Roots 2.4

"Aaaaand, done!"

Armsmaster looked up from... whatever he was doing to a Gravity Dust round at the other end of his lab. "How does it look?"

I lifted Crescent Rose off the table, gave her an experimental twirl to test the balance, then held the blade out to in front of me and pressed one of the three new switches present on the outer casing. Electricity crackled into life on the blade, stopping at newly-added insulation wrapped around the barrel. I tilted her down toward the floor, and it arced to reach the last inch or so to the ground like a miniaturized Lightning Dust overload.

"We could probably stand to lower the voltage a bit, but it looks like it works! I'll still need to swap out for a blunted blade… and actually make that blade, but so far so good."

He nodded. "Did you get the paperwork for it submitted?"

"...Paperwork?"

He straightened, leaving his project on the table. "Nobody told you it was required, did they?"

"Umm… no."

"Here." He moved to a desk near the door and pulled out a stack of papers two fingers thick. That couldn't be… "Tinkertech application paperwork. You technically should have filled this out for having your scythe in the first place, but this works."

"Right." This would be fine, right? "I guess I'll go do that, then. Thank you for your help!"

He nodded. "Keep that future conversation in mind, please. You can bring it back here, once you're finished."

Four hours later, after struggling through as much of the paperwork as I could, I went hunting for Armsmaster. A lot of this stuff wasn't really meant for someone like me - I'd built Crescent Rose years ago, and rebuilt her dozens of times in the interim, so how was I supposed to know how much the parts cost? Especially given that I bought them all with Lien, not Dollars.

Apparently, he had left for an emergency 'crisis point' event, whatever that was, just minutes before I finished, so I decided to just leave it in his lab.

By that point, it was getting close to sundown - half an hour earlier than I was used to at this time of year in Vale, but I guess we were a lot further north here - so I wasn't expecting to find Vista wandering the halls. She looked like she was going somewhere, so I nodded in greeting and kept walking. The footsteps that stopped behind me before coming back my way gave me pause though.

I turned back around, and Vista froze. "Do you... need something?" I asked.

She took a moment before responding, then took a deep breath and recited, "Yeah, I was over here looking for you. That video of you beating up Fenja and Menja was really impressive, and Kid Win told me that you agreed that we should get to do more, so I wanted to ask if you could help give me some pointers on fighting up-close"

She said it all in one breath and looked up at me, almost nervously. Had she practiced that ahead of time? I'd helped train Oscar back before he fully merged with Ozpin, and I'd done the same thing for Carmine a few months later, so she could have just asked. "Okay, I can do that."

Vista looked startled. "Really? Just like that? You're not wor-" She cut herself off.

"Not worried?"

She looked away. "Worried that I'll get myself hurt, or take it as an excuse to get into the thick of a fight, or get overconfident and not back off when I should have, or-"

I interrupted, "No, I get it. It's… not a problem I ever had, I was kind of groomed for this, but I'll give you some training if you want-" I held up a hand to cut her off, "but we'll start slow. I've never trained someone without Aura before, so we're gonna start off with basic blocking and dodging until I can figure out exactly how to do this. Make sense?"

Vista nodded, clearly holding back her excitement. "When do we get started?"

I thought to the patrol schedule. If I remembered right, she wasn't set for anything for a couple days, so… "Is there anything you've got to do tonight?"

"Uhh, no?"

"Well, let's do it now, then. I've got to drop this off with Armsmaster, then I can meet you in the gym in a few minutes?"

She seemed kind of… startled, but I could see a smile under her visor. "Okay then!"

I smiled, then turned around and headed for Armsmaster's workshop, and I heard Vista's footsteps going the other way after a few seconds. I… wasn't quite sure what to make of her, yet. She clearly wanted to be taken seriously, which was something I understood well enough. There were actually a lot of similarities between her current situation and where I was when I started training at Beacon - the youngest member of our respective teams, strong but not trusted to be able to pull our weight.

The difference, I realized, was in our circumstances. Ozpin had, for whatever reason, decided to choose me as the leader, and I had managed to prove myself to Weiss and Blake in the following weeks. The way the Wards were structured though, with the oldest member being the one in charge, it would be years before she got a chance to do the same.

That would explain her wanting to train, then. She wanted to get strong enough in close-quarters to prove herself… that could get dangerous. All the issues she'd mentioned before could totally come into play here. I'd need to be careful.

I made my way down to Armsmaster's lab and slid the paperwork into a slot in the door. Then, I turned back toward the elevator to head down to the training area.

Vista was waiting for me, as expected. What I wasn't expecting was for her to still be in full costume, going through the motions of some kind of hand-to-hand combat form. She hadn't noticed my entrance, so I stayed quiet for a moment and watched as she let loose a flurry of punches at her target, an oversized humanoid mannequin that must've been seven feet tall. She spun to the side as if to dodge an attack, getting behind it and going for a kick to the backs of its knees.

She wasn't bad, actually. Compared to what I'd seen of the fighting here, she was probably pretty impressive for her age. Not anywhere near huntress-level, but solid for a beginner. Once I'd gotten a good impression of her general style, I stepped towards her. It still took her a few seconds to notice my approach, that was something we'd need to work on.

She noticed me mid-spin and stopper herself as she came back around. "Scatter! Sorry, I didn't notice you come in."

I took on what I was sure was a suitably mysterious teaching expression as I responded, "We'll work on that." Her head cocked to the side, but she didn't respond beyond a nod. I continued, "First off though, I want to get an idea of what you can do already. So… hit me."

I half-expected her to argue or be confused, but she ran forward with less than a second of hesitation and threw a well-executed punch. I stepped back out of the way, and she kept moving, closing the distance and trying again. I sidestepped, spun, and tapped her on the back of the head. "I'll hit back if I get the chance, keep your guard up."

She swore under her breath and spun clockwise, elbowing with her right arm and throwing another punch with her left, following up with a side kick. The blows kept coming, and I could tell that most people would have taken at least one hit by now - but like it or not, she was maybe thirteen with no enhanced strength, and even if she had been fighting a normal person her attacks probably wouldn't have done much.

She briefly switched to trying to get a grip on my wrists, but I pulled away from those as well. It would have been more effective against a normal person if she'd used it right, but it wasn't the answer I was looking for here.

She juked to the right before jumping to the left, getting behind me and pulling the same trick I'd seen her use on the mannequin moments earlier. I felt it coming and could have dodged, but I scattered around it instead.

She went sprawling, clearly not expecting the trick, and pushed herself up to her hands and knees before scampering backward to make some space. She paused for a second, unsure about where to go from there.

I decided to speak up. "You can use your powers, you know. Ideally, we'll combine them with your general fighting style so they can work together, but- woah."

I was cut off by the world going crazy. Like a funhouse mirror, the walls to my left and right stretched upward and bent inward, making the ceiling higher and smaller as the entire room seemed to twist at the top. I caught more motion in the corner of my eye and turned my head slightly to see the same thing happening behind me.

I was caught off-guard enough that I didn't notice Vista herself moving until my aura flared in warning. I hadn't really understood what she did when I'd seen her power described as 'large-scale, Manton-limited spatial warping,' but I was starting to get it now. Still kind of crazy, but I was getting a grasp. I decided that this was good enough to let the hit land, and did so - a second later, a kick impacted my knees. "Good work!" I said.

Vista gave me a look through her visor that I wasn't sure how to take. "Sure. Can we try again?"

"Umm… alright." She backed a surprising distance off, and we squared off again. This time, there was no messing around as the ground warped upward so that walls appeared behind me and to the sides and steadily grew higher, while in the same moment the distance between us jumped from several yards to no more than a couple of feet. This girl was powerful.

Space stopped warping, and she was already stepping in. I dodged backward from her first hit but had to jump to dodge the second, launching myself up and to the side, ricocheting off the opposite wall and vaulting the top. Vista wasted no time starting to drag them back down to ground level, and before she could I jumped down on the opposite side and waited.

After just a second, before the floor finished returning to its normal shape, she jumped over the barrier and dropped the four or so feet to the ground, landing right in front of me… or where I had been when she jumped. I rolled under her and sprang up behind her landing point, repeating my move from earlier and tapping her on the back again.

Vista was decent on the attack, but she didn't watch her flanks and her mobility could use some work. I could also already see some different ways to use her Semblance, as long as I was understanding it right.

I decided to let her keep going for a minute, though. From her reaction earlier, I didn't think she'd take it well for me to end the match right after landing a hit. She repeated the same series of moves she'd tried the first time I hit her, and I predicted the exact moment she overextended in order to move past her again. It looked like we'd need to work on the variety of her attacks as well.

I decided to make some distance and make her chase me a bit, but I was caught off-guard by space warping ahead of me though. A flare of my aura and a glance back showed that I had only managed to get a few feet away from her with a movement that should have taken me a good dozen yards away. Vista was already mid-punch, so I let it hit so we could move on. "Alright, that was better."

She seemed more satisfied with that one. What was the difference, though? "I can see where we'll need to start off. First things first, we're gonna teach you how to not get hit."

"No attacking yet?" She seemed pretty disappointed. Yeah, it was good that I'd realized what her intentions were, here.

"Not yet, no. You're not a huntress, you don't have Aura, and I couldn't give it to you. You can't take a hit like I can, so we're going to make sure you don't have to take any. I'm not sure I can get you up to bullet-timing, but we should be able to find other ways around it."

I saw her mouth 'bullet timing?' to herself before nodding slowly. I raised my arms into a combat stance and smiled. "You might want to start running."

Her eyes widened, and the floor in front of her shot up into a wall between us.

"So it's our turn to escort the newbie now, huh?"

Battery flicked her husband. "Be nice. Scatter, it's nice to actually meet you. Out-of-costume, I'm Samantha, and I think you've met Ethan already."

I shifted my mask slightly to see them around it, smiling in greeting. "Ruby. I heard we were doing a police ridealong this time? Are we going anywhere in particular, or…"

Assault answered, "Not this time, nope. Just introducing you to the BBPD, and outside of that, it's basically another patrol. We'll be following a few of their patrol cars along their routes and responding to whatever comes up, but overall it's just a normal patrol."

Made sense. I'd be meeting more people, but at least they were police. I'd worked with law enforcement before, so I figured it should be similar.

One of the PRT troopers drove us across the bridge in a big armored van this time, and we kept going into the actual city. There weren't as many people waiting as there were last time, and there wasn't any cheering either - it took me a minute to realize that they might not actually know we were inside.

The trooper called back through the partition, "Traffic's looking pretty thick, we've probably got about twenty minutes before we get there."

"Thank you!" I called back. She nodded into the mirror before opaque plastic slid into the gap, separating us. Both Assault and Battery took off their helmets, so I did the same. Battery was younger than I'd expected, no more than a year or so older than I was.

After a little bit of silence, I decided to try and start the conversation. "So, do we work with the police often?"

They both looked surprised for a second, but then Battery chuckled. "I'm going to keep forgetting you're not from around here. Yes, we work with them often. We're basically doing the same job, anyway. Did you not do the same thing where you came from?"

I responded, "Not really. We worked together sometimes, and I guess it's been more common lately, but the Huntsmen mainly went after the Grimm." Or occasionally other Huntsmen. That had been happening more often lately too. "When it came to things the police or even the military couldn't handle, we got sent in."

"That sounds… terrifying, to be honest. Like how we get sent up against the Endbringers. That kind of thing was your entire job?" Batt- Samantha asked.

"I mean, if I was in the area when a robbery went down, I'd help deal with it, but… yeah." I loved it when that happened. Brought back some fun memories. "It was pretty much just… normal, everyday life to me." Not that we ever had much of a 'normal' life, but that was beside the point.

"Endbringer attacks every few months are bad enough, but… how often did you go out?"

"Uh, every few days?" I responded. They looked at me agape. I explained, "Most Grimm really aren't that scary if you know what you're doing, and the really dangerous ones are rare enough that most people didn't have to deal with one more than every few months or so. It's been a little different lately since more aren't being spawned and the big ones are the only targets left, but it wasn't usually all that stressful. And there's always more Huntsmen, so we can kind of set our own hours, to a point anyway."

Ethan spoke up, "Out of curiosity, did you work alone, or…"

"I never did, but I know lots of people were different. Huntsmen get formed into four-member teams when they enter the second level of schooling and work with them until graduation. My team… never actually finished all that, but we've mostly stuck together up until a few months ago."

Battery gave me a concerned look. "Are they… alright?" What did she… oh!

"Oh, n- yes! They're fine. Weiss, my partner, went off to run her family's company after her father got arrested for… things, Blake got voted into the leadership of the new White Fang, and Yang wound up accepting a job teaching. I kept working with other teams, whenever the opportunity came up." I'd never liked the idea of going Hunting alone. Never been sure why, but the idea of something bad happening and nobody ever finding out what it was scared me enough that I put up with the hero-worship I got from most Huntsmen teams.

"Oh, well that's good. Glad to hear they're alright."

There was a bit of an awkward silence then, that I found myself breaking. "I wish they'd stuck around. I probably wouldn't be here if they had."

Where had that come from? I was doing fine here. Sure, I missed them, but…

The pair's expressions had changed as I said that. Assault's brow furrowed, and Battery took on a slightly pained look, as if I was reminding her of something. Assault was the first to speak though. "They're working on getting you back, right? I'm no TInker, but have they said anything about how long it might take?"

I shook my head. "Dragon had no idea. I'll find a way eventually but until then… well, I guess I'm here, doing what I can. I've been getting used to dealing with new teams over the past few months, I can do this too." I paused for a second. "I'm not the only one dealing with a changing team, so if you all can do it than I can too."

Battery smiled a bit, but Assault frowned. "Yeah, I guess so. All this alternate universe stuff, Velocity leaving... it's a lot to take in."

Oh, right. Here I was talking about my team separating when I was directly responsible for doing the same thing to this team. Sure, it was only one person, but still. "Yeah… I'm sorry about Velocity. I guess his leaving is kind of my fault."

Assault prepared to speak up again, but Battery cut him off. "Don't worry, it's fine. He's only headed to Boston, and it's not like we're never going to see him again. We would have lost Challenger anyway, so it's not like much has changed."

Assault looked like he wanted to say something, but ended up staying silent and I didn't push. The van started pulling to a stop, and we replaced our masks before the partition opened again, saving me from awkwardly responding.

The trooper called through the gap. "You all masked back there?" At a confirmation from Battery, she continued, "Alright, popping the back. This has been Pinto taxi service, thank you for flying with us!" She picked up a joking tone near the end, but as usual, I didn't get the reference.

Assault's typical grin had returned, and he replied, "Thanks for the ride, Pinto. We'll find our own way back."

"Aww, that hurts! You might make somebody think you weren't a fan of my driving!"

"You're right, I might."

She laughed, rolling up the window as she restarted her van and began pulling away. Battery was giving her husband a dirty look, but I barely noticed as I heard a commotion behind me and turned to find maybe half a dozen police officers exiting the building and looking directly at me. The leader, a big guy with a cap and a blonde beard, held out a hand in greeting. "So you're our new cape, huh? You've kicked up quite a stir."

Behind him, the officers that had followed him out had expressions ranging from impressed to annoyed. As I hesitantly stepped forward to greet them, I began to realize that today would be starting out with little more than schmoozing. Again. Was this all we did as heroes? I'd seen exactly one fight since I got here, and I knew from the incident reports that people were getting hurt on our watch.

Surely, if we put some of the efforts we had placed into PR into actually stopping criminals, this city would be a safer place, right?

I feel like my chapters have started getting longer. If I'd written these scenes a year ago, I'm pretty sure they'd be half this length. Not totally sure why that is, to be honest. As is, I've had to add an extra chapter to this arc to keep from winding up with a random 5k-word chapter at the end. This oughta be... interesting if it continues.

The next chapter is (somehow) like two-thirds complete already, so I'm gonna try to post it on Halloween. If I manage it, then I'm going to take November off of this story and do NaNoWriMo - not the full 50k words, that's probably never gonna happen, but instead aiming for a chapter every day, written for a sort of prequel-series to Scatterer that would bridge the gap between canon and the beginning of the story. With more volumes of RWBY coming out, I want to make it obvious what is and isn't canon - I've mentioned before that everything up through Volume 4 is canon to this story, and that much of Volume 5 actually lined up fairly well with what I had planned, but Volume 6's trailer looks to be diverging pretty heavily so I'd like to distinguish the two. I'll probably be posting the chapters once or twice a week to give me time to look them over. I've never done something like this before, so let me know what you think!

And... yeah. Roots 2-5 hopefully coming on October 31, 2-6 probably mid-December. See you then!

PSA EDIT: Do not look at any user bios. I don't fully understand the details, but there's some kind of script running on certain 'infected' profiles that's causing problems and apparently doing something to backup emails? The current top post on /r/fanfiction explains it better. Regardless, be careful out there.