"I'm sure they're fine."

Team JNPR had just woken up at sunrise and were headed out for the airships for their mission. Pyrrha was reassuring their leader while Nora skipped along happily behind them and Ren kept to a simple walk.

"You think so?"

"Yeah, probably just a butt dial or something," Nora continued to remain jovial.

"Team RWBY has always performed exceptionally in the field," Ren pointed out, "We should be focusing on our own mission."

Nora suddenly whipped around to look at him with an excited expression and her hands in the air, stopping him in his tracks as she shouted, "We're gonna be deputies!"

Nevertheless, Jaune still remained apprehensive as he stopped walking, "I just got this feeling...I don't know."

"Jaune..." Pyrrha came to a halt next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. However, whatever advice she was about to give was cut off as a siren pierced the early morning quiet, drawing JNPR's attention. On the horizon was the city of Vale with smoke rising from numerous areas as the alarms continued. Despite the apparent danger, Jaune's face now held a look of resolve as he ordered to his team, "We're changing our mission. Everyone on board!"

As they headed to the Bullhead, Jaune did a quick headcount before hopping in and saying to the pilot, "We'll be heading to that village another time. Take us into the city!

The Bullhead departed, leaving behind three "students" whose prescience remained unknown to the team. Emerald, Mercury, and Cinder looked off at Vale. The green-haired girl's eyes widened, "You don't think..."

"Sure looks like it," Mercury crossed his arms and shook his head.

"That's still days away!"

Mercury remained calm as he turned to their leader, "So? What do we do?"

Cinder looked to the ground, mulling over the newly developed problem. Roman had, without warning, started his part of the mission, throwing things into disarray. But perhaps this can be salvaged, Cinder smiled as she nodded, making her decision.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

"Well. This doesn't look too good," Yang commented.

There wasn't a better way to describe the situation. After the team left the entrance of the tunnel and made it to the center of the plaza, the Grimm in the area decided that was the time to focus all of their attention onto the group. Needless to say, team RWBY(V) were now surrounded by Beowulves, Ursai, and a King Taijitu. Ruby and Weiss exchanged nervous glaces while Yang was giving a...Yangry glare at the Grimm. Blake looked over to V to find him withdrawing his book of poetry.

"'Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul,/And sings the tune without the words,/And never stops at all,'" V quoted, as Griffon flapped his wings and hovered next to him, crackling with electricity while Shadow growled at their opposition.

"Quoting poetry at a time like this," Blake gave a playful grin despite the situation which V returned.

"It's always a good time to quote poetry," V replied before adding, "And I'm not particularly good at making motivational speeches by myself."

As the two refocused on the horde, the large snake Grimm unleashed a mighty roar, prompting the assembled Grimm to charge.

Ruby was the first to charge, hopping into the middle of a group of Beowulves and slamming the tip of her scythe into the ground before pulling a Neo v. Agent Smith and swinging herself around in a circle, kicking each Grimm that approached away. Yang leapt down and spring boarded off the skull of a Beowulf, launching herself backwards into the air. She proceeded to rain fire with Ember Celica, taking out quite a few Grimm with the blasts. However, her flight was cut short as a trio of Nevermores sent her crashing back down to the earth, making a crater from her landing.

Blake had remained on the central platform, slashing multiple times at an Ursai that attempted to charge her and sending it to the ground dead. She immediately spun in a circle with Gambol Shroud shifted into its pistol mode, shooting down multiple Grimm that were attempting to approach her.

Weiss was also still in the center of the park, slicing and stabbing three Beowulves that tried to take her down. With a Glyph and a swing of her weapon, a large ice sword was created that cleaved a group of Grimm in half.

V weaved around any Grimm that came his way, not allowing them to get a hit in as he had Griffon and Shadow do their thing. The former was launching Blockades and Round Robins left and right as Shadow slashed through a few Grimm before transforming into a shape resembling a Venus Flytrap and lunging forward, hitting any creatures in front of it and crushing them to a pulp.

As they fought, an image flashed through V's eyes. It felt similar to the vision he received upon beholding the Yamato, but this one was short, brief, and seemingly uninformative; it was an odd sight, one of blue, crystal-like energy swords, summoned by a mysterious individual and launched towards an unknown target.

"V!" Blake shouted, breaking him out of his vision just in time to see an Ursa about to swipe at him. He dodged backwards, using Griffon to ferry him to a safer position. He was immediately surrounded by a small pack of Beowulves. For some reason, an odd feeling flared up in him again. Deciding to go with it, V jumped upwards, bringing his hands together and sweeping them away from each other. Somehow, this action resulted in an occurrence similar to the one in the vision, though in this case it created a cluster of summoned canes that shot out and impaled the nearby enemies.

As he landed in the group of now dead Grimm, Blake made her way over to V.

"Are you okay?" she asked, stabbing an attacking Beowulf that Shadow then grabbed off her blade with a few tendrils to swing around and knock over a few enemies.

"Been better," V responded as he looked up to see the King Taijitu, passive until now, focus its attention on him and Blake, "I'll tell you some other time. Right now we have more-"

Before he could finish, the rubble next to it shifted, gaining its attention. The snake leaned closer to investigate, and soon after it was greeted by a nasty surprise a a red blur burst forth from the scrapped train and slashed its head clean off with a single slash. The now headless body crashed to the ground as the blur landed next to the teens, revealing a Devil Triggered Dante with Rebellion resting on his shoulder. V let out a breath and smiled in relief at the back up.

"Looks like I'm a little late to the party," he grinned with a mouth full of sharp teeth.

"No, you're just in time."

"DANG IT! I wanted the big one..." a dejected voice shouted across the battlefield as Dante returned to his normal state. The three of them turned to find team JNPR having just dropped from their Bullhead with a pouty Nora, apparently upset at not being able to get the Taijitu.

"Eh, don't worry too much," Dante grinned as he gestured to the area surrounding them, "There's plenty of ass to kick all around."

Nora grinned wickedly and jumped high into the air onto an unsuspecting Ursa, shouting, "NORA SMASH!"

"Let's go!" Pyrrha said as she, Ren, and Jaune also split up to assist in fighting the Grimm.

Dante whooped a bit as he found an advancing pack of Beowulves, Trickster-ing above them and Rainstorming before summoning a pair of gauntlets and greaves, slamming down into the ground and sending the Grimm flying into the air and allowing him to blow them all out of the air with a few blasts from Coyote-A. After finishing them, he made a charging thrust towards the next target and stabbed at it rapidly, continuing the carnage.

"Nobody move! Junior detectives!" another familiar voice called out.

"We have badges, so you know it's official!" a second followed soon after.

V and Blake turned to see Sun and Neptune had arrived on the scene, although rather than contributing, they were currently standing in the road and posing with their little badges like dorks.

"Oh yeah, I'm sure that'll do a great fuckin job stopping the Grimm, twats!" Griffon mocked them, causing their confidence to immediately deflate as he Flank Attacked an Ursa to set it up for Yang to pummel into the ground.

Blake frowned at V, "You need to discipline that bird someday."

V shrugged, "I dislike it as much as you do, but he'd never listen."

Their conversing was once again interrupted as the roar of engines sounded overhead. Multiple dropships were flying around, dropping off Atlesian robots to assist in the fighting as a ginormous flagship came into view above the block. Despite their robotic nature, they proved effective in helping to thin the tide of Grimm, though a few were accidentally destroyed as Dante practically danced around and sliced anything that came within a few feet of him into a million pieces.

Soon after, Cinder, Mercury, and Emerald walked up to the fight. Cinder simple stood back and instead let her two subordinates go to help repel the Grimm.

Strange, V thought to himself.

A new Bullhead landed in the middle of the plaza carrying Team CFVY and Professor Port. Yatsuhashi was the first to see combat as he was quickly surrounded by Beowulves. The large teen was unpreterbed, and after a mighty swing of his greatsword, brought it to the ground and blew away the creatures with a massive shockwave.

Fox and Velvet were fighting off more Beowulves as they attacked one at a time, quickly making their way forward. However, they stopped their advance as an Ursa Major, flanked by other Grimm. Fox rushed ahead towards the large bear-like Grimm, performing a flip kick that made it stumble and attacking it multiple times with his elbow blades. With a brutal uppercut, he sent it into the air, and as soon as it came back down, he struck it on its boneplated head with both fists. As the Ursa crashed back into the remaining foes, it swelled up and exploded, sending its bone spines that covered its back flying out and impaling any Grimm caught in the blast.

A few flew toward the now-approaching Coco, but she simply deflected it with her briefcase. As she walked by Fox, she slapped his ass, complimenting, "Nice work, honey."

One beowulf stood in front of the fashionista, roaring in her face. Coco remained stoic, simply lowering her sunglasses with an annoyed look.

"You just destroyed my favorite clothing store," she said, pushing her glasses back up on her face and spiting off to the side, "Prepare to die."

With an angry howl, the creature reared back a paw and slashed downward, only to be deflected by Coco's briefcase. It was soon rewarded a swift kick to its nether regions, making it fall over in pain. Coco bent forward and stared down the injured beast before rearing her hand back and bringing her weapon down on top of the Grimm's head like a hammer on a nail. The blow killed it instantly as it smashed into the ground and shattered the pavement.

More Grimm started to swarm toward the new threat. Coco strutted forward with a smirk as her case opened to reveal its second form: a gigantic chain gun. All of the creatures around her were obliterated in seconds as the deadly weapon opened fire. Coco turned her BFG skyward, tearing Nevermores that flew overhead into shreds.

Dante looked on from the sidelines, stabbing a Boarbatusk right through the head, cursing, "Damn! I knew I should have brought Pandora!"

Meanwhile, Ruby and Yang were starting to get a bit worn out from the length they had been fighting, but they pushed onward. However, rounding the corner, a trio of Deathstalkers came out and bore down on their position. Unexpectedly, a teen shot out from the tunnel with a blue ghost behind him, grabbing the tail of one of the Grimm and flinging it into the bakery on the corner of the street.

"Nero!" Ruby called out as the object of her not-so-hidden affections landed on the street in front of them, Yamato in his Devil Bringer hand and Red Queen in his human one. He looked a little ragged from the collision, but was otherwise okay.

"Good to see you're still kicking Grimm butt, Rubes," Nero grinned, using the spectral demon figure created by Yamato to give her a little thumbs up.

"Guess it takes a bit more than a train crash to take us out of it," Yang grinned as they focused on the remaining two Deathstalkers. Nero charged the one closest to the front, pushing away its pincers as they tried to lash out at him. With a mighty yell, he swung upwards with both blades underneath its skull(?), making the upper half of its body real back into the air and exposing the unprotected belly of the beast. Revving up Red Queen to the max, he practically flew up into the air, becoming a tornado as he spun with both blades slashing into the large Grimm and causing its now segmented, flaming body parts to fall on the ground.

Ruby used her semblance and a few shots from Crescent Rose to propel herself above the pincer attacks of the second Deathstalker. Before it could strike with its stinger, she quickly shot in another direction to change her trajectory, causing the attack to miss and leaving the tail wide open for her to slice off the stinger. Nero, having just finished the first one, jumped over and grabbed the detached stinger, throwing it down into the bone plate covering the Deathstalker's body with enough force to make it stick into the creature. This left it open for a heavy finishing blow as Yang propelled herself into the air with Ember Celica and shot herself back down towards the target, landing a Semblance-Shotgun-Gravity assisted mega punch straight on the head of the stinger, driving it completely through the body of the last Grimm.

"That was totally awesome!" Ruby shouted as Yang and a DT-less Nero walked up with Weiss, Blake, and V regrouping with them as well, "We need to give that combo attack a name! How about, Slam Dunk!"

"Sounds great," Nero grinned and pointed to another group of Grimm, "But right now, we got some more baddies to take care of."

"Alright! Team RWBY and Team VN duo attack!" Ruby exclaimed. As the two teams readied themselves for combat, and unexpected event occurred as the Grimm they were about to attack were simply flung to the side.

"What?" Nero asked, confused.

"Uh...that was anticlimactic," Yang said. The entire group felt a chill go down their spines; it was one that only occurred when a certain angry teacher was bearing down on some unfortunate person or thing.

True to their intuition, Glynda Goodwitch was pissed. She angrily power walked down the street, flinging any approaching Grimm into oblivion if they dared attack. Finally, she reached the large hole in the street. With a wave of her riding crop, the pieces of debris that had once formed the street flew back into place, patching the hole and sealing the remaining Grimm inside.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

"Well, I guess we did it," Yang said.

Teams RWBY and VN and Zwei were sitting on the edge of Beacon's lending platform, looking out at the city of Vale in the distance.

"Damn straight we did," Nero said.

"If we don't get extra credit for this, I will be seriously disappointed," Weiss complained. Griffon appeared on V's shoulder, commenting, "Look Ice Queen, a huge fuckin' snake destroyed a bakery. That don't sound like extra credit to me."

Zwei yipped at Griffon and attempted to hop at him, prompting him to shout, "HEY! Get the fuck away from my you stupid dog!"

Zwei paid the insult no heed, and in the next instant, Griffon disappeared to escape death by slobbery corgi adorableness.

Nero groaned and looked over to Ruby, "And now I have to find another place to take you for cookies. Which will probably be harder because I destroyed a second bakery be throwing that Deathstalker..."

"W-well, that's okay. It's not like Vale only has one bakery," she chuckled and waved off his concern, making him grin a bit.

"We also didn't solve everything," Blake pointed out, "We don't know why they did this or what those demons V and Nero found were for. And a lot of civilians got hurt, too."

"Given your reading, Blake, I believe you know not every story has such a happy ending," V responded.

"We did take care of a lot of dangerous people," Weiss shrugged her shoulders, "And I think that's something we should all be pretty proud of."

Ruby cheered, "Yeah! And if anyone tries something like this again, we'll be there to stop them."

Yang flopped backwards with Zwei copying the motion as she unenthusiastically added, "Yay, teamwork, camaraderie, good guys, go team, alright, good job...so, what now?"

"I'd say training because the tournament is right around the corner, but I think we got that covered," Weiss answered.

"So..." Blake trailed off without an answer.

"Um...time for bed?" Ruby suggested.

"Oh yeah."

"Definitely."

"I'm going to pass out for a few hours."

Everyone voiced their agreement as they began to stand up.

"I feel like I could sleep forever," Yang groaned.

"That's called a coma, Yang," Nero commented, "Coma's are bad."

"Oh shut up, Deadweight."

"Are you kidding me?!" Nero shouted as everyone else began to laugh, "I knew we shouldn't have told you about that stupid nickname!"

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Ozpin aloofly stared out of the window in his office as a voice from his monitor called for his attention.

"Ozpin!" one of the figures on the video call shouted. The headmaster finally turned around and came back to the conversation.

"Yes, councilman?"

"You've left us no choice!" the person who demanded his attention reprimanded, "The Vytal Festival tournament cannot be broadcast, let alone held, if we are unable to ensure the safety of the citizens."

Ozpin remained stoic, sipping from his coffee cup as he continued, "Ahem...therefore, we have reached out to the Atlas Council and together have decided that the best action is to appoint General Ironwood as head of security for the event."

"Thank you, Councilman," Ironwood's visage on the video call took up the majority of the screen now, "Our Kingdom is happy to lend as many troops as it takes to ensure that the event runs smoothly and safely as possible."

"And we thank you, General."

Ozpin simply said "Will that be all?

"For now," the Councilman confirmed before warning, "After this festival comes to a close, however, we are going to have a serious discussion about your position at Beacon Academy. General Ironwood's reports over the last few weeks have left us somewhat...concerned. I am sure you understand."

As the council men's video feed vanished, Ironwood and Ozpin stared at each other for a few moments, completely silent until Ironwood finally spoke.

"This is the right move, Ozpin. I promise, I will keep our people safe, you have to trust me.

Ironwood's feed disappeared as well, perfectly timed as the doors to Ozpin's office opened to reveal a certain Demon Hunter strutting into the room. The Headmaster grew a little tense.

"So Oz, what did you want me here for?" Dante asked, joking, "I got a perfect pizza waiting for me back in my room, so if we could make this quick, my stomach would appreciate it."

Ozpin sighed, "Your report was a bit...concerning...Dante. I simply wished to discuss a few parts of it with you."

Dante's visage became a little more drawn. He crossed his arms and straightened his back a little, indicating he was paying attention.

"Let's start with the reactions of Mr. Blake and Mr. Angelo to the Yamato..."

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Meanwhile, three certain "students" were gathered on a rooftop in Vale near the spot of the breach earlier.

"All in all, I call today a success," Cinder concluded.

"Those stupid kids really made a mess of things," Emerald shook her head.

Mercury agreed, pointing out, "Yeah. A lot of Faunus didn't make it out the tunnels. You still think the White Fang's gonna listen to us? And what about that Nero kid? He's got the Yamato now, and we didn't plan for that."

"You can stop worrying so much," a new voice added, causing the three of them to turn to a newcomer with red and black hair in a black jacket and a White Fang mask.

"The White Fang will listen for me," Adam said as he rested his hand on his katana, "As for the Yamato...

"Leave that to me."

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

V walked out of the dorm building. It was a bit late, but the sun hadn't set yet. Most of the others had already turned in for the night, but he still had one last thing to do.

With a small sigh, he reached into his pocket and drew out his Scroll, turning it on. He dialed a number, but hesitated before pressing the "call" button. Rather than putting away the Scroll without calling as he had before, he drove tapped the button and brought the device to his ear.

The device rang once.

Twice.

Then a sound as the call was answered.

"William Blake speaking," a voice answered.

V's breath hitches for a moment. What should he say?

"Victor, is that you?" the voice on the other end called, probably recognizing the number.

V's hand's shook. He hadn't called in so long. How was he supposed to start this conversation?

Finally, he swallowed his fears and took a deep breath and said the first thing that came to mind.

"Hey dad..."

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Aaaaaand that's Volume 2! I'll start working on Volume 3 soon, but I won't give a concrete release date yet. Hope you guys enjoyed.

If anyone was confused by William Blake, he's basically an OC in this story that will share the name of the poet from real life. In the RWBY universe, the character is V's adopted father (he named V "Victor," as has been referenced before in these first two books). He wrote basically any poetry V loves to quote. More shit will be explained down the line about V's unknown past before Will took him in and about Will himself since I don't want to give too much away.

Anyway, I'll see all you beautiful people later. Have a happy and safe spook night!