Chapter 17 – The Lone Huntsman
In which Weiss Schnee and Ruby Rose form different opinions about a new actor on the huntsman scene.
Weiss placed her hands on the white crystal.
"Ice Dust," said Ruby. "Crescent Rose can use it to make explosively freezing shots that adhere a target to a surface or wall. Shadow Clones Blake leaves behind are made of solid ice. Your Glyphs can make basically any ice creation you want, but you tend to favor ice shards as projectiles and longer lasting barrier walls. In terms of safety, its noncombustible on its own no matter how energized it gets. The most hazardous it can get is suddenly expanding to fill up a large space with ice, trapping or freezing the occupants."
Weiss nodded. Next, she moved her hand to the green crystal and strummed her fingers on it.
"Plant Dust," Ruby said. "Mostly used for industrial or agricultural applications, including farming, livestock, artificial production of proteins and enzymes, medicinal usage, and occasional recreational drug use. No immediate hazards beyond general flammability."
That was correct. Her hand hovered over the brown crystal.
"Rock Dust," Ruby said. "Makes my shots pack a bit more punch, makes Blake's clones solid stone that's a ten on the mineral hardness scale, and you can do the same things you do with Ice Glyphs. Explosive when mixed, inert when not."
Ruby had said nothing wrong, but she was starting to sound a lot more lackadaisical in the way she phrased her answers. Weiss merely raised an eyebrow and went to the red crystal.
"Fire Dust," Ruby said concisely. "It's fiery."
Time had passed since Ruby's emotional decision to let Weiss be her leader and catch her up on what she'd missed in her two skipped years, and she was clearly getting a bit too comfortable. Sure, when Ruby had freshly exploded her partner, she knew that something needed to change, but as the days went on and the second week of school came around, Ruby's motivation faded.
Weiss decided to help her regain it.
Wordlessly picking up the red, green, and untouched yellow crystals, she smiled and smashed them together in her hands. The crumbling, crunched shards of mineralized magic fell down into a heap on the laboratory table. Then, Weiss stepped away.
Ruby's hands flew to her head in terror as the crystals caught fire that rapidly began to spread. She looked up at Weiss for aid, but Weiss gestured to the table. If Ruby was so familiar with the properties of Fire Dust that she felt like she didn't need to recite them, then this was surely a simple problem for her to fix on her own.
The red girl ran over to the fire extinguisher by the door and came back to the steadily spreading conflagration. The weight of the bulky red object was enough that she struggled to carry it for a moment or two, but it was just a short jaunt between where it had been stored and where it was (not) needed. Aiming the nozzle straight at the base of the flames, Ruby pulled the pin.
Ruby couldn't see it, but Weiss raised her aura and readied herself to make a Glyph to shield her partner.
Fortunately, Ruby squinted at the flame for a few seconds and seemed to figure out what she'd done wrong on her own. "The Lightning Dust!"
It hadn't been a comment directed at Weiss, merely an exclamation brought on by her own excitement, but Weiss found herself nodding approvingly. A Class A or Class B fire extinguisher would only exacerbate the flames, as they were fueled by both Plant and Electric Dust. It was the latter that truly mattered in this case, as Class C foam was the ideal way to put it out.
"Where's the yellow one?" Ruby cried out, her head frantically swiveling about the room. "Where's the yellow fire extinguisher?"
"There isn't one," Weiss said. As much as she wanted Ruby to figure this out on her own, it was a lesson on Dust safety, not on the locations of fire extinguishers. If Ruby figured out which one to use, she at least deserved to have her question answered.
"Then…Then…" Ruby looked around.
"Fire alarm's going to go off soon," Weiss pointed out. "All that Plant Dust is making a nice plume of smoke."
Ruby closed her eyes, and for a moment, Weiss feared she'd pushed too hard and shut Ruby down. But then they opened in triumph, and Weiss realized Ruby had just been focusing.
"I need to starve it," Ruby declared. "I need something big enough to cover it and block out the air so that –"
Weiss nodded over her shoulder towards the large cabinet, through whose glass windows a sealable desiccant chamber could be seen. It was made for other experiments, but it could be closed off from the atmosphere hermetically, and that was all that was needed.
Ruby slid her safety glasses that rested at an angle on her hair down to cover her eyes (that she even wore them like that was already a safety violation), grabbed the desiccant chamber, and shoved it between her knees. Grabbing a metal spatula from the tabletop, she slid the flaming pile of Dust shards off the edge of the table and right into the chamber, which she then topped.
Her silver eyes were as wide as those of an owl as she watched nervously for the flames to cease. It took almost two minutes for the entire oxygen content of the chamber to be consumed…actually, that wasn't quite true. The atmosphere inside the chamber became so nitrogen heavy that it actually doused the flames faster, but the principle was the same.
"Oh, thank the Gods," Ruby said, slumping back into her chair.
But the lesson wasn't over.
"What would you have done if I added this instead of the Lightning Dust?" Weiss asked, holding up the clear crystal.
Ruby's motivation had seemingly returned, for she answered quickly. "Wind Dust makes its own wind, so it would be a source of oxygen, and it would also make the pressure inside the chamber enough to explode!"
"Exactly. So what would you have done?"
"Uh…" Ruby clenched her teeth. "…red fire extinguisher?"
"Class A. Correct." Weiss touched the Ice Dust. "What would you have done if I mixed this with the Fire and Wind?"
Ruby inhaled deeply. "I think…if I wear gloves that don't burn, I can still reach in and grab out the individual ice crystals, then use the Classy fire extinguisher on the Fire and Wind Dust?"
"Class A."
"That's what I said." Ruby twinkled her fingers. "Classé, if we wanna be fancy."
She got the question right, so I'll let it slide.
She touched the Wind Dust crystal again. "And if I'd added this in addition to the Lighting, Plant, and Fire?"
Ruby blinked. "I…"
Weiss patiently waited, but no answer came. In the end, Ruby just shrugged.
"The correct answer," Weiss said, "would be to evacuate the building."
When Ruby Rose applied herself, Ruby Rose was actually an amazing huntress. The problem arose from the fact that she almost never tried if she didn't have to (aside from topics directly linked to combat and weapons). Provide her with the correct motivation, though, and Weiss had an amazing partner on her hands.
She could easily surpass me in terms of knowledge, combat ability, and technical know-how. The way she retains information, I have half a mind to test her for photographic memory. And that's at age fifteen – there isn't a doubt in my mind that Ruby will be a legendary huntress when her age is equal to mine currently.
In all honesty, and Weiss would never say this aloud in a million years (she felt dirty for even thinking it), it was all the more reason for Ruby to not have been skipped ahead. Nothing was truly gained – Ruby was bound for Beacon one way or another, and she flew through initiation like it was nothing. All that skipping her ahead two years gained was satisfying her impatient desires to be a huntress that much earlier. Sure, Remnant would gain a huntress two years faster, but Ruby was the one who had to play catch-up, not the rest of Remnant.
Had she been given a chance to truly mature in those last two years at Signal, she wouldn't be starting Beacon at a handicap. She would have taken all those essential classes that weren't assigned to students just for fun, and she would be in the right mindset after having matured into adulthood.
On top of that, she was socially awkward as well, and through no fault of her own. Well, some fault of her own, but mostly because her friends (and she assured Weiss that she had them – she'd described them in great detail) had been left behind. Weiss and Blake came together to Beacon following their shared tutelage in Atlas, as did Ren and Nora in Mistral. Cardin had formed a team with the young man Sky Lark, the very man he'd apparently known since they met as twelve-year-olds in primary combat school. Even Yang had compatriots, though Weiss would never understand what anyone saw in her.
T̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶e̶.̶ ̶ ̶S̶h̶e̶'̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶t̶e̶a̶m̶m̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶b̶e̶f̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶W̶e̶i̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶v̶o̶k̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶a̶r̶b̶a̶r̶i̶s̶m̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶W̶e̶i̶s̶s̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶.̶
But not Ruby. No, Ruby was plucked away from her social hierarchy and told to join into a new one, with new people who were all many years ahead of her, and for what? To save time?
I just can't understand why Ruby was pushed ahead. She earned it, and I understand that, but she could be a superhuntress if she'd stayed the course. Instead, she'll be at such a disadvantage that she'll merely be a regular huntress albeit slightly younger.
Either way, Weiss had no intention of questioning the decision. Whatever the reason, Ozpin had sent Ruby Weiss' way, and Weiss was happy to have Ruby.
"Watch it, Weiss! It's super mega epic! There's laser beams and rocket explosions and giant robot fights and superheroes and –"
Okay, Weiss was happy to have Ruby conditionally. That condition was that Ruby didn't wave her scroll right up in Weiss' face.
"Ruby, I don't care for whatever cheap summer blockbuster they came up with," Weiss said. "I never cared for that junk."
"I guess that rules out movie dates," Blake said, turning a page of her book as Ruby attempted to fuse her device into Weiss' cranium.
"Oh puh-lease," Weiss said dramatically. "Some people are illiterate, but you're the opposite – you don't even know how to watch a screen."
Blake's eyes never left the book, but Weiss caught a faint smile.
"It's not a movie," begged Ruby. "It's the VNN – that's the Vale News Network. They're reporting on this epic huntsman vs. huntsman fight that went down yesterday. Lisa Lavender reviews it at the end – hey, she's a girl! You like women, right, Weiss?"
Weiss couldn't even figure out how she was supposed to respond to that. She did notice Blake glancing her way, as though to visually inspect whether Weiss intended to humor Ruby.
"It's awesome, Weiss! A-A-And it's news, meaning that it's me staying informed about the world around me and all that jazz, so you should watch it too!"
Weiss rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll watch whatever news clip you have, if only to stop this mosquito-like pestering." Her lips flattened. "And I suppose it is good to keep abreast of the news…"
"Exactly!" Ruby nodded up and down, smiling. "Breasts! I knew Lisa Lavender would getcha interested!"
Weiss seriously considered shoving the scroll down Ruby's throat and praying for asphyxiation to become synonymous with resolution, but she held off when she caught a glimpse of the video playing on it. There truly was a VNN logo watermark in the bottom left corner, meaning that this was an actual news piece, not just Ruby being confused by a movie trailer.
And it truly was dated from Sunday, the day after her and Blake's date (and the brief interruption with Ruby that had concluded it). She'd been too busy with catching up on homework to pay attention to anything else for the remainder of the weekend, and classes had taken up most of today.
And it truly did include explosions and laser and whatever other tripe Ruby had been raving about…actually, Weiss supposed it wasn't tripe if it was real.
Weiss rewound the video to the start and pressed play. She watched it with mild interest.
Then, she rewound the video again and watched the entire five minute clip again, this time with great attention paid.
"See?" Ruby asked. "Isn't it –"
"SHHH!" Weiss hissed.
She restarted the video one last time and reviewed the footage with an eye for details, rewinding and pausing as she saw fit.
Then, she took the scroll over to her girlfriend. Weiss placed the small device right on top of the open pages of Blake's book.
"Watch this."
"That good?" Blake asked, her eyebrows raised.
Weiss shook her head, hoping to dispel the humor in Blake's tone with her own seriousness. "Something isn't right. You need to see this. It affects us."
Amber eyes flicked up to blue ones. "U-Us?"
"Beacon," Weiss corrected upon realizing just how easy that word was to misinterpret. "The student body. The team. All of us."
"Uh, it was just a cool video," Ruby said. "Just a VNN puff piece, not some…whatever it is you think it is. Can I have my scroll back?"
"No," Weiss said resolutely. "I need Blake's opinion on this."
She held the scroll out in front of Blake and tapped play.
A robot that Weiss recognized (though she knew she wasn't supposed to) was plainly visible on the screen. It wasn't supposed to be out of the early stages of testing yet, and it certainly wasn't meant to be deployed in the middle of downtown Vale, being videotaped by an amateur scroll-filmer that had been passing by.
The Atlesian Paladin Mark VI-IX was one of the military's more terrible creations, and even though it was fueled by special composites of Schnee Dust, even her father had some misgivings about the creation of this weapon. Weiss had no idea if he truly feared for the loss of innocent life that would ensue if the Atlesian military deployed it or if he simply despised it for being a weapon his enemies intended to use on his allies, but he despised it and frequently spoke of it in terms unbefitting of a Schnee when Weiss eavesdropped.
It wasn't built for Grimm. While it certainly could be used to destroy them, it was intended, according to every internal document that Father had managed to snag, for use on hostile governments in the event that war broke out (that meant Menagerie). The White Fang was one-third Jacques' at this point, and he didn't want the army to be developing destructive suits of armor that could easily be deployed at a moment's notice to subdue it.
According to father, the mechanized robotic shell packed both lethal and nonlethal weapons, including heavier artillery (for larger crowds), lasers (for individual targets), and tear gas (for the Brother's sake). It was not nearly mobile enough to face off against an agile horde of Beowolves, but it would swivel with enough range of motion to target an entire crowded street. The armor of the paladins was even described as bullet-proof. Unless the Grimm had secret marksman among their ranks, Weiss doubted that any of the Atlesian high command intended for it to be a tool for Remnant's defense.
The council was undecided on whether they truly wished to implement it, for obvious reasons. Some proposed mandating its deployment in all Atlesian-owned territories, while others wanted it to remain a military secret until it was needed. Not one among them proposed scrapping the project, of course, not after all of the resources they'd invested into their terror tool.
But no matter what, it was still in the testing stages, or so it should have been. In the video Ruby had shown her, though, it was on the rampage, tearing a warpath through Vale. The glass cockpit of the machine showed a gray-haired boy, grinning evilly within as he smashed entire cars with giant mechanical fists and tore apart homes and buildings using the impressive array of firearms he commanded.
"Black?" Blake breathed, furrowing her brows as she glanced up at Weiss. "Is that…?"
"Not quite," Weiss answered, pausing the video.
"Wha– but it is!" Ruby exclaimed. "They say the bad guy was Mercury Black, the assassin! That's what Lisa Lavender calls him when she breaks it down."
Ruby was right, but so was Weiss. It was Mercury Black, an assassin of semi-famous renown. It was not, however, Marcus Black, a far more famous huntsman turned mercenary who had tried to kill Blake's father on two separate occasions.
"It's his son," Blake said, coming to the same conclusion as Weiss. The boy looked like the photos of Marcus Black they'd seen, but he was far younger, and his face was just a touch different. "But why is he –"
"That's why I want you to watch the video. It doesn't make any sense."
From the paladin being used to the pilot commanding it, nothing was right about any of this.
Mercury grinned villainously as he batted aside the police cars that had attempted to blockade him in. For a few, he even crushed them beneath his vile drone's large legs. Shards of broken glass littered the street, and it seemed that nothing was going to be stopping him anytime soon.
Nothing, that was, until the appearance of a team of huntsmen arrived on the scene. Weiss didn't recognize them, knowing that she wasn't likely to given that they were dispatched within Vale and thus likely native to this kingdom. However, they performed admirably enough, engaging the paladin in, as Ruby had put it, a super mega epic battle. There were plenty of explosions, though these were not conceived from CGI but instead from people's houses and livelihoods.
The huntsmen put up a good fight. One of them even managed to trip the paladin down by sinking its right foot into a puddle of suddenly appearing tar that seemed to go infinitely deep – likely the effect of his semblance, Weiss suspected. However, it caught itself on an evacuated bus, and once it was back on its feet, nothing could stop it. None of their Grimm-oriented huntsman weaponry was high enough caliber to inflict as much damage onto the paladin as its many human- and Faunus-oriented guns inflicted onto their aura. They were ultimately forced to retreat for cover behind flipped police vehicles after less than a full minute of combat. One of them sustained a rather severe leg wound on the way out, and Weiss had suspected when she first watched the video that that would be their death knell.
A team is only as strong as its weakest link. If one is down, the others will have to cover him, and they couldn't even pierce the paladin's metallic hide at full strength.
And then, when all seemed lost, a shimmering blast of fuchsia light came from the rooftops above, impacting the ground beneath the paladin. That made it lose its footing for just a moment, teetering briefly as Black furiously engaged the many controls from his cockpit to regain his balance, but a moment seemed to be all the new adversary needed.
"Enough!" a voice boomed.
A brand new huntsman, dressed in a heroic white coat with just a touch of black and red to match his excellently-groomed orange hair, leapt from atop a building, landing in a tumbling somersault that took him between the unsteady paladin's legs and directly underneath it. Though the cameraman was filming from a safe distance. Jabbing his cane upwards, he fired off another explosive Dust blast at point black from the metal hull.
It did next to no damage to the machine itself, but the resultant bounce the shockwave produced slammed Mercury's head straight up into the glass, disorienting him briefly. The new huntsman grinned victoriously and got to work.
Deftly, artfully, masterfully, he targeted the dazed driver's paladin at its every weak point with precision that could only come from years of combat experience. The crack of his cane and the blast of its cannon were like the tune of a rhythmic melody, striking the joints of the machine with precisely enough force to put it on the back foot and force Mercury to give up ground. The mech and the man inside were both pushed away from the civilian crowds fleeing the scene and into the already destroyed ruins the paladin has produced in its initial assault.
Then, the huntsman truly attacked. He went after the guns and missile launchers themselves, categorically destroying each one with extreme prejudice. While his face had previously been the reassuring smile of a gallant huntsman, one to reassure the crowds, he was all business now.
"How dare you! Hiding behind armor as you tear down the lives of innocents! Monster! I'll bring you to justice if I have to peel this tin can apart with my bare hands!"
Rage, pure unfiltered indignity at the audacity of this vile assassin to target crowds of innocent men and women in his quest, poured forth from the huntsman's mouth. He had a look that Weiss might've mistaken with the visage of the young brother, darkness incarnate, as he relentlessly tore the machine's weapons apart from the outside. It wasn't just anger – it was outrage.
The way this well-dressed man leapt into danger's way, fought like a banshee for his just cause, and did so for the noblest reasons – he looked the part of a fantasy hero.
Black eventually regained some of his wits and managed to score a solid punch to the huntsman's chest, flinging him away towards a large tree with enough force that he snapped it in half. It looked like a painful blow, so much so that Weiss had cringed each and every time she watched the video, and so did the cameraman, as the video wobbled up and down as the mystery huntsman picked himself up.
The huntsman spat out blood, but there was a gleam in his eye. "So I guess you can fight, eh? I suppose that means it's time for me to end this."
Wiping his lip with a glove, he raised his cane in a combat position once more, but instead of shooting a Dust blast this time, he tossed it up in the air, grabbed it by the other end, and launched out a grappling hook attached to a solid cord. The hooked head shot far past the paladin, but the huntsman flicked his cane upwards and snagged the far leg of the paladin on a sturdy pipe.
For a moment, it looked like he was about to try to pull it over in a feat of incredible strength, but instead he broke out into a run. It wasn't in a straight line, but instead in a wide circle around the entire battlefield. The paladin attempted to keep up with him in a vain attempt to not get tangled up in the swirl of rope that threatened to ensnare it, but this was a machine designed for brute force, not maneuverability. Within seconds, the legs were thrice tied around.
Then, the huntsman chuckled slightly, winked at the paladin, and fired one last shot.
The cane pulled backwards, cinching around the legs and tightening them to the point that they were pulled together, while the blast simultaneously smashed right into the cockpit and knocked the paladin right onto its back. It attempted to gain purchase on the ground and upright itself, but the huntsman team from before descended upon it once more. This time, with it downed and defeated, the three standing members were easily able to group up and rip off its right arm.
Before they could move on to the left and completely disable its last limb, Black's fist viciously pounded against the cockpit with a scowl built of hatred and murder on his face directed at the mystery huntsman. That seemed to be his final word, for he then slammed that same fist down onto a control, and his cockpit ejected.
It wasn't a fully mobile airship – not even Atlesian engineering was great enough to design a flight-capable vessel within a robot drone – but it had enough Dust fuel to simply launch out in a random direction. The small escape capsule had no idea where it was going, but the designers of the paladin evidently decided that a fleeing pilot would prefer anywhere to a disabled mech.
Fortunately for Black, his pod happened to be angled in the direction of the ocean. It rapidly launched away from the fallen robot and shot about a mile towards the ocean, crossing past the docks on the way. With a distant plop, it landed in the bay and sank down, letting the criminal escape to fight another day.
"Curses!" uttered the mystery huntsman. "But I suppose the apprehension of one criminal can't compare to the necessity of both recovering this disturbing weapon and ending its rain of carnage."
"Holy BLEEP, he saved us!" said the voice of the man behind the scroll filming this, his expletive censored away by the VNN. "He's a hero!"
There was a loud and frantic noise of applause, and as the cameraman's cheering continued, other survivors and onlookers crawled from out of their hiding spots and joined in.
"You saved us!"
"Our champion! Woohoo!"
"Three cheers for…the huntsman!"
The amateurish footage cut off there, switching to a VNN studio.
"There you have it, ladies and gentlemen – exciting raw footage captured by a citizen of Vale documenting the amazing events that transpired just hours ago in our fair city," Lisa Lavender explained, staring directly at the camera. "The perpetrator of these crimes, now identified as wanted assassin Mercury Black, remains at large, but with the machine he used for his destructive rampage back in the hands of the authorities, Vale is certainly that much safer.
"Of course, new questions arise – who was this criminal's target? How did he get his hands on military-grade weaponry that no government has yet claimed ownership of? And most importantly, who is the heroic huntsman who saved us?"
Weiss didn't really think the last one was the most important, but the next segment of the video confirmed why it had been asked last as the anchor.
"Folks, VNN was lucky enough to be the first news agency present at the scene of the crime as authorities regained control and began treating the injured. The mystery is no longer, as we managed to get a statement from the newly-crowned savior of Vale."
The video cut back to the scene of the carnage, which was now crawling with first responders, EMTs, firemen, and police among them. The ranking officers were conversing with the huntsman team and the mystery huntsman, who seemed to be explaining something to them. As the VNN camera crew drew closer, his words could be made out.
"…catch this punk before he gets away. If we put the word out fast enough to all ports, airship docks, and other ways out of the city, we can pin him like the rat he is."
"Sir!" cried the anchorwoman. Her cameraman was a professional, this time, as the footage remained steady and didn't teeter or totter. "A moment of your time?"
"One second, please," said the huntsman, a picture of polite charm. He turned back to the police. "If we act quickly, we can save lives. Let's hop to it, gentlemen!"
They all nodded, and the huntsman turned back towards the camera crew. "Now, then."
"Sir, could you please tell our viewer who you are, and why you saved Vale?"
The huntsman smiled pleasantly. "The name's Torchwick. Roman Torchwick. And as for why I saved Vale…who wouldn't, if they had the chance and the skill? It's what we huntsmen do."
"Are you associated with Beacon Academy?" asked the reporter.
He shook his head. "Can't rightly say I am, sadly. I apprenticed under a master huntress out in the wildlands…Sensei Shiriganai." He removed his bowler hat and closed his eyes as a long sigh escaped his lips. "May her energy rest in peace."
His face lightened after a moment.
"But Sensei always taught me that our most sacred duty as the great defenders of humanity and the Faunus is to never stop looking forward. It's not about what lies in the past, but about what we can offer to the future. That's why I travelled from the southern settlements to this fair kingdom – I was rather hoping to pay my lessons forward and become a teacher of the hunting arts."
"At the prestigious institution of Beacon Academy?" asked a reporter.
"Is that where they put the teachers in this kingdom?" asked Roman.
The anchor must have nodded, for he smiled.
"Then I suppose that's where I'm headed. Rather, where I was to be headed, before that…" His smile briefly flickered, but it shaped back up quickly. "…that menace of a man stopped me."
"How did you defeat that giant robot, where a full team of huntsman failed, Mr. Torchwick? You were amazing out there!"
"Please. Roman is my name, there's no need for titles like mister. Sensei always said hunters must retain their humility lest they lose sight of where they come from." He smiled fondly. "And she also feared that my head would explode if I got praised too much. Anyways, I may have been trained by a teacher, but it was the school of life itself that gave me my greatest lesson – combat is a fluid substance. One must always navigate the waterways of a battle, lest the current sweep them away. One of the many teachings I hope to impart on future generations at…Bacon Conservatory, was it?"
"Beacon Academy," corrected the journalist.
"Assuming they'll have me," said Roman, chuckling ever so slightly. He placed a fist against an open palm and leaned forward in a small bow. "Humility above all else."
"Mr. Tor– ahem. Roman, if anyone at Beacon had any sense at all, I'm sure you'll be grading papers before the end of this semester."
"Bullshit," said Blake. "That…there were at least eight things wrong with all of that."
"Whaaaat?" Ruby cried. She seemed far more easily impressed by the news program. "But he was so cool! A real life superhero!"
And that was the problem. He was cool.
Weiss loathed to use such a term, but it perfectly described what had happened. A city torn apart by a villainously unstoppable force with power beyond compare, unable to withstand his rampage using the resources at their disposal until a fanciful hero literally falls out of the sky, singlehandedly stopping the threat and announcing his grand arrival. It was cool – cool, epic, awesome, inspiring wonder in those who watched cool movies and played cool videogames and desperately wished to have something cool happen in real life to inspire them. Ruby found it cool because she was so willing to let it be cool that she didn't question it.
The problem was that real life didn't tend to be cool. Real life tended to have hiccups, like the hunters taking wounds (as the first team did), or not showing up from a rooftop, or even getting scuffs on their coats. Not a single strand of combed orange hair was out of place on the head of 'Roman Torchwick,' nor did he sustain any injuries. Even after taking the one hit from the paladin, he was still a picture of graceful harm. He spat a spray of blood in a battle-hardened manner, instead of coughing up gobs of it in an undignified red fluid discharge. What had happened looked almost scripted.
"It was perfect. Too perfect," Weiss summed up.
Perhaps that's a cliché, but it's applicable.
"It was perfect," Ruby echoed, lost in her own little world. "He was perfect."
"No," Weiss said decisively. "You may not."
"W-What? May not what?"
Weiss just glared at the airheaded child who'd introduced her to this nonsense. She would not have that pumpkin-brained chump as a partner-in-law, no matter how Ruby seemed to feel about this whole thing.
"I'm more concerned about the 'assassin,'" Blake said.
Weiss nodded; she'd noticed that too, even if it seemed like a smaller detail.
"What about him?"
"Why'd he steal a paladin and rampage through the city?" Blake asked.
Ruby shrugged. "May-uh-maybe, you know, he wanted to kill someone, perhaps? Cuz he's an assassin?"
"No," said Weiss and Blake simultaneously. Weiss gestured for Blake to take the lead in educating their ignorant partner, and the cat Faunus did.
"Assassins work best when their presence isn't known through any concrete means. If they or their weapons are noticed, it could provide evidence as to their kingdom of origins, price range, affiliation, or any number of other such clues. That means their employers are closer to being identified, which defeats the entire purpose of assassination."
"Blake and I have both been the target of assassins," Weiss added in. "On numerous occasions."
"Did any ever succeed?" Ruby asked, eyes wide without a single hint of sarcasm. Her genuine curiosity was adorable, though slightly balanced out by the liquid idiocy that coursed through her veins.
"Yes, Ruby." Weiss smacked her lips. "Several of the assassins were successful in assassinating me."
"I myself died a handful of times as well," Blake said forlornly. "It was quite traumatic."
Ruby crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks. "Hey, don't bully me. That's racist."
"As we were saying, the video just felt…unrealistic," Weiss explained, hoping to convince Ruby once and for all that this Roman fellow was bad news. "Honestly, with him announcing his intent to come to Beacon, I wonder if he may have been in cahoots with Mercury Black, and that was all a performance to display his talents in front of a captive audience."
"Weiss, people died in the paladin's rampage," Ruby said, her face quite displeased. Weiss couldn't tell if it was because of the accusation that her new folk hero had coordinated murders, or if she was simply upset by the notion of anyone dying. Weiss was too, but she had lived in the real world enough to know that people frequently got hurt.
She didn't want it to be a grand conspiracy, of course. It would be much better for everyone if Torchwick were truly a helpful huntsman, and it was all just a bizarrely convenient set of circumstances that he showed up just in time. But there was too much convenience for the cynical side of Weiss to be convinced any time soon.
"Oh," Ruby said, tapping at her scroll. "There's been an update."
"What is it?" Blake asked. "Did they already figure out he's a fraud?"
"No." Ruby rotated the device in her hands so the others could now see a picture of Roman Torchwick and Headmaster Ozpin shaking hands and smiling in the face of flashing cameras. "Starting next week, our schedules will have an extra class called Special Tactics on Monday-Wednesday-Fridays at 4pm, and it's got a brand-new professor."
Next Chapter: Scared Straight
In which Weiss Schnee's team is fully reunited once more.
Author's Notes
I promised that the plot would be starting, but now it's speeding down the highway, and all of the brakes have been removed.
It's good to have some nonviolent Ruby-Weiss interactions, both as leader and just as friends. Of all of them in this fic, this chapter, with its Dust lesson, is probably my favorite...okay, in my top 2 fav friendship scenes.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!