The goon’s skid along the shop’s floor was quite impressive. Roman gave him a three out of ten. It would have been higher but the cause of said skidding detracted quite a few points.
“Are you okay down there... Chris, was it?”
Junior’s goon raised one thumb, then his arm fell flat to the side and his head flopped back.
“You take a breather,” Roman advised before looking at the source of the disturbance. He found himself locking eyes with a short girl in a red dress. She would have been unassuming enough, standing in between two rows of Dust dispensers, if it wasn’t for the smoldering anger in her pretty little silver eyes.
Now, so far his spat of robberies on Cinder’s behalf had all gone pretty well. A few threats, some fist waving, maybe a few witty one-liners for the shopkeepers and customers to repeat for the media. All good, wholesome fun that left him richer by the day.
It made him happy, it made Cinder happy, and Akelarre didn’t eat him. Good times all around.
It seemed as though his good luck started to hit some bumps in the road. “Hey there, Red,” he said.
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” the girl growled.
Roman gasped, placing a hand over his heart as if she was the most precious thing since Neo first shanked someone or discovered ice cream, events that, if memory served, happened within minutes of each other. “Oh, but Red, I’m no stranger,” he said with a wide gesture of his cane. A few of the Suits were approaching him and the goon on the floor was helped to his feet by some of his buddies. “I am Roman Torchwick, thief extraordinaire.”
Red’s eyes narrowed. “So you are robbing the store,” she said, then let out a sigh that was just gut-wrenching, the kind of sound a puppy would make when kicked. “Aww, man, dad’s going to be so annoying now.”
“What’s wrong, Red?” Roman asked with faux-casualness. He gestured to the side for his goons to keep working and a few of the smarter ones started packing up more Dust products. “Why is your daddy going to be angry? How about I give you a nice selfie and maybe sign a hat for you? Won’t that make you feel better?” He used the tip of his cane to flip a ‘Make Remnant Great Again’ hat off from a stand next to the counter and waved it at Red.
“No, he’s going to be annoying because he made me promise not to get into trouble, but you’re robbing the store, so I have to stop you,” she said.
“Well, aren’t you precious,” he said.
Then Red reached around her back and brought up a large steel box that he recognized as... well, something that was mechashift.
The box slid apart, unfolded, clicked a few times and unfolded some more until the girl was standing next to a scythe whose shiny blade was as long as she was tall. With an expert twirl that managed to avoid knocking any of the shelves around her, she brought the scythe around and let the tip of its blade sink a couple of inches into the floor.
Roman noticed the rather large, bore-like hole at the end of the shaft pointing in his direction and licked his lips. The girl was quickly growing to be far less precious.
Another box unfolded itself along the haft of the spear and two red lasers speared out towards Roman’s chest and hovered over his heart. “Mistress, I am ready to annihilate the cookie-hating heretics,” the scythe said.
“Good,” Red said to her talking weapon. Because his day wasn’t complicated enough as it was.
“Distract her!” he said before rolling to the side.
Junior’s boys were on the ball, running at the girl with their weapons raised.
“Thank you!” he called out to them before he spotted a suitcase loaded with Dust crystals. He swooped in to pick it off the floor while running towards the front door.
His path was, unfortunately, cut off when one of the goons flew past him and through the front window with a clatter of broken glass. Shoes spinning on bits of glass, he came to a stop only to hop out of the window, roll across the sidewalk and jumped to his feet.
“Wait!” Red called from inside the store.
“Gravity-Dust Tipped High Explosive Fin-Stabilized Sabot: loaded. Likelihood of splatter reaching our current location: 100 percent! Mistress, take the shot!”
Roman Torchwick was many things, but a fool he was not. “Waiting, waiting!” he called out while raising the hand which held his cane by its top. His other arm came up and brought the suitcase full of dust up to protect his chest. “Don’t shoot!”
Red was holding her talking scythe by her side, leaning it against her hip. “Are you surrendering?” she asked.
“Not quite,” he said, one finger lifting on the hand that held the case. “See, this here case is chock full of weapon’s grade dust. You shoot me, this goes boom, then the whole street turns into a crater.”
“Mistress! Let’s do it!”
“No Crescent Rose, dad will be extra annoyed if we have to pay to fix the street,” Red said.
He was a little disappointed that the thought of what would happen to him in that scenario didn’t cross her mind.
“Drop the case, buster,” she said.
He blinked at being called ‘buster’ of all things. Did she think she was in a sitcom?
“I have a better idea,” he said. With a slash, he swung his cane around, the tip popping open just in time for him to fire a round at her.
Wide-eyed, the girl jumped to the side and rolled out of the path of his shot which exploded somewhere behind her. He wasn’t sticking around to watch though, too busy running towards the nearest building to make his way to the top.
“Mistress, he is escaping! Destroy him.”
“Darn it!” Red screamed.
Roman chose to start moving a little faster.
He tossed the case onto the roof and followed after it, picking it up as he ran towards the far end. He tucked his cane under one arm and pulled out his scroll, thumb flashing as he dialed a number. “Where are you?!” he screamed into the scroll as soon as she dial tone ended.
“We’re here,” Cinder’s smooth, unruffled voice said over the line.
A crack behind him announced the presence of Red who, being the cheating little cheater that she was, skipped the whole climbing up the ladder part. “Stop!” she called after him.
“Mistress!” he gun called out. “Cut off his knees!”
“Now now, Red, no need to cut off my pretty little knees,” Roman said as he spun around near the lip of the roof. “Especially not since I am leaving.”
His ride, a simple unmarked Bullhead, rose up from the streets below and came to hover behind him, the wind kicked up by its engines snappnig at his jacket and making Red bring a hand up to mask her face.
“A parting gift, my dear!” he called out after hopping onto the Bullhead. From within his jacket he pulled a fire Dust crystal that size of his fist and tossed it towards Red. It bounced twice before skidding to a halt at the girl’s feet.
Raising his cane, he took aim and fired.
“Mistress!”
The explosion rocked the Bullhead in the air and he could see Cinder in the pilot’s seat fighting the ship for control. He was about to laugh and make a snide remark when the dust cleared and revealed a shimmering round shield of crackling Dust.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
A hand wrapped itself around his shoulder, black as pitch and tipped with sharpened bones. “I’ll take care of it.”
***
Glynda Goodwitch was a woman on a mission.
Insofar as Ozpin’s vague instructions could be considered missions.
Nonetheless, her title as huntress and her job as headmistress of Beacon implied a certain level of protectiveness towards those who were weaker than her. Which meant, of course, that when she saw a young woman facing off against one of Vale’s most notorious criminals it was her solemn duty to step in and protect the child.
“Are you well?” she asked over one shoulder.
“Oh-hoh! Of course she’s well! Look at the anger in those pretty eyes. This here girl is ready to take a chunk out of that criminal scum, isn’t that right!”
Glynda sighed. She had almost, for one blissful moment, forgotten that she wasn’t alone.
Peter Port smacked the young woman on the shoulder hard enough that she stumbled to the side. Her ‘angry’ eyes looked a lot more ‘wide and bewildered’ to Glynda than anything else. A reasonable response to being near Port.
“Peter, could you keep the young lady safe,” Glynda asked as she began to weave Dust in a very precise way. “I will take care of the Bullhead.” With a last twist of her crop and a push of willpower six brilliant balls of Dust took to the air and arced on a direct course towards the Bullhead.
It was going to be a hassle explaining to the VPD why she had downed an aircraft over a civilian sector, but capturing Torchwick would be worth it.
She caught blurs in the darkness of the night and all six of her projectiles burst apart in mid-air.
Her eyes narrowed. Something had intercepted her attack.
Before she could begin to weave another, a form shrouded in white jumped out of the Bullhead and landed on one knee at the edge of the rooftop, its long cloak pooling around its body until, with a slow, almost menacing motion, it stood up and lifted its shadow-covered face towards them. All Glynda could make out was a smiling mouth and a pair of faintly glowing eyes. “Hello,” she, because the voice was definitely feminine, said.
The Bullhead’s engines whined and the vehicle started to pull up. With another flick of her wrist, Gylnda sent a barrage after the craft, only a for a dozen white forms to slip out of the cloak the woman was wearing and intercept the blasts in mid-air.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Glynda felt her expression go flat as the Bullhead started gaining speed and raced across the city. She might have been able to hit it, but now a miss would mean hitting civilian areas and the potential collateral was unjustifiable. She turned her gaze onto the woman in the cloak. “Stand down and place your hands behind your head,” she ordered.
The woman tilted her head to one side, the gesture too mechanical, like an insect staring down a smaller bug. “Are you trying to arrest me?” she asked.
Glynda lifted her crop, ready to act. “Yes, yes I am.”
“Ah... you know that jumping out of a Bullhead isn’t illegal, right? I looked.” She pointed over one shoulder at the Bullhead that was still visible in the distance.
“Um,” the girl in the red cape said. “I think it’s because you helped that criminal guy.”
Glynda would have chastised the girl, but she was essentially correct. She nodded, the gesture served to dislodge a fly that had landed on her forehead. “Indeed.”
“Right, I guess that would be some sort of aiding and abetting charge? Maybe? I’m not all that familiar with all the laws in Vale yet.”
“Be that as it may,” Glynda said. “We’ll have questions for you.”
“Oho! No worries, little lady! You probably won’t spend your life behind bars. Or my name isn't Peter Port!”
The woman’s head jerked back up. “That didn’t make sense,” she said, her voice rising over a low buzz coming from the streets below.
Glynda was feeling the first shades of a headache coming on. “Please just stand down,” she said.
“That made a lot more sense,” the young woman said. “But I’m going to have to pass.
“You’re looking for a tussle aren’t you?” Peter said. “Well, you came to the right rooftop, Peter boy--that’s me--is always ready for a good round of fisticuffs. Ladies have always admired my skills with a closed fist.”
The girl raised a hand, then lowered it. “I’m also going to pass on that offer, whatever it may be. I came here because I had a few questions, but I’m beginning to regret not staying on the Bullhead.”
“You’ll be able to get some answers,” Gylnda said with a wave of her crop. The young woman’s arms cartwheeled as Gylnda used her semblance and lifted her off the ground. She wasn’t reaching for a ranged weapon, so chances were good that Glynda had just removed her ability to fight. “From within a cell.”
The woman’s frantic waving stopped a moment later and she looked around, as though searching for the source of the power levitating her. “Is this the work of your Semblance?” she asked with a rather calm voice, all things considered.
Glynda rose to the tips of her toes, ready to move. It took a certain mentality to dismiss such an obvious threat.
“You know, this is maybe the most powerful Semblance I’ve ever seen,” she added.
“Our Glynda here is quite the powerhouse. And she’s a looker. The whole package,” Peter said. Glynda’s headache was growing.
“Does she need line of sight for this? Because if she doesn’t then this is incredibly versatile. I don’t think Semblances are Manton limited. She could target individual muscles to make someone drop a weapon. Or she could just crush a person’s heart or scramble their brains with a twitch.”
Glynda noted the red-clad child taking a step away from her. “We are not here to discuss my Semblance,” she said. “Under my authority as a Huntress of the Kingdom of Vale I place you under arrest. You’d be making all of our lives easier if you surrendered without a fight.”
The girl shook her head. “If you answer some questions for me I’ll be more than willing to back off,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” Gylnda said.
“Your loss,” the young woman said.
Glynda was preparing herself to pull the girl closer, to use her power to divest her of any weapons, when a sharp pain bit through her wrist, then the nape of her neck and both thighs. She gasped, concentration slipping just enough that her telekinetic grasp dipped and the girl she was holding up touched the ground.
The low buzz from the streets below intensified tenfold and when Glynda raised her crop again it was to see black tendrils racing up around them like the twisting bodies of sea dragons. The limbs crashed down around them, splitting apart into swarms of insects that rushed around Glynda and Port and the girl, coming closer every moment until the three of them found each other moving closer and closing ranks.
She saw a form in the swarm, of a young woman in a cloak and whipped her crop out to grab her, but her telekinetic pull only tore the silhouette apart and scattered it back into the swarm. It was joined by a dozen others, vaguely humanoid shapes standing amongst the chittering masses, red eyes glowing as they watched.
“Now, I have a few questions for you, if you wouldn’t mind?” the swarm asked, every syllable rendered with clicks and the chittering in insects. “Ah, I’m sorry, you seem to be nervous. There’s no need to be afraid.”
“I don’t know,” the girl in red said. “That’s a lot of bugs.”
“You’re right, I didn’t consider whether any of you might be Entomophobic,” the swarm said.
The girl made a confused little noise. “You think we don’t want bugs to marry each other?”
Glynda twitched. “Peter, take the child and leave.”
“There’s no need for that. I wouldn’t harm Ruby, she’s nice.” This time the voice came from a few different directions, first from Glynda’s left, then behind her, then before her, only for a few words before switching places. “First question, last night you moved to assault a warehouse near the docks that was, at the time, occupied by team CFVY. Why?”
Glynda’s breath caught. “How do you know about that?” she asked while preparing to cast again. A sufficiently powerful Dust attack would devastate the swarm. The trick was going to be hitting close enough to hurt the insects without injuring the three on the rooftop. She and Port could take a blow, but the civilian was just a young woman. Maybe an electrical discharge while using her Semblance to prevent it from grounding on the girl?
“Please just answer the question.”
“We were going to try and apprehend a criminal,” Glynda said.
“You mean me?” the swarm asked. “Strange. I don’t believe I committed any crimes.”
“You just helped someone rob a Dust store,” Glynda pointed out.
“I meant yesterday.” How a swarm of millions of insects managed to sound contrite, Glynda would never know.
“You’re the Grimm girl,” Glynda said.
The swarm seemed to pause, then, from the shadows, insects the size of dogs rose up, red eyes glowing faintly. Glynda swallowed and started revising her plans. “Please answer my question,” she said.
“What happened yesterday?” the girl in red asked.
“Ah, the lady here and her friend, Mister Port, tried to attack me while I was trying to do business with a hunter team,” the voice of the swarm said.
“Were you doing anything... um, evil?” the girl asked.
“Not at all. I was going to ask them for help taking out some drug dealers.”
“Then why did they attack you?” she asked with the guileless curiosity of a child. Which, Glynda supposed, she was.
She cleared her throat in the way that had most students snapping to attention. “I do not believe I have to justify myself to a Grimm,” she said.
The swarm buzzed louder for a moment. “Not even if that Grimm is a person? Not even if they have a citizenship in Vale? Not even if that Grimm committed no crime.”
“Wait, is Akelarre saying the truth?” the girl asked.
Glynda whipped around to face her. “You know this creature?”
There was a sigh through the swarm. “Ruby, I was trying to detach you from the situation a little.”
“I’m sorry?” the girl, Ruby said, then she turned angry silver eyes onto Glynda. “Have you been hurting Akelarre?”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Well, did you?” she asked, tone laced with enough accusation that even Port backed up a step. “That would be... so, so mean. Akelarre is actually really nice.”
“Thanks, Ruby,” the swarm said.
“If she’s so innocent,” Glynda said. “Then explain this swarm.”
The swarm coughed and it was the first time she had heard such a sound from a cognizant flood of insects and Grimm. “I was an innocent bystander aboard an aircraft which a thief boarded. So I jumped out. Then I was assaulted by two unknowns who pointed deadly weapons at me.”
Glynda felt her hand twitch. “It’s a crop.”
“Yes, and Crescent Rose is a gardening tool.”
“Mistress. She has insulted me, and thereby insulted you. Let’s cut her apart!”
One of the shapes in the swarm just pointed towards Ruby and her scythe as if that proved her point. “Be that as it may,” Glynda said.
“No,” the swarm said. “It has been too long, the police are here, you may have reinforcements coming. Congratulations. You wasted enough of my time that I never got the answers I wanted. I suppose I will have to find them some other way. Goodbye Ruby. Good luck, professors.”
The swarm cleared just as quickly and suddenly as it came, bugs dispersing into the air in every direction and whatever Grimm were hiding amongst them moved away in the confusing mess of motion.
“Well, that was an exciting evening,” Ruby said. She folded her scythe up and tucked it against the small of her back. “But-I-Have-To-Go-Now-So-Bye!”
She began to move, but a twitch of Glynda’s crop had the girl’s legs kicking out against empty air before she stopped and flopped down like an impotent kitten in its mother’s grasp. “One moment... Ruby was it? I think I might have a few questions of my own for you.”