The few streets surrounding the plaza base of LUCID had become a battleground of shredded storefronts, shattered pavement, and drifting dust that refused to settle. Ruby and Yang fought side by side, moving in practiced rhythm yet rarely unleashed with such intensity. Five Dragon Gang members closed in on them, each armed with jagged weapons that glinted under the broken streetlights. Yang took the brunt of their attention, stepping forward with her arms raised as heat shimmered around her gauntlets. When the first thug lunged, she released an eruption of kinetic that cracked the ground beneath her feet and sent him stumbling back. Each punch that followed carried another burst, keeping them at bay and denying them any chance to surround her.
Ruby darted between the gaps in their defense. Every burst of her Accel rune left a wake of disturbed air behind her as she reappeared at their flanks and vanished again. The men registered her presence, but weren't able to catch her before she was gone, carving shallow lines across armor and fabric, turning momentum and speed into precision cuts. The fifth time she blurred through the air, she reappeared behind them, and all five staggered as she swept Crescent Rose low and sliced cleanly across their ankles. They shouted in pain and dropped to their knees.
Yang seized the moment. She clasped her fists together, gathered the stored force inside her body, and struck the ground in front of them. The shockwave exploded outward and hurled all five into the air. Their pained bodies scattered across the cracked pavement like broken pins. When they landed, none of them were able to properly get up again.
Behind them on the partitioned walls, the unawakened manning the turrets continued firing. Each shot snapped through the air and sparked almost uselessly against the reinforced bodies and armor of the more stronger Dragon Gang bruisers. The bullets could not pierce anything that mattered, but they did throw off timing. More than once, a weakened LUCID operative avoided death only because the shooter on the rooftop forced an enemy to flinch at the crucial moment.
The turret fire bought seconds and seconds were everything.
Yang reached out and grabbed Ruby's shoulder to steady her. Ruby lifted her head, expecting the next threat, but Yang's expression had changed. Her eyes had gone sharp and wide with worry.
"Heads up. Jaune needs help."
Ruby followed Yang's line of sight. Several storefronts down, beyond the torn asphalt and overturned cars, a churning spiral of steel raged through the air. It looked less like weapons and more like a metallic storm that had been taught to think for itself. Blades spun and slashed at every angle, slicing through signs, glass, and chunks of concrete. At the center of the whirling chaos stood the man who had so confidently introduced himself earlier. Roman Torchwick commanded the cyclone of blades with a casual flick of his fingers, as if he were merely idly sorting cards.
Jaune was trapped within the chaos. He had no weapon in his hands. He darted and teleported from one crumbling patch of ground to another, narrowly avoiding the blades that tore after him. He stumbled once, slipping on debris, and barely avoided being skewered when the next sword ripped past where his head had been a heartbeat earlier.
Ruby was startled. "His swords are missing?"
She Accel'd before Yang could even finished exhaling. The world surged past her in a smear of gray and red, and the storm of blades came into focus with terrifying clarity. She planted herself in front of Jaune, and the instant she reappeared, she swung her scythe into a spinning guard. Several flying swords clanged against her weapon, sparks bursting across the air. She skidded back from the impact but steadied her stance.
Only then did she notice something wrong. The blades hammering at her were not random. They were familiar in shape and weight, and when she parried another, her eyes widened.
They were copies of Crocea Mors. Dozens of them.
She looked past them. Roman held two blades in his hands. One was the gleaming form of Crocea Mors itself, the original. The other was Lux Aeterna. Both of Jaune's swords were being wielded by the stranger who fought them with an almost bored expression.
Jaune exhaled, shoulders heaving behind her. He muttered a strained thanks and took a step closer, as if her presence alone helped him breathe again.
The movement of the airborne blades slowed. They hung around Roman in a loose orbit, spinning lazily like predatory birds waiting for a signal. Roman tilted his head, observing the three of them with an amused smile.
Yang landed beside Ruby and Jaune, breathing hard. "What happened? Where did your swords go?"
Jaune's jaw tightened. Embarrassment mixed with the sharp edge of anger in his eyes. He looked away for a moment. "He has a rune that steals things. He used it on my weapons and activated my imbued rune."
The admission tasted bitter to him. They all knew why. Jaune's sword, Crocea Mors wasn't just simple metal. It carried the imprint of his first ever Rank 1 rune, Sword. It was sentimental to him and spoke of the progress of his power. Roman had taken all of it and turned it back on him.
Yang studied Jaune's expression and understood immediately. She did not say anything for a moment. Instead, she inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to calm the tension building around them.
Ruby tapped her scythe into the ground. "So we just get your swords back. Easy."
Before Jaune could warn her, she vanished again in a streak of red and reappeared directly in front of Roman, scythe already swinging towards his legs.
She didn't even get a chance to touch him.
An invisible force burst outwards in a reflective manner. The moment her attack crossed into range. Ruby was thrown back in the opposite direction, as if an enormous hand had swatted her and flung her away. Her scythe flipped with her, and the blunt end slammed into her own ankles. She cried out and tumbled violently through the air. Jaune dashed forwars and caught her mid-fall, spinning with her momentum so he would take the brunt of the impact instead.
Ruby clutched onto him, breathless and stunned. The pain radiated up her legs, sharp and slightly unexpected. She blinked, trying to understand what had just happened.
"What was that? I didn't even touch him."
Jaune steadied her and set her down. He placed a hand on her shoulder. "You moved before I could warn you. His other rune, reflects attacks somehow. If anything hits him, it reverses the force back onto you."
Ruby stared at Roman. The man had not moved a single step. The smirk on his face had grown.
Jaune continued, frustration thick in his voice. "I tried blinding him earlier, but he was still able to reflect the attack back... and steal my weapons in the process. That means his runes probably don't rely on sight."
Yang folded her arms. "Fantastic. So what do we do now?"
"My only idea is that we drain his aura down and make this a war of attrition. But... we're likely to only damage ourselves at this rate..."
Ruby hummed for a moment. "Do you think... he can reflect shockwaves?"
"I'm not sure. Probably... Yang, want to give it a try?"
"Im down."
Roman lifted Crocea Mors and Lux Aeterna at the same time, their edges gleaming in the haze of dust. The swords around him shifted, rising in preparation for another assault.
The storm of blades began to move again.
"I am going to try something," he whispered. "I can focus my weakness rune on a single part of him. I will try to weaken his perception."
Yang glanced at him with surprise. "Since when could you do that?"
"I figured it out earlier," Jaune muttered. "No time to explain."
Roman sighed loudly from within the cyclone of hovering Crocea Mors replicas. His voice carried across the ruined street with theatrical boredom. "Are we done scheming? I promise I am very patient, but this is starting to feel like a waste of premium villain time. Shall we continue?"
Yang's eyes narrowed. Ruby shifted her stance and lowered herself into a ready crouch. The two girls began to circle around Torchwick. The flying swords adjusted with them, their smooth movements betraying Roman's control over each one. They drifted outward like a school of metal piranhas preparing to devour anything that entered their radius.
Jaune steadied his breathing. Without his weapons, he could only dodge or punch, neither of which would matter much if Roman just reflected everything back. So he focused inward instead. He summoned his weakness rune, feeling its familiar cold tingle race along his arms and up the back of his neck. It wanted to spread, as usual, a soft blanket ready to envelop Roman's entire body. But Jaune forced it inward, compressing it, tightening it, funneling it toward a single point.
The effort made sweat bead across his forehead. He imagined a hook, anchoring itself to Roman's head, gripping his perception, his senses, his awareness.
The rune latched.
Roman grunted immediately. His expression twitched into mild irritation as something unseen seemed to clamp over his mind and senses. The man blinked and raised a hand to his temple.
"That meta rune of yours is really quite something, isn't it?" he exclaimed.
Jaune pushed harder. He felt his aura drain, but it was still considerably less than when attached to an opponent's entire body. Twenty percent of Roman's sensory clarity vanished in an instant, as if Jaune had dimmed the lights inside the man's skull. Roman's pupils dilated slightly. His focus wavered.
"Now!" Jaune hissed.
Ruby Accel'd and disappeared while Yang lunged forward at the same time. Roman barely adjusted his footing.
Ruby reappeared behind him and swung Crescent Rose in a scything arc. The moment her blade touched the shimmering edge of Roman's invisible barrier, her own momentum snapped backward as if she had hit an invisible trampoline. The blow reversed on her, and she managed to twist her body mid-air but still crashed onto her knees, sliding across the pavement.
Roman ignored her completely and parried Yang's gauntlet with Crocea Mors. Sparks burst from the contact. Lux Aeterna flicked upward in Roman's other hand and Yang had to rotate her arm to catch the strike on the thickest part of her gauntlet. The blades rang loudly with every hit.
Yang did not try to punch. She knew the reflection rune would only throw her own force back into her bones. She tanked two more strikes on her gauntlet and kicked off the ground to disengage.
The moment she moved, the airborne swords shot forward. Three flew at Ruby. Four flew at Jaune.
Ruby spun Crescent Rose in front of her like a rotating shield and deflected each blade in rapid sequence. The clangs echoed like rapid-fire gunshots. Jaune dodged two, ducked under a third, and punched the fourth away with a burst of aura that cracked its trajectory.
He reached for one of the airborne Crocea Mors copies, hoping he could rip it from Roman's control. His fingers closed around the hilt for a single second. The blade turned transparent the next instant and slipped through his grip like smoke.
"Damn it." Jaune breathed. "I was hoping he didn't know he could do that with sword."
Roman's perception had dropped, but he still fought with the clarity of a Rank 1 awakened. Jaune could still feel how strong Roman's aura was through the resistance of the weakening effect. Sword would probably not be dispelled for a while. The length of how long an imbued rune could function for was a case by case basis. Jaune had no idea how long that would take.
Roman flicked Crocea Mors downward, carving a diagonal arc of pressure that Yang barely caught on her gauntlet. She skidded back two meters, boots tearing up the ground.
Then Yang thrust both palms forward and released a compressed shockwave. The air rippled. The street cracked. The blast slammed directly into Roman.
He did not even brace.
The shockwave reversed and hurled itself straight back toward Yang. She planted her feet and crossed her arms, letting the enormous force slam into her chest. Her gauntlets glowed red as she absorbed the kinetic energy and grunted from the pressure.
The three regrouped as the flying blades returned to orbit around Roman. Ruby and Jaune batted away the stragglers before they could be skewered.
"Shockwaves are also useless," Yang exclaimed.
Jaune released weakness on the man.
"That rune of his is too refined. It's probably at comprehension level."
Yang and Ruby exchanged a look. They both nodded grimly. A Comprehension-grade rune was an absolute advantage in a Rank 1 fight. At this point in time, each of them had sparred with Pyrrha and her one rune at comprehension, was already extremely overpowered.
Roman, hearing this tilted his head with amused approval. "Very good. Someone here actually understands what he is up against."
Jaune ignored him. His mind raced. Roman could reflect force and even contact-based attacks. Anything that physically affected him. But what if it wasn't exactly physical.
What about heat?
Jaune straightened. "Yang," he said. "Do not use shockwaves. Try Inferno. Burn him. Heat might not be able to reflect in the same way."
Yang blinked. Then a grin crept onto her lips. "I like this plan better."
Roman raised Jaune's swords slowly, waiting to see what they would try next.
Yang thrust her gauntlets forward. Flames roared from her palms in a concentrated stream, bright enough to illuminate the shattered street around them. The fire twisted into a spiraling jet that reached the area around Roman in the span of a heartbeat, surrounding him in a blast of blistering heat. Yang was careful not to directly target him in case the flames turned back onto her.
The temperature spiked instantly. Asphalt melted into bubbling pools beneath the flames. Storefront windows shattered from thermal pressure. The air warped and shimmered around Roman as the Inferno enveloped him completely.
This time, there was no reversal.
There was only fire.
And for the first time since the fight began, Roman Torchwick's smile finally dimmed.
.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon