Author's Note:

Hello everyone! Here is the next chapter of Earth's Mightiest Huntsmen! But first, let's answer some reviews!

SulliMike23: While the person who hired Arcade will not come into play for a long while (cough cough Act III cough cough), I will say that it is a relatively big villain name.

Blackmetalzane22: Yeah, Arcade's going to be in big trouble if Nora breaks free...or if Ren gets to him first.

Theheroneeded: You make a good point there, but it's unlikely that any of the RWBY characters would describe what Roman looks like or really mention to Logan how similar Arcade looks to him. It's just not really something that would come up in normal conversation. As for who hired Arcade, I see your guess is Mister Sinister. Certainly a great guess. Let's see if it's correct.

Ironchef13: Why indeed.

DarthK9: I do indeed have plans for Bucky that may come sooner than you think. As for the monsters, while I can't say for sure if I have plans for some of them, I will say that I do have plans for the Midnight Sons, and there may be one or two monsters on that roster. But that won't be until Act III.

Thank you all for your continued support. Now, let's get back to the action.

Murderworld—November 19th

The sounds of fighting were getting closer as Blake and Jaune moved towards them. From what he could hear, Jaune could tell that it was quite a battle. He hoped that whoever was there was doing okay.

He stole another quick look at Blake. She still looked fine, but he could tell that whatever she had seen inside the haunted house had rattled her—and she certainly didn't seem like she wanted to talk about it. He had a nasty feeling that it had something to do with her imprisonment of the Badoon, but he wasn't going to push her on the matter. What mattered the most right now was that they found the others and got out of there.

Blake suddenly came to a stop, her ears perking up. "It's Ruby," she announced. "And Ren. They're close. I'm not sure what they're fighting...but there's a lot of them."

"Then let's go help them." Jaune raised his right arm, where he had attached Ember Celica. He wasn't exactly sure how to use Yang's signature weapon, but he hoped he could figure it out before they got back into combat. From his observations, all Yang seemingly had to do was just punch to shoot.

The two started running, sliding around the corner to see multiple small cars parked off to the side, with dozens of what appeared to be clown robots attacking Ruby and Ren. To Jaune's notice, Ruby had Myrtenaster and Ren had Miló and Akoúo̱.

"There they are," he announced. He took aim with the gauntlet.

"Do you know how to use that thing?" Blake asked.

"Uh...maybe? Yang just seemed to punch and the thing fired." To demonstrate, Jaune punched the air. Instantly, multiple missile rounds fired from the gauntlet at once, propelling him off his feet and into the ground several yards away. The missiles struck against several of the clowns at the back of the pack, blowing them apart instantly.

Jaune sat back up with a groan. "See?" he commented weakly. "Just like that."

Ren whipped his head around at the explosions that blew up several of the clowns at the back of the swarm. Seeing Jaune and Blake in the distance, he gave them a nod of thanks before focusing back on the fight, cutting down another clown before smashing the face of another with Pyrrha's shield. "Jaune and Blake are here!" he called to Ruby.

Ruby flashed a grin and jumped to avoid a swinging fist. She landed on top of that clown and stabbed Myrtenaster into its head before using her Semblance to quickly jump to another one, repeating the process. As she moved through the clowns, Blake moved to help her, jumping into the air and converting her weapon—which Ren recognized as Magnhild—into its hammer form. The added weight of the hammer brought her down harder, smashing a clown robot completely while creating a small shock-wave that knocked other robots to the ground.

Working together, the group managed to destroy the clown robots one by one until there were none of them left. Ren braced himself for another wave, but for the moment, it seemed like there wouldn't be another attack.

"Are you two okay?" Blake asked.

"Just tired," Ruby admitted, taking a few moments to catch her breath. "What about you?"

Blake opened her mouth to speak, but seemed to hesitate. Ren instantly sensed that something was wrong. There was a flicker of unease in her eyes, and she looked...shaken by something. But before he could question it, Jaune said, "We're fine."

Deciding not to press the issue, Ren instead asked, "Any sign of Nora and the others?"

Blake shook her head. "We haven't seen them." She transformed Magnhild back into its grenade launcher form. "We just have their weapons.

"Then that should be our first priority," Ruby decided. "We need to find the others."

"How do we do that?"

"That big wheel," Jaune told her. "We can get a good vantage point up there."

"That's where we were going originally," Ruby told him.

He turned red slightly. "Oh—right."

"Come on," Ruby told the others, starting to continue to walk to the giant wheel, stepping over the dismantled bodies of the clown robots as she did. The others quickly followed her, though Ren kept his eyes on the weapon in Blake's hands.

"Be safe, Nora," he thought. "I'll be there soon."

Nora struggled against her bonds, but she was stuck tight. So stuck, in fact, that she couldn't even move. "Ren's going to kick your butt when he gets in here," she warned.

Arcade laughed. "He can try," he told him. "But he'll have a nasty surprise waiting for him."

"Shall I prepare the endgame scenario, sir?" a drone asked as it floated into the room.

"Please do," Arcade told it. To Nora, he said, "You see kid, when this fortress goes up, we're going to have a very special electric barrier over the entire area. The only way through is to get zapped with enough volts to kill a man in seconds."

"Oh yeah?"

Arcade smirked. "Yeah. And guess which electric proof girl is going to be placed right in the heart of the generator for this electric barrier."

Nora stared at him. Then she started to laugh.

"Something funny?"

Nora stopped laughing for a moment. "You're an even bigger idiot than I thought," she said. "Electricity just makes me stronger! If you try zapping me with it, I'll break through these chains and kick your butt myself."

Arcade smirked. "Oh, I'm well aware of your superpowers, Shockhammer. But you can't exactly use your incredible strength if you can't move."

"The more electricity you pump into me, the stronger I'll get," she said back. "Doesn't matter if I can't move. Eventually, I'll be able to break these chains through sheer will."

"Maybe you will. And maybe you won't." Suddenly, a large glass tube began to close around Nora. Too late, she realized that she was hanging above some sort of sparking platform.

"The generator this creep was talking about," she thought.

"But I'm willing to bet that while you can absorb all this voltage...you still feel all the pain that comes with it." Arcade grinned sadistically. "And if you're in that much pain...you won't even think about breaking free."

Before she could offer a response, a blast of electricity shot up from the platform and coursed through her body before striking the top of the chamber she was in. Instantly, she let out a cry of pain as the energy shot through her.

Arcade let out a laugh. "It's showtime!"

Ren and the others stared up at the giant wheel. "So," Jaune said after a moment. "How do we...get up there?"

Ren moved to the wheel and instantly started climbing it, using his superior acrobatic skills to climb and flip his way up to one of the seats at the top of the wheel. Steadying himself as the seat shifted from his weight, he began looking out over the entire area, searching for any signs of his friends. He could see what he hoped was the entire scope of Murderworld. There were strange structures all over the place, both large and small. At first, he couldn't see anyone. But then he saw three smaller dots on the other side of the area, moving among a series of small booths.

"See anything?!" Ruby called up.

"I see people moving!" Ren called back down. He squinted his eyes. "It looks like...Weiss, Pyrrha, and Yang! If we head in that direction, we can meet up with them!"

"Sounds like a plan!"

But then Ren suddenly frowned. "Wait," he thought, a quiet sense of dread growing inside of him. "If we were all paired up...then where's—"

The ground began to shake violently, causing Ren to lose his balance and fall off the seat. Luckily, he was able to grab onto another part of the wheel and hold on.

"What's going on!?" Ruby cried.

Ren shakily climbed back to the top of the wheel, seeing a large castle slowly rise up from underground in the distance. "There's...a castle!" he yelled.

"What?!"

"Where did that come from?!" Jaune wondered.

A loud siren wailed. "Knock knock!" Arcade's voice boomed from all directions. "Well, it looks like you kiddies are a lot tougher than you look, which is...very, very annoying. So I think it's time we start the endgame."

"Why don't you come out and fight us directly?!" Jaune asked. "Stop hiding behind your robots!"

"Now where's the fun in that?!" Arcade laughed. "But I'll tell you what—I'll give you brats a chance to come get me. See that castle that just popped up out of the ground? I'm sitting inside it. You just have to find a way inside."

"We will," Ruby promised. "And we'll take you down."

"We'll see about that. It'll be shocking if you make it in here." Arcade let out a laugh. "Oh, and to make sure there's no delay, I've got incentive."

"What do you mean?" Blake asked.

Arcade laughed again. "Say hello, Shockhammer." A loud, pained cry came over the intercom then. Ren froze instantly, recognizing who was screaming almost instantly.

"Nora," he breathed.

"Tick tock, kiddos!" Arcade declared. "Tick...tock." With that, the intercom shut down, cutting off Nora's screams of pain.

Ren clenched his fists as a bubbling rage began to grow inside him. This...madman had Nora captive and was torturing her. He...was going to make him pay.

Without warning, he leaped from the wheel, swinging down the metal poles that lined the outside of it and landing on the ground below before taking off running.

"Ren!" he heard Ruby call after him. "Wait!"

But Ren ignored him. All he cared about was getting to Nora.

"Okay, that's it," Yang decided, slamming a fist into her palm. "That guy's really going to get it now."

"We need to get going," Pyrrha said. "Fast."

"Hold on," Weiss said, thinking about it. "Something's not right here."

"Yeah—Arcade has our friend," Yang growled. "We're going to punch his lights out."

But Weiss' hesitation caused Pyrrha to pause as well. "No—she's right,
she said. "Arcade wants us to rush in there. It's a trap."

"Well, obviously it's a trap," Yang remarked. "But we can't let that stop us. Nora needs our help."

"We have to play this smart." Weiss hefted Crescent Rose with a huff. "I'm tired of being forced to play Arcade's game the way he wants us to play it. I think it's time we change the rules."

"Breaking the rules?" Yang raised an eyebrow. "Who are you, and what have you done to Weiss Schnee?"

Weiss rolled her eyes in annoyance. "What did you have in mind?" Pyrrha then asked her.

"Well," Weiss said, looking down. "Nora disappeared without warning, right? Since we would've seen and heard her if she had been dragged away or flown away, then that means—"

"That means she must have been taken underground!" Yang interrupted.

Pyrrha smiled slightly. "That does seem like what happened. And why none of us would've noticed her disappearing like that. She probably stepped on a trapdoor and dropped down below."

"Exactly." Weiss looked around on the ground. "So if I'm right, that means that there are underground tunnels that lead right to the castle. If Arcade wants us to go straight for it on the surface, that's where he'll lay his trap. If we find those tunnels, we can go underground and get the drop on him. With any luck, he won't even see us coming."

"And if he does?" Yang asked.

"Well, then you'll be able to smash your way through whatever he sends down after us."

Yang grinned. "Now that sounds like a plan."

"We just need to find that trapdoor." Weiss got down on the ground and felt around for any clues that would lead them to the trapdoor.

"We're going to have to hurry," Pyrrha warned. "The others are probably going to be going to that castle. They're going to walk right into whatever trap Arcade sent."

"I'm sure Ruby can handle herself," Yang told her.

Pyrrha frowned. "I'm sure she will. But it's Ren I'm worried about."

"Ren?" she repeated. "The most level headed member of our group?"

"Think about it," Pyrrha told her. "Arcade has his best friend captive and is torturing her. How do you think he's going to react to something like that?"

Weiss looked up at her. "Pyrrha...this is Ren we're talking about."

"Everyone has a breaking point where they just snap and go ballistic," Pyrrha said, closing her eyes and looking down. "Even someone like Ren. What we need to do is find a way to get to Arcade before that happens."

"Well, that's not going to happen unless we find that trapdoor," Yang commented, punching the ground in annoyance. The ground caved in under her and she fell with a yelp.

"Yang?!" Weiss yelled.

Yang's voice floated up from the hole. "Found it!"

Pyrrha and Weiss looked down into the hole to see Yang standing up and dusting herself off. "There's definitely a tunnel down here," she called up. "And Nora was definitely here."

"How can you tell?" Weiss asked.

Yang bent down and picked up Crocea Mors in response. "She dropped Jaune's weapons."

"Arcade warned us about switching weapons," Weiss warned.

"And I couldn't care less," Yang responded. "Besides, Nora's technically out of the game, so it shouldn't count anyway." She slipped Jaune's shield onto her back and held his sword out in front of her. "Come on. It's time we end this stupid game once and for all."

Ren barreled through Murderworld, his rage steadily growing. He didn't know how Arcade had gotten Nora, or what kind of torture he was subjecting her too. But he didn't care. He had to reach her.

"Ren!" Ruby called after him. She was catching up quickly, using her Semblance to close the distance. But Ren ignored her. The castle was in sight. The drawbridge was within striking distance. If he could just get over it—

He hit some sort of invisible field and instantly let out a cry of pain as volts of electricity shot through him. He let out a yell of pain, feeling is Aura steadily start to drain. He tried to move, to retreat from the field, but he was stuck. All his nerves were in too much pain to even process his brain telling them to move.

A hand grabbed onto his shoulder. With a cry, Ruby pulled Ren from the field. He landed on top of her as they both fell to the ground. Letting out a groan, Ren rolled off her as Jaune and Blake reached them. "What was that?" he asked.

Jaune picked up a rock and tossed it at the castle. It instantly hit the electric field and froze, getting pumped full of electricity before exploding into dust.

Everyone scrambled back from the field in shock and horror. "If it hadn't been for your aura," Blake breathed, her ears flattening, "you'd be dead."

Ren's eyes narrowed. "There must be a way inside," he said. "There has to be."

"Ren's right." Ruby picked herself off the ground and dusted herself off. "Nora needs us. We have to find a way inside."

"How do we do that?" Jaune asked. "If we even touch that thing, we're going to get ourselves killed."

"Doesn't matter." Ren got to his feet, eyes focused on the castle. "We're getting in there."

"Well, yeah," Blake told him. "But we need to think this through."

"The longer we wait, the worse off Nora will be," Ren responded. "We just have to—"

"Oh kiiiiiidds!" Arcade's voice called through the intercom again. "I see you've reached my electro field of doom—partially powered by our dear friend Shockhammer!"

Ren bristled as fury began to overtake him again. "Let her go!" he yelled. "Or I swear I'll—"

"Temper, temper, Quickstrike," Arcade mocked. "But if you're all in the mood for some more action, then I've got just the thing for you!"

"More of your clown robots?" Ruby asked.

"Even better!" The ground behind them opened up and a massive, familiar robot was lifted up from the hole. "You wouldn't believe how much this Sentinel cost me!"

"Ha!" Ruby called out. "Those things only target mutants, and we're not mutants!"

"Well obviously they just target mutants!" Arcade countered. "That's why I had to reprogram it to kill anything that moves—except me, of course!" As he spoke, the Sentinel's eyes lit up.

Jaune laughed nervously. "Okay—that's not good."

Nora's voice was hoarse from crying out in pain as the electricity surged through her. Arcade, meanwhile, was laughing as he watched Ruby and the others start to back nervously away from the Sentinel.

Despite the immense pain that she was in, Nora was still trying to find a way out of her situation. While she was in utter agony, she knew that all the voltage running through her was making her stronger. However, the chains that she was attached to had absolutely no slack to them, meaning that she couldn't pull herself free. For the moment, she was completely and totally stuck.

As she tried to think of what to do, she caught something else on Arcade's security monitors. It looked like some tunnels...and Weiss, Yang, and Pyrrha were making their way through them.

Nora's eyes widened in realization. "They found a way in! But if Arcade sees them, he'll send more robots after him." But if they had the element of surprise...then they could help her out of this situation. She had to find a way to distract him.

"Hey, Arcade!" she managed to cry out, gritting her teeth from the pain.

"Not now, you little brat. I'm busy watching your friends get destroyed," Arcade responded.

"But I just want to know something! How did you become the insane criminal mastermind you are today?!"

Arcade seemed to pause slightly. Then, just as Nora had predicted, his ego got the better of him. "Well, I might as well tell you, since you're about to die and all." He turned away from the monitors and approach her. "I was born a genius..."

Arcade continued to tell his story, but Nora mostly ignored his rambling. What really mattered was that his back was now to his security monitors...and her friends.

She just hoped that they would hurry.

The tunnel came to an abrupt end, with a single ladder leading up. "This is it," Yang said, drawing Crocea Mors and twirling the sword.

"We're going to have to move fast," Pyrrha warned. "It won't be long until Arcade realizes that we're here and he decides to just kill Nora. We're going to have to stop him before that happens."

"And how do we do that, exactly?" Weiss asked.

"We cause a distraction," Yang said. "Something that will keep him occupied while we free Nora." Her eyes lit up with an idea. "Like cutting the power or something."

"Cutting the power?" Weiss questioned. "Does that really work?"

"Trust me—it's an old strategy that the Guardians use a lot. Suddenly cutting the power freaks them out more than you might think."

"But cutting the power isn't going to do us any good if we don't know where Nora is in the first place," Weiss warned.

"My guess is that she's being held in the control room," Pyrrha guessed. "Arcade will want to keep an eye on her in case she somehow breaks free on her own."

Yang began climbing the ladder, opening the hatch and peeking out. "Looks clear," she announced, sliding out so Weiss and Pyrrha could follow her up. Once they were all out of the tunnel, Weiss took the opportunity to observe their surroundings.

"Yep...it's a castle alright," she decided.

"Which way?" Yang asked.

Pyrrha seemed to think about it for a moment. "I say...that way," she decided, pointing forward. "There's a lot of power cables running along the ceiling. We follow those and we'll get to the main power room."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Yang decided. "Let's go."

As they started to walk, the castle suddenly shook, as if a distant shockwave had rocked it. "What the heck was that?" Weiss asked.

"Sounds like fighting," Pyrrha replied. "Ruby and the others must have made it here."

The castle shook again from another impact. "If that's Ruby and the others," Weiss said, "then what are they fighting?"

Ren rolled back several feet, momentarily stunned from the impact of the Sentinel punching the ground right next to him. Shaking off his daze, he jumped back to his feet and ran at the giant robot again, throwing Miló at its head. But the javelin simply bounced off its armor without any sort of damage being inflicted. It swept its hand down, forcing Ren to jump over it to avoid getting knocked aside.

Ruby sped up to its leg and tried slashing at it with Myrtenaster, but the only damage she could inflict was minimal. The Sentinel kicked her aside, sending her sprawling past Jaune, who was punching the air in an attempt to fire more missile rounds from Ember Celica.

"I think you're out of ammo, Jaune!" Blake warned.

"Out of ammo?!" Jaune repeated. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me—" His protest was cut off as the Sentinel blasted him with his laser eyes, knocking him back as well.

Blake fired several grenades from Magnhild, which did seem to force the Sentinel back a little, but didn't come close to destroying it. It raised its hand and fired a massive energy blast that Blake had to jump back to avoid, using her Semblance to leave a clone behind, which disintegrated instantly.

Ren raced back to the Sentinel, picking up Miló and charging straight at the robot. He wasn't going to let this thing get between him and Nora.

Ordinarily, he and his friends would probably have far less trouble than they were having at the moment. The Sentinel was one of Logan's favorite training simulations to run back at Remnant HQ. But that was when they all had their own weapons. Now that they all had different weapons...this was going very badly.

Ren tightened his focus as he jumped over the Sentinel's large hand again, gripping onto its fingers and swinging himself up to its arm. He started running up it, but it used its other hand to brush him off, sending him falling to the ground again.

"Ren, stop it!" Ruby tried to tell him. But Ren ignored her. Letting a yell of rage, he charged the robot again, dodging another energy blast before throwing Pyrrha's shield straight into its heel. The shield stuck into the Sentinel fast, but if it was injured by it, it didn't show it. Instead, as Ren slid over to yank it free, it instead kicked him. He let out a grunt of surprise and pain as he flew backwards, crashing through a nearby booth with a stack of glass jars, shattering them all on impact as he landed.

His aura flickered weakly around him. Already drained significantly after his collision with the electric field, it was now on its last legs. Ren slowly picked himself back up, wiping his mouth as he saw Jaune roll around the Sentinel's stomping foot and Blake struggle to use Magnhild, now in its hammer form, against the colossal foe. But before he could rush at the robot again, Ruby dashed in front of him, blocking his path.

"Get out of my way, Ruby!" he ordered.

"You're not thinking straight, Ren!" Ruby told him. "Rushing at this thing head on isn't going to stop it—or help Nora!"

"It gets us closer to her!" he argued, trying to push past her. But she held firm.

"You're not going to get to her if you get yourself killed!" she told him.

"Ruby—"

Ruby put a hand on his shoulder. "You're supposed to be the calm one," she said gently. "Your levelheadedness is part of your strength—and it helped save me earlier today back in the maze. Charging in like you have been without any sort of plan isn't going to work."

Ren tried to argue, but Ruby held firm. "Nora would want you to stop and think," she went on. "Rushing in blindly is her thing. Use what you know and think this through."

Slowly, Ren forced himself to calm the swelling rage in his heart. Ruby was right. He had to focus, or they weren't going to get anywhere. As he slowed his breathing and using his Semblance to dampen his emotions, the Sentinel whacked Jaune and Blake aside, knocking them back next to him and Ruby.

"This thing is way easier in the simulations," Jaune grunted as he and Blake got back to their feet.

"If anyone has any good plans, now would be a good time to speak up," Blake warned.

Jaune seemed to think about it for a moment. "How many of Nora's grenades do we have left?" he asked.

Blake checked Magnhild's chamber. "One," she reported.

"One just might be enough." Jaune pointed up to the Sentinel's head. "We need to get it up there. If we can get it onto that thing's head, we can shut the whole thing down."

"I'll take care of it," Ren announced.

"Are you sure?" Blake asked.

Ren nodded. "I can make it." He glanced at Ruby. "But I might need some backup."

Ruby nodded back to him. "I'll make sure you get up there."

"Then Blake and I will distract it from down here," Jaune decided as Blake handed Ren the last grenade.

"Good luck," Ruby told him as the Sentinel raised its hands and prepared to shoot them all with energy blasts.

"You too." Jaune then started running off to the left. "Hey, you big bucket of bolts!" he taunted. "Come and get me!"

The Sentinel shifted to track his movements, attempting to shoot him with its laser eyes. But Jaune jumped and rolled, avoiding the blasts.

Blake then ran the other way, forcing the Sentinel to shift targets. She slid under a swinging arm and jumped back to avoid a laser blast. At this point, the Sentinel was completely ignoring Ren and Ruby.

With a final nod to each other, the two charged the Sentinel while its back was turned. Ruby used her Semblance to speed up to its back, reaching down and grabbing Ren's arm and throwing him further up the bot. The Sentinel, noticing this, swung its arm back to try to swat him off, but Ruby was there, blocking the strike with Myrtenaster at the cost of being forced back down the robot. She stuck the blade in, trying to stop herself from sliding down further.

"Keep going!" she called up to Ren. "I'll catch up!"

Ren tightened his jaw, but continued climbing. The Sentinel tried to brush him off again, but Blake charged forward, striking it in the leg with Magnhild, causing it to stumble slightly and change focus back to her. This allowed Ren to continue climbing up the Sentinel.

Eventually, he made it to its shoulder, crawling up it and coming face to face with its head, which was turning to face him. He grabbed the grenade from his belt and threw it straight at its head. The bomb hit true...and bounced right off its nose.

Ren dove for it, but the grenade was already out of reach, falling off the edge and starting to plummet to the ground. But just as quickly, Ruby was there, briefly coming out of her Semblance to kick the grenade back up to him before sliding away again. Ren caught the grenade and got back up, turning to face the Sentinel as its eyes powered up again.

"Throwing it's not enough," he realized. "I'm going to have to detonate it personally."

Closing his eyes with the realization of what he needed to do, he jumped straight at the head of the Sentinel, drawing Miló at the same time. He threw the grenade first, followed quickly by the javelin. When the grenade hit the Sentinel's head, the javelin stabbed into it, setting it off right as the Sentinel's laser eyes shot Ren at point blank range.

He was blasted off, pain radiating through his body as his aura shattered instantly. As he fell, however, he saw the head of the Sentinel sparking with massive amounts of electricity. Smoke rose from the head before it suddenly exploded.

Ren smiled weakly. "We beat it..." His eyes rolled up into the back of his head as he slammed into the ground hard, and he knew no more.

Nora could barely keep her eyes open from the pain. Her aura was almost gone, and worst of all, Arcade was still yapping away about his backstory.

She tried to focus on the security monitors to tune him out. But her eyes widened as she watched Ren, his body smoldering from a massive laser blast, hit the ground hard. "Ren!" she cried out, despite herself.

Arcade swung around. "What are you—" Seeing the carnage of what was going on outside, he started to laugh. "Yes!" he cheered. "Yes, yes, yes!" He cackled. "I got one!"

A bloodcurdling rage began to build up inside Nora. From her angle, she couldn't tell if Ren was alive or dead. Arcade certainly thought he was dead, but she wasn't ready to believe it. All she wanted to do now was take him down.

Slowly, she curled her right hand around so that she could just barely grasp the chains with a few of her fingers. Closing her eyes to channel as much of her built up strength from all the electricity she had been absorbing into those fingers, she pulled with all her might. The chains groaned and and screeched before finally snapping off, freeing her right arm. With one hand free, she was easily able to free her other arm before reaching down and pulling on the chains binding her legs in place.

Arcade took notice of this. "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded to know. He pulled a lever on his control console and the intensity of the electricity increased even further. "Do you think that you can break free from your prison there? I think not! As long as that voltage is pumping through the generator in there, you're not going anywhere!"

"Pardon me, sir." A droid floated into the room. "But there are intruders about to enter the main power room.

"What?!" Arcade swung back around to the security cameras, pulling up the feed to the power room. "No!" he yelled upon seeing who was in there. "No, no no no no!"

The next door the group busted down was the door to the power room. A massive generator hummed in the center of the room, and cables led away from it and out of the room.

"This is it," Weiss announced.

Yang punched a fist into her palm again. "Then let's start smashing." She started forward, but Pyrrha held her arm out, blocking her path.

"If we just smash it, there's a good chance it will explode," she warned.

"Fine," Yang said, standing down. "Then how do we shut this thing down?"

Weiss pointed to the side of the generator. "How about the off switch?"

Yang winced. "Oh...right."

"No!" Arcade yelled as the power suddenly shut off. He slammed his hands on his console, trying desperately to restore the power. But it was no use. Everything was offline.

The moment the electricity stopped rushing through her, Nora let out a gasp of relief. The pain may have been gone, but there was still work to do. She drew a crackling fast back and smashed it into the glass tube, shattering it instantly.

Arcade swung around to face her again. Seeing the look of murderous rage on her face, he gulped, let out a curse, and then grabbed his droid. "Don't just float there, you piece of garbage!" he raged. "Get her!" He threw the droid directly at her and fled, barreling through the door as fast as he could.

Nora swatted the droid aside, causing it to crash into the far wall and explode. "Where do you think you're going, Arcade?!" she yelled, running after him.

Arcade sprinted around a corner, with Nora in hot pursuit. He ran into a sealed door and typed desperately on a keypad to try to open it. However, due to the power being out, the door remained stuck shut as Nora arrived. "Hey Arcade!" she yelled with a slight cackle. "Guess who's queen of the castle now!"

"Now—now hang on a minute!" Arcade stammered. "We can make a deal here. We can—"

Two sets of metal claws suddenly sliced through the door behind him. He yelped and backed away as the claws cut a hole in the door. The hole was then kicked in, revealing Logan on the other side.

"Going somewhere, bub?" he growled.

Now on his knees, Arcade tried to crawl away down another hallway, but was blocked by the sudden arrival of Weiss, Yang, and Pyrrha. The former aimed Crescent Rose right at his head.

"You're under arrest, Arcade," Weiss told him. Then, frowning, she looked up at Logan. "I can do that, right?"

Logan chuckled. "Yeah. You can do that. You kids okay?"

"We're fine," Pyrrha told him. "Nora?"

Nora's fists, still crackling with all the electricity she had absorbed from being stuck in the generator, clenched. "I'm okay," she said. "But—Ren's hurt. He's outside."

"Go get him then," Logan ordered. He grabbed Arcade by the shirt collar and dragged him to his feet. "I'll get this scumbag back to the Quinjet." He began dragging Arcade away. "Come on, bub. We've got a nice cell waiting for you at the Vault."

"Wait, wait wait—" Arcade tried to protest. Yang proceeded to shut him up with a punch directly to the face, knocking him out cold.

She then smirked. "I've been waiting all day to do that."

"Come on Ren, wake up!" Ruby begged, shaking Ren's unconscious form.

Jaune checked his pulse. "He's breathing at least," he said. "But it's going be days for him to heal, even with his aura."

"Can you help him?"

Before Jaune could answer, a new voice called out. "REN!" Nora sprinted towards the group, followed closely by Weiss, Yang, and Pyrrha. She slid on the ground and clutched his limp hand. "Is he—"

"He'll be fine," Blake assured her. "He just needs some time to rest and heal."

Weiss, upon reaching them, held Crescent Rose out to Ruby. "How do you manage carrying this thing around everywhere?" she asked.

Ruby just shrugged. "I'm used to it." She handed Myrtenaster back over to Weiss before grabbing her own weapon and clipping it to her back.

Weiss let out a small sigh. "Of course you of all people would've gotten my weapon."

"I didn't break it!"

After a brief moment where every exchanged their weapons, Nora picked up Ren's body. "Let's go home," she decided.

"Yeah," Yang agreed. "I think we've had enough carnival games for one day."

Remnant HQ—November 19th

Blake watched the sun set on the horizon. They had gotten back to New York later that day after dropping Arcade off at the Vault, one of the strongest supervillain prisons in the world. Ren had been checked over by Dr. Foster and cleared. Currently, he was resting in his room, Nora by his side. She had refused to leave him.

Blake let out a small sigh. While everyone else seemed to be okay, her experience in Murderworld still weighed heavily on her mind. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see the sparking prods. Hear the cruel laughter of her Badoon captives.

She didn't like to be reminded of such a painful moment in her life. Even now, she could feel the sense of uneasiness and fear within her. Emotions that would've easily attracted the Grimm if they had been around. Emotions that she really didn't like feeling.

She felt the presence of someone approaching her. Jaune. "It's a nice view," he commented.

Blake nodded slightly. "Yeah. It is."

The two were quiet for a moment. Then, Blake said, "Thank you, Jaune. For not telling the others about what happened."

Jaune looked at her. "I don't know a lot about what happened to you when we all left Remnant," he admitted. "But from what I do know...you had it worse than all of us put together. It didn't seem right to bring that up when we needed to focus on finding a way out of there. But...if you ever want to talk...or vent or...whatever...you know that I'm here for you. We all are."

Blake closed her eyes. "I know, Jaune. It's just...going to take some time. I...still need to process some things on my own."

He nodded, looking like he understood, yet still was a little disappointed. "Goodnight, Blake." With that, he turned around and left Blake alone with her thoughts.

When Ruby checked in on Ren's room, she found him lying down in his bed, his torso wrapped in bandages and gauze. Nora was by his side, passed out in a chair. She smiled slightly in relief, and moved to close the door.

"Thank you, Ruby," Ren suddenly said. Ruby froze, looking back at him as he opened his eyes slightly.

She hesitated, then entered the room. "I didn't know you were awake," she admitted, keeping her voice low so as to not disturb Nora.

"I woke up a few minutes ago," he admitted.

"Oh. But...you don't have to thank me for anything."

"I do." He turned his head to face her. "I lost control. I got so emotionally distraught that I lost sight of the true goal. I wanted to save Nora so badly that I couldn't think straight, and it almost led to my own death and the deaths of my friends. But you...you helped me see that. So thank you."

Ruby blushed awkwardly. "You don't have to thank me for that, Ren," she told him. "I'm just glad you're okay. I don't...I don't want to lose anymore friends. We've already lost so many back on Remnant. And as long as I live...I'm going to make sure that I don't lose anyone here."

Ren smiled softly. "You're a good leader, Ruby. And an amazing friend. Never change."

Ruby blushed awkwardly again. "I'll...let your rest, Ren." She turned around and left the room, gently closing the door behind her.

They had all survived Murderworld, with only a few minor injuries to speak of. She only hoped that the next villain that she and her friends would face would be just as simple to defeat as Arcade had been. But deep down, she knew that Arcade was on the lower end of the villain hierarchy on Earth.

There were far bigger threats out there...and Ruby knew that chances were that she and her friends would have to fight them before they could finally go home and face the real threat before them: Ultron.

Elsewhere

The man sat in silence as he replayed the footage from Murderworld. Behind him, his associate was frowning. "So, he failed then?" he asked.

The man smiled coldly. "He was always destined to fail. But it doesn't matter. I got what I wanted."

"Yeah? What's that boss?"

"Information. These aliens, these...Remnantians...interest me. They do not appear to be mutants, nor Inhumans, nor Eternals or any other superpowered species in the universe. Perhaps they will be the key to completing my research."

"You want us to snatch them then, boss?"

The man waved him off. "Not yet. I wish to learn more about them. We will watch. We will wait. And when the time is right..." His lips curled up his pale face as his eyes burned red with malice.

"...we will crush them all."

And bam! The Murderworld arc has concluded! Arcade's locked up and everyone lived happily ever after! And yes, as several people guessed, I'm confirming it right here: the guy who hired Arcade is indeed Mister Sinister himself. But as I said before, his machinations aren't going to really come into play until Act III. But I've already got plans for what's going to happen there, and trust me-it's going to be pretty epic.

As for what happened in this chapter, there's definitely some things to talk about. I highly considered having what happened to Nora supercharge her and cause her scarring like in volume 8, but I eventually decided to wait on that and see what comes up down the road to cause something like that to happen. After all, it would be kind of lame if Nora would get all that scarring from a guy like Arcade. So instead, I decided to flip the script and inure Ren instead. Granted, his injuries are certainly not going to be permanent, but they just might sideline him for the next arc. I haven't fully decided that yet. And while you could make an argument that Nora could've gotten a major overcharge that would cause her scarring, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that she wouldn't suffer that fate quite yet. I'd say that it was close to it happening, like it was a few seconds away from it happening, but Nora just lucked out with it not happening.

Why did I decide to have Arcade in a castle? Simply so I could fit in another "Nora is the queen of the castle" gag. It's always been a funny gag that it's a shame they can't use very often in the canon series.

As for what comes next, I'm really excited for the next arc. The arc that's coming up I originally had slated to be Arc 12 rather than Arc 11, but I decided to switch Arc 11 and 12 around-partly because I like what I had planned for the original Arc 12 more, but also because the original Arc 11 is a much larger in scale arc that would serve much better as a mid-Act finale arc. As for what's coming up next, well...let's just say it's about time the RWBY characters meet some more young heroes. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

But anyway, that's all from me. Until next time, this is Guest 1138, signing off.