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Weiss had been expecting a bunch of things when they got launched off into the middle of the night on a 'routine training mission'... which she was beginning to suspect wasn't all that routine to begin with. Maybe they were just the disarming bunch of girls needed for the job of poking the shadowy briarpatch hiding something as thorny as the armored Huntsman. A dark presence who was currently holding off the simultaneous assault of half a dozen elder Grimm of all varieties currently trying to bring down the plateau of ice she'd woven.
Who was scarier in this situation, Weiss thought as her heartbeat skyrocketed when the man
blurred into motion and impaled a pair of Beowolves leaping clear of the slippery rise, saving Yang from a mauling, then simply twisting his arm
just so and bisecting an Alpha Beowulf who tried his luck and unexpectedly ran out then and there. Mind you, that was while already carrying the burden of two corpses and only having the space the four Huntresses-In-Training allowed him to swing that huge sword around.
Not exactly a lot of opportunity for a wind-up,
there.
The currently cracking edifice had been reinforced twice already, but then again, she had encased a pair of Ursa and a King Taijitu rising from the soil within it. Huh... that might have a lot do with why she'd so quickly agreed to the insane plan of launching the four of them with a thermobaric Dust reaction right beneath them and insulated only by careful placement of her glyphs and the platform she'd split off from the rest of the mound.
She realized in horror that the armored warrior hadn't joined them on the platform below when Blake turned to offer him her hand. He raised an armored knee and with a pivoting gesture kicked off the underside of the glyph, twisting in the air with preternatural grace and suddenly
he was over twelve feet tall and he's going to crash into the ice!
She didn't know whether to send up some prayers for the madman or turn her head away so she didn't witness the carnage sure to unfold, but the man stomped the plateau, sundering the ice and sending chunks raining all around him, doing much to split up the horde of Grimm surging from all sides, making the whole thing topple, then
shatter, like a giant kicking over a sandcastle. The snake-like and ursine Grimm were reduced to nothing more constituent than a smear on the ground, dissipating into black smoke already.
And then he
moved.
Five slashes.... ten... fifteen. Every slavering Grimm about to dog-pile him suddenly evaporated, the giant madman--
possibly some Semblance at play, Weiss thought dimly--suddenly in range of everything that had been harrying them.
With that new breathing space he entered a stance of unnatural stillness, the rampage having given even the Creatures of Grimm serious pause. Speed like that unprecedented from anyone she could care to name besides Ruby, and she couldn't keep up that kind of pace and attack at the
same time!
There was perfect stillness for only an eye-blink, before the churning mass of Grimm surged forward, lunging to bite or raising claws and bony spurs to slash and crush him.
Honestly, the scene was growing ever-distant with their ascent towards the stone tower and arching bridge toward the cliffs that she'd think she was seeing things, she was prepared to call it all off and declare herself hallucinating, but then he went
even faster than before, his blade striking out at every single Grimm in range. One strike sweeping through dozens of Beowolves, Ursa and Elder Grimm, like a Deathstalker or terrifying Nevermores, at all angles and levels. Then came the
back-blow coming around again to finish the job on any of the hardier variants who managed to survive, a hurricane of black metal, trailing flames and sweeping doom.
His plan wasn't to sacrifice himself to save them, Weiss then realized, even as she turned to guide the descent of the platform of ice she'd separated from the chaos below, the thing looking the worse for wear and probably not bound to hold up all that well. The Huntsman was holding back because they were
too close for him to
really begin cutting loose.
She imagined if they hadn't intervened when the Grimm began swarming, he would have been going all out already. He was just way too fast, the expenditure of Aura he must be making was so inhumanly efficient to keep up with that kind of body enhancement for very long, yet he didn't look like he was breaking a sweat.
Far from the feats that fully licensed Huntsman were known for, to utilize a Semblance that over-the-top, having suggested an impromptu escape tactic from just watching her and her friends fight for a few minutes? And then deliver a perfect strike against every single opponent in range, guaranteeing death despite the Grimm often having multiple redundancies and thick armor to survive in close range?
Completely inhuman, Weiss thought, even as she created a hard light shield around her team with some emergency Dust supplies she'd been saving, the four of them adhered to the underside of the glyph as the platform beneath crashed through the tower, sent stone tumbling and then finally flung them forward onto the safety of the cliff-side. She collapsed in exhaustion from the improvised safety measures.
Just who is that man? The amount of training you would have to do in order to obtain that sort of efficiency with your Aura was incomprehensible.
There were eventually diminishing returns to consider, to be sure, but moreover, in order to make the most of that kind of style, you had to accept that you were going to
die beyond everything else. Any wasted movement, any hesitation, the trust placed in both your own ability to out-think your opponent and guess where they would be the next moment while keeping track of where they were
now.
Ruby herself might be able to get her Semblance to the point where attacking and maneuvering at the same time was practical, having the control over her own body to where she could maneuver around with sniper fire and then surge into close range attack with her scythe, but bursts of speed like that were more of a tactical consideration for those without a Semblance that revolved around pure speed, she'd seen her sister Winter perform at that level often enough to be able to make the comparison. A normal Huntress or Huntsman could move that quickly
briefly but only to end a fight against a weakened opponent or one attempting to regain their momentum against a dangerous foe.
If anything, the armored Huntsman had been faster than her sister, and more agile than Ruby if not quite quicker on a straight run. Weiss was a dexterity fighter and Ruby was all about positioning, both at range and in close-quarters, to better utilize the weight of her sniper-scythe, but that man trod all over those notions, being both quicker and stronger while acting with all the boorish and brutal efficiency of a Goliath. A fighter expecting to meet absolutely no resistance to the first thing he struck and completely trusting his weapon to carve through the next thing without resistance as well.
That kind of mad fighting style could only come from someone who so obviously spent exorbitant amounts of Lien on Dust-infusion, if his burning brand in hand was any indication, and had absolutely no fear whatsoever.
Weapons could be relied upon to a certain extent, it was the skill needed to make those kind of split second judgement calls where things began to fall apart. An ordinary Huntsman would likely rely more on their own positioning and footwork, keeping enemies away from their backs. The armored Huntsman fought always expecting death in every trade, a suicidal approach that was completely uncompromising and unhesitating. The kind of mindset needed to fall into that style was more like beasts in nature, fight or flight taken to its natural conclusion, paired with machine-like efficiency.
Absolutely terrifying, she thought.
Who trained him, she would wonder, later on, when how close to death they really were just then began to sink in.
Whoever it was deserved to have their teaching license revoked. Putting someone through that kind of hell just to achieve such results was absolutely criminal.
***
At first, Ozpin didn't know what to think from the hasty report Team RWBY drew up for their training exercise, his four erstwhile students immediately collapsing into bed, and in light of the chaos that unfolded in the aftermath of the previous evening, he was inclined to cancel morning classes as well. Right. 'Exercise'. As far as the Council was concerned, routinely drawing up live fire exercises to throw Huntsmen and Huntresses-In-Training into unexpectedly, with all the necessary safety measures working in the background, was in no way correlated with some ulterior motive to test for weaknesses in his eternal foe. Still, he was baffled. What could have stirred up the Grimm so close to Vale this badly and out of nowhere?
Such congregations on that scale often spelled widespread destruction and attacks against outer settlements for weeks or months. When they sent a recovery team to bring back Team RWBY and their rescuee turned rescuer, he had half a mind to blame the whole debacle on the stranger they encountered, were it not for the terrifying knowledge walking into this meeting that the man had slaughtered every Grimm in a square-mile radius. Possibly further, given the delayed reaction from the Beacon staff and local Huntsmen on call.
Ms. Schnee had described him as, 'in a word, terrifying', and his general demeanor was little more reassuring, come to it. Still, he had taken no hostile action against them, and indeed had gone to significant lengths to protect his students all the while... but did he really have to take things
so far? Any sane person would have retreated from such a mass of enemies, not stand and fight.
His appearance was equally surprising, like a Huntsman out of another era entirely. Black armor softly glowed with what seemed like intricate, layered and repeated infusions of Dust, the light of a forge fire giving indications of high purity Burn Dust, and going by the story, his sword was similar. The rest of his equipment sported the same esoteric mindset, sounding more like a hero out of tales of yore, more than one he'd fought alongside, albeit in another life.
A type of warrior who had access to some kind of hermetic, some might say 'mystical', benefactor. Or perhaps a team of industrious Dust weavers and artificers from a Monarchy-era workshop, a dying practice to say the least. It was still a taught, if niche, subject, in all of the major Huntsman academies, but more elaborate effects such as the bound gravity and transmutation Dust in the man's cloak were nearly unheard of, not to mention archaic.
Why spend that kind of Lien to fly somewhere when you could take an aircraft?
His dark helm rested on the table, the tray of tea going ignored, though the chair beneath the man groaned in protest and his metal-encased forearms scraped against the surface in front of them. He was seemingly of indeterminate age, with dark-brown eyes nearer to black and accompanying an equally dark beard, if well groomed, his brown hair done in a simplistic coif.
His sword was another story, combined with the sinister motif and dark purple leather, the gilded skull had eyes that glowed faintly at his very approach, an unsettling feeling settled over him like one being scrutinized by an unseen force, and a red stone
burned deeply at the cross-guard with an unbridled sense of power. The girls had reported that its exposed blade would burn when unsheathed, with near-to-white flames.
"Mister Lonmouth," Ozpin began finally, after realizing pleasantries would be lost on this dark warrior. "You present me with a number of questions... and possibly an unsolvable conundrum to go along with them. How is it that a Huntsman of your stature can appear on the map suddenly with no rumors at all to mark your passage? And further, how is it you did not recognize a swarm of Grimm for what it was?" The negativity caused by such things was often self-compounding, likely to spread and grow out of all proportion or hope of control. Such things were often only herded away from civilization with extraordinary shows of strength.
"Hmph. Well at least you're cutting to the quick of things," he replied, voice a rich and even baritone, but seeming to indicate a man with few use for words, and less inclination to speak them unless absolutely necessary.
Not a conversationalist, then. "I am a Knight, not a Huntsman. I can at least answer your second question. I've no idea what those things were, but they died just as well as the rest."
Ozpin blinked, wondering how such an accomplished fighter could survive in the World of Remnant without ever encountering the Creatures of Grimm... before another realization struck him, and a creeping doubt began to set in. "Your weapon and armor... they're not dust-infused, are they?"
The man's eyes lit up in curiosity, a question unstated, before he spoke, "No. Never heard of it. They're enchanted and rune-crafted."
"Magic," Ozpin breathed, a thousand questions flying through his mind, a pervasive fear he didn't let show on his face accompanying them.
"Aye," the man, Richard Lonmouth as he introduced himself initially, replied, brow furrowing deeply, "I take it that is not normal in these lands," he spoke, almost sounding resigned, perhaps even a subtle longing for simpler times buried beneath it.
"You could say that," Ozpin said, wondering how much to explain and how to keep a lid on all of this, lest it be overheard by the wrong people.
