Ch 29 - Iron and Blood

A/N: So, uh, before we get to the story, is there still, like serious interest in this? Cause, like, quite a few of the last updates only get a review or two. Just, curious, you know? I'm having a lot of fun with my Murder Drones fic right now, so I'm just curious to see if there's still interest in this. I get it's probably vain, but my main motivation to keep writing is reader engagement, and only getting like a 1 or 2 comments on an upload really kills it for me.

So I know something from a Bismark quote ("The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood") is a bit weird, but it felt appropriate when I was thinking on a chapter title.

We're back to Atlas now, and if you thought things were getting bad before, they're about to get worse. Once again, I want to emphasize just how dangerous an unchecked darkwraith can be. Kirk already has a body-count in the hundreds in Mantle alone. And that number is about to skyrocket.

Trigger Warnings: Mass murder, death, and dismemberment.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belonged to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.

(Penny)

Awareness creeping in for the second time was almost as jarring as the first. Now braced for it, Penny closed her eyes, focussed solely on the sound of her breathing, and took slow, deep breaths. A cold wind caressed her skin, giving her goosebumps, and making her shiver, and it took everything she had to not be overwhelmed by that. I'm a real girl again. She shook her head. I'm always a real girl, she corrected herself… and then felt doubt burrowing in her abdomen, reminding her of all the things she had now that she didn't before. But this is a bit more real than usual, she offered as a mental compromise. She opened her eyes, and surveyed her surroundings. The skylines of Atlas greeted her, the black of the night chased away by neon lights, billboards, skyscrapers, streetlights, and more alternative sources of light pollution than Penny could count. The young woman herself took in her surroundings, noting the biting wind and the fact that she was on top of what appeared to be an apartment building. Nearby were three more identical high-rises, and a quick trip to the edge of the roof to take a look revealed that it was evidently the result of an eccentric architect's machinations. Four identical buildings were built in a square, and some ten floors below her the space between the structures had been bridged between, resulting in a park of sorts hundreds of feet above the streets, a fountain in the center and trees and plants heated by dust lamps at the midpoints between the buildings, with benches spread about. Doubt was replaced by foreboding, and the implications of her presence here began to sink in.

Okay, the darkmoon girl thought. I've been summoned to Atlas by accident, and Vyliria has no idea. That's bad. Since I'm in Atlas, that means there's an invader nearby, also in Atlas. That's also bad. Most likely, that invader is Kirk, which is very bad. Penny groaned. She had just been trying to do something nice, but instead she screwed up so badly that she couldn't come up with an analogy to describe the sheer magnitude of her screw-up. But she was here, and that meant she had a covenant to fulfill.

But she was also in Atlas, and she'd had a scroll in her pocket when she left (the same scroll she'd been given when she first went to Beacon, as it would be very bad if a seemingly organic girl answered a scroll call with her own brain and no scroll in sight). She reached into her hoodie, fishing the communications device out of her pocket, desperately hoping… and it had signal. Her eyes widened, and she immediately went to her contacts, and General Ironwood was in range. Her heart was thundering in her chest as she grinned, not caring about how the dust a phantasmal copy of a scroll managed to work and be able to network to the local CCT, and instead immediately going to make a call. Six rings later, a moderately groggy voice picked up, its tone incredulous.

"Penny?"

"Hello General Ironwood! I'm sorry if I woke you up, and I apologize for the circumstances, but I am currently in Atlas as a Blade of the Darkmoon, which means that an invader, most likely Kirk, is near my current location. My scroll seems to work for calling you, but can you track its transponder?" Penny quickly rattled off.

There was the sound of rapid movements on the other end of the call, shortly followed by. "Yes! Keep your scroll on, Penny. I'll route reinforcements to your location immediately. Do you have a means to track the invader?"

"I do, sir. I will find and engage them as soon as we're done speaking."

"Excellent. I'm also routing specialist Schnee to your position. You've already done Atlas a great service, Penny. Stay safe until backup arrives."

"I'll do my best, general!" Penny eagerly replied, and then ended the call.

Turning around, she scrunched her face up as she battled down a sudden wave of nervousness. She was combat ready. Darkmoon ready. She could do this. She didn't need to beat Kirk, or whoever the invader may be, she just needed to keep him from killing more people until Winter and the other reinforcements the general was sending arrived. "I can do this. I uphold the vows I took. I can make Vyl proud," she whispered, psyching herself up.

The not-currently-a-gynoid relaxed a bit, and deployed Floating Array from her backpack, once again not thinking about how that worked, and jogged over to a roof access door, going for the doorknob and raising an eyebrow in alarm. The door opened without issue, and a quick look showed it had been forced open. The likely suspect was the invader themself, and Penny assumed that they had formed on the same roof she had, and then started working their way down. Taking the stairs as fast as she safely could, now acutely aware that she had neither her normal durability nor aura as she was, she got down to the uppermost floor. Going into the hall, the first door she saw had also been forced open. Storming into what looked to be a living room, blades at the ready, she found nothing, and continued on cautiously. Empty kitchenette, empty bathroom, and then she came to the bedroom, froze at what she saw, and got to experience the distinctly unpleasant sensation of trying not to vomit for the first time. The desiccated corpses of a man and a woman were both in the bed, throats slit, and dried out faces locked in an expression of fear. Drained of their humanity while unable to scream as they choked on their own blood. As undeniably effective as it was brutal.

Penny swallowed, and forced herself to turn around and leave the apartment. There was nothing she could do for those people anymore. Stepping back into the hallway, she (metaphorically, rather than literally, as she usually did) scanned the other apartment doors she could see. Every one of them was also forced open. Penny shuddered, running a quick estimate in her head. From where she was, she could see ten doors before the hallway turned at the end of the building, and likewise nine doors in the other direction, with an elevator after the first 4. With the building's floors shaped as a square, and assuming that there was an elevator on the opposite side of the building, this floor probably had thirty-eight apartments. In a "best" case scenario, with an average of two people per apartment, the invader had killed roughly seventy-six people on this floor alone. Thundering down another flight of stairs, she barged in on the next floor, only to find another two hallways lined with doors that had been breached. Penny's breathing was shallow. This darkwraith killed so many people without even one of them raising some sort of alarm. She made it two more flights down before she had to stop, feeling dizzy and nauseous at the same time. The enormity of the evil she'd stumbled on hit her like a brick, and the mental image of Vyliria's most recent death cropping up at the reminder certainly didn't help. Some three-hundred people were killed tonight alone, and she still hadn't located the invader. What kind of… of demon could do this? At least the Grimm were creatures of instinct. But this… someone had chosen to do this. Penny's eyes hardened, and she jumped back to her feet. This had to stop. Now.

Five more flights of stairs, each floor the same as the previous four, and Penny's anger only increased at the sights and implications thereof. On the sixth, however, only four doors had been forced open, and at the opposite end of the hallway she was facing, the door to the sky-park lay fully open in what was one of the most obvious signs of a trap Penny had ever seen. The Blade of the Darkmoon realized the chime of her summoning had been noticed by her foe, and he must have halted his progress to prepare to fight her in a more advantageous position. She grit her teeth. If this monster wanted a fight, she'd give it to him. In a whisper, she applied Darkmoon Blade to her armaments, and then she crept down the hallway, Floating Array fanned out in a ring around her, reaching the exit door without incident. Taking a breath, she sprinted out the door, checking left and right, before taking in a sharp breath as she turned around, blades whirling as she just barely remembered the other direction she should have checked. With a ringing and an eruption of arcane sparks, a barbed, glowing red sword clashed against three of her own blades, the glowing form of the invader rebounding from the strike and then springing off the wall towards her once more. She rolled back, a shield lit by ominous energies slamming into the ground she'd just occupied and cratering it with a crunch. The darkwraith rose to its feet, settling into a neutral stance, and Penny raised her own guard once more.

A thorned helmet tilted a fraction of an inch to the side. "You're not Avalon," a sophisticated, raspy voice issued out from the being that could only be Kirk. That helmet then shifted back slightly, as if its bearer was surprised. "The Darkmoon whore took on a pupil?" he asked, sounding genuinely incredulous.

"Don't call her that!" Penny yelled back, surprising herself that she spoke before even thinking about it.

"I don't know whether I should laugh or be insulted by the fact that you think you can best me alone," Kirk replied.

She glared, rage and adrenaline pumping through her veins. "How can you kill so many people and not even care?!" Penny shouted at him. "What could possibly be worth all this?!"

Kirk's hands clenching tighter around his weapons were the only hints Penny got that she'd made him angry. "Why I tread this path is far beyond your understanding, mortal," he spat. "Beyond even the Irithyllian bitch's understanding." He shifted his footing. "When I banish you back to cower between her legs, be sure to tell her who sent you."

Penny blinked, and almost died. Two of her blades crashed against Kirk's sword, the darkwraith having closed distance in a fraction of a second, and her weapons were battered aside just like the next four that she desperately threw in the path of his shield. Backpedalling, a flick of her wrist brought another four in line just in time to barely block Kirk as he spun and launched another slash at her. His foot shot out in a kick, and Penny gave a choked scream as she felt and heard ribs break. She tried to make space, tried to make an opportunity to reach for her estus flask, but the darkwraith had none of it, closing in on her once more, a malevolent red glow building on his shield before he slammed it against an attempt to attack with four of her blades. Metal snapped, some shards grazing her arm and lighting the limb up with pain as the shield struck and outright broke through them, continuing on and scoring a cut on her collarbone. Guard smashed wide open, she tried to do something, anything, to put up a continued defense, but then Kirk's sword flashed forwards.

Penny's view tumbled end over end a few times, before bouncing on the ground, spinning twice before coming to a stop on her side. She didn't even want to know what kind of strike could send her tumbling like that. She blinked, suddenly delirious, and then she saw her body stumble forwards and collapse to the floor, a headless neck fountaining spectral blood onto the slate tiles of the path. Realization flooded her as Kirk walked by her view, already dismissing her and strolling back to the door to continue his grisly work. The darkwraith had decapitated her. Her phantasmal body was beginning to evaporate away in a wash of blue motes of light. Penny's vision was rapidly tunneling, awareness slipping away, but she still felt the unbridled terror that hit her fading brain full-force.

I don't want to die.

I don't want… to die...

I don't want…

I… I don't…

(Kirk)

Now that the irksome distraction had been dealt with, the Knight of Thorns was shifting his focus back to the task at hand. Thirty-six score and five more victims drained of their humanity was putting him tantalizingly close to the completion of his goal. In fact, a single extra invasion of this scale would put him over what he needed. If he could continue this one undisturbed, he might even finish the task tonight. Though…

Kirk paused for a moment. Regardless of how poor she fared against him alone, Avalon had still taken a pupil. The Darkmoon certainly had surpassed the skill needed to pass said skills onto another, but to his knowledge, despite meeting multiple promising candidates in the form of other unkindled during the Age of Fire, she hadn't offered to induct a single one of them into her order. Perhaps he shouldn't have been so hasty in slaying the girl. He may have been able to force her to give insights, if not an outright answer as to why Avalon had chosen to take someone under her wing now, and why her specifically. The darkwraith shrugged. It was all idle speculation anyways, and there was no point crying over lost souls. He had work to resume anyway.

Or he would have, had not the faint flap of wing-beats altered him to danger. Without thinking, he threw himself back indoors, a fireball blasting into the space he'd occupied a moment later. Tucking out of his roll, he already heard people screaming, and narrowed his eyes. Whoever had just alerted his prey after taking so many of them silently had just earned his personal ire. A door burst open behind him, a man screaming once more upon seeing him, before he began to flee in the opposite direction. More humans began to follow. Some manner of white-and-blue Grimm landed where the fireball had, and then evaporated away as the woman riding it hopped off. Slate-blue eyes flicked to the disappearing body of the Darkmoon, and then leveled upon him with an incandescent glare.

The young woman was tall, fair of skin, and with what would otherwise be long, snow-white hair tied back in a bun tilted to the left side of her head. Some bangs escaped the bun, running down the right side of her face, and a much smaller, curled lock of hair ran down the left side, stopping before her shoulder. Her knee-length coat was held together at the waist by a dark blue clasp, predominantly white but with blue highlights upon the shoulders and back. Beneath it was a white-collared undershirt with a blue tie bearing a red brooch, and between it and the lapels of her coat was a deep blue girdle with light blue highlights. Her navy blue gloves covered her wrists and met her coat without revealing any skin, and pants that reached to black boots with red highlights at the top that in turn nearly reached her knees. She drew a strange-looking sword with a crescent shaped guard, pulling some sort of trigger and opening the blade. Pushing aside his personal distaste at the nonsensical weapons of this era, Kirk merely watched as she withdrew a smaller sword from within the larger, shifting it to her left hand, settling into a fencing stance. Most likely the blade on the right would be the primary offensive tool, and the left would function more akin to a parrying dagger, Kirk thought. Though I should still watch both.

The darkwraith snorted, aggravated, and rather than yield the initiative, went on the offensive himself. The woman leapt back from his opening swing, feet planting in midair as they struck some manner of glyph that materialized from the ether. Damned mages. She sprung off the construct, which disappeared an instant later, and he crossed his sword and shield to intercept her paired blades. Steel rang against its titanite-reinforced equivalent, and he threw his arms out to open her guard, thorned boot flying out and striking her abdomen. She grunted, but was otherwise unharmed as she hit the ground and rolled, coming up ready to continue. Kirk narrowed his eyes slightly. This aura that warriors in this era employed was an incredible inconvenience. The woman lunged towards him once more, and he intercepted two swings from her blades with only his sword. He pulled energy from his darkhand into his shield, and swiped the glowing red mass of metal at his opponent, only for her to twirl back from the strike and land a glancing blow that failed to pierce his armor. He threw himself forwards, crashing into her as he tucked into a roll, thorns tearing into her clothes and aura. They crashed to the floor, and he raised his sword in a reverse grip, plunging it down, yet a minuscule black glyph caught his blade and locked it in place. Before he could attempt to break through it, it pulsed, and then detonated in his direction with enough force to throw the darkwraith back. The white haired slattern raised her smaller blade towards him as she rose to a kneel, and two moderately sized white glyphs bloomed to either side of her, clouds of small, white-and-blue, avian Grimm flapping out and screeching as they brought razor-sharp beaks and talons to bear. Kirk weathered the storm, aggravated, and charged energy into his shield again, throwing it forwards, cutting straight through several of the birds before it hit the surprised woman in the chest, taking her from the feet she'd just risen back to and sending her a good distance down the hallway, back towards the exit door where he'd dispatched the Darkmoon. He sprinted forwards, closing the gap he'd made, and she sprung back to her feet, kicking his shield behind her and managing to intercept his glowing hand with her smaller blade before he could grab her throat. With a glare that still exceeded his own, she shouted as she brought her larger sword down towards his neck, only for him to intercept it with his own blade. They struggled against each other for a few moments, Kirk already beginning to overpower her, before the quiet ring he'd already learned came with the woman's glyphs echoed from behind him.

Disengaging, Kirk threw himself back, and a sabyr, a Grimm akin to a fang-toothed great-cat, glowing white and blue, pounced where he just was, the glyph that had birthed it disappearing a moment later. With a growl, it leapt at him again, only for his free hand to catch its upper jaw, jamming his sword through its mouth before it could even attempt to scrabble at him with its claws. Using a spin to build his momentum, he threw the beast at its master before it could start to dissolve, but the woman cut through it, and a glyph resembling a clock sprung into place beneath her. In an instant, she drastically increased her speed, and Kirk actually felt concerned as he was forced on the defensive by a single mortal. He put a significant amount of his skill into keeping up with the woman, and she still managed to score several glancing blows against his armor. Having enough, the invader flared his darkhand to life, the shield it provided used to parry yet another of her strikes as he went back on the offensive, the woman's eyes widening as he matched her speed with his own. His sword clashed against her own pair, once, twice, thrice, and then he launched his foot out to kick her shin, offsetting her own stance. She stumbled, and he threw his hand forwards, the woman just barely moving her larger blade in time to prevent from being grabbed. He pulled, twisting and yanking her forwards, coming out of his spin with a swipe of his weapon that sent her sprawling. He reached his free hand out, fell energies gathering to recall his shield, only for another one of those damnable glyphs to spring up on a wall as a beowolf, again white-and-blue in place of the standard black-and-red, leapt out, catching his shield in its jaws, before smashing through the exterior wall of the building and dissolving before it could plummet to its death, his armament tumbling far to the street below. That was… aggravating. While there was no actual loss, as the tool would dissolve when he returned to his body, and the physical item it copied was still with said body, he'd have to manage without it for the immediate future.

The woman came at him yet again, now slowed to her previous speed, and Kirk met her charge head-on. He kept up well enough, meeting most of her attacks and using his darkhand to fend off the rest. He shifted back to the offensive himself, the woman forced to block and deflect increasingly often as the seconds ticked by, taking a few blows to her aura. And then she caught his sword in another black glyph. Glaring, he threw his other arm forwards, only for her to conjure another of the blasted arcane constructs around that arm as well. She took a step back, lunging forwards before Kirk could move to break himself free, blades swinging for his throat-

And the thought that a mortal would have the gall to immobilize him, after finding her own skill unable to match his, just so that she could slay him, made him snap. Molten red flames built around his free hand, and a massive burst of crimson fire erupted from his palm, shattering the glyph keeping his arm in place whilst spewing forth magma. The stuff began to eat away at both the floor and the woman's aura as it bubbled and hissed from where it had plastered the front of her body. Having been thrown back by the blast, she cried out in pain as she desperately worked to remove the stuff, aura flickering increasingly visibly across her form before it ruptured just as she got the last of it off her person. She stood to her feet, panting, and Kirk jerked his sword arm free, shattering the other glyph in the process. Yet Kirk only had eyes for the flame burning in his hand, as he snuffed it out with a cold glare. He clenched that fist. This bitch made him use that. The same damned Chaos that had ruined everything. Had ruined his family. Had ruined her. Kirk growled, seething as he began to stalk forwards. Before, the woman was aggravating, but far from enough to actually enrage him.

Now, he was furious.

He bat aside her main sword as she met him halfway, and caught the smaller one with his empty hand. He clenched his fist, and the weapon shattered, Kirk utterly uncaring as shards of metal managed to pierce his gauntlet and hand. He clenched that same hand into a fist, and threw it forwards, the woman trying but failing to dodge, the blow catching the lower left side of her face with a flash of blood finally spilling and the crunch of a cracking bone. She raised an arm, and a glyph flashed into existence, only for him to throw his sword through it, the construct shattering like glass, before the weapon whisked back to his grip with the very next motion. She swung at him with her remaining sword one more time, and with contemptible ease, he danced around it and flicked his sword in a downwards stroke. From the elbow down, the arm holding the blade dropped down to the floor, blood spurting from the stump coming from her shoulder as she screamed. Hand glowing with dark power, he reared his arm back-

-and twisted, catching the fist of the bitch from a few nights prior with the metal and wire framework mirroring her skeleton, twisting and expending the energy he had built to send her through multiple walls rather than draining the wounded woman on the floor. He turned back to finish the previous fight, only to turn again as the woman came barreling around the corner farther from him no worse for wear. A line of glyphs coming down the hallway accelerated her speed even further, and he had just enough time to bite out a mental curse upon that damned mage before he was tackled, carried down the rest of the hall and thrown back onto the platform bridging the buildings. The large woman with the hammer and the man whose leg he broke earlier were out there waiting as he came back up to his feet, and the fast bitch zipped into formation with them. Again, aura was beyond aggravating, as without healing miracles, normal mortals would have taken weeks if not months to recover from the wounds he dealt. The shriek of aircraft caused him to take note of the multitude of flying metal contraptions the denizens of this kingdom's military bore. He belatedly realized the first woman, who had limped to the door and had a glyph acting as an improvised tourniquet on her truncated arm, spitting out a tooth as she raised her remaining sword in her other hand, had just been there to stall him as the military of the kingdom arrived to surround him. Which still raised the question of how they knew he was here. He'd been quiet. Unseen. The only way they could have responded as they had was if the Darkmoon had some means of contacting them that she'd used before she engaged him…

Avalon, you utter bitch, Kirk thought, even as more of the so-called specialists that Atlas employed began to leap from other aircraft and further surround him. Even when you aren't here, you still find a way to inconvenience me at every turn. This was almost certainly going to be a losing battle, once again from numbers alone, but he was going to make certain he removed the white-haired one from the playing field before he was banished back to his body once more. He shifted his stance slightly-

And woke in his physical form with an absolutely agonizing headache, more confused than anything else. What the fuck even killed me? He silently cursed and seethed, but began to calm rather quickly. Despite the repeated setbacks and inconveniences, he'd still made incredible progress tonight, and generally good progress in the past week. Without hiding his existence being a concern, he'd been making rapid progress to acquiring all the humanity he needed, and however much his blood boiled at the mere thought of a pair of darkmoons and the sorceress, they still wouldn't be able to truly stop him. The knowledge that he could acquire his goal by the next full moon did wonders for ausaging his fury.

Though figuring out what precisely had killed him would probably do more.

(?)

A bolt was racked. A casing the length of her outstretched hand was ejected from a chamber wider than her forearm. Ciel Soleil bit her lip and suppressed a pleasured shudder as she smelled the acrid scent of the ridiculously high-grade propellant used in the round that had erased Kirk's head. Sweet dust, that had been a satisfying shot. An extremely dangerous target in the middle of combat, friendly forces all around, on a roof in the dark while she was prone in the back of an airborne Manta. Granted her scope had night-vision, ultraviolet, and infrared, but still, what she just did was by no means an easy task. Yet it was the target and only the target that had taken the bullet to the brain, and it had only been some four seconds from when the bay door opened to when she pulled the trigger on Abschied.

The custom-made sniper was gargantuan, taller than she was (though it didn't help that her height was below average), impractical to wield to begin with, nevermind on the field, and the rejected prototype military anti-Grimm sniper it was based off of had to be used by a team of two. It had so much recoil that if she attempted to fire it without either taking a knee to steady herself or use of its bipod to brace it against a solid surface, it outright knocked her off her feet. The sound of its firing caused hearing damage to anyone within roughly ten meters without protective gear or aura, without a specially designed flash suppressor the muzzle flash could be seen from the horizon, and the gun left an incredibly visible smoke ring each time it fired.

It was also powerful and accurate enough to empty an alpha Sabyr's skull from a mile away. Its rounds left the barrel at Mach 1. And the rounds she used were custom-made, mass-reactive, anti-armor, explosive fire-dust rounds designed to punch through Megoliath skull-plating before detonating inside. Sometimes when people thought she couldn't hear them, they joked that Ciel Soleil had a fetish for punctuality. Those people hadn't seen her with Abschied. Those few who she counted as friends instead joked that she had a fetish for overkill.

But when she focused on the sheer satisfaction from the sensation of her ludicrously powerful firearm bucking against her shoulder with enough force to drain half a percent of her aura… When she focused on the sight of a round several factors more powerful than needed utterly aerosolizing the previously solid, helmeted skull that was her target… When she focused on how that was enough to make her feel high… It was times like this, that she was almost inclined to agree.

(Ciel)

Ciel adjusted the altered, miniaturized version of the specialist uniform that she was wearing, stepping into one of the many hospital rooms in Atlas Academy. A long, dull white coat, marred by splotches of shades of off-white and gray in a camo-pattern, split at the back starting at the waist, the two ends of it reaching to her knees. Gray fur lined the seams, and beneath it were a darker gray pair of pants and a shirt, black, non-reflective fur-lined gloves and knee-length boots gracing her hands and feet. Lastly, her head was capped by a winter-camo military-issued ushanka. All-in-all, everything a sniper needed to be relatively camouflaged in a winter environment. The bindi on her forehead was likewise treated as to be non-reflective, and her hair was cut at exactly regulation length.

Specialist Schnee was being treated by several doctors, prepping her truncated arm for receiving one of the best prosthetics Atlesian medical engineering could provide. Her broken jaw had been wired shut, though after recovering most of the fragments of her shattered teeth (and one she'd spat out wholesale), the doctors were confident that between themselves and aura, they could reconstruct her jaw, mouth, and lower left face to be as good as new. Ciel swallowed as the other three active Ace Operatives loitered nearby, General Ironwood himself present in the back of the room as he observed the proceedings. "Cadet Soleil. Thank you for joining us on such short notice."

"It's no problem sir," she humbly replied.

"I'll keep this brief," the general continued. "As all of us will be very busy handling the fallout of tonight, and specialist Schnee needs to undergo medical procedures imminently. This is a preliminary debriefing, so you all have permission to speak freely. Winter, if you could begin?"

The specialist motioned for her scroll to one of the doctors, who begrudgingly passed it into her open, remaining hand. She began to type on it moments later, evidently using a text-to-speech function."Sir," the robotic voice on the scroll replied, "I received your call at 0214 hours. You had told me that Polendina's daughter contacted you via scroll call to inform you that she was present in the city and looking for an invading darkwraith, and had turned on her transponder so that we could track her." At the general's nod, she continued. "I used a manticore summon to reach the provided coordinates as fast as possible. I'd already been on patrol at the time, and was relatively nearby."

"You were supposed to be sleeping," General Ironwood remarked, not as a reprimand, but merely stating a fact.

"I couldn't," the specialist replied, suddenly suppressing a wince. One of the doctors hovering nearby went to reach for her, only for her to wave him off with her remaining arm. "Phantom pains already setting in," she explained, and the medical professional backed off. "I was uncomfortable with the prospect of being impaired by sleeping aids with the kingdom in crisis, and so I had thought of taking a short patrol around Atlas and hoping that would tire me out. I had it cleared with air command, and had set out. A fortunate coincidence."

"And when you arrived on scene?" Ironwood asked.

"Penny had engaged the… invader," she began, seemingly uncomfortable with the term. "As I got a visual on the scene, I confirmed the target was Kirk, but he… decapitated her, and had turned to move back into the apartment complex to continue his killing spree."

"What?!" Ciel exclaimed, and then visibly wilted as the room turned on her. "Sorry, sir," she apologized.

"It's fine, Cadet. Penny was present using similar esoteric means to those of Kirk. While her death is unfortunate, her actual body is unharmed, though we will ask her to submit to a psychiatric evaluation on her return to Atlas," the general explained.

"I engaged Kirk myself, mostly intending to stall him, as I had no illusions about actually being able to defeat him after the events a few days prior. Though if the opportunity to eliminate him occurred, I would take it. He was fast, strong. Disturbingly so. That and reflexes that I can only describe as inhuman allowed him to even keep up with me under the effects of time dilation." Ciel's eyes widened at that statement. "I am under no illusions that he was adapting to my combat style on the spot, and he was certainly starting to overpower me as the fight dragged on. However, I had gotten lucky, and managed to maneuver myself into a position such that I could land a decisive strike, only for him to cast some manner of… pyromancy," and there was another term Winter seemed disgruntled to type, "that caused an eruption of magma. I removed it from my person before it could cause harm, but it took the remainder of my aura to prevent injury long enough to do so. The engagement pressed on for a few more seconds, perhaps a minute, and then he severed my right arm at roughly the elbow. He appeared to be preparing to… drain me," and no one in the room missed her shudder, "before reinforcements finally arrived."

"We engaged him directly," Harriet curtly interjected. "And with the help of specialist Schnee, we drove him back into the courtyard and away from fleeing civilians. We kept him stalled as more operatives and military assets arrived on scene, and before he could engage us further, the girl took her shot," she finished, gesturing to Ciel.

"And it was a good one," Marrow added.

"Just doing my job, sir, maam," Ciel humbly replied.

"I'll be asking for full reports tomorrow morning," General Ironwood spoke up, after giving a nod. "Cadet Soleil, follow me. The rest of you, dismissed. Schnee," the blanchette looked up to meet the general's gaze. "You'll be on mandatory leave for the next two days. Take some time to adjust to the prosthetic and recover from the facial reconstructive surgery."

The specialist acknowledged with a nod, and then Ciel was following her superior out the door.

It was a few minutes of silence later, long after the halls they were traversing were empty, that the general chose to speak again. "Soleil. That was a difficult shot, given the circumstances. There will be a commendation on your record for this. You potentially saved a half dozen lives that Kirk might have claimed if he had been engaged conventionally."

Ciel struggled not to preen under the praise. "Thank you, sir. If, ah, I could ask something freely."

"Permission granted."

"Will Miss Polendina- that is, Penny, be okay? Mentally, because I know that you said she was fine physically?"

The general sighed. "I don't know. All our records of soldiers who had near-death experiences, or were resuscitated, all describe the experience as traumatic, and many of those people required extensive psychiatric help afterwards. While we have no experience with someone dying in such a brutal manner but then coming back, I can't imagine Penny will handle it well. We can only hope that her friends help her cope with it, and that she can remain in a relatively stable mental condition until such a time that we can provide her professional help."

"I, I see," she replied. "Is there a particular reason that you requested me here, sir?"

"Kirk has caused utter chaos in the kingdom," her superior said by way of reply, coming to a halt in the middle of the hallway, the sniper following suit. "While the official casualty list won't be made public until tomorrow, he claimed seven-hundred and thirty-five civilian lives in that apartment complex before he was stopped." Ciel felt cold at hearing that number, dread creeping down her spine. "That is the single greatest number of Atlesian deaths to a source that isn't the Grimm in one day since the end of the Great War. I checked the other preliminary reports. You were ready and boarding a Manta from full sleep in less than five minutes, no questions asked. As soon as you arrived on scene, before your pilot could even communicate with others to give you a window to disembark, you told them to open the rear door so you could take a shot, which you not only hit flawlessly, but also did so within four seconds. You dealt with the target quickly and decisively, seeking to minimize casualties, and were proactive in doing so." The general took a breath. "I need more loyal soldiers. Soldiers that I can trust. There is… a whole world of threats in Remnant that the average civilian, the average person, isn't even aware of. You have talent. You have loyalty. You have initiative. You have potential, cadet Soleil. I don't want that to be wasted. I want to fast-track you into the specialist program, and additionally read you in on several classified threats to Remnant. Understand that if you accept this, you will be under a very small collection of individuals who are aware of this information, and you cannot divulge it under any circumstances without my express permission. And there will be no going back."

Ciel swallowed. "And if I were to refuse?"

"I would still put my personal recommendation for you to enter the specialist program. I refuse to squander talent where it appears. But other than that, this conversation never happened, and you will go back to your quarters and act as such indefinitely," the general replied.

Ciel thought it over for a few seconds. The general had all but directly stated that he trusted her, and wanted her aid against threats that were so catastrophic that they needed to be kept classified from the majority of the populace. This would be a way to protect her kingdom, and serve it to the best of her ability. Not to mention that it would likely result in an increase to what she could requisition for Abschied, and it would take a lot for her to turn down something that could lead to her having the potential to make her sniper even more powerful. All things considered, she'd known her answer before she'd even started to think. "Where do we start, sir?"

The general smiled, a previously unseen tension leaving his shoulders, and Ciel already knew she'd made the right choice, and she grinned. "Believe it or not, Soleil, we start with mythology. Or to be a bit more specific, an old fairy tale."

Ciel's sudden confusion was merely the start of what was rapidly becoming a very long night.

(Vyliria)

A shrill wail interrupted the otherwise quiet night, and Vyliria shot to full attention from her solitary sword practice in the dojo. That was Penny. The scream kept going, and the unkindled thundered up the stairs two at a time, ignoring Oscar groggily rising from the couch, which was extended out to serve as an impromptu bed. Barely taking enough care not to damage the building, she reached the bottom of the stairs to the second floor and thrust her hands back, twin bursts of black flames rocketing her up to the top, tucking into a roll and coming out of it already calling the Moonlight Greatsword back to her hands. Her armor shifted back to her current combat attire without a conscious thought, finishing in mere seconds. She shoulder-checked Penny's door, outright knocking it off its hinges, ignoring the sounds of the others stirring for the time being, and took in the room. Penny's blue eye orb had rolled across the floor and sat against a wall, and the girl herself had fallen from her bed and was still screaming, body twitching as she clutched at her throat. Scanning the room and not seeing any immediate danger, she strode forwards, kneeling down and removing one hand from her blade to hesitantly put it on her partner's shoulder.

"Penny? What-"

The girl's eyes snapped open, locking to Vyliria's, and she sat up and latched her arms around the Irithyllian, the scream cutting off, only to be replaced by terrorized sobs. Vyliria drew in a breath and fought down the urge to tense her shoulders. The sobs began to quiet down after what had to be at least a few minutes, as Penny buried her head into Vyliria's chestplate, transitioning into a repeated mumble. She twisted her head, meeting the gazes of her concerned teammates (and Oscar) as they had all finally shuffled into the room, and mouthed a silent "I have no idea."

Turning around, she focused on listening, and trying to pick up Penny's mantra. When she finally managed to pick the words out, her confusion was washed away by concern and fear.

"I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die…"

"Penny?" she tried to ask again.

The gynoid seemed to realize who she was holding onto, and wide eyes opened for a moment before looking away. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I… I…"

"What happened, Penny?" she asked in a soft voice.

The girl shuddered, tightening her hold and clenching her eyes shut again. "I… I just wanted to help…" Her chest jumped a few times as she choked back a sob. "I wanted to see if I could figure out how to d… duplicate your Darkmoon things…"

Vyliria sucked in a breath. She knew Penny wouldn't be able to figure that out, but the mere fact she'd made the attempt and tried to keep it a surprise… really touched her. She swallowed. And then realized what happened. "You looked at the eye and got summoned? And since my amulet didn't go off, it had to have been Kirk."

At just the mention of the name, Penny's pupils dilated, and she started hyperventilating, falling back against the side of the bed as her hands went back to her neck. Not squeezing, but holding onto it, as if to verify it was still there. Well, shit, Vyliria thought. How the Izalith did he invade again this soon? Unless… Her eyes widened. Of course Kirk would have more than one red-eye. How the fuck would that slip my mind? Gwyndamnit! she internally seethed.

Pyrrha walked forwards, sitting down next to Penny and placing a hand on her shoulder. Penny shook, again trying to force down sobs. "What happened?" the crimson champion asked.

"He… he…" Penny couldn't finish her sentence.

"He cut your head off," Vyliria said in a quiet voice. A sob got past the gynoid's best efforts, and she nodded. She heard gasps from everyone present.

Vyliria hadn't meant for it to happen. She'd been stargazing with Yorshka, but after a particularly exhausting day of learning how to wield a sword, the fourteen-year-old girl could barely keep her eyes open by the time she'd joined the Crossbreed for their regular meetings. She'd fallen asleep next to Yorshka, and though she'd only learned of it after the fact, the draconic girl, having not known where she normally slept, had panicked and carried the smaller girl like she weighed nothing, all the way back to her own room, sneaking past eight Silver Knights in the process.

Vyliria had a nightmare. Even after years had passed, her unconscious mind would still be haunted by the prospect of them taking her away from her new home, and beating and violating her once more. She'd woken up screaming, hysterical, panicking, and hyperventilating, completely unaware of the world around her until she felt another body carefully embrace her, scooping her up and placing her in their lap, before a pair of thumbs began to rub small circles on her back. The gentle touch slowly brought her back to her senses, and the first thing she focused on was the pair of bright blue eyes on Yorshka's face looking at her with nothing but concern for her own wellbeing.

The Irithyllian (mentally) shook herself out of the flashback, but her body moved before her mind could catch up with it. Vyliria shuffled forwards, and wrapped her arms around Penny, picking her up and sitting down with the smaller girl in her lap. Her hands reached around her back and she began to rub her thumbs in small circles on the gynoid's back. The young woman froze, eyes shooting open, before her own hands slipped off her neck and she wrapped them around the Irithyllian once again. They sat there for several minutes as Penny began to calm… somewhat.

"I… I was so scared," she whimpered. "I died…"

"It doesn't get easier, Penny," she replied.

"How do you do it!?" She exclaimed. "You… you've died so many times, but you just act like it doesn't even matter!"

"I didn't handle it. At least at first. Waking up on the side of the road leaking… fluids, after having my throat slit, and feeling the darksign on me… I snapped. Spent what was probably a couple hours screaming and crying. I puked a couple times. I think I even soiled myself. Thrice. That day is a bit blurry, and for once I'm actually thankful for the curse eating away at some memories. The mind isn't built to handle experiencing the End, and then coming back. I was in a very bad state for a very long time, and subsequent deaths were just as bad. I spent a few decades wandering the world, seeing and experiencing so much death and pain that I started to become numb to it. A lot of that time was a blur, even more of it outright lost to me. The… best advice I can give is to treat it like pain. If you stick your hand into flame and burn it, you know not to do it again. If you get disemboweled because you overextended your sword swing, you know not to do it again. It's akin to pain in that it's a learning experience in what not to do, so that it doesn't occur again. Just, far worse. It doesn't get easier. You just get used to it."

"I… that's awful," Penny whispered. "That's what you go through, every time, so many times you lost count? To the point where you just got used to it?"

Vyliria sighed, and when she spoke, she addressed the whole room. "I told you; the darksign is a curse. And my only alternative is worse than all that." She sighed again, and then reminded her friends that she put a lot of souls into increasing her strength when she stood up, hoisting a surprised Penny up effortlessly, and then plopped her back on her bed before sitting down next to her. "Penny, if you want to… talk to me about it, or even just have me sit here for a few hours, I'll do it." She gave a sardonic grin. "I'm very obviously terrible with people, but hey, I got the most experience with this, so I'll help however I can."

"We're all willing to help however we can," Nora piped up, for once completely serious.

Penny met her gaze, and then shuddered, a hand reaching up to her neck, rubbing on her throat. "I think I just want to sit here with you, Vyl."

"No problem," the Irithyllian replied.

"We'll uh, go back to sleep then," Jaune said. "Just, call us if you need us." Vyliria honestly felt a bit bad. With the exception of Ozpin and herself, none of them were at all qualified to handle this, and Oscar looked off put enough by all this that Vyliria would rather not have him involved further (even if only by proxy) unless absolutely necessary.

"P-Pyrrha?" the gynoid asked, hands fidgeting as she put them back in her lap.

"Yes?" the crimson-haired warrior asked, stopping herself at the empty door frame. Note to self: fix said door.

"I… I've watched a lot of your fights, but… can I hear about one of them from your point of view? I'm just curious. I can review the footage as much as I want, but I can't really know what went on in your head." Speaking of footage, Vyliria thought, I also need to remember to ask for details when Penny is in a better state. For all I know, with the population density in major cities in modern Remnant, if he decided that stealth was no longer optimal, Kirk could have killed hundreds tonight alone.

"Sure!" Pyrrha said, walking back in and sitting on the other side of the shorter girl. "Is there one in particular that you have in mind?"

Penny looked down at her hands and clenched her fists, closing her eyes, briefly shuddering and failing to hide a glare. "Any fight against an opponent who used a straight sword and shield," she said in an even tone.

Vyliria joined Pyrrha when she winced. While not ideal, the sudden anger was probably better than the previous terror and depression. Revenge was a perfectly suitable motivator, and if the burning need for retribution was properly moderated, she might be able to get Penny to bounce back from this. Still, this was the latest in a series of small steps that Vyliria had been noting. Much to her own dismay, Penny had taken her as a role model, and while the innocent girl she had initially (quite literally) bumped into was still there, moments of anger and rage, slight shifts in personality that reminded the unkindled of herself, were becoming more common as time passed by. She was happy that Penny seemed a prodigy for learning dark miracles, managing dark lighting spear with the barest of possible essentials, but at the same time, Vyliria had lived through the trauma that had birthed that spell, and for Penny to manage it so easily meant that the Attack on Beacon and the skirmish against the Branwen Tribe in Shion left much deeper marks in her psyche than Vyliria initially assumed. And now Kirk had added this on top of it all.

Vyliria wasn't really paying attention as Pyrrha began to speak. She was focusing on keeping her expression and body language as neutral as she could. She resolved to routinely attempt to use her blue-eye in the coming nights. Kirk had seriously harmed one of a very small list of people she cared about. And that pissed her the fuck off.

However many attempts, however many deaths it takes, I promise I will spill your blood threefold for what you did to her, Vyliria resolved. The blood of my friends has an iron price, and I intend to collect with interest, you thorn-clad son-of-a-bitch.

()

A/N: Ooof. This chapter, man. Things got real bad, real fast. Penny rolled a 1, and Winter rolled a 3, which cost her an arm, but not a leg. Which means Kirk is still better than a loan-shark. And Vine is still out of commission.

Anyways, for those of you who haven't done the math and somehow skipped over reading the part where Ironwood told Ciel exactly how many people died that night, Kirk, without setting off any alarms, killed and drained seven-hundred-and-thirty-five people before Penny arrived and he set up his ambush. And, ah, that's fucking horrifying. I don't really have much to say, beyond the fact that poor Penny was hopelessly outmatched, and that I feel really bad for what happened to her because of that. Also, even with summons, I doubt Winter could succeed where all 5 (now 4) of the Ace-Ops failed. However, the two of them brought just enough precious minutes for the military to get on-site and prevent any more civilian casualties, though the body-count is still quite brutal. Atlas also kinda got caught with its pants down, as they'd sent a significant portion of their ground forces to Mantle to suppress the White Fang and hunt for Kirk.

Hey, Ciel exists. I dunno where she was in canon when V7 and V8 rolled around, but she exists, so I'm using her. AFAIK, RT didn't give her a weapon, so I thought doing a full subversion of her character, which is the epitome of punctuality and practicality, would be really funny. So I immediately went to think of what would be the most impractically, over-the-top, ludicrously overkill weapon I could give her. My options eventually boiled down to: a triple-barreled minigun ala Doom, which I shot down because Cocco would kick my ass for attempting to infringe upon her field of murder, a double barreled rocket launcher ala the one the UNSC uses in Halo, which just didn't strike me as Ciel, and felt like it would seem too copycat when compared to Elm's rocket-hammer, and a massive fucking sniper rifle, one that puts even Crescent Rose to shame when it comes to sheer size, inspired by the terrifying tools of the trade that Vindicare assassins use in Warhammer 40k. I will admit, I thought the Distant Thunder that Scipio Smith's Ciel uses in SAPR (great fic, check it out, I promise that the MLP elements of the xover aren't cringe) was pretty awesome, so that's what I ultimately settled on. Then I thought for about 20 minutes on a name, before I decided I wanted to use a phrase in German to role with the parallels to Germany that exist in Atlas (Weiss Schnee literally means White Snow in German, which is in itself a play on Snow-White), and so I eventually settled on Send-Off.

Google translate gave me Abschicken, but then I remembered that I have a friend I game with who is a native German speaker. So I asked him, and he said that Abschied was the best way to say it in the context I'm trying to convey, which is a massive fucking sniper rifle which is basically a fucking Exitus rifle from Warhammer 40k. So yeah, that's the story behind how I gave Ciel a sick as hell sniper rifle (godsdamnit, Uzi, stop rubbing off on my writing you angsty robo-gremlin). On a side note, I also learned that Abschied is not the only way you can say Send-off in German. Depending on the context, there's more than one way to say it, and that evidently applies to a lot of phrases in German. Which isn't really relevant to the story, but I thought that was cool, and so I'm sharing it. Anyways, said friend I game with thinks fanfiction is cringe, so I'm not going to name him, but I'll still offer my thanks. But don't think bad of him for that. People can like or dislike whatever, as long as their views don't cause harm to others, and they don't try to force their views upon others.

Anyways, Ciel's getting read in on the bigger picture, and will probably be cropping up a few more times as this fic progresses, so there's that.

Ah, gotta love Vyliria's slowly deteriorating mental state, and the flashbacks she has no control over. But hey, at least this one wasn't traumatic, and it resulted in something actually pretty wholesome. Though I'm sure I'm gonna get at least a couple comments going somewhere along the lines of "Oh my Gywn! Rust to Dust ship confirmed!? Not Clickbait!?" To which I will say: "Dude! Down you horny bastards! Characters can hug and not be fucking! I mean, granted, Jaune and Pyrrha, and Nora and Ren are definitely fucking in this universe, but still! Hold your horses! And not in a horny way!"

Lastly, Oh my God! Kirk killed Penny! You Bastard! South Park references aside (there's actually a really funny image on the internet of Ruby and Yang drawn in a South Park style saying the lines), doing so has made Vyliria very angry. She already had a lot of reasons to hate Kirk's guts, but now he made it personal. And a Vyliria who has a personal grudge against you is a very scary Vyliria indeed.