A/N: Volume 3 OP: "The World" by Jonathan Young

Chapter 14

Placed in Check

The crowd roared with excitement— the sound deafening much to the dismay of Faunus with animal ears— as the finals of the Vytal Festival Tournament finally got underway with the finalists taking to the arena. The eight finalists all stood proudly in the center of the arena as cameras captured their every move and look and broadcasted that footage live all around the world. The finals held a very special place as it was always, without fail, the most viewed program of that year. Even people who didn't typically care too much about the whole event would tune in to see what were typically the most intense fights and see who the winner was.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between; welcome to the finals of the Vytal Festival Tournament!" Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck announced over the PA system. This caused the cheers of the crowd to only grow louder which caused Blake Belladonna to wince and try to find a way to cover both her Human ears and her cat ears without making it obvious. Ruby Rose took notice of this and used her excitement as a justification to throw her arms around Blake in such a way as to let her bury her cat ears under her leader's chin.

Once the cheers lowered by a decibel or two, Bartholomew and his co-host, Professor Peter Port, introduced the finalists. They were Yang Xiao Long of Team RWBY, Pyrrha Nikos of Team JNPR, Mercury Black of Team CRME, Penny Polendina of Team CPER, Sun Wukong of Team SSSN, and three others that Teams RWBYS and JNPR didn't care about. All of them (and a whole lot of other people) agreed that the first four were the only ones seriously in the running for winning. Of them, Team RWBYS were pretty sure that Mercury was probably going to throw his match somehow since none of them could think of any way that him winning would accomplish anything.

The way the finals were handled was different from the other rounds: The variable terrain system wouldn't be used and the fights were randomized in real time. Peter claimed over the PA that this is done because any good hunt leaves you with no prep time but no hunter or Hunter agreed with that sentiment. It also raised further questions regarding why the other rounds weren't randomized beyond the variable terrain system but that was neither here nor there.

The roulette got to work doing its thing, the names and faces of each contestant flashing by too fast to fully see, before stopping on the first fight of the day.

"Yang Xiao Long versus Mercury Black!" Peter announced over the PA. At this announcement, the members of Team RWBYS that were in the stands gave each other troubled looks.

"Already? What are the odds of that happening?" Ruby asked rhetorically.

"About 14% when looking specifically at Yang versus anybody or about… 4% just in general," Blake supplied anyway.

"Regardless of the chances, I don't trust coincidences like this. Out of all the people he could have ended up fighting, he just so happens to go up against the second-most-famous one who's seen as a hero of Vale?" Emiya Shirou pointed out.

"Are you saying that the selection process is rigged?" Weiss Schnee asked.

"I'm not saying that it is but I'm not saying that it can't be somehow."

"You think he's gonna try to do something to Yang?" Ruby asked somewhat worriedly.

"No, I don't think so," Blake said. "Again, I can't see what doing something to Yang would really accomplish. If we work under the assumption that they're trying to repeat their plan, even if he were to do something like somehow cripple Yang, I don't see that having that great an effect on everyone's mood."

"Then he's going to have Yang do something to him," Weiss stated.

"Possibly. While she's a lot better than she used to be, Yang's still pretty hotheaded. Although, everyone outside of our friend group doesn't know just how much she's gotten that under control so the plan might not work."

"I'd agree with you but Yang knows that he's a bad guy. That makes things… complicated," Ruby pointed out.

"There's also still the possibility that his presence here isn't a part of the plan and is just something he's doing for fun," Weiss said. "Regardless of our own speculations, there's nothing we can do about it other than what we were already doing: Wait and be ready."

"Everyone have their lockers on standby?" Ruby asked. When everyone but Shirou confirmed it, she returned her attention to the arena where the countdown was just about to begin. "Until they get here, we'll be counting on you, Shirou."

OoOoOoO

Yang cracked her neck and then her knuckles as she got in her starting position while Mercury got in his. It must have been her lucky day since she was going to be able to beat the shit out of one of the bad guys first thing. To tell the truth, a part of her was disappointed that she wasn't going to be fighting Pyrrha. While she wasn't sure she could win that fight, she had Shirou use his magecraft to remove the magnetic properties from Ember Celica (she would have had Ruby do it but that level of Alteration was beyond her). The look of Pyrrha's face would have been priceless but she'd muddle through the disappointment somehow.

As things currently stood, Yang wasn't as comfortable with her odds against Mercury as she would have liked. She was pretty sure that he was going all out— or near enough to it— when he was fighting Velvet Scarlatina and that speed was nothing to scoff at. In terms of overall attack speed, she was pretty sure that she could match him well enough but he was absolutely faster than her when it came to movement speed. Making things worse was the fact that Velvet had used Ember Celica for a bit meaning that he already had some experience fighting her.

She wasn't entirely unprepared for this, though. After the previous day, she had spent as much time as she could sparring with Blake and Shirou at the same time. While she absolutely got her ass handed to her, the point was to get her as used to handling rapid attacks from all directions as they could. Thanks to that, if push came to shove, she was reasonably confident that she could just hunker down and put everything into defending until he tired himself out and that wasn't counting the tricks she had up her sleeve. What's more, that would give her Semblance plenty of energy to slam into him all at once. If she had her way, she'd make sure to rocket him straight to Aura break.

"You better not go easy on me!" Yang called out as she assumed a loose guard stance and began bouncing on the balls of her feet.

Mercury smiled darkly at her as he slid into his own guard stance and said, "You wish, blondie. I'm gonna smear you all over the floor."

Yang thumbed her nose and said, "Hah! Tough words! Let's hope your dancing can hold up!"

Silence fell over the arena as the countdown started.

"Five!"

Blake tightened her grip on her knees as she prayed for her girlfriend to be safe.

"Four!"

Shirou scanned the crowd for Emerald Sustrai and was concerned to not see her anywhere.

"Three!"

Cinder Fall smirked as she popped another piece of popcorn into her mouth.

"Two!"

Emerald watched on with detached disinterest from where she stood leaning against the wall in the tunnel leading to the arena.

"One!"

Yang and Mercury hardened their stances, every muscle in their bodies as taut as a watch spring.

"Fight!"

(A/N: Play a href=" watch?v=9HlpCBBu2vo""Find Your Flame" from Sonic Frontiers/a)

The instant the match started, Yang and Mercury charged each other in a burst of speed to meet in the middle, Yang's fist colliding with Mercury's shin. They paused just briefly enough to smirk at each other before exploding into a rapid flurry of attacks. Yang held the advantage in that her punches could follow straight lines while Mercury's kicks couldn't but the man had skill to spare as he used quick, sharp movements to just barely dodge and block what he couldn't dodge while lashing out with attacks of his own.

The situation changed as Mercury used his superior speed to disengage and cover half of the arena in an instant. Despite following only half a heartbeat later, Yang wasn't fast enough to catch up before Mercury spun around her in a quarter circle and aimed a kick at the side of her head. Yang wasn't bothered— indeed, her smirk only grew— as she turned the momentum of her right cross into a high kick that collided with Mercury's. When Mercury touched down with his back foot, Yang pressed her attack to stop him from recovering his balance, lashing out with a flurry of punches so fast that even some of the other finalists were having trouble keeping up.

Despite being so heavily pressed and slowly moving toward the edge of the arena, Mercury was still as cool as a cucumber. This concerned Yang a little and that concern proved warranted when Mercury completely changed up his fighting style. Up until now, Mercury's style had been similar to Yang's kickboxing but now he was twisting and spinning and flowing around everything in a manner not too dissimilar to dancing. Yang recognized the style as capoeira and found herself locked in place as she was forced to shift her offense into a defense.

When Mercury disengaged again, Yang was too rooted in place to follow immediately. Mercury used this distance to start firing round after round at her from his boots, his movement never once stopping as he literally danced circles around her. Yang was freed up enough by this point to turn but was still too off balance to really start moving herself. As such, she was left with no other choice but to counter Mercury's bullets with her own and be thankful that she had loaded shot instead of slugs.

After approximately far too much of this, Yang growled with frustration, her eyes briefly flashing red, as she ejected the spent shells from Ember Celica while pulling out two bandoliers of Dust rounds and loading them with a spin. At the exact same time, Mercury was also reloading his boots with spin kicks of his own. Fully reloaded, the two of them fired at each other only for the bullets to collide in an explosion of fog as fire met ice.

The crowd went wild as the pause freed up Yang enough to start fully moving again. While Mercury's increase in skill from his true fighting style was great, this was well within Yang's (Blake's) calculation. Yang's stance shifted and her movements became much looser and more fluid as she started using a hybrid of her fighting style and Blake's. While it was nowhere near fully developed yet, the change was enough to even out the playing field.

Up in the stands, Neon Katt paled considerably as she realized that Yang could have demolished her at any moment.

Fire and ice exploded around the arena as the two combatants entered into a dance of polar opposites. The first hit of the fight was finally scored when one of Mercury's bullets hit Yang's right arm, freezing it solid. While she broke the ice with a fire punch without any hesitation, that brief pause was long enough for Mercury to close the distance and catch her under the chin with a flip kick that sent her into the air. Mercury gave chase, bounding off of one of the stalagmites of ice he had created, and intercepted her rise with an ax kick that sent her tumbling across the ground. While she recovered fast enough to dig her feet in as much as possible and bleed off her momentum with shotgun blasts, it still put her too close to the edge for her liking and the fact that he had gotten first blood was more than a little annoying.

Not wanting to stay close to the edge of the arena, Yang immediately launched herself at Mercury with a superman punch that Mercury intercepted with a thrust kick. There was a massive explosion that forced the two back as fire and ice met once more and the area was covered with a dense fog. Yang put more focus into her defense as she strained her sense to try and locate her opponent (she wasn't so stupid to assume that he hadn't moved) but was having no luck. She locked up her defenses as she heard numerous shots ring out but she was confused as none came at her despite the shots continuing at a high frequency. She was eventually completely done with the fog and her eyes flashed red as she clapped her hands together, the shockwave blowing the fog away and revealing a very unusual sight.

Mercury was currently down on the ground in a breakdance spin while firing bullets in every direction. Yang was about to launch an attack but stopped when she caught something in the corner of her eye. She looked around in shock as the bullets Mercury was firing were circling the arena in a dome shape, the trails that followed them suggesting a Semblance. Yang knew that Mercury would close the cage Yang found herself in the instant she went for any kind of attack and that she was in a lot of trouble once that happened. She wasn't nearly fast enough to dodge everything and Ember Celica was almost out of ammunition so that wasn't an option, either.

Yang wasn't as bothered by this as nearly everyone thought she would be, though, as she broke out another of her tricks. She quickly pulled two small cylinders out of her pouches and extended them into batons as she switched stances to Blake's. All of that training the day prior made it painfully obvious that her usual style would be completely worthless against something so fast and her new style wasn't developed enough to work, either. As such, she had instead focused on this little surprise by honing her defense with Blake's style as much as possible.

Almost the instant the batons were extended, the cage started to close. Bullets came at Yang from every direction and she began a flurry of movement as she parried them with the batons and dodged what she could. While a number of them still got through, this was more than acceptable and even, to a degree, intentional.

When the attack finally started to come to an end and Mercury flipped to his feet, Yang was on him in a flash. The shock left Mercury utterly defenseless as Yang unloaded on him with a string of "slashes" that didn't give him enough room to so much as breathe. To make matters worse for them, Yang's eyes were only flashing red as her attacks were about to hit and were back to lilac in between. While still very wasteful, this allowed her to use her Semblance far more than before.

As good as she was with Blake's fighting style, Yang wasn't nearly good enough to keep it going completely unbroken. As such, when it was clear that Mercury was about to recover, Yang dropped a baton and caught him square in the chest with a full power right cross to send him tumbling across the arena.

(A/N: End song)

"That's it! Yang Xiao Long is the winner!" Peter said over the PA as the buzzer blared. Yang looked over at the Aura display and was annoyed to find out that he was only in the red as the crowd went absolutely wild.

"Don't think this is over," Mercury said as he got back up, his voice snapping Yang's attention back to him. He started to walk in a slow circle that Yang matched.

"I can keep going if—"

"Don't think you have even the slightest chance!" Mercury snapped back. It was strange. For some reason, Mercury looked slightly hazy to Yang and there was a spot roughly in the middle of them that was also hazy. Yang was tempted to blink hard to try and get rid of it but she knew that to be a bad idea.

Mercury eventually stopped walking as he continued, "You can't stop us! We're gonna kill you and all your friends and everyone in this stadium!"

Yang's eyes turned red as she dropped the other baton. "You better hope security gets here before I break every bone in your godsdammed body," she said in a low growl.

"I'd love to see you try!" Mercury said as he launched himself at her. Yang could feel a red flag going up in the back of her head and hear the voice of someone— probably Weiss or Blake— telling her that this was a trap but that was drowned out by all her rage. Mercury went for a rising kick and Yang roared as she did what Nora was always suggesting brought her fist down on that leg with all her might. There was a familiar "snap" of a bone breaking— although it sounded slightly off to Yang's ear— and she felt more than satisfied. She was debating whether or not to break the other when she suddenly heard the crowd gasp and scream.

Yang looked around in confusion as the crowd looked down at her with a combination of fear, worry, and anger; their judging stares almost a physical weight on her shoulders.

"My word!" Bartholomew said as he stood up from his seat in the announcer box.

"Cut the cameras!" Peter ordered from next to him.

Back in the arena, Mercury was rocking back and forth, holding the leg Yang had punched while screaming, "My leg! My leg!" Again, to Yang's ear, this sounded a bit fake (that was not how a person reacted to having a limb broken) but that observation would only be noticed later as she found herself surrounded by Atlesian Knights and two soldiers, all with their guns raised.

"Yang Xiao Long, stand down!" one of the soldiers said as the two of them cautiously approached her.

"What‽ Why‽" Yang replied.

"Mercury!" another voice cried out as Emerald rushed to the arena to hold her injured teammate. As Emerald glared daggers at her, Yang's eyes widened in realization.

She had been played.

As Mercury continued to hurl accusing questions at her, Yang closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. She had been played and now she had to do as much damage control as possible.

"I'm taking off my weapons," she said loudly and clearly as Ember Celica deactivated and she slowly reached over to do as she said. She then slowly crouched down to place Ember Celica next to the baton, dropping them the last few inches to be safe, before slowly standing up. "I'm gently kicking them over to you and putting my hands up," she continued as she did what she said.

As one soldier picked up the weapons and the other detained her, Yang only had one thought running through her head:

Whenever their plan started, she was going to break every bone in his godsdammed body.

OoOoOoO

Yang angrily swished the water in her mouth around before spitting it into the bucket Shirou had projected for her. She and the rest of her team were currently sitting in the break room where Yang was essentially being detained (the rest of them were allowed in for various legal reasons that may or may not have involved Ozpin pulling some strings).

"It's not your fault," Blake said as she massaged her girlfriend's shoulders.

"Yes, it is," Yang said tersely before taking another drink. "I should've seen this coming; I did see this coming!"

"Perhaps but that doesn't change the fact that, at that time, you had done what you thought was best under Emerald's Semblance," Weiss said. After Yang had calmed down enough, the others had explained to her that, to everyone else, they just saw her circling the downed Mercury, say a couple of menacing things, and then break his leg as he approached to shake her hand.

"Doesn't change the fact that I fucked up."

"What are you thinking about, Shirou," Ruby asked from where she was sitting beside her sister. After projecting the bucket, he hadn't said a word as he stood in a corner deep in thought.

"Their plan. It doesn't make sense. I can only assume that they want to create enough negative emotions to draw in the Grimm but that just doesn't make sense. Not only would this one incident not be nearly enough, it would accomplish less than nothing given the alert status of Atlas' military."

"The final day of the tournament is the most watched program in the world. Perhaps they want to ruin our reputation?" Weiss suggested. Meanwhile, Blake wrapped her arms around her girlfriend, pressed her chest against her back as she started purring.

"That can't be it. We're not that special," Ruby countered. "It wouldn't really do much of anything."

"Besides, they were trying to do something like this even before we gained that bit of fame," Shirou added.

"Then what do you think their plan is?" Weiss asked.

"I don't know and that worries me."

"It doesn't really matter what their plan is right now," Yang said. While she was still visibly upset, she was a lot calmer now. "We gotta make sure you guys don't take the fall with me. Say that I had a beef with Mercury and that you guys didn't know how bad it was until it was too late; it'd technically be the truth anyway."

"We are absolutely not doing that," Weiss said with a sense of finality. "We're a team; we either stand or we fall together." To further her point, she tapped the wayfinder charm that was attached to one of her tassels.

Yang sighed as Ruby and Shirou gestured to theirs and she couldn't help the smile that wormed its way onto her face. "You guys really are the best."

OoOoOoO

"Oh doc, tell me, will I ever walk again?" Mercury asked melodramatically to Emerald from where he laid on a cargo crate in the back of the "ambulance." Emerald's reaction to this was to punch Mercury in the arm, causing him to react with real pain and rub at the spot. "What's your deal‽"

Emerald collapsed on another crate as she rubbed her forehead. "Headache. One mind I can handle but two is a stretch." As the paramedics had rushed Mercury out of the arena, Cinder, dressed as a paramedic, redirected them to the "ambulance" that they had. Emerald had to use her Semblance on both of the real paramedics in order to make them see an ambulance rather than a plain airship.

"Well, you all performed marvelously, driver included," Cinder said from where she sat in the copilot's seat. In the pilot's seat, a similarly dressed woman nodded with a pleased smile as her eyes changed to brown and pink.

"So, do you think it worked?" Mercury asked as he rolled up his pant leg to assess the damage. After using a cloth to wipe away the fake blood and the shards of the stick they had used to make the snapping sound, he grimaced as he saw the sizable gash in his artificial leg.

"Perfectly," Cinder answered as she scrolled through her Scroll.

"Wow, she really got you good," Emerald commented as she looked at Mercury's leg.

"Yeah, bitch was really out for blood. She wasn't kidding when she said that she'd break every bone in my body."

A wicked smile crossed Emerald's face as she looked down at Mercury and said, "Seems to me like you didn't throw that match and actually got your ass kicked."

"As if!" Mercury snarled back. "She was a lot better than expected, sure, but I could have killed her in less than a minute if I wanted to."

"Sure you could. How long did you say that you could last against Salem?"

"That's enough, you two," Cinder said with a tone that would brook no argument as fire sprung to life around her left eye. Immediately, Mercury and Emerald backed off from each other; Mercury going back to fixing his leg while Emerald fished out her Scroll. "Your petty bickering is pointless. The fact of the matter is that we're one step closer to the finale of our time here in Vale. That being said, I would check that pride of yours, Mercury. It could get you killed one day."

Mercury grumbled under his breath while Emerald gave him a superior smile which instantly deflated when Cinder reprimanded her, too. "And Emerald, no matter how much you may hate him, we're a team. The only reason we got this far was by working as such. The consequences could be dire for all of us if you threaten that."

With her subordinates sufficiently cowed, the flames around Cinder's eye died down as she returned her attention to her Scroll. "Now all we have to do is get the final pieces in play. Once we do, we'll finally have…"

A/N: Honestly not a whole lot to say about this chapter. Our heroes know who the villains are and that they're up to something but they don't know what that something is or even how to stop it without just killing them which is something that they can't legally do. So, they're stuck in this holding pattern of trying to stay one step ahead to them or at least be in the position to mitigate the damage. Of course, this is all information that's been shared in the story a couple of times by this point but it bares repeating.

Yang VS Mercury was pretty fun to write as I got the chance to show off Yang's overall development and how she's way above where she had been by this point in canon (in case that wasn't obvious from her previous fight). If Yang and Mercury were to actually fight to the death, I'd say that Mercury would win 7/10 times. It would not be an easy fight but the odds are in his favor.

There are two very specific changes that I made right at the end of the fight and for two different reasons. The first is that weird haze that Yang saw around the illusory Mercury and the place where Mercury actually was. If you're confused by this, I suggest that you refer to Yang's stat sheet and notice how she has a skill called Bravery. You can check the Type-Moon wiki to see what that does. The second is a change I made because the canon version made absolutely no goddamn sense. Like, how in the hell did Emerald's Semblance let her make Yang think that she was standing still while Mercury was circling her when, in reality, she was circling Mercury? There's not a single thing about that that makes sense so I changed it to them circling each other with the real Mercury in the middle. If Yang hadn't responded in kind, Mercury probably would have just gotten in Yang's face or something.

Review time! Only one worth responding to this week. Surely, you guys have more questions and comments.

Ningen life: I refer you to the author's note at the end of the very first chapter as well as a few others. Beyond that, let's see if you still think that next week and for the rest of the volume.

But that's all from me. We're getting so extremely close to the climax of Volume 3 and I'm very much excited. See you next week!