Chapter 16 – All Hands On Deck

Soundtrack: Achilles Last Stand – Led Zeppelin

Brawnz, Roy, Nolan and May charged to port, engaging Jaune and Pyrrha while Ren and Nora moved to flank them. Qrow, Ironwood and their men charged forward to take on Vernal, Emerald and Mercury, while the remaining pirates took on Weiss and her employees at starboard. Vera, meanwhile, decided to run inside the bridge to hold on as the ship rocked back and forth.

Brawnz and Roy unsheathed their swords, while Nolan held up a cattle prod and May unhooked an elephant gun from its holster on her back. Jaune, having the presence of mind to bring Crocea Mors, brought his shield and sword to bear and began to duel with Brawnz. Pyrrha, meanwhile, jumped back to avoid Roy's lunge, then shot the prone man with Milo while unhooking Akouo's shield.

Roy was doused in flame from the crimson Dust that Milo unleashed; panicking, he dropped and rolled along the iron deck. No sooner had he quenched the fire and jumped to his feet than Nora swung her hammer into his stomach, breaking two ribs and narrowly avoiding a broken spleen. Roy fell backwards and lost consciousness, never to rise again for the rest of the fight.

Brawnz, meanwhile, had Jaune on edge as he threw his sword around with the well-honed savagery he'd always used on raids. Jaune was grateful that he'd brought his ancestral shield and sword, elsewise he'd have been outmatched when it came time to do the leg-breaking. Ducking under a wild blow from the left, Jaune charged forward with his shield and swatted Brawnz's sword away. Desperate to win this duel, Brawnz lunged forward and tried to tackle Jaune. However, the policeman rolled to the right as the Thai pirate moved, and swatted the man into a bollard on starboard with the shield. In a cruel twist of bad luck, Brawnz was spreadeagled by the offending bollard, and his pelvis was fractured in two places upon impact. Jaune winced as a primal yell of pain escaped Brawnz's quivering lips.

Nadir, holding a crimson Dust pistol in his left hand and a cutlass in his right, closed the distance on Ruby quite quickly. Unfortunately for him, Ruby hadn't retracted her scythe-blade while shooting at other pirates, and Nadir quickly backflipped as she swung Crescent Rose around. Landing heavily on his left leg, the Turk knew his balance was impaired as pain shot up his leg. Knowing that his cutlass wouldn't be much good if he couldn't move, Nadir brought his pistol up – and his right hand was promptly frozen as Ruby shot an azure Dust bullet into it. Nadir yelped as he tried to shake his hand loose of the ice, but a swift punch from Ruby was enough to put him out of contention.

Weiss and Bolin duelled each other, with Bolin using a bo to counter the strikes of Myrtenaster, which now possessed an automatic Dust selector embedded within the chamber. Weiss flicked it to verdant Dust and threw a lightning bolt at where Bolin was backing towards. Bolin, spotting it, jumped forward to avoid electrocution and wound up too close to Weiss for either party's liking. Bolin then jumped to Weiss's left, bringing his azure Dust pistol to bear … only to be frozen to his neck when Weiss emptied a handy vial of water in Bolin's direction as he fired. Not bad, Weiss concluded as she ran to help Blake.

True to their word, Emerald and Mercury took on the two big men in the middle of the combat and their cronies. Mercury went for the man in white, leaving Emerald to tussle with the thin man in black. With Vernal quickly knocking out the younger deputies with her verdant pistols, Emerald unleashed both of her ivory gun-sickles and wailed on Qrow's head with them. At least, that was the plan.

Qrow instead headbutted Emerald in the nose, breaking it and disorienting the Egyptian long enough for him to blow out her kneecaps with his pistols. Emerald fell to the ground screaming before a swift kick to the head knocked her out quickly. "That's for leading the Grimm, you schweinhund," Qrow hissed before rousing his easily-overwhelmed men with smelling salts.

Nolan, meanwhile, was having a problem. His cattle prod wasn't long enough to shock the woman he only knew as Bloody Nora from a safe distance, and he harboured no means of fighting at range. Sensing someone reaching behind him, the Italian spun and got Ren in the stomach with the verdant Dust weapon. Ren shuddered as he collapsed to the ground, convulsing as the electricity coursed through his system. Nolan ran towards Ren's head, reared his right leg back … and screamed as Nora blasted said leg clean off at the knee with her grenade launcher.

"GET AWAY FROM MY MAN!", Nora yelled in fury.

Nolan turned as he began to fall over, only to fly into the Thames as the enraged Irishwoman hammered him clean off the ship. Nora had no time to celebrate, however, as May decided to start shooting at her and Ren. Before she knew it, Jaune jumped in front of her with shield in hand, and Pyrrha began to get Ren to safety.

"Thanks," Nora yelled over the cacophony, and blasted the ground beneath her with Magnhild in blaster mode. Of all the sights May ever saw in her life, a huntress clad in a pink hunting costume vaulting three metres into the air with a grenade launcher in her hand was by a mile the most surprising. Shock overwhelmed her for only a second, but it was enough for Nora to fire twice at her position. May was bowled over by the first blast, and the second hit her square in the abdomen and knocked her into the bridge window.

Ironwood, meanwhile, was dealing with a former employee of his. Mercury had been a young, promising member of the militarised security team, but his career was wrecked when he murdered his own father in 1882. Ironwood once had some sympathy for the young man who'd avenged the murder of his mother by drunken anger, but it had vanished once Weiss told him of Mercury's involvement with the Creatures of Grimm. It was also likely that Mercury gave Cinder information about security arrangements at the warehouses burgled earlier this year, and tipped her off about Ironwood sending his blueprints by train that fateful night in July.

Therefore, Ironwood wouldn't extend his mercies to his former charge. The cudgel Mercury led with was a dead giveaway to Ironwood; Mercury was left handed, so a right handed charge would result in a feint, followed by a wallop on the back with his left hand. When Mercury did just that, Ironwood didn't fall for it, instead shooting Mercury's cudgel out of his left hand with a gun embedded within his artificial hand. Mercury yelped as his middle and ring fingers departed his hand, the crimson Dust cauterising the wounds before they bled.

"YOU ARSEHOLE," Mercury screamed in a blind rage, before putting his other cudgel away and running in to kick Ironwood's chest in. Ironwood, to his credit, didn't fall over due to the hit, but he hadn't expected steel-capped boots. When Mercury turned his right leg sideways and pirouetted for another kick, Ironwood grabbed his leg with his normal hand, before a punch too powerful for human hands found it's mark. Mercury's voice was shot as Ironwood broke his leg with his bare hands, and he almost croaked in unimaginable pain as the general jumped on his other leg, breaking it too.

This display of brutality was too much for Vernal, and she promptly decided to leave. The Frenchwoman ducked underneath Ironwood's hands and rolled out of the way, jumping down the nearest ladder to flee.

Blake, meanwhile, took on Reese as the Irish lass tried to flank Weiss on the right. Gambol Shroud was in it's sword form, and Blake held one of her throwing knives in her left hand. Reese, however, decided to skip back and shoot at Blake. Feline reflexes resulted in Blake leaping above the verdant rounds coming from Reese's pistols, changing weapon forms, and pistol-whipping Reese so hard she ended up teetering on the edge of the starboard railing as vertigo dulled her balance. Just as Reese recovered, Weiss knocked her off the ship proper with a fireball from Myrtenaster.

"Stop drop and die, hündin," she yelled over the railing as Reese landed in the water with a yell.

Arslan and Yang approached one another, with the former simply wielding a chain with a hook on the end. Surmising quickly that ranged combat wasn't a smart idea, Yang decided to forgo Ember and Celica for now and charged the Egyptian with her gauntlets. Arslan was smart, however, and decided to roll around Yang, getting the cord around Yang's left arm before Yang physically stopped Arslan's movement with the chain. She then picked up one end of the chain and began to twirl around. Arslan was lifted off her feet as Yang threw her and the chain, crashing into the bridge like a ragdoll.

Cinder, already panicking as she desperately tried and failed to negotiate the tight area of Canary Wharf's Outer Dock with the Spring Maiden, jumped as the Cantonese sniper got plastered into the window on the port side of the bridge, followed by the Egyptian cook on the starboard side. As they slid off slowly, Cinder quickly surmised that the battle was lost once Mercury and Emerald's states of being were discovered.

"We'd better get moving," she murmured to herself.

With no other recourse, Cinder picked up one of the grappling harpoons that the pirates used to rob Exham Museum earlier that week, and moved to the door. Vera, noticing this, held the door opened and lay down covering fire as the pair ran for it.

"Where did you store the blueprints?", Cinder called out as they reached the stern. "They weren't in my briefcase on the bridge."

"I put them in another briefcase, safe on the bottom deck," Vera replied. "Next to the ladder on the port stern side of the ship. We're going there now."

Cinder nodded as she and Vera descended the ladder that ran on the inside of the Spring Maiden. True to Vera's words, the safe stood firm in the lowest deck. Vera quickly opened the safe, and screamed as she noticed the lack of briefcase.

"Shit," Vera cursed. "Vernal's obviously had the same idea and bolted amidst the chaos."

Cinder growled lowly. "She can't have gotten far. Let's go east."

Opening a nearby door, Cinder and Vera jumped a metre and barely made it onto the Millharbour, which led northwards to the South Quay bridge. They spotted Vernal's grey fatigues moving away at speed with a red briefcase in hand. Without a word, the pair of predators began to run. Vera, as always, held her corvine bone mask steady upon her face as she sprinted up the street. Cinder was gaining fast on Vernal, despite the weapon's encumbrance.

Half a minute later, Jaune and Qrow made the same landing. Without speaking, the pair got to their feet and began to run, before the three remaining perps could wreak more havoc. At this point, the others realised that combat had been won, and Weiss expertly docked the ship in the southern side of Canary Wharf while the others placed handcuffs on the pirates and thugs with cheery smiles on their faces. We did it, Weiss realised in sheer relief. We stopped a nightmare before it began.

Five minutes later, in an alleyway near the western end of Marsh Wall Bridge, Vernal Fausse had ditched her grey britches and jacket, survivors of many a battle on the seas, tied her hair back in a knot and patted down a silk dress she'd hidden within her clothes to provide protection against bullets. Holding the briefcase and her pair of pistols, Vernal decided on a course of action. Find somewhere to lay low tonight – perhaps that inn over the bridge there – then sell these blueprints to a fence tomorrow for enough pay to escape to France. I'll retire and find somewhere to live, somewhere quiet and undisturbed.

It wasn't a bad plan, in hindsight, but Vernal had made a catastrophic mistake in her plans. She had severely misjudged the time it would take to make it to the inn without avoiding detection – especially when her pursuers were equally athletic, and smart enough to avoid wearing overly feminine dresses. Vernal barely made it halfway over the bridge with her skirts hitched before a chilling voice called to her.

"Quo vadis, Vernal?"

Vernal spun around with guns in hand … and screamed as a harpoon impaled her through the abdomen. Cinder walked slowly towards her quarry with a smile that could only be called demonic. Her voice, when it came, had the same serene tone – which made the woman all the more terrifying.

"I'd pegged you as a traitor the minute we first met, Ms. Fausse," she said as she began to reel in Vernal's bleeding body, the pain causing the pirate to scream horribly as the barbs of the harpoon cut her insides up. Cinder only seemed to smile more openly in response to the noise.

"I never needed you or your crew for the voyage … after all, my family invented auto-navigation systems before the Schnees suppressed the technology for themselves."

By this point, Cinder was standing face to face with her prey. Her smile was nastier than ever before, and Vernal knew she was doomed.

"So I will take … what is mine."

Cinder planted her left foot on the pirate's chest, and ripped the harpoon spike from Vernal's body. The blood loss Vernal suffered in that instant ensured death within minutes, even with medical attention given to her. As she fell to the ground screaming in pain, Cinder retrieved the briefcase that held the ill-gotten plans, and opened it. Cinder's smug expression faded into outright shock at what she found within; nothing.

"What is this … w-where are my blueprints?!"

"You won't find them."

Cinder spun around, and saw Vera standing ten metres away, with her red katana drawn in her right hand.

"Because Vernal wasn't the traitor."

Cinder then noticed that the woman was unmasked, and held a badge in her left hand which had five words written underneath it.

"I AM!"

Sergeant Raven Branwen, Special Branch.

A/N: Surprise.

Maidenbowl 2.0 will be up next Friday.

Stay tuned, and I hope this chapter's combat wasn't dull.