Ch 11 - Merry Mayhem
A/N: Ayyyyy! Back to Roman!
Also, just tossing a reminder that in this universe, Robyn's taken any aspiring volunteers into her merry band. So there's a good deal of extras with crossbow-staffs running around Mantle.
Oh yeah, and you also get a new POV in this chapter. As much as I like Roman, him and Whitely can't be the only two people I bounce between in Atlas and Mantle.
Lastly, I'm setting some ground rules for Fiona's semblance, because it's occurred to me that it's overpowered. Said rules are in an author's note at the bottom, so go read that before posting an angry review.
Edit: Forgot to update last week like a total idiot. Also, no one called me out on it, so at least it's not ENTIRELY my fault.
Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belonged to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.
(Roman)
He smiled smugly as the door winked out of existence. Fionna just blinked, looking down at her hand for a moment. Roman sighed. "Really, Little Bo Peep? You never thought to use your Pocket Dimensions to just store something that was blocking your way? Something would literally have to be magic for you not to be able to get in!"
"Hey! It didn't occur to me! Besides, I can't use it to get inside a small safe or something like that, because it would suck up the entire safe instead of just the door. And stop calling me that!" she protested.
The hatted hoodlum made a show of putting a hand to his chin, and tilting his head as he pretended to think about it. Then he shrugged, looking her dead in the eyes as he grinned. "Nah."
"I hate you," she protested petulantly.
Roman just kept his smile. She might hate him for it, but the knowledge that being able to store things in a pocket dimension as a semblance (he couldn't wait until she met Edgelord) extended to being able to store a locked door was going to be invaluable moving forwards. Granted, he could have just bypassed the lock with his own skills, but this was sure to leave the authorities scratching their heads. He waved a hand, walking past her and into the warehouse, shortly followed by Fiona and a few other Happy Hunters that he didn't care to learn the names of. And after one of them used their semblance to make a bunch of floating lights appear around the massive room, and he took a look at its contents, he whistled in appreciation. The Malachite twins really had a knack for scoping places out. The place was absolutely stacked with construction supplies… which made him question what they were doing locked away in a warehouse when Mantle had a hole in its wall, and a literal slum district. Even Vacuo didn't have slums, for dust's sake. And Vacuo was… Vacuo.
"Alright people, we got a huge warehouse full of loot, and a bag of holding waiting to receive said loot. Let's get this over with," he called out to those present. Rolling his neck, he got his own hands dirty, and started bringing boxes over to Fiona, who stowed them away with her semblance. Even though he preferred not to get into the menial labor himself, especially after how far he'd gotten in his line of work, he had to admit to himself that it really did feel great to finally have gotten back into the groove. Another three SDC warehouses drained of dust in a week, positively spiking dust prices up in Atlas (especially considering the embargo meant dust could only be mined on Solitas), while Mantle now had more dust than they knew what to do with. Literally so, because Robyn had decided that she'd start stockpiling the excess dust in general in case of a shortage, and fire dust in specific. Her people had been surprisingly efficient in storing the latter in secret caches on the off-chance parts of the heating grid in Mantle ever went down. Roman himself wasn't familiar with the infrastructure that kept Mantle from becoming an ice sculpture, but he did agree that a plan B was always a great idea when it came to something like that. Then May and Joanna had gotten wind of rumors of a warehouse owned by the military storing literal tons of technical equipment and construction material, which was getting shipped to somewhere out of the city piecemeal, and Robyn asked if Roman could raid it. Of course the opportunity to steal from Iron-ass himself was too good to pass up, not to mention the thrill of it and the boost it would bring to his reputation. So he sent the twins off to find the place and check if it was suitable for a heist, and here they were.
The best part, though, was the crap security. Sure, Atlas was the technological capital of the world, with cameras everywhere, which would make theft on this scale nigh-impossible. But the city above had never bothered bringing that tech and prosperity down here. As such, it was downright trivial to simply cut the power to the building. No electricity meant that even if the place did have cameras or some other form of automated security, they'd be useless. So it was understandable that Roman was in a great mood, and it was just as understandable that a small part of his mind was already on the lookout for when the other shoe would drop. Though for now, he just focused on working with some schmuck to wheel a crate full of cement mix over to the sheep faunus waiting by the door.
He'd just turned around to look for something else to nab, and that's when his scroll began to buzz with an incoming call. Oh boy. He fished it out of a pocket, and saw the caller ID was Melanie, who was with the team keeping lookout in a radius of several blocks around the warehouse. "Yeah?" he asked, as soon as he picked up the call.
"There's three military trucks on the way here," the older twin said. "Just those, and May says her thermal binoculars aren't seeing anyone inside, so it's probably full of knights. Can we hit them to buy you time?"
Roman cursed in his head. "Yeah, but bug out the second you get actual soldiers coming in. The last thing we need is a direct firefight bringing half of Atlas down here." The call ended, and he sighed, before taking a breath. "Alright people," he called out, "Atlas is sending some tin cans over here. Lookout's stalling them, but we're officially on the clock. Let's double-time it! Five minutes, and we're out with whatever we got!" He suited actions to words, and joined the throng of people now rushing to steal as much as they could in as little time as possible.
(Miltia)
May was part of the furthest ring of lookouts, so she'd be taking a minute or so to join them. As it was, Miltiades and Melanie were currently standing in front of a hastily assembled ad-hoc roadblock manned by some Happy Huntsmen and Huntresses. The trucks bearing Atlas' mechanical minions would be turning the corner to this street in just a few more seconds.
She felt more than saw her sister glance at her. "You ready Mil?"
The younger twin let out a solitary hum of amusement. "I was gonna ask you the same thing."
Three armored trucks turned the corner of the street, coming to a stop in front of the barricade. A door opened, and the passenger door opened as a knight walked out, mechanically taking a few steps forwards. "Citizens. Disperse. You are violating multiple traffic regulations and interfering with military operations." The response the droid got was a crossbow bolt punching into its forehead. It stood upright for a few more seconds, before it tilted over and flopped to the ground with a thunk. The rears of the trucks opened up a second later, and some three dozen knights thundered out, taking aim with the guns in their hands, but Mil and Mel were already moving before the bullets started flying.
Deciding to test out her new upgrades, Miltia punched forwards as she closed the distance, bullets firing from the guns attached to her claws, turning two of them into perforated scrap metal before reaching melee. Beside her Mel flicked a leg up to decapitate one bot with the blades of Stiletto, before twirling around a burst from another, then sliced its gun in half before leg sweeping it, and impaling it with her heel as it fell. Mil angled a claw in front of her face to block some shots aimed at her, before taking the offending droid apart with three swipes of her own weapons, turning to shoot the gun of a second before taking its arm off with a slice from her right arm, and finished it by stabbing its head, before driving her left claw into its chest and throwing the body at another pair of droids. In that timeframe, another five of the knights had been trashed by crossbows, before their allies joined the brawl. Her sister finished the two bots on the ground from the one she'd thrown at them, and she covered her back by shooting another one with her claws before scooping up a gun from one of the trashed droids and turning it upon another three. A Happy Huntress scrapped a mech nearby her, before flinching as Mel rushed her, blinking in surprise as her sister vaulted over her shoulder to wreck a knight behind her with Stiletto, before grunting through a burst of rounds to her aura as she punished the robots who shot her with rapid, violent disassembly.
By then, May had arrived with the rest of the lookout group, and they made quick work of the rest, May alone ending six of their opponents in as many seconds. The engagement itself had likely taken no more than a minute and a half. "Right," May called out, "Loot the trucks for anything useful, and burn any recording hardware the droids or trucks have, but we're leaving them in case they have trackers. I wanna be out of here in sixty seconds, before Atlas sends something else down here. Warehouse team's already bugging out, so all we have to do is slip away and then we can call tonight a success."
Miltia just shrugged, even as her sister muttered a "Whatever," loud enough for May to hear. At the end of the day, this was just business for her, though getting to fight with her sister always brought a smile to her face.
(Ironwood)
James Ironwood hadn't slept the past two days. Mettle wouldn't let him. He needed to stay focused on finding Torchwick, and stopping the damages his crime spree was causing. Sleep would get in the way of that. If this continued for another night, the general fully intended to requisition sleeping aids, to force unconsciousness, semblance-be-damned. He closed his eyes, organic hand massaging the lids. At least Mettle interpreted the splitting headache he had as a distraction, and was keeping his focus on anything else it could. He knew it was there, but even still, he barely felt it. A double-edged blade indeed, he thought. His desk chimed, and he opened his eyes. Someone was requesting entry to his office, and a quick tap of some keys pulled up the camera to reveal it was just an aide, likely with a report. He keyed the door open.
"Come in," he said, Mettle keeping the weariness from his voice.
"Sir," the woman in a communications officer's uniform began, "we just got a report that the warehouse in district 12 was just raided. We lost roughly eighty percent of the inventory. We don't have any concrete evidence on a culprit, because surveillance in the area was disabled just prior to the robbery, and the recording devices of the knights and trucks that went to respond were destroyed, but analytics agrees that it was most likely Roman Torchwick."
Ironwood froze in his seat, fists clenching. The district 12 warehouse had supplies for the Amity Project. 80% of the inventory lost would probably set the Project back by a week and a half. Mettle took over, and loudly pointed out that now, not only did he have an excuse, but that he also had people perfect for this task.
"I see," he said evenly. "Well, we couldn't interfere before, because Jacques was blocking our offers to help by claiming it was an internal security matter on private property, but now that Torchwick raided a military facility, we'll have free reign to retaliate. Thank you for the report. If there's nothing else, you're dismissed."
The aide nodded, offering a goodbye and leaving the room. Once the door closed, Ironwood opened a communique on his desk. Winter picked up on the third ring. "Sir?"
"There's been a development with the Torchwick situation. Send the Ace-Ops up to my office as soon as possible. I have a new mission for them." He felt the pressure from Mettle on his mind ease, and fought to keep the expression of relief from his face until after Winter gave an affirmative and he ended the call. He grimaced as his headache flared, before his mind suddenly locked onto the report the aide left on his desk, Mettle telling him to get to reading it. He tapped a few more keys on his terminal. "Set a reminder for the end of shift." The console pinged. "Requisition sleeping aides. Lock reminder." There, now Mettle couldn't make him delete the reminder, and the missive it sent to the infirmary ensured the medication would be prepped by the end of his shift. And far be it from Ironwood to waste a prescription. He gave a weary grin. It wasn't often that he'd outwit his semblance, so he'd enjoy the petty victory while he could.
(Whitley)
Whitley Schnee outwardly projected the perfect picture of calm. Sitting still, posture upright, hands upon his lap, head straight, and only his eyes moving. Just like Father had taught him, and so he obeyed in order to avoid drawing his ire. He wasn't like Winter, who could forsake the family entirely, and he wasn't like Weiss who could slip from Father's grip long enough to find friends who would stand with her so she could break free. And he was the only one left now, so Father would never let him go, and Mother would be no help, perpetually stuck at the bottom of a bottle of the finest wine money could buy.
Yet beneath the surface, beneath the facade that he used to hide himself from the world, he desperately tried not to break into a cold sweat, forced himself to keep his breathing even, and prayed to whatever was listening that no-one would notice his heart thundering more loudly than the main armaments of an Atlesian battleship. And the cause of that primal terror was now entering the twelfth minute of his explosive rant in front of the board of directors for the SDC, along with a head of storage security who Whitley was sure would be fired in the coming minutes, if not sooner.
"Three point eight million lien of dust, and you can't find out where a single speck of it went?!" Jacques Schnee shouted. "We're already bleeding in the bottom line from the damned embargo, and the entire company security force can't catch one vagabond that a group of children in Vale trounced?"
"Mister Schnee, property damages and stolen equipment from the warehouses actually brings estimated losses to roughly four millio-" A single glare from Father silenced the head of the financial department.
He turned to address the head of security. "Your employment with this company is terminated effective immediately. You have one hour to gather any personal effects from your workplace. Hopefully your replacement will be more competent than eight teenagers, a robot, and a corpse."
The now-former head of security glumly nodded, offering a single "Yes sir," before quietly retreating from the room. Whitley wished he could join him.
"Perhaps we could ask General Ironwood for assistance? Torchwick did rob a military storage facility last night," the head of the SDC's HR (and wasn't that oxymoronic) suggested.
"Absolutely not. James Ironwood is already making this company hemorrhage profits, and I refuse to give the man any inroads into the SDC. I'm sure the general is just waiting for an opportunity to force concessions for his help, or dust forbid, nationalize the company in its entirety in order to suborn it to the military. And begging for his help by admitting we can't catch a single thief would provide him the perfect excuse to do just that."
"Of course. My apologies, sir."
Father didn't dignify the apology with a response, and merely looked to the various corporate underlings in the room. "I don't care what it takes," he began with a fear-inducing calmness to his voice, "I want this man found, and then I want him gone."
"Sir?" one of the department heads asked, reading into the implications.
"By any means necessary," Father reiterated. The woman who had asked the question flinched, but managed to silently nod.
"Understood sir," chorused the other department heads.
"Then you are all dismissed. Whitley, remain seated, I wish to have a word with you." As the board members began to file out of the room, Whitley swallowed. When they were all gone, and the electronic door to the meeting room hissed shut, he started speaking. "Firstly, I want to commend you for your initiative during the charity event, and ordering an initial response from company security, before waiting until after the event to present the news of the first robbery to me. That shows potential for leading this company, something that I now see that your sisters lacked." Whitley beamed under the belated praise, though made sure to school his expression so that the actual joy wasn't visible. When Father paused, Whitley took the queue to offer his thanks, before the man continued. "That said, employees in Mantle are currently uneasy due to the robberies that are taking place. And that uneasiness is harming production, which further harms our profits. I am too busy with company business and my campaign for the council seat to address this, so I am delegating the task of visiting company dust processing facilities and warehouses during daylight hours to you. You will use your presence to project the image that we care for our workers and are ready to stop Roman Torchwick and his spree of terror and grand larceny. I will present you a schedule for this, along with arranging a meeting with the team that will provide your security, shortly. Is this understood?"
"Yes, Father."
"Good." Father stoof from his chair, walking to the window and gazing dispassionately on Atlas outside. "I will be announcing that you'll be going on this PR campaign later today. I expect you to join me for the press conference. Until then, you are dismissed."
Whitley couldn't be out of the room fast enough.
(?)
He watched the news playing in the darkened room, the reporter going on about the financial damages the crime spree of the most wanted man in Vale was currently causing in Mantle. His only reaction as they went on and on was to raise an eyebrow. And for envy to flare. In a month, the hatted hoodlum had swaggered into Mantle, and proceeded to do more financial damage to the SDC than he had in the past year.
Then the news reporter switched to a news conference, in which the Oppressor announced that his heir would be touring company facilities in Mantle. His eyes widened, and the axolotl fins on his neck flared in surprise. He shut the television screen, and pulled out a burner scroll, dialing a number.
"Commander?"
He looked to the white Grimm mask on the armrest of the chair he was on. "Contact everyone. We're having a meeting tomorrow. The usual location. An opportunity has just presented itself."
(Roman)
A map of Mantle was laid out on the table before them, several SDC warehouses pinned blue to mark them having already been raided, and many more marked as red, and a few possible locations of Atlesian military caches marked in yellow. Their own hideouts and supply caches were marked green and white, respectively. Any time the map wasn't out, Fiona pocket-dimensioned it, so that there weren't any worries of it getting stolen. Not that it was likely, but Robyn had agreed when he pointed out that it was better safe than sorry.
"Construction supplies. It was all construction supplies?" Robyn asked.
"I mean, some of the stuff we nabbed was actually mining equipment, which leads me to believe that they're planning to build something in a mine, but yeah, most of it was for building something," Roman replied, glancing around the map of the city. "What they want to build, I got no idea, but it obviously isn't fixing the hole in the city wall, because they would have made a public announcement if it was."
"And it isn't getting used in Atlas, that's for sure," May chimed in.
"How do you know that?" Bo-Peep asked.
"Because if the stuff was getting used in Atlas, it would be stored in Atlas," Butch responded.
"Joanna's right," Robyn said. "If it's being stored down here, they're either using it in Mantle, which is unlikely, or somewhere out in the tundra."
"So, like, do we have any idea where this stuff is actually meant to go?" Melanie asked, sounding tired. Roman honestly couldn't blame the twins. They'd taken a day to lay low after the raid, and just before this meeting both the twins had just finished their latest training session with Robyn's top three. They'd been practicing constantly the past few weeks, and their skills had finally begun to reach a level that could keep up with the field they were playing in.
"Unfortunately, we don't," Robyn answered.
Miltia raised a hand. Everyone looked to the hatted hoodlum in the room, but Roman just shrugged, so Robyn gestured for the younger twin to speak. "I heard there's a guy running a clinic for prosthetics down here, who keeps in touch with the military. Maybe he knows something?"
"How come I don't know about this?" Mel asked her sister.
"You don't listen as much as I do," she said with a small smirk.
"Do you know where this clinic is?" Roman asked, giving Robyn a condescending grin when he received an annoyed look for having beat her to the question. Miltia nodded.
"Well then," Robyn took over before Roman could steal her thunder again, "It appears we have a lead."
()
A/N: Yes, I'm aware that Fiona can store something as small as a map, or something as large as a truck loaded with military goods. But, those things have something in common: They're one object. Sure the truck has stuff inside it, but she's storing everything within the boundary of the frame of the truck. It's a sort of limit I'm putting on her semblance, because when you actually go down the rabbit hole (no faunus related pun intended) and think about it, her semblance is brokenly OP. What if you tie her legs with a gravity bola? She'd just store it away. Put her in a cell? Store the hardlight dust projectors, and no more cell. Any door, an opponent's weapon, the metal parts of Ironwood, Jacques Schnee's stupid mustache, literally anything she can touch (possibly even Salem), gone with a snap. So, I've put a limit: She can store stuff, but only store an object: IE: something whole, not a part of it. A door is an object. Part of the wall of a building is not. So she can't just make an exit in a wall without trying to store the entire building, which probably wouldn't go well when you're inside said building. And she certainly wouldn't want to store people, because even if she can, which she doesn't want to find out, she doesn't know what would happen to them. So, something like a safe under your bed? She could store the safe, but not the door to the safe, or just what's inside it. She'd have to open the safe for that. A bank vault safe door, on the other hand, is something built separately from the walls of the vault, so she could nab that. Likewise, she can store a truck full of supplies, but not just the back of the truck, or its seats, though she could store any individual supply item inside that truck, albeit one at a time. Hence, storing the entire truck is not only more efficient, but you can also summon a literal armored truck at will, be it as something to block a hallway with, as a getaway vehicle, or even as an ad-hoc battering ram.
Hey, I finally bothered coming up with a name for Melanie's heels. Stiletto came to me in five seconds, but after five minutes of trying to think of a name for Mil's claws, and coming up with exactly nothing, I decided that a nice way to showcase the minute differences between the twins would be to have Miltia just not have cared to actually name her weapons. Of course, that might change, because if I come up with something later, I can just have the younger twin change her mind and actually name them.
The SDC isn't taking Roman's crime spree lying down, though they still haven't learned that the Happy Huntresses are involved. Suffice to say, I'm having a lot of fun mapping out the changes that are occurring due to the altered timeline.
So, the way it was originally set up in canon made it seem as if the White Fang had different cells/branches for every kingdom and Menagerie, that all ultimately answered to Sienna Khan (who directly controlled the Mistral branch), but were also autonomous enough to operate within each kingdom on its own. This leads me to believe that there were additional branches in Atlas and Vacuo, which were rendered defunct when the Fang collapsed at the end of Volume 5. But that hasn't happened yet, which begs the question: What was the Atlas branch of the White Fang up to during the timeframe of the end of Volume 3 to the end of Volume 5? Suffice to say, this is a plot that's going somewhere. Also, I got axolotls on the mind ever since they were added to Minecraft. I looked into them IRL, and they're awesome. Like, easily my favorite amphibian.
The gang is wondering where the supplies they stole are actually supposed to go. Meanwhile, Miltia shows that being the quiet one comes with benefits. And I wonder who runs a clinic that makes/maintains prosthetics in Mantle, who also has connections to the Atlesian Military… oh wait, I already know, some of the more astute readers probably guessed it as well.
Ironwood wasn't content with not looking into the heists in the SDC, but without Jacques permission (which he'd need to be desperate to give), his hands are tied, and he can't do much beyond increase patrols in Mantle. Now that Roman's hit a warehouse with supplies meant for Amity, however…
On a final note, I thought that it would be a cool touch of worldbuilding if the districts in Mantle had numbers instead of names, as a little holdout from the colorless era (in which Mantle and Mistral tried to ban all forms of free thought/art/expression, in (what was likely) an attempt to create an emotionless society that would attract less Grimm. This didn't fly with Vale, and eventually Vale and Vacuo were pitted against the other two kingdoms in what would become known as the Great War, some 80 years prior to canon. I strongly believe that Oz's incarnation at the time was the King of Vale. But numbered districts are just so efficient in terms of administration, that despite Mantle losing that war and Atlas rising from the ashes, that little bit of the colorless era remained.
Omake: Because I just couldn't help myself.
A/N: You all know where this one is going. And honestly, none of you should be surprised. There's no way I'd be able to resist when I saw the opportunity present itself. This is not canon at all.
"Construction supplies. It was all construction supplies?" Robyn asked.
Roman Torchwick raised the barrel of Melodic Cudgel, just inches behind Robyn Hill's head.
"Always has been…"
He pulled the trigger.
A/N: You know I had to do it.