and the likelihood of any civilian inhabitants, we can assume that the noises in this cave are being conducted by the criminal operations we have been sent in search of!" Oobleck stage-whispered to the rest of them, looking as excitable as ever. There was a steadier edge to him, though, than Ruby had noticed earlier, and she did not miss how he ushered them into a more hidden corner of the street. "Remember, Huntresses, our purpose here is to collect evidence! Ideally, we should split up into teams so as to cover more ground."
"We can go with our partners." Ruby said, sinking her voice equally low. "Me and Weiss, and Yang and Blake, and, um… you can go on your own, since you're a Huntsman."
It felt weird, giving orders to her former teacher.
"A most excellent plan, Miss Rose. We shall rendezvous here within half an hour, shall we say, and compare our findings. Even if we do not find anything of note, that in itself is most alarming! And remember to be on your guard! We can ill-afford any slipups at this juncture!"
With a general nod to all of them, Oobleck swept off in a cloud of dust, leaving Team RWBY dazed all over again.
"I wonder what he's like when he's not caffeinated." Yang coughed, waving a hand in front of her face.
"I dread to think." Weiss grumbled. She glanced towards Ruby. "I take it you're going to mysteriously and accidentally split up from me?"
"Let's try to get a little closer." Ruby temporized. "I wanna make sure the White Fang and everybody are where they should be…"
"Well, while you guys do that, me and Blake will be doing our rounds." Yang said, interlacing her fingers together and stretching her arms up above her head with a crackle of joints. "Good luck."
"Good luck."
The two halves of Team RWBY turned away from each other, and Ruby and her partner faded into the shadows as they began to creep towards where they remembered the train tracks of Mountain Glenn to be. Ruby had a better time of it than her partner as they slipped around walls and occasionally bent to crawl below the edge of open rooftops to keep out of sight –Ruby's cape might be garish (lies! lies and slander!) but at least she wasn't the one trying to be all sneaky dressed head-to-toe in purest white. The brightest shade this place had to offer naturally was a dark steel grey.
They eventually worked their way down to what would have been street level had Mountain Glenn's settlement succeeded, following the spiraling path of a dirt-choked set of maintenance stairs. Their feet left prints in the thick layer of dust, which might have been worrying if there had been literally any other footprints in the building they snuck down through. Ruby and Weiss huddled below the two matched bay windows in what had been probably meant to be a shop –now empty of glass– and peered over the edge.
Welp, the White Fang were definitely here, carrying boxes and boxes of stolen Dust around in stolen Paladins as they loaded up the train. Ruby and Weiss exchanged glances, and Ruby pulled out her Scroll.
"Hang on a sec…" she mumbled, flicking through her screen until she found the camera. Making sure the flash was off, Ruby raised the edge of her Scroll over the edge of the windowsill and snapped several shots of the White Fang at work. She was tempted for a moment to send the photos to Neo with the tag This you?, but then Ruby remembered Watts, and the fact that Ozpin might check her phone for the photos, and reluctantly refrained.
Neo probably would've just replied with a middle finger anyway.
"Okay, so they're definitely here." Ruby murmured, sinking back down. With some quick taps of her thumbs, she sent the photos to Ozpin –just in case. She also shared them to the Beacon Counter-Conspiracy group chat, although that name was still very much unofficial. Nobody appreciated her genius…
"Now, I take it, you wander off and get yourself caught by that reprobate and his goons?" Weiss whispered back to her, with the edge of a weary sigh in her voice. Ruby blinked at her as she put her Scroll away.
"Well, I mean, unless you wanna…"
"I'm a Schnee." Weiss said flatly. "I would be lucky to survive a few minutes of their tender care, and you know it."
Ruby winced. Oof, yeah. Maybe it was definitely a better idea for her to be the one in the hot seat, just like before.
She unclipped Crescent Rose from her belt and handed it over.
"Hang around at the entrance to the train tracks?" she asked, and Weiss nodded. She made to put Ruby's weapon away, only to be tugged short by Ruby refusing to let go.
When Weiss looked at her, Ruby's silver eyes were huge and filled with mock tears.
"Promise you'll take care of my baby…" she sniffled. Weiss rolled her eyes and lightly whacked Ruby on the top of her head with one hand, tugging Crescent Rose away.
"I'm hardly going to break it just by carrying it around." she sniffed, standing up and moving deeper into the shadows of the room. "Now go and get caught like the idiot you are."
Ruby stuck out her tongue, then turned around and faced the street. Of course, she didn't step right out onto it –she wasn't actually stupid, no matter how Weiss teased her.
No, she waited until Weiss had enough time to be gone, then began slinking off through the building, wiggling her way out of a cracked wall into an alleyway and then working her slow and sneaky way towards the actual train itself. Her Aura hummed gently just beneath her skin, ready to shield her at the first sign of an attack: Ruby felt like now was a good time to practice actual serious scouting and infiltrating an enemy's base, even though she expected –even wanted– to get caught here eventually.
After all, the sooner she was caught, the sooner she and her team could drop their pretenses and crash this train –before it started blowing holes in the bedrock and luring the Grimm towards the city. Ideally, Ruby would get "caught," alarm Weiss, and draw the rest of her team and Oobleck over, and they could whip the White Fang (and Torchwick and Neo, technically) into submission. Ruby and her team could make sure Neo and her partner somehow managed to sneak away, and then they'd have all the evidence they wanted and needed to indict Cinder, lock her up, and throw away the key.
Heck, some of the White Fang members here might even have seen Cinder prancing around with Torchwick, which would only make Ruby's job easier.
Still, expecting to get caught was no reason not to challenge herself, and Ruby did her utmost to stay quiet and unseen as she slinked closer and closer to the hive of terrorist activity, peering at the crates and shipping containers. The actual area by the train tracks had been scraped down to bare earth, probably recently, since almost all of the White Fang activity was concentrated there, loading containers onto the train that waited on the extreme end of the tracks.
It was a really, really long train –no wonder they'd had to steal bucketloads of Dust from all the stores around Vale. Ruby was not privy to the exact distance between Vale and Mountain Glenn, but this train –obviously made up of many, many segments from many different trains– clearly had enough to detach and detonate cars at regular intervals all the way there. The sheer amount of Dust Torchwick and the White Fang must have stolen to pull this off was mindboggling –not to mention hooking it all up to bombs and stuff so it'd blow up in the way they wanted it to.
If she wasn't sneaking, Ruby would've whistled.
Unfortunately, this large empty space to work meant that Ruby would have almost zero cover if she wanted to try and sneak over to the train, and she gnawed on her lower lip, considering that for a moment. Her red cape and lack of mask would instantly mark her out as a non-member of the White Fang, unlike Blake, who even without her cat ears would probably at least pass muster at casual glance, what with her black and white clothes. And using her Semblance to zip by in a flash of movement wouldn't help either, since she'd leave a trail of rose petals behind.
Let's see…
Assuming that this was a mission where Ruby didn't know how things would go or exactly what was supposed to happen, she would try to take the long way around –the large empty space didn't stretch all the way along the train, and if she really had the time to spare, she could pull back and loop around, using the buildings to disguise her progress as she circled the cleared area and approached the train from the side opposite of where she was now, almost flush against the rock wall. Having done that, she could slip her way down the length of the train until she hit the engine car, then sabotage how it connected to the rest of the train.
Train mechanics were not Ruby's strong point, even if she was a gearhead, but sabotage was by definition a lot easier than repair or maintenance. Slashing the coupling of the engine car would slow the White Fang drastically as they figured out a way to link it back to the train, and if worst came to worst, Ruby could always start pulling apart wires and breaking conduits in the actual engine itself. Sure, that would become incredibly dangerous once they tried to turn it on, but desperate times…
"Urk!"
Ruby choked as someone suddenly grabbed the back of her hood, yanking her to her feet as the clasp of her cloak dug into her throat with strangling force.
"What are you doing here?!" a masked White Fang grunt asked, and Ruby gurgled sheepishly, pulling at the line of fabric against her windpipe. Okay, note to self, maybe don't plan when she was just hiding behind a wall…
"What is it?" another asked, and Ruby was dragged backwards like a scuffed kitten as the grunt holding her exhibited the reddening trainee as evidence.
"Some kind of little girl spying on us!"
"Gack!" Ruby gasped as she was finally dropped unceremoniously between them, the blood draining back away from her face.
"Where did she even come from…?" another of the mooks asked, more of the White Fang getting drawn from their duties by the unexpected scene.
"Don't know, don't care." the grunt who had caught her said, and Ruby coughed in annoyance as he and one other grabbed her by the arms and hoisted her up. "The boss is gonna wanna see her anyway. He'll figure it out."
"You guys are jerks…" Ruby croaked as they pulled her away, doing her best to pout fearsomely and ignore the tight ball of panic pounding in her chest. This was okay. This was fine. This was according to plan.
Ruby wasn't used to playing for low stakes. Deliberately lowering her guard, letting people catch her like this without a fight, it was playing unexpected havoc on her nerves. All her instincts screamed to use her Semblance, pull free, twirl Crescent and knock the haft into the back of their heads to knock them out, and then dart away and find her team, so that they could neutralize these guys and find out what they were planning and…
And this is fine. Ruby reminded herself, taking deep breaths as they dragged her across the ground to the back car of the train. All according to plan. Totally under control. Totally fine.
"Hey, boss!" one of the grunts dragging Ruby called as they came to a halt, a respectful distance away from the car itself. Both of them promptly dropped her, making Ruby cough as the dust kicked up and got in her throat. "There's this little girl here…?"
Oh, crap. Ruby and the others had been acting so confidently on the assumption that it was just Torchwick and Neo out here –was that Adam guy out here too?! What should Ruby do? What would Blake want her to do!?
She hastily struggled up onto her knees and turned to face the car, seeing a familiar man lean out of the open doors, then tsk in annoyance and drop to the ground. His companion was left behind, arranging herself to sit languidly on the edge of the train car.
"Man… like my day wasn't bad enough already."
Oh, it's Torchwick. Ruby thought, relieved at seeing a familiar (if not entirely friendly face). Her guard dropped, she did not react in time as a solid metal cane caught her right in the face, sending her flying back several feet with a yip, landing on her back and skidding in the dirt. At least she'd had her Aura up.
She blinked the pain out of her watering eyes, her nose stinging a bit despite having her Aura up, before Ruby looked through her defensively raised arms to see him sauntering towards her with a smug little chuckle rolling low in his throat.
Oh, it's Torchwick. Ruby thought, her face paling a little as she realized that Neo wouldn't have given him the memo that Ruby was part of the other side of their alliance against Cinder. Uh-oh.
"Wow, you are much more manageable without that oversized gardening tool of yours." Torchwick snickered derisively, planting the butt end of his cane in the dirt and cocking his hip to lean against it. He put his free hand on his hip as he smirked down at her.
Ruby's eyes flicked sideways slightly, looking beyond him back at the train car. Neo was still daintily sitting in the open part of the car Torchwick had leaped down from, and when she saw Ruby looking at her, Neo grinned and waved by fluttering her fingers. She very noticeably did not get up or otherwise move.
Okay, that was fine. Ruby didn't expect her to actually directly help anyway, that would raise way too many suspicions. So she did her best to growl like she would at fifteen and lunge forward, her fist pulling back and aimed for Torchwick's face. She could actually feel how his cane looped around her arm this time, pulling her blow to the side and deflecting her, but didn't bother fighting it. She was supposed to be doing this by the book, even if it felt a lot more humiliating this time around when Torchwick used her own momentum to send her sprawling into the dirt on his other side, and laughed.
Jerk. Ruby could show him, she'd learned some moves since Beacon. …But no, she couldn't. Stupid following the script rules or whatever. She'd give a lot of Lien to see Torchwick's face when she karate-chopped the six-foot man over her hip.
"Oh, man." he chuckled, pretending to wipe a tear of satisfaction from his eye as he turned back to face her. "Y'know, Perry, I really did need this."
He laughed again as Ruby did her best to hide the fact that she was looking back to Neo –upside-down, this time– and signaling for help with a lift of her eyebrows. Er, well, not help… but maybe control? Support? Some sign that Neo was ready to stop her partner, just in case Torchwick got out of hand, went off-script, and started hurting Ruby for real?
Rather than any of that, Neo offered her a distinctly toothy grin, and a pantomime thumbs-up.
Oh.
Ruby's expression flattened along with her brows, and she wanted to groan at herself as she heard Torchwick stop laughing and quickly looked back at him again. Of course Neo wouldn't help her out here: Ruby was more or less indirectly responsible for Torchwick's death, and now Neo got to watch him beat Ruby up with relatively minor, nonlethal stakes. They both knew how this fight would end up, after all, so it was probably safe for Neo to just watch from the sidelines… probably.
Ugh.
Ruby should probably consider herself lucky that Neo hadn't broken out a bucket of popcorn and a placard that scored Torchwick on where and how he was hitting her.
"Ah. But, seriously." Torchwick sighed, sobering up again as he took several steps forward. Due to the differences in their height –he was taller than Jaune and Ruby wouldn't even come up to his shoulders if she was standing– he had to actually take a knee to shove the distinctly-a-gun-barrel part of his weapon up under her chin, tilting Ruby's head back at an uncomfortable angle as his voice became sickeningly patronizing, like he was talking to an actual kid kid. "How'd ya find this place, Red?"
She glowered at him, and then Semblance'd away in a puff of rose petals.
"Huh?!" She heard him exclaim behind her, soon far behind her, and then, faintly, "Woah!"
Ruby looked behind herself, seeing Torchwick had turned to look after her with his goons. Unable to resist the impulse, she put a finger to her cheek as she ran, pulling her eyelid down and sticking out her tongue at him.
"Bleh!"
She had to duck the next second as a Dust flare whistled past her.
"I'm not above killing a kid, Red, so don't test me!" came Torchwick's irritated voice in the distance, his cane outstretched in her direction. Ruby remembered what had happened last time, the way the handle of his weapon had caught around her hood and yoinked her to a halt –and so despite breaking the script, she dodged as it shot past her.
Hey, she couldn't let him drag her back like he had before after she'd taunted him. That would be so embarrassing, she'd curl up into a ball and die out of sheer humiliation! She just knew Torchwick would have a smarmy comment about it –probably something in the line of her being an immature brat who didn't know better– and Neo definitely wouldn't let it go, ever. Nope, Ruby had made fun of him by sticking her tongue out, and so now she had to stick to her guns and be competent, cool, and badass in her escape.
Yeah.
That was a good idea.
Ruby was so awesome.
To solidify her awesomeness, she continued the movement of her dodge and spun around fully for a moment, briefly offering him both middle fingers –and a defiant blep of her tongue again– as she ran backwards.
"You're not making this any easier for when we catch you!"
Ruby turned back ahead at Torchwick's shout, jumping over the returning swipe of the hooky part of his cane (the handle? Ruby had no idea what to call that part of a mecha-shift cane) as it rattled by underneath her feet, spooling back to reattach to his weapon.
Ducking and zigzagging from one side to another as she wove through the gunfire being blasted after her from just about every direction possible, Ruby pulled out her Scroll, still running towards the yawning hole at the end of the tracks ahead.
"Weiss! Got my weapon!?"
"Of course." Her partner scoffed over the line. "Yang, Blake, and Oobleck are en route… following the sound of gunfire, I presume."
"Hehe." Ruby laughed sheepishly. "I'm heading for the entrance –see you in a sec!"
She replaced her Scroll –and not a moment too soon, as a molten flare of Dust splashed past her and exploded on the ground. Torchwick had apparently forgone the melee part of his cane and was just straight-up shooting at her.
Familiar explosions sounded on her right, further behind, and Ruby risked a glance over her shoulder to see Yang and Blake blasting through the ranks of the White Fang stationed up on the roof of an abandoned parking garage. Nice –they were making sure that any snipers up there wouldn't be able to give Ruby any more trouble.
The withering stream of gunfire dwindled noticeably in the next few moments, until Ruby saw Oobleck dashing in from a street nearby.
"Miss Rose! What happened to your weapon!"
"Ah, uh, Weiss has it!" Ruby blurted, seeing the familiar stark pop of color luckily running towards them. Weiss tossed Crescent Rose to her, and they all ducked behind a nearby building –probably once meant to be terraced apartments– as gunfire pelted the walls. Ruby ran through a quick safety check, making sure that the sights were correct and the gear changes were all in order. Dashing footsteps nearby made her quickly swing it up and around, but she lowered Crescent when she saw it was just Yang and Blake.
"Looks like that Torchwick guy's got half the White Fang down here, with stolen Atlas Paladins and Dust and gods know what else." Yang panted as they skidded to a stop, mostly for Oobleck's benefit.
"He's loading it all onto a train, so presumably he means to take it somewhere." Blake added.
"Ah, but where might that be is the question!" Oobleck said, adjusting his glasses slightly. "Even if he means to cause the Breach which we have sought to thwart, these tunnels are sealed! The tracks lead to a dead end."
There was a teeth-clenching, nails-on-chalkboard screech of feedback loop from the long-abandoned rail speaker system that made them all wince, before Torchwick's voice echoed across the vast space of the cavern.
"Get to your places, we are leaving now!"
"Well, he certainly means to go somewhere with it!" Weiss snapped. "We have to stop them before they get that train going!"
"Indubitably, Miss Schnee!" Oobleck agreed, extending his thermos into its combat form with a flick of his wrist. "We must put a stop to the Breach at all costs! Miss Rose, with me! We must distract and displace the White Fang members attempting to board the train! The rest of you, endeavor to stop that train from getting to the walls of Vale!"
They all nodded and dove into motion, even as the train gave a dreadful whistle, hissing with steam as it began to chug ponderously forward. Ruby and Oobleck split from the others and ran back for the crowd of masked Faunus who were all frantically throwing themselves towards the train as it slowly began to gain speed. Their panic at the idea of being left behind would be sure to draw any Grimm lingering in the area, so she and Oobleck would need to be quick with this.
The first indication the grunts had that the little girl they had previously captured might be a bit more competent than previously assumed was when Ruby crashed into them, Crescent Rose shifting into war scythe form and whipping out as she spun through a knot of half a dozen people, using the blunt side as it cracked against skulls and spines. These guys were White Fang, which meant that even if they had their Aura activated, their control would be sloppy and their use inefficient. She could afford to knock them out –or at the very least, knock them away from the train– with full-blooded swings, as long as she didn't use the edge of her scythe.
Oobleck was using his thermos-flamethrower to much the same effect, making sure that opposition for the rest of Ruby's team would be minimal as they all latched onto one of the train's rear cars and immediately began climbing towards where it coupled to the rest. Of course, ideally they'd be able to stop any and all of the cars from exploding before they blew holes in the roof and Ruby and Oobleck had to deal with these guys and Grimm from the surface…
"White Fang, stand down!" Oobleck called as he and Ruby quickly finished knocking aside the stragglers –which, honestly, was probably more than half of them– and stood tall on the tracks between the Faunus and the retreating train. "I can assure you all a fair trial in Vale despite the actions taken here today, but first you must survive to make it there!"
There was a frission of uncertainty in the remaining White Fang at that. These particular grunts weren't hardcore White Fang, not yet, not quite. More zealous and less principled than most recruits, sure. But at the end of the day, Ruby knew that most of these guys were civilians, only recently trained to handle Aura and heavy weaponry. Caught between the implicit approach of Mountain Glenn's Grimm and an experienced Huntsman (and someone who fought like a Huntress), their obvious choice was to go with the people who were at least capable of showing them mercy.
But then again, violent extremists were hardly known for being reasonable.
"K… kill the humans!" one of the remaining mooks called. He must have been higher-ranking, since the others firmed up and began spraying gunfire at her and Oobleck almost on reflex.
He tsked, Ruby sighed, and they both split away from each other before the first Dust bullets even began to streak by them.
"Nonlethal blows only, Miss Rose!" Oobleck shouted as they ran forward to engage the White Fang. "And let us hope your team manages to disengage the train mechanisms before it's too late!"
Dust roared as Yang punched one mook aside, slamming him against the metal wall with a clang. She was the leader of their three-person point as the remainders of Team RWBY blitzed their way through the back cars, charging with reckless haste down through the train. They weren't even focused on immobilizing the White Fang, just knocking them out of the way –which was the main reason why Yang was on point. Leaving enemies behind them might be risky, but getting to the front of the train itself was more important than making sure that everyone who went down stayed down.
Besides, grim as it may be, getting knocked out or left in one of the back-end train cars was practically a death sentence already… unless Yang and the others managed to stop the train.
Rather unsurprisingly, given the assholes involved, the White Fang's presence began to thin out as they reached the middle of the train, the sounds of combat having drawn everybody with a weapon and the ability to stand towards the back cars. A really disciplined or experienced fighting force would've known to hold their ground and stay spaced out along the train in order to grind the three of them down with an endurance race, not all pile into the same half-dozen cars in the effort to overwhelm them through brute force.
I mean, seriously. Yang scoffed internally. She and the others were Huntress trainees, and the White Fang were trying to engage them in a small space where having a smaller force was actually an advantage.
And speaking of smaller things…
Here was someone who actually was smart enough to stay at their assigned spot.
Neopolitan dropped down from the hatch in the ceiling, probably having been sitting on the edge to make sure that, no matter if they charged across the top of the cars or dashed through their interior, she'd be able to catch Team RWBY. She smiled as the three of them ran into the car, as though greeting a trio of old friends.
"You two go on ahead." Yang extended her gauntlets with a snap of her wrists. Neo's smile turned knife-edged. "This one's mine."
True to form, Yang didn't have to distract Neo with a shot for Blake and Weiss to bolt past her: Neo simply straightened up from where she had landed, letting the two Huntresses split to either side of her as they dashed to the next compartment. Yang paused to take her measure for a moment, steadying her own breathing.
Just like before, Yang began to slowly stride across the length of the train car, coming closer and closer to the motionless Neo. This felt odd, like a spar and yet not like a spar, the two of them playacting together and yet still very much on opposite sides. There were real stakes involved, too, and Yang wondered if Neo felt at all nervous about the possibility of an upcoming crash, and how it might damage her partner.
She stopped when they stood a mere arm's length away, and Yang was struck once again by how tiny Neo was, barely coming up to her chin. The smile on Neo's face, though, was nothing but feral confidence, looking up at Yang like she was the one who was small and insignificant.
"So. We're gonna pull our punches, huh?" Yang asked, rolling her shoulders and bringing her elbow back, and Neo put a finger to her chin and tilted her head slyly, something like a playful question rising in her mismatched eyes.
Are we? that look seemed to ask, and Yang scowled, before throwing her fist forward with a yell.
Neo slid aside, and that damned parasol hooked under Yang's shoulder and flipped her headlong across the space of the train car in an uncontrolled spin.
When she rebalanced herself and looked back, Neo was turned half-away from her in a pose that was almost coquettish, feet neatly together, hips swayed slightly to the side, her opened parasol over one shoulder as though she was a young miss out enjoying a sunny day.
The grin she tossed over her shoulder as she looked at Yang was something like a Beowolf about to eat their young.
"You are just the fucking worst." Yang half-groaned, before cocking her gauntlets again and lunging forward with a cry.
The hissing of machinery and pumping pistons filled the air as Blake and Weiss's feet tapped rapidly against the metal floor of the cargo cars, rushing past countless crates of unknown provenance. If Weiss had to guess, they probably contained extra Dust capsules and crystals, not enough to light up the entire car if one of its defenders destroyed a crate, but more than enough to add extra force to the bomb in each car when it finally went off.
With Oobleck and Ruby clearing off the train's former landing point and drawing most of the White Fang by the oblique presence of an actual Huntsman (despite the fact that all of Team RWBY were certainly Huntress-level fighters), there were far less enemies than there had been the first time around, although Weiss's heart still squeezed in guilty fear as she heard the distant whump of one of the detached cars exploding, followed by the sound of falling rock.
It was fine. This was fine. They were still far out from Vale, only one or two cars would have been decoupled at this point. They needed to hurry, though, before the exit for Ruby and Oobleck was blocked off by Grimm and shattered rubble.
The two of them therefore ran from one car to the next with utmost speed, rapidly working their way up the length of the rattling train. With Yang "distracting" Neo and Torchwick allegedly in the engine car, they thankfully didn't have to worry about any foes as they ran.
That is, until Weiss heard a familiar grinding, scraping noise of many metal teeth being dragged heavily across the floor, and then the rumbling roar of a chainsaw being started up.
A towering man in a White Fang uniform and a tightly-shaven crown stalked forward in the open space of the next car, chuckling darkly as he hefted his weapon. He made for a truly imposing sight even now, several heads taller than Weiss, with fierce tattoos swirling down his incredibly muscular arms and his face transformed by a glaring Grimm mask. Weiss still remembered the unmitigated terror that had pulsed in her heart when he'd disregarded all rules of combat and simply grabbed her by the face, before slamming her against the unforgiving metal floor like she barely weighed more than a cloth doll.
Weiss and Blake made eye contact even as they ran. He was a member of the White Fang, and it was entirely possible that Blake knew him and did not want Weiss to be the one to deal with him…
Blake gave her a tight nod.
"You've got this." she said, and fixed her eyes ahead. Weiss nodded, drawing Myrtenaster as she did the same.
A press of her thumb, and the revolving chamber spun to the Gravity Dust slot as Weiss suddenly charged in to take the mighty overhand blow of that roaring chainsaw. She caught it on Myrtenaster and thrust up, and despite the almost pathetic toothpick-slenderness of her rapier compared to the chainsaw he wielded, her steel held firm and Gravity Dust shimmered against the blow, bouncing it back with just as much momentum as he had swung it forward.
As the White Fang lieutenant's chainsaw almost scraped against the ceiling from the force of that rebound, Blake streaked under his uplifted arm on the side and was gone, dashing into the next car. In that moment of disorientation, too, as he struggled to recover from the unexpected bounce backwards and up, Weiss finished her move by slashing her rapier viciously across his raised arms, not daring to stab for fear that she would knock him back into range of Blake.
It did not break through his Aura, as she had more than expected, but it weakened it, and then she was leaping back out of range as that chainsaw came roaring down like a thunderbolt, gouging a deep slice into the floor.
Weiss dodged several errant chips of flying debris as she flipped backwards, and then took a ready pose as she landed several of her own steps out of his range. The White Fang lieutenant merely growled deep in his throat, a sound of deepest, primal satisfaction as he wrenched his chainsaw out of the floor and held it at the ready.
"Finally, I get to kill a Schnee." he rumbled.
Weiss huffed and raised her sword.
"If it wouldn't make everything worse, I'd gladly hand Jacques over to the White Fang for execution myself." she said, before narrowing her eyes. "And I'll thank you not to assume the outcome of the battle before it's begun."
Do not kill Torchwick. Blake reminded herself as she bolted through another door, knowing that she was drawing near to the head of the train as she loosened Gambol Shroud in its sheath. Do not accidentally kill the only reason Neopolitan is working with us.
She took a deep breath as the door to the engine room slid open, before slowing and coming to a final halt when she saw Torchwick standing before the boilerplate door, just as he had been originally.
"Hello, kitty-cat." he said, spreading his arms wide. "You miss me?"
Blake's eyebrow twitched as he actually had the audacity to spin his cane in one hand at those words and point at her with a cheeky grin, somewhat offended even though she knew she looked like a student. Did he seriously think she was so little a threat that he could afford to play with his weapon, though? Ugh.
"You know, we really gotta stop meeting like this." Torchwick added as his spin ended with uplifted cane tapped against his shoulder, cocking an eyebrow at her as mocking, saccharine concern dripped from his voice. "People are gonna talk."
Do not kill him. Please, Blake. Restraint.
She charged forward just as she had before with a snarl, but instead of leaving a Burn-loaded clone of herself for him to hit with his cane as Torchwick stepped forward to swing for her, Blake skipped several moves ahead in their fight. She pulled loose of her Semblance the moment Torchwick's cane came down in an overhead swing, leaving it lodged in the ice of her clone's chest as Blake soared over his head.
She came down again behind him, landing with both feet, and immediately lashed out with the blunt spine of Gambol Shroud, slamming its edge into the back of his skull as Torchwick lurched forward with a cry and a crack of Aura. Blake wasn't playing around like she had last time she'd fought him, back at the docks. That had been to keep him busy and give Ruby the time she needed to negotiate, and Blake had barely needed to stretch herself.
Not this time.
This time, as Torchwick hastily exploded her icy clone and rolled forward, somersaulting to his feet and hastily turning to meet the quick, lashing attacks of her katana and cleaver with his cane, Blake was moving to incapacitate him as quickly as possible. It didn't matter that she was alone now, as opposed to fighting him four-on-one: Blake's strikes were lightning-quick, the force behind them inexorable, and she was pushing him back with ease across the length of the train car as their weapons clashed and clanged together.
"Someone's been doing their homework." Torchwick muttered through gritted teeth, giving ground by the second as his eyes searched her form for any openings. Blake was experienced enough that she could see sudden alarm blooming in them, the realization that he had deeply underestimated her and needed to find an exit, fast.
It was a further token of how seriously he was taking the situation that Torchwick's snarky little quips actually dried up after feeling the strength she brought to bear in her strikes.
A few more blows in their furious exchange later, and the tip of Gambol Shroud's katana flicked up, almost scraping across his face as he hastily jerked back, before it caught under the brim of Torchwick's hat and flung it off his head. Despite clearly knowing better, he tilted his head back to follow the path of his hat on reflex, and Blake spun to aim a perfect kick at his chest, sending him flying back the few feet she needed as his back crashed against the bulkhead wall.
She slammed her cleaver against his hand as he tried to raise his cane a half-second later, and the cold steel of Gambol Shroud's katana tickled against Torchwick's throat as he hastily pulled his head back, pinning him against the cold wall.
"Drop your weapon." Blake said, not bothering to ask for surrender. His wrist tensed slightly under her blade as Torchwick clenched his fingers around the handle of his cane, and she narrowed her eyes, pressing him harder into the wall as she leaned her weight further into her weapons. "Drop it."
Torchwick's throat bobbed in a slight swallow against Gambol Shroud. She might not be able to cut through his Aura just from this, although she had definitely weakened it a little from their previous spat, but that wasn't why he wasn't ignoring her demands or offering more of those snippy little comments of his. Torchwick had seen from that brief exchange just how skilled she was, and he knew better than to think he could risk fighting her.
The blade against his throat wasn't a threat that she would slit it: it was a warning that she could –if she wanted to– do a lot more and a lot worse than that.
But it was still just barely within the risk of possibility that he would ignore all common sense and fire off a Dust flare this close to the engine in order to distract her and knock her away, giving him a chance to run with his tail between his legs –which was exactly why Blake wasn't letting up on the pressure against his throat and insisting that Torchwick drop his cane. She knew him. Survival at any cost was his motto, and he might risk the Grimm, the train crash, and Cinder's ire if it meant he could get away from a Huntress-level opponent trying to kill him.
Torchwick wet his lips and spoke.
"You been training this hard just to get little old me back for what happened at the docks?" he asked, carefully raising his free hand in a palm-out gesture of surrender –but not dropping his cane. "'Cause wow, I am seeing some improvement over the last time we fought."
Blake narrowed her eyes as her ears pinned backwards.
The train rumbled beneath them, heading ever-on towards Vale's city wall.