Author's Notes
le BEEP le BEEP le BEEP le BEEP le BEEP le BEEP le BEEP le BEEP
That's the new story alert! For some reason, it's French this time - I guess a little bit of France must have accidentally seeped in when I was cleaning it, and now the whole thing's going to be like that until it cools off! Anyways, on to the new story.
We've got action! We've got romance! We've got Freezerburn! We've even got Zwei! That's right, the epic ballad of DUST BITCH has finally arrived!
Yang didn't mean to run over that girl with her motorcycle, but can you really blame her when the young woman was lying face-down on a backroad in the middle of nowhere in Patch in the dead of night? Fortunately, Yang's unintended victim is a huntress and survived the hit, but now Yang owes her one. And in this case, one happens to mean helping Weiss Schnee avoid a trail of assassins and mercenaries dead set on stopping Weiss from traveling across half the world to get home.
Dust Bitch, the newest RatCrimes fanfiction story, will be posting next Wednesday. Be sure to give it the old gander!
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
Chapter 44 – Sense of Self
In which Weiss Schnee and Yang Xiao-Long progress to the second round of the tournament they plan to rig.
Winter sought Weiss out this time, instead of forcing her to awkwardly wait for them to bump into one another. It was at the morning of the double round starting, long before the tournament was set to begin. Right now, the stands were still being filled, and the combatants were being seated when Winter caught her.
There were no friendly greetings of acknowledgements of their sisterhood this time around. Winter just walked right up to Weiss and apologized.
"I…I was wrong. I'm sorry."
"Wrong about what?" Weiss asked. She didn't want to torture Winter like this, but she needed to know that this was more than lip service or some wrongfully learned lesson like 'Maybe Faunus can be taught to be good.' Winter needed to actually change for this to work between them.
"Wrong about Menagerie," Winter said. "A-About…anti…Faunus…sentiment. There is some, as General Ironwood discovered, following the incident –"
"The attack," Weiss corrected. "Several students were burned."
It bothered Weiss that Winter was still hiding behind the shield of General Ironwood as well. The implication was still there, that she only was meeting with Weiss now that her military master had changed his mind. It wasn't Winter's growth; it was Ironwood's trickling down to her.
"Is my name still on…the list?" Weiss inquired. "Or lists, was it?"
Winter smiled. "No, thankfully. We've managed to have it removed from any documents of interest."
Weiss smiled in response. "That's good to hear. I, Weiss Schnee, am invested in a personal capacity in the overthrowal of the Atlesian government and the destruction and/or annihilation of its military."
Winter's smile immediately dropped.
"That should be enough to get me back up on the tippy top, should it not?" Weiss gleefully surmised. "So, once it's there, please come and talk to me then."
"Weiss, you're no longer considered an enemy of the state." Winter didn't seem to hear how absurd that sounded, given Weiss' age and career as a huntress. "This is a good thing."
"I understand that," Weiss said. "But you weren't willing to speak with me when I was blacklisted. You're speaking with me now that I'm off it, but I want to see if you still wish to be my sister when it goes against the image of the perfect Specialist you've created. You need to decide, Winter, even if the choice is hard."
I certainly had to make my own share of tough choices, Weiss thought bitterly.
Winter continued to call after Weiss as she left, but she had nothing to say.
It was absolutely absurd that Willow…that Mother was being an absolute gem and Winter was the trouble relative. As for Mother, thought, she'd thrown every ounce of effort she could muster into the attempts to forge a new relationship, and Weiss was actually beginning to find herself enjoying their little virtual teatimes. It was mostly fluff, with serious topics of conversation being avoided, but Weiss had a feeling her mother would have no strong opinions about anything and would agree with whatever Weiss wanted.
It's sad to admit, but she's essentially been unplugged from the world for years now. I bet she can't even name the headmasters of the academies, let alone state any of their recent positions. The drink was a way to avoid the pain of living, so there was no point for her to keep abreast of news or world developments.
But Willow, in spite of her failings, was still a kind person, and she still had the social wherewithal to discuss things like Weiss' social circle at Beacon, their shared career/ex-career of hunting, and other such safe topics like the singing world.
Somehow, Mother had managed to keep an ear to the musical scene of Atlas in spite of her years of near isolation, and she could list off established career violinists with the same ease as up and coming pop musicians. Weiss hadn't the courage to ask how or why, but singing was something she too had an interest in, and it was…pleasant…to talk about. Quite pleasant, in fact.
It's like having a mother. A second mother after Kali, but a mother, in the same way Ghira is like a father to me even though Father is my father.
If Blake and I ever have kids, I'd never let them feel so isolated, Weiss thought. I'd be their mother, the only mother they'd need…other than…well, uh, Blake.
She hadn't meant to be thinking about her future with Blake. It had more been the topic of children, and it was more a hypothetical comparison of herself to her parents, but in the end, she'd gotten a bit ahead of herself. Potential m…m…marriage was a little bit far along the path, for now.
But…I mean…I know. There's no doubt. We've been together for less than a year, but we've been together for ten. How soon is too soon to ask? Do I ask? Does she? Do we talk about it first?
Weiss didn't know this stuff. There had to be online resources for how to do it, but she would sooner pour the milk before the cereal than trust the internet with something so precious as her relationship with Blake.
Kali and Ghira were a couple. Weiss could ask them!
…except she didn't want to speak to them just yet. It wasn't the end of their relationship, but the whole affair with Father and the intent to stack the tournament in Adam's favor was too raw.
That left one person to whom she could confide.
It has been a while since I've called Klein, hasn't it? I should probably speak to him more, regardless of the need for advice.
Weiss resolved to give him a call. She also needed to call Father and let him know that she was planning to accept his offer to…to…
If you can't say it, you won't be able to do it. And you need to do it, Weiss. For the Faunus.
She'd accepted his offer to cheat. And she was going to cheat.
There was no coming back from this.
At least she wasn't going to have to do anything unethical until the finals. Just beating her opponents fair and square up until that point was what was asked of her, what was expected of her. And if she lost before then, she wouldn't even have to cheat.
Except I would always know that I was prepared to. I would always know that I made my choice and dragged my team into it and was fully ready to go all the way.
Her team wasn't first – that was Pyrrha's, once again. They were moving in a line, going through the same order of teams from the full team round, meaning Weiss and Yang would go third today. They'd already filed a notice to have Weiss swapped out with Yang for the huntress who would go on to represent Team RWBY in the singles round, and it was only the first sacrifice they'd had to make.
Yang didn't even seem angry about it, or at least she put up a good mask to cover it up.
"We're making the world a better place by doing this," she said.
"I hope so," Weiss said.
Yang reached out a hand, and Weiss nodded.
"Weiss, I made a right knob of myself when I creamed you in our first-week-fight, and then to top it off, I lied about how I was sorry and went and did it all again." Yang wrapped her arm even further around Weiss' shoulders as they walked away from the office in charge of the Vytal coordination. "I already have done bad shit for a bad reason. Trust me when I say that this is different. This is me doing bad shit for a great reason."
Everything they said amongst themselves was true. It was for a good cause, it wasn't hurting anyone, it was their own team that suffered the loss…but Weiss knew in her soul that everything they were saying was a justification. They all still felt the need to justify themselves to one another and to Weiss.
I'm the leader. We held that vote, but I'm the one who can put a stop to this. It's not too late. Father said I can back out before the singles round – Dust's sake, I already told him no, so I don't even need to back out. I can be the one vote that stops it from being unanimous.
But she didn't. Because as much as she despised herself for going into this tournament knowing she was going to cheat, she wouldn't be able to bear to look at herself in the mirror if she let the island of Menagerie stagnate for years when she had the chance to aid it and Faunus worldwide. Weiss was a huntress; she was meant to be the one to suffer so that the world didn't have to. This was her burden, her glorious duty that she fulfilled with a smile.
Until I get there and find myself face to face with Adam, I just don't know what I'm going to be able to do. It's easy to call it unethical or necessary or any number of things now, but the look on his face could easily be enough to sway me from one way to the other.
Weiss resolved to stop worry about it. If she wasn't going to be able to decide until the moment of, there was no use needlessly stressing over it.
What was far more relevant to the moment was watching Pyrrha Nikos instead and trying to figure out a strategy to defeat her – something no other Faunus or human had ever accomplished.
When the battle began, Weiss watched it with a strategic eye, keeping a lookout for weakness in Nikos' defenses, flaws in her form, or anything that could come in handy. When Pyrrha (oh, and Nora) inevitably won, Weiss rewound the fight on her scroll and watched it again from the angle of a camera.
The match after Pyrrha's dragged on for a lot longer, giving Weiss ample time to watch the video a third time from yet another angle. She considered watching it a fourth time, but she had a feeling she already knew the outcome.
It's no different than Goodwitch's classes. Everyone was eager to test their mettle against the best there is, and we all saw firsthand that her reputation is deserved. I've thought of strategies to beat her before when it was spars and pride on the line, and they all failed whenever I watched the next bout of Pyrrha vs. Yang or Cardin or any of the other students Goodwitch paired her with. I mentally put myself in the ring next to them and swung my sword accordingly, and it always ended in failures. The openings I'd been counting on had turned out to be one-time mistakes, not repeating themselves one they'd been shown. I honestly think it may have just been Pyrrha going easy on people when her sympathy welled up in the middle of a fight.
There was no way Weiss could overpower her. She lacked the raw strength and musculature, and her rapier had always buckled against strikes from Miló. Not even Yang had been stronger than Pyrrha physically, and she was Yang.
It honestly was a good idea to send me forward anyways. My semblance is a wildcard, but Yang's brute force is weaker than Pyrrha's own as we've seen many a time.
What made it exponentially harder was the fact that Weiss wasn't going to be able to bring Myrtenaster. Pyrrha's semblance made it a liability, and while she'd never openly tore the weapon straight from a huntress' hands, Weiss suspected that if her victory were on the line, Pyrrha would take no chances.
I said it before, and I'll say it again – I refuse to use trickery in the early matches to secure a victory. That rules out emotional manipulation regarding Arc or Team White Bread Peanut Butter and Jelly. I know her semblance, but she knows mine, and my Glyphs will be even weaker if I try to use some sort of wooden staff to cast them.
Long story short, Weiss was screwed.
If I'm going to do this, I have to do this. Father said he needed to know, so if I tell him I'll win and then lose the second I step into the ring opposite the Invincible Girl, I may as well just give up on this whole thing.
She'd spent so long wondering if she should that she never even considered if she could. Perhaps throwing in the towel early truly was the best idea.
The second fight of the day ended, and that meant Weiss and Yang were next. At the very least, she could do her best to win against whatever duo she found herself up against today.
The others had been chatting amongst themselves and seemed to recognize that Weiss was absorbed in her own little Pyrrha-centric bubble, but Yang offered Weiss a mock salute and began to head down to the arena when their time came.
"You'll kick butt!" Ruby reassured her.
"Don't think about…future rounds," Blake said, going straight for the meat of the issue. "That isn't what you have to handle today. Just focus on winning against Team Nickle."
"Team Nickle?" Weiss asked. "Is that my opponent?"
"Atlesian, sending their leader Neon Katt and her partner Flynt Coal. Weapons are nun-chucks for the former and a modified trumpet for the latter." Ruby nodded. "I figured my leader would be distracted, so I oughta step up and do some research on my partner's behalf when she can't. Good luck, Weiss."
"Thank you, Ruby." Weiss could have teared up at how much the simple gesture meant to her. It wasn't the research itself but the show of support from her partner. Cheating or not, she was going to have Weiss' back on this.
Team Nickle was already in the arena before Yang got down, standing at attention. Flynt was a tall, steady looking young man wearing standard Atlesian combat armor. He was so formally dressed that the trumpet he'd hook around two fingers looked out of place.
The real surprising character, however, was his partner and leader, Neon. To Weiss' great surprise, she was a Faunus, of which there were few in the Atlesian military. Same as Flynt, she had the standard armored uniform that every cadet in Atlas got on their first day of enlistment, but she did more that wear it. Every inch of her body screamed Atlas, from the buzzcut of short dyed black hair that didn't match her eyebrows to the military stance that looked more rigid than a metal stop sign to the tail wrapped around her waist to the sheer hatred for Weiss in her eyes.
"Yes, we exist," Neon fumed. "Try not to stare."
"My apologies, then," Weiss said, unsure of what she'd done to offend this particular girl.
Well, I did call for the unseating of her government, but that was more a mind game with Winter than a real threat. I've never met a Faunus who hates Schnees before, but I've never met one in the Atlesian military before.
"Don't worry," said Neon. "When Team Nickle and I win, we'll wipe off the stain you left on this arena."
Weiss looked down at the arena and saw no stains.
"From the opening ceremony."
"The opening ceremony…where I extinguished attempted arson?" Weiss asked, unsure of how that translated to animosity.
"The opening ceremony where yet another Schnee decided she wanted the eyes of the entire world on her and didn't care who she hurt in the process," chided the cat Faunus.
Yang leaned over to Weiss. "Do you know her or something?"
Weiss could only shake her head. She couldn't recall hurting anyone during the opening ceremony. Had her Ice Dust had more of a spread than she'd thought can given Neon frostbite? She hadn't heard of any such injuries.
"Do you seriously not get it?" Neon asked, her fists clenching around her nun-chucks. "Is your skull just so thick that real thoughts can't penetrate the layer of fantasy?"
"Ensign Katt, perhaps we should just show them we mean business on the battlefield," offered Flynt, standing at attention and even saluting.
"Yes," Neon said, frowning deeply. "Let's."
When the battle began (desert on Team NICK's side and abandoned city on Team RWBY's), Neon went straight for the throat, dashing forward using some sort of semblance to glide across the floor toward Weiss. Her attempted to raise a Glyph as a barricade were too slow, and Neon got past it before it could fully go up. Her nun-chucks were about to bash Weiss' head in when Yang pulled Weiss out of the way and took the hit for you.
"Some leader," called out Neon, as she fell back following the first onslaught. "Letting your 'friend' take the hits for you. Why am I not surprised?"
"What did I ever do to you?" Weiss exasperatedly asked as she and Yang split up to avoid a sonic blast from Flynt's trumpet.
"You're Weiss Schnee," said Neon, curving around and coming in for another strike. "You make the world worse for the Faunus. Why wouldn't I hate you with every fiber of my being?"
What the hell is this? Assuming she's blaming me for my family's work with the White Fang, that should only endear her to me! We help Faunus!
"Head in the game, Weiss!" called Yang from across the arena as the distance between them increased even more.
Neon was herding Weiss away from her teammate, hoping to isolate her. While Weiss had full confidence in her own abilities as an individual combatant, she wasn't keen on letting her enemy control the flow of the battle.
Thus, when the nun-chucks twirled towards Weiss' ribs, she leapt into the air to avoid them and didn't come down.
"BITCH!" screamed Neon as Weiss flew over her head. "THIS! THIS IS WHY I DESPISE YOU!"
Yang's right. Until I'm in the clear, I'd best just assume she's insane and do my best to beat her rather than psychoanalyze her.
Flynt's trumpet sent air waves that blew Weiss off course, but the time he had it aimed on her was enough for Yang to sock him halfway across the arena, right into an already crumbling building.
Weiss course-corrected once Coal was down and landed next to Yang.
"What's the plan, boss?" Yang asked.
"Neon hates me, and she moves fast, but only on the ground. I can lead her on a wild swan chase while you handle her partner?"
"A wild seagull chase, you mean?" Yang asked, a smirk on her face.
"How the hell did…o-oh." Weiss had momentarily forgotten that she'd shared the full truth with the Rose sisters. "Yeah."
"Sorry," Yang apologized. "I shouldn't crack jokes until I know you're comfortable."
"It's alright," Weiss said. "I told you because I want you to be able to make –"
A trumpet blast from a now recovered Team Nickle reminded them that now wasn't the time.
Neon was apparently here to win, because she saw right through Weiss' attempts to distract her and didn't take the bait. It wasn't like that was a problem, though, because the fact of the matter didn't change – Weiss owned the air. Neon couldn't reach her, so Weiss could freely pummel her into the arena from above due to her lack of range. As long as Yang handled Flynt, this battle was as good as theirs.
The battle was as good as…
Weiss…Weiss owned the air, and…
Neon was screaming about the opening ceremony where…
An idea started to come together in Weiss' head. An incredibly dangerous idea that would risk the battle in exchange for winning the war, but it was quite possibly the only idea Weiss or anyone could think of for dethroning the Invincible Girl.
However, if she were to implement this idea, flying liberally during the early flights might give it away. That meant that, for the time being, Weiss was stuck on the ground.
Neon and Flynt were teaming up on Yang, with the latter using his semblance to keep all her angles of escape blocked off while the former darted in for quick hits. All in all, it was a safe strategy for her semblance – pick away at the aura while never giving her a chance to go thermonuclear with her destructive semblance.
Weiss sent a wave of Lighting Dust, striking at the exposed back of Flynt, but he turned around after the attack and blew his trumpet Weiss' way. The initial copy turned around, that was, and then turned back around to Yang. The first copy followed suit a moment later, and then the second, at which point the original Flynt turned did another rotation again, and then the first and third simultaneously.
Within moments, the four Flynts were spinning out of sequences, thus keeping the pressure up against both Weiss and Yang. His trumpet was a powerful weapon, able to nearly blow them away with such force that Weiss had to stab her sword into the ground to not be blown away. And because of the delay in his copies, he could work it on multiple foes at once.
There was only one problem, though. Weiss' semblance had more tricks than just Wind Dust.
In the split second between two of the clones turning her way and the other two turning back to Yang, Weiss used a Lighting Dust Glyph to enhance the speed of her movements. Flynt saw it and adjusted his path to aim where Weiss now was, but she was perpetually in motion, already moving to another position with the speed of lightning. The trumpet's barrel kept chasing her, but at this point, his copies were no longer moving in a neat little back and forth sequence and now blowing all over the place as they lagged behind him.
Team Nickle's little strategy was falling apart. Flynt may have formed three men, but he only had the attention of one, and tracking Weiss mean he'd failed to keep Yang at bay. Like Weiss, Neon adapted to the change and stopped attacking now that a counterattack was possible, but Weiss had carefully led Flynt towards all possible spots where Neon could retreat to. Flynt controlled his clones indirectly, meaning there was nothing he could do as one of them, the third lagging one, caught Neon in its trumpet wake and sent her flying into a sand dune.
"NEON!" he cried, but he should have been more worried about himself.
Weiss and Yang converged on him at the same time, and his copies hadn't been set up to intercept both. With only one trumpet and two foes from opposite side, he couldn't stop them both.
And yet, for some reason, he didn't hesitate to turn Weiss' way and blast her.
Weiss had been so sure that he'd go for Yang, who was powered up to the maximum at this point and clearly the far greater threat, that she hadn't been ready for the air to catch her wings and send her flying out of the arena. It was a costly knockout for Flynt, though, as Yang broke his aura in one single hit, and Weiss failed to see the logic in his choice.
He took me down, but if he'd stalled Yang, I wouldn't have been able to inflict enough damage to defeat him. He was at full aura, and I was exhausting from having to jump about like a hummingbird. Why did he do it?
"HAH!" screamed Neon Katt, unburying herself from the dune and shaking the sand off her body. "Not so haughty now, Schnee! The world has seen you for what you truly –"
Yang marched towards her, causing Neon to suddenly scramble to her feet, but whatever power she'd been using to move circles around Team RWBY didn't seem to work on the sand, and she only stumbled and toppled over herself again.
Three solid punches to the core were enough to send Neon's aura to fifteen percent, giving Team RWBY the win.
The announcers declared the victory for Yang and announced that Team RWBY would be progressing to the singles round, sending their leader forward, but Weiss was more focused on her enemies at this point.
They cared more about defeating me than defeating Team RWBY. Gods, what did I do to inspire such hatred? I seriously don't know.
Flynt and Yang were shaking hands, seemingly more out of obligation than anything, but Neon was glaring Weiss' way. Teams were typically given a few moments to say polite words like 'thanks for a good match' or 'you guys were great' before they were expected to vacate the stadium, so Weiss approached Neon Katt of Atlas with caution.
"Here to gloat?" Neon said with a smirk that didn't quite match her loss. "Don't bother. Your teammate won, and you just tagged along for the ride."
Weiss nodded. "Yang was amazing today."
"It should be her going forward, not trash like you."
Again, Weiss couldn't find it in herself to disagree. "We mutually agreed. But, Miss Katt, I really want to know. Why –"
"Why am I not groveling at the feet of the mighty Weiss Schnee like a good Faunus slave?" Neon finished for her. "I guess I can't blame you for not knowing when all you can see is your own reflection in that silver spoon."
Weiss gestured for her to go ahead.
"You think you're some heiress-savior for the Faunus, but everything was fine before your dad showed up," Neon angrily explained. "Atlas treated us fair – equal work, equal reward, no matter the species. It's only because you keep trying to force politically correct anti-discrimination laws that don't help anyone but your company that there's any remaining anti-Faunus feelings. People don't hate the Faunus, but they hate the woke trash that you're shoving down their throats, and you keep telling everyone that you and the White Fang speak for all Faunus. Newsflash – you don't!"
Ah. So she really is just an insane Atlesian who believes racism is an SDC hoax. For a second there, I was almost worried this was the beginning of some grand conspiracy. Well, I guess I'm glad to know that they don't just brainwash humans but anyone who passed through their doors. They're equal opportunity cultists.
"You mentioned the opening ceremony?" Weiss asked.
"It was a nonviolent, relatively tame political message that no one would have even cared about, but you suppressing it makes people think Faunus really do want to extinguish humanity. You practically threatened an entire species, Schnee."
"Out of curiosity, did my last name get mentioned during your classes back at Atlas Academy a lot?" Weiss asked.
"Every day," Neon said, grinning as her chest puffed out. "I'm not like you, Schnee. I'm not a traitor who weakens the kingdom that raised me. I protect it with my life."
"You're one of the good Faunus," Weiss suggested.
Neon nodded vigorously. "Damn straight."
"Faunus and proud?" Weiss asked.
"Atlas and proud."
"I see," Weiss said. "Well then, I think this is where we part ways, Miss Katt. Thank you for an excellent match, and congratulations on defeating me."
Having heard all that she needed to hear and said all that she needed to say, Weiss had nothing left to do but turn around and leave Neon to her 'victory.'
"You'll never win, Schnee!" laughed Neon from behind Weiss. "It doesn't matter that you got through here. You'll get what's coming to you in the semifinals!"
Weiss just ignored her, too focused instead on her trappings of a plan for Pyrrha Nikos to be bothered. It was a long shot, and it required preparation, but it might work, and Weiss had no other options.
"I'm glad it's you and not that blonde gorilla," Neon taunted to Weiss' back. "The team and I will bust out the popcorn and watch you be torn to shreds when you get to the semifinals! No, to feathers, you dumb pigeon!"
When someone tried too hard to be hurtful, Weiss often found they lost the ability to inflict actual pain. After all, it was difficult to care about the opinions of someone so ignorant. Weiss had just never expected a fellow Faunus to be so…so…so Atlas.
"Bwak-bwak-bwak! Tastes like chicken! She's gonna fry you alive, Schnee! Penny will cremate you!"
Next Chapter: Stacking the Odds
In which Weiss Schnee lays the groundwork for a series of impossible fights.
Author's Notes
Atlas dug in its heels, and this is the result.
It's weird. On the one hand, holy shit, this fic is nearly over! It started in June of last year, and it's long enough to run for a full year, making it my longest posting fic ever, and we're nearly at the end.
On the other hand, 44 out of 53 means we've still got about 20% of the entire story left, since 9 chapters is a lot even relatively. That's over two months of posting, as it is.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!