Penny cheerfully hummed to herself as she typed keys on her cutting-edge Atlas duel runner, A.I. Go Forward (her father had suggested the pun and she'd found it quite amusing! Even though the vehicle could obviously go in more directions than just forward). After that close call in Team RWBY's dorm room, she'd thought it best to back up the stated alibi for her quick exit with action and come down to Beacon's garage to perform the maintenance she'd excused herself with. She'd have to claim she'd already eaten the food she'd said she'd eat before she saw anyone else if she was challenged on it.
Ms. Schnee was quite insightful to suspect that Penny was a machine (though saying that she was 'just' a machine was a gross oversimplification) from just her notes, but the Atlas Obelisk Blue thought she'd covered for herself quite well. After all, both her father and General Ironwood had been adamant that the world wasn't quite ready to learn what she truly was and react with anything but fear. They needed to see the good that the monsters she'd created could do for humanity before they'd be able to realize she was only there to help.
It was… necessary. Though, more lonely than Penny would have liked. When she'd learned that she'd be sent to Vale as the Cultural Exchange Representative from Atlas's first years, she'd been so excited! Surely between watching the Beacon student body for infiltrators from this Queen the general was so worried about and being ready to support Headmaster Ozpin if an attack was made on this 'vault', plus her normal duties as Dr. Oobleck's student teacher, she'd have time to make real friends! But, that hadn't happened yet.
Yet!
"Start the runner, Wukong! We need to get to the docks before Blake gets herself killed!"
"I'm working on it, Ice Queen–and, yes! We are in business!"
"Great! Ruby, text Yang! Have her meet us there."
"What? I'm riding with you!"
"Absolutely not! This is a one-seat vehicle! Even having both of us on it is outrageously dangerous!"
"Aw."
Penny peeked out from A.I. Go Forward and watched as Sun Wukong gunned his Golden Nimbus out of the garage, his tail wrapped around Weiss Schnee's petite waist as an impromptu seatbelt.
Huh. She wondered if that had something to do with Blake Belladonna having hotwired a school duel runner and driven out a bit ago?
Oh! There was Ruby Rose, grumbling as she texted on her scroll. Perhaps she could explain.
"Salutations, Ruby!" the orange-haired girl brightly greeted. "What is going on–"
"Penny! You're here!" Ruby said, blurring over to the Atlas Obelisk Blue in a flurry of rose petals. She pointed to A.I. Go Forward. "I need a duel runner. It's really, super important. Is that one on?"
"Yes, it is," Penny replied. "That is mine, the A.I. Go Forward. I was performing maintenance on it like a normal meat person just like I said while eating food which I ate before you arrived–"
"Great! Can I borrow it? Kay, thanks, bye!"
Penny blinked (she questioned the inclusion of that function since her eyes did not require the constant refreshing, but her father assured her it was crucial to blending in with humans) and Ruby had used her semblance to get into the A.I. Go Forward's seat and gunned the hi-tech duel runner out of the garage.
Oh no!... She'd left before Penny could let her know that she could borrow the runner! That simply wouldn't do.
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Stowing her hotwired Beacon Duel Runner in an alley close to the port, Blake secured Gambol Shroud on her arm and made her way through the docks, creeping atop and around a tall maze of shipping containers.
After everything that had happened with Weiss, the duel, living each others' memories, their awkward talk in the bathroom, Blake found herself feeling… unbalanced. The monstrous enemy she'd been fighting to defeat since she was a child had chosen to keep her identity secret out of nothing but kindness, while the righteous organization she'd dedicated her life to, that she'd turned her back on her parents for, filled her with more doubts than even when she'd left them, left… him.
If the White Fang really was behind this rash of dust robberies, she had to find out. Find out, and stop them. They were sure to hit a SDC shipment this big, so she just had to grab the operation leader and make them tell her if Adam had ordered the smaller store robberies too.
Of course, when she saw the operation leader, she knew that would be unnecessary, her stomach plummeting even as she filled with even more confusion.
"Come on, come on, you animals! Get those cables attached!" Roman Torchwick harried a frantic squad of faunus terrorists in Grimm masks, smacking his cane against his palm as he turned to a White Fang member wearing glasses over his mask striding beside him with a clipboard. "Perry, are these really the best mooks you've got? We need these containers linked to the bullheads yesterday."
"I can call in the patrols to help," Perry offered.
"No! You never get rid of your lookouts! Neo's out there, but she can't be everywhere at once," Torchwick lectured, smacking his face into his palm. "Am I the only person here who's done a high-profile heist before? Where's Lizard Lips? She should be done with her section by now."
Something was very wrong. Adam would never choose to work with a human.
Blake swiftly snuck her way down to the ground and stealthily came up behind Torchwick, popping out the blade function she'd modified Gambol Shourd with at the thief's throat. Perry and the other White Fang members hopped back in surprise, trembling with terror when they saw who'd appeared.
"C–commander Blake?!" Perry stammered, stumbling to activate his (strangely sleek and Atlesian) duel disk.
"The prodigal kitty? You've gotta be kidding," the Torchwick groaned, rolling his eyes without the least bit of concern. "Oh no, you've got a knife at my throat. Whatever shall I, a person with aura, ever do?"
"Brothers of the White Fang!" Blake shouted. "Why are you aiding this scum?!"
Perry and the masked grunts said nothing. They merely continued to activate their duel disks, all advanced Atlas models that the White Fang had never had access to when Blake was with them.
"You've been gone a long time, kitty cat. The White Fang's joined a new… business venture," Torchwick chuckled, flicking his wrist and sliding out a card from under his sleeve. "Twin-Barrel Dragon. If you would."
Blake's eyes widened, a mechanical dragon with a double-barreled pistol for a head appearing right in front of her and her hostage, its barrels aimed point blank at her head. What kind of thief had the skill to manifest a monster so easily without a duel disk?!
BANG!
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BOOM!
"That did not sound good," Sun winced, his duel runner parked as he and Weiss dashed into the maze of storage crates filling the docks.
"No, but I'd bet good money that it's where Blake is," Weiss muttered. "We need to get over there–"
"Hey! What're you–Schnee!"
Grinding her teeth, Weiss whirled around to see a masked faunus with ram's horns, though one was missing its top half, sticking out from his head jump back as he spotted her and Sun. He hit a button on his advanced Atlesian duel disk (that model wasn't even on the market yet! How did a terrorist have one?) and typed several buttons. "Intruders! Intruders! There's a Schnee here!"
Sun pulled out his own duel disk, but Weiss raised a hand to stop him. "I'll deal with this! You get to Blake!"
"Are you sure?" Sun asked.
"It's one grunt. They're not exactly skilled duelists," Weiss responded, recalling her research on the White Fang's rank structure and brief flashes from Blake's memory. "I'll be fine. Go help Blake!"
Sun still hesitated a moment, concerned for her even against a threat she should have been able to handle, but he did nod, slapping two cards onto his duel disk and calling out an XX-Saber Boggart Knight and X-Saber Airbellum. He and his monster then worked together to bound up to the top of the shipping containers and dash away towards the explosion they'd heard.
"Now then," Weiss said, deploying Myrtenaster and turning to face the terrorist before her. "Shall we?"
"Heh! Let's!" the White Fang grunt laughed, his deck shuffling before he drew his hand. "I'll crush you before anyone else even gets the chance to show up, Schnee!"
"Duel!"
Weiss Schnee: 4000 Life Points
WF Grunt: 4000 Life Points
"I'll go first!" the White Fang Grunt declared. He looked over his hand and grinned like a maniac when he spotted the card on the end. "Yes! You're gonna get it now, Schnee!"
"Yes, I'm sure," Weiss snarked, rolling her eyes. The White Fang elevated duelists with actual skill very quickly through the ranks, making them operatives or commanders like Blake. Everyday grunts like this were usually given a standard Beast-type power deck and told to do their best. And given that she'd gone blow for blow with some of the best of Beacon, including Ruby and Blake, she was confident this fellow posed little threat to her.
The grunt snatched the card from the end of his hand and slammed it into his duel disk. "I activate this spell card!"
The card materialized faceup before the masked faunus, the spell's picture showing an orange demon and dragon swirling together over a dark blue spiral. The churning whirlpool manifested in the air above the card, twisting space itself as the faunus discarded two monsters to grave, only for the beasts to suddenly appear on the field and be sucked into the vortex.
"What in the world?" Weiss muttered. She had an exceptional knowledge of support cards and she'd never anything like this one before.
Unless… was this… that card?!
"Polymerization!" the White Fang grunt yelled. "Fuse my Berfomet and Gazelle, the King of Mythical Beasts together in order to fusion summon Chimera The Flying Mythical Beast!"
A shaggy, brown beast similar to the initial two monsters emerged from the swirling vortex, now with two snarling heads, one with a mane of dark fur and the other with ram's horns similar to its duelist (ATK 2100/DEF 1800).
"I lay two cards facedown and end my turn," the grunt said, smirking at Weiss's stunned face. "Fear the new power of the faunus people, little girl! We won't be pushed around anymore!"
Weiss closed her gaping mouth and briskly shook her head to resecure her focus as she drew for her turn. It wouldn't do for her to let her mind slip so much in such a dangerous duel.
Still… this was fusion, the Extra Deck summoning method that had eluded her studies, complete with the Polymerization spell card that Arc had told them about. The grunt hadn't had a single monster on the field and one spell card later he had one with over two thousand attack points.
"Scared, Schnee? You should be," the faunus taunted. "You humans have lorded your Synchros and Xyz over us for decades. But we don't need to tune aura bodies or modulate them through the Overlay Network. We just need to manifest Polymerization and it does all the work."
"So it's a skillless art," Weiss mumbled, though she was far from blind to implications. If Fusion didn't require the careful aura body techniques of Synchro, Xyz, or even Pendulum, that meant that anyone that could make Polymerizations could use it. Which meant every single White Fang member would get a boost to their dueling.
Of course, how much that boost would be, and if it would be enough to even challenge a duelist of Weiss's caliber, was a whole other story.
"I summon The Phantom Knights of Torn Scales! Then I'll use its effect to discard The Phantom Knights of Ancient Cloak to send The Phantom Knights of Mist Claws from my deck to my graveyard. Finally, I'll banish The Phantom Knights of Ancient Cloak to add The Phantom Knights of Silent Boots to my hand and special summon it with its own effect," Weiss smirked, completing her combos with one monster banished, a trap in her graveyard that would special summon itself and a Phantom Knight from the grave to protect her should she be attacked directly, and two level three monsters on the field. The Phantom Knights of Torn Scales (ATK 600/DEF 1600) and Silent Boots (ATK 200/DEF 1200) floated in front of her, at the ready. "With these two monsters, I build the Overlay Network! Xyz Summon! The Phantom Knights of Break Sword!"
Just as they did in her duel against Blake, Weiss's two ghostly armors morphed into nodes of violet light and spiraled into a brilliant golden galaxy, emerging from a bright nova orbiting an armored horse mounted by a rider of hollowed armor light by blazing blue flame (ATK 2000/DEF 1000). But also like her duel with Blake, it wouldn't be staying long.
"Ha!" the White Fang grunt chortled. "All that effort for a monster that's weaker than mine! On my turn, it's going to the graveyard."
"Why wait?" Weiss smirked. "I activate The Phantom Knights of Break Sword's effect! By using an OVerlay unit, one card on both our fields is destroyed! Him and your Fusion Monster!"
Break Sword's blade was swung and shattered, the cleaver's infernal chunks obliterating both its master and the rabid chimera before him. When the dust cleared, both Extra Deck monsters were gone, with Silent Boots and Torn Scales summoned back to Weiss's field as level four monsters by her Xyz Monster's effect.
And a wild beast with a mane of dark fur (ATK 1500/DEF 1200) was on the enemy's field.
"What?" Weiss exclaimed.
The ram faunus sneered. "Looks like both our Extra Deck monsters let us bring back some of their materials when they're destroyed. Only my Gazelle, The King of Mythical Beasts is stronger than your accessories."
Weiss frowned. Unexpected. But hardly insurmountable. Gazelle was a dirt-common normal monster. No hunting duelist had ever used one because they'd been outdated when the profession was invented at the end of The Great War. One of her most beautiful monsters could easily handle it.
"From the black darkness hidden behind the mirror, bare the fangs of rebellion against the stupidity that would make you guilty of its crimes," Weiss chanted, her level four Phantom Knights swirling into the Overlay Network once again. "Xyz Summon! Rank 4! Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon!"
Her mighty black dragon burst from the spiraling galaxy and let out a piercing, defiant roar to the heavens.
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As Bumblebee raced down the Vale highway, Yang winced as a familiar screeching cry once more filled her ears, her duel runner swerving a bit as the inevitable wave of nausea hit her. Luckily, she was a badass enough driver that she'd straightened out her ride before the cars around her had time to realize something was wrong and honked at her to get out of the way before it became their problem.
"Guess Weiss has already started the party," Yang muttered, unsure how she instinctively knew it was Dark Rebellion that had been summoned and not Odd-Eyes.
She turned her back for fifteen minutes to go kick the butts of a couple punks who thought they could step up to Pyrrha by beating her, and suddenly Blake had run off to play vigilante without inviting the rest of them! She'd barely finished having Hot Red Dragon Archfiend wipe out the last of the punks when she'd gotten Ruby's message and suddenly had to speed across town. And if one of the others, especially her little sis, got hurt because she wasn't there to back them up…
The blond gunned her duel runner down the exit to the docks.
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Ruby only felt the nausea for a brief second after she parked Penny's duel runner by the docks and heard Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon's battle cry fill the air. That's because a second after the feeling came over her, her Signer Mark began to glow bright red.
The silver-eyed girl smiled. "Thanks, Black Rose. Now let's go find the others."
"Hey, do you see that weird red glow down there?"
"Yeah! Let's go check it out."
Ruby's smile grew wider, her Crescent Rose duel disk expanding over her arm. "Right after we deal with these guys."
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When Blake heard Dark Rebellion's battle cry fill the air, she was not looking forward to getting hit by the nausea wave in the middle of combat.
Fortunately, she didn't. She didn't at all.
For whatever reason, be it an aftereffect of their dragons' previous clash or their memory sharing, the previous nausea of Dark Rebellion's shriek was replaced by intense focus, energy flooding through her body like adrenaline times ten. Where before the roar had split the sky, she'd only survived Twin-Barrel Dragon's shot and the resultant explosion of the dust shipping crate by having a shadow clone take her place for each attack, and had been thrown to the ground and surrounded by grunts, now, she was standing over half the terrorists in a sea of flames, Drummerilla and Skullcrobat Joker beside her.
"Mr. Torchwick, please don't take this the wrong way," Perry stammered, hopping back from the raging inferno with the last three grunts standing. "But can you stop shooting at her when she's standing in front of dust containers!?"
"Hmm, good point, Perry," Torchwick remarked, the only combatant other than Blake to be unblemished, flanked by his Twin-Barrel Dragon and the even larger Blowback Dragon. "We can't steal it if we blow it up."
BOOM! Another container went flying as its cargo ignited, Perry and the three grunts stumbling for cover.
"Why are you doing this?!" Blake demanded. "You've stolen most of the dust in Vale! You can't possibly have a buyer that needs this much!"
"We're not thieves, Blake. We're revolutionaries," a new, but familiar voice responded. "You of all people should know that."
"Ilia!" Blake gasped, whirling around as fear lit her energized muscles.
There she stood, lithe and deadly with her auburn hair in a needle-like ponytail running down her back, her thin Lightning Lash duel disk curled around her forearm like a whip. The chameleon faunus stared down at Blake from atop a shipping container with a torn-up roof, accusing yet mournful. While Adam was the old comrade the Odd-Eyed Bandit feared encountering the most, her former best friend was a close second.
"Now!" Torchwick shouted. "Duel Anchor!"
Duel Anchor? Wha–Gah!
Blake gasped, a band of crimson energy suddenly wrapped around her wrist, Drummerilla and Skullcrobat Joker instantly vanishing. Her aura and semblance locked down to dueling, the cat faunus's eyes widened when they followed the coil back to the sleek duel disk of one of the grunts!
"Huh. Guess the boss was right about stealing those fancy new Atlas models," Torchwick smirked. "You animals all being able to use duel anchors is useful."
He snapped his fingers and his dragons cocked their barrels. Blake made ready to dodge, hoping whatever crazy energy boost Dark Rebellion's roar had given her would be enough to let her dodge long enough to figure a way out of this–
"Hold your fire!" Ilia yelled.
"Why would I… oh, I got you, Lizard Lips," Torchwick chuckled, signaling his dragons to stand down. He turned around and smacked Perry's shoulder. "Come on, Perry, let's make sure the other sections are ready to move out. No matter how this goes, it'll be entertaining for later."
The gangster tipped his bowler hat to the surrounding faunus and strolled away as the glasses-wearing terrorist scampered after him.
Leaving Blake still surrounded by three grunts, with Ilia leering down from above. The two masked terrorists on the ground that weren't using a duel anchor drew from their decks, ready to summon monsters in hunting mode while Blake couldn't defend herself.
"Stop!" Ilia commanded. "We're dueling her, no cheap shots."
"But there's no way the cops haven't heard that explosion. They could be here any minute," one of the grunts argued, before sneering at Blake. "And this traitor deserves no mercy."
"That traitor is still the Odd-Eyed Bandit," Ilia pointed out. "You really think not having her semblance will keep her from sending wild attacks into the dust we're surrounded by?"
Blake bit her lip. That had been the plan, especially with her mysterious adrenaline boost. Leave it to Ilia to keep a cool head and come up with a plan that put her in an even tighter corner. She was good, but a four-on-one battle royale duel was a little much even for her.
Ilia's Lightning Lash duel disk unfurled into petals of gray and glowing yellow, a look of sorrow and regret ghosting over her face. "I never dreamed it would come to this, Blake. You shouldn't have come back."
"Correction! She shouldn't have come back alone."
Huh!?
Blake, Ilia, and the White Fang grunts' heads whipped up as a blur of gold flipped onto the shipping crate the chameleon faunus was standing atop. Before anyone could realize what was happening, a bright yellow duel anchor shot out of the new figure and snaked around Ilia's wrist.
Sun Wukong flashed an earnest grin, his gold and maroon duel disk popping into its ready position. "Let's even the odds a bit, shall we?"
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"Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon, attack!" Weiss ordered, fervently pointing at her opponent's Gazelle, The King of Mythical Beasts. "Lightning Mandible Charge!"
Her dark dragon's protruding fangs lit with crackles of violet lightning and rammed towards the enemy creature. Outside a specialized arena, the aura body's claws tore up the ground, a new trench torn through the docks from the charges. Still, it was significantly less destruction than would have occurred from the chaos of a hunting mode battle. It was said in ancient times that duels were used to resolve disputes while limiting the destruction of the feud, and it was a tradition Weiss meant to carry on by getting to Blake. She had to help her teammate defeat whatever foes she was up against.
Unfortunately, it seemed in her haste, she had lost focus on the foe in front of her.
"I activate both my trap cards! Both Horn of the Phantom Beast!" the ram faunus shouted, his facedowns flipping up and granting his Gazelle two pairs of giant orange energy horns (ATK 1500 + 800 + 800 = ATK 3100). "Each one equips to my monster and gives it eight hundred extra attack points!"
"What?!" Weiss exclaimed, cursing her choice to save her dragon's special ability in case her opponent brought out a truly powerful monster.
She threw her hands to her feet, preparing to summon a gravity glyph beneath her to brace for the losing battle's backlash, only for the grunt to hit a button on his duel disk and shoot a duel anchor that wrapped around Weiss's wrist. The heiress balked as her semblance was sealed, her glyph never manifesting.
"No running away with a glyph, little girl," the grunt growled. "You started this fight, you're gonna finish it! Gazelle!"
The beast leapt into the air at its master's call, its enlarged phantom tusks tearing Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon apart before the black dragon's shorter mandibles could even reach it. Weiss's beast let out a pained death knell as it shattered to pieces, its mistress gritting her teeth as she stumbled back from the shockwave of the blow.
Weiss Schnee: 3400 Life Points
The White Fang grunt cackled. "Another benefit of my traps. When the equipped monster destroys another monster in battle, I draw a card. So two traps, means two cards."
"I banish The Phantom Knights of Silent Boots from my graveyard to add The Phantom Knights' Fog Blade from my deck to my hand," Weiss grunted, pulling the trap from her deck and then pushing it and two other cards from her hand facedown. "I set three cards facedown and end my turn."
To think one of her aces had been taken out by such simple traps. She'd let her guard down and not just because she hadn't realized that this terrorist would be able to use his stolen advanced Atlas duel disk to make an artificial duel anchor despite his lacking skill. But at the very least, she had adequate defenses in place to weather whatever came next, most notably her Phantom Knights in the graveyard that her Mist Claws could bring back if she was attacked directly–
"I play Pot of Greed and draw two more cards," the grunt announced, picking up two more cards and bringing his hand to four. He smirked with excitement as he plucked one of his new cards into his duel disk. "I play Soul Release."
Weiss's eyes widened at the sight of the common card flaring onto the field, its image one of a kaleidoscopic ethereal woman. "Oh no."
"Oh yes. I figure it's about time I stop you from mining those Phantom Knights in your graveyard," the grunt gloated. "Soul Release banishes up to five cards from any graveyard."
Weiss paled as every Phantom Knight monster and trap in her graveyard, along with her Dark Rebellion, were banished and rendered useless to her.
"Then I once again activate Polymerization!" the White Fang member shouted, raising the spell high as its vortex swirled. "I fuse the Gazelle on my field, and the Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest and Yellow Baboon, Archer of the Forest in my hand!"
The three mighty beasts flew up into the spiraling twisting of space, their bodies warped and churned into a new creature.
"Taunted, tortured, insulted, and reviled. Demeaned by human overlords, who never paid the price. No more! Unify our people! Lead them to salvation and take back our lives they stole! Fusion Summon!" the ram faunus roared. "Guardian Chimera!"
A mishappen monstrosity emerged from the vortex, a mass of black fur and rippling flesh haphazardly stuck together, as if the fusion hadn't quite worked properly. Golden lines of light marred the new beast's horns and wings, its tail a serpent barring its fangs while three heads of a lion, an eagle, and a dragon roared at the defenseless Weiss (ATK 3300/DEF 3300).
The grunt smirked as Weiss took a step back in horror at the sight of his enormous new ace. "A match even for the legendary Blue-Eyes. With the power of Fusion in our hands, we won't be pushed around anymore. Atlesian Knights, corporate goons, even hunting duelists, we can finally go mano-e-mano with them all!"
"Don't be so sure," Weiss warned, hitting a button on one of Myrtenaster's Spell & Trap Card Zones. "I activate my Fog Blade and–"
"It won't work," the White Fang grunt countered, mockingly tapping his broken horn. "As long as Polymerization is in my graveyard, Guardian Chimera can't be targeted by your card effects."
"What?" Weiss gasped, sparks crackling over her facedown on the field as it failed to raise without a legitimate target.
"It's got a few more effects too," the grunt revealed, drawing two more cards from his deck. "For every fusion material that came from my hand, it lets me draw a card on summon. And for every fusion material that came from my field, one of your cards is destroyed. And since I know where your useless Fog Blade is, I'll target the facedown on the other end instead!"
Guardian Chimara's lion head let loose a breath fire, the blaze searing through Weiss's trap, The Phantom Knights of Wrong Magnetring, and leaving her with only two facedowns.
"Next, I normal summon Berserk Gorilla," the grunt proclaimed, an enormous ape (ATK 2000/DEF 1000). "You're wide open, Schnee. And my monsters easily have enough power to crush your life points."
"Not quite. You forgot my Fog Blade!" Weiss reminded him, her trap flipping over for real and firing a misty sword through Berserk Gorilla. "Your monkey can't attack and its special abilities are negated. Guardian Chimera may be powerful, but it can't finish the fight alone."
"Heh. 'Can't finish the fight alone'," the faunus grunt echoed, though not mockingly for once. No, now he just lowered his head and gazed down at the last card in his hand. "I'm not alone. None of us are. Our comrades are with us."
Weiss cocked an eyebrow. "We're the only ones here right now."
"Tsk. I shouldn't have expected a Schnee to understand. All you do is use people, wear them down in your mines until there's nothing left. Get as much money and dust out of them as you can until they're gone," the horned terrorist sneered, clutching tight at his card, tears slipping down from behind his Grimm mask. "You don't know what it's like to fight for a cause, to fight for something others fought for, that your comrades died for… that your family died for… your child…"
Child… wait… no.
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Weiss nearly jumped when one of the bedridden faunus, a man with ram's horns, one with its top half missing, sticking out his head.
"My… my son," he gasped in a croaking, parched voice. "Please… where is my son?"
Weiss gulped, her eyes flickering towards the significant pile of unmoving bodies shoved into the far corner of the barn, some of them small enough to be children.
"We'll… we'll find him," she lied, gently patting the man back down to his cot. "Just rest. We'll find him for you."
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Weiss paled, realizing that she recognized the half-broken horns of the faun– of the person before her. It was the same half-alive man who'd grabbed her arm in Blake's memory of the White Fang's only peaceful protest under Sienna Khan's leadership. The same man who begged her to tell her where his lost son was.
"You… you don't have to do this," she tried to tell the still grieving man. "There are other…"
The words died on her tongue. 'There are other ways'? Was that what she'd been going to tell him? This man had tried those other ways, for decades under the Belladonnas' leadership of the White Fang, and all it had accomplished was getting him mained and taking his child. Humanity, at least the ones in power like her father and the councils, hadn't cared. He'd already lost everything. Was she supposed to tell him that he had to sacrifice even more just to be treated like a human being?
Did every faceless grunt of the White Fang hide a tragedy behind their Grimm mask?
"The comrades I've lost… carry me forward! To see justice done for my people!" the ram faunus shouted raising his last card, a spell. "I activate Gift of the Matyr! By tributing Berserk Gorilla, its attack points are added to Guardian Chimera's!"
Berserk Gorilla roared, its body fading along with the Fog Blade that had bound it. The ape's spirit floated out from where it had stood and surged through Guardian Chimera, the Fusion Monster throwing all three of its heads back in a wrathful cry of rage… and mourning (ATK 5300).
"Attack!" the grunt screamed. "End this!"
Guardian Chimera's heads each unleashed a stream of vibrant rainbow flames, all of them shrieking straight for the Schnee heiress. For a moment, a terrible moment of self-loathing and guilt, Weiss actually considered letting the blaze strike her. She had not committed her father's crimes, but she'd certainly benefitted from them. The lien he'd robbed, that she'd played the songbird to help him embezzle at times, had paid for everything she'd ever owned, the dust that made up every card she'd ever played. Her life had been built by blood money, no matter what good she wanted to do with it.
And yet if she lost here, she'd be leaving her friends, those without such guilt in their families, to face the rest of the White Fang alone. She'd be leaving Blake to face her demons alone. She couldn't do that. Even if she had to be one more example of Schnee privilege hurting this man.
"I activate my trap card."
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"This was my last facedown."
"Dang."
"There are undoubtedly benefits to being filthy rich and having access to lots of high-quality dust."
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"Mirror Force!" Weiss yelled, her final facedown flipping up and casting a reflective barrier between her and Guardian Chimera's attack.
For a brief moment, the screen reflected back the young girl's own miserable face, the scar cutting through her left eyes glaring accusingly back at her.
Yet, the trap did its duty and sent Guardian Chimera's rainbow screeching back towards it. The mangled Fusion Monster howled in agony as its reflected blaze blew it to smithereens.
"No!" the horned grunt wailed, pained and heartbroken.
Weiss clenched her fist, turning away in conflicted shame. "Walk away. Please, let's just end this and walk away. Tell them I got away from–"
"No! No, I can't–I won't! Too many have died for me to just walk away!" the grunt cried. "I activate Green Baboon, Defender of the Forest's effect from my graveyard! When my Beast-type monster is destroyed, I can pay one thousand life points to summon it to my field!"
WF Grunt: 3000 Life Points
Weiss gulped as a giant green-furred baboon with a huge club rose up and roared (ATK 2600/DEF 1800), a flash of fear cutting through her fog of guilt. Said fear soon proved very justified when the club was bashed into the petite girl and sent her flying through the air, falling back down and bouncing across the concrete until she was abruptly stopped by the duel anchor yanking taut.
Weiss Schnee: 800 Life Points
"Well?!" the grunt demanded. "Are you gonna just 'walk away'?"
Weiss groaned as she struggled up to her knees, her aura crackling as her matted white hair strayed out of her ponytail and into her face. "I… I can't. Too many are still alive... for me to stop. I… draw."
She pulled a card from her deck, her Sage with Eyes of Blue, bringing her hand to three. "I summon the White Stone of the Ancients."
The small glowing egg rose up before her (ATK 600/DEF 500).
The grunt scoffed. "One last prideful gasp?"
"I suppose so. I activate the effect of the Sage with Eyes of Blue from my hand," Weiss glumly remarked, no joy in her impending victory as she placed the card from her hand in her graveyard. "By discarding it and sending one effect monster on my field to the graveyard, I can summon a Blue-Eyes monster from my deck to the field."
The horned faunus stumbled back, his mask shaking on his face as he trembled in terror. "Blue… Eyes?"
The White Stone of the Ancients crackled with electricity, the coursing energy rapidly building into a blinding tempest, a distinctive, furious roar thundering through the docks.
"Rise. The pride of the Schn… Rise," Weiss muttered, unable to bring herself to speak her usual summoning chant. "Blue-Eyes White Dragon."
Her family's signature beast cut through the blinding tempest, the mighty dragon roaring down upon Green Baboon, the enormous beast shrinking back and looking utterly puny before the ultimate creature of destruction.
"Attack," Weiss whispered, discarding the last card in her hand, a monster bearing the image of a resplendent angel. "I discard Honest to activate its effect. When my light attribute monster battles your monster, mine gains attack equal to yours."
"Wha–what?!" the ram faunus stammered, Blue-Eyes White Dragon's wings replaced with the shining wings of a seraphim (ATK 5600).
"I'm sorry," Weiss murmured. "White Lightning."
Blue-Eyes White Dragon threw its head back and unleashed a coursing beam of tempestuous death annihilating Green Baboon and sending the masked faunus hurdling back. He smashed into the side of a shipping container tower, denting the base container's side as his duel anchor shattered.
WF Grunt: 0 Life Points
Winner: Weiss Schnee
Weiss sagged down onto her hands and knees in exhaustion, panting hard as her Blue-Eyes White Dragon faded from above her. Maybe if her mind was still functioning at her best, she could have kept her technique up well enough to maintain her dragon with the pittance of aura she had left, but frazzled as she was, she didn't have the energy. And as much as she loved her Blue-Eyes, she couldn't stand to think about the cursed pride that it represented, what it had cost the man she'd just beaten.
Yet even more, her heart was gripped with fear for her friends. For all that she'd had sympathy for her opponent, he hadn't been an exceptional duelist. His strategies were simple and his deck was the standard Beast power style she'd expected. He was, ultimately, just a grunt. And because of Fusion, he was a grunt that had brought her down to a meager eight hundred life points and left her exhausted. Blake probably knew what they were capable of, but Sun and Ruby (she would be amazed if her partner hadn't found some way to follow them to the docks)? They had no idea what they were getting into–
THUNK!
Weiss blinked and picked her head up at the sudden noise in front of her, the exhausted heiress ready to fight off the enemy reinforcements her opponent had called for before the match. Only to instead be faced with… a book?
It was. A massive green, leather-bound tome, just plopped on the dirty concrete in front of her. It was bigger than most of her textbooks, its cover etched with colorful cartoony letters that wouldn't have been out of place on the Onomatopoeia Gang show.
They spelled out 'Toon World'.
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "What the–ah!"
She scampered back as the book suddenly slammed open, its massive pages flying from cover to cover. And from within the tome popped out a lanky purple cat with a goofy, mischievous face.
Weiss's mind whirled, racking her extensive knowledge of cards to try to recall what the creature in front of her was. While she was stunned however, the purple cat whipped its lanky body over to her duel disk and snatched up her Blue-Eyes White Dragon card from her duel disk.
"Hey!" Weiss screeched, grabbing for the feline thief as it cheekily dodge her. "Give that back!"
The purple cartoonish cat giggled, teasingly holding its paws with the card in front of its mouth. Its body, almost cartoonish in its agility, yanked itself back to the book it'd spawned from, taking an exaggerated regal bow and handing the card to a woman who'd seemingly appeared next to it out of thin air.
She was short, even shorter than Weiss. She wore a chic pastel pink and white pantsuit, heels adding several inches to her height. Her eyes were different colors, one pink and one brown, switching shades every time she blinked. Her hair was split along the same colors, the woman shooting Weiss an eerie playful smile as she twirled a pale parasol, a pair of spell cards placed upon the top. Was it some kind of eclectic duel disk?
"Who are you?" Weiss asked, her eyes narrowed in confusion. "Give me back my Blue-Eyes."
The woman quirked her lips and raised the card in front of her face, mocking the heiress's demand. She then placed the dragon's card atop her parasol, the mighty beast taking shape behind her.
But suddenly she snapped her fingers and something went wrong. The forming aura body was suckered over above the green book, the purple cat wrapping the manifesting creature up in its elastic body as glass shards seemed to ripple over the creature within.
And the creature that emerged made Weiss gasp.
It was smaller than her great beast, its limbs stunted almost in mockery of a living creature's natural proportions. It chattered and chuckled with its wide, crocodile mouth, its eyes wide and demented.
The parasol woman grinned and merrily clapped at her new creation. But to Weiss, who'd spent her entire life surrounded by the majesty and beauty of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon, who'd grown up educated in all the pride and splendor of the Schnee name it represented, the creature before her was a perverse abomination.
Or perhaps, it was merely the truth of her family's pride. Not the pretty lies she'd been told all her life.
The woman with pink and brown eyes snapped her fingers and pointed straight at Weiss with an eager smirk. The warped version of Blue-Eyes White Dragon cheekily rubbed its claws together and opened its maw five times wider than its entire body, a storm of white lightning crackling within.
Hey, cool! That lady has Toons! Bet she's just a no-name background character who won't do anything important in the story eve-Hahahahaha! Oh, I can't even finish that joke. Hi Neo!
So, the docks are easily going to be the biggest sequence in the fic so far, it is the Volume 1 finale after all. But it's also the first big non-school battle for the characters, and I really wanted to sell just how much the gang is jumping in unprepared here (Blake falling into her and Ruby's fatal flaw of rushing in alone and everyone else running after her, Yang not even being there, Ruby being excited when she hears grunts approaching) and that the danger is VERY real. The heroes are skilled, but their enemies are not without their own power, whether that be Fusion or numbers. One of the goals of Weiss's duel here is to show that even the enemy mooks, in addition to having their own stories, can give our heroes trouble if they don't take them seriously. And that's not even getting into the named antagonists like Roman, Ilia, and ESPECIALLY Neo.
Safe to say, thank goodness Penny is on her way (side note, I'm really proud of her runner's name).
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Thank you for Reading! I hope you enjoy what comes next!
Go Forth and Conquer!