Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or its associated characters. The characters in this writing so far are all original characters, but I make no claim over the existing characters.

Chapter 3

The Depot

Confidence.

"Well I'm glad you feel good about this" I muttered under my breath, careful not to let the other members of the squad hear me. I didn't need accusations of insanity or general loopiness getting me pulled off the line.

Helping.

"Yes, you've been very helpful so far, and I thank you for that." I shifted uncomfortably on the rock I had been sitting on for the last two hours. "But listen, we're going to directly assault a fortified position, they have heavy weapons and a clear line of fire. We got lucky by being fast before, but that won't hold up forever."

Confidence. Smugness.

Smugness? Could a belt be smug? And what did that even mean in this context?

It was two hours since my discussion with Lieutenant Stone, the squad had settled into defensive positions to wait until nightfall. Around the thirty minute mark Private Wilks had come around with snacks for the whole team from the oversized backpack he had been carrying around.

So there I sat, a bottle of electrolyte water in one hand, a government issue granola bar made more of sawdust than food in the other, arguing strategy with a belt.

Not even a talking belt, that would be more interesting. Nope, this belt was a feeling belt, however that worked.

With a few minutes until go time I downed the last of my water and stuffed the granola wrapper under a rock, I didn't need to rustling giving me away in a tactical situation.

Most of the squad was going through their own pre battle rhythms. This would be the first fight we would be initiating ourselves, but we would also be going up against potentially our worst odds.

The previous engagements had been quick fights against ambushing forces, quickly resolved by adapting and sustained counterfire. This would be a drawn out engagement where anything could go wrong, followed by a desperate retreat as soon as our objectives were complete.

-/-

I watched Sergeant Helmsman move soldier to soldier, checking each one's equipment and reassuring them. In a way, his conversations with his troops were his own preparation.

Putting my helmet on, I moved through my equipment checks, ensuring my magazines were loaded and my weapons were in good shape.

With my checks complete I stood, gave Wilks a pat on the shoulder, and moved to join Lieutenant Stone at the front of the assault formation.

Notably, Lieutenant Stone looked the most nervous out of all of us, bouncing on the balls of her feet and repeatedly shaking out her hands.

I gave her a nudge "You good Lt?" I asked "You look pretty nervous for someone who is basically bullet proof."

She gave me a pained smile, then leaned in and whispered "Between you and me, I'm more nervous for everyone else here."

She glanced backwards to where Helmsman was quietly getting the troops lined up. "I've worked with the regular army for most of my career, but fighting human enemies is new to me and I'm worried I won't be able to protect everybody."

Reassurance.

I didn't have a great response to her statement, so I just awkwardly offered her a fist bump and said "Well, one way to find out I guess."

"Yeah" she responded quietly, looking at my fist bump like I was reminding her of something, or someone. "I guess."

She returned the bump, then turned back to the formation to see the six other soldiers we would be taking into the fight were ready to go.

She checked her watch, counting down until the agreed time. As it approached she held up five fingers and gave a slow count down, five, four, three, two, one.

At the last count she held her palm flat out in a knife hand and pointed forwards down the street, then took off at a full sprint.

Desperately hustling to keep up, the rest of the team and I ran after her around the building we were taking cover behind and came within sight of our target. The building we were assaulting stood alone, surrounded by the rubble and ruins of numerous smaller structures that had been destroyed by artillery fire.

According to what I had heard, indiscriminate fire into the city had been banned by Atlesian high command, but the precision bombardment directed towards this structure had been knocked aside by the huntsman who was previously defending it.

Just as we rounded the corner I spotted subtle vapor trails emanating from the roof towards our target, marking the paths of the completely silent bullets that Lieutenant Rivers was firing.

-/-

We all ran as quietly as we could, the clattering of equipment and heavy breathing the only sounds we made, sprinting and leaping over the broken terrain, trying to get as far as we could before being spotted.

We made it halfway to the target before the alarm was raised. One enemy who had been checking on his comrade noticed the team sprinting across the gap.

With a shout, he scrambled for his weapon. A second later a silent shot from our sniper caught him in the chest and he fell, clutching at the bloody bullet wound that had suddenly formed.

It was too late to stop the alarm being raised however, and soon heavy machine gun fire erupted from the nest that was facing us, the one hidden behind the tree I had pointed out earlier.

Stone slowed her speed, throwing up a curved wall of rocks drawn from the flattened buildings around us in front of the team as we caught up, then began jogging forward at a steady pace.

Her concrete shield deflected the gunfire coming from the window and gave us cover as we advanced, but also forced us to lose our tactical spread, clustering up behind the wall as we pushed forwards. The two soldiers on the sides of the shield began intermittently peeking out to fire off a burst of rounds, hoping to keep the enemy suppressed.

"Demo rockets to the edges!" Helmsman shouted, and two soldiers with disposable rocket tubes switched places with the two who were previously firing.

The one on the right leaned out and quickly fired off his rocket. The explosive projectile raced across the open ground between us and our target in a flash to punch a hole in the wall of the first floor.

The one on the left took longer to aim, and paid the price for it. He fired his rocket at the machine gun nest and scored a direct hit, but as he was moving back into cover a burst of fire caught him in the arm and he shouted in pain.

Another soldier grabbed him by his good arm and hauled him along with us, keeping him from falling behind the moving path of the stone shield.

-/-

With hundreds of bullets ricocheting off the shield, we finally closed the last few hundred yards to the objective. Lieutenant Stone halted the tide of rocks about forty feet back from the building. Bringing her hammer up she used her semblance to shape a small hole in the wall, then slotted the head of her hammer into it and held down a trigger on the side of the haft.

Red dust energy charged up along grooves cut into the sides of her hammer, building into a ball held in place by a field at the front of her hammer. She released the trigger and fired the ball of activated dust into the building, causing another explosion to ring out and blasting another hole into the first floor walls.

Coming to a halt myself I slid into position next to her, crouching and bracing my rifle on the bottom edge of the firing hole she had created. I poured automatic fire into the new window she had created in the structure, concrete dust and ash kicked up by the explosions obscuring my line of sight on the enemy.

-/-

Having finally gotten their bearings about them, the enemy retaliated hard. An anti armor rocket punched through the lieutenant's shield, the armor piercing warhead detonating its shape charge a split second after piercing the shield.

The cone of superheated metal and shockwave completely eviscerated a soldier who was in the middle of reloading.

"Damn it!" Lieutenant Stone shouted "We can't stay here! Pincer maneuver, go!"

Confidence.

Nodding in response to her command, I slung my rifle and strapped it in, then took hold of two pieces of rubble that had fallen off the shield when the blast hit and backed up for a running start.

Lieutenant Stone sealed the firing hole she had made in the wall and turned back to face me, extending the head of her warhammer at ground level towards me.

"Cover fire!" Helmsman shouted above the din of the battle "Keep their heads down a minute!"

Power surged through my body as the belt supercharged my muscles and I sprinted forwards in a rush. I leapt into the air, planting both feet on the head of the warhammer.

Lieutenant Stone used the hammer as a catapult, flinging me over the shield and I leapt off the head of the hammer to go soaring through the air.

An almost supernatural dexterity gripped me, and time seemed to slow for a brief second. I flew through the cold evening wind, feeling the acrid smoke of gunpowder in my lungs as I inhaled deeply, then the pieces of rubble I was holding guided me forwards like a smart missile to fly cleanly through the window I was heading towards.

With a crash, I flew through the glass, shards flying everywhere, but my armor protected me.

As I fell, I tucked and rolled, popping to a standing position on the far side of the room. My momentum carried me too far however, and I crashed into the far wall.

I hit hard on my left side, punching a man sized hole into the drywall and temporarily disorienting myself. I shook my head to clear it, forcibly extracting myself from the wall.

As I recovered my bearings I looked up to see three enemy soldiers in the room with me, their black and red armor marking them as heavy infantry. All three of them looked backwards at me with incredulity, their weapons still poking out of gaps in the wall towards my squad.

-/-

The first to react immediately tried to swing his weapon towards me, but caught it on the edge of the window he had been firing from.

With my own weapon secured on my back and out of easy reach I charged towards him, crossing the distance in a heartbeat and throwing my full weight behind a hook to his jaw. He went down, losing grasp on his rifle as it fell out of the window.

I turned to my left, seeing the next man had gone for his combat knife, and leapt towards him, my still injured left arm grasping for his right wrist to gain control of his knife.

I missed the grab, and his knife skated across the armored plating of my chest guard as he lunged for me. Pivoting and twisting away, I shot a low kick to his upper thigh, my armored shin catching him in the nerve bundle located there and giving him a dead leg.

Surprised by the sudden pain, he stumbled backwards, his left leg no longer cooperating with the rest of his body.

Pressing the attack I reached down to grab a discarded chair and chucked it towards him. Unable to dodge, he took the chair directly into the chest, knocking him off of his feet.

I drew my own combat knife and had taken a step towards him when the first man leapt on me from behind, attempting to get a chokehold by sinking his arm in the gap between my armor's chest piece and helmet.

I reached up across my right shoulder with my left hand, which had now healed thanks to the energy coursing through me from the belt, and got a firm grip on his armor, locking him to my back. Then I tucked into a forwards roll, bringing my shoulder down and in to flip him over me, following through to roll on top of him.

I landed on his chest with an audible "Unf" and drove from his lungs, then slipped his weakened grip, pivoting and driving my knife into his throat, just above the armored plate of his chest piece.

Attention! Behind!

The belt shouted, and I turned just in time to see the third enemy had managed to dig a sidearm out from his holster.

In a fluid motion, I withdrew the knife from the first soldier and flipped it, catching it by the tip of the blade before flinging it across the room. As the knife flew, the third enemy fired, the low caliber pistol round thankfully deflected by my chest piece.

The knife caught him in the forearm, causing him to drop his pistol and clutch at the wound.

I rose, turning back to the soldier with the knife and dropping into a fighting stance.

He had recovered and was coming at me, swinging the knife in an overhand attack with the blade held in a reverse grip.

I blocked, my forearm catching his wrist mid swing, and he dropped the knife from his right hand down into his left, then slashed in a traditional hammer grip. I danced away from the sharp edge, my back forced to the wall I had originally come through.

As he chased me into the wall I sidestepped him, allowing his thrust to carry past me, then caught his wrist with my left hand and reached to grab the back of his helmet with my right. I pivoted on my right leg to pull him past me, slamming his helmet into the wall and cracking the drywall, then took his back in a grapple and slipped my arm under his chin.

-/-

He flailed, but was unable to effectively reach me as I applied pressure in a rear choke. After a few seconds of searching I found the vein and squeezed.

Danger!

The belt shouted again, and I looked to my right where the enemy with the pistol had successfully removed my knife from his arm. I kept squeezing, maintaining eye contact with my opponent as I choked his comrade while he went for his rifle.

I held the choke for as long as I could, before dropping him and lunging for the last soldier. I was too slow, and he brought his rifle up just as I was clambering to my feet.

Automatic rounds slammed into my armor, and the repeated force of the impacts drove me backwards as I fell away from him. My breath caught in my throat and I felt warm liquid in my airways as some of the bullets pierced the armor.

I stumbled backwards, tripping and falling over the soldier I had just choked out.

Danger! Helping!

I coughed up blood to spray onto the front of my armor, pulling the soldier's limp body over myself like a blanket to try and cover myself from the incoming fire.

Rifle fire slammed into his body, the impacts jostling him and a few rounds penetrating through to splatter me with more blood.

Healing energy surged through me for a few seconds before sputtering, then resuming at a lower level.

The incoming fire stopped and some part of my brain pieced together that he must be reloading. Taking the opportunity I rolled out from under the dead soldier and got a clear view of my enemy.

Underneath the brim of his helmet I could see his panic, he was fumbling attempting to reload his weapon, shaky fingers unable to properly extract the magazine from his pouch.

As I sat up, wheezing through the blood filling my lungs and throat, I felt some muscle memory or instinct take hold of me. I pointed my empty hand at the opponent, my hand forming into the shape of a gun.

"Bang" I half said, half coughed. As soon as I spoke, the belt surged and a thin green ray of energy shot out from my hand, striking the terrified enemy directly in the chest.

I watched in what felt like slow motion as I saw his body disintegrate. It spread outwards from his chest, the layers of armor, then skin and muscle, then finally bone and organs peeling away and crumbling to dust.

The green energy spread like a wildfire outwards across his body, until finally I watched his terrified eyes crumble to ash from the inside out and float away through the breeze of the open window.

-/-

With one last cough, I felt the wounds in my chest close, and the healing energy ceased to flow.

Tired.

"That's fine buddy" I wheezed "I'll take it from here, you did great."

Pride?

"Yup, you should be proud." I winced, my ribs were still very sore, and climbed to my feet.

I could still hear gunfire, but a quick glance out of the shattered window showed that the squad had made it inside. I unslung my rifle and hurried into the hallway, determined to fight my way downstairs.

As I exited the room I was in, I looked down the long corridor and saw several enemy soldiers hustling away from me towards a stairwell. I dropped to a knee and opened fire, catching them in the back and dropping them before they could turn around.

Pushing forwards I dropped the half spent magazine, not wanting to risk getting caught without a fully loaded weapon.

I moved down the hallway as quickly as I could, but without the power surging from the belt I felt sluggish and slow. My boots splashed through puddles of blood as I ran past the enemies and crashed through the door to the stairs, assaulting the second floor from my position on the third.

As I opened the door to the second floor, gun up and ready to shoot, I was met with a gruesome sight.

Soldiers wearing black and red armor sat or lay in various poses of distress. Legs and arms were bent at unnatural angles, and one man's head was entirely gone, with a matching blood splatter at head height above his limp corpse.

Further down the hallway Lieutenant Stone charged forwards towards three terrified soldiers. They fired directly at her, bullets reflecting off of her light purple aura as she screamed in rage.

A piece of wall, broken by a swing of her hammer, flew over her shoulder and nearly decapitated the foremost enemy. She caught the next one in the kneecap with her hammer, a loud splintering *Crack!* resounding down the hallway as his leg folded over backwards.

He screamed out in pain as she carried through with her swing, bringing her hammer around behind her in a full circle and following through to crush his head without losing momentum.

The last soldier, screaming in fear, ran away from her, firing his weapon blindly behind him. With a huff, she hefted her hammer and threw it like a javelin.

The heavy weapon hit him directly in the spine, crushing his vertebrae and driving him to the floor.

I entered the hallway, softly letting the door close behind me and advanced, checking to see if any of the soldiers still posed threats, none of them did.

She strode towards the last man, he looked up at her, one hand reaching out to protect himself.

She grasped him by the collar, pulling him out from under her hammer and lifting him to dangle in the air. The soldier said something in Mistrali that I was too far away to hear and she paused for a moment, before punching him so hard her fist crushed the front of his skull and dug into his face.

Breathing heavily with exertion and adrenaline, she dropped the limp corpse, then looked at her shaking hands. I approached slowly, not wanting to startle her, and still awed by the carnage.

Calming herself, she took a deep breath and shuttered, then picked up her hammer and turned towards me. "Shit!" She exclaimed, dropping into a combat stance before recognizing me. "Oh" She said "shit."

"Are you uhh, are you okay?" I asked hesitatingly. She clearly was not, but I couldn't really think of anything else to say.

"I will be, but the bastards killed or wounded half the squad before I made it up here."

She took another deep breath, then did a double take. "Are you okay?" She asked, concerned. "That's a lot of blood."

I glanced down to where I had been hit earlier. My torso armor was still dripping blood that had yet to fully dry, and my hands were nearly soaked. There were also conspicuous holes in my armor from the rounds that had penetrated my chest piece.

"I could say the same for you." I deflected her question, pointing to the blood covering her boots, forearms, and hammer. She shook her head "I'm fine, my aura is still up. The surviving members of the squad are downstairs, is the third floor clear?"

"I think so, I got six upstairs, counting down here that puts confirmed KIA at seventeen."

"Hmm," she responded. "We took out a few outside, and some more downstairs, but there might be more on the roof. Come on."

We ran back upstairs to the roof exit, bursting out through the door with weapons leveled. Only one soldier was on the roof, a young man with a pair of binoculars dangling around his neck.

Seeing the door practically kicked off its hinges by a pissed off operative he immediately threw up his hands in surrender.

"Don't shoot!" he shouted in Mistrali "I surrender!" Lieutenant Stone strode towards him while I swept and cleared the rest of the roof. Confirming the roof was clear I joined the Lieutenant as she disarmed the last soldier.

"Where is the stockpile?" she asked in broken Mistrali "I know it is here, but I did not see it on my way up through the building. And where is your huntsman?"

He gulped, clearly nervous. "Um, I don't think I'm supposed to tell you that."

The Lieutenant's fist clenched as she took a step forward, and the soldier decided to rethink his answer.

"But I will!" He said hurriedly. "Athena left a few hours ago, she didn't say why. She just told us to hold the position while she went to look for something."

Stone and I exchanged a look, wondering what the huntsman was up to.

"And the stockpile?" I asked in fluent Mistrali, surprising all three of us with how clear my pronunciation was.

"Downstairs" He replied nervously. "It's behind a set of armored doors." He suddenly remembered something and rushed to add an addendum "But don't try to blast open the doors! It's filled with dust!"

-/-

Ten minutes later I had secured the prisoner and handed him off to the remains of the squad. Unfortunately Sergeant Helmsman had been killed by rifle fire while helping another injured soldier out of the line of fire. The other three casualties had been taken either on the assault or in securing a breach for Lieutenant Stone to get inside the building.

Fortunately, Private Wilks and one other soldier who I hadn't spoken with were relatively uninjured, and two the demolition troopers were still combat capable. I took a moment to mourn the fallen while Lieutenant Stone decided how to get through the bulky armored doors of the munitions depot.

The doors had clearly been installed recently, though it was unlikely that the Wings of Freedom troops could have installed them inside of the apartment building while the city was under siege, which made me wonder how long they had been planning to attack Argus.

Finally, the Lieutenant decided that the simplest solution was the best, and just bashed the thick steel doors down with her hammer. The clang of her hammer on the hinges of the steel door was nearly as loud as the storm of gunfire that had engulfed the building for the last few minutes of combat.

Once we were through the doors, I whistled quietly to myself as I examined the supplies inside the depot. It was filled to the brim with ammunition, explosives, medical supplies, and strangely an assortment of metallic scrap in a box marked 'Hyperion/Prometheus.'

"Prometheus?" I asked. "I haven't heard of them. Why would they have a bunch of random scrap marked for them and Hyperion?"

"I don't know." Lieutenant Stone answered. "Atlesian intelligence doesn't have a good read on either of them. All I personally know is that Prometheus isn't a fighter, but he builds equipment for the rest of their team."

"Huh," I remarked as I grabbed as many medical supplies and as much ammunition as I could reasonably carry, then headed outside the bunker to rejoin the rest of the squad. The two demo troopers set explosive charges, then we set off to the west, to regroup with Lieutenant Rivers and make our escape.

The sun was quickly setting as we headed back, basking the flattened buildings around us in golden light that contrasted sharply with the smells of blood and expended munitions.

Rivers dropped down from the roof using some kind of grappling hook to control his fall. He and Lieutenant Stone exchanged a brief conversation in sign language and we set off into the night.

"It's about five and half miles back to base" Stone said to the squad. "We better keep moving, I don't want to get caught out here in the dark for longer than needed."

-/-

As we ran, I pondered the day's events, trying to let my mind work out my emotions. Rivers ran scout, ranging far ahead of the team then bounding back to deliver reports. It was difficult to make him out in the darkness, his camouflage blending in as soon as he was more than a few dozen feet ahead of the group.

Myself and Lieutenant Stone led the rest of the troops, with Wilks following along in the back with those who had been too wounded to participate in the assault and the two demo troopers bringing up the rear.

After a few minutes of running my revere was suddenly interrupted by the detonation of the sabotage charges we had left in the stockpile.

The fireball leapt hundreds of feet into the air, lighting up the sky for an extended moment. Turning to see Lieutenant Stone's reaction I saw tears quietly pooling in the corners of her eyes.

Sadness. The belt sent me. Empathy.

We turned to keep running , but I nudged the Lieutenant with an elbow. "Hey Lt, what's up? You're not looking too great right now."

"It's fine" she responded shakily "I'm fine, it's just… I just hate losing people." As the flash of the explosion subsided darkness again overtook us, and I had trouble making out her expression. She let out a choked cough and wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. "It gets to me, and I can't seem to get over it no matter how many times it happens."

"I'm pretty sure that's a good thing." I attempted to console her "Don't let it ruin your judgment, you don't want to end up numb."

"Yeah" she said softly, "Numb wouldn't be good." She shook her head, steeling herself, then turned to me. "What about you? Anything coming back from before you lost your memory?"

"Not really." I replied with a grimace. "I know how what to do, and how to do it, but I still have no clue who I am or what I was doing before today."

She grunted, and we fell into silence, focusing on keeping alert while we got back to base as fast as the wounded could move.