Author's Notes
Moderate violence and minor roughness in this chapter. If you're not up to read it, maybe wait a bit and come back. I only say since I promised a fluff fic, but this isn't one of those chapters.
Posted early for fear of AO3 maintenance causing issues.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
Chapter 36 – Shiriganai
In which Weiss Schnee finally comes to understand her Sensei.
In spite of Yang's bright flames lighting up the outside world, the Amalgamations and Merlot himself were still caught unawares by their entrance. They were enclosed in a large metal laboratory, so it followed that they might be insulated from sights and sounds of the city outside.
"Team RWBY! Attack!"
Ruby Rose was the first to dash into combat, bubbling up into a ball of rose petals and slamming her entire form directly into the stomach of the closest Amalgamation. From there, she bounced from one to another, bashing them with her tiny but tightly-packed might.
Blake's ribbon flew out like a football, sailing right over the heads of most of the Amalgamations and coiling around the arms of one of the further out ones. The kata wrapped around the beast's elongated arm and hooked onto the ribbon, and Blake yanked back with all of the strength. The Amalgamation she'd hooked swung into its comrades like a wrecking ball, turning it into a living weapon.
Except these already are living weapons, Weiss thought as she dashed forward, leaning into a full tilt to close the distance between her and the closest standing Grimm hybrid. These were people before this mad scientists turned them into abominations. What if there's still some remnant of their former selves within?
"Team RWBY!" Weiss shouted, countermanding her previously vague orders. "Incapacitate, but avoid killing if you can do so safely!"
She didn't want to ask her teammates to risk their own lives in order to spare the Grimm, but these weren't run-of-the-mill Beowolves, in spite of how much their exterior resembled them. Weiss had heard them speak, in cohesive sentences and with fully formed thoughts.
Furthermore, there were only about twenty or thirty amalgamations present in the laboratory space. If they could plow through these few, capture Merlot, and extract him before the rest of his monstrous arsenal arrives, Team RWBY could call this in to Vale and have the area cordoned off. Leaderless, she imagined that these slaved Grimm-like creatures would be far less coordinated and dangerous.
"What is the meaning of this?" cried Merlot, pushing himself up from his chair. "What in the Grimm's name is going on?!"
"MERLOT!" screamed Torchwick.
Weiss could only watch in horror as her professor made a mad dash for the head honcho, ignoring all of the Amalgamation in his path. However, her concern for his safety quickly turned into raw bodily horror as he swung his cane right through an Amalgamation in his path, bisecting the creation in a single hit. There was a gory splatter of blood and viscous, globbish Grimm ichor that sprayed across the room.
"MERLOT! YOU'LL ANSWER FOR WHAT YOU DID TO HER!"
"Torchwick, stop!" Weiss cried, her pleas falling on deaf ears.
The absurdity of the situation struck her – here she was, a huntress pleading with a wrathful huntsman to spare the Grimm – but if there was even a chance that these were still people deep down inside, she owed it to them to defend them just the same. After all, they'd done nothing to deserve being Grimmified.
It could even have been one of the botanists we were sent out here to save that he just mangled. I have to stop him before he does something unthinkable.
"MERLOT!"
The doctor, for his part, didn't seem all that keen on sharing the same fate as his poor creation. One look at the split halves of the Grimm Amalgamation before him and the huntsman who'd rent them, and he turned around and ran. After all, if the blunt haft of a swung cane could split an enhanced human being with Grimm physiology and durability in half with but a single swing, Torchwick could easily kill Merlot with his bare hands.
"YOU CAN'T RUN FROM ME, DOCTOR!"
Torchwick gave chase, following Merlot straight through the door to the hallway through which he'd fled, and Weiss cursed. They knew this facility housed many more Amalgamations than were present before them at the moment, and Torchwick was charging headfirst in a vengeance-fueled furor right into what could be a trap that would lead to his death.
Weiss needed to stop him. She needed to save him. If he followed Merlot to the bulk of the Amalgamations, the supposedly smarter and stronger ones that lurked within this complex, not only would he die but Merlot would escape, free to launch his invasion of the kingdoms.
"Handle this?!" Weiss half-asked, half-ordered her team, and then chased after him before waiting for their response.
As her companions presumably continued to plow through the Amalgamations with the same ease as before (human-hybrids or not, their intelligence didn't make them any less susceptible to a Dust bullet or Xiao-Long punch than a regular Grimm), Weiss pushed deeper into the laboratory fortress, following after the sound of Merlot and Torchwick's footsteps.
This was a larger place on the inside than it appeared from the outside. There were many winding corridors and offshoot rooms that she passed by on the way, barely giving them a second glance as she chased after her two targets lest she lose their trail and become lost in the maze.
And if I did stop, I imagine I wouldn't like to see what awaits behind those doors.
Torchwick was right. No matter how horrible this city seemed, it never lacked the capacity to get far, far worse.
She was hopelessly lost, at this point, but she made sure to leave the doors open behind her to find her way back when the time came. All that mattered was keeping up with Torchwick and Merlot.
Just like all that mattered was finding what made that clicking noise. And that went so well, didn't it, eh, Weiss?
Her self-critical thoughts were right; she needed to think rather than act on raw conviction alone. Weiss stopped running, hurriedly placed the tip of Myrtenaster beneath her, created a line of Glyph to enhance her speed using the aid of Lightning Dust, and bolted forward faster than before. Sprinting and keeping up was all well and good, but if she could catch them and end this chase before it dragged on any further, she could return to support her team as quickly as possible. When she used her head, these problems almost seemed to solved themselves.
With the aid of Nature's Wrath as applied by her semblance, Weiss barreled through the barely lit rooms, smashing open door after door as she ran down the tunnel that seemed to drag on for miles. There was a slight tilt downward to the floor as she ran, making it easier to move with the aid of gravity. The further she progressed, the louder Torchwick's voice grew.
"MERLOT! YOU CAN'T RUN!"
The voices were so close that Weiss could practically feel the sound waves bouncing off of her face. Pushing forward her a burst of stamina that would hopefully enable her to rest immediately thereafter, Weiss threw open the last door between herself and Torchwick and burst into the room.
Except it wasn't a room. It was a tunnel, much longer than the corridor she'd just run through. This one stretched all the way out into infinity, with the end so far away that she couldn't even see it from the dim light of the corridor behind her. It was also far wider, with the roof easily forty feet above the ground.
There were also a pair of train rails on the ground.
As they mowed down the Aberrations or Abominables or whatever it was Weiss had called them, Ruby was quick to discover two things.
For one, the Grimm hybrids (that was so much easier) could be easily neutralized if edged weapons were used to lop off their oversized limbs. The human bodies within didn't seem to express any pain at having their extended Grimm claws chopped off at the wrist, and none of the telltale blood from the one Torchwick had ruthlessly murdered showed, so Ruby figured it was the cheat code that guaranteed a victory on easy mode.
For all that these beings had terrified Weiss, they were hardly as dangerous as Grimm. Lumbering about as they did, most of them could barely fight worth a darn, and they all seemed too uncoordinated with their movements to pose a true threat. Weiss had mentioned training, meaning that these meanies were not ready for a real fight. That was probably why they were going down so speedily.
But it's not their strength that makes them dangerous. Grimm with minds that can think and strategize and plan would truly be a sight to behold in a siege of the city or other drawn out conflict. It's because we're blitzin' 'em that it's going so well.
The second thing she discovered was that the Dr. Moreau guy wasn't the only human.
"Get back!" cried a guy that she had cornered. "Stay away from me!"
There were actually a good handful of humans and even a couple of Faunus that were either Moreau's security or his lab assistants. She hadn't seen them immediately, the adrenaline and hyper-focus on the freakin' hybrid Grimm monsters giving her tunnel vision, but when she noticed them, most of them were fleeing in terror at the sight of five…er, make that three huntresses bearing down upon them. Ruby, with her speed semblance and ability to move about the room quickly, had raised her aura and barreled right through most of them before they could flee and raise the alarm. The few stragglers, she mopped up with a quick bonk on the head using Crescent while Yang and Blake took down the last handful of Atrocities.
In less than two minutes, the main hall was theirs. All enemies were downed, and save for the one Grimm-thing Torchwick had split in half (Ruby had needed to look away), no lethal force had been employed.
"But where's Weiss?" Ruby asked herself. "Is she safe? Is she okay?"
"She's fine, Rubes," Yang answered from across the room, prodding one of the creepies with her shoe to see if it was still conscious (it was not). "I mean, we took down a room full of these guys. I'm sure she can handle any she runs into along the way. Right, Blake?"
No answer came from the cat Faunus, and for a second, Ruby panicked. Worrying that Blake had been injured while her back was turned, Ruby quickly looked around for her partner's partner…and there she was, perfectly safe and alive. The five-second-terror escaped Ruby's body, and she regained her ability to breathe.
"Blake?" Ruby called. "You good?"
Walking over and trying not to shake with the lingering excitement from the action-packed battle of just a moment ago, Ruby checked out what Blake was doing. She was knelt down next to one of the Grimmos, and her hands were pressed against the side of one of its unconscious face. Ruby couldn't help but notice there was a black smear on the pale skin of Blake's fingers.
"Please don't tell me you're infected with Grimm zombie sauce," Ruby pleaded jokingly.
"I…I don't understand…"
"Blake?" Ruby asked. "Is everything okay?"
"When they…but there's no way it could…i-it has to be my imagination, right?"
There were several red flags about this immense tunnel of breathtaking size that alarmed Weiss immediately upon entering.
First of all, the lack of lighting made the feathers on her wings stand up on end. The smaller tunnel she'd just exited from was dimly lit, with occasionally hanging bulb fixtured planted in each juncture between one pair of doors and another, but there was absolutely nothing to illuminate this one. The only reason Weiss wasn't completely blind was the faint light coming past open door Weiss had just entered through, and even her Faunus eyes couldn't fully make out her surroundings. Unlike the cracked and broken Huntsman Barracks from before, this tunnel was enclosed, and all moonlight was sealed out. Weiss could only see about ten feet in front of her as she lit the tip of Myrtenaster with Fire Dust, rationing it to spare what she could.
The second cause of alarm was the absence of both Roman Torchwick or Doctor Merlot. Both had seemingly vanished the second Weiss had entered in behind them, and not a trace of them remained. Furthermore, their banter was also absent; the room was silent as the grave.
There were also the train tracks that looked like they'd survived a cave in for how many rocks and chunks of debris were scattered about, but those weren't as inexplicable.
We're in the railway that would ferry passengers to and from the city and Vale. This has got to be it. I bet Merlot was planning to use this tunnel to launch his Grimm invasion into Vale, but instead its become his desperate passage of fleeing.
"Torchwick?" Weiss called out. Her voice echoed once, then again, then again. The noise seemed to just keep going forever, all the way down the unending tunnel until Weiss could no longer distinguish them.
"torchwick…torchwick…rchwi…rch…"
This reminded Weiss much of her encounter with the clicker robot – she had given chase and found herself in danger, but her awareness of it left her without fear. However, this time around, a learned instinct to not leave herself any blind spots took over, and she frequently looked over both shoulders for enemies.
"Professor Torchwick, are you there?"
The sound of her own voice filled the tunnel, and there was no answer once again.
"Doctor Merlot?" Weiss tried, unsure if perhaps her supervising huntsman hadn't been the one to prevail in their altercation.
"tor…lo…lo…lo…"
But how could they have fought? I was right behind them for the entire chase; I could hear Torchwick right ahead of me. Even if they came into this railway tunnel first, I entered only a second later. That's not nearly enough time for a huntsman to be slain.
Unless…Unless Torchwick was the one who did the slaying. If he caught up to Merlot and slew him in one blow, it would only take the blink of an eye for it all to end.
"Hello?" Weiss said. "Is anyone here?"
"hello…is…here…hello…is…here…hell…is…here…hell…is…here…hell…"
"Alright, I suppose I walked into that one," Weiss murmured, too low for the echo to carry.
"Blake, what's wrong?"
Rubbing her fingers together, Blake tested the consistency of what had spread onto her skin when she touched the Amalgamation. It had been the sight of it slopping off in addition to the blood that had raised her interest in it, and now, as she felt it between her fingers, she was sure.
"Ruby, Yang." He showed them her hand. "It's makeup."
"Makeup?" asked Ruby. "What, like, eyeliner?"
"Not eyeliner exactly. It's heavy stuff, a more durable product than mascara or foundation, like the kinds I use but worth ten times as much for the same volume."
"Merlot put makeup…on his Grimm?" Yang asked incredulously.
Blake spat on her hand and vigorously rubbed it on the face of the downed Amalgamation. She only needed to press up and down its…up and down his face three times before pale skin appeared beneath it. Plain, human or Faunus skin.
Not Grimm.
"Oh my gods," Yang said. "They're…"
Her head turned in the direction of the halved corpse, blood still dripping from both ends.
"But why would…" Ruby trailed off, unable to finish the thought. "I don't understand."
"Neither do I, but we need to find Weiss. I think she's not as safe taking off alone in this place as we all thought." Blake stood up and drew Gambol Shroud. "Did anyone see which way –"
Her voice was cut off by a loud clicking noise. Looking down at her feet, she saw a small toaster shaped robot wheeling itself forward into her left leg.
"Huh? What the he–"
The entire tunnel rumbled, and Weiss could feel the shockwave of the explosion as it moved through the ground beneath her feet. It wasn't enough to upset her balance, but it was enough to terrify her for other reasons. Unless the abandoned city of Mountain Glenn had a secret cache of explosive hidden within, there could only be one place from which the blast originated.
"Blake…R-Ruby…no!"
"And that," called out the voice of Roman Torchwick, follow by a slow clap, "is game, ladies and gentlemen. Rather, just ladies. Lady."
"Torchwick!" Weiss shouted, jumping around to face him, but there was no one there.
"I gotta say, you made me work for it, snow pea. Ain't no one gonna say Roman didn't earn his keep."
Weiss could hear him speaking, but in this echoing cavern in which she found herself, it was impossible to pinpoint just where he came from. Each time it sounded like she had him, the noises came from the other side, and she was left with nothing.
"What have you done? Where's Doctor Merlot?"
"I think you mean Douglas Fir? No loose ends, Schnee. He was a good actor, but indie films were never my jam, and he'd seen our faces."
Weiss hopped behind the collapsed piece of rubble where she thought she'd located Torchwick's voice as originating from, but there was nothing there. "Stop playing games with me, Torchwick. What's going on here? I want the truth."
"Honey, honey, honey. There is no truth. Control the narrative, and you control the world. Learned that lesson a while ago, I did, and being the best liar in the known world has never failed me before."
"Liar, eh?" Weiss continued to search this cavern for Torchwick, extinguishing her flame as she did. If she couldn't hear where he was, it followed that he couldn't hear where she was. That meant that Weiss, with her night vision, had the advantage in this game of cat and mouse of theirs. "So none of it was true? The Amalgamations? The laboratory?"
"I'd rather keep you blind as the dumb bird we all know you are, Weissy-kins, but I was told to play the game and rub it in when I win. Well, the game's been played, and I'm the one holding all the cards, which means it's time for me to start a-rubbin'.
"Invasion of the Grimm Snatchers. It was gonna be the sleeper hit of the Sunstreet Film Festival, but I suppose now that the set and all of the actors have died in a fiery inferno, that ain't happening."
Don't think about Blake. Focus on yourself, Weiss. Blake can look after herself, but if you let Torchwick get the slip on you, you'll only be burdening her with your own rescue.
Weiss swallowed the fear and pain and kept meandering through the rubble. All she needed was a single glimpse of Torchwick, and she would have him.
"Why?" Weiss asked. There was no risk to speaking, as sounds were impossible to follow in this horrid cavern of death.
"All for you, princess, all for you. I needed to get your team out of the safety of the kingdom, and the easiest way to do it was to open the gates and watch you walk yourselves right out. Slipping the bimbo that card and then never speaking of it again? Nosy shits like you would never, ever be able to pass it up, not when I dialed the smirking to an unlucky thirteen."
At least Weiss was getting somewhere. "So you're finally dropping the mask, then? This is the real Roman Torchwick, the criminal mastermind who left his mark on Vale. Mercury piloted the paladin on your orders, and you killed him here for it."
She sneaked a glance over her shoulder, hoping to catch her enemy sneaking up from behind: nothing.
Frustration began to take hold of her as Torchwick continued to evade her. She was sure she'd covered enough area to have found him by this point, but there wasn't even a scrap of a clue to his presence. Most likely, he was moving as well, hunting for her in the darkness as she hunted for him. Weiss...didn't like that feeling, the feeling of not being 100% sure.
"Oh, Weiss. Poor, poor stupid friend Weiss. Mercury Black's corpse ain't here…Mercury Black was never involved in the first place. I only chose to have Neo dress herself up as the scamp because I knew he was both recognizable and long dead. Died from infection, after he tried – and succeeded – at offing his old man. Perfect for the whole no loose ends thingamabob."
Okay, it was official. Weiss was actually starting to get afraid. Very, very afraid. Proud Schnee scion of her distinguished family line or not, she was not liking the position she was in.
In fact, she was starting to wonder which animal she was in this game of cat and mouse.
"I bet you thought you were so clever, getting the inside scoop from 'the junior,'" Torchwick went on, even more relentless in his vicious, mocking tone. "Weiss, my friend, I saw Yang walking out of his club that night. Junior told you to come to Mountain Glenn because I paid him to."
Weiss froze in place for only a second.
She knew Torchwick was a cad, but to hear that he'd been playing her for the whole time…that he'd been the one in control of her actions since the very beginning…
Torchwick's in control here, he's hunting me, he brought me here and he has a way to find me in this darkness, he…he killed Blake, and now he's going to kill me…
Tears started to well up in the corners of Weiss' eyes. She felt so powerless right now. A tiny seagull in a dark cave, too far from her home and her kitty cat to know what she was supposed to do.
"It was pretty damn easy, too. No one ever checks the paperwork, Weiss. Ozpin didn't when I flashed some bullshit about botanists and ivy in front of him, and you certainly didn't when I showed off a fake White Fang membership card. It hurts me how little of my genius I needed at times. Just build the façade, and you never need to worry about someone peeking behind it. It's that easy."
Weiss couldn't trust herself to speak. If she did, he would hear the wobble in her voice, and it would make him even bigger and her even smaller.
"I'm guessing you're a sobbing, sniveling wreck at this point? Bad, bad energies, Weiss. You should know better."
She wanted to get out of here. She wanted nothing more than to beat her wings as fast as she could and fly over to the door and run back into the deathtrap that was Mountain Glenn, but she didn't know the way, and even if she did, all that would be up there for her was…
"B-Blake…" Weiss choked.
"There's my girl!" Torchwick boomed, his bellowing laughter filling Weiss' ears from all directions.
She couldn't take it anymore. Weiss stopped walking, shut her eyes, and crouched down.
"Toaster bot was a remote-controlled toy car with some fixings to lead you to the movie set. There were no botanists, no Amalgamations, no Miracle Aloe Vero. What we saw were plain old garden-variety liana vines; you could've found it on any search engine if you'd bothered. Sensei Shiriganai isn't even a real name – I made it the fuck up. Honestly, I sometimes even pushed my own bullshit to the limit just to see what I could get away with, and you...you choked down it all, good girl. I bet at the end, you really believed I was trying to avenge some mentor of mine by hunting down the mad scientist who killed her, didn't you?"
Weiss let out a little whelp of anguish. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to find Black's corpse, carry it to the kingdom, put Torchwick behind bars, and return to Beacon with a hero's welcome.
Her first mission…her last mission…
"It was all just to get you and the buffoon platoon out here." The suave, friendly tone of 'Sensei Torchwick' returned for a moment. "After all, wicked but unavoidable accidents happen in the wild, and if a poor untrained team and their energies go missing in the horribly dangerous wilderness that is Mountain Glenn, it's tragic is it not?" The haughty voice that truly defined Roman returned. "But hardly worthy of an investigation. And even if there is, the blast destroyed any evidence."
A rock was kicked her way from some unseen corner of Remnant and landed right between Weiss' feet.
"All of it's gone. The movie crew, the actors in their crappy makeup, your friends, Weiss, your darling girlfriend Blake Belladonna, the kitty cat to your chicken wings who loved you despite being a horrid little burdensome seagull, the one person you can count on, or, oops, I suppose I should say could count on now that she's gone. Gone, just like Ruby Rose, the trash Ozpin picked up from the gutter that never belonged in Beacon. She wanted your help getting better, Schnee, but you weren't enough to fix how broken she was. I hear she talked about quitting Beacon after I broke her little heart – that wasn't even planned, by the way, but I couldn't resist some fun. Maybe I shoulda fucked her once 'r' twice, just to drive the point home…but nahhhh, even I got standards, and kid pussy ain't on the docket. I could probably say something about the blonde chimpanzee, but you're probably thanking me for avenging the rough patch in your feathers. I heard in the teacher's lounge that things got so bad between you gals that you actually tried to resign as leader." There was a pause, and Torchwick's voice took on a particularly vicious tone of joy. "You know, you gotta wonder, if you had quit, and someone else took charge instead of you…would the ladies still be alive?"
This was a dream. Roman Torchwick couldn't know this stuff. This wasn't information any man, even a teacher of Beacon, would know. This was a bad dream. Weiss would die and wake up and it would all be over.
Soft footsteps came towards her, and Weiss opened her eyes and looked up to see…
Wait, that's not Torchwick…
Towering above her was a miniscule girl, pink and brown and white in her hair and clothing. The grin on her face seemed to threaten to swallow Weiss whole. In spite of how monstrously high she seemed rise from Weiss' point of view, weeping down on the ground, this girl was probably exceedingly short.
Torchwick's voice echoed through the cavern again. "It was all to get you four out of the safety of Beacon and then to get you, Weiss, away from the other three. You've been at the center of this story since the very beginning, and you're about to get to see how it ends."
The girl raised some blunted object that Weiss couldn't quite make out through her tears, then brought it down. There was a pain in Weiss' forehead, and things started to get fuzzy.
It's…It's the girl's shoes? What…?
The air against Weiss' cheek felt rough and cold, almost like it was made of stone.
"She's out? Good work, Neo."
Consciousness began to fade as Weiss realize what the consequences of bending over and giving up entailed.
"I'll call Mr. Schnee and let him know we've got her."
Next Chapter: Chairman Schnee
In which Weiss Schnee loses something that can't be replaced.
Author's Notes
Reread the description for Chapter 35: To Aberrate. Go ahead, I insist. I'll wait.
If you're too impatient to do it, I'll do you a solid.
CHAPTER 35: TO ABERRATE
IN WHICH WEISS SCHNEE FINDS HERSELF TRAPPED IN THE WORLD OF A HORROR MOVIE.
I mean, I literally told you guys this was going to happen. I can't even be blamed for it at this point.
So, that's how we do it here at Team Rat. If something didn't make sense in this fic or if there's a plot hole or anything, it's okay, because I've literally swept away the entire lore and B-Minus canon of Roman Torchwick in an ocean of trickery.
As you may have expected, this one's been one of the biggest twists I've written, with it being the final answer to the riddle that this entire fic has been building up towards. Not all twists are meant to be guessed, though, so if you didn't, don't think that you missed some vital clue - Weiss didn't have enough evidence to definitively crack the case, so neither would you.
The makeup was Chekov's Gun, I guess. The makeup. The Blakeup. Wow, okay, I'll never write again.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!