Disclaimer: See last chapter.

Combat Ready

Even through the Grimm horde in the Plaza had been dealt with, there were still hundreds of stragglers of those that had come in while the hole was open, immediately darting past the dozen Hunter teams right at the opening to get to the civilians in the back.

Penny was getting each communication from Atlas as it got updated. Hundreds of dozens of communications soared through her network card, updating the supercomputer that was her brain every time a Grimm was killed.

Ironwood thought he was the commander of the Atlas forces, and he was. However, the computers on the battleship could only support so many units, and that number had been maxed out within minutes. Vale was simply too big.

So instead the nearby units had piggybacked off Penny's own hardware. She saw what they saw, aimed at what she told them to aim at, and fired how she wanted them to fire.

It kind of scared her, honestly, that she had so much power over the robotic units. Most of the Vale citizens had long since been hiding, which was good because that was, as Atlas protocols went, exactly what they should be doing.

But Vale didn't have the armored subway bunkers that Atlas did. Vale had only the steel buildings around, and Penny calculated they only had around twenty five minutes before the structural integrity of the most important buildings, the Hospital and City Hall, were to go down.

And yet here she was, trapped in the arena hardlight walls of Summer's Weapon Shop. The two other shopkeepers, although when Ruby had hired more Penny was unaware, had ushered everyone in. By the time that Penny had gotten the first update, two minutes late thanks to the meeting between Ironwood and Ozpin at exactly the same time, she had been pushed down into the arena with everyone else.

Now she watched, casually glancing at the dozen of Grimm surrounding them and trapped within the weapons store itself. Normally a bad thing, except that the owner, Ruby Rose, had decided that now was a perfect opportunity to abandon the shop and go fight at the Plaza.

If Penny was capable of chiding someone, she'd chide Ruby for that. She had civilians in her shop, and arena or no arena, her first responsibility was to make sure that they were safe.

On the other hand, with Ruby's assistance Atlas had finally caught sight of the elusive Adam Taurus, wanted terrorist and killer of around seventy Grimm so far.

Only part of that actually made sense to Penny, and she wasn't sure what part.

He was White Fang. White Fang hated humans. They dressed themselves as Grimm. Therefore, they worked with Grimm to kill humans. The logic was sound.

And yet...he'd killed dozens...actually new update, Adam's kill count was somewhere in the nineties. Most of Beacon's students were only around the thirties or forties, unless they were particularly good, or were named Peabody. Team PABY was currently tied with Taurus' kill count, spread amongst the four of them.

Either way, he was killing Grimm and saving humans. Actually it looked like he was ignoring humans and letting them get slaughtered by the Grimm, no, wait, new update, he did extend his sword to save a few. New update, they were faunus.

Okay. She could logic with that. He was White Fang. White Fang were all about faunus rights. Something that she, personally, had developed an understanding for. Therefore, he saved faunus, even from the Grimm.

Even if that meant accidentally saving humans.

...Did that make him a bad guy still, or was he a good guy now? Penny wasn't sure.

"Hey, girl, you still in there? Come on, don't lose yourself, we're safe in here," one of the shopkeepers, a girl with purple hair that was obviously died and a long purple not dyed cat tail.

Was she talking to Penny? She was looking in her direction, her mouth moving towards her, her body language suggested that she was. She must have been!

"Do not worry for me! I am all right!" Penny replied. She made sure to use the facial subsurface structure that her father had made absolutely certain was there to give a broad grin.

"If you're certain. Ruby will be back soon, and then these Grimm won't matter," the shopkeeper said quietly, with a hint of determination to her. She was talking that time to a couple of faunus and human kids who had been trapped in there with all of them.

Truthfully, if Penny had to say, these Grimm didn't matter much either. She was there, and she was combat-ready! But on the other hand, despite asking for permission for combat readiness, she had been told by command to stand down, and let Vale take care of it.

Which was odd, as Atlas robots were currently assisting with the 'taking care of it'. And yet she was told to stand down. She asked for permission again, once again getting the 'permission denied'.

She might have to go rogue here soon, if only because these people were in danger and where people were in danger she needed to be there.

She took the opportunity to really look at some of the beowulves surrounding them, occasionally hitting the hardlight barrier. She pinged the server of the hardlight arena every so often, seeing the general stability of the dust.

It was obvious that Ruby had spared no expense when it came to building this thing. Sixty five purity hardlight dust was rare to come across, especially in the twelve crystals that it needed to form the crystallized lattice. With a power crystal of an ninety two white, one of the most powerful dust crystals that Penny had ever seen, the arena hardlight was determined to take a beating.

In the fifteen minutes that Ruby had been gone, the hardlight had only been taken down five percent. It was still had eighty five percent efficiency in a true dome. There was no Grimm that would penetrate the hardlight anytime soon. Which meant that she could take the time to really study her foes, understand them. Maybe she could talk with them!All that was really known about beowulves was that they were black and red, bipedal esque wolves, with small bony plates and a bony mask that acted at its face.

Instead, she was able to see the dozens of fractals that made up its shoulder bones, the hundreds of small scratches that were on its bony mask. It was actually kind of stunning, once her sensors got close enough to really look at it. The claws, too, weren't pure bone but rather fractal based bone elements of some material that she couldn't quite get a hold of.

"Girl! Don't get that close to the walls!" the same person was shouting at her.

The walls that were still standing at eighty three percent. They blocked another few dozen blows within a few seconds, and Penny saw the internal ticker tick down to eighty two percent. "Why? My presence would not cause the hardlight dust to fail."

"We don't know that for certain!"

Well...Penny did know that for certain. "Yes we do. They will not. They have withstood more attacks for longer than this. They will not fail," Penny said, making sure that her voice modulator was set to 'serene' or 'calm'.

There were times when she felt almost encapsulated, buried deep within a robotic body. But she had always been this way, and yet she felt the urging of her aura to come out, to break free from the limitations of her shell.

What's worse is that sensation came across most strongly while being attacked by the Grimm. This wasn't her first encounter with Grimm. But every time she did she felt like she wanted to break out more and more.

She sent another ping to command, asking for permission to go to arms. Once again she was denied. Why was Atlas denying her the ability to help and assist? Was her presence at this Vytal Festival not meant to see what she can do when not in the field of testing, but in the field of improvisation?

And what better way to see how she was developing than by allowing her to fight the enemy of all people? It was quite a conundrum.

"I'm scared..." one of the kids said softly. They were huddled in the middle, with both of the shopkeepers at each of the corners.

The lights flickered, and Penny watched as the internal ticker went from eighty one percent down to a mere sixty. It got another scream from the kids, and both of the employees held onto weapons that they were obviously not trained for. At least, not well. The silver haired one held a sword, perfect for stabbing or slashing. The purple haired one held a gun, the traditional model that Ruby advertised for most beginners.

Even Atlas used some of the beginner guns to get everyone used to the recoil and damage they could do.

But what had caused the flicker? It was nothing in the shop. There was a small howl from above, in the loft, and suddenly a boarbatusk was sent flying down the stairs and crashing into a Beowulf.

The corgi had been left outside of the arena. There were mild cuts and small bruises developing on him, but his aura was still quite strong. The other Grimm noticed him more than the civilians, or her, and started to head towards him.

Well. That was simply unfair. She again pinged for command to allow her to assist, and was once again denied.

The feeling of being trapped within her robotic shell came back, and she allowed the Floating Array to come out of her backpack. "Turn off the arena. Turn it back on once I am outside," Penny commanded.

"We can't do that! But...Zwei...no..." the purple haired girl murmured. Penny sighed internally. Fine. She could do it herself.

She pinged the arena, seeing it had dropped to fifty six. Something was wrong with it, but what it was Penny couldn't quite tell. According to its diagnostics, it was operating at one hundred percent efficiency.

She turned it off, stepped outside its walls with the Floating Array, and pinged it back on. Eighty percent. Interesting that it had regenerated power after she'd essentially power cycled it.

The Grimm turned to her and the ten floating dust swords surrounding her. Zwei was barking furiously, in his mouth a small box of ammunition.

Penny had Ironwood's deduction of the event from nearly eight months ago, in which Ruby had had shown off some experimental ammunition at Beacon, mostly as a closed test. It had worked wonderfully, but still wasn't on the market just yet. She could see why; half the burns on Zwei weren't from the Grimm, but from the ammunition that he was throwing at the Grimm that occasionally exploded him.

"This is not a fair fight," Penny warned as the Floating Array surrounded her. The Grimm said nothing, keeping up their assault on Zwei, who was defending himself quite admirably. Definitely a Huntsman's dog, especially when he ran up the wall and threw down essentially a small grenade of non-dust explosive.

The Floating Array swords could cut through the material on the Grimm like a hot knife through butter. She'd seen first-hand how quick that was, and figured the adage was apt. Especially as how after two full swirls of the Array, the shop was mostly filled with black Grimm dust. They had gone after the wrong target for too long.

The door bust down as an ursa came in, attracted by the feeling of her aura and Zwei's, and the taste of fear from the civilians. The Array was spread out, and wouldn't make it in time if she tried to call it as it was. She did anyways. One of the swords would at least impale it if it did charge her.

In another instant it was cut in half as the injured Ruby stood there, her cloak in tatters and her combat skirt looking like it'd seen better days. "Is everyone alright?" she asked, her silver eyes bright. "That was the last one on the street," she smiled.

Penny's internal communications dinged with a notice that she was now cleared for combat use. She rolled her eyes internally; at least she was cleared now.

Fallout

The field was surprisingly both green and soft, Ruby felt. She already had an idea of where it was she wanted to put it, but the question was less of where and more 'where would it be allowed'?

The Vytal Festival had not been delayed because of, as the news was calling it, 'The Breach'. In which a class of terrorists similar to the White Fang in dress but not in style, took a train from the ruins of Mt. Glenn and tore through the old subway tunnels.

If it hadn't been for Ghira and Kali, who'd figured out something was going on, using knowledge of what Sun had found out when he'd 'accidentally' stumbled upon a White Fang rally, going to Mt. Glenn, it would have been much, much worse.

Instead, they, and Qrow, found all the dust that Roman Torchwick had been plundering over the last year and a half. In Ruby's estimates, not that she had seen the classified files, it was nearly three times that amount that Summer's Weapon Shop had gone through.

In it's entire existence.

It was a lot of dust. Ghira, Kali, and Qrow, and she only knew this because Qrow had broken confidentiality to tell her later that night so she didn't worry about him, had essentially broken the train cars up to prevent an explosion that would blow up the entirety of the Plaza. Instead, it was a giant gaping hole in the center.

There hadn't been time for communication, and the CCT's range didn't extend that far out. It was one of the reasons Mt. Glenn fell the first time, according to official rumors. It was why Ironwood, Ozpin, and Goodwitch weren't there at the end of the Plaza waiting for all the Grimm, and why Vale was caught out with its pants down.

Almost as if summoned by his name being thought, Ozpin walked down the stairs to the main plaza of Beacon. Ruby watched him as he approached her. "Ah, Ms. Rose. Please excuse my tardiness. The clean-up has been...difficult."

Today was the day that she was supposed to choose the spot for the Vytal Festival outpost of Summer's Weapon Shop.

There was a small spot that Ozpin had picked out on Beacon's grounds that allowed shops and various goods to be bought and sold during the Festival timeline. As she was the 'official', and she still couldn't believe that she was, weaponsmith for the duration of the tournament, she was allowed to pick a spot first.

Well, okay, not first. Some food vendors got here first, but they'd been there at every single Festival for the last twenty or thirty years so Ruby gave them a pass. Either way, she was allowed first pick of the prime real estate, and for a lower cost because she was essentially giving her services to Beacon.

"That's okay. You weren't late," Ruby excused. Ozpin gave a sad smile, and his cane hit the ground gently.

"I shall show you the general area where we've been allowing people to set up. Please follow me," Ozpin said as he took off at a far more brisk pace than Ruby was anticipating. "I hope your shop fared well given the excitement."

"The door got busted in, and I lost some experiments that I had going, but Zwei decided to field test them. Overall, I'd say success, I hardly lost anything except for a couch I didn't like. Uncle Qrow did though."

"I do remember him mentioning that his usual 'pad' was no longer an option. Something about an explosion in the center?"

"Zwei set off a small box of four in the center cushion to take out a boarbatusk. The couch survived, somewhat, but the Grimm didn't," Ruby explained.

"Port mentioned something of that. An ammunition type that was wholly unique and could blow an ursa's head, I believe his remarks were."

"Yeah I tested it in his class."

"You know, you weren't supposed to have been there," Ozpin said, a gleam to his eye to show his acceptance of her presence. "But...that is neither here nor there."

"Can I ask what you're going to do to Adam and the other White Fang?"

"They are terrorists, Ms. Rose. They have been imprisoned aboard Atlas' main battleship. I wish we could have gotten Roman Torchwick as well, but alas he managed to flee once again."

"Torchwick was there?"

"Ah. Qrow did not tell you," Ozpin said, his hand calmly pushing up his glasses. "I thought he would have. Yes, he was there. He was driving the train, in fact."

"That doesn't seem like him."

"Indeed it doesn't. He is a master thief, make no mistake, but something like this is well beyond his usual methods."

"You don't think he's working alone."

"No, Ms. Rose, I do not. But as James says, we'll keep an open eye at all times. We'll see whoever it is coming from a long distance ways," Ozpin said. They went around another few corners until they got to an open field with a long stretch of sidewalk.

He pointed to a small airfield in the corner, "That's where access to Amity Colosseum will be while the tournament is going on. The Festival itself has three parts to it; one is the tournament, obviously, and the other are various tag-team events in the Emerald Forest and Forever Fall."

"And everyone can watch from here," Ruby said as she walked along the sidewalk. "How much would rental cost for most people?"

"Depends on if you need electricity or dust. If you did not, a mere ten thousand lien per day. If you did, a more exorbitant fifteen thousand per day. As the official weaponsmith of Beacon for the duration of the tourney, your price is down to a much more reasonable two thousand per day, even for power needs."

"Oh good, so I can set up a TV for people to watch the tourney and the events with."

"Precisely."

"I don't need to worry about power consumption, do I?"

"No, consider it part of the rental fees. Beacon has a dust generator on its own capable of supporting the entirety of the Academy and everyone here."

"What about the coliseum? Does that have any rental space?"

"Not on the coliseum itself. Amity is meant to be a place of combat, not a place of rest. We will have bullheads going back and forth at fifteen minutes intervals before the matches begin for several hours, and afterward for each match, allowing people time to come back down if they wish to grab food or shop," Ozpin explained.

"Well, I think that allowing the fighters to grab stuff they forgot right before going up is a good idea, so I think...here," Ruby said, pointing next to the airfield and the sidewalk. It was by all accounts a near mirror of her current placement on one of the main drags of Vale.

It didn't help that it also had a few trees nearby for easy rest for breaks. And that there was a noodle shop nearby for when she got hungry. Oh this festival was going to be so much fun!

Think of all the weapons she could see while at Beacon! If she thought Ironwood's revolver diablo's were neat, he probably had so much better weaponry at his disposal! So much cool stuff!

"Alright, I'll put at placement A3," Ozpin said, writing it down on a small clipboard. "Let's see, rates have already been determined-"

"The White Fang aren't going to be let out anytime soon, are they?" Ruby asked suddenly.

"Most likely not. Most of them may get lenient sentences if they agree to have their aura unlocked and become Huntsman or Huntresses. Benefits of wearing a mask, they probably thought."

"You're going to send them against the Grimm?"

"Not without training them first, heavens no. But eventually, just as all Hunters do, we will send them out."

"What if they don't agree?"

"Most of them will, I think. As for the ones that don't, they'll simply stay imprisoned until the battleship gets to Atlas, where they'll be tried there and imprisoned in their facilities."

"So it's prison or fighting Grimm."

"Essentially. I don't suppose that you've seen now the type of enemy we Hunters face? The endless abyss of black death, staring at us. It is truly infinite, and all that we Hunters do is at best stem the tide, but just like with all tides, it will always have a high and a low."

"I think we did pretty well actually. The news hasn't said how many people got hurt, but I know no one in the shop section got hurt."

"No, by all rights we did reasonably well. Thirty six civilian deaths, mostly in the first minute of the onslaught. A quarter of those were done in by being trampled rather than by the Grimm. On the Hunter side, a mere fifteen were out of aura with small injuries. Much like yourself."

"I couldn't just stand there and do nothing!"

"I never said you shouldn't have. Although Taiyang and Qrow would shout at me for it, I personally think you did quite well. Next time, however, it might be prudent to let Qrow take lead rather than try to wrestle it from him."

Ruby pouted. "He was being silly. And I got Adam to switch sides!"

"Yes, you did. You intentionally managed to get Adam to switch sides for the duration of the fight, and that is no small feat, given his fanaticism. You also got the rest of the White Fang to aid in the Grimm fight, and to lay down their weapons when the time came for surrender. You have done much more than you think you did, Ms. Rose."

Why? All she'd done was fight Grimm. She saw the enemy, and she killed it. It's what she would have been doing if she wasn't out in the shop. Out in the forest for two years while she got better, culling the 'endless Grimm horde'.

"I wonder then..." Ozpin said softly, his head tilted back as he looked at the sky. Far off in the distance, Ruby could see Amity Colosseum as it floated gently towards Beacon. It was huge, or at least seemed like it. It dominated the landscape, its tall spires reaching towards the clouds and down towards the mountain tops.

"How does it float?" Ruby asked quietly, her head tilted. She could imagine a ton of gravity dust, but to continually fire that much dust it had to be one of the greatest feats around.

"Gravity dust and lightning dust, generally," Ozpin answered. "The lightning dust inverts its internal gravity, allowing it to...float in the wind. Atlas keeps it close by for maintenance purposes, but otherwise it would go wherever the wind blows. Have you gotten that far in your dust studies?"

"Sixty three purity lightning, and fifteen purity gravity would be enough to do that. And then...thirty five red for the rocket thrusters?"

"You have, I see," Ozpin chuckled. "Always good to see more dust being used by those smart enough to know how. How does your experimental prototypes work?"

"A mixture of chemicals. They're stable on their own, fortunately, but once you mix them together they start to react with each other. If you create a powder from it, it's...well, explosive. Less than dust. Easier to pack in though."

"Not much is more explosive than dust," Ozpin said. "There are few forces more powerful than it, and yet we know very little about it. Hopefully your experiments will become better. We can always use more to fight the Grimm."

"If I get it to do what I want it do, then once I market it and figure out how it works exactly, I'll be sure to give you a call," Ruby said, her eyes on Amity Colosseum as it moved closer and closer.

Her shop was set, and the door had closed on the Breach. Roman Torchwick was still at large though. The thought came to her, of the weapon that Neo had stolen. "Did you find Sundered Rose?" Ruby asked instantly when the thought came to her.

Ozpin stared at her, apparently put off by the question. "I...will have to ask Qrow, but I do not think so. However, Atlas will continue to hunt for Torchwick, make no mistake, and once his safe houses are located we'll make sure that Sundered Rose gets back to you safely."

Ruby nodded, her mind on autopilot. If Torchwick had stolen Sundered Rose, why wasn't he using it? What was he planning with it?

And that wraps up volume 2. A neat look from Penny's point of view, the second point of view switch in this fic, which slowly becomes more common in volume 3.

Until Next Time, in which I reveal just how badly shot canon's been.