Chapter 45 – Stacking the Odds
In which Weiss Schnee lays the groundwork for a series of impossible fights.
Flying high into the sky to make private calls with Father may have worked when the entire population of Beacon and the Vytal festivalgoers were all distracted by ongoing fights, but a flying girl in the sky would be too conspicuous now that people were actually around to see it.
Thus, to ensure her privacy, Weiss instead reserved a room at the CCT and purchased a private, encrypted line to speak to Father. For moral support, she asked Blake to join her and was promptly informed by the cat Faunus that tonight was too busy, as a new novel had found its way to the Beacon library – the missing seventh in a series of nine, meaning it unlocked three more books for Blake to read.
After playfully threatening retribution for the blatant excuse to not have to deal with Weiss' father, Weiss offered it to Ruby only to immediately realize how disastrous that could turn out and quickly rescind it. Ruby was too innocent and too vulnerable to manipulation to spend time in the room with Jacques Schnee; according to Blake, she'd nearly cost Blake negotiations regarding the paladin by blabbing some team secret that she wasn't supposed to.
That meant that Weiss was accompanied by none other than the last remaining teammate to keep her company – Yang.
"Don't speak. Let me do the talking. I can handle him, I'd just rather not be alone."
"Dick move of Blake to ditch you, then."
Weiss shook her head. "She would come if I insisted. I sort of…soft-asked her in a way that only she would recognize, leaving room for a denial that she accepted."
"I guess it'll be good to finally meet the celeb dad of the team," Yang said as the two of them filed into the room Weiss had bought out. "I'm the only one who hasn't yet."
"That's also part of it," Weiss explained. "I…I think you need to hear him speak to truly get him. Second-hand stories can't truly describe the grease that you can hear in his voice."
"I don't get it…do you hate him?" Yang asked. "I thought he was, like, some superhero for the Faunus. You said he did all those things to impress you when you were born."
"He did all those things because his daughter was a Faunus, and he didn't want his legacy to be treated as a second-class citizen. It's not out of a deep love for me…but…well, he does care. In his own way." Weiss shook her head. "I just disapprove of his lack of personal morals. He does good things, but he'd be willing to do bad things. Now hush, the call is starting."
Yang hushed and took a step backwards to allow Weiss to be front and center for the screen as the image of Father appeared.
"Daughter."
"Father."
"Have you reconsidered my proposal?"
Weiss nodded. "I have, and I agree. I will see it completed."
Father nodded. Weiss noted that he didn't express any approval at this decision – no 'good, good' or 'I'm glad you saw reason.' Perhaps he truly didn't want her to be forced to do it and would be willing to let it go if she said no.
It didn't matter, though. She wasn't saying no. But she was saying something.
"But I need aid with it. My opponents will be incredibly powerful, and the strategies I have come up with to defeat them require aid."
Father did his trademark fingers-woven-in-front-of-the-mustache maneuver. Weiss couldn't help but notice his eyes drifted to Yang, pretending to notice her when he'd clearly seen her this whole time. "Elaborate."
"There was a recent attack on Amity Colosseum. Anthrosurgent is suspected."
"I've heard," Father said.
"They used what I assume was a composite mixture of Dusts to light a flame that would not go out." Weiss did her best to imitate Father's steely, unflinching gaze. "I need the SDC to determine the composition so that I can recreate it."
Father shook his head. "Out of the question."
"What?" Weiss immediately dropped the impression of Father in favor of the outrage she was feeling. "I…I need this to win! To do as you asked!"
"You cannot be seen using a weapon that was so recently seen employed by terrorists. Weiss, can you even imagine the insinuations?"
"I quashed any insinuations when I extinguished those flames, Father."
"I don't care." Father shook his head. "Find another way."
"There is no other way," Weiss said. "This doesn't have to be some secret. I can go to the headmasters and inform them of my intent to use it. Hell, I could even tell Pyrrha and it wouldn't change things."
"We're not going to be hosting a press conference announcing the SDC's new modus operandi is replicating terrorist technology for use in sports."
"If it's merely a unique composition of existing Dust crystals, there's nothing –"
"No."
"Terrorists have used guns before, but you don't –"
"Weiss. I said no."
The call ended from the other end. Weiss considered trying to redial it and reach Father again, but if he'd decided he wasn't going to budge, there was no point.
"Damn," said Yang. "He asks you for help and then ties your hands? I kinda get what you meant. But, like, wasn't he supposed to be the unscrupulous one? Why do you need magic Fire Dust that doesn't burn out?"
"Pyrrha can't fly," Weiss said.
"What?! Impossible!" Yang nearly fell backwards in surprise, before immediately straightening out. "Uh, yeah. No shit."
"So, and I'm gonna need you to follow me here, if I light the arena on fire and fly up while she's stuck down there…"
"Then it really will look like you borrowed recipes from Anthrosurgent's cookbooks," Yang concluded, crossing her arms. "I kinda agree with yer old man here, Weiss-cream. Not a good image, especially when the attack was the only thing that convinced Irondick not to start a war."
"I stopped the attack," Weiss said.
"You did," Yang said. "You responded faster than the fire department and extinguished flames using the Ice Dust you just happened to have on hand that perfectly worked to put out the fires. Sketchy, sketchy, Weiss."
Weiss nearly turned towards Yang in rage.
"I know, I know, but to someone who isn't personally familiar with you, it almost looks like you knew there was going to be an attack and were prepped for it."
"D-Does it?" Weiss asked. To her, it had seemed so obvious that her desire to stop Anthrosurgent's message was a genuine one, but…
In hindsight, it was quite cinematic. The Faunus angel heiress rising when no one else could, freezing over a message of hatred and retuning to applause from her peers.
"Curses. I guess I won't be beating Pyrrha, then."
"Not with Fire Dust," Yang said. "But you are right about one thing – you can fly forever without spending a drop of aura. If you can somehow make the ground hazardous to stand on, doesn't even matter how, then you fly away, dodge rifle fire, and outlast her to a victory."
"But I've no means to make the ground hazardous without the modified Fire Dust," Weiss proclaimed. "It couldn't be extinguished, meaning Pyrrha would have no means to fight it. If I use regular Fire Dust, she could just stamp it out. The solid cement ground wouldn't even catch."
"Not fire, then." Yang offered, stroking her chin in thought and slapping a hand against the complimentary desk. "C'mon, Schnee. You reserved the room for an hour, meaning we have time to brainstorm here. Let's get to work."
In the end, Weiss had to extend their reservation for three more hours. Each time the hologram appeared and asked them if they were finished, both girls felt so close to a breakthrough and didn't want to give it up.
It had to be a Dust based attack, as chemicals or other ordnance were strictly prohibited in the Vytal Tournament. That limited them immensely, but it wasn't the end of everything, for Weiss wasn't an expert in chemicals or other ordnance.
No basic type of Dust would work, they had decided almost instantly, other than perhaps Ice. If Weiss were to freeze the arena beneath her and force Pyrrha to succumb to hypothermia, it could conceivable work. The problem with that theory was that Weiss would need to hook a cart of Ice Dust to an ox in order to haul enough crystals to lower the temperature by that much over the entire stadium for such a prolonged time. The aura consumption from that many Glyphs would probably exhaust her first.
Fire could be put out, Rock could be avoided, Plant wasn't harmful enough, Wind wouldn't wear her down, Hard Light was a defense and not an offense. Weiss could easily use these Dust types to send a barrage down to Pyrrha, but knowing Nikos, she would shield up or just avoid them. It had to be something that polluted the entire arena and couldn't be protected against.
"Is there Radiation Dust?" Yang asked.
Weiss scratched her chin for a moment.
"W-Whoa, I was kidding."
"And so was I," Weiss admitted. "Rock Dust can form any type of mineral or geologic feature you can wish, meaning that there would be uranium if I made the correct types of ore, but it wouldn't be enriched. Also, that would kill Pyrrha before it disabled her."
"Scratch that idea, then," Yang said. "Gravity? Make her float away?"
"Gravity requires aiming, and it would only bring her closer to me in the air."
"Electricity?"
"Again, requires aiming," Weiss said. "Yang, it has to be something she can't dodge. She's too limber to hit and too dangerous to get close too."
"I get it, I get it." Yang looked down at their painfully short list. "You wanna fly up, crouch over her head, and drop a load down onto her face that gets everywhere."
Weiss was really starting to regret giving Yang permission to make bird jokes.
"Do Dust combos make poison?" Yang asked.
Weiss shook her head. "Plant Dust can't create plants, only accelerate the growth or, theoretically, evolution of small plants and organisms that are already there. I've no idea what I'd create and if it would create some debilitating toxin. Plus, Pyrrha would have to be exposed to it, and unless she eats my plants…"
"You said Rock Dust can make any metal, right? How about lead?"
Weiss considered that for a moment. "Again, she'd have to get it inside her body, and again again, it would kill her. I'm not looking for a lethal option here."
Yang pondered that for a second. "How about unconsciousness? She passes out, you fly back down and scoop her up before she gets seriously harmed, and drag her away."
It sounded like what Adam had done to Cardin. Weiss was okay with that, but she insisted to Yang that there be no true danger to Pyrrha.
"I refuse to endanger a life in order to fulfill Father's wishes."
"Can Dust make a gas?" Yang asked. "A dense one that suffocates her, like carbon dioxide? Burning plants and releasing it?"
That…That was actually a viable idea. Not burning the plants – she'd never make enough biological matter without the ox cart from before, and the smoke inhalation would affect her in the sky – but the idea of creating a mass of dense asphyxiant to deplete Pyrrha's oxygen until she yielded.
Plants wouldn't work, but if she could find a way to condense them into pure carbon for a combustion reaction…
"Anthrakes," Weiss whispered. "Anthrakes! Oh, Yang, I could kiss you!"
"W-What? Who? Me?"
Weiss nodded up and down excitedly. "It's so clear now! I'm not even sure how I didn't see this before! You're a genius!"
"I…I am? I mean, uh, yeah! Hell yeah! Go Yang!" She pumped a fist in the air in triumph.
Okay, that was too good an opportunity. Weiss waited patiently, her smile not dropping.
"…so…h-how am I a genius?" Yang said at long last. "What are androids?"
"Anthrakes," Weiss explained. "There's a mineral, formable with Rock Dust, known in scientific circles as anthracite. It's basically pressurized biological matter that's on the reactive path to graphite but isn't yet there. Historically called anthrakes, they were what primitive humans and Faunus mined before Dust was discovered as an energy propellant. A dirty, filthy substance, it barely produced two orders of magnitude lower power than Dust and had many nasty chemical side effects – carbon dioxide among them."
Weiss looked up excitedly at her teammate.
"If I replaced the other chambers of Myrtenaster with enough Rock Dust…and filled my pockets…and carried a few large chunks in both hands…I'd only need a speck of Fire Dust to ignite it. It would be more than enough to drown Pyrrha in an ocean of asphyxiant, held together by the force fields. And she would think I was trying to use it as an explosive and not even notice until it's too late!"
This was actually happening. Weiss could barely contain her giddiness as the prospect of having a strategy in hand that could dethrone the Invincible Girl. It didn't matter if it was for all the wrong reasons or for Father or the Faunus or whatever. Weiss had come up with this. Weiss and Yang.
"Okay, may I hug you?" asked Weiss. "Because I gotta hug you."
Yang had barely finished nodding before Weiss had thrown herself around her.
"I gotta say, I like this," Yang said.
"Still with Blake," Weiss said, not leaving the hug.
"Not…snrk…not that, Weiss-hockey. Just…earning the win. You and me brainstorming ideas instead of stealing the tricks from terrorists for an easy victory. We had to use our heads and work for the victory. This feels more fair."
"Fairer," Weiss corrected automatically, ushering as many thoughts of Adam as she could out of her mind. "And…you're right. It does."
The best part about the strategy was that, short of the SDC running out of Rock Dust, Weiss could apply it in every round of the doubles. She could, in theory, but she wouldn't, since people would wonder why she didn't use it on Adam if she started to regularly employ it. That meant treating it as some last-ditch high-risk effort to defeat the Invincible Girl herself, but the strategy itself was still genius.
Weiss and Yang were still coming down from that high when they made their way back to their dormitory to hear voices coming from inside. The pair of huntress stopped outside.
"You wanna tell Ruby and Blake, or me?"
"I would never have thought of it without you, Yang." Weiss nodded. "You should be the one."
Yang nodded, grinned a little, and let a little laughter sneak out.
"Wassup, bitches?!" she loudly asked as they entered the door. "You're looking at…t-the…"
The voices hadn't just been Ruby and Blake. Winter was with them, her arms crossed behind her back.
In spite of their triumphant creation of a strategy, Weiss couldn't help but recall that that hadn't been why they'd gone to the CCT.
We were informing Father of our intent to cheat in the tournament. That's what Blake and Ruby still think we were doing. And now, Winter just shows up here?
"Sister," Weiss said amicably. It wouldn't do so sound defensive or nervous. "Welcome to my humble abode.
"Your teammates have been most accommodating," Winter said.
Weiss glanced at Blake, who betrayed no emotion.
"I'm glad to hear it."
"I was hoping to meet up with you, and we chatted while you were out." Winter then did an odd behavior – she stuttered. "M-Might I ask where you were?"
Weiss had no idea what Blake or Ruby had already told Winter, meaning that she couldn't answer without potentially contradicting herself.
Blake caught on quickly and answered to fill the silence. "Weiss and Yang were out celebrating their victory."
So, they hadn't already told her anything. Odd that she would show up to Team RWBY's dorm and wait for up to three hours without asking where I was.
"Ah." Winter nodded slowly, looking uncomfortable. "You'll be progressing to the singles round, then, will you not, sister?"
Weiss nodded. "It was originally to be Yang, but we decided…"
"…we decided as a team that it would be better for Weiss to proceed," Yang finished for her, equally guarded. Weiss was pleased to see that the rest of the team wasn't keen on giving Winter anything.
"I'm most proud of you, then. Now…I was hoping we might spend the, ah, evening together, sister?"
Weiss looked Winter over. She was awfully jittery compared to usually, which was not at all. Alarm bells started ringing in Weiss' mind.
"Is my name back on the blacklist?" Weiss asked, recalling their most recent conversation.
"Hmm? Oh, no. The general would never…I did not think there was sufficient…reporting you when you only…i-it wasn't because…it…th-the list…"
Weiss patiently waited for Winter to spit out the next excuse, but it never came.
Winter brushed her Specialist coat, straightening it out. "I did not add your name back to any watchlists, but it was more because doing so would never last. It would only give an administrative intern a headache, and I do not believe such a symbolic gesture would prove anything."
"I do," Weiss said. "Winter, you're still choosing Atlas over –"
"Let's spend the day together," Winter interrupted. "Sister."
This was a trap. This was some sort of trap. Weiss had no clue if Winter was wearing a wire or if she had a platoon of shock troops waiting just outside, but her sister was behaving far too insistently on 'spending time together' for her not to have ulterior motives.
"Sadly, I'm unavailable at the moment," Weiss said, stepping over to her desk to fiddle with some homework papers she'd left on it. "But I'd be happy to at a later date."
When you don't have whatever you've set up for me ready.
"Perhaps we could partake of Vale's cultural scene," Winter powered on, ignoring Weiss' answer of no like it hadn't even been said. "You like Vale, do you not?"
Was Winter trying to get Weiss to admit to being disloyal to Atlas or something? Well, she wasn't wrong.
"I do like Vale," Weiss said. "Very much so, above many other locations." I hope the microphone caught that, General, because it was meant to.
"Excellent!" Winter said, a bright smile popping up on her face. "Let's catch a movie together!"
From behind Winter, Blake was shooting Weiss an extremely uncomfortable look. She also knew Winter and knew that this abnormal behavior was only made even more abnormal by the fact that Schnees rarely cared to watch movies. Perhaps they attended opera houses, theatrical productions, or stage plays, but cinema was never their go-to 'bonding' event.
"A…movie? At a movie theater?"
Winter nodded. "I know the perfect movie. It's called Exterminator 2: Adjudication Day. The sequel to the first film in the Exterminator franchise."
"I…I haven't heard of it. Or seen whatever first one."
"No need; it's said to be standalone."
"No, it isn't," said Ruby, looking at Winter like she'd just said the moon was whole. "The first one ends with generative AI robots taking over the world and humanity starting a resistance. You kinda have to see it to know what's going on. I mean, for Dust's sake, the trailer for the Adjudication Day showed a character from Ex one."
"Trivial," Winter said, waving her hand and not even bothering to look at Ruby. "What do you say, Weiss? I've already bought us two tickets."
Weiss just shook her head. "As I said, I'm busy."
"Well, then." Winter reached into her pocket, and it took everything Weiss had to not reach for Myrtenaster. "I've already bought the tickets. I'll just leave them here, in case you wish to take a teammate." She placed the two slips of paper onto Blake's desk, the nearest one to her.
Weiss stepped over, picked up the tickets, and looked them over. Nothing seemed out of place – they were genuine movie tickets to Stonehouse Theaters for the Exterminator sequel Winter had been talking about. Surprisingly, the date on the tickets was…yesterday?
"Thank you for your generosity, sister." Weiss pocketed the tickets. "I'll consider it."
"That is all I ask. That you consider it. That you consider it."
"I…sh-shall. Is that all?"
Winter nodded. Without another word, she stepped out of their dormitory and left.
Weiss immediately took out the tickets and began to inspect them with a greater eye for detail that she couldn't have done in front of Winter. Looking for secret messages written on them, trying to peel back a hidden layer on the paper, reading over every word for some code or cypher…but there was nothing.
"Do any of you know what that was?" Weiss asked the others.
"It was a look into the mirror universe," Blake said. "Where everyone is the opposite of their usual selves. Over there, Ruby's slow and lazy, Yang is sharp as a tack, I hate books, and you're ugly, Weiss."
"Awwww!" cooed Ruby, clasping her hands and holding them to her right cheek. "You two love each other."
"You wanna fucking go?" said Yang, raising her fists.
"I'm serious, you guys." Weiss held the two tickets apart and checked them for any differences. There were none other than a seven being replaced by an eight on the barcode. "I'm moments away from having these chemically tested. Winter isn't the type to ask me out to the movies."
"What was that about you being blacklisted, by the way?" asked Ruby.
"Atlas used to consider me a high-profile enemy of the state. They reversed that stance when I put out Anthrosurgent's fiery message, but I asked Winter to prove she cares more about me than Atlas by reinstating my criminal record."
"And instead of doing that, she shows up with movie tickets for an action film that no rich Schnee would ever be caught dead watching," Ruby said. "Exterminator is a trashy movie, Weiss. It had lots of fake blood, the actors aren't famous, three dudes' butts show up on screen, and the robots are Claymation at times. It's a B-movie, Weiss. Weird choice for your fancy-pants sisters."
The movie itself was the message, then. Winter was trying to tell Weiss something.
"Do we need to reserve our CCT room for another three hours of brainstorming?" Yang asked jokingly.
"I think we need to head on down to the theaters," Blake offered instead, shuddering.
"No." Weiss shook her head and pointed to the tickets. "The date's passed."
"We can buy fresh ones," Ruby said. "You have the dough."
"It's not that. The message wasn't that she wanted me to watch this crappy movie or she wouldn't have specifically given me dud tickets."
"Before we go any further, are we sure we want to hear this message?" asked Yang. "I mean, your sister was the one who nearly started a war a few days ago. Are we sure she's on our side? How do we know this isn't actually a trap? Or a red herring to get us to waste time?"
"We don't," Weiss said, setting down the tickets.
It made her very uncomfortable that Winter's message came the very same day that Weiss had agreed to cheat in the tournament for her father. The timing was very convenient, but then again, they were rapidly approaching the finals of the Vytal Festival Tournament. Things were heating up. Time was becoming limited for important missives to important people, so two in one day wasn't inconceivable.
"I've seen the movie," Ruby said. "Five times. Let me take this one, Weiss."
Weiss looked back down at the tickets.
"You're the leader, not the doer. I can focus on it while you handle the other important stuff like Pyrrha. I'm the best suited for it, after all."
Weiss pocketed one of the tickets, but she handed Ruby the other. She and Yang had come up with the anti-Pyrrha strategy, so Weiss supposed she could delegate this one over to Ruby, especially since she had asked for it.
"I'd offer to join you, but I've no taste for movies," Blake said. "I'll help with the Pyrrha countermeasures instead."
Weiss chuckled awkwardly. "About that…"
"I'll be around," said the actor on the big screen.
"He's already said that," Blake complained to Ruby. "Four times!"
"It's the most famous quote from the first movie. Now hush!"
Next Chapter: Singled Out
In which Weiss Schnee finds herself face-to-face with an invincible opponent.
Author's Notes
Ignore the time Weiss referenced having watched the movie in question, and Ruby didn't know it. Ignore that. Stop thinking about it, right now.
It's no secret that Weiss would never beat Pyrrha in a straight fight. Thus, it's all the more motivation for her to make the fight noticeably less straight (like I make most of the ships in my fanfics).
Happy rats, and don't do crime!