Chương 1892: 122
Chapter 122Chapter Text
"I almost feel bad for the grimm," Glynda deadpanned, standing atop the highest point nearby as Team RWBYP hacked away at the nigh endless hordes of grimm infesting Mountain Glen with utterly insane amounts of glee- specifically in the case of Miss Rose and Miss Polendina, who were working together with frightful and untiring efficacy as they ripped through block after block after block. There were three main groups in the city now that they'd arrived: Ruby and Penny made up the first, the two of them attacking in perfect synchronicity despite the sheer ridiculous difference in their attack styles, with Ruby preferring an utterly blinding level of speed and almost ballet-like movements while Penny favored a more graceful approach with almost sword-dance like movements… and laser beams. The second group was made up entirely of a squad of Rosebud grimm, each one armed with one of Ruby's many, many weapons and numbering almost fifty strong. They were less coordinated than their creator, and much more prone to just beating their enemy grimm to death with their weapons like they were particularly pointy rocks, but with how strong they were, how fast they were, and how effectively maintained their weapons were… well. A bit of a lack of skill was acceptable. Especially when that skill level was already around the level of Mister Arc.
The third group was, obviously, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. The three of them worked together remarkably well, with Weiss hanging in the back and providing support in the form of crowd control, jump pads, environmental hazards, harrying projectiles, lance thrusts, and all sorts of glyph effects, all while Yang and Blake took point and swung each other around in a way that seemed to imply they'd known each other for far longer than they actually had.
Aura synchronization could be interesting sometimes, with how well it allowed two or more people to coordinate with minimal communication. In the case of the three she'd dubbed the "dubiously sane" members of Team RWBYP, it allowed the three of them to coordinate with extreme efficiency, destroying grimm after grimm after grimm in a way that made sure none of the three were overtaxed, and any stronger specimens were dispatched or thrown in the direction of the nearest Rosebud. Or, if Yang was feeling like it, thrown all the way over until it crashed down near Ruby and Penny, who would promptly annihilate it with extreme vengeance.
Glynda tried not to think about how Ruby occasionally just opened her mouth and started breathing out giant beams of lightning and fire because she'd just remembered she could do that . There weren't even that many types of overly strong grimm in the area that would warrant such a response, it was purely for the fun of it!
"Seems like they're having fun, yeah," Qrow answered Glynda's words, his voice coming in through the comm in her ear as he perched somewhere in the abandoned city. He'd also volunteered to keep watch of the troublemaking team, given that his nieces were there.
Glynda tried not to get distracted, but still somehow wound up questioning why Ruby, Yang, and Cinder were considered sisters when Ruby and Yang called Qrow their uncle and Cinder called both Taiyang and Qrow her fathers. The Rose/Xiao Long/Branwen family tree was… convoluted, it seemed.
Hm. She'd actually have to tell Ruby and Yang some stories about Summer at some point. Maybe if they came to her office at some point.
"I'd call it less fun and more of a rampage, Qrow," Glynda sighed, massaging her brow as she continued to watch over the three groups with a careful eye, noting that they were, technically, following her grading criteria to the letter. Given their goal of clearing out the entirety of Mountain Glenn of all of the grimm infesting its walls, streets, tunnel systems, and buildings, their previously set list of goals had been completed in barely the first hour- they'd established more than enough of a foothold to start sending in other Huntsmen and Huntress teams in to continue chipping away at the hordes, but instead of stopping there the five of them (plus an army of Rosebuds) continued to rip through a tide of grimm that filled the streets with the endless cacophony of explosions, roaring, baying, howling, screeching, gunfire, impacts, Dust usage, and fucking laser beams .
Good thing that, once the entire area was clear, the plan was to tear down a good chunk of the buildings in Mountain Glenn and replace them with newer, better ones that offered better protection against the grimm. The amount of property damage was…
Glynda winced, hearing a building collapse in the distance, along with the sound of frantic cawing and feathers flapping from her earpiece. "Qrow, were you in that building just now?"
"Unfortunately yes! Dammit Yang, watch where you're throwing those Beringels! Fucking hell, that one almost took out a support beam right over my head…" Qrow answered, the grimace clear in his voice as he took to the air again and flew her way- barely visible from where he'd started nearly two miles out, but closing fast thanks to his enhanced speed as a crow. She leapt down from her own perch and roof hopped out to meet him halfway anyway, because she wasn't about to wait ten minutes for him to arrive, and it would give her a better vantage point if she found the right area to perch on.
"How is it that even without a bad luck Semblance you still have some of the worst luck I've ever seen?" Glynda asked rhetorically once Qrow came into view, the two of them perching atop the highest structure in their new area like a pair of gossipy birds. Qrow was the annoying crow and he sat like it, doing a squat on an I-beam as he chewed on a stick of gum and fiddled with a pen that he… definitely hadn't had with him when they'd arrived. When the hell did he get a pen? Glynda, meanwhile, stood elegantly next to Qrow and kept her feet together as though she were a ballerina en pointe… but without actually being en pointe, because that was hard to manage even for her.
She probably should have taken those dance lessons while she was still enrolled… it was just awkward to try and join Beacon's dance club as a teacher now …
"Probably residuals from my Semblance. 'S been giving me weird pangs for years at this point," Qrow snorted, eyeing the girls' progress through a pair of binoculars that Qrow also hadn't had on him when they'd arrived. "Whatever. Looks like they're making good time. Also, there's a shitload of Rosebuds in the city. That's… more than I've ever seen in one place at a time. Kinda fucks me up knowing how much damage Ruby could do all at once if she really took the time to try…"
He paused, then shook his head. "'S a damn good thing making Rosebuds makes her weaker, otherwise she'd be tearing things up even more right now."
"How is that a good thing?" Glynda asked idly, raising an eyebrow at the scruffy man next to her and adjusting her glasses with the motion. "One would think it's just the opposite."
"It means that she still has limits, even if she's building more mass with every grimm she kills. It means that if she gets mind controlled again, we can stop her. It means that she's still human, in her own special kinda way. More or less," Qrow answered, frowning now as he tucked his binoculars away beneath his cape and sighed heavily, the mood brought down by an oppressive aura that reminded both of them that Ruby was… Ruby's entire existence was something that they couldn't keep shoving under the rug forever. Something that would eventually come out to the world, something that they'd need to account for over the years. Something that might eventually make her more of a threat than Salem.
At least Salem worked in the shadows. At least Salem was a known quantity. There really wasn't as much research into Ruby's existence as there should have been, and her limits kept growing year by year to the point that it almost felt like there was nothing that could take her down if she put her mind to it.
Her scroll beeped, knocking the both of them out of their thoughts as their time limit for the day expired- coinciding with the sunset as it began to darken the world and make the sky burn orange.
"Team RWBYP. Time limit has been reached. Pull back for now. We'll continue tomorrow," Glynda tapped her ear and sent out the call to the girls below, marking a meeting point in the safe zone they'd set up- there weren't any truly safe places in a grimm infested hive like this, but the girls' zeal for destroying grimm had led to a mostly safe, almost entirely empty wasteland free of the creatures of darkness to the point that they could likely only do a few watch rotations that night instead of having everyone wake up at least once in turn. Especially with Ruby being able to ignore sleep entirely. That they were taking refuge on the top floor of a building that had its roof ripped off somehow would provide shelter as long as they took care to blockade the stairwell and kept an eye on the windows and sky. Good thing there weren't any Geists in the area. Or Nightmares.
"Roger that, professor! Ruby Rose, returning to base camp!"
"Penny Polendina, returning to base camp!"
"Weiss Schnee, returning to base camp!"
"Blake Belladonna, returning to base camp."
"Yang Xiao Long, returning to base camp!"
"Good. Make sure to assign someone to keep watch over the night and perform weapon maintenance before the light dies down too much."
She sighed quietly, shutting off her comm and turning back to Qrow. "Would you like to join us for our evening meal, Qrow?"
He shrugged. "Yeah, sure. I could eat."
"Hope you like ration stew and freeze dried bag meals, because it's all we have packed."
"... Is it too late to back out and go hunt a few rabbits or something instead?"
"Yes."
"... Fuck."
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