The moment Yang's flames closed around Roman, he grimaced as the heat was forcing him to retreat in a stumbling rush. He swept backward with sharp steps, swords raised and coat flaring behind him as he sought to escape the furnace blooming around him. His motions betrayed irritation and something deeper. Fear, perhaps? Though it was clearly muted behind his pompadour.
Jaune, Ruby and Yang saw the opening immediately. Three grins appeared in unison. They lunged as one.
Roman clicked his tongue, lifted both of Jaune's stolen blades and waved them. The flying swords above him stacked together in midair. They arranged themselves in a geometric pattern, as if he had folded Crocea Mors into a metal mandala. The blades formed a spinning shield of interlocked copies. With a sweeping gesture, Roman hurled the construct at them like a massive serrated discus.
Yang was forced to stop her flames and vault sideways. Ruby dove the opposite direction, twisting into a roll. Even Jaune felt the force of the spinning shield as it tore through the air. Yang detonated shockwaves into the oncoming blades, blasting them aside with bursts of raw kinetic force. The street cracked with every impact. Fragments of metal and pavement kicked into the air.
Jaune cursed under his breath. The copies of Crocea Mors were becoming a bigger threat than Roman himself. Every reflection, every reversal, every trick Roman pulled grew more complex with those blades reinforcing him. It wasn't simply the danger that was a problem. It was the insult. Jaune had handed him the perfect weapon by not using the imbuement earlier.
His hands clenched. That mistake was on him.
He risked a glance back at the rest of the battlefield. Dragon Gang awakened still clashed with the LUCID operatives. Bodies staggered, retreated, advanced and collapsed in rotating waves of exhaustion. No ground was being won. No side had the advantage. Every second spent here meant LUCID's lines frayed further, and Jaune could already see where it would snap.
They had to finish Roman. They had to get back there before someone died.
Yang was struggling to keep both the flames and her dodging in rhythm. Each sword that cut toward her forced her to break her focus. The Inferno flickered instead of pouring forward as she wanted. Ruby noticed it first and her eyes widened with an idea.
She snapped Crescent Rose into her hand and whispered, "Accel."
Her runic energy burst outward and she blurred. In the same moment she grabbed Yang around the waist.
"I will dodge and you burn," Ruby told her. "Just keep firing."
Yang hesitated only a heartbeat, then nodded. She climbed onto Ruby's back and steadied herself with a hand on Ruby's shoulder. Flames began to gather at her palms. Ruby inhaled, grounded her stance, and vanished forward again in a streak of red.
Roman's frown deepened as the flames reignited. He swept his arms and sent the airborne swords after them in fierce pursuit, but Ruby's compounded speed was too much. The copies never came close. She danced between small buildings and slid under collapsing debris, sprinting along the curve of shattered storefronts while Yang flooded the air in their wake with streams of fire.
Roman tried to dodge and reposition, but Ruby's movement speed shaved away his options. Each burst of flame forced him to retreat another step. Then another. Then five more.
They circled him like wolves shaping their prey's path. Jaune watched the pattern unfold as he fought off falling debris and stray sword copies. Ruby was carving a ring through the air. Yang was filling that ring with fire.
Slowly, the Inferno transformed. Flames formed a spiraling corridor around Roman, climbing upward as Ruby spiraled tighter and tighter. Heat distorted the street into a liquefying swirl. The temperature rose to a blistering intensity that could have melted steel.
Roman snapped his arms outwards to try using his reflection rune again. A visible wave of heat bent and curved, but it did not reverse fully. The reflection pushed some of the flames aside, but the spinning motion Ruby created counteracted the reversal instantly, restoring the vortex in seconds.
Roman's shoulders tensed.
He realized the prison was closing.
Ruby completed another tight sprint around him, and now the fire tornado took its full shape. It towered over the street like a pillar of molten light, trapping Roman in a wide but inescapable circle. He looked around as the flames rose higher and higher.
Jaune felt triumph flare through his chest. For a second he let himself imagine they had him.
Then Roman sighed.
It was a small, almost tired expression, the look of a man choosing the move he did not want to use but could no longer avoid. His lips moved slowly.
Jaune read them.
Steal.
Immediately Ruby stumbled. Her next step stuttered and she tumbled out of her sprint. The world snapped back into normal speed around her, and her eyes widened in disorientation. Her entire body felt wrong. Wrong in a way she had never experienced.
"What?" Ruby whispered. "My speed…"
Jaune's eyes widened in confusion. He felt something ripple through the air, a pulse he could not fully comprehend.
Roman vanished from inside the flames.
He reappeared outside the tornado in a streak of oddly familiar blinding motion. Somehow, Roman moved as easily as if the world had slowed down just for him.
He appeared in front of Ruby and Yang in a blur of supreme velocity and slashed downward with both of Jaune's blades.
The skies rained swords at the same moment. The entire storm fell on the two girls.
Yang acted without thinking. She shut off her flames and detonated an explosive shockwave. The blast launched her and Ruby backward while forcing the falling blades outward like a scattering of deadly petals. Sparks flew. Metal screeched against the pavement. The shockwave pushed them far enough that Jaune was able to catch them. He stared at Ruby with slight alarm.
"What happened? Why'd you decelerate?"
Ruby shook her head, still slightly confused. Her muscles had not strained, nor had her rune malfunctioned.
The speed was gone because it was taken.
Yang pushed herself to standing beside them, equally shaken. She had felt the shift in the air too. Something fundamental had been stripped away from Ruby in that moment.
Roman approached with Jaune's swords at his sides and an expression that could only be described as smug delight. He planted his cane on the ground and rested one hand casually atop it.
"Don't blame little Red," he said with infuriating casualness. "There was no way she could have known I would be able to steal her speed, now is there?"
Jaune froze.
The implication was clear. The confirmation was chilling.
Roman Torchwick could steal runes?
He twirled Lux Aeterna in one hand with a satisfied grin.
"Surprised? I suppose I would be too. After all, who goes around expecting their powers to simply walk away with someone else?" Roman shrugged. "But take heart. I rarely use this little trick. Honestly, it feels rude. But you three are starting to irritate me, and perhaps it's time I start properly fighting back."
Jaune felt his stomach sink.
Roman had somehow stolen Ruby's acceleration and stolen Jaune's imbued Sword rune. They had been fighting a man who could not only reflect but also plunder their abilities at will. He could manipulate, counter and copy them. And his confidence suggested he had not yet shown his full hand.
Jaune forced himself to breathe. Roman's display was shocking, but something about it felt wrong in all of it. Something did not line up.
Stealing physical objects was one thing. Stealing runes, though, was another matter entirely. That simply was not possible. A rune was not a trinket or tool. Runes were a foundational imprint on the soul. The only way that could even possibly tamper with them was through meta runes, and even then, the effects were indirect, twisting interpretation or channeling rules rather than ripping a rune's function directly out of someone's spirit.
But Roman's move had not felt like a meta rune. Jaune knew that instinctively. Spending time with Qrow and Raven had sharpened his sense of the improbable. Both of them possessed meta runes, the real kind that twisted the metaphysical plane and the conceptual foundation behind techniques. Jaune himself carried one and he had learned to feel the difference. He had learned to tell when something operated beyond the framework of normal runic mechanics.
And Roman… did not.
His power was strong, refined to a razor point, but it didn't have the same weight of a meta rune. It did not carry the surreal, almost cosmic echo that Jaune had felt from Qrow's Murder or Raven's rune. Roman's technique felt grounded. Heavy and potent, but still rooted in the established world.
Something about it rang suspiciously normal.
Jaune glanced at Ruby.
"Try Accel again," he said quietly.
Ruby looked uncertain, but then she closed her eyes, breathed, and pulsed the rune.
A flare of red speed sparked around her body. Her eyes snapped open.
"It works...?" she whispered.
Yang stared. Jaune nodded, the final confirmation falling into place.
He turned back toward Roman.
"Your rune doesn't actually steal a rune from someone, does it?" Jaune said. "What it steals is the runic energy that the rune is channeling."
Roman's face contorted into a theatrical cringe, followed by a perplexed stare. He looked at Jaune as if the boy had somehow ruined a perfectly good performance.
"How in the seven smoldering levels of hell did you figure it out already?" he demanded.
Jaune tapped his chin as if in thought. "At first, I assumed the rune was a meta rune. Something powerful enough to steal concepts outright. And considering how you keep using the word steal, I am guessing the rune's name is Steal." He shrugged. "It fits the pattern."
Roman raised a brow. Jaune continued.
"But then I thought about what actually happened. You took Ruby's speed, but not the rune itself. She cast it again. If the rune were gone, she should not have been able to do that. So it is not the rune that was stolen. It is the active runic energy. The charge, but not the core."
Roman stared for a long moment. Then a slow, wicked smile crept across his lips.
His cane lifted from his hand and remained upright on its own, balanced as if resting on an invisible pedestal. Roman released a soft, appreciative whistle.
Then he clapped.
The sound echoed through the street like the crackle of burning wood, punctuating the heat and the orange glow of the lingering fire tornado around them. The flames illuminated him in a theatrical halo as he applauded Jaune as if the boy had just performed a well executed magic trick.
"Bravo," Roman said. "Truly. Bravo. I have been waiting for someone to actually understand what I do instead of screaming at me or trying to punch my face in. You, blondie, are really quite the clever one."
He gave a showy twirl, sweeping one leg behind the other before bending forward in a lavish bow.
"Allow me to reintroduce myself," he said, his tone full of delighted vanity. "I am Roman Torchwick, the Gentleman Bandit of Vale."
He straightened and placed a hand over his chest.
"And, since you've already figured it out, there is no harm in telling you now. My runes are Reversion and Steal. Both of which are at the level of comprehension. Below Rank Two, I am the strongest."
Ruby, Yang and Jaune stood in silence as the declaration settled into the air. The firelight flickered across Roman's face, painting his expression with a satisfied glow.
A comprehension level rune was already a nightmare. Even Pyrrha, with only one such rune, could turn a battlefield into her personal playground. Jaune still remembered the first time he felt her bend the metal in his blood without even touching him, controlling him like a marionet. That kind of dominance was the sort of thing that turned fights into hopeless endeavors.
And Roman had two such runes.
Two comprehension runes wielded by a man who was already flexible, unpredictable and merciless.
Jaune's chest tightened.
He was not sure how they were supposed to win this.
Ruby glanced at Jaune, a mixture of an unidentifiable emotion rising in her eyes. Yang's posture stiffened, her muscles coiled and ready, but even she seemed to be cowed slightly. The thought of fighting someone with two comprehension runes would scare any reasonable person.
Roman, of course, basked in the attention.
"You understand the predicament you are in, I hope," Roman said lazily. The cane floated to his hand with a casual beckoning movement. The blades in the sky shimmered, orbiting him like a metallic halo. "I am not simply strong. I am untouchable beneath Rank Two. Every strike you throw at me will find itself undone, diverted or turned against you. Every move you attempt, I can counter. Every rune you cast, I can undo."
Jaune studied him quietly. The arrogance was real, but it covered something else. Something in the way Roman tensed his jaw. Something in the brief flicker of irritation when Ruby restored her rune.
Roman was strong. Too strong. But even he was not limitless. There were surely flaws in the technique, subtle but present.
Steal only worked on active runic energy, not the rune itself. Reversion had limits even at comprehension. It still obeyed rules.
The question was how to exploit that.
They were outmatched. Overwhelmingly so. But there was one advantage they still had.
They were three.
And Roman was alone.
"Comprehension or not," Yang muttered under her breath, "we are not done with you."
Roman tilted his head, amused.
"No," he said, "but you should be."
Ruby stepped forward. Jaune felt her aura thrumming, her determination hardening like tempered steel.
"We've beaten worse odds," she whispered.
"Have you?" Roman asked with a playful tone. "Because I highly doubt that."
Jaune did not answer him. Instead he kept analyzing.
Comprehension or not, a human body still remained a human body, even if it was vastly... superhuman like them.
In any case, if they could force him into a mistake, then maybe they had a chance.
Jaune's eyes narrowed.
But the question was, how?
"Hey… one thing," Jaune finally said, stepping forward a half-pace.
Roman, who had been swaggering in a lazy half-circle with that self-satisfied smirk plastered on his face, groaned dramatically.
"Really? More questions? Kid, we're in the middle of a fight. One with fire, flying swords and—" He waved his cane at Yang, "—a tiny blonde explosion machine. This isn't the time."
"It is," Jaune replied.
His voice was level. Roman raised an eyebrow.
"You say you're the strongest below Rank 2," Jaune continued. "You clearly have two comprehension runes. So why haven't you ranked up? What's stopping you?"
Roman stared at him.
Then his expression twisted into something like exasperated pity.
"Oh for the love of—are you serious?"
Jaune didn't blink. Roman rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Kid… why are we talking? No, really. As much as I love a little chin-wagging, you picking a philosophical moment now is killing me."
"Indulge me," Jaune said coldly. "Strongest below Rank 2, right? So act like it."
Roman froze for a heartbeat.
Then he let out a breathy laugh and pointed the cane at Jaune.
"You know what? Fine. Sure. You want the reason?" He flicked his wrist and the cane spun upright in the air like a baton before he caught it lazily. "It's obvious. As a Rank 1, every night the dream drags me in and forces me to kill one Grimm before I get to go home. It's the same for all of us. But for me?" He tapped his chest with the cane. "At my level? I can swat Rank 1s like flies."
He stepped forward. The heat shimmered between them.
"Now picture this. I hit Rank 2." He said it almost lovingly, like savoring a dessert he'd never eat. "And then suddenly the system decides, 'Oh hey, Roman Torchwick, congratulations! Here's a Rank 2 Grimm that you now have to fight every night.' And once I peak at Rank 2? Guess what comes next? Rank 3s." He snapped his fingers. "Now, they'll be trying to monitor me."
Jaune frowned.
Roman gestured with both hands, as though presenting a conclusion a toddler should understand.
"I'm strong, kid. Not suicidal. So why would I willingly put myself through all of that and Rank up?"
He smirked.
"You LUCID types? You've got teams. Support. Safety nets. One person falls and four more pull them back up. Must be nice. But me? I'm a soloer. No backup or squad. No healer girl waving her hands. If I mess up, I die. Simple as that."
He tapped his cane lightly against a broken chunk of pavement.
"So tell me. Why should I rank up? For more power? Please. The moment I ding Rank 2, I'll have to once again struggle and fight my way up. Downsides all the way, I say."
Jaune's jaw tightened. Something was wrong. Something in Roman's answer didn't match everything he had been led to believe.
"But... what about your Dragon gang? Won't they help you in this? Aren't you a part of them?" Jaune asked slowly.
Roman barked out a laugh.
"Part of them? Please. They wish." He tilted his head, giving Jaune a foxlike grin. "Nah, kid. I'm not one of theirs. Me and my partner? We're hires. Freelancers. Mercenaries. Whatever word helps you sleep better."
Jaune's stomach sank.
So Roman wasn't even loyal to the people they were fighting.
He was just here because someone paid him.
Roman shrugged, utterly unbothered.
"I take jobs and I get paid, then, I leave. Tomorrow? Maybe I work for someone else. Maybe I don't." His eyes gleamed. "But right now, your people… your little government body… they're the ones in the way of my paycheck. Nothing personal."
Ruby's fingers curled around her scythe's grip. Yang's teeth clenched. Jaune lowered his stance just an inch.
Roman's grin widened.
"Now," he said lightly, "are we done with story time?"
His cane pointed at them, tip glowing faintly with the energy blade he'd used before.
"Because I'd really like to get back to stealing more of your fun little tricks."
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon