Author's Note:

Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas! As my gift to you all, here is the next chapter of Earth's Mightiest Huntsmen! But first, let's answer some reviews!

dinocam3: It's really funny that Roman and Arcade look really similar. I'm sure it's a coincidence, but it's still funny-and conveniently for some great moments.

Blackmetalzane22: Coming up with the pairings for this arc was certainly really fun for me, and should lead to some great moments-particularly with one certain pairing.

Guest: Because it's Christmas, I'll give you that answer: yes, Mojo will eventually be showing up. But not until Act III.

Brak: I considered it, but with having to deal with four different perspectives in Murderworld alone, I eventually decided against it.

TheBilliantOne: Nora is certainly a wild one with a lot of great moments for her.

Red Scorpion: Interesting guesses at the other pairings. And I think you're right, Roman probably would be insulted by being compared to Arcade, since Roman is far more successful than Arcade ever has been or will be.

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

Remnant HQ—November 19th

Logan returned to Remnant HQ and instantly knew something was wrong. Usually by now at least one of the kids would have been up by now. But the main area of the penthouse was empty. Not only that, but the remnants of dinner remained on the table. It was as if the kids had just gotten up and left without warning.

Logan tried to flip on the lights, but nothing happened. "Power out?" he wondered. "Phyllis, report," he ordered.

Nothing happened. "Phyllis," Logan repeated. "Report."

Again, no response. Now Logan definitely knew something was wrong. He sniffed the air, trying to detect any scents. He smelled the kids, of course, along with traces of a sleeping gas. And...someone else. Someone he recognized.

He growled, extending his claws with a snikt. "Arcade."

Murderworld—November 19th

"Yang?"

Yang moaned, her eyes fluttering up to see Pyrrha looking down at her. "Good, you're okay," she said.

"What...the hell happened?" Yang groaned, sitting up, only to realize that she and Pyrrha were surrounded by walls of mirrors. "And where the hell are we?"

"I think it's called a house of mirrors," Pyrrha answered. "As for what happened, I think we got kidnapped."

"Kidnapped," Yang repeated. "By who?"

"By me!" A holographic image of a red haired man in a white suit and green bow tie appeared before them.

"Wait—Roman Torchwick?" Yang asked, astonished. "How the hell are you here?"

"I'm not Roman Torchwick!" the man exclaimed. "I'm Arcade!"

"Sorry...I've never heard of you," Pyrrha admitted.

Arcade let out a grunt of annoyance. "Anyway—welcome to my Murderworld House of Mirrors! All you have to do is escape without dying! Something that no one has ever done before!"

"And how many people have you put through this?" Yang challenged, not looking the least bit scared or intimidated.

"Uh, well—lots of people!" Arcade stammered. "And none have ever made it out alive!"

"Uh huh." Yang got to her feet, rotating her metal arm and flexing her her fingers. The arm still felt a little stiff and the fingers were slow to flex. The arm must still have been feeling the effects of the EMP. "So all we have to do is escape this crazy mirror house and we win? What kind of a villain are you?"

"I'm an assassin," Arcade informed her.

Yang rolled her eyes. "What kind of assassin doesn't kill their targets?"

"Killing your targets instantly is boring. I'd rather make sport out of the whole thing. It makes it far more entertaining!"

"Whatever." Yang cracked her knuckles. "Let's get this over with." She threw a punch into a mirror. Instantly, it shattered, revealing even more mirrors behind it. A second later, there was a clicking sound, and a large stone pillar dropped down from above her. She yelped and dove to the side to avoid getting smashed.

"Oh, did I mention that breaking the mirrors would unleash even more traps down upon you?" Arcade asked with a laugh. "You're going to have to do this the right way, or you die!"

Yang scowled as Pyrrha helped her back to her feet. "I already hate this guy."

"Just calm down," Pyrrha advised. "We're going to have to be careful."

Yang let out an annoyed sigh. "Fine. How do we get out of here?"

Pyrrha looked around at all their reflections in the mirrors. "One of these mirrors has to be a door in disguise. We just have to find it."

"Oh, and just to make things even harder," Arcade interrupted. Seconds later, flashing laser lights began to shoot out of seemingly nowhere, reflecting off all the mirrors and creating a dizzying strobe effect.

Yang covered her eyes and scowled in annoyance. "I really hate this guy."

Jaune tried to find his way down the hall, feeling his way across the wall in pitch darkness. "Hello!" he called out. "Anyone there?!"

Nothing called back to him. He let out a sigh. "Great," he said aloud, continuing to feel across the wall. He had to find a way out of...wherever he was at the moment. He had to find a way to regroup with the others...assuming they were even at the same location he was at.

A low creeeeaaaaak caused him to swing around. But he still couldn't see anything behind him. It was all still pitch black.

He wished he had Crocea Mors with him. He didn't like the idea of being unarmed, let alone at the mercy of whoever had attacked them. Whoever it was, her or she clearly wanted them alive. At least for now.

As Jaune turned around again, he startled as he saw a pair of amber eyes staring back at him from the darkness. "Ah!" he exclaimed, waving his arms in front of him.

"Jaune? Is that you?"

Jaune stopped moving back. "Blake?"

The eyes bobbed up and down slightly, as if she was nodding. "Yeah, it's me."

"Are you okay?" he asked her. "Do you know where we are? Where are the others?"

"I'm fine," Blake insisted. "We're in some sort of house. And I don't know where the others are."

"Do you know who attacked us?" Jaune asked. "What kind of a prison cell is this if we got kidnapped?"

"It's not a prison cell, it's a haunted house!" A blue light appeared, illuminating the small hallway that Jaune and Blake were in. The light formed a hologram of a man in a white suit. "I'm—"

"Roman Torchwick?" Blake interrupted, taking a step back in alarm.

"Bah! For the last time, I'm not this Roman Torchwick! I'm Arcade!"

"Who?" Jaune asked.

"Gah!" Arcade looked really frustrated. "You're taking all the fun out of this!"

"What, taking the fun out of our kidnapping?" Blake questioned.

"I'm okay with that," Jaune added.

"Can we just get on with this?!" Arcade snapped. "I'm already sick of you brats!"

"Get on with what?" Jaune asked. "You haven't told us what we're doing here."

"I'm getting to that!" Arcade took a deep breath. "Look, it's very simple. All you have to do is escape the haunted house without dying. If you do, your weapons will be waiting for you. If you don't escape...well, then you're dead."

"I think that was obvious," Jaune commented.

Arcade let out a growl. "Fine. Be that way. I was going to tell you about the wonderful traps that I've set in the haunted house, but if you're going to be a smart alec, then I'll let you find those traps yourselves. More fun for me!"

With another laugh, the hologram of Arcade vanished, plunging the hallway back into darkness again. "Wait!" Jaune called. "Can't you turn the lights on first?"

"I think that take away from the vibe this guy's trying to go for," Blake told him. "Come on—we need to find our way out."

"But I can't see anything."

"I can." A hand suddenly gripped Jaune's own. "Don't worry, Jaune. I can get us out of here. Just follow my lead, and we can hopefully get out of this place without getting hurt."

"Nora, get up."

Nora moaned. "Five more minutes."

Weiss grumbled in annoyance. "Nora, get up."

Nora turned over on the pavement, facing away from her. With a huff, Weiss kicked her in the side. "Nora!"

Nora yelped, jumping to her feet. "What was that for?!"

"In case you haven't noticed, we've been kidnapped and stuffed in..." Weiss looked around. "Okay, I don't exactly know where we are."

"You're in Murderworld!" A voice boomed out as a hologram of a red haired man in a white suit and green bow tie appeared.

Nora looked strangely at him. "Say, aren't you R—"

"I'm Arcade!" the villain interrupted. "Seriously, none of you have heard of Arcade?!"

"We're not exactly from here!" Nora protested.

"Fine—just—fine!" Arcade seethed. "Your first trap you have to survive is my bumper car convoy! Find you way out of that, and you'll get your weapons back! And if you don't...you'll be pancaked!" He cackled as his hologram faded.

"What's a bumper car?" Nora asked.

"I think its supposed to be a little car that kids drive," Weiss replied.

Nora let out a laugh. "And we're supposed to be scared of that?"

Sirens suddenly began blaring as garage doors opened on either side of the girls opened up, revealing several rows of bumper cars. However, Weiss quickly noticed that the bumpers on the bumper cars had been replaced with rows of spikes.

"I think you spoke too soon," Weiss told her.

Nora winced. "Run?"

"Run." The two took off running as the bumper cars began to speed out of the garages, heading straight for them.

"Come on, Ren, let's go!" Ruby exclaimed, already starting down the path from their starting location.

"Ruby, wait—" Ren hurried after her, grabbing her shoulder. "We need to take this slow."

"But we have to get out of here," Ruby protested. "The faster we do that, the faster we can get our weapons and find our friends."

"That's what he wants us to do," Ren warned. "He wants us to rush into this and trigger whatever traps he has set up. We need to have patience."

"Then how do we get out of here?"

Ren looked around. "We will need to pick our paths carefully." He looked down at the ground briefly before drawing a line in it with his foot. "We will mark which paths we have been down so we do not lose our way."

"Sounds like a plan," Ruby decided, starting for one of the side paths leading deeper into the maze.

Ren heard the tiny click as Ruby hit a tripwire and sprung into action, tackling Ruby as a huge jet of flame shot from down the path, missing them both by mere inches.

Ruby yelped as Ren held her down, waiting until the fire had passed before getting off her and helping her up. "Okay," Ruby said, looking a little shaken. "Not that way."

Ren drew an X in the dirt in front of the path to indicate that that wasn't the way to go. He then looked at the remaining possible paths and picked one at random to walk down. He braced himself for a trap to be activated, but nothing came flying at him. "Follow my lead," he advised to Ruby. She nodded and followed him, sticking close behind him.

Ren moved carefully and cautiously. He wasn't lying with what he had told Ruby. Arcade wanted them to rush into the maze and trigger more traps, making it harder for them to survive. The only way that the would get through the maze would be taking it slow and steady. Of course, Arcade had also mentioned that things would get more dangerous the longer they stayed in the maze. Hopefully, they wouldn't have to deal with whatever that meant.

His thoughts turned to the rest of his friends—particularly Nora. He hoped that she was okay. That they were all okay. After everything that had happened to them—Ultron invading, being held prisoner by Doctor Doom, being transformed into gamma monsters—it was clear that it was starting to take its toll on both him and her.

Nora, of course, would deny it happening. But Ren knew her well enough that he could tell that she was starting to wear down. Frankly, they all were. Two months after Ultron's invasion, and they were still no closer to finding their way back home. The only thing that had happened was that they had picked up support to destroy him once and for all.

"Who do you think he is?" Ruby asked. "Arcade?"

Ren shook himself free of his musings. "From the sound of it...I'd say he's some sort of assassin. But his methods are...strange. Ineffective."

"I'd say that fireball was pretty effective."

Ren shook his head. "Assassins are supposed to be efficient at killing. Yet this one is giving us a chance to survive."

Ruby thought about it for a moment. "Assassins are usually hired, aren't they? So...who hired Arcade to attack us?"

"She's right," Ren realized. "Someone must have hired Arcade to kill us. But who?"

They soon reached another crossroads. Ren looked between the paths and turned left. He took a single step and heard a click under his foot. Instantly he jumped back as a row of spikes shot from the hedges right where he had been standing. Unfortunately, he jumped right back into Ruby. The two of them stumbled back into another path, where there was another click. The ground under them instantly dropped. Ren grabbed onto the edge of the pit, and Ruby grabbed onto his leg, holding on for dear life.

"Hang...on," Ren grunted, looking down at the spike pit below them.

"Holding," Ruby replied, struggling to tighten her grip.

Ren, struggling significantly, began to pull himself and Ruby back up out of the pit. Once they were both up and out, he collapsed onto his back. "Okay," he decided, "Maybe this guy is more dangerous than we first thought."

"Uh, Ren?" Ruby pointed back down the way they had came. Ren lifted his head and looked, seeing a massive boulder rolling down directly towards them.

He jumped back to his feet, grabbing Ruby's arm and pulling her quickly to the next crossroads, which was only a few feet away, before pulling her down another path. He braced himself for whatever trap was about to trigger, but nothing happened.

"Okay," he thought, letting go of Ruby's arm. "Some luck at last."

"How did this guy create all these traps?!" Ruby exclaimed.

"This is someone who clearly has a lot of time and money on his hands," Ren guessed. "Which makes him even more unpredictable and dangerous."

"Then let's get out of this maze," Ruby decided. "Find our friends, and take Arcade down."

Yang yelped as another few laser lights reflected off the mirrors and shot into her eyes. "Damnit! I hate these stupid lasers!"

"Let's just keep moving," Pyrrha suggested, shielding her eyes with her arm.

"Are we sure we can't just smash our way out?" Yang asked as they struggled to push forward, disoriented from the constantly flashing lights.

"Do you want to risk setting off more traps?" Pyrrha challenged.

"We can take them," Yang insisted.

"Yang," Pyrrha told her gently. "This isn't an enemy we can punch. We have to be more careful if we want to avoid getting hurt."

Yang felt along the mirror wall, trying to find some sort of latch that would open a door out of there. "The longer we're stuck in here, the longer that maniac has to torture our friends."

Pyrrha paused. "You know they can handle themselves, right?"

"Of course I know that!" Yang exclaimed, clenching her fists slightly. "I just want to get through this and get out of here." She yelped again as another laser reflected off a mirror straight into her eyes.

"We can't rush into this guns blazing," Pyrrha insisted. "Arcade is clearly more intelligent than he appears. Every inch of this room and probably the area surrounding it is going to be littered with traps, and we don't know how those traps are going to affect our auras."

"What difference does it make?" Yang asked.

"Yang..." Pyrrha put a hand out onto her shoulder. "Calm down. Ruby is going to be fine, wherever she is. We need to think about this strategically. Where would someone like Arcade hide an exit?"

As Yang slowly unclenched her fists and seemed to think about it, more reflected lasers shot at them. To Pyrrha's notice, these lasers seemed...brighter. And, even more to her notice, when they hit her clothes, they seemed to...start to smoke.

With a chill, she suddenly realized what was going on. "The lasers," she said. "They're heating up the longer we're in here."

"You've got to be kidding me," Yang groaned. "Can we start smashing things now?"

Pyrrha looked around at all the mirrors. "We need to get some of these mirrors off the walls," she told her.

Yang instantly realized what she had mind. "Pyrrha, you're a genius." She put her hands around a mirror, struggling to find a spot where she could pry it off.

"Be careful of the trap—" Pyrrha warned as Yang yanked the mirror off the wall. A second later, a massive laser blast shot from the ceiling straight down at her. Yang quickly jumped out of the way, landing several feet away. As the lasers reflected again at her, she raised the mirror and deflected them away.

"We still need to find a way out of here!" Yang yelled.

Pyrrha looked around again. The lasers were making it hard to concentrate on the mirror walls. But if there was a hidden door anywhere on the wall of mirrors, she just couldn't see it.

Unless...

Pyrrha's eyes moved down, focusing on the floor...and a small indention in it. "Yang, I think I found it!" she yelled. "It's in the floor."

Yang threw Pyrrha the mirror. "Cover me!" She ran straight for the spot on the floor that Pyrrha had indicated. The moment she did, all the lasers began to focus on her. Pyrrha quickly moved to assist, blocking the lasers with the mirror. As she did, her thoughts inexplicably turned to the arena on Sakar.

In one of her early matches, she had been pitted against a swarm of laser spitting drones alongside a dozen other imprisoned gladiators. Though she had tried desperately to save them, they had all fallen one by one, until she was the sole survivor.

This time, though, she was determined to make sure her friend would live.

She focused even harder, deflecting every laser that came at Yang as she slid on the ground and raised her metal fist, bringing it down on the floor. The ground shattered, opening a small hole. "Here!" she shouted. "There's a chute!"

Pyrrha tossed the mirror aside and jumped down into the hatch, Yang quickly behind her. The two slid down the chute before being spit outside, with Yang landing on top of Pyrrha.

"Worst...room...ever," Yang grunted, getting off Pyrrha and stretching her arms.

"Agreed." Pyrrha looked around, finding that they were in...some sort of park. There was a large wheel with seats attached, a large set of train tracks that stretched all around, and multiple different weird structures she couldn't identify.

"Check it out." Yang pointed to two large crates a few feet away. "Looks like Arcade wasn't lying. I think we got our weapons back."

Blake led Jaune through the haunted house slowly and cautiously. While Jaune was still stumbling around, Blake could see perfectly fine and could observe her surroundings. The walls of the hallway were covered with creepy looking pictures, all of them featuring Arcade himself. As they walked, she noticed that the eyes in each picture seemed to follow them.

Blake's ears twitched in uneasiness. She understood the concept of a haunted house. It was designed to creep people out and put them on edge, if not outright scare them. While she and Jaune had faced far scarier things back on Remnant, she was still jumpy. This Arcade, whoever he was, no doubt had laid traps out to hinder their progress. And given how easily he had captured them, he wasn't someone to be underestimated.

Eventually, the two entered what appeared to be a library. Like the rest of the house that the two had explored, the walls were lined with pictures of Arcade. But there were also plenty of bookshelves filled with books. As Blake looked around, torches suddenly lit up around the room, illuminating their surroundings.

Jaune stumbled back in shock, rubbing his eyes at the sudden brightness. But once he recovered, he said, "At least I can see now."

"Not necessarily a good thing," Blake warned. "It means he wants us to do something in here—which means this is a trap."

"Then maybe we should get out of here?" Jaune suggested. But as he turned around, a metal sheet slid down over the door they had just came through, trapping them in the library.

"Or we could stay here," Jaune said after a moment.

Blake, meanwhile, began examining the bookshelves. Every single book had a stupid title to it, including The Genius of Arcade, Arcade's Greatest Schemes, and Avengers Arena: How Arcade Forced Children to Fight to the Death. "This guy is certainly full of himself," she thought.

"Hey, look at this." Jaune pointed to one of the books on the shelf. Blake turned in his direction and looked closely at the spine of the book, which read "How to Escape an Obvious Trap."

"Jaune, wait—" Blake darted towards him as he reached up and tried to pull the book off the shelf. As he did, there was a click and the bookshelf started to swing around. She pushed Jaune out of the way at the last second, being swept up by the revolving bookshelf as it knocked her into the hidden room behind it.

"Blake!" Jaune yelled, his voice muffled by the wall.

Blake crawled back to her feet, turning around. "I'm okay!" she called. "Just let me find the—"

A crackle of electricity caused Blake to freeze. Slowly, she turned around to see that the wall on the other side of the room. It was covered with electric spikes that sparked sporadically. With a churning of gears, the wall began to close in on her slowly.

Blake's heart pounded as her face paled. Her mind flashed back instantly to a darker time not to long ago. To a hideous looking alien that was advancing on her as she curled up in a corner. He carried a sparking electric rod, which he used to jam straight into her, causing her to scream in agony as electricity coursed through her body.

With another scream, Blake pressed herself against the wall as the spike wall closed in on her. Fear was overtaking every rational thought as her hands scrambled to find the trick book that would get her out of there.

"Blake!" Jaune called again, starting to pound against the wall. Blake, in a full blown state of panic, started pulling every single book she could off the shelves, trying desperately to get away from those terrible, sparking spikes.

Finally, she found the right book and spun back around, straight into Jaune and knocking both to the ground. Once she was free, Blake scrambled back from the shelf and pressed herself against the far wall, hyperventilating.

"Blake!" Jaune ran over, getting down next to her. "What happened? Are you okay?!"

Blake shook her head rapidly, trying with all her might to calm herself down. But all she could think about were those terrible sparking weapons...and the trauma she could never forget.

"Why are tiny cars with spikes on them chasing us?!" Nora yelled as she and Weiss ran as fast as they could away from the pursuing bumper cars.

"That crazy guy that looks like Roman Torchwick sent them after us!" Weiss responded, having to jump to the side as two cars came at her, crashing into each other where she had just been standing.

"Why don't we just smash these things?!" Nora leaped onto one of the bumper cars and spun it around, causing it to crash into another one before leaping out again.

"We don't exactly have our weapons, Nora!" Weiss pointed out.

"So? We still have our Semblances!" Nora punched into the destroyed bumper car and ripped out a set of sparking wires, gripping the tightly.

"We don't even know if that's against the rules!" Weiss protested.

"Who cares about rules in a death game?!" Nora challenged, jumping off the wreckage and landing back on her feet where she continued to run, pulling ahead of Weiss slightly.

"Nora—wait!" Weiss quickened her pace, trying to keep up. Nora let out a laugh, taking a flying leap and bringing her fist down onto the front of another bumper car, channeling her aura and her Semblance into a devastating punch that flipped the entire vehicle over her and into the swarm of bumper cars that were coming at them.

"Nora!" Weiss called again, starting to get frustrated. Of all the people she could've gotten stuck with, it had to have been Nora. Out of all her friends on Earth, Nora was the one that she had trouble working with the least. Ruby at least could calm down when she needed to. Nora, on the other hand, was always running at overdrive. She didn't understand how Ren could put up with her.

Rounding the corner of the track, Weiss skidded to a stop next to Nora, who was looking up at a large gate that was blocking their path. "Uh oh—dead end!" Nora exclaimed.

"No, it's not." Weiss bent down and put her hand on the ground, creating a glyph. From that glyph emerged her Arma Gigas which, at Weiss' direction, lifted the two of them over the gate. The two of them jumped out of the hand and down to the ground several feet below. Weiss turned around just in time to see the swarm of bumper cars smash into her creation, taking its legs out from under it. The Arma Gigas stumbled and fell down, crushing most of the remaining bumper cars as it hit the ground, dissolving seconds later.

"Well...at least we're out of there," Nora commented. "One step closer to finding this Arcade guy and taking him down!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Nora, please. The first thing we have to do is find the others. Then we can take Arcade down together." She turned around, only to do a double take when Nora was no longer where she had been standing. "Nora?" she asked, looking around.

But Nora was already at where two large crates were sitting. "Found our weapons!" she called, already trying to pry the crates open.

"Nora, wait!" Weiss called, running over to her. "It could be a trap!"

But Nora had already ripped the lid of the crate off. Weiss braced herself for an explosion, but nothing happened. "Got the lid off!" Nora called over, looking inside. "And hello—what the—"

"What?" Weiss made it over to her and looked inside it. Her eyes widened in surprise. "Oh no." She quickly went to her own crate and forced it open, confirming her fears.

This...was not good.

A fireball flew over Ren's head as he and Ruby ran down the next path in the maze. As they passed several other openings, arrows flew at them. The traps had started triggering faster and faster. Even avoiding the wrong paths at this point was not enough to keep them from going off.

"There!" Ruby called as they rounded another corner. In the distance, Ren could just make out an opening. "That's got to be the exit!"

"Run," Ren ordered, and the two took off. As they did, Ren could hear a clanking sound behind him. Glancing over his shoulder quickly, he saw that the ground was starting to collapse behind them, the decay moving faster and faster.

"Keep running!" Ren ordered. "Don't look back!"

But Ruby had also seen the decay coming after them. "Hang on!" She grabbed onto Ren and kicked off the ground, activating Petal Burst. She approached the exit at top speed. For a moment, it looked like they were going to make it.

WHAM! A board shot out of the ground right in front of them. Ruby slammed into it and instantly broke out of her Semblance, sprawling on the ground and letting go of Ren.

"Ruby!" Ren got back to his feet and helped her up. She let out a low groan, holding her head.

"M' okay," she told him.

Ren looked back at the decaying ground behind them, approaching them. Thinking quickly, he picked him the dazed Ruby and made a run for the exit a few feet away.

The ground was crumbling right behind him. He could feel the edges decaying right under his heels. With one last burst of adrenaline, Ren leaped out of the exit, tumbling with Ruby several feet beyond it. Luckily, the decay stopped right at the exit of the hedge maze.

Panting, Ren got to his feet again and helped Ruby up. "Are you okay?" he asked her.

She nodded. "I'm fine. Thanks for the save."

He gave a curt nod and scanned the area. "There," he said, pointing ahead to a pair of crates nearby. "That's probably where our weapons are."

The two approached the crates cautiously, fully expecting a trap of sorts. However, nothing seemed to happen. Slowly, Ruby reached over and opened the crate, quickly ducking and shielding herself with the lid. But nothing jumped out at them. Nothing exploded.

"Alright then," Ruby said, peering into the crate. "Time to—what?"

She reached down into the crate and pulled out the weapon inside. It wasn't Crescent Rose, as she had clearly expected. Instead, she was holding Myrtenaster.

An uneasy feeling ran through Ren as he quickly opened the second crate. Sure enough, instead of StormFlower inside, he found Miló and Akoúo̱, Pyrrha's weapons.

Arcade had given them their weapons back, all right...but he had given them the wrong ones.

A chime sounded, and Arcade's laughter boomed through speakers. "Did you really think I'd give you your own weapons?" he mocked. "Where would be the fun in that? Enjoy struggling with weapons you know nothing about!"

"I really hate that guy," Yang growled as she stared down at Blake's chain blades, while Pyrrha was left holding StormFlower.

"This is completely unfair!" Weiss complained, barely being able to lift Crescent Rose, while Nora took a practice swing with Crocea Mors.

"Life's not fair, kid. Deal with it!" Arcade laughed hysterically as he cut off his transmission.

Weiss stamped her foot in frustration. If they got out of this...Arcade was going to pay. Big time.

Surprise, surprise, Arcade decides to mix things up and switch everyone's weapons around! Once again, I had to think about who might struggle with what weapon, and I hope I did a decent enough job. Weapon switching may not be as effective as the uncommon pairings, but I still think it will shake things up.

Speaking of the pairings, big shoutout to Red Scorpion for correctly guessing the remaining pairings! Nice work!

We get a few more cool moments here, including diving a little bit into Blake's time as a prisoner of the Badoon. More bits and pieces about that traumatic time will be sprinkled in throughout the continuation of the story. But there will be a time where she will have to face that trauma once and for all. And then the full story will be revealed.

As for Arcade, I'm really enjoying writing for him. The style I'm choosing for him allows me to go back to my fanfiction roots. When I first started writing fanfiction, I mostly stuck in the Total Drama franchise. But with Arcade seeming a bit like a psychotic reality TV host in the same vein as Chris McLean, it allowed me to channel my early fanfic writing into Arcade's character, which is a lot of fun.

Oh, and oh yeah-Wolverine's on the hunt now, so Arcade might want to lock his front door to keep him out.

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