Reject Normalcy. Embrace Violence. (RWBY×bullied depressed reader turned Badass)

Chapter 16: Calm before the storming of the armory

Another was a thief. A cheat, swindler, genuine scum among men. He had tricked some hapless youths with some snake oil business, I do not remember the specifics. It proved to be the final straw, for a small mob of previously fooled victims hunted down the trickster and proceeded to beat him within an inch of his life. The con man, bloodied and battered, was left for dead on the side of a road after they were done.

Those that could not find the body later that day believed the wolves had gotten to him first. So you can imagine the shock of the few that found him months later, aiding the downtrodden and being charitable. All with a soft smile that was never seen before.

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[Location: Vale Police Department]

These... are dark times for Vale. It has been two days since the rampage of a stolen Atlesian Paladin tore through the highways, and the number of deaths are stilling being tallied. So far, the total is up to around 260 deaths. With only 39 confirmed survivors of the whole ordeal. All the while, Chief Afføring is sorting through never ending reports on the situation.

From what he gathered from detectives, the onslaught began at a warehouse within the city. Uniforms and the few survivors revealed the location to be a White Fang rally point... To be honest, the sight of that room had awoken a memory he had hoped to keep forgotten.

The only thing that came close to such grotesque brutality was back in Atlas, when he was just a deputy in a small town. A pack of beowolves had broken into a cow farm and slaughtered all the livestock. Nothing but blood and viscera splattered everywhere, barely a single body intact. Both scenes almost caused him to vomit, but the fact that this time it was people, living thinking beings, will haunt his dreams for much longer.

Doing his best to not picture how those faunus died, Afføring moves on to the later half of the reports.

Reports came in that a rampaging Paladin was tearing through the streets to a highway, several bullheads were sent in to intercept. Safe to say, THAT was a horrible idea. Over all, while casualties on the highway were not as overwhelming as what happened in the warehouse, the property damage to the roads were a staggering millions of Lien.

Speaking of survivors, among the lucky few are five people of interest. Four of them being Huntresses-in-training found within the destruction of the highway. While each of them were in various states of trauma, their auras and training prove potent enough to not only keep them alive, but also heal them to where they'll be out of hospital within the next week or two.

Enough about their health. What interested the chief of police was why they were at the highway. Apparently, the four teens were trying to discover Roman Torchwick's criminal activities, which lead to one of them, Blake, being caught in the middle of that blood bath. Being one of the few survivors of that scene, he was able to find the possible cause.

He was told that after Torchwick was wrapping up his speech, Blake and another of her companions were compromised and were prepared to make a quick escape. What happened next, while understandably difficult for her to explain, she could only describe as a fever dream. While she prepared to cut power to the warehouse to lower visibility, she soon heard what she can only describe as the pulsating sound of nails on a chalkboard. Further questioning is till ongoing due to her hesitation, but so far, all four Huntress-in-training are in agreement that it was Roman Torchwick piloting the Atlesian Paladin.

To Afføring, that would have been all and they could just put another crime on Torchwick's file. However, it was the testimony of lucky number five that raised one too many questions.