Fandom Distorted Mirror [IC]

[MidwayLives]

Never in her life did the current scenario ever cross Ruby's mind.

Locking hands with Weiss Schnee-full of the power of a being beyond Ruby-and soaring through the air.

Together they'd fight and the the one standing in their way?

She'd never liked Ruby though the former right hand of evil had made an effort to befriend the faunus.

Handshakes were ignored, friendly smiles were never returned, hugs were out of the question.

Ruby's view of things were rather...simplistic given the mess that made up her mind. To her it was as simple as 'I'm a human so Blake must be wary around me. Maybe if I do better then I'll show her we can be friends. Friends that can talk to eachother and hold eachother.' At one point during her confinement, Ruby had even mulled over the idea of confronting Weiss and asking/forcing her to be kinder to the faunus in some kind of attempt to win Blake's friendship/attention. As life had a rather funny way of working itself out, it turned out that Ruby ended up standing side by side with the very councilwoman she'd plotted to fight at one point.

Still.

Blake and her had fought together before as well. The two had spilled blood and shed some of their own for Ozpin.

If it came down to it, she'd probably have to kill Blake.

'But could I do it...?'

She didn't know and so she stayed quiet throughout the flight.
​

The Red Masque was crouched at her side, cloak flapping amid the air currents, but likewise made no move to attack.

Ruby's eyes looked over all those gathered.

She knew Blake placed a lot of faith/trust in those she worked with....the faunus ones anyway. So she doubted that any of these people were amateurs. She'd have to be on her guard or else the advantage gained by Weiss's immense power would be squandered if either of them were forced into a less than ideal position. Her flesh and blood hand held tightly onto the shaft of Crescent Rose. A low hum emitted from her mechanical arm, her fingers twitching as she waited for any of the faunus gathered beside Blake to make a move...
​

At the very least it felt good to finally get that off her chest, and she promptly buried the matter somewhere so deep in her heart she'd likely never think about it involuntarily again as she slid her right foot back and whipped Myrtenaster's immaculate blade up to divide her face in half. Taking a breath to steady herself, she traced out a glyph beneath Ruby's feet, the dials of a clock spinning rapidly into existence below her as she felt a surge of lightning dust imbue her with its quickening properties. During one of their very first training exercises together she had learned she could more or less just do this to Ruby and let her become the spinning top of speed and death she was always meant to be.

"Ruby? Keep them away from me. Don't let the big ones touch you, overwhelm the short fellow with your speed, don't let the chameleon girl leave your field of vision. Oh, and mind yourself around the shorter-haired sister. I have no idea who that is."

She nodded stiffly, swished her rapier out to one side, and whether any of them had found success in freeing any of their limbs yet or not the Shadow Fang members promptly found the glyphs binding them dispelled.

In the same moment the glyphs behind her all started to glow in their center, and they had barely dropped down by the time their entire end of the room was eviscerated by volley upon volley of dust, lightning, fire, meteorites, ice, all bolstered by a variety of energy conjured straight from the gods themselves.

The cloak fell from her shoulders and Ruby's tie came loose from the prim and classy guise she'd put on for this mission.

Part of it was for her own personal enjoyment, the other was...well, she couldn't really explain it too well. But it helped her feel more 'in-sync' with Weiss if that made sense.

It'd...actually been quite some time since she'd had a good fight. The training sessions with Weiss were tough enough and at the end of the day Ruby always knew Weiss COULD kill her but she wanted-she craved a knuckle to knuckle drag out brawl like she had with her Yang back at the motel...Just pure savagery!
​

"Its proof you Schnees are all the same. Drunk on power and faunus blood for centuries. My FAMILY'S blood. Oh, I know you think you're different. You think you're better. The next human savior of the faunus, different from all the other ones who promised us things would change, that this time things would be better. You wanna prove it?" She sneered

"Then choke on your shitty messiah complex and die. and let the world get a chance to heal without your fucking bloodline tainting it. and if not-"

Ruby raised her prosthetic arm and prepared to blast IIia with it.

Weiss may have called her a...monster...but Ruby still believed that she had nothing but the best intentions for Atlas and the world at large.

Plus these people had hurt the one Yang that Ruby hadn't ruined. They'd die for that.

This one first.
​

Moments before the glyphs were released, the rubble nearby exploded, a black blur aiming to crash two blades into the maiden's aura at the neck before immediately reversing the momentum with another semblance dash as Blake spun about face with the same motion to slash into Weiss' back as she roared "SCATTER!" as the shadow clone that was imprisoned in the glyphs finally began to dissipate

"Weiss!"

Turning on a dime, Ruby quickly pulled her sword from it's sheath and threw it.

With all the strength her artificial arm afforded her to try and hinder Blake's attack on the maiden.
​

Ruby had her moment to react, but all of the talons (and special guests Ilia and Feri) all exploded for different exits; Blake's half seen blur going for the hole in the wall White Rose had created, Hound and the argent twins bursting out the door into the hallway, and Bear giving a martial roar as he smashed through an entirely different wall into what looked like a hangar, Ilia dashing to keep pace with him and tiger probably went with one of those groups

'Who do I go after...?'

The one with the cool-looking arm had raced off into a hangar of some-kind along with the lizard girl following behind them...She'd seen the other 'big' fighter race off into the hallway...

If the chameleon got away...

Ruby drew Crescent Rose and vanished in a trail of rose petals.

All was quiet except for the sound of hurried footsteps until IIia saw a trail of rose petals blow past by her and something crash against her aura.

Coming to a stop and having reclaimed her sword from where she'd tossed it, there stood The Red Masque staring down the chameleon.

 

[Gus Gungus]

"Its proof you Schnees are all the same. Drunk on power and faunus blood for centuries. My FAMILY'S-"

There was a degree of irony in the way Weiss's features mirrored Blake's placid inscrutability from the moment Ilia started talking, attention diverting to her with little more than a disciplined frown and eyes that were as unswayed as they were surprisingly patient.

Because even if she didn't agree, concede or even particularly sympathize, she understood. She really did. Emotions had a way of warping the mind, of dominating reason, and she'd long since learned to refrain from expecting other people to be as committed to objectivity as she was. Especially these people. Indifference was something she feigned extremely well, but it had always made her a bit uncomfortable, honestly. Association with her father's crimes. The idea that somebody could hate her for wrongs she never committed. It made old, long-buried sentiments of existential panic bubble to the surface, of guilt, of constantly feeling like she had done something wrong without actually knowing what. Part of her always hoped that if she just gave them a wide berth, let them get it out of their systems, maybe one day the faunus who loathed her so would understand. They'd wake up from their dream of vengeance and loathing towards her, go back to leading lives that were socially acceptable, just... leave her alone. Let her do what she had to do, make up for her father's wrongs the only way she could think of, before she had to deal with every single one of them the only way her long-term ambitions could allow for. Before more faunus lives ended at the hands of a Schnee, and they all died thinking they were right.

From where she was standing right now, that didn't seem likely.

The guilt that rose in her whenever she was faced with the fallout of her father's sins was like bile. It strained even her capacity to maintain her heart of ice, to keep the ugly knot of emotions locked away somewhere deep inside her from finally exploding and reaping their terrible penance, and Weiss didn't appreciate that. If she gave even an inch, if she let these people's accusations weigh so much as a feather on her conscience, there was no way of telling where it might end. She couldn't allow it. She had to be steel, had to be impervious. If that meant being cold, so be it.

That was why Ilia made it that far before Weiss decided she'd had enough, whatever nerve the chameleon struck with her last words enough to force what was almost an aggrieved huff out of her as she sharply raised a fist to cut her off. Which would've been about as effective as trying to douse the sun with a water pistol, naturally, if not for the layer of ice that formed over Ilia's mouth with the motion, forcing her lips shut. It was actually one of the more polite methods Weiss entertained of silencing her, and the transition back to her own speech was seamless as she rolled her eyes.

"-Yes, yes, family this, family that, I've heard it all before. Your bloodlust's showing, you sad little girl. It has a way of misleading people, so allow me to offer a few quick corrections for the benefit of your next vitriolic rant against me. First, my grandfather? Founder of the Schnee Dust Company? Source of all my family's influence and wealth? Was a miner himself. The Schnee name was rich with a proud heritage of huntsmen, huntresses and Mantle tradespeople long before it was ever rich with lien, but please, tell me more about how our legacy is defined by the actions of one man. Who, might I add, didn't even carry our blood."

Her features had soured into a darker glower the longer she continued talking, warring with the temperature of the room for arctic dominance, but she pressed on undeterred.

"Here's the first inconvenient truth your myopic revenge fantasy won't allow you to acknowledge: the Schnees came from nothing, JUST like your parents. The second? This should really go without mentioning, but I was barely older than you were the day they were taken from you. I can't begin to imagine what your memories of the accident must be like, truly, but would you like to know all I remember from that day? My father's rage at the projected profit loss, and the ensuing bruises. So grow up, miss Amitola, and spare me your misplaced blame. The only commiserations you'll get from me are for how thoroughly you've allowed the world to break you. Anyone with as much venom in their heart as you carry has no business determining the fate of anything, much less an entire people. Oh, and for the record? Where your partner and I differ is that I never intended to save a species."

Where her initial stoniness had been a reflection of Blake's, the calm, goading smirk she wore by the time she was through stood as a marked contrast to the spite and acrimony Ilia's grin had borne her, as unmoved and breezy as her tone. For Ilia, the name Schnee had, for better or worse, defined the course of her entire life. The animosity, the anger, everything she felt when she looked at Weiss was incredibly, intensely personal.

When Weiss looked at her she saw the same thing she saw when she looked a majority of the room: another disaffected faunus deserving of pity. And frankly, she wasn't even sure she'd gotten her name right.

The glyphs started to loosen, the rubble exploded, and-

Moments before the glyphs were released, the rubble nearby exploded, a black blur aiming to crash two blades into the maiden's aura at the neck before immediately reversing the momentum with another semblance dash as Blake spun about face with the same motion to slash into Weiss' back as she roared "SCATTER!" as the shadow clone that was imprisoned in the glyphs finally began to dissipate

-Weiss had no intention of letting Atlas become the third kingdom in as many months to underestimate Blake Belladonna, nor had it taken her long to determine the one she had snared wasn't the genuine article. She took immense pride in her advanced skill in swordplay, but in truth Blake had seen and engaged in far more personal bloodshed than Weiss herself ever really wanted to; an edge that simply couldn't be imitated in a training context no matter how how fierce the taskmasters she employed. Carnelian's tutelage, in particular, had seen her improve by magnitudes, but nevertheless she harbored no delusions over who the circumstances favored if they played that game. An equal test of their swords wouldn't even have been a close contest.

So she was going to play another game. Myrtenaster complimented her in more ways than she cared to list, but frankly its capacity as a sliver of metal Weiss could poke things with was the least of her arsenal. The spray of rubble and Ruby's intervention was more than enough, and by the time Blake was near enough for her offensive Weiss had turned to affix her with a smirk that looked contemptuously unsurprised as her rapier danced up in a parry of shimmering elegance. Two fingers pushed against the blade, and the row of miniaturized glyphs running across its edge rebuffed Gambol Shroud's swings with far more force than the councilwoman's slender frame seemed capable of generating. It was enough to repel her in the opposite direction entirely, where the faunus found a prism of glyphs spring up around, above and beneath her to promptly bounce her around its confines a few times as vigorously as a pinball trapped between bumpers before she managed to maneuver herself out.

"I'm going to save the world."



They were propulsive glyphs that could easily have been a full scale offensive bombardment, and the air of mockery was undeniable as Weiss tutted lightly at the scattering tactic even while immediately throwing herself forward in pursuit of Blake. She recognized the tactic for what it was; the typical game of cloak and dagger the Shadow Fang liked to play.

They weren't playing their game today. They were playing Weiss's. Her city, her terms. And she wasn't letting Belladonna out of her sight for a second.

Outside the room, all three of the hastily formed groups were met by a different fresh hell as a more intricate design behind Weiss's seemingly haphazard approach made itself known. The walls, floor and ceiling of the room Blake emerged into were absolutely covered in glyphs, ominous sights for how gently their snowflake patterns circled, and the moment the Shadow Fang's Hand touched down several pulsed with a glow that expanded from their center to envelop the room in a thick sheet of ice far denser and more troublesome to break through than the drywall and floor tiles themselves, with the added detriment of the floor itself becoming profoundly slippery. Weiss herself navigated it with the ease and grace of an ice skater, surprising in her ability to keep up with the faunus' dashes as she glided across a track of glyphs that conserved her balance, circling her in a bid to cut her off with a flurry of thrusts even as ice started closing over the opening they came blurring through.

"You know this forced reticence is quite unbecoming, Blake! Especially given I've always been rather civil with you. Come now, you must at least have questions. Too shocked for words? I take it your resident snake in the grass failed to relay the terms I set out via scroll, then. Could it be she didn't want you to know we were communicating? Well, that's no real surprise in light of what she offered to give me, but-"

Even as the words assailed her from what seemed like all sides a glyph suddenly appeared before Blake to block her path, and however she responded to that as well as the taunting she suddenly had to deal with her quarry coming at her from a totally different angle of attack than the nigh-predictable arc of before. Weiss launched herself directly upwards from one glyph into the waiting arms of another, ricocheting downwards for an elevated thrust at the faunus as every one of Myrtenaster's barrels burned white, though nowhere near brightly enough to disguise the clashing streams of light flaring from her eyes.

The Hound and the Argents, on the other hand, kicked open the door and found themselves face to face with an obstacle of an entirely different—And more straightforward—nature.



The Gigas was smaller than Weiss often summoned it, but towered over them all the same, its frame leaking ethereal mist from every joint as it stood in a sentry position to cut off the hallway. Both hands grasped its enormous claymore, and by the time the doors were open all the way was already mid-swing with strength that outstripped what even the strongest of humanoids could achieve with aura sans an enhancing semblance of some kind and a surprising amount of speed to match as the arc of its blade threatened to impact all three of them.

She trusted Ruby and her boosted speed to prove sufficient for corralling the other two. Brothers help them, honestly.​

 

[MidwayLives]

In the search for the Mistral Murderer, the Boss had made some moves of his own.

Spiders were now being targeted and seemed to be winding up dead. Some due to knife stabs, others to gunshots(all headshots for some reason...)

Had the killer somehow learned of the Anti-Murderer Defense Squad(Tyrian's name he picked out)'s intentions? If so then how? Who was watching out for him? Who had the resources to keep finding and knocking off the Spiders? The killings seemed too clean for a simple butcher....

The bodies as they continued to pile up seemed to leave clues behind as they were found.

'STOP NOW IF YOU WANT TO LIVE' 'GET OUT OF MISTRAL' 'YOU'LL DIE BEFORE YOU FIND ME' all warnings and yet the wind seemed particularly strong this day...

As he looked over a particular gruesome looking corpse-half of his head was missing due to a headshot-Blanco huffed and tucked his hands into his pockets.

"The Killer...Tyrian's the only one who's made mention of his weaponry and had a personal encounter with him. He wouldn't be using a gun. I doubt it'd get him the same sense of carnal urges that acts like these bring out in madmen like him. No, somebody is covering for him.." Watching as windows were shuttered and blown shut by the wind picking up, his gaze hardened. "...To get rid of us." Tyrian's tail smashing against the ground broke up Blanco's speech as the faunus groaned in frustration.

"AGH! I don't care who's helping this guy! I just wanna find him! The more we scramble, the more..." He didn't look over at Callie. "The more bodies are gonna pile up. If that wind's him reaching out then it's the best lead we got so far..." Thoughts of Trifa sailed through his head: if she was okay, what was happening to her, and if she'd be in one piece by the time they found her. As Tyrian moved to race towards where the wind seemed to be blowing, it'd end up taking the AMDS down to a rather worn-out looking warehouse. One that someone as well-versed as Callie could have recognized as having been used to previously smuggle/store drugs/weapons/etc for the Narcotics Team and possibly even smaller groups. It also happened to be one of the places that suffered due to the Boss's continued insistence on making and keeping a foothold in Atlas. It hadn't been touched since.



"Hey, uh...if we find this killer guy...WE don't have to fight him, right?" Blanche asked.

"Bring him on!"

"Char!"

"Sorry, sorry. I just get excited..."

Blanco wasn't convinced to believe that the killer would so casually invite his pursuers to come confront him. No, there had to be something more to using this location in particular. "Tyrian and anyone else who wishes to accompany me? I'm going to have a look inside and see what might be...lurking around." Making his way inside with Tyrian following in step behind him, a chill ran up the faunus's back. His unfortunate encounter with the one called 'Jack' had been at a warehouse much like this and needless to say if the scar on Tyrian's side wasn't enough proof, it hadn't gone well for the teenager.

Declining Blanco's offer(and not really liking the idea of him ordering Blanche and himself around anyway)to investigate the outside, Char and Blanche remained outside unless they were strongarmed to join the others.

~~~Prior to the gang arriving to the warehouse~~

"The Boss wants us to work with-what?!"

"..."

"A member of the Elite Guard. Aurora says Char and Blanche have gone rogue and the punishment for that..." Abyss let the obvious answer hang there for Vanille and Violet to figure out on their own and deal with as they wished. Vanille didn't speak as was expected/respected by her comrades at this point. The drink she'd been sipping on though trembled lightly under her increased grip. Violet had a much more volatile reaction to the 'news.'



"Yeah, I'll tell you right now Abyss. I respect you, hell I admire that you've gotten this far without having a semblance. But that little shitheel Aurora can tell me til he's blue in the face, I still won't believe that those two idiots packed up and bailed on us. We've been through too much together. Years upon years of work taking out the gang's enemies. Fuck, we nearly died together and you're expecting not just me-" She thumbed over to Vanille."-To buy this slop hook line and sinker?? It's an absolute bowl of bullshit and I'm not listening to it! What's more likely is that those kids either killed the two of them and Aurora's trying to get us psyched up to go murder the shitty little brats or they got their asses kicked and the kids are holding em hostage. But...when I put it like that." Violet grumbled. "Maybe they should have just died. Getting beat and caught by some dickhead's son and his band of merry little buddies. Pour one out for the Hitman Team's credibility...'

Abyss listened until Violet was finished.

"I agree with you."

"Eh??? Then why the hell did you-"

Abyss held up her hand.

"I didn't mention it the last time we met up. I didn't want to cause any trouble while Char and Blanche's statuses were still unknown. But I had a scuffle with Aurora the last time I spoke to him and he managed to do this to me." Abyss let her jacket slip from her shoulders and pulled it down slightly to show the bruise on her left arm and ran a finger under her nose. "Took my own gun and smacked me with it. If it hadn't been for my aura, I probably wouldn't have been able to hide the injuries as well as I did. Whoever Aurora 'is', he's not just the Boss's underling. He's just as dangerous and until I know what's really happened to Char and Blanche, we're going to play along."

That...was a lot for Violet to take in. Mostly the whole 'Aurora being dangerous' bit.

"...Well, if those two idiots are still alive then what?"

"Once we're all back together....we're leaving Mistral. The Boss's influence runs too deep and I'm not going to risk the lives of my comrades while living in fear. I'm not sure where we'll go or if we won't be stopped by the Narcotics Team or the Community Team. He'll probably say whatever he needs to say to turn them against us. If we die on the streets like dogs then, well,..." Abyss drew one of her many firearms and loaded the pistol before holstering it. "Then we'll have at least died on our own terms, not his."

"...Can't say I much like the idea of bolting from Mistral. This place is the only home I've ever known. So it's gone to shit, who cares, no hometown is perfect." She rose to her feet and drew her twin pistols. "But if you're saying that's what's best for the team then we'll do it. Vanille?"

The wolf faunus nodded her head and finished off her soda before tossing the cup aside.

"Then consider this the last mission for the Hitman Team! Our goal is to retrieve Char and Blanche if they're still alive. If they're not...." Violet's face broke out into a grin. "Then we kill Black's kid and his friends. Blood for blood and all that."

"HELL YEAH! LET'S-uh, wait hold on a second. The Elite who's gonna be with us isn't gonna just let us bounce. Who is it anyway...?"

"Well, you know the one that acts around town as a street clown-"

"AH, I FUCKIN HATE THAT GUY!!!"

~~~Now~~~



Despite the shutdown of the warehouse, the inside seemed relatively clean.

No real signs of dust or wear and tear. When the operation had been shut down, the Narcotics Team apparently packed up and moved out without question. While violence wasn't their go-to, they were remarkably adept at getting things done and not leaving a trace of their actions behind. The fan built into the wall atop the second floor of the warehouse was still spinning though. As if there was still something generating power into the building. Blanco held up his hand figuring that'd be enough as the other's aura would have given them the inklings that something wasn't right here and why would it be? Tyrian and Blanco had expected whoever had been covering for Jack to show themselves and silence the group before it could continue pursuing the lead.

What they got instead was one foul-mouthed gangster and her silent faunus partner staring down at them from the second floor.

Spoiler: the two

"Hey, you little shitbirds!"

Vanille gave a little wave.

"Dunno what happened beyond you guys giving our pals an assbeating but nobody disgraces the Hitman Team and gets away with it." Violet warned and Vanille nodded in agreement. Standing in the center between the two women was one of the Boss's most trusted subordinates, a member of his elite guard: Ghastly Ebony. His curly blonde hair poked out like a dirty bush behind the bloodstained clown mask he wore. Eyeing Emerald in particular out of the group, he leaned onto the railing and gave Violet a hearty slap on the back for encouragement and all that! Anyone else would have gotten put on their ass but Ghastly was a big shot so...Violet let it slide.

Both her and Vanille's eyes narrowed upon seeing Blanco.

"Well if it isn't Mistral's 'Golden Boy.' Let's see if we can knock a little of that sheen off, Vanille..."

The faunus nodded and as energy cycled through her legs, she leapt from the second floor and straight down to the main one, the spot where she landed little more than a miniature crater. Hefting her sword over her shoulder, she looked over those gathered as if waiting to see who'd try attacking her first. Violet was a bit more sudden with her violence and opened fire forcing Tyrian to do the same.

Ghastly quietly clasped his hands and leaned back, watching the proceedings....

​

 

[MidwayLives]

The Gigas was smaller than Weiss often summoned it, but towered over them all the same, its frame leaking ethereal mist from every joint as it stood in a sentry position to cut off the hallway. Both hands grasped its enormous claymore, and by the time the doors were open all the way was already mid-swing with strength that outstripped what even the strongest of humanoids could achieve with aura sans an enhancing semblance of some kind and a surprising amount of speed to match as the arc of its blade threatened to impact all three of them.

She trusted Ruby and her boosted speed to prove sufficient for corralling the other two. Brothers help them, honestly.

She'd been quiet through the planning, the waiting.

Now?

The time for being quiet was over.

Bursting past Hound and the two sisters quick enough to potentially bowl them over, Tiger's outfit was already tearing at the seams.

Percentages were rattled off as she debated in real time what would be enough for an enemy like this. A construct made by the very woman they'd come to kill.

She'd managed to turn the tables on them. Taking her on in a 'fair' fight would have only ended up with all of them dead or wishing they were. The woman known as Tiger had no such fears. Living, dying, as long as she did it her way it was all fine in her eyes. Same for those she fought and killed. No hostility or hatred ever entered into the equation. Just things that needed to be done. This was another thing that needed to be done.

"80!%"

Her sleeves practically exploded off her jumpsuit as she put herself in the path of the incoming strike and raised her left arm. The power behind the Gigas's swing was mighty. Enough to crumple a lesser warrior and as Tger's sneakers scrathed across the ground the soles being eviscerated in real time, she grit her teeth and bared it. Her aura shimmered like angelic lights as she was continually pushed back until she finally found her footing. Panting, she wasted no time in rearing her grotesquely muscular right arm back to throw a punch right at the artificial knight.

'My 'name' is Tiger...but that's not who I am...not in my heart...I know who I am...My name is!-'

If she was going to die here then she had to come to terms with somethings. But not before making sure the other two were alright.




Oh, and Hound as well. She'd always liked him despite the banter.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Outside the room, all three of the hastily formed groups were met by a different fresh hell as a more intricate design behind Weiss's seemingly haphazard approach made itself known. The walls, floor and ceiling of the room Blake emerged into were absolutely covered in glyphs, ominous sights for how gently their snowflake patterns circled, and the moment the Shadow Fang's Hand touched down several pulsed with a glow that expanded from their center to envelop the room in a thick sheet of ice far denser and more troublesome to break through than the drywall and floor tiles themselves, with the added detriment of the floor itself becoming profoundly slippery. Weiss herself navigated it with the ease and grace of an ice skater, surprising in her ability to keep up with the faunus' dashes as she glided across a track of glyphs that conserved her balance, circling her in a bid to cut her off with a flurry of thrusts even as ice started closing over the opening they came blurring through.

"You know this forced reticence is quite unbecoming, Blake! Especially given I've always been rather civil with you. Come now, you must at least have questions. Too shocked for words? I take it your resident snake in the grass failed to relay the terms I set out via scroll, then. Could it be she didn't want you to know we were communicating? Well, that's no real surprise in light of what she offered to give me, but-"

Even as the words assailed her from what seemed like all sides a glyph suddenly appeared before Blake to block her path, and however she responded to that as well as the taunting she suddenly had to deal with her quarry coming at her from a totally different angle of attack than the nigh-predictable arc of before. Weiss launched herself directly upwards from one glyph into the waiting arms of another, ricocheting downwards for an elevated thrust at the faunus as every one of Myrtenaster's barrels burned white, though nowhere near brightly enough to disguise the clashing streams of light flaring from her eyes.

"Nothing- ngh- forced about Schnee. You just won't shut the fuck up long enough for anyone else to talk"

Blakes' words were almost amused in their blunt rebuttal, even though her gaze was anything but. The placid indifference on the shadow clone from before had merely been the expression Blake had been wearing the instant before the crash, and the hateful golden eyes that seemed to burn almost as bright as the maiden's even in the well lit room were locked into a dark glare that tracked Weiss' graceful movements around her, and the faunus' own movements were sharp and wholly unbecoming of a cat on ice. Moments after the ice had begun to form, there'd been a click from Blake's feet, and if Weiss spared a glance for where Blake stepped, she'd see tiny holes in the ice where Blake's boots had dug in. They'd come to slay the ice queen, and no amount of conviction or sacrificial fervor could replace preparation when it came to success on a hunt.

It would've been a dangerous glance to take.



Blake's movements were so quick and precise that the only sign she was pushing herself so hard were the heavy clouds of mist bursting from her lungs after every breath in the icy room as she slipped around Weiss' barrage of thrusts. She wasn't sure why Weiss had opted into this game, to enclose herself in close quarters with The Hand; she knew there'd be a reason of course. She didn't believe for a second that Weiss Schnee had burst into the warehouse in a heroic raid without fifteen plans and as many backups. But it didn't change the fact that for now, thats where they were. A fact Blake was willing to let herself play into whatever trap might've been forming to abuse. This was no longer possible to play as an assassination; it'd be a game of inches, chipping away at Weiss' defenses, aura, and willpower, a lunatic armed with a spoon attempting to break down a glacier.

The last thrust in the flurry was met with a vicious rebuttal as Blake's feet left the floor even as she leaned down and vanished in a blur, her sheathe's blade cutting across Weiss' abdomen as she halted her momentum mere inches on the other side and twisted to catch Weiss with another stroke before her glyph skating sped her away-

a gunshot came from the other side as Gambol shroud came spinning in from a completely different angle, the ribbon's deployment hidden behind the clone left behind. The second strike never landed, Blake instead vanishing only to come crashing down with an overhand chop from above with such speed and force that the ice splintered and cracked where it impacted, regardless of whether Schnee was beneath it when it came.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The Hound and the Argents, on the other hand, kicked open the door and found themselves face to face with an obstacle of an entirely different—And more straightforward—nature.

The Gigas was smaller than Weiss often summoned it, but towered over them all the same, its frame leaking ethereal mist from every joint as it stood in a sentry position to cut off the hallway. Both hands grasped its enormous claymore, and by the time the doors were open all the way was already mid-swing with strength that outstripped what even the strongest of humanoids could achieve with aura sans an enhancing semblance of some kind and a surprising amount of speed to match as the arc of its blade threatened to impact all three of them.

All three had their weapons in hand in an instant; Greki's entire arm being covered in a chunky, metallic gauntlet ending in fingers of needles, Hound's spear spinning into his hand from where it was already in flight from across the room, and eight bracelets that were along Feri's arm all popped off and snapped together, blades extending on three sides of the newly formed ringblade filled with dust-

She'd been quiet through the planning, the waiting.

Now?

The time for being quiet was over.

Bursting past Hound and the two sisters quick enough to potentially bowl them over, Tiger's outfit was already tearing at the seams.

Percentages were rattled off as she debated in real time what would be enough for an enemy like this. A construct made by the very woman they'd come to kill.

She'd managed to turn the tables on them. Taking her on in a 'fair' fight would have only ended up with all of them dead or wishing they were. The woman known as Tiger had no such fears. Living, dying, as long as she did it her way it was all fine in her eyes. Same for those she fought and killed. No hostility or hatred ever entered into the equation. Just things that needed to be done. This was another thing that needed to be done.

"80!%"

Her sleeves practically exploded off her jumpsuit as she put herself in the path of the incoming strike and raised her left arm. The power behind the Gigas's swing was mighty. Enough to crumple a lesser warrior and as Tger's sneakers scrathed across the ground the soles being eviscerated in real time, she grit her teeth and bared it. Her aura shimmered like angelic lights as she was continually pushed back until she finally found her footing. Panting, she wasted no time in rearing her grotesquely muscular right arm back to throw a punch right at the artificial knight.

'My 'name' is Tiger...but that's not who I am...not in my heart...I know who I am...My name is!-'

If she was going to die here then she had to come to terms with somethings. But not before making sure the other two were alright.




Oh, and Hound as well. She'd always liked him despite the banter.

Then a meteor came crashing over them to intercept the blade.

"I had that, Arena meat!" Hound complained even as Tiger's massive frame briefly struggled with the blade, but he was on the move by the time Tiger pushed it off and readied her next punch. his lithe form slipped between the two titans just before they clashed and in between the Gigas' legs, the spear in his hands resting on his shoulders as he gripped and violently twisted, the two ends of the spear hitting just so that they had enough leverage to make up for the beast's weight and poise to send it tumbling forwards.

"GREKI, GO HELP THE HAND'S BITCH AND THE OLD MAN, FERI, DO WHAT WE'RE PAYING YOU FOR!"

The sister shared a glance, nodded, and slipped off.

----------------------------------------------------------

'Who do I go after...?'

The one with the cool-looking arm had raced off into a hangar of some-kind along with the lizard girl following behind them...She'd seen the other 'big' fighter race off into the hallway...

If the chameleon got away...

Ruby drew Crescent Rose and vanished in a trail of rose petals.

All was quiet except for the sound of hurried footsteps until IIia saw a trail of rose petals blow past by her and something crash against her aura.

Coming to a stop and having reclaimed her sword from where she'd tossed it, there stood The Red Masque staring down the chameleon.

Ilia rolled backwards from the strike and came to a stumbling halt at her feet, a growl on her face as she wiped a bit of spit the blow had knocked out of her from her lip.

"So I get the rabid one. Great. Let me guess, you want a one on one show down to impress your new girlfriend, right?" She drawled as she pulled her Shadowfang mask from her belt and slipped it into her face. "Alright then. Let's-"

The only warning Ruby got was the faint tingle of danger from her aura before Bear came crashing down from the Hangar's ceiling like a vengeful, silent meteor, his massive hand bending steel and crushing the rock beneath as he impacted the floor

"-not do that" Ilia said, before dashing off towards a set of crates in a sideways direction from the mask and her mentor

 

[Gus Gungus]

"Nothing- ngh- forced about Schnee. You just won't shut the fuck up long enough for anyone else to talk"

Blakes' words were almost amused in their blunt rebuttal, even though her gaze was anything but. The placid indifference on the shadow clone from before had merely been the expression Blake had been wearing the instant before the crash, and the hateful golden eyes that seemed to burn almost as bright as the maiden's even in the well lit room were locked into a dark glare that tracked Weiss' graceful movements around her, and the faunus' own movements were sharp and wholly unbecoming of a cat on ice. Moments after the ice had begun to form, there'd been a click from Blake's feet, and if Weiss spared a glance for where Blake stepped, she'd see tiny holes in the ice where Blake's boots had dug in. They'd come to slay the ice queen, and no amount of conviction or sacrificial fervor could replace preparation when it came to success on a hunt.

It would've been a dangerous glance to take.



Blake's movements were so quick and precise that the only sign she was pushing herself so hard were the heavy clouds of mist bursting from her lungs after every breath in the icy room as she slipped around Weiss' barrage of thrusts. She wasn't sure why Weiss had opted into this game, to enclose herself in close quarters with The Hand; she knew there'd be a reason of course. She didn't believe for a second that Weiss Schnee had burst into the warehouse in a heroic raid without fifteen plans and as many backups. But it didn't change the fact that for now, thats where they were. A fact Blake was willing to let herself play into whatever trap might've been forming to abuse. This was no longer possible to play as an assassination; it'd be a game of inches, chipping away at Weiss' defenses, aura, and willpower, a lunatic armed with a spoon attempting to break down a glacier.

The last thrust in the flurry was met with a vicious rebuttal as Blake's feet left the floor even as she leaned down and vanished in a blur, her sheathe's blade cutting across Weiss' abdomen as she halted her momentum mere inches on the other side and twisted to catch Weiss with another stroke before her glyph skating sped her away-

a gunshot came from the other side as Gambol shroud came spinning in from a completely different angle, the ribbon's deployment hidden behind the clone left behind. The second strike never landed, Blake instead vanishing only to come crashing down with an overhand chop from above with such speed and force that the ice splintered and cracked where it impacted, regardless of whether Schnee was beneath it when it came.

"Yep. Charming as I remembered."

The scoff Weiss gave in reply was remarkably conversational in its own right, less the rancorous bad blood of a sworn foe and more the derisive cattiness of a jilted friend. The irony didn't seem to occur to her. She would've rolled her eyes were she not keenly aware how costly a mistake it would've been in this room, with this enemy bearing down on her; as to why she had placed herself in such precarious conditions to begin with, there really wasn't anything especially complex to it.

Was Blake more lethal? Decisively so. Was she more talented with a sword? Almost definitely.

Was Weiss an unprecedented nightmare of an opponent, endowed not only with a perfected form of her family semblance—one her sister's comparatively intermediary grasp of had made her among the most elite operatives in all of Atlas—but actual magic, without the hesitance or inexperience of Blake's maiden punching bag from a few months ago? Was she still her better in every way that actually mattered in a one-to-one confrontation between them?

Absolutely. And most importantly, she had a point to prove.

For months she was forced to idly sit by and endure while the Shadow Fang grew bolder and bolder, while they had their way with the incompetent and unprepared kingdoms practically unopposed, glorifying themselves as righteous revolutionaries while they beat up children and plunged thousands of lives into chaos. As something of a dabbling revolutionary herself she considered it sloppy work, not to mention insane. But they'd overplayed their hand this time. Weiss was neither incompetent nor unprepared; on the contrary, she'd been preparing her kingdom for a threat far exceeding Sienna's cavalier pack of thugs and savages. But that didn't mean she'd forgotten about them, and when it came to the people who had (indirectly or no) deprived her of any chance of remote happiness in her life Weiss Schnee was always prepared to put them back in their place.

And NOT in a racist way. She was really glad she hadn't said that out loud.

Her initial flurry was comprised of quick, gauging thrusts while she whisked around at a respectable distance, making full use of the superior reach offered by Myrtenaster to test Blake's guard without committing herself fully enough to leave herself open. All of them laser precise, all of them calculated as her her eyes stayed rooted to the faunus's form, disciplined and trained enough to observe its movements as a whole without putting too much of her focus towards any one part, all in anticipation of-

Exactly that, and as soon as Blake's figure burst forward in a blur so too did Weiss's glide the opposite direction at a similar rate as her glyphs superseded her own body's capacity to dodge. The parry to the strike at her torso seemed effortless, as did the way she spun to deflect the hurled Gambol behind her head in an elegant pirouette with rapier held over her shoulder, surprisingly not taking the bait of the shadow clone. It sent the blade spinning into the waiting hands of Blake as she descended like a god's wrath from above her, but again Weiss seemed prepared, and again a pinpoint glyph allowed her to twist her body at just the right ankle to plant her heels on Gambol's blade for the brief moment it was embedded in ice. The frozen surface she was standing on, in turn, climbed up to envelop Blake's ankles, and the incumbent Schnee matriarch spared a split-second pitying smirk down at her before opting towards a maneuver straight from the family playbook.

Spoiler

Whether her shoe successfully met Blake's chin or not, the miniature glyphs already swirling under her stilettos aided her in springing away, the one awaiting her on the ceiling shot her back towards the floor with momentum, and she promptly resumed gliding across the track of glyphs rapidly forming before her, continuing to keep herself frustratingly beyond Blake's reach and even having the audacity to cover a giggle. Between the game of keepaway, the relatively tame nature of the attacks Weiss had unleashed to date and the continued air of breezy nonchalance she was meeting Blake's vindicated wrath with, the feared Hand of the Shadow Fang would've been forgiven for getting the sense she wasn't being taken seriously. Outright mocked, even.

The reality was quite different, but Weiss had few issues with letting an enemy who hated her believe as much.

Presuming Blake continued to push the offensive, Weiss had no qualms about abusing her glyphs to continue to enforce a distance, coasting along just out of her quarry's reach as she coasted around the icy arena as if it were her home. Yet her retaliatory attacks were mild, almost the bare minimum for what could even be called a fight on her end, and her chosen form of punishing the faunus seemed to be via sheer annoyance as the words just kept coming, tone less that of an enemy and more a stern schoolteacher imparting a lesson.

"Oh, you poor deluded thing. Still think you can win? You can't. Is this not going the way you envisioned? It won't. Frustrated? Good. The fact is, Blake, if I wanted you people gone right now you'd be gone. Along with this entire building. It can still happen the moment I run out of patience, and that spiteful little lover of yours already cost you precious minutes of however much pointless, impotent thrashing around I was willing to let you work through. So by all means, tire yourself out. I sealed off the building and a veritable legion of androids are already setting up a perimeter around the rest of the block, so you can forget any bright ideas of slipping off into the city amid the chaos. When you're ready to talk, we'll talk. I know you morons are allergic to the very notion, but it's a choice between caring about the wellbeing of the faunus around you and admitting this entire crusade of yours is nothing more than a glorified, farcical revenge mission. I leave the decision in your hands. For what it's worth, though? I happen to know your parents raised you better than that."

She ramped off the wall, ornate symbols imbued with gravity dust letting her keep her footing, and gracefully spun to finally come to a halt at the opposite side of the room from Blake, one hand folded behind her back and Myrtenaster's point extended outward.



"I never did get the chance to tell you I spoke to your father not long before the Mistral debacle, did I? You didn't come up, obviously. Just a small matter concerning some donations I'm making to Menagerie's education system. I'm hoping they might build a statue of me, but I digress. Care to know how he's doing?"

For the first time since she appeared before them, some of the ice in the councilwoman's features was melted by what appeared to be a soft glow of sympathy; Even as faint wisps of an actual glow started to curl from the corners of her eyes again.

"He looks tired, Blake."

"I had that, Arena meat!" Hound complained even as Tiger's massive frame briefly struggled with the blade, but he was on the move by the time Tiger pushed it off and readied her next punch. his lithe form slipped between the two titans just before they clashed and in between the Gigas' legs, the spear in his hands resting on his shoulders as he gripped and violently twisted, the two ends of the spear hitting just so that they had enough leverage to make up for the beast's weight and poise to send it tumbling forwards.

"GREKI, GO HELP THE HAND'S BITCH AND THE OLD MAN, FERI, DO WHAT WE'RE PAYING YOU FOR!"

The sister shared a glance, nodded, and slipped off.

The summon stumbled from Hound's twist, and Tiger's blow smashed it crater-deep into the wall on the other side of the hallway, giving the Argents an opening to split off; but it was a stronger beast in its ghostly form than the one Weiss had originally slayed, and its stance was iron-wrought as it picked itself out and readied the weapon again, charging forward and dragging the tip against the floor to wrench it out and spray the two with rubble before its next swing, form surprisingly knightly for what should have been mindless spirit reanimating armor.

Ilia rolled backwards from the strike and came to a stumbling halt at her feet, a growl on her face as she wiped a bit of spit the blow had knocked out of her from her lip.

"So I get the rabid one. Great. Let me guess, you want a one on one show down to impress your new girlfriend, right?" She drawled as she pulled her Shadowfang mask from her belt and slipped it into her face. "Alright then. Let's-"

The only warning Ruby got was the faint tingle of danger from her aura before Bear came crashing down from the Hangar's ceiling like a vengeful, silent meteor, his massive hand bending steel and crushing the rock beneath as he impacted the floor

"-not do that" Ilia said, before dashing off towards a set of crates in a sideways direction from the mask and her mentor

It probably occurred to both Ilia and Bear that there was a hole in the hangar that probably shouldn't have been there, and the corner of a parked Manta visible just beyond it that definitely shouldn't have been.

The man Ilia almost ran straight into as he emerged from the shadows of the crates she sprinted for, on the other hand, was someone who positively, indisputably should not have been anywhere near any form of a faunus holdout, even in the darkest depths of their most vile and horrific nightmares.





He came from the darkness so suddenly and smoothly it was as though he were melded with it, the general of Atlas's armed forces looking far from official with his military vestments discarded for something simple and nondescript in a white shirt and slacks. Each hand clutched an antiquated officer's sword, the kind that looked more like relics from the Great War than the elaborate, polished weapon designs of Remnant today, but somehow they were the least conspicuous things about him. What immediately drew the eye was his face, or more specifically the expression on it.

It was rage. It was loathing. Whatever mistreatment at the hands of humans she may have suffered in the past, Ilia had never felt so much hatred coming from someone she'd never met before. But that wasn't even the frightening part.

He looked serene. Every muscle in his face and shoulders was relaxed; all the formality and tension in his body dispensed with, save for the pinpricks of spite his pupils had shrivelled to. It was a different Carnelian than the one the Talons had come face to face with in Mistral; the one barely keeping his rage locked behind a veneer of duty.

In short, it was his war crimes face.

The life of a public official did not suit Borous Carnelian. He was a man who had subsisted through the years since his days of infamy largely by keeping his head down and putting in his time where he had to, by letting memories fade and staying away from the public eye. Now he was drenched in it, Atlas's foremost general charged with the defense of their kingdom, even if he left most of that to Schnee and her pet colonel. His every move was publicized; his every act, scrutinized. Frankly, he hated it.

Not here. Here, there were no cameras. No eyes. What happened in this building wasn't going on any reports.

Carnelian was free, and he looked every bit as comfortable as an animal in its natural habitat as he kept his pace slow and measured. He didn't say anything. It was never his style, truth be told. But about a beat after he and Ilia locked eyes, he quickened; only slightly, still far from a sprint, run, or even jog. But it was definitely a stride, and it carried him straight for the chameleon with a single spin of the hilts he grasped, adjusting his grip. He appeared to be in no hurry. This moment was his to savor.

But his intent couldn't have been any clearer, muscles just slightly coiled like that of a tiger anticipating the first movement of his prey.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Elsewhere...

It was across the city, give or take a few hundred feet in altitude and an indeterminate period of time later that Yang regained her senses, her injured form having immediately been pounced on upon deliverance by the most insurmountable foe of all in an elite team of surgeons and doctor on staff who brooked no argument as they held a respirator connected to a canister to her face and encouraged her to breathe deeply, consciousness slipping away from her soon after.

Her first instinct was that she felt immeasurably better than when she went to sleep, the work of medical professionals and her own aura over time far more effective in repairing what trauma remained than a rushed, panicked magic job could possibly hope to be. Her second was that she was no longer in the same bed she'd been put under in, nor even the same wing from the looks of it. Her surroundings did look familiar, though it took her a moment to place them.

It was the same cell they'd rescued Ironwood from, or at least one very similar. The same elaborate interior design, deceptively spacious coziness and general sense of feng shui most cells lacked that practically screamed of Weiss Schnee's idea of a prison disguised as a guestroom. A doily even sat upon the nearby bedside cabinet, taunting her with its splendor. Yet a prison it remained; the same one where Raven and Qrow's breakout of the former Atlesian general had gone terribly wrong despite ending in a technical success, thus commencing a long and winding sequence of events in Remnant's premier kingdom that had somehow yet to conclude.

The only difference was that the cell opposite hers was occupied, its inhabitant refraining from using any of the fancy chairs or couches in favor of sitting against the wall, giving a disdainful cluck of the tongue perfectly audible through the hardlight fields keeping them penned in when she noticed Yang was conscious as she glanced away.



"Well it's a relief to see she finally came to her senses about something." ​

 

[MidwayLives]

Ilia rolled backwards from the strike and came to a stumbling halt at her feet, a growl on her face as she wiped a bit of spit the blow had knocked out of her from her lip.

"So I get the rabid one. Great. Let me guess, you want a one on one show down to impress your new girlfriend, right?" She drawled as she pulled her Shadowfang mask from her belt and slipped it into her face.

It'd been some time since Ruby had fought, let alone, killed.

She knew what it meant to take a life-to snuff out somebody's flame. The weight that it carried. For the longest time she did it only to those who attacked her first. Those who wouldn't let simply go on to make sure that her best friend's dream was brought to fruition. It was a necessary evil and the lives she'd taken and the blood she'd spilled? She regretted all of it but nothing could bring them back or change that. The only thing she could do was change herself and after the time spent with Weiss she really did believe that was possible. Atonement was there at the end of the line. All that needed to be done was to prove that she deserved to get there.

...The way to do certain things never left a person though. It was like riding a bicycle, you never forget.

Ruby said nothing until Ilia slipped on the mask.

"I wore a mask once."

She took a step forward and for the slightest of moments there was a chill in the air. Ruby couldn't have looked more calm if she tried. Her hair slicked back and her attire professional in appearance, black gloves pulled over both hands and the laces on her boots tied. The feeling radiating off her was as far from calm as you could get. It felt like a wicked omen, a radius of death. The killing intent was in the air and Ruby was practically drenched in the center of it. Her sword seemed to hang loosely in her organic hand as she continued to walk forward, her footsteps paced and without the slightest bit of exertion to them. It was as if she were going for a leisurely stroll.

She'd worn the mask of the Grimm as the Red Masque. It was what in her mind separated 'The Red Masque' from Ruby Rose.

"But then I outgrew it."

She looked down at her blade and frowned seeing the reflection it gave back.

Her mind was clear for once in so many years.

"I'm going to kill you."

Stated as though it were fact.
​

The only warning Ruby got was the faint tingle of danger from her aura before Bear came crashing down from the Hangar's ceiling like a vengeful, silent meteor, his massive hand bending steel and crushing the rock beneath as he impacted the floor

Her grip tightened and she prepared to charge IIia when-

'The big one.'

Rose petals danced around Bear's gigantic prosthetic that seemed more fitting for a piece of construction equipment than any man.

Staring down Bear with the same vacant expression that she'd given the chameleon, the feeling ebbing off Ruby's person didn't seem to lessen at all in it's intensity.

Her shoulders were raised and lowered as a breath escaped her lips.

It didn't matter what Weiss had called her. Not at the moment.

This was what Ruby had been raised learning to indulge in.

Unadulterated violence!
​

Carnelian was free, and he looked every bit as comfortable as an animal in its natural habitat as he kept his pace slow and measured. He didn't say anything. It was never his style, truth be told. But about a beat after he and Ilia locked eyes, he quickened; only slightly, still far from a sprint, run, or even jog. But it was definitely a stride, and it carried him straight for the chameleon with a single spin of the hilts he grasped, adjusting his grip. He appeared to be in no hurry. This moment was his to savor.

But his intent couldn't have been any clearer, muscles just slightly coiled like that of a tiger anticipating the first movement of his prey.

Ruby sheathed her sword and raised her artifical arm.

The last one she'd had was built by her and as much as self-confidence she believed she had back then...The arm could have been better. It needed inputs, codes, switches to flick before anything could be used all the way from activating a hidden blade within it. Merlot gave her the creeps but he knew technology like the back of his hand and Ruby knew there was no way she was beating this opponent in a straight fist-to-fist fight as much as every urge was telling her to do. Holding her palm out, her gaze met Bear's while Carneilian strode towards IIia like a hunter approaching it's prey.

The palm of her hand began to glow-

*VSSSSSRRRR!!!*

A beam fired straight from the hand straight towards Bear, Ruby gripping onto the limb and taking a step forward as the beam picked up in power.

She didn't need to kill him. Just keep him occupied enough while Carneilan 'dealt' with the other one.

​

The sister shared a glance, nodded, and slipped off.

What with Hound & and Tiger facing down the giant knight, Bear and IIia having to deal with the former Red Masque and war criminal Carneilian?

Not to mention Blake taking on the maiden herself.

The sister who'd run off might have believed she'd had it easy compared to all of them. Whatever her job entailed the threat she'd face certainly wasn't anywhere near one as calamitous as Weiss 'power of two' Schnee.

It was enough.



The screeching of something raking itself across metal rang out through the halls as did what sounded like footsteps.

"Oh, there you are."

There he stood his attire not at all like that of a mere Atlesian grunt. Over his shoulders hung a loose fur jacket and his general attire seemed to give off the air of someone who took situations like these as opportunities rather than chances for the spread of viscera and gore. His own faunus features lay hidden away by the mask strapped to his face, his eyes resting comfortably on the woman he'd found.

Taking this task was an obvious yes in his mind. The search for the two intruders skulking around Atlas had failed to provide many new leads. For all intents and purposes it seems the two had managed to ebb off the radar. He hypothesized that they'd cut their losses and ran.If he'd been in their shoes and confronted by an army of soulless machines then he'd have weighed his options at the very least. But be that as it may it was the farthest thing from Magenta's mind right now. He wasn't doing this just for the love of Atlas or because it was his duty as a contractor the potential for combat was far too great to simply pass up. So much could be learned here! So many things studied!

It was the perfect environment and it seemed he'd found his guinea pig.

"Looking for an escape? I wouldn't. Waste of time. No getting out for you or your ilk, I'm afraid." Magenta quipped as he walked forward, peeling off the glove on his right hand as he did so.

"Heard somebody running around, unfortunate that it was you, huh?"

The glove was dropped to the floor and a bright blue glow coated the faunus's bare hand.

He raced forward and took a quick swipe and whether it was dodged or not, the swipe continued on towards the wall, leaving a trail of deep claw mark like gouges in it.​

 

[MidwayLives]

"I had that, Arena meat!" Hound complained even as Tiger's massive frame briefly struggled with the blade, but he was on the move by the time Tiger pushed it off and readied her next punch. his lithe form slipped between the two titans just before they clashed and in between the Gigas' legs, the spear in his hands resting on his shoulders as he gripped and violently twisted, the two ends of the spear hitting just so that they had enough leverage to make up for the beast's weight and poise to send it tumbling forwards.

"Sure you did."

Tiger said without the faintest hint of sarcasm as sweat rolled down both of her exposed arms, her sleeves little more than tatters laying at her feet.

Having to jump to 80% right off the bat...
​

"GREKI, GO HELP THE HAND'S BITCH AND THE OLD MAN, FERI, DO WHAT WE'RE PAYING YOU FOR!"

The sister shared a glance, nodded, and slipped off.

"I doubt Schnee and the Maque came to kill us on their own...Do you think they'll be alright?" If the fact that she'd only barely gotten away from the fight club during it's raid wasn't enough of an indication that Schnee's forces were nothing to sneeze at wasn't good enough, she didn't know what was.

Tiger didn't see much of a need for friends or personal attachments beyond answering if she was asked something or responding if she was addressed.

Well, Fox was an exception she supposed.
​

The summon stumbled from Hound's twist, and Tiger's blow smashed it crater-deep into the wall on the other side of the hallway, giving the Argents an opening to split off; but it was a stronger beast than the one Weiss had originally slayed, and its stance was iron-wrought as it picked itself out and readied the weapon again, charging forward and dragging the tip against the floor to wrench it out and spray the two with rubble before its next swing, form surprisingly knightly for what should have been a mindless beast reanimating armor.

Watching as the construct ripped itself free from the hole it'd made upon impact with the wall, Tiger sighed.

"Well, suppose it can't be helped." If either of the sisters came into any danger on their respective tasks, it'd be up to them to get out of it.

Tiger swung her left arm to cast away the rubble coming towards her and watched as another swing came in. Stopping the last one had left her almost completely pulled off her feet and needing to catch her breath. The power to create something as powerful as this, it was exhilarating to witness. Doubly so to actually fight it. Clasping her hands together, Tiger moved in to meet the incoming swing by knocking a hammer blow against the blade itself as it came in. Every vein on her arms seemed to be popping out as the feline faunus exerted herself in this fight more than she had since the fight back in Mistral.

The ground trembled under the soles of her sneakers-of which she was sure would be ruined by this fight's conclusion whatever it ended up being-and just coming into contact with the blade again sent the power wielded by the gigas coursing through her entire body leaving her arms tingling as though someone had run volts of electricity through them.

"Hound!" ​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Tiger swung her left arm to cast away the rubble coming towards her and watched as another swing came in. Stopping the last one had left her almost completely pulled off her feet and needing to catch her breath. The power to create something as powerful as this, it was exhilarating to witness. Doubly so to actually fight it. Clasping her hands together, Tiger moved in to meet the incoming swing by knocking a hammer blow against the blade itself as it came in. Every vein on her arms seemed to be popping out as the feline faunus exerted herself in this fight more than she had since the fight back in Mistral.

The ground trembled under the soles of her sneakers-of which she was sure would be ruined by this fight's conclusion whatever it ended up being-and just coming into contact with the blade again sent the power wielded by the gigas coursing through her entire body leaving her arms tingling as though someone had run volts of electricity through them.

"Hou--!"

*Boom*

It was a fairly loud noise, that small explosion, but with all things currently going to hell around them? Nobody could fault anyone who didn't register that sound. The sound of a grenade burst propelling a tiny warrior up into the air where she briefly landed on the top of the summoned gigas' armored head. Her feet had hardly touched the surface before she pushed off in a jump to go even higher, no time wasted to judge the battlefield or give the pair of faunus terrorists much time to react. Yet again another *boom* followed and this time Nora rocketed downward with both her natural strength supercharged and at considerable momentum, all of it focused into one move as the lightning bruiser brought her hammer down onto the big Tiger before the woman could finish calling out to her compatriot, aiming to slam it into the woman's skull and smash her against the floor while she was occupied with the gigas. As much as she didn't like Carnelian and what had been suggested back there, she recognized that these were also bad, misguided people and they needed to be stopped as well. She didn't plan lethal force but she wasn't going to hold back much either.

Especially not with somebody who was that big and could trade blows with the summon.

Truth be told, seeing somebody like that...she'd be lying if she said she didn't get at least a little excited by that, if she said she couldn't feel the blood pumping. After being treated like a rag doll by that faunus dude who just threw her and his weapon around Glynda-style, she was way in the mood for a more straightforward fight with someone.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"Yep. Charming as I remembered."

The scoff Weiss gave in reply was remarkably conversational in its own right, less the rancorous bad blood of a sworn foe and more the derisive cattiness of a jilted friend. The irony didn't seem to occur to her. She would've rolled her eyes were she not keenly aware how costly a mistake it would've been in this room, with this enemy bearing down on her; as to why she had placed herself in such precarious conditions to begin with, there really wasn't anything especially complex to it.

"I'm a *huff* princess. It comes naturally"


The dull sarcasm amid exertion that came in response almost met Weiss halfway. It was as if the fact that there was no longer any front to them being allies, a forced union of Schnee and Fang that grinded Blake's nerves to a jagged edge no longer binding, let those nerves finally loosen around the councilwoman. Weiss' overtures at conversation, mockery, and vague insinuations of, if no friendship, camradrie born of being coworkers in the cult of desturction had always met nothing but violent, blunt rebuttle. It was an active choice on Blake's part; While she needed little to hate any given human, the Schnee family was the pinnacle of Faunus exploiters. She'd seen their horrors first hand, and any sort of belief that their 'improvements' had been borne of anything but teeth grating admission to their alliance beneath Ozpin's banner was laughable. It didn't matter how easily her personality might've gelled with Weiss'; the well had been poisoned the moment Sienna got her claws into Blake and began the forging process.

Now though? It hardly mattered if she indulged. It didn't matter if she agreed that, if she hadn't been warned away, armed against her wiles well before they'd ever been in the same room, a friendship between them could've bloomed. Thank the gods she was saved that fate, and now it no longer mattered; her actions would replace her words.

Was Blake more lethal? Decisively so. Was she more talented with a sword? Almost definitely.

Was Weiss an unprecedented nightmare of an opponent, endowed not only with a perfected form of her family semblance—one her sister's comparatively intermediary grasp of had made her among the most elite operatives in all of Atlas—but actual magic, without the hesitance or inexperience of Blake's maiden punching bag from a few months ago? Was she still her better in every way that actually mattered in a one-to-one confrontation between them?

Absolutely. And most importantly, she had a point to prove.

For months she was forced to idly sit by and endure while the Shadow Fang grew bolder and bolder, while they had their way with the incompetent and unprepared kingdoms practically unopposed, glorifying themselves as righteous revolutionaries while they beat up children and plunged thousands of lives into chaos. As something of a dabbling revolutionary herself she considered it sloppy work, not to mention insane. But they'd overplayed their hand this time. Weiss was neither incompetent nor unprepared; on the contrary, she'd been preparing her kingdom for a threat far exceeding Sienna's cavalier pack of thugs and savages. But that didn't mean she'd forgotten about them, and when it came to the people who had (indirectly or no) deprived her of any chance of remote happiness in her life Weiss Schnee was always prepared to put them back in their place.

And NOT in a racist way. She was really glad she hadn't said that out loud.

Her initial flurry was comprised of quick, gauging thrusts while she whisked around at a respectable distance, making full use of the superior reach offered by Myrtenaster to test Blake's guard without committing herself fully enough to leave herself open. All of them laser precise, all of them calculated as her her eyes stayed rooted to the faunus's form, disciplined and trained enough to observe its movements as a whole without putting too much of her focus towards any one part, all in anticipation of-

Exactly that, and as soon as Blake's figure burst forward in a blur so too did Weiss's glide the opposite direction at a similar rate as her glyphs superseded her own body's capacity to dodge. The parry to the strike at her torso seemed effortless, as did the way she spun to deflect the hurled Gambol behind her head in an elegant pirouette with rapier held over her shoulder, surprisingly not taking the bait of the shadow clone. It sent the blade spinning into the waiting hands of Blake as she descended like a god's wrath from above her, but again Weiss seemed prepared, and again a pinpoint glyph allowed her to twist her body at just the right ankle to plant her heels on Gambol's blade for the brief moment it was embedded in ice. The frozen surface she was standing on, in turn, climbed up to envelop Blake's ankles, and the incumbent Schnee matriarch spared a split-second pitying smirk down at her before opting towards a maneuver straight from the family playbook.

Whether her shoe successfully met Blake's chin or not, the miniature glyphs already swirling under her stilettos aided her in springing away, the one awaiting her on the ceiling shot her back towards the floor with momentum, and she promptly resumed gliding across the track of glyphs rapidly forming before her, continuing to keep herself frustratingly beyond Blake's reach and even having the audacity to cover a giggle. Between the game of keepaway, the relatively tame nature of the attacks Weiss had unleashed to date and the continued air of breezy nonchalance she was meeting Blake's vindicated wrath with, the feared Hand of the Shadow Fang would've been forgiven for getting the sense she wasn't being taken seriously. Outright mocked, even.

The reality was quite different, but Weiss had few issues with letting an enemy who hated her believe as much.

Presuming Blake continued to push the offensive, Weiss had no qualms about abusing her glyphs to continue to enforce a distance, coasting along just out of her quarry's reach as she coasted around the icy arena as if it were her home. Yet her retaliatory attacks were mild, almost the bare minimum for what could even be called a fight on her end, and her chosen form of punishing the faunus seemed to be via sheer annoyance as the words just kept coming, tone less that of an enemy and more a stern schoolteacher imparting a lesson.

"Oh, you poor deluded thing. Still think you can win? You can't. Is this not going the way you envisioned? It won't. Frustrated? Good. The fact is, Blake, if I wanted you people gone right now you'd be gone. Along with this entire building. It can still happen the moment I run out of patience, and that spiteful little lover of yours already cost you precious minutes of however much pointless, impotent thrashing around I was willing to let you work through. So by all means, tire yourself out. I sealed off the building and a veritable legion of androids are already setting up a perimeter around the rest of the block, so you can forget any bright ideas of slipping off into the city amid the chaos. When you're ready to talk, we'll talk. I know you morons are allergic to the very notion, but it's a choice between caring about the wellbeing of the faunus around you and admitting this entire crusade of yours is nothing more than a glorified, farcical revenge mission. I leave the decision in your hands. For what it's worth, though? I happen to know your parents raised you better than that."

She ramped off the wall, ornate symbols imbued with gravity dust letting her keep her footing, and gracefully spun to finally come to a halt at the opposite side of the room from Blake, one hand folded behind her back and Myrtenaster's point extended outward.

"I never did get the chance to tell you I spoke to your father not long before the Mistral debacle, did I? You didn't come up, obviously. Just a small matter concerning some donations I'm making to Menagerie's education system. I'm hoping they might build a statue of me, but I digress. Care to know how he's doing?"

For the first time since she appeared before them, some of the ice in the councilwoman's features was melted by what appeared to be a soft glow of sympathy; Even as faint wisps of an actual glow started to curl from the corners of her eyes again.

"He looks tired, Blake."

Having Weiss Schnee land on the sheath-sword she was trying to kill Weiss Schnee with seemed to flabbergast Blake so much that the kick did in fact connect-

Blake exploded on contact, fiery red flames blasting the area the Faunus had seemingly been that scorched the ice beneath them into a cloud of steam, a mini, Yangless freezerburn that should've been equally blind to them both. The followup strikes that came in the cloud didn't seem to agree; Blake was everywhere in what was barely a second. She was no maiden, and her aura reserves would have some limit, but the Hand's semblance had been refined to the pinnacle of what it could be at this point, and her body molded into pure weapon; Glyphs were a potent source of speed themselves, but blake didn't so much dash as teleport, every strike almost entirely fifty-fifty guesswork as to whether it was even real, a single person becoming a surrounding mob that worked in perfect harmony.

She didn't push her luck; the barrage ended the moment the cloud began to thin or Weiss acted on it, the faunus broke ranks with herself, a gaggle of clones still left in motion as the real Blake split off to the side and flicked her hand outwards, a trio of tiny metallic canisters slipping from her robes and into her fingers-

"..."

She didn't fumble, but she did stop pursuing her relentless assault, skidding to a halt agianst the ice as she stared at Weiss at mention of her father.

"...I know."

She came out of her crouch, a much slower pacing beginning to circle Weiss unless the heiress pushed the offensive. As hateful as her eyes still were, the words were quiet and mournful as they followed.

"I'm the last person you have to try to convince that I'm hurting them, Schnee. I know I am, and I hate it. But their way doesn't work." she snarled, the fire already back in her tone. "We've tried it for a thousand years. We will not let it be another thousand. I won't let it be another thousand. You think you're the solution?" She barked out a laugh.

"Humans have made that promise to us every decade. You're another Ironwood, another Salem, another Grandfather Schnee. A promise that this time will be different, grand and glorious good intentions wrapped up in a hundred promises, zero of which will be kept. Hell, maybe you believe it yourself." Blake drawled, her words unconvinced even as she said it. "But it doesn't matter what you believe. Even if you're the really messiah your deadset on selling yourself as, the heartless saint who acts in the name of the greater good, whatever your human hands create will be tainted by whoever comes next. Just like your father with dear old Nick, just like every leader Salem's put in charge over the fucking eons. You didn't even make it out of the gate. Carnelian leads your military, and Mistral and Beacon's blood is on your hands as much as mine. No."

She flicked her sheathe-blade forward to point it tip as Weiss, one eye visible from the mask as she halted her pacing to stare Weiss down, the yellow tinged with blue.

"Not this time. History proves time and time again than any human peace will be on the back of the faunus in the end. Even if we die here, Faunus are going to lead the Faunus to revolution. We'll side with the monsters if we're going to be treated like monsters ourselves. And you?"

----------------------------------------------

He came from the darkness so suddenly and smoothly it was as though he were melded with it, the general of Atlas's armed forces looking far from official with his military vestments discarded for something simple and nondescript in a white shirt and slacks. Each hand clutched an antiquated officer's sword, the kind that looked more like relics from the Great War than the elaborate, polished weapon designs of Remnant today, but somehow they were the least conspicuous things about him. What immediately drew the eye was his face, or more specifically the expression on it.

It was rage. It was loathing. Whatever mistreatment at the hands of humans she may have suffered in the past, Ilia had never felt so much hatred coming from someone she'd never met before. But that wasn't even the frightening part.

He looked serene. Every muscle in his face and shoulders was relaxed; all the formality and tension in his body dispensed with, save for the pinpricks of spite his pupils had shrivelled to. It was a different Carnelian than the one the Talons had come face to face with in Mistral; the one barely keeping his rage locked behind a veneer of duty.

In short, it was his war crimes face.

The life of a public official did not suit Borous Carnelian. He was a man who had subsisted through the years since his days of infamy largely by keeping his head down and putting in his time where he had to, by letting memories fade and staying away from the public eye. Now he was drenched in it, Atlas's foremost general charged with the defense of their kingdom, even if he left most of that to Schnee and her pet colonel. His every move was publicized; his every act, scrutinized. Frankly, he hated it.

Not here. Here, there were no cameras. No eyes. What happened in this building wasn't going on any reports.

Carnelian was free, and he looked every bit as comfortable as an animal in its natural habitat as he kept his pace slow and measured. He didn't say anything. It was never his style, truth be told. But about a beat after he and Ilia locked eyes, he quickened; only slightly, still far from a sprint, run, or even jog. But it was definitely a stride, and it carried him straight for the chameleon with a single spin of the hilts he grasped, adjusting his grip. He appeared to be in no hurry. This moment was his to savor.

But his intent couldn't have been any clearer, muscles just slightly coiled like that of a tiger anticipating the first movement of his prey.

Ilia froze

As devoted to the cause as she was, she wasn't a Blake or an Eve, or even a Hound. She was an excellent fighter, a cut above most of the Fang or any mere Atlas soldier, but the sheer killer instinct needed to hang with the best of the best just wasn't in her. She'd fought before, she'd killed before, but she wasn't a killer, and there wasn't a single moment before she made eye contact with Carnelian that the fact had been so crystal clear to her, an involuntary shiver of yellow crawling up her skin.

But what she was was devoted to the cause. Just as much as any talon, or maybe even moreso, personal vendetta melding with idealism and distilled by Blake and Sienna's accidental and purposeful egging on. So even if she wasn't a killer, she acted.

By talking, and running.

"Hound, Wolf, C's in my location!"

She didn't dare take her eyes off Carnelian as she broke out in a sprint towards Bear as she yelled, feet thudding against the ground as fast as they could go.

Bear was stoic as Ruby darted away, his masked eyes meeting Ruby's emptiness with a reserved calm of their own as the little warrior landed.

"Do not stand in our way, little one." His voice rumbled, firm and soothing. "You I bear no ill will. But will not hesitate to crush-"

He saw him.

The specter in black and white that had haunted his old bones for decades.

The entire reason that Navano Cedar hadn't merely faded into obscurity and died in peace after the faunus revolution, a waery veteran, but a kind mentor to Ghira Belladonna, one of the first chiefs of Menagerie, and instead mentored a young Sienna in the ways of guerrila warfare, found by her still training and reinforcing his old bones off in the wilderness. The one being that he absolutely wanted dead, more than he wanted anything in the universe. More than freedom for the faunus, more than Salem or Schnee's or Ozpins death. More than he wanted to continue breathing.

Boris Carnelian. A grudge that had been stewing for 50 years.



The wordless roar that escaped his mouth was a primal, bone shaking sound that was a far cry from the calm of moments ago, Ruby briefly entirely forgotten as the sheer hatred rolled off him in waves that would've been an inescapable, horribly unrealstic feeling to the young rose if she hadn't been in the presence of the black beast Ozpin himself before. That this simple faunus almost reached that height was a testament to how much anger had just burst forth like puss from a wound. The blast from the hand drew his attention, but only in the sense that she was now an obstacle between him and his prey as his grey aura shimmered across his body before he raised his arm between it and her. The force was enough to inch even his massive bulk backwards, but her gave a throaty growl as he planted his feet into a more solid stance and levelled his own arm at her. The massive claw suddenly split into four prongs that connected with plating that slid down to the base in a cone shape, and the center of it opened up in a grate-like hole.

*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNG*

instead of any sort of projectile, the wave that eminated from the weapon was sheer thunderous sound, condensed enough that the floor bent and the ceiling cracked along its wake as it hit Ruby like a freight train and even clipped Ilia as she tried to dive to the side, sending her spinning with a small yelp of pained surpise as she kept her feet and tried to keep pace and path to Bear.


------------------------------------------------

"WELP"

Hound gave a bemused grin as he suddenly had three things to do at once, but such was the life as someone as talented and badass as him;

Everyone always wanted something from you. He got it. Hell, he loved it. But it did, unfortunately, mean he actually had to try.

Nora more felt than saw the blue streak shoot past her, almost positive that the Hound used Magnhild as a stepping stool to power his jump past her and to the gigas while it was still unbalanced from Tiger's blow. Call out or not, he knew what needed to be done; when you had to kill weiss schnee, even he did his homework.

Or at least some of it, anyways. Like, passing with a Cs worth.

It was enough that he'd known about the whole glyph summoning bit, and how it worked; the Schnee semblence was hereditary after all, and they weren't exactly good at not leaving their mark on history. Their summons were marvels in that their mirrored killed counterparts exactly, and in turn they functioned much the same way, and were killed the same way. It wasn't a surprise this beast was one of Schnee's favorites; a 'creature' that was really three separate Geists, all piloting the same suit of armor, with none of its faces, the only weak point on any Geist, visible?

Damn girl. Even Hound woulda admitted (under his breath to an empty room) that that was impressive, and this was supposedly before she decided to turn herself into the ice queen murder machine they all knew and hated today. Because it was impressive. Just, y'know, as long as the person trying wasn't him.

His arm snagged the Gigas' shoulder as he rocketed by, spinning his momentum to wrap his legs around the thing's opposite arm to steady himself as he let go. His spear spun in his hands, a feral grin lit up his face, and the weapon was jabbed straight through the opening in the thing's floating shoulder joint at just the right angle to skewer one of the hidden grimm masks inside. A nigh impossible, literally blind shot. As long as you weren't him.

He released and dipped under the return strike he knew was gonna come, the blade or arm breezing so close that it tickled his nose as before he landed deftly on the floor.

"I'mma clean this up while you handle the midget arena meat!" He called over as he studied which pieces of the armor started to fail with a smirk.

"Then I got a date with the devil himself."

------------------------------------------------------------

Feri's path and thus interception was right back to the break room they'd just fled from, and thus it was there, amidst the rubble of multiple shattered walls and sheets of frigid ice, the sounds of Bear's Roaring Claw in the hangar almost drowning out the sound of grinding metal and grenade explosions in the hallway behind her, that she was intercepted by the good doctor. She blinked as he arrived, and gave an offended snort at his words as she pulled a shadowfang mask from her belt and slid it onto her face, the eyes briefly glowing blue.

"Me, running away? Tch. Who do you think I am? One of these little... ninja terrorists my father is so taken with? One of you spineless traitors who serve the very people who hate us? No. Laughable. Stupid. Idiotic. Why do I always get the dumb ones." She sniffed with mocking disappointment "What I am is incredibly offended that you'd lump me in with the rest of you lunatics and cretins tromping around this stupid flying city. If I didn't have more important work to do, I'd kill you on the spot."

She kicked the back of the ringblade that had been resting across her shoulders and sent it flipping into the air so should could catch it with herself in the center as she assumed a low stance.

"Unfortunately for you, I do. So I will only probably kill you."

There was something immediately off about Feri's weapon as the doctor looked at it. The entire inner ring was filled with dust, an immense, frankly grotesque and dangerously unsafe amount. While hunter weapons were certainly hardy, if the worst happened and the dust inside got ignited instead of spent through the weapon, the ensuing reaction would've likely been enough to blow out the entire lower floor of this warehouse.

Except all the dust inside of it was spent. Grey, dull, and about as useful in a fight as common sand, its days as a purveyor of elemental might already over. It was like the woman across from him had simply forgotten to reload her weapon, or simply hadn't the time before the ambush happened.

He charged, and so did she, light and graceful steps across through the rubble before her the dust in her ring began to glow a faint white. The massive wall of ice along one side of the wall suddenly began to disintigrate, becoming blue motes of light that swirled and sucked itself into Feri's weapon, and the dull, grey, spent dust suddenly glowed a bright blue in a small section of the weapon, reborn anew.

He took his swipe and found himself slashing through a pillar of ice instead of an Argent sister, Feri using the newly re-lit dust to form one to launch herself up and over the duck faunus for the ice wall that had covered Blake and Weiss' exit. Chunks of it began to disappear and be sucked into her blade, before she gave a warrior's cry and swung it forward-

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"-You're just another human in the way of that."

The wall behind Weiss suddenly exploded into a dizzying array of icy spikes, the cage match she'd set up between her and the hand rudely interrupted by the dust weilder on the other side.

 

[Gus Gungus]

"I'm a *huff* princess. It comes naturally"


The dull sarcasm amid exertion that came in response almost met Weiss halfway. It was as if the fact that there was no longer any front to them being allies, a forced union of Schnee and Fang that grinded Blake's nerves to a jagged edge no longer binding, let those nerves finally loosen around the councilwoman. Weiss' overtures at conversation, mockery, and vague insinuations of, if no friendship, camradrie born of being coworkers in the cult of desturction had always met nothing but violent, blunt rebuttle. It was an active choice on Blake's part; While she needed little to hate any given human, the Schnee family was the pinnacle of Faunus exploiters. She'd seen their horrors first hand, and any sort of belief that their 'improvements' had been borne of anything but teeth grating admission to their alliance beneath Ozpin's banner was laughable. It didn't matter how easily her personality might've gelled with Weiss'; the well had been poisoned the moment Sienna got her claws into Blake and began the forging process.

Now though? It hardly mattered if she indulged. It didn't matter if she agreed that, if she hadn't been warned away, armed against her wiles well before they'd ever been in the same room, a friendship between them could've bloomed. Thank the gods she was saved that fate, and now it no longer mattered; her actions would replace her words.

There was nothing terribly imperious or cold-blooded about the giggle and flawless twirl the remark evoked amid the breakneck pace of her glyph-skating, a girlish chime of surprised gratification that wouldn't have been out of place coming from a princess itself. It wasn't much, but it was something to work with. Some show of life from the person Blake Belladonna allegedly was, rather than the coalesced ball of an entire species' vengeance and hatred made manifest she appeared determined to be. The one Weiss had frustratingly been met with time and time again.

"My, what an interesting choice of words! Ruby styles herself as something of a bandit princess, funnily enough. Dubious credentials, I know, but those really were the words she used. I can't help but notice a trend. What do you suppose Xiao Long's the princess of? Pillo-?"

Blake exploded on contact, fiery red flames blasting the area the Faunus had seemingly been that scorched the ice beneath them into a cloud of steam, a mini, Yangless freezerburn that should've been equally blind to them both. The followup strikes that came in the cloud didn't seem to agree; Blake was everywhere in what was barely a second. She was no maiden, and her aura reserves would have some limit, but the Hand's semblance had been refined to the pinnacle of what it could be at this point, and her body molded into pure weapon; Glyphs were a potent source of speed themselves, but blake didn't so much dash as teleport, every strike almost entirely fifty-fifty guesswork as to whether it was even real, a single person becoming a surrounding mob that worked in perfect harmony.

Alas, the perils of being fun. The undignified screech of pain and surprise what seemed like the third strike to land (but was actually the sixth) amid the whirlwind elicited was just as much the opposite of militant as the giggle had been, Weiss a wholly unique blend of power and technical skill whose proficiency in both meant she almost never got hit.

That didn't mean she didn't know what it felt like. She was familiar enough to know she didn't especially enjoy it.

She had no intention of letting it go further. Combat could be trial and error occasionally, and when her attempts to riposte with Myrtenaster skewered nothing but shadow she was smart enough to know which category her current mode of engagement fell under. Unaware that the arcane forces she had access to had doubled though she may have been, Blake herself was too smart not to recognize Weiss was being oddly conservative in her use of even the magic of Winter, but was awarded at least a momentary glimpse of what was being concealed when flames that were searingly cold to the touch sprang up from the floor around Weiss's heels, curled around her like a living spiral and violently exploded outward in a brilliant display of blue light; the mist that didn't resolidify was dispersed by the force alone, and the clones were consumed in blue fire as the real Blake found herself battered against whatever wall her back had faced like a twig in a hurricane.

Even if the blast was anticipated enough to clear some distance, the sheer force of the magic colliding with her aura was to a similar scale of dust explosion what a sledgehammer was to a whack-a-mole mallet, and even from such a brief showing the difference in magnitude and precision between the last maiden she'd 'fought' and the one she now faced was clear. Remnant's young Fall Maiden had the luxury of being eased into her destiny; attending Beacon, bettering herself, learning the necessities to be a huntress while her newfound power came to her innately.

Weiss had been afforded no such luxury. By the time she became a maiden she had already attained a discipline and mastery over herself that was practically unheard of, her semblance as shaped and honed into its most intricate and perfected form as Blake's was. From the day she seized the magic of Winter she had been on a deadline, one that found itself severed by thirds when things with Ozpin escalated the way they did. She couldn't afford to wait for this power to come to her; she needed to bring it to heel. She gave herself no quarter in training, set the facility parameters to fields intended for entire squadrons of huntsmen, told even the likes of Carnelian to come at her with everything he had. Every one of her significant resources was availed of, every text and databank devoured to determine what she could and couldn't do, hours spent at Fria's bedside picking her addled brain on every aspect of her lifetime as a maiden she could remember. It wasn't any kind of a normal, or even healthy pathway for a maiden to take; it was cramming. It was studying.

There probably wasn't a single thing in the entire world Weiss Schnee was better at.

The last of the mist cleared, though the flame remained. Weiss stood at the center of a glyph in its midst, smoke unfurling on the air from the cigarette she held with dignity between two fingers, and though her icy veneer had returned in spades the inescapable sense that Blake was being treated less like a vicious foe and more like a child in the throes of a tantrum yet lingered.



"Done yet?"

"...I know."

She came out of her crouch, a much slower pacing beginning to circle Weiss unless the heiress pushed the offensive. As hateful as her eyes still were, the words were quiet and mournful as they followed.

"I'm the last person you have to try to convince that I'm hurting them, Schnee. I know I am, and I hate it. But their way doesn't work." she snarled, the fire already back in her tone. "We've tried it for a thousand years. We will not let it be another thousand. I won't let it be another thousand. You think you're the solution?" She barked out a laugh.

"Humans have made that promise to us every decade. You're another Ironwood, another Salem, another Grandfather Schnee. A promise that this time will be different, grand and glorious good intentions wrapped up in a hundred promises, zero of which will be kept. Hell, maybe you believe it yourself." Blake drawled, her words unconvinced even as she said it. "But it doesn't matter what you believe. Even if you're the really messiah your deadset on selling yourself as, the heartless saint who acts in the name of the greater good, whatever your human hands create will be tainted by whoever comes next. Just like your father with dear old Nick, just like every leader Salem's put in charge over the fucking eons. You didn't even make it out of the gate. Carnelian leads your military, and Mistral and Beacon's blood is on your hands as much as mine. No."

She flicked her sheathe-blade forward to point it tip as Weiss, one eye visible from the mask as she halted her pacing to stare Weiss down, the yellow tinged with blue.

"Not this time. History proves time and time again than any human peace will be on the back of the faunus in the end. Even if we die here, Faunus are going to lead the Faunus to revolution. We'll side with the monsters if we're going to be treated like monsters ourselves. And you?"

"-You're just another human in the way of that."

She was taking that as a 'no'.

Weiss's cold look of detachment never wavered through Blake's rebuttal, though she made no move to interrupt it. She seemed glad of the chance to make headway on her cigarette, the only crutch she'd ever allow herself in times of stress.

It said all that needed to be said about the day she was having that it was nearly spent by the time Blake was through. The last lungful of smoke she ejected was a more forceful one, enough so to be construed as a huff. She opened her mouth to respond-

The wall behind Weiss suddenly exploded into a dizzying array of icy spikes, the cage match she'd set up between her and the hand rudely interrupted by the dust weilder on the other side.

-when the twitch of her aura and crackling of ice behind her had her spin, duck, and drop to one knee, the glyph she was standing on suddenly flaring up with the cyan light of hardlight dust as a barrier sprang up around her to absorb the force of the spikes. Her head whipped up to glare at the offending wall, eyes narrowed in a frightening severity, and in about a fraction of a second her mind was made up.

Though slim if she gave her her full attention, someone with that level of dust control posed a problem. Especially when weighed against her intentions here. She imagined it was the work of the unknown Argent, more than likely someone brought along to act as an ace in the hole against her. How annoying. But just for that, just for a second, she was going to pull out the big guns. Weiss dominated in battle by virtue of controlling every element of the battlefield, of leaving nothing to chance; a rival dust manipulator of any worth was enough of a threat to that to warrant immediate removal.

Or in other words, it was about to be a terrible day for anyone on the other side of that wall.

What happened next was like something out of storybook. Twin streams of light exploded from Weiss's eyes, and she thrust her hands outward; what remained of the ice and wall beneath it burst outward into the breakroom, fragments with enough mass and velocity to hit like meteorites pelting those there even as the flow of air started to swirl and condense around them. The level of control was so fine it rapidly formed a condensed sphere of oxygen, and the wall was barely down an instant when Weiss flicked the remains of her cigarette out into its midst, eyes flaring in time with the blue glow at its tip.

"This is a private conversation."

The room exploded. The mystical flame that burst outward from the cigarette made the mightiest dust explosion seem like a candle in the wind as it engulfed the break room in its entirety, and bar something miraculous both Feri and Magenta had their auras annihilated by power that was almost beyond their capacity to comprehend, let alone match; the work of not only one season of maiden's power, but two.

It took all of two seconds, and she spent one of those turning back to reaffix Blake with the same harsh, scathing glower as the Gigas suddenly touched down behind her to guard her back, a look that stood in seeming defiance of her next words.





"You're right."

Superficially, the admission was as simple and straightforward as could be, yet belied just as much complexity just below the surface as the joint act of physics, chemistry and God preceding it had.

"What's been done to your people is unacceptable. On that much, we agree. Drastic measures are necessary, Blake. But not yours. Never yours. Giving the world back to the Grimm? Ruining thousands of men, women and children's lives, your own people among them? 'No' yourself. It's not a revolution. It's stupid. It's a child's idea of how to make the world better. And it solves nothing. Only promises more strife, more suffering, decades more of the same for human and faunus alike, until the temperamental nightmare you empowered decides he's bored of it all and his creatures of darkness roll over whoever and whatever remains. Take umbrage with my hand in things all you like—my plan is an actual plan. I've done what I had to. You're doing what you want to, whether you're capable of recognizing it or not. The world's cruelty has broken you down, and truthfully? I think that's... sad."

She blinked, a sudden air of unease as though the revelation were as much one to her as it was anyone. The word she had wanted to say was 'pathetic'. Maybe 'sickening'.

But her lips formed the far simpler one before she could stop them, and her eyes were a bit wider as she regarded Blake in an entirely different light.

"...I think that might be it, you know. Why I never hated you. You make me sad, Blake. That's not something that's supposed to happen anymore. It's a bit concerning, honestly, but there it is. And you know why?" Her bottom lip curled. "Because you could've been wonderful. I'm not being sarcastic; I look at you and see someone who could've been so... so good. For Remnant. For the faunus. For everybody. And seeing you like this, lashing out at a world that robbed you of your potential..."

She shook her head, her sigh earnest.

"It breaks my heart, and I proofed that thing to be invincible. Because looking at who you're becoming? Someone who paints in broad strokes, who thinks an entire species of individuals could ever deserve to pay for the crimes of a few, who wilfully sees the world in such cruel, unrepentant shades of black and white?"

Weiss' features hardened once again, and another glyph formed beneath her as she straightened her back and put her feet at shoulder distance in a preparatory stance. Myrtenaster's tip was extended, pointed for Blake with nary a shake or tremor as she breathed out, set her shoulders, and waited.

"You're just another Carnelian in the making."

The wordless roar that escaped his mouth was a primal, bone shaking sound that was a far cry from the calm of moments ago, Ruby briefly entirely forgotten as the sheer hatred rolled off him in waves that would've been an inescapable, horribly unrealstic feeling to the young rose if she hadn't been in the presence of the black beast Ozpin himself before. That this simple faunus almost reached that height was a testament to how much anger had just burst forth like puss from a wound. The blast from the hand drew his attention, but only in the sense that she was now an obstacle between him and his prey as his grey aura shimmered across his body before he raised his arm between it and her. The force was enough to inch even his massive bulk backwards, but her gave a throaty growl as he planted his feet into a more solid stance and levelled his own arm at her. The massive claw suddenly split into four prongs that connected with plating that slid down to the base in a cone shape, and the center of it opened up in a grate-like hole.

*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNG*

instead of any sort of projectile, the wave that eminated from the weapon was sheer thunderous sound, condensed enough that the floor bent and the ceiling cracked along its wake as it hit Ruby like a freight train and even clipped Ilia as she tried to dive to the side, sending her spinning with a small yelp of pained surpise as she kept her feet and tried to keep pace and path to Bear.

In light of all the righteous wrath the man called Bear brought to bear at the sight of his age-old grudge appearing before him, all the hate and pain and vengeance of decades setting his old bones ablaze at once, one might've assumed a being of rage and spite like Carnelian would've been thrilled. That maybe this was the one he'd been looking for; the kill that finally allowed him to relive his best days, the days he'd spent every day since pining for. When he was young. Free.

When the faunus were savages who needed killing.

Instead, there was none of that, and in its place on the weathered visage of the old general, who had somehow avoided the path of the soundwaves before Ilia had, before Bear's claw had even loosed it, and now continued his brisk stroll about a half dozen feet to the left of where the attack tore up the floorboards, was about the most insulting reaction possible given the circumstances.



"Mh."

It was a cruel, sadistic smile, without a doubt. The kind traced in blood, a smirk only someone whose sense of empathy and feeling had long since been put out to pasture could give someone who carried so much pain.

But more than that, it was apathetic. He looked bored.

"Not interested in stale rage. I'm in the market for something fresh."

And just like that his gaze swept right past Bear like he wasn't even there, and Carnelian just... kept walking. Resuming a slow, incorrigible course for Ilia wherever in the room she stood, cleaning out his ear with a pinkie like he had a mild case of tinnitus.

He released and dipped under the return strike he knew was gonna come, the blade or arm breezing so close that it tickled his nose as before he landed deftly on the floor.

"I'mma clean this up while you handle the midget arena meat!" He called over as he studied which pieces of the armor started to fail with a smirk.

Hound found himself cockblocked once again as the Gigas sort of just... vanished in front of him, as if it had been transported somewhere else.
​

 

[MidwayLives]

Bear was stoic as Ruby darted away, his masked eyes meeting Ruby's emptiness with a reserved calm of their own as the little warrior landed.

"Do not stand in our way, little one." His voice rumbled, firm and soothing. "You I bear no ill will. But will not hesitate to crush-"

In lieu of saying anything, Ruby simply continued to stare.
​

The wordless roar that escaped his mouth was a primal, bone shaking sound that was a far cry from the calm of moments ago, Ruby briefly entirely forgotten as the sheer hatred rolled off him in waves that would've been an inescapable, horribly unrealstic feeling to the young rose if she hadn't been in the presence of the black beast Ozpin himself before. That this simple faunus almost reached that height was a testament to how much anger had just burst forth like puss from a wound. The blast from the hand drew his attention, but only in the sense that she was now an obstacle between him and his prey as his grey aura shimmered across his body before he raised his arm between it and her.

'Twice I've seen death standing before me.'

Ozpin and Weiss, they couldn't have been more different if they'd tried.

But to Ruby despite how close she grew to both or believed she had, one thing never left her.

At any moment if it so suited them they could kill her if she didn't tow the line, if she wasn't perfect, if she didn't show she was worth the effort being put into her.

That was what it felt like staring death in the face.
​

The force was enough to inch even his massive bulk backwards, but her gave a throaty growl as he planted his feet into a more solid stance and levelled his own arm at her. The massive claw suddenly split into four prongs that connected with plating that slid down to the base in a cone shape, and the center of it opened up in a grate-like hole.

Ruby's eyes widened upon seeing Bear's prosthetic split.

The beam emitting from her arm died down...
​

*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWNG*

The ceiling above her head cracked and if there was an encore, it likely would have started collapsing. In fact it was a testamanet to the place's structucal integrity that it didn't!

'Too fast-!'

Ruby was thrown back by the sheer force reverberating off the soundwave. Her aura shimmered around her as she cupped her hands to her ears.

Her head! HER HEAD! She felt like she was-she WAS going to-

"Splurk!"

Vomit.

Her head ached and if it hadn't been for her aura, she was sure her eardrums would have burst.

What had she been thinking of? Ah, the times she'd seen what could have been her end and instead lived.

'There won't be a third.'

Wiping away at her mouth, she stood up and brushed herself off.

Too many times...Too many times she'd been left at the mercy of others. It'd been her otherself, Eve Taurus, her own resistance to ending it all while locked up, and more. That weapon had done more than rattle her. It made something clear to Ruby: If she wanted to be taken serious. To be seen as more than just a rabid dog, a vicious minion lashing out at tose who'd disparage her 'keeper', she had to earn it. Not as the 'Red Masque' but as the girl she always was in her heart.

Ruby Rose.

Her eyes met Bear's and she was gone once more. A scattering of rose petals to the wind. Reappearing a few feet from the experienced faunus, she raised her arm and took aim-not at Bear himself but rather the mechanisms that likely helped keep this piece of dangerous machinery tethered to his body. She'd seen the way he'd looked at Carneilian, the entire atmosphere had changed. Whatever opinion Ruby may have had on the old man were privvy only to her(unless he read her mind of course~)and they didn't matter here. All that did was this.

"Instead of focusing on Carneilan...you should have been more worried..."

The light in the palm lit up far more brightly.

"RUBY ROSE!"

*VSSSSSSHHHHH!!*

~~~


​

Feri's path and thus interception was right back to the break room they'd just fled from, and thus it was there, amidst the rubble of multiple shattered walls and sheets of frigid ice, the sounds of Bear's Roaring Claw in the hangar almost drowning out the sound of grinding metal and grenade explosions in the hallway behind her, that she was intercepted by the good doctor. She blinked as he arrived, and gave an offended snort at his words as she pulled a shadowfang mask from her belt and slid it onto her face, the eyes briefly glowing blue.

"Me, running away? Tch. Who do you think I am? One of these little... ninja terrorists my father is so taken with? One of you spineless traitors who serve the very people who hate us? No. Laughable. Stupid. Idiotic. Why do I always get the dumb ones."

"Ah, right. The ol 'traitor' line. Not the first time I've heard it..."

Magenta's eyes narrowed and the glow coating his hands grew brighter.

"I doubt it'll be the last time too. So long as people like you get to run around and cause messes. What...do you think you're accomplishing by attacking the kingdoms? Peace? No, that's not it. Equality? At the end of a sword I suppose. But it's not that either. I'm only in my 30s but I've seen what this has 'done' for 'us'. Talking's gotten us nowhere, violence has gotten us nowhere. No, I think it better to do what suits the individual."

He knew that their human 'comrades' knew what he and Paradise were and what they were thinking. He'd seen too much growing up not to realize it.But what they thought and felt didn't matter to Magenta or his goals. If serving Atlas as best as he could was the finest chance he had at achieving his research then he'd do it. Humans, faunus, as long as those whom he answered to were satisfied, nobody else's opinion did or ever would. Society didn't need to accept him and neither did humanity.

He didn't care for their acceptance.

"Say what you'd like, believe what you want. But to go against someone as powerful as Miss Schnee is like charging straight into the predator's maw..." Black lines began to spread across Magenta's face as a result of him preparing to use his semblance to modify his body(or activating 'attachments' that he'd already made to it)

"Ten times out of ten I'd rather be the prey that lives to see another day than the one who earns the predator's ire."
​

She kicked the back of the ringblade that had been resting across her shoulders and sent it flipping into the air so should could catch it with herself in the center as she assumed a low stance.

"Unfortunately for you, I do. So I will only probably kill you."

There was something immediately off about Feri's weapon as the doctor looked at it. The entire inner ring was filled with dust, an immense, frankly grotesque and dangerously unsafe amount. While hunter weapons were certainly hardy, if the worst happened and the dust inside got ignited instead of spent through the weapon, the ensuing reaction would've likely been enough to blow out the entire lower floor of this warehouse.

Except all the dust inside of it was spent. Grey, dull, and about as useful in a fight as common sand, its days as a purveyor of elemental might already over. It was like the woman across from him had simply forgotten to reload her weapon, or simply hadn't the time before the ambush happened.

He charged, and so did she, light and graceful steps across through the rubble before her the dust in her ring began to glow a faint white. The massive wall of ice along one side of the wall suddenly began to disintigrate, becoming blue motes of light that swirled and sucked itself into Feri's weapon, and the dull, grey, spent dust suddenly glowed a bright blue in a small section of the weapon, reborn anew.

He took his swipe and found himself slashing through a pillar of ice instead of an Argent sister, Feri using the newly re-lit dust to form one to launch herself up and over the duck faunus for the ice wall that had covered Blake and Weiss' exit. Chunks of it began to disappear and be sucked into her blade, before she gave a warrior's cry and swung it forward-

The swipe missed it's mark and a snarl escaped from the doctor.

Looking over his shoulder, he tapped a small bud on his ear.

"Paradise, if you're still on your way here then-"
​

"This is a private conversation."

The room exploded. The mystical flame that burst outward from the cigarette made the mightiest dust explosion seem like a candle in the wind as it engulfed the break room in its entirety, and bar something miraculous both Feri and Magenta had their auras annihilated by power that was almost beyond their capacity to comprehend, let alone match; the work of not only one season of maiden's power, but two.

It took all of two seconds, and she spent one of those turning back to reaffix Blake with the same harsh, scathing glower as the Gigas suddenly touched down behind her to guard her back, a look that stood in seeming defiance of her next words.

*BOOOOOOOOM!*

The explosion hurled Magenta off his feet and left him laying flat on the ground, his clothes in tatters and his mask shredded to pieces.

Blood seeped out from his bill and the glow around his hands had faded.

But he hadn't been the only one affected by the blast and that wasn't referring to Feri...

'I'm finally going to show Magenta that I'ma good assistant. This mission will prove it!'

With two long rabbit ears whipping back and forth as he ran, Paradise was decked out in typical Atlesian solider attire with the slight modification of holes in his helmet that allowed his ears to flow to and fro without a care in the world. He'd stuck back after Magenta insisted on scouting ahead to try and cut off any potential enemy hostiles from making an unscheduled escape from the battlefield and as he followed after his mentor and was about to make his way down the hall where only a corner turn would have separated him from Magenta, the connection between the two cut out and Paradise had only seconds to react.

"Magenta? Magenta what's-"

The explosion knocked Paradise off his feet and sent his aura a-glowing as he smacked against the walls and floor respectively. Landing flat on his back with a pained groan, he pulled his helmet off and flung it weakly to the side. If he'd been any closer his aura would have been shattered for sure..."Good thing I wore my helmet...' He mewled before activating his semblance as a sphere appeared around Magenta and whatever wounds he acquired from that explosive aftermath were gone, leaving the faunus with the accompanying amnesia. "Huh...?" What the hell had happened here?? It looked as though a bomb had gone off! "Magenta! Magenta do you copy??"

No answer.

Racing down the hallway and turning the corner to see the demolished hallway, he saw Magenta's unconscious body and the body of somebody he didn't recognize. Judging by the state of things it would have been reasonable enough to assume she'd been caught up in this...whatever it was as well. As emotional a sight as seeing the man he looked up to and trusted enough to let modify and weaponize his body laying bloodied and battered in a destroyed hallway was, this was enemy territory and a moment's hesitation would decide the battle. It was just a good thing they had someone as strong and admirable as Miss Schnee leading them! Making his way over to grab Magenta, Paradise slpped his fellow faunus's arm over his shoulder and looked to Feri.

Friend or foe...He really didn't know.

His hand was held out, rods ready to rip through his skin as a result of the 'battle system' that Magenta had progressively added to within the depths of Paradise's body, the shining achievement in Magneta's eyes behind the blade built onto a system directly attached to the rabbit's spine: Twisted Love. If she was an enemy and still conscious/willing to fight, he'd recalled what Magenta had told him at the start of this mission.

'If they threaten you? Defend yourself. Even if it means killing them. That's what it means to be a solider, my sweet Paradise.'

....But as his shaggy lavendar hair threatened to hang over his eyes, he felt a pang of sympathy running through him. Even if this person was an enemy, if she was caught up in whatever incident had happened to injure Magenta then he couldn't kill her...Maybe he could just detain her and....and....

​

 

[MidwayLives]

He'd been as quiet as death itself throughout the buildup to what was going down.

What did it matter? What could he possibly do to help? He'd only end up costing others.

Just like...

But he was still going.

'Maybe it's fear or ignorance that's moving my body along. I can't be sure. Maybe both.' He mused to himself as he prepped for what was to come. Gloves were pulled on, his cloak was discarded for the hoodie he kept on underneath it, it was zipped up and the hood was pulled down. Looking at his face,, slightly obscured as it was by trails of fog flowing freely from his mouth, he placed a gloved hand atop the mirror. There may have been only one face in the reflection but ever since he'd been caught and brought here with the others, it didn't matter what happened next. If he survived, hell, even if he died. Cobalt would always be watching out for him.

He slowly pulled his hand back.

'Just wish I could have done the same for you.'

*BOOOM*

It had started...
​

The sound of a grenade burst propelling a tiny warrior up into the air where she briefly landed on the top of the summoned gigas' armored head. Her feet had hardly touched the surface before she pushed off in a jump to go even higher, no time wasted to judge the battlefield or give the pair of faunus terrorists much time to react.

This summon, construct, whatever it was.

The power behind it was something to behold and Tiger's muscles were covered in beads of sweat from the immediate jump into exertion that fighting the Gigas had required. Normally she preferred to gauge her opponents. See what they could reasonably handle and if it was clear that they weren't worth her time or effort, she either let them go or as the case had been with Grey if they pushed the issue, she'd reluctantly oblige. The results usually weren't pretty in those situations and it'd been only thanks to Cobalt's timely intervention that Grey had been saved from sharing the fate of that ilk.

But something wasn't right, something was setting off her aura-
​

Yet again another *boom* followed and this time Nora rocketed downward with both her natural strength supercharged and at considerable momentum, all of it focused into one move as the lightning bruiser brought her hammer down onto the big Tiger before the woman could finish calling out to her compatriot, aiming to slam it into the woman's skull and smash her against the floor while she was occupied with the gigas

*THWACK*

The ground under Tiger's feet caved in almost instantly and her entire body seemed to tremble due to the force from Nora's strike. From an outsider's perspective it looked like an action figure being bent in a position it clearly wasn't meant to hold as Tiger's left leg looked as though it were going to bend the knee. Her leg started to move down as she struggled to stay standing of her own volition...

"84%...Left arm..."

The muscle mass in Tiger's right arm seemed to quickly recede and in contrast, her left arm grew as thick as the beefiest steak you'd ever laid your eyes on. Rearing it back she threw her fist forward to try and catch Nora in the stomach and send her flying back into the wall to the left of the Gigas. Stuck in the position of having thrown said punch, Tiger stumbled back a step or two as both arms returned to their normal physique as she rubbed the back of her head. "Aura or not, I felt that one." The woman known as Tiger to most, 'Arena Meat' to Hound and whatever her true name may have been to only herself, didn't know who this hammer wielding teen was but she actually cracked something of a small smile.

She'd been robbed of a decent fight back in that underground event. Perhaps this was a chance to right that wrong.
​

Truth be told, seeing somebody like that...she'd be lying if she said she didn't get at least a little excited by that, if she said she couldn't feel the blood pumping. After being treated like a rag doll by that faunus dude who just threw her and his weapon around Glynda-style, she was way in the mood for a more straightforward fight with someone.

'Nora's just as strong as ever. Good for her.'

He was envious if nothing else.

But every man and woman had to make due with what they had and he'd taken the time to prepare how someone like him could.

Drawing a couple of throwing knives from within his hoodie, Grey quietly sighed.

'Cobalt. Remember, if there's consciousness or anything after death, you brought this out in me.'
​

He released and dipped under the return strike he knew was gonna come, the blade or arm breezing so close that it tickled his nose as before he landed deftly on the floor.

"I'mma clean this up while you handle the midget arena meat!" He called over as he studied which pieces of the armor started to fail with a smirk.

Breathing out a small cloud of fog near his person, Grey took aim and hurled the four knives in his hand.

The knives in combination with a touch of his semblance were meant to throw the enemy off guard/obscure the path of the knives-intiially at least-good in theory.

It's just a shame Grey never bothered to heed any of his father's combat lessons.

One knife went wide, not even venturing anywhere close to Hound and instead pinging off the wall opposite from him. The other three stayed the course but...

Dispersing the cloud, Grey stepped forward.



"I'm afraid the only thing getting cleaned up here is your act."

Ugh, what a cliche thing to say. He'd never put something like that in any articles on his website.

"The Shadow Fang's met their match now that-"

Tiger's ears perked up while keeping her attention focused on Nora.

"That voice...You're the one from that club...The masked man."

Grey paled and was glad the fog surrounding his face obscured it just enough.

'She saw through it so quickly...'
​

"Then I got a date with the devil himself."

Well, it didn't matter.

He'd just have to roll with it. He didn't know the exact layout of who was going where and who was fighting who but one thing was clear.

He'd seen the muscular woman fight and she was dangerous.

The other man gave off something of an obnoxious air. Remarkable for someone who'd never met him up to this point.

He was also likely an experienced fighter with years of fighting those with area effecting semblances like Grey's.

Grey's combat experience started and ended at skirmishes he'd gotten into in his school years.

Still he stood tall even as his legs threatened to disobey and crumple at the very ludicrous nature of what he was doing.

'I know it doesn't seem all that obvious but it bears mentioning, I'm incredibly frightened, terrified even.'

'Have a little more confidence in yourself!'

Grey's hands balled up.

"Nora...I'll catch up with you later."

'You're right, Cobalt. I do believe in myself. Not to win..' He eyed Nora facing down Tiger. 'If I can make things even slightly easier for those I care about...'

He opened his mouth and blew a stream of fog directly towards Hound, manipulating it just enough so it didn't spread outwardly towards Nora. Grey didn't expect someone of the Shadow Fang to be so easily caught in his semblance, dodging it would likely be amateur hour for someone like this man. Still if it inconvenienced him ever so slightly then so be it. Now, all Grey had to do was...

RUN!

Turning back and bolting in the hope/fear that Hound would pursue him on the way to go fight Big C, Grey believed in two things.

His semblance: 'Ghostly Whispers' and his will to survive. He may have lost Cobalt but he'd gained CONFIDENCE!

Now if only he could live long enough to use it....
​

Truth be told, seeing somebody like that...she'd be lying if she said she didn't get at least a little excited by that, if she said she couldn't feel the blood pumping. After being treated like a rag doll by that faunus dude who just threw her and his weapon around Glynda-style, she was way in the mood for a more straightforward fight with someone.

"Not much of a fighter that one. But he's got determination. Or maybe it's just outright stupidity."

A purple miasma flowed around Tiger's body as she spread her feet apart.

"86%!"

Tiger's frame bulked up once more and she clenched her left hand.

"Still, I imagine he made for a good friend."

Tiger then charged forward to throw another punch.~​

 

[MyrtenRose]

*THWACK*

The ground under Tiger's feet caved in almost instantly and her entire body seemed to tremble due to the force from Nora's strike. From an outsider's perspective it looked like an action figure being bent in a position it clearly wasn't meant to hold as Tiger's left leg looked as though it were going to bend the knee. Her leg started to move down as she struggled to stay standing of her own volition...

The sight of that did ebb at least some of the thirst for a good fight from the young woman. "...Hey, so...I'm not a doctor or physician or anything but even I can tell that doesn't look good. So please, for your sake and mine and everybody's, maybe just consider surrendering? Yeah? Pretty super ultra please? It's really for--"​

"84%...Left arm..."

The muscle mass in Tiger's right arm seemed to quickly recede and in contrast, her left arm grew as thick as the beefiest steak you'd ever laid your eyes on. Rearing it back she threw her fist forward to try and catch Nora in the stomach and send her flying back into the wall to the left of the Gigas. Stuck in the position of having thrown said punch, Tiger stumbled back a step or two as both arms returned to their normal physique as she rubbed the back of her head. "Aura or not, I felt that one." The woman known as Tiger to most, 'Arena Meat' to Hound and whatever her true name may have been to only herself, didn't know who this hammer wielding teen was but she actually cracked something of a small smile.

She'd been robbed of a decent fight back in that underground event. Perhaps this was a chance to right that wrong.

"84%?" She repeated. "What's that--" Nora's eyes widened just as much as Tiger's arm suddenly went full on bodybuilder jacked. Even Elm would have been jealous, or at the very least appreciative. Between that sight and the blaring warning her aura gave off, Nora did her best to push off to the side and avoid that blow, to not much avail. The punch still struck, though it was closer to her kidney than the actual stomach, and it was more of a glancing blow...but glancing blow or not, it still hit like a mothertruckin' semi. The force rocketed her tiny frame through the air until she collided back-first into the wall. For a few moments she didn't move from where she was embedded in the wall like a home ornament. Not out of the pain, but more taking stock of the situation. Her head tilted slightly to the left. "...Okay. So that's a thing." Despite it all, some of the feeling that had been temporarily lost looking down at Tiger now returned and then some, a brief excited smile crossing her face for a second.​

"Then I got a date with the devil himself."

It was gone again by the time her eyes shifted back over to the other one as she pushed herself free from the wall.

Oh no you don't--​

He opened his mouth and blew a stream of fog directly towards Hound, manipulating it just enough so it didn't spread outwardly towards Nora. Grey didn't expect someone of the Shadow Fang to be so easily caught in his semblance, dodging it would likely be amateur hour for someone like this man. Still if it inconvenienced him ever so slightly then so be it. Now, all Grey had to do was...

RUN!

Turning back and bolting in the hope/fear that Hound would pursue him on the way to go fight Big C, Grey believed in two things.

His semblance: 'Ghostly Whispers' and his will to survive. He may have lost Cobalt but he'd gained CONFIDENCE!

She blinked, glancing over that way. She'd been about to try throwing her hammer straight at Hound like a demented heat-seeking hammer of justice but with Grey doing...that, she erred on the side of caution and decided not to do so. If the reporter did his thing and occupied the faunus dude's attention, by all means. Having to focus on only one opponent would sure make things easier, and not just to fight and win but also to try and keep it as calm and unchaotic and as painless as humanly possible. She didn't need these people to hurt out of some savage bloodlust and desire to kill. She only needed them to go down and stay DOWN.​

"Not much of a fighter that one. But he's got determination. Or maybe it's just outright stupidity."

A purple miasma flowed around Tiger's body as she spread her feet apart.

"Says the person who just took part in bombing the military academy of the kingdom with the most ridiculous military in like the history of ever."​

"86%!"

Tiger's frame bulked up once more and she clenched her left hand.

"Still, I imagine he made for a good friend."

More than good, Nora thought to herself as she called up the memory of him and Cobalt. Those two had been gut-bustingly hilarious in that moment. The cowboy guy who even jumped in on their food fight challenge...never had a chance with her in it, of course, but even so she appreciated all the challengers. Each and every one. But now was not the time to be reminiscing too much. She cleared her head and refocused on the fight while the big faunus swelled up even more.​

Tiger then charged forward to throw another punch.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Essentially an act of God

Any normal dust user would've been obliterated by such a show of force. That it hadn't killed Magenta outright was proof enough that perhaps he should've been at least worthy of Feri's attention, if not respect.

Feri Argent was no normal dust user. She was a dust master. it was no hubris nor false estimations that brought the shadowfang to her father's door for help against a maiden. The very manipulation of it was her semblence! The elements were hers to command!

As such, it only hurt like anything worse than she'd ever been subjected to, rather than instant disintigration.

But while one couldn't even begin to hope to match that sort of firepower as a normal person, Feri didn't attempt to match; she absorbed. The instant the hackles on her skin began to raise, and her trained eyes saw the incoming change in the elements for what it was, she twirled the blade around in the first of the two seconds, and expended the entirety of the ice dust she'd absorbed to sheet a massive wall of ice on one side of her, to deflect rather than entirely block-

She absolutely misjudged the force of the explosion to follow. It was simply not an act one could prepare for. It was one thing to be briefed on the power of maidens, and another entirely to experience it first hand, and none of them had known that it was not the power of one, but two maidens that coursed through Weiss' soul . But nor did she simply groan and bear it; the flames that did not arc against and shatter her wall were pulled into the ring, blue swirling to red that sent the entire ring aglow. Even with the absolutely absurd amount of dust within her weapon however, it wasn't enough. Flames battered her, and the sheer force sent her crashing into the wall with enough force to crack even Weiss Schnee's ice, and it was quite the undignified shout of pain that was forced from her both on impact and on landing. Yet while her golden aura flared, it didn't crack, and she stumbled to her feet with her weapon hung over her shoulder, a growl let out as she dusted off her chin with her knuckles.

"...I will not be ignored-"

*BOOOOOOOOM!*

The explosion hurled Magenta off his feet and left him laying flat on the ground, his clothes in tatters and his mask shredded to pieces.

Blood seeped out from his bill and the glow around his hands had faded.

But he hadn't been the only one affected by the blast and that wasn't referring to Feri...

'I'm finally going to show Magenta that I'ma good assistant. This mission will prove it!'

With two long rabbit ears whipping back and forth as he ran, Paradise was decked out in typical Atlesian solider attire with the slight modification of holes in his helmet that allowed his ears to flow to and fro without a care in the world. He'd stuck back after Magenta insisted on scouting ahead to try and cut off any potential enemy hostiles from making an unscheduled escape from the battlefield and as he followed after his mentor and was about to make his way down the hall where only a corner turn would have separated him from Magenta, the connection between the two cut out and Paradise had only seconds to react.

"Magenta? Magenta what's-"

The explosion knocked Paradise off his feet and sent his aura a-glowing as he smacked against the walls and floor respectively. Landing flat on his back with a pained groan, he pulled his helmet off and flung it weakly to the side. If he'd been any closer his aura would have been shattered for sure..."Good thing I wore my helmet...' He mewled before activating his semblance as a sphere appeared around Magenta and whatever wounds he acquired from that explosive aftermath were gone, leaving the faunus with the accompanying amnesia. "Huh...?" What the hell had happened here?? It looked as though a bomb had gone off! "Magenta! Magenta do you copy??"

No answer.

Racing down the hallway and turning the corner to see the demolished hallway, he saw Magenta's unconscious body and the body of somebody he didn't recognize. Judging by the state of things it would have been reasonable enough to assume she'd been caught up in this...whatever it was as well. As emotional a sight as seeing the man he looked up to and trusted enough to let modify and weaponize his body laying bloodied and battered in a destroyed hallway was, this was enemy territory and a moment's hesitation would decide the battle. It was just a good thing they had someone as strong and admirable as Miss Schnee leading them! Making his way over to grab Magenta, Paradise slpped his fellow faunus's arm over his shoulder and looked to Feri.

Friend or foe...He really didn't know.

His hand was held out, rods ready to rip through his skin as a result of the 'battle system' that Magenta had progressively added to within the depths of Paradise's body, the shining achievement in Magneta's eyes behind the blade built onto a system directly attached to the rabbit's spine: Twisted Love. If she was an enemy and still conscious/willing to fight, he'd recalled what Magenta had told him at the start of this mission.

'If they threaten you? Defend yourself. Even if it means killing them. That's what it means to be a solider, my sweet Paradise.'

....But as his shaggy lavendar hair threatened to hang over his eyes, he felt a pang of sympathy running through him. Even if this person was an enemy, if she was caught up in whatever incident had happened to injure Magenta then he couldn't kill her...Maybe he could just detain her and....and....

She blinked, and mechanically turned her head towards Paradise as she heard him land, her indignation giving way to a bemused frown as she saw... that.

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?"

"You're right."

Superficially, the admission was as simple and straightforward as could be, yet belied just as much complexity just below the surface as the joint act of physics, chemistry and God preceding it had.

"What's been done to your people is unacceptable. On that much, we agree. Drastic measures are necessary, Blake. But not yours. Never yours. Giving the world back to the Grimm? Ruining thousands of men, women and children's lives, your own people among them? 'No' yourself. It's not a revolution. It's stupid. It's a child's idea of how to make the world better. And it solves nothing. Only promises more strife, more suffering, decades more of the same for human and faunus alike, until the temperamental nightmare you empowered decides he's bored of it all and his creatures of darkness roll over whoever and whatever remains. Take umbrage with my hand in things all you like—my plan is an actual plan. I've done what I had to. You're doing what you want to, whether you're capable of recognizing it or not. The world's cruelty has broken you down, and truthfully? I think that's... sad."

She blinked, a sudden air of unease as though the revelation were as much one to her as it was anyone. The word she had wanted to say was 'pathetic'. Maybe 'sickening'.

But her lips formed the far simpler one before she could stop them, and her eyes were a bit wider as she regarded Blake in an entirely different light.

"...I think that might be it, you know. Why I never hated you. You make me sad, Blake. That's not something that's supposed to happen anymore. It's a bit concerning, honestly, but there it is. And you know why?" Her bottom lip curled. "Because you could've been wonderful. I'm not being sarcastic; I look at you and see someone who could've been so... so good. For Remnant. For the faunus. For everybody. And seeing you like this, lashing out at a world that robbed you of your potential..."

She shook her head, her sigh earnest.

"It breaks my heart, and I proofed that thing to be invincible. Because looking at who you're becoming? Someone who paints in broad strokes, who thinks an entire species of individuals could ever deserve to pay for the crimes of a few, who wilfully sees the world in such cruel, unrepentant shades of black and white?"

Weiss' features hardened once again, and another glyph formed beneath her as she straightened her back and put her feet at shoulder distance in a preparatory stance. Myrtenaster's tip was extended, pointed for Blake with nary a shake or tremor as she breathed out, set her shoulders, and waited.

"You're just another Carnelian in the making."

The display proved enough for Blake; Weiss was toying with her. Playing some angle other than simply killing The Hand. Part of her already knew it, but even confirmed she didn't move to retreat. If Weiss wanted to take her lightly, then she'd use that. Even if it was all playing into whatever game Weiss was setting the board for, even the indomitable Schnee could miscalculate, and there was almost nobody on Remnant would could turn a misplay into a strike at the jugular better than Belladonna.

Besides; it wasn't the only fight Weiss was trying to have, nor the only one blake wanted to win, and Weiss words cut open a fresh bleed of anger in Blake's eyes, her own shoulders shivering slightly as she paused.

"...The crimes of the few? You think its just a few bad humans?"

She wanted to bark out a laugh, but just how angry those words made her turned the sound into more of a dry rasp as she breathed it out.

"Carnelian may be the worst, but it wasn't the few that fought an entire war to try and keep the faunus in line, Schnee." She spat, her murderous congeniality from earlier giving way to simply murderous. "It was your entire gods-damned KINGDOM! We still lived in cages until the last talons made the humans set us free. One thousand years of being treated like dirt, property, and monsters, and the only thing that brought us real change was when we fought. And even that 'peace' was fake. Most of us still only get to scrape by, only now instead of getting fed by masters we have to feed ourselves with the scraps you toss out. For every faunus that claws out of the gutter, there's ten more that die trying to reach that better life. No. I could kill every single human on the planet myself, and I still wouldn't be Carnelian. Because it doesn't matter if there's only a few Carnelians doing the actual work." she snarled, leveling Gambol at Weiss as she rested her sheathe-blade against her shoulder.

"It took all of you not caring to let it happen, or worse, pretending to care while doing nothing to change it, and every single human has benefited from it. So what if the grimm are monsters? So what if the faunus are no less safe from them than we are you?"

She crouched lower as she spun both weapons into reverse grips, Gambol shifting to its chain scythe form while Blake's eyes narrowed.

"At least they don't pretend they're any better."

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Hound found himself cockblocked once again as the Gigas sort of just... vanished in front of him, as if it had been transported somewhere else.

Hound's shoulders practically deflated.

"....Really-"

Breathing out a small cloud of fog near his person, Grey took aim and hurled the four knives in his hand.

The knives in combination with a touch of his semblance were meant to throw the enemy off guard/obscure the path of the knives-intiially at least-good in theory.

It's just a shame Grey never bothered to heed any of his father's combat lessons.

One knife went wide, not even venturing anywhere close to Hound and instead pinging off the wall opposite from him. The other three stayed the course but...

Dispersing the cloud, Grey stepped forward.

"I'm afraid the only thing getting cleaned up here is your act."

Ugh, what a cliche thing to say. He'd never put something like that in any articles on his website.

"The Shadow Fang's met their match now that-"

Tiger's ears perked up while keeping her attention focused on Nora.

"That voice...You're the one from that club...The masked man."

Grey paled and was glad the fog surrounding his face obscured it just enough.

'She saw through it so quickly...'

Well, it didn't matter.

He'd just have to roll with it. He didn't know the exact layout of who was going where and who was fighting who but one thing was clear.

He'd seen the muscular woman fight and she was dangerous.

The other man gave off something of an obnoxious air. Remarkable for someone who'd never met him up to this point.

He was also likely an experienced fighter with years of fighting those with area effecting semblances like Grey's.

Grey's combat experience started and ended at skirmishes he'd gotten into in his school years.

Still he stood tall even as his legs threatened to disobey and crumple at the very ludicrous nature of what he was doing.

'I know it doesn't seem all that obvious but it bears mentioning, I'm incredibly frightened, terrified even.'

'Have a little more confidence in yourself!'

Grey's hands balled up.

"Nora...I'll catch up with you later."

'You're right, Cobalt. I do believe in myself. Not to win..' He eyed Nora facing down Tiger. 'If I can make things even slightly easier for those I care about...'

He opened his mouth and blew a stream of fog directly towards Hound, manipulating it just enough so it didn't spread outwardly towards Nora. Grey didn't expect someone of the Shadow Fang to be so easily caught in his semblance, dodging it would likely be amateur hour for someone like this man. Still if it inconvenienced him ever so slightly then so be it. Now, all Grey had to do was...

RUN!

Turning back and bolting in the hope/fear that Hound would pursue him on the way to go fight Big C, Grey believed in two things.

His semblance: 'Ghostly Whispers' and his will to survive. He may have lost Cobalt but he'd gained CONFIDENCE!

Now if only he could live long enough to use it....
​

The knives never found their mark; two were twirled through with laughable ease, and the third was quite literally snatched out of the air between two fingers, hovering a few fingers from Hound's forehead before he twirled in his hands to wave at Grey like he was wagging a finger him.

"Hey, hey heeey! Careful with those, someone could get-"

He whipped it behind his back without looking, sending it straight into the back of Nora's skull while she was occupied with Tiger.

"-hurt-"

Then grey literally ran right past him. Just right on by. The sheer audacity was enough for the reporter to slip by, Hound taken wholly offguard by some dude who's best move was 'spook gas while I hide and throw stuff' even daring to get into stabbing range of The Crim Culann. He sighed.

He was really gonna need to start killing more people if his rep was that low.

"leavin the midget with you arena meat! I think even you can handle her!" He snarked as he turned on his heel and brought his spear back for a throw. It was at an entirely wrong angle for throwing a spear, and he heaved it with all his might in a way that sent it spinning down the hall like a frisbee that suddenly turned into a propeller as the mini jets on it ignited to send its rotation even faster. A few seconds later, just at the same moment Grey entered the break room that had just been devastated, with Feri and Paradise' sudden standoff, Hound's weapon crashed into the back of his knees with enough force to send him flipping backwards twice in the air.

Not a moment later Hound leaped over his prone form, Grey getting the brief image of a dog faunus flipping him off overhead before the blur vanished towards the hangar.

"...and who the fuck are you supposed to be??? Is Atlas full of literal clowns instead of just metaphorical ones??? Do you celebrate halloween months early???" Feri felt obliged to complain

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Bear was not at his best. This was not the sort of rage that drove a warrior to greater heights, and there was a reason until now that Sienna had kept the old fighter from Atlas until now, near the end, when it could no longer be denied to a legend so well respected. It was blind fury. His only goal was Carnelian's death, and until his senses returned, everything was was to be damned. Even Ruby appearing right beside him wasn't enough to shake him from his furious stupor, and he ignored her entirely in favor of turning towards Carnelian.

Blood was in the air.

Literally, after the explosion that rocked the warehouse a room over, the tiniest bit of Magenta wafting through the air.

Which was why the tackle that hit Ruby just before her beam tried to take Bear's arm off at the joint was so feral.

It was a ball of muscle, claws, and teeth that suddenly careened into the self styled bandit princess and sent the shot wide. If she could have gotten a good look at her, it would've been easy to recognize her attacker as Greki, and equally easy to recognize she did not look the same. Her grey eyes were burning red, her teeth had sharpened into fangs, and her fingernails on the hand uncovered by the gauntlet had sharpened into full grown claws. The Talon's eyesight had greyed out, seeing the world in monochrome shades everywhere except the person right in front of her, who's insides were a pulsing, flowing red system of branches and roots that sang to the faunus as her semblance took over.

It was very hard to get that good look, as the faunus grappled and tried to bite and tear at the silver eyed warrior, a beast taken off its leash and set loose on its prey.

It was an unslightly display, two of the shadow fangs purported greatest warriors acting the beasts the faunus tried to hard not to be called, but this was no place for decorum. Bear swung his weapon around without ceasing the fire, carving a bent and wrecked path against the walls and floors to follow after Carnelian, as Ilia's somewhat panicked sprint was forced to dive behind a pair of crates for what little shielding they would provide from the blast.

 

[MidwayLives]

Literally, after the explosion that rocked the warehouse a room over, the tiniest bit of Magenta wafting through the air.

Ruby's attention was temporarily taken aback by the sudden explosion.

'What had happened??'

It was all she needed.
​

Which was why the tackle that hit Ruby just before her beam tried to take Bear's arm off at the joint was so feral.

Ruby was quite literally swept off her feet and forced to watch as her beam smashed through a chunk of the wall instead of demolishing metal and who knew what else? She collapsed into a heap on the ground trying in vain to gather herself. Everything was moving so fast, everything was-
​

It was a ball of muscle, claws, and teeth that suddenly careened into the self styled bandit princess and sent the shot wide. If she could have gotten a good look at her, it would've been easy to recognize her attacker as Greki, and equally easy to recognize she did not look the same. Her grey eyes were burning red, her teeth had sharpened into fangs, and her fingernails on the hand uncovered by the gauntlet had sharpened into full grown claws. The Talon's eyesight had greyed out, seeing the world in monochrome shades everywhere except the person right in front of her, who's insides were a pulsing, flowing red system of branches and roots that sang to the faunus as her semblance took over.

The stump of her arm that was attached to the prosthetic began to ache terribly. It obviously wasn't a perfect 1:1 but that didn't matter for the part of Ruby's psyche that was still traumatized by what had happened back in the woods all those years ago with Yang. The one selfless act she'd ever done for her sister by saving them from the Beowulf that had lashed out at them upon sniffing the two out. At the time Ruby smiled through it. Sure, she'd lost an arm but she'd saved the two of them and that was more important than some measly limb, right?

Wrong.

Bandages, attempts at prosthetic replacements. Ruby hated looking at her stump. It reminded her all too much of when she'd been so vulnerable. A foreshadowing of things to come later in life with her so easily falling under Ozpin's spell and then Weiss's. She'd left her family behind with the former likely to never see them again and abandoned the side she'd maimed and killed people for only to end up fighting for someone else with the latter. She'd been weak both times and every time she showered or changed clothes she had to look at it. A reminder that in her heart of hearts she was still just the smiling little girl with a torn sleeve and a bloody stump back in the woods.

But the style in which this woman fought, the savagery inherent to it, it was a stark reminder of the rabid beast waiting within Ruby just as IIia had alluded to. It'd always been there from the moment Ruby could form words in her mouth. It was in her nature for better or for worse to fight and revel in the chaos it brought about it, it was why...she'd tormented Yang for all those years. The feeling of being in control and willing to do whatever to see what happened whether you acted like an animal or worse overrides everything else. In all the time she'd spent with Weiss, she'd hoped that side of her would have been quietly subdued and strangled. She was better than that now. She didn't need to foam at the mouth or scream and wail if things didn't go her way.
​

It was very hard to get that good look, as the faunus grappled and tried to bite and tear at the silver eyed warrior, a beast taken off its leash and set loose on its prey.

As claws tore into the rather professional red-black suit that Ruby had adorned in order to try and look more 'fitting' among those Weiss trusted, bare skin was revealed and the dozens of scars littering Ruby's stomach and chest were becoming more and more open the longer this feral barrage continued. Some of them jagged looking, others looked as though they were years old, regardless they all had one thing in common.

They were self-inflicted.

Failure was never an option in Ruby's mind. Even from her days in the bandit camp, she'd been firm in that mentality. As she sat in the cold cell in Vale and debated what would happen to her, dark thoughts came to the forefront but for whatever reason she never followed through on them.

Well, no more she said!

These clothes were lovely, everything Weiss had done for her was appreciated, but at her core Ruby couldn't change who she was and she was ultimately fine with that.

"grrrr....GRRRRRRRRAAAAGHHHH!!"

She thrashed back and lashed out with her prosthetic arm attempting to punch and backhand the attacking faunus off her. On one hand it felt as though it were pissing away dozens of the training sessions Weiss had put her through but lashing out like a feral beast felt almost like home. Biting wasn't off the table either!
​

 

[Gus Gungus]

The display proved enough for Blake; Weiss was toying with her. Playing some angle other than simply killing The Hand. Part of her already knew it, but even confirmed she didn't move to retreat. If Weiss wanted to take her lightly, then she'd use that. Even if it was all playing into whatever game Weiss was setting the board for, even the indomitable Schnee could miscalculate, and there was almost nobody on Remnant would could turn a misplay into a strike at the jugular than Belladonna.

Besides; it wasn't the only fight Weiss was trying to have, nor the only one blake wanted to win, and Weiss words cut open a fresh bleed of anger in Blake's eyes, her own shoulders shivering slightly as she paused.

"...The crimes of the few? You think its just a few bad humans?"

She wanted to bark out a laugh, but just how angry those words made her turned the sound into more of a dry rasp as she breathed it out.

"Carnelian may be the worst, but it wasn't the few that fought an entire war to try and keep the faunus in line, Schnee." She spat, her murderous congeniality from earlier giving way to simply murderous. "It was your entire gods-damned KINGDOM! We still lived in cages until the last talons made the humans set us free. One thousand years of being treated like dirt, property, and monsters, and the only thing that brought us real change was when we fought. And even that 'peace' was fake. Most of us still only get to scrape by, only now instead of getting fed by masters we have to feed ourselves with the scraps you toss out. For every faunus that claws out of the gutter, there's ten more that die trying to reach that better life. No. I could kill every single human on the planet myself, and I still wouldn't be Carnelian. Because it doesn't matter if there's only a few Carnelians doing the actual work." she snarled, leveling Gambol at Weiss as she rested her sheathe-blade against her shoulder.

"It took all of you not caring to let it happen, or worse, pretending to care while doing nothing to change it, and every single human has benefited from it. So what if the grimm are monsters? So what if the faunus are no less safe from them than we are you?"

She crouched lower as she spun both weapons into reverse grips, Gambol shifting to its chain scythe form while Blake's eyes narrowed.

"At least they don't pretend they're any better."

"You think I don't know that?!" She snapped abruptly, the sight of Blake's simmering anger drawing out an indignancy in her if not anger outright as she kept her stance with a furrow of incredulity at suddenly having to field a coherent debate from the girl who barely strung together a sentence to her on any other given encounter. "I'm not pretending anything, you derelict. I know exactly what it's like to look at the worst face of my own kind, better than anyone. Humans are small, ignorant, petulant creatures who never admit when they're wrong and are prone to using violence as a solution to their problems. Guess what? So are faunus. It's how we were all designed! We all crawled out of the same stupid, flawed generational gene pool over a long and disappointing period of thousands upon thousands of years, and I'm sorry your people came out on the wrong side of the evolutionary race, it isn't right, but good lord am I the only one capable of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture in all this?!"

There was legitimate frustration in her voice, yet still of an oddly casual nature compared to Blake's righteous generational wrath. It also didn't contain nearly as much denial of any of Blake's accusation as any of them may have expected.

"This is dumb! People are still killing each other because some of them have animal ears and some don't! In a world where literal monsters threaten all of our survival! It's ridiculous! And don't act like you're any better, for dust's sake, you gave me the brush-off every time we shared a room together for months when we could've been having this conversation, and now it's happening at the worst possible moment! DON'T try to tell me you don't understand what it is to be petty and prejudiced, Blake Belladonna!"

The way she stomped her foot was downright petulant itself, the scathing glare she now leveled Blake with more born from irritation at being withheld intellectual discourse during every endlessly tedious gathering at Ozpin's chapel than directed at the other woman proper.

"Neither of our species have advanced to the point they should have, because most of us are morons. You're the morons this round, Blake. Morons who think crumbling under the weight of society's many inadequacies and retreating into some delusional, JUVENILE ninja fantasy where you all dress up in masks and sit around a shadowy table planning murders is in any shape or form a valid way of dealing with their problems instead of fixing them! How dare you claim a progressive stance when your organization is singlehandedly dragging Remnant backwards into the same conflict from fifty years ago? You aren't the champions of your people, Blake! You're a bunch of warped, emotionally stunted maniacs throwing the mother of all tantrums to the detriment of everybody! You're the monsters bringing conflict and bloodshed to the doorstep of the faunus again! Your people don't accept you! Your own FAMILY don't!"

Despite the demanding indignation in her voice, the huff she gave was of the soft, dejected sort as she tried to reconcile her own disillusionment with the world with even feeling a need to argue with Blake in the first place, to somehow find it in herself to disagree with the notion that Remnant would be better off if society was purged and began anew after all the cruelty she'd seen. To find her purpose for even being here, the desire to leave a better world than the one she was born into that drove her. To even want to be here at all.



"...I just... refuse to believe this is all there is to us..."

It... took her a second. So instead she just thought of someone good. Someone who didn't deserve to suffer for any of the world's wrongdoings or imperfections, who had no ill intentions, someone who wasn't prejudiced and whose only selfish impulse was wanting to protect the people close to her.

Someone whose blood still stained her dress.

The way the spark of drive in her eyes reignited was downright fierce.

"...Look. Society is broken, but when something is broken the solution isn't to just... keep breaking it. You identify the problems in front of you, and you repair them. And you can tell me it's been a thousand years all you like, but it was a thousand years of bloody war with the Grimm hampering our progress while the guiding immortal who should've been shaping a better civilization was too busy squabbling with her ex to properly address the issues harming people every day." The not-so-veiled shot at Salem came out in a disapproving drawl, the disapproval shifting back to Blake when she spoke further. "Would you like to know why humans hate the faunus, Blake? They don't. They hate what they're afraid of, which unfortunately happens to include all the things they don't understand, and far too many have yet to understand the faunus are no different. But that doesn't mean they can't be taught. There are too many who already know that, too many people capable of far too much pointless kindness for me to believe so. Need I remind you that it was only a generation ago that half the world came together to try and eliminate the concept of individuality? We've come a long way since then. I see no reason to believe we can't continue to evolve given the right guidance."

Her eyes narrowed, tempered with steel that was still less dense than the conviction in her voice when she continued.

"Just not with people like you and Carnelian still standing in the way. There was a time when he felt righteous too, you know. When war broke out, took its toll on the people he cared for. The first time he killed a faunus, his anger made him feel as vindicated as yours does."

Her sneer spoke her mind on that more than words ever could have.

"Then he realized he was good at it, and when you're good at something you start to like it. It wasn't long before he stopped caring, before all faunus deserved to die, because in his mind they were all the same. Sound familiar? If it doesn't, you're lost in a more bottomless delusion than Ruby used to be. And there's no point in further discussing it."

The glyph humming beneath her started to glow faintly around the edges, Myrtenaster dropped to a horizontal glyph as a barrel on the side facing Weiss started glowing.

"One more question before you attack me again. Do you seriously think you're better? That your reasons for making orphans of children because you felt their parents deserved it on the basis of species alone are somehow any less barbaric than his are, what, simply because your rage comes from a more justifiable place?" She scoffed in derision, but didn't wait for a response. "Good. I'm happy for you, really. Because there are only two ways your life can go at this point: either you end up like him, or there comes a day when you won't be able to live with yourself for the things you've done. Whichever eventuality you find yourself living, Blake, I hope you're prepared for it, and I hope all that helplessness and pain subsides enough that you feel content one day. Sincerely. Now come on. I doubt you're any more convinced to stand down and hear me out than you were previously, so in lieu of a sensible outcome be the one who takes the violent path first. Per usual."

Her rapier's tip whipped up again, blade now imbued with a similar glow.

"You're going to stand with the monsters? Be a monster. But for your own sanity, dear, get your head out of your backside and let go of this idea that you're right."

"leavin the midget with you arena meat! I think even you can handle her!" He snarked as he turned on his heel and brought his spear back for a throw. It was at an entirely wrong angle for throwing a spear, and he heaved it with all his might in a way that sent it spinning down the hall like a frisbee that suddenly turned into a propeller as the mini jets on it ignited to sent its rotation even faster. A few seconds later, just at the same moment Grey entered the break room that had just been devastated, with Feri and Paradise' sudden standoff, Hound's weapon crashed into the back of his knees with enough force to send him flipping backwards twice in the air.

Not a moment later Hound leaped over his prone form, Grey getting the brief image of a dog faunus flipping him off overhead before the blur vanished towards the hangar.

The blur had barely managed a brief dash in that direction before another blur as fast as he was crashed into his blur from the adjacent hallway, sending Hound's blur blurring through the wall and back into the scorched remains of the breakroom as the Hound's second, and far more deadly, obstacle made itself known, a cloak of shadows spreading out to cover the hallway behind her like it was less cloak and more living, breathing entity.



"He he hee, de-niiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeed!~"

The woman hunkered down into a half-crouch, giving a giggle that somehow sounded in equal parts exhilarated little girl and deranged crone despite what appeared to be very much a young woman's body as she crossed her arms and cocked her head with the most palpable pitying smirk in the world despite her mask, chin in hand.

"You're the Puppy, right? Sorry, but I'm supposed to stick to ya like you're rubber and I'm glue! Not how that saying goes exactly but wHATEVER I LOVE PUPPIES!!!!!"

It was an unslightly display, two of the shadow fangs purported greatest warriors acting the beasts the faunus tried to hard not to be called, but this was no place for decorum. Bear swung his weapon around without ceasing the fire, carving a bent and wrecked path against the walls and floors to follow after Carnelian, as Ilia's somewhat panicked sprint was forced to dive behind a pair of crates for what little shielding they would provide from the blast.

Carnelian turned, at just enough of an angle that Bear could see the mechanical implant replacing his left eye ever-so briefly pulse red.



He also launched one of the swords in his hand in Bear's direction with so much force one might've been forgiven for thinking it were fired from the barrel of a gun, the faint whir of cybernetics from his bones drowned out thoroughly by the roar of the old foe before him as the sword took all of milliseconds to hurtle... absolutely nowhere near Bear, nor the path of his weapon.

Instead it whisked straight by him, struck a nearby support pillar, bounced, and drilled the grizzled old faunus's in the back of the head at the right angle with enough force to send even his mighty frame staggering forward, the path of his beam knocked off balance to rend through the floor dangerously towards where Greki now wrestled Ruby.

It was astounding how quickly the old man his wrath was so singularly focused on vanished completely from his eyeline in the brief moment it took him to adjust, and behind the crates Ilia was barely in the recovery phase of her dive when she felt her spine get spiked into the dirt by what felt like a jackhammer crashing down on her from above; a force that struck her dead-center in the nerve cluster and drove the wind from her lungs with force that made what Eve mustered during her most feral moments in sparring feel like a love tap. If she managed not to curl up into a ball from the sheer pain it brought, a glance upward told her it wasn't a jackhammer but a boot, and Carnelian's crimson eye glared behind it as it came straight down in an identical stomp for her head that all but guaranteed unconsciousness if it struck with that same force, even with aura.​

 

[MidwayLives]

She blinked, and mechanically turned her head towards Paradise as she heard him land, her indignation giving way to a bemused frown as she saw... that.

"..."

Gingerly setting up Magenta's body so he was resting comfortably against the wall, Paradise's ears drooped as he started to rise to his feet.

'Before I met Magenta, I wasn't going to be anyone special. Just another face in the Atlesian army. If it wasn't for my ears you'd never be able to pick me out of the crowd. It made sense it's the only reason why my family had me. To join the military just like my siblings and predecessors before me had. 'Thirteen' was what my family called me as a way to dehumanize me. I wasn't their son, just another figurative lamb to fight for human causes, human goals. Magenta changed all of that. He took interest in me, me! Just a lowly Atlas soldier. He made me his assistant and bodyguard and he's the reason I go by Paradise these days..'

Wiping away some of the blood off the doctor's bill, Paradise sniffled.

'Everything was going good too. But I failed you, Magenta. I wasn't able to keep you safe from harm. I wasn't able to be there for you like you'd been there for me." Rolling up his sleeves and tossing off the plating off his arms, his pale skin was as exposed as his arms.
​

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?"

"My name is Paradise Lavender, a solider in the Atlesian army. A faunus...Just like you."

Paradise wasn't going to act as if there hadn't been humans who bullied him, made him ashamed at times to be a faunus, to want to hide his ears.

But going out and killing innocents? Causing nothing but strife and panic where you go? Maybe he was just being 'naive' as Magenta often scolded him about but he didn't care.

There always had to be a better way.

"Judging by the fact that you're here and my frien-partner is down on the ground, I'm gonna have to ask you to surrender yourself."

The back of Paradise's armor began to crack and shift as a blade attached to what appeared to be some kind of thick tethering(filled with cables/wiresetc)emerged from his back, attached to a metal base infused to his spine. The end result of Magenta's modification tests on Paradise: the weapon system known as 'Twisted Love'. "..If you'd rather fight though..." The blade curled up behind Paradise not unlike a grotesque science-born tail. Tapping one foot on the ground, he lunged and extended his arm, and Feri got an immediate dose of blood splatter as jet black metal rods erupted from the palm and seemingly the entire length of his forearm in an attempt to try and impale her to the wall and straight through it.

"I'm game."
​

 

[MidwayLives]

Then grey literally ran right past him. Just right on by. The sheer audacity was enough for the reporter to slip by, Hound taken wholly offguard by some dude who's best move was 'spook gas while I hide and throw stuff' even daring to get into stabbing range of The Crim Culann. He sighed.

He was really gonna need to start killing more people if his rep was that low.

"leavin the midget with you arena meat! I think even you can handle her!" He snarked as he turned on his heel and brought his spear back for a throw. It was at an entirely wrong angle for throwing a spear, and he heaved it with all his might in a way that sent it spinning down the hall like a frisbee that suddenly turned into a propeller as the mini jets on it ignited to send its rotation even faster. A few seconds later, just at the same moment Grey entered the break room that had just been devastated, with Feri and Paradise' sudden standoff, Hound's weapon crashed into the back of his knees with enough force to send him flipping backwards twice in the air.

'Wonder if he lost interest??? That fast??? Even after I threw knives at him-'

Grey's budding inner monologue was cut off as he burst into the break room and saw three distressing things:

1: a duck faunus who looked like he'd been through the wringer, 2: Another faunus dressed in typical Atlas soldier garb with rods coming out of his arm, ugh, and 3: Well given that she was being attacked logic would denote that she was in fact another enemy. Before he could confirm anything though, Grey's knees buckled and he was flipped through the air. Crashing down with his hood falling back, he groaned even as his aura shimmered around him.

'Well, if there's a silver lining, at least I'm not dead.'
​

Not a moment later Hound leaped over his prone form, Grey getting the brief image of a dog faunus flipping him off overhead before the blur vanished towards the hangar.

'Not one to editorialize, even the slightest bit. But what an utter dick.'

Picking himself up and brushing himself off from the dust and debris that'd been kicked up as a result of the explosion, he looked over to Paradise and Feri.

Well, the fight with Hound hadn't gone so great. But with an Atlas solider on his side perhaps he'd fare better here!
​

"...and who the fuck are you supposed to be??? Is Atlas full of literal clowns instead of just metaphorical ones??? Do you celebrate halloween months early???" Feri felt obliged to complain

His pitch black hair was a mess. It hadn't looked like it'd been combed or thoroughly groomed in days. Something of a five'o clock shadow also brandished itself on the reporter's face leaving him looking less like the erstwhile fighter standing against the terrorists that made up the Shadow Fang and more like a college student who'd stayed up doing an all-nighter.

"You're mistaken. The only thing that's going to be celebrated is your defeat."

'Better. Not perfect though.'

Paradise was less than amused.

'WHY ARE YOU HERE???" He screamed in exasperation. He didn't need anybody to be made a hostage or worse while he was trying to fight!​

 

[MidwayLives]

Then grey literally ran right past him. Just right on by. The sheer audacity was enough for the reporter to slip by, Hound taken wholly offguard by some dude who's best move was 'spook gas while I hide and throw stuff' even daring to get into stabbing range of The Crim Culann. He sighed.

Tiger laughed.
​

He whipped it behind his back without looking, sending it straight into the back of Nora's skull while she was occupied with Tiger.

As helpful as it'd been, things like that never meshed well with someone like Tiger.

Even when they fought together, Tiger and Hound had their own ways of doing things.

If one got in the other's way they'd say something(usually Hound) and that was just the way things were.
​

"leavin the midget with you arena meat! I think even you can handle her!"

"Don't call me that. Not now."

But it was too late, he was off to pursue the fight that many a faunus had been longing for.

She was jealous to put it lightly.
​

The punch stopped inches from Nora's face and Tiger let out an audible 'urk!' as the hammer impacted with her gut.

She was thrown back but unlike the example with Hazel, Tiger touched back down on the ground before she could be properly flung through the wall. The screeching of her shoes against the floor until she finally came to a dead stop likely helped further cement just the type of fighter Nora was taking on here. Clutching at her stomach as the aura around it shimmered like reflective glass, Tiger's smile never left. "I'm sure he's a friend of yours but I met a young boy in Mistral, larger one, his first blow knocked me through a wall. So far you've landed two hits just as hard." She complimented before slamming her knuckles together.

"Which means I don't have to hold back against you!"

Raising her arms above her head, Tiger swung them downwards, the force rippling through the floor in the form of a shockwave headed for the diminutive huntress.

'We're facing enemies coming at us with the frequency of rats surging from a sewer. The odds are undoubtedly in their favor. Be that it as it may."

Tiger's smile seemed to grow bigger.

'I think for the first time in my life...I'm having fun.'
​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Hey, hey heeey! Careful with those, someone could get-"

He whipped it behind his back without looking, sending it straight into the back of Nora's skull while she was occupied with Tiger.

"-hurt-"

Her head got knocked forward a bit, aura flickering briefly thanks to the small weapon bouncing against it. Aqua eyes slid over to deliver a peripheral and annoyed side-eye over in Hound's direction. "...Really?" She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised but that was still pretty lame as far as she was concerned. But whatever. There were bigger things to focus on. Literally.​

The punch stopped inches from Nora's face and Tiger let out an audible 'urk!' as the hammer impacted with her gut.

She was thrown back but unlike the example with Hazel, Tiger touched back down on the ground before she could be properly flung through the wall. The screeching of her shoes against the floor until she finally came to a dead stop likely helped further cement just the type of fighter Nora was taking on here. Clutching at her stomach as the aura around it shimmered like reflective glass, Tiger's smile never left. "I'm sure he's a friend of yours but I met a young boy in Mistral, larger one, his first blow knocked me through a wall. So far you've landed two hits just as hard." She complimented before slamming her knuckles together.

"Which means I don't have to hold back against you!"

Raising her arms above her head, Tiger swung them downwards, the force rippling through the floor in the form of a shockwave headed for the diminutive huntress.

Her gaze moved back towards said big thing, or rather, the big person. "Yeah. I work out!" She smiled, thinking back to her four for one knockout swing back at the tournament.

That moment had been a blast. So many doubted her or underestimated her simply because she was...well, she was straight up tiny. Puny. Small. Short. Diminutive. She'd heard it all so much that she had long since stopped being bothered by it. So what if she was small, enough so that even the younger Ruby stood equal with her. She was just the right size, in her exuberant opinion, and besides that? Sometimes big things come in small packages. Though her swing here was not as effective at banishing Tiger from the room, her mood was not in the least bit dampened. If anything her grin grew even wider as the faunus had dug in her heels and withstood it. A good fight was one of the most thrilling things in her life.

Plus, well, she'd tried. It seemed her words about surrendering and making this easy had gone into one of the faunus's ears and right out the other one. A fight it had to be. She'd just have to do her best to make it as quick as humanly possible. Fine by her. Nora flashed a more intimidating smile this time, residual lightning sparking around her as her semblance, High Voltage, produced some electrical energy and channeled it right into her muscles...just as the shockwave shot through the floor like an off-the-scale earthquake. So much power behind that blow from the Tiger...

She bypassed it all entirely. This time she did throw her hammer, Magnhild wildly spinning as it closed the distance between them, the glow it emanated bathing the room in purple light. Nora herself followed in its path, her gauntlet likewise glowing as the gravity dust sought to reunite her with her weapon. The thundermidget shot through the air like a bullet, letting the blow of earthquake proportions just crawl along the floor under her. Just before Magnhild would have made contact with Tiger on its own, Nora's fingers gripped the handle and immediately shifted the blow. Instead of the wild, unguided strike into Tiger's side that would have occurred if the thrown weapon connected, instead, Magnhild swung up in a fierce uppercut style blow meant to slam into the big faunus lady's chin and send her up into the ceiling this time.​