Fandom Distorted Mirror [IC]

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Truly, Weiss was a remarkably difficult person to battle against. Gifted with a semblance that was nearly unmatched in versatility, backed up by the power of the maidens she had taken herself and never lacking for dust, the list of people who could even possibly match her was not a large one. And, as befit somebody as capable as she, the list of people who had gone against her and fell short only continued to increase, even day by day it seemed, sometimes. Robyn Hill, May Marigold, Fiona Thyme, Nora Valkyrie, Raven Branwen, Blake Belladonna, Liadan Jade, the list went on and on. Victories that were well earned. The only problem with that, was with victory after victory piling up, with the number of people personally defeated rising...it went right to her head. It made the possibility of somebody managing to hold their own seem more and more like an impossibility. It fed the ego, and the belief in one's inherent superiority. And that belief in and of itself, became a weakness.

For in that moment that Weiss relaxed, her guard let down with closed eyes, through the rubble came one more explosion. That of Cinder, body covered with burns, cuts and bruises(more than several of them severely painful looking), nevertheless bursting right out of the rubble. Between that explosive re-entry with the scorching flames following behind her, the wounds dotting her body, and the intense predatorial look of hunger on her face, so inhumanly determined to get the power she so desperately craved...suffice it to say Cinder looked like someone who had catapulted straight out of somebody's nightmare. That dark, ghastly, long appendage wrapped tightly around Weiss's neck in that moment of vulnerability, ending with a clawed hand firmly pressed against and covering most of the councilwoman's face, already glowing equal parts light blue and dark red as it did it's work.

Cinder's legs were wrapped around the woman's midsection as well, pressing so tightly that were it with a lesser person, it may very well have squeezed the life out of them. Her perverse lust for power drove her to such extremes that even the immense pain inflicted by that absolute barrage did not deter her. She would have that power, it was all destined to be hers. Nobody else's. Not Raven, not Vernal, not Weiss, none of them were worthy of even an ounce of it in her eyes.

She would be top of the food chain, or she would die trying.
​

There was an inherent amount of ego that came with being a maiden. Even its most heroic bearers felt it; that their power was theirs alone, and that the stage they fought upon was one that was for them alone, that what they fought no one else could stand against. With that sort of mindset, with an enemy who wielded the same power before you, it was easy to forget about the littler problems;

But even a mouse still had teeth, and the resistance was far from a mouse.

Lost in the smoke, ash and snow Cinder had been so keen on kicking up to shield her own attacks, the sword came from almost literally nowhere; instead of cutting straight through the grimm arm, it lodged itself inside it, before another came down from a different angle, then another, and a third; and somehow the debris and mist was getting thicker rather than dispersing;

from outside the fog; Penny's eyes were slightly aglow as her sensors picked out where Weiss and Cinder were as she and Grey flew round and around the pair, the robot turning his aura eating fog into a crop dusting as she sent sword after sword through the mist in rapid succession.

 

[Indolent]

"Ector!!"

Before, Ruby hadn't much of a chance to speak to the colonel.

Matter of fact she just assumed he hated her. Or at the very least disliked her.

But at this moment in time? She couldn't have been more happy to see him if she'd tried.

For a moment there, she had genuinely believed she had managed to get through to him. That her words had disarmed him of his belief in this being the only way. But that was nothing more than overly optimistic sentiment. Desperation to pull back a childhood hero, stop him from making a mistake before it was too late. Cynics would have said she should have known better, and right then, right as she felt the bullet hit her between the eyes...she would have found it difficult to argue that point. The high caliber nature of the bullet and close proximity between them flung her back, navy blue aura shimmering, breaking entirely before she had even hit the ground. Gwen grunted as she landed back first, adding to the ache from her much rougher landing shortly beforehand. She laid there still, seemingly obliging those two words he said. Ones that she heard as both sincere advice and a warning of what would happen if she didn't.

But then her eyes flickered to the corner of her holographic visor, focusing on what she saw there. With the tap of a button on her wristpad, it enlarged to take up the majority of space along that visor.

The professional license she had gotten the day she graduated, one of the most proud days in her life. And she was keenly reminded of what it meant. What that simple license stood for. Then she knew, in her heart, that she couldn't stay down. A huntress was meant to do what was right, all the way to the end. Whenever it came. Before he had gotten too far, she was back on her feet with a shaky arm reaching down and snatching up Malware. Then she fired, emptying the whole clip of her own high caliber rounds aimed at his departing back.

"I...can't do that, sir." She said with profound sadness, feeling herself growing significantly more teary-eyed as she stood there. The only way this ended, from her perspective, is if she took him down, brought him into custody...or he finished the job by knocking her out. Or...worse.​

Contrary to common opinion pertaining to someone with Colonel Ector's semblance, it wasn't that he entered a scene with explosions marking his arrival in a bid to completely arrest the situation and bring it to heel. It almost, invariably always was an exercise in control, and focus, that saw the ranking member of the military evaluate the circumstances before taking the according steps. This was reflected in his storied operational records, pertinently where casualties taken abroad sorties were concerned.

It's an all too easy presumption to make that it was his attempt to distance himself from the legacy of the deceased Burning. It was an infinitesimal component to the truth, if it even was a part of it; it was core to Llewellyn's character, an ever present desire to delimit the harm he would bring to others. It was an inexorable facet to a person of his caliber in the role he occupied, collateral damage. Whether it was intended or otherwise was something that left a bad taste in his mouth and it was this that corporealized a sense of responsibility to ensure that any scenario he was a part of would see such happenstances mitigated or nullified.

As idealistic as it is, the Colonel wasn't so far gone in his wishful thinking that it exempted him from exercising realism side by side it. Such things were inevitable but that hardly meant that one oughtn't try.

That was one reason why he hadn't gone in with finger-guns blazing. The other, to keep it succinct, was to ascertain Weiss's status in person.

Which was why when he entered her proximity, Ruby's outcry went ignored. His feelings regarding her aside, the wayward bandit ranked less in terms of urgency. Ector was aware she was there, struggling in the defense of their side despite the haphazard circumstances that played out, but she wasn't outwardly acknowledged. It wasn't a gesture done out of malice, however cold it seemed to her if she even took notice at all.

Gwen, however, did elicit a cursory remark from Ector. A mere mention of her name with a certain inflection was all he could proffer as someone of import deigned to address him, a veritable threat that couldn't be ignored. Silly as it were to have made the statement, considering the presence of the Hand and her allies, the Dragon, and Pyrrha Nikos. The last one he supposed even though she had been summarily removed from the battlefield as per a sit rep he received whilst in the elevator from Liza.

It was just that he considered Borous Carnelian to be more dangerous than most.

He kept his eyes on the tip of the staff as he addressed his junior officer, voice a cocky, commanding drawl that carried none of the pretense of formality he attempted with Gwen. Honestly, he always hated this upstart little asshole, anyway.

And, well, he was always a little curious.

"Colonel." He began, courteously enough. What followed was less so.

"Stand by Weiss Schnee and I'll have you stripped of your rank, discharged with immediate effect and hung for treason slow enough that you can watch while I show your little sniper piece all her most vital organs. Your choice?"

The colonel didn't return the courtesy whatsoever, his words flush with scorn for the man.

"General, spare the pretenses. You know already. Were you not a bloodthirsty hound, I'd have appealed to your humanity. Not that I would bother with Ironwood either..."

It was an uncharacteristically rigid shift in his posture, the ever slightest tilt of the head as Ector concluded with words that were resoundingly pithy.

"Look in my mind's eye and see my qualms where the world's future is concerned. You aren't in it."

If he did peer inside, the general would witness the visage of Ector illuminated in the flickering glow of a candle, his shadow cast far and long. The weak flame belied the power, focus, and determination he carried in equal parts, the intensity reflecting in his eyes.

Despite the bold pronouncement made, it wasn't punctuated with a flurry of explosions. If anything, it was plain as day his stance and intentions against Carnelian were entirely defensive, his goal to affix a bead on the general's position and respond accordingly, though not to the extent it was detrimental to his battlefield awareness.

 

[Gus Gungus]

Truly, Weiss was a remarkably difficult person to battle against. Gifted with a semblance that was nearly unmatched in versatility, backed up by the power of the maidens she had taken herself and never lacking for dust, the list of people who could even possibly match her was not a large one. And, as befit somebody as capable as she, the list of people who had gone against her and fell short only continued to increase, even day by day it seemed, sometimes. Robyn Hill, May Marigold, Fiona Thyme, Nora Valkyrie, Raven Branwen, Blake Belladonna, Liadan Jade, the list went on and on. Victories that were well earned. The only problem with that, was with victory after victory piling up, with the number of people personally defeated rising...it went right to her head. It made the possibility of somebody managing to hold their own seem more and more like an impossibility. It fed the ego, and the belief in one's inherent superiority. And that belief in and of itself, became a weakness.

For in that moment that Weiss relaxed, her guard let down with closed eyes, through the rubble came one more explosion. That of Cinder, body covered with burns, cuts and bruises(more than several of them severely painful looking), nevertheless bursting right out of the rubble. Between that explosive re-entry with the scorching flames following behind her, the wounds dotting her body, and the intense predatorial look of hunger on her face, so inhumanly determined to get the power she so desperately craved...suffice it to say Cinder looked like someone who had catapulted straight out of somebody's nightmare. That dark, ghastly, long appendage wrapped tightly around Weiss's neck in that moment of vulnerability, ending with a clawed hand firmly pressed against and covering most of the councilwoman's face, already glowing equal parts light blue and dark red as it did it's work.

Cinder's legs were wrapped around the woman's midsection as well, pressing so tightly that were it with a lesser person, it may very well have squeezed the life out of them. Her perverse lust for power drove her to such extremes that even the immense pain inflicted by that absolute barrage did not deter her. She would have that power, it was all destined to be hers. Nobody else's. Not Raven, not Vernal, not Weiss, none of them were worthy of even an ounce of it in her eyes.

She would be top of the food chain, or she would die trying.

Muted though it may have been, it served to reify her low opinion of the power-hungry Fall Maiden that the shrill gasp from beneath the Grimm hand was one of affronted disgust rather than fear or panic, like an especially large bug she'd been staring at had just flown in her mouth. It gave way to a torrent of muffled, vociferous protests, the contents of which doubtless would've set off Penny's parental control filter had they been intelligible, as Weiss's pride and lack of bonafide huntress experience proved inauspicious. She reacted not as a warrior but as a rich girl—one entirely unused to being touched, let alone smothered and drained of energy by a biological nightmare. Her immediate reaction was to buck, scratch, and try to pull the claw off her face rather than the multitude of other things she could've done, none of which proved particularly effective against Cinder's grip strength.

It was just... a lot. Being choked always made her uneasy to begin with, and she had dropped Myrtenaster in surprise; The lack of air, coupled with Cinder's larger frame wrapping around her like a human-sized facehugger, already had her stumbling backward, off balance.

Then there was the drain. It really was quite a ghastly feeling, like a vacuum being taken straight to the soul. The glyphs that were forming around them manifested weakly, faint and flickering before they vanished entirely; it wasn't that the wretch had managed to sap so much of her power already, the process just... made her a bit too tired... to concentrate...*

She caught herself starting to buckle at the knees, only realizing how much the impulse to lie down had overtaken her moments before she succumbed to it. With how much of the world's weight she'd taken on her shoulders these past few months, it was almost tempting. But she could feel it. Everything she'd worked for, the power she'd amassed. The power she needed to win. Being sucked away.

No.

She stood up straight, and the suffocated groans her protests had faded to suddenly gave way to a more frustrated sound as she battered her fists against Cinder more vigorously. Weiss wasn't the first, second, or even third maiden Cinder had tried to drain with her arm, but she was the most powerful; Cinder had never attacked one so close to grasping the full spectrum of their abilities before, to say nothing of the fact that she wielded the power of not one but two. She had managed to chip away at some of Weiss's reserves a bit when the flow of energy suddenly slowed, then stopped, as though a dam had been put up. The clashing lights coming from Weiss's face shone more brightly, now, erupting from under Cinder's palm like twin volcanoes of fire and ice, and as the blizzard started to howl around them her arm started to feel something she couldn't recall it ever feeling before.

Cold.

There was an inherent amount of ego that came with being a maiden. Even its most heroic bearers felt it; that their power was theirs alone, and that the stage they fought upon was one that was for them alone, that what they fought no one else could stand against. With that sort of mindset, with an enemy who wielded the same power before you, it was easy to forget about the littler problems;

But even a mouse still had teeth, and the resistance was far from a mouse.

Lost in the smoke, ash and snow Cinder had been so keen on kicking up to shield her own attacks, the sword came from almost literally nowhere; instead of cutting straight through the grimm arm, it lodged itself inside it, before another came down from a different angle, then another, and a third; and somehow the debris and mist was getting thicker rather than dispersing;

from outside the fog; Penny's eyes were slightly aglow as her sensors picked out where Weiss and Cinder were as she and Grey flew round and around the pair, the robot turning his aura eating fog into a crop dusting as she sent sword after sword through the mist in rapid succession.

It may have registered as curious when Penny's first sword skewered the arm not with the soft, squishy noise of metal cleaving through Grimm flesh, but with the dense chink of a blade embedding itself in something solid. Like a pick being wedged in ice.

The next was the same, and the one after, and three blades later a sudden flare of Weiss's eyes shattered the hand covering her face into solid, fractal pieces, leaving the rest of Cinder's arm intact as a frozen pincushion sculpture. There was a moment where Weiss's eyes bored into Cinder's like a pair of icy drills, then everything went dark. The latter didn't see why.

Penny did, and it was as simple as the giant suit of armor that appeared behind her closing its titanic gauntlet over her entire head as it ripped her off its mistress like a bandaid and promptly slammed a fist into her gut.

BOOM

"That's for touching me."

It reeled back and spiked her headfirst into the ice, leaving a crater that sent a spiderweb of cracks out in all directions.

BOOOM

"That's for having the mere conceit to think you can touch me."

The veil of darkness lifted as the gigas's gauntlet left her face, just in time for Cinder to see its enormous sword swing down for her like a headman's axe.

"AND THIS IS SO YOU REMEMBER YOUR PLACE!"

BOOOOM

If it hit, it struck with a strength that bore as much savage ferocity as her arm and drove the maiden deep, deep into the earth, the ice surrounding her crumbling and giving way as Weiss's light-bearing summon sent her into the dark where she belonged.

With the other monsters.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

She did the mental math on the way, before her final step put her on a rocket course for her target; She knew Yang and Ruby had traded some punches, she knew that telltale glow of silver eyes had beamed briefly through the office, but despite that, she was pretty sure she'd taken the harder hits; courtesy of Tiger and herself. Lower aura, higher strength, right up until the first punch switched it all up. Barring some fancy tricks or just being a complete magnitude more skilled than her uglier self, a fight between them was going to be a game of Russian Roullete with fists, a guessing game as to which punch was going to give too much more than you could take back. A gamble with her life, with both Ruby's, Weiss, the relics, everything

So no matter how much she wanted to, she knew that wasn't the best way to help her sister. That was what really mattered. If she'd been any less angry, any less laser focused, a fist fight would've been what she chose, but not this time.

Instead, her monstrous rush of speed from strength blasted her right by Yang to instead snatch the Staff of creation as it spun through the air, land with a pivot, and absolutely demolish Bear's knees using one of the oldest things on Remnant as a baseball bat with all her borrowed strength to send up him spinning across the floor with a grunt of shock as his aura flared dangerously close to breaking in one blow just before he could followup with Carnelian's assist. Yang shoved the staff into Raven's hands and yelled "Quit goofing around with these idiots and GO!"

"...I..." There was plenty she wanted to say, but recognized that right then in the thick of battle was not for the time for it. So she just got to the heart of it, the most important of it all as the staff got shoved into her free hand. "I can't! Not until I'm sure you're going before me!" She knew the relic's key level of importance, that she was their chief exit plan for this mess but...she had left a Yang behind before. The other Raven had too. It seemed to be an inescapable part of being Raven Branwen...or at least it had. But not this time. Yang wouldn't be stuck behind again. Not if she could help it. The relic just got thrust right back into Yang's hands with stubborn determination. That was her guarantee that Yang would go. If Yang had the relic, she couldn't afford not to. Even if that meant she had to linger and stay behind to make sure nobody going against them followed them through.

With both hands she gripped her blade and sliced away at the open air, another portal manifesting then. "You're going!" She yelled in a voice that said there would be no arguing that point, pushing her towards it, head on a swivel to keep track of any approaching threats and ready to fend them off.​

“I’m fine” He croaked in a voice that very clearly showed he wasn’t; He was wearing his hunter’s uniform sans the outer jacket, and large swaths of it was covered in scorch marks where it had been touching the armor before he rolled out. He was actually ever so slightly sunk into the ice, hot enough that his body had melted it a bit when he’d rolled out of the armor, that itself was a good six inches into the ice sheet.

More than that though; he looked haggard, drained, utterly exhausted in a way that a lack of sleep or over exertion couldn’t begin to be the cause of. Yet in spite of that, he gave Cinder a wry smirk and slowly pushed himself back up, his aura still intact enough that the ice melting hadn’t gotten him stuck against it.

"For a smart guy, Arthur, you're a pretty bad liar." Cinder couldn't help but comment, grabbing hold of his hand to help pull him up even though the exertion sent spikes of pain shooting through her shoulder, prompting a wince. One that she immediately brushed off as best she could manage. Despite the sarcasm, she looked nothing but concerned for her former team leader. One hand reached out, projecting a bit of ice cold to help balance out some of that scorching heat.​

“You know me; do my best not to pick fights I can’t win and all that. Unlike you, You should be more careful, what were you thinking fighting a maiden by yourself, blah blah blah etcetera etcetera. Despite that though its… its good to see you too Cinder.”

"We don't always get to pick the fights, Arthur. Sometimes they come to us and leave us no choice in the matter." That was the only thing she said on his brief lecture, which she had 100% expected. It just wouldn't be a Watts reunion without that being directed at somebody, and that familiarity got a small smirk out of her.​

His gaze grew more serious by the end, and it had drifted down to a glare by the time he’d swung his eyes to the light show that was happening between the two maidens.

“That is an example of a fight we can’t win. I don’t know what prompted her to make her move, or why she’s working against another Ozpin lackey, but whoever wins, we lose. We need a plan of action.”

"Wait, hold on I forgot to..." Her words drifted away unfinished, her attention briefly stolen away by the battle as well...​

“-did you get stabbed?!” he suddenly yelled, gazing in slight horror at the knife still in Cinder’s shoulder.

...and by the time it returned to Watts, the topic had changed. "...Yeah." She answered sheepishly, a bit more casual about it than might have been expected. It hurt, a lot, to be sure. But pain was an old friend, and she had suffered way worse as a child thanks to her own family. "I was going to ask if I should rip it out or not, whether that was a good idea before we go to a hospital or something for some help..."
​

No.

She stood up straight, and the suffocated groans her protests had faded to suddenly gave way to a more frustrated sound as she battered her fists against Cinder more vigorously. Weiss wasn't the first, second, or even third maiden Cinder had tried to drain with her arm, but she was the most powerful; Cinder had never attacked one so close to grasping the full spectrum of their abilities before, to say nothing of the fact that she wielded the power of not one but two. She had managed to chip away at some of Weiss's reserves a bit when the flow of energy suddenly slowed, then stopped, as though a dam had been put up. The clashing lights coming from Weiss's face shone more brightly, now, erupting from under Cinder's palm like twin volcanoes of fire and ice, and as the blizzard started to howl around them her arm started to feel something she couldn't recall it ever feeling before.

Cold.

Nothing was said on Cinder's part as she suddenly recoiled from the biting pain of the extreme cold, especially as nearly auraless as she now was. No! NO, this isn't how it is meant to go! The power, it was promised to her, destined for her! All of it!​

It may have registered as curious when Penny's first sword skewered the arm not with the soft, squishy noise of metal cleaving through Grimm flesh, but with the dense chink of a blade embedding itself in something solid. Like a pick being wedged in ice.

The next was the same, and the one after, and three blades later a sudden flare of Weiss's eyes shattered the hand covering her face into solid, fractal pieces, leaving the rest of Cinder's arm intact as a frozen pincushion sculpture. There was a moment where Weiss's eyes bored into Cinder's like a pair of icy drills, then everything went dark. The latter didn't see why.

But that was quickly the least of her concerns, her thought process interrupted as she howled in extreme pain from the blades sinking their way into that monstrous limb, and she roared even more so loudly as her whole hand shattered into pieces that scattered across the ground. Her fiery counterattack with her other arm only got as far as the planning stages, thanks to...​

Penny did, and it was as simple as the giant suit of armor that appeared behind her closing its titanic gauntlet over her entire head as it ripped her off its mistress like a bandaid and promptly slammed a fist into her gut.

BOOM

"That's for touching me."

...that.
​

It reeled back and spiked her headfirst into the ice, leaving a crater that sent a spiderweb of cracks out in all directions.

BOOOM

"That's for having the mere conceit to think you can touch me."

The veil of darkness lifted as the gigas's gauntlet left her face, just in time for Cinder to see its enormous sword swing down for her like a headman's axe.

"AND THIS IS SO YOU REMEMBER YOUR PLACE!"

BOOOOM

If it hit, it struck with a strength that bore as much savage ferocity as her arm and drove the maiden, deep, deep into the earth, the ice surrounding her crumbling and giving way as Weiss's light-bearing summon sent her into the dark where she belonged.

With the other monsters.

With the following blows, she didn't even have it in her to scream in pain. Her breath got expelled so violently, her head swimming with so much pain and dizziness that even if her whole head wasn't enveloped by the gigas' massive gauntlet and her vision wasn't cut off, she likely wouldn't have even known where exactly she was at that moment. Then the last blow hit so hard that Cinder choked up blood with the last remnants of her breath, bits of red launching out at great velocity and staining the white snow of Atlas, some even splattering across Weiss's cheek just as that Cinder disappeared from sight. The grimm maiden dropped into the abyss below, even the raging fire in her eye eclipsed by the dark that swallowed her whole.

And this time she didn't come back up.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Despite that, despite the torrent of feelings inside her, and the determination rolling off her steps in waves as she swung her fists to either side to reload Ember Celica, she answered Yang's smirk with one of her own.

"Sorry hun, you just weren't second date material! Clingy is so not cute on us."

"..."

Ruby felt her head thump against the hard office floor as it was unceremoniously dumped from Yang's lap, though somehow she just couldn't bring herself to care all that much. The numbness in her chest wasn't cold anymore; kind of warm, actually. All the pain, heartbreak and fear she'd been feeling had drained away—all that was left was the warm, heady feeling of the first kind words the Dragon had spoken to her in years.

It was nice.

Deep in her arm, something growled.

Instead, her monstrous rush of speed from strength blasted her right by Yang to instead snatch the Staff of creation as it spun through the air, land with a pivot, and absolutely demolish Bear's knees using one of the oldest things on Remnant as a baseball bat with all her borrowed strength to send up him spinning across the floor with a grunt of shock as his aura flared dangerously close to breaking in one blow just before he could followup with Carnelian's assist. Yang shoved the staff into Raven's hands and yelled "Quit goofing around with these idiots and GO!"

"...I..." There was plenty she wanted to say, but recognized that right then in the thick of battle was not for the time for it. So she just got to the heart of it, the most important of it all as the staff got shoved into her free hand. "I can't! Not until I'm sure you're going before me!" She knew the relic's key level of importance, that she was their chief exit plan for this mess but...she had left a Yang behind before. The other Raven had too. It seemed to be an inescapable part of being Raven Branwen...or at least it had. But not this time. Yang wouldn't be stuck behind again. Not if she could help it. The relic just got thrust right back into Yang's hands with stubborn determination. That was her guarantee that Yang would go. If Yang had the relic, she couldn't afford not to. Even if that meant she had to linger and stay behind to make sure nobody going against them followed them through.

With both hands she gripped her blade and sliced away at the open air, another portal manifesting then. "You're going!"

Raven's rebuttal had barely registered with Yang when the latter felt a fistful of hair get yanked as roughly as it had ever been touched in her life, so close to the scalp and with such strength even she was wrenched clean off her feet. Raven's attempt to return the relic met nothing but air as the blonde was ripped almost the full length across the room, reeled in by a Grimm arm that meant to slither around her throat like a boa and slam her into the metal wall on the other side of the office hard enough that it dented.

"YOU DON'T GET TO JUST TURN YOUR BACK ON ME!"

The fist that followed left a much larger one, whether it made contact with Yang's face or the metal itself in time with the feral scream accompanying it. Her own eyes, cast in that same stark shade of crimson that had defined Yang's own fits of temper when she was younger, were the ones she was looking into, only flared wider and more unhinged than she had ever seen them in the mirror. Whether it was through recognition or the exact opposite, even for just that split-second she saw everything in them; the intricacies (or lack thereof) of the most truly lost of what passed for this world's team RWBY laid utterly bare. The desperation. The insecurity born of low self esteem born of abandonment. The allergy to being alone, the longing for connection; how all those things had beaten her down far, far worse than any pummeling, past the threshold even their semblance could take. How it had all come together and made her weak, not strong like Yang, no matter how much macho posturing she tried to make up for it with. It begged the question how different it all could've been with just one change, the one constant pillar of inspiration, strength and support Yang had that the Dragon didn't.

And how much whoever she was looking at despised Yang Xiao Long for that. Jury was out on which one.

Her double screamed again, a horrible, wordless howl of emotions so untamed and confused even the grimm infesting her couldn't quite wrangle them all as she sought to give Yang a good idea of just how much she fucking hated that face by slamming Ember Celica into it again. And again. And again.
​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Raven's rebuttal had barely registered with Yang when the latter felt a fistful of hair get yanked as roughly as it had ever been touched in her life, so close to the scalp and with such strength even she was wrenched clean off her feet. Raven's attempt to return the relic met nothing but air as the blonde was ripped almost the full length across the room, reeled in by a Grimm arm that meant to coil around her throat and slam her into the metal wall on the other side of the office hard enough that it dented.

"YOU DON'T GET TO JUST TURN YOUR BACK ON ME!"

The fist that followed left a much larger one, whether it made contact with Yang's face or the metal itself in time with the Dragon's feral scream. Her own eyes, cast in that same stark shade of crimson that had defined Yang's own fits of temper when she was younger, were the ones she was looking into, only wider and more unhinged than she had ever seen them in the mirror. Whether it was through recognition or the exact opposite, even for just that split-second she saw everything in them; the intricacies (or lack thereof) of the most truly lost of what passed for this world's team RWBY laid utterly bare. The desperation. The insecurity born of low self esteem born of abandonment. The allergy to being alone, the longing for connection; how all those things had beaten her down far past the threshold even their semblance could take, had come together and made her weak, not strong, no matter how much macho posturing she tried to make up for it with. It begged the question how different it all could've been with just one change, the one constant pillar of inspiration, strength and support Yang had that the Dragon didn't.

And how much she despised Yang for that. Precisely which one was unclear.

Her double screamed again, a horrible, wordless howl of emotions so untamed and confused even the grimm infesting her couldn't quite wrangle them all as she sought to give Yang a good idea of just how much she fucking hated that face by slamming Ember Celica into it again. And again. And again.

"No!" Raven cried out in alarm after witnessing that, one hand briefly outstretched. The shock gave way to grave concern and the once bandit rushed forward then, the relic of creation dropping from her hand and clattering to the ground as she went to deal with something far more personal. Something far more...painful. Not the same kind of pain her otherworldly daughter was suffering, but pain nevertheless. Every blow that landed, the hurt she heard in that wild declaration, it stung her down to the core. It made part of her want to run, to avoid confronting it, to escape and just...she didn't know what, but that small part of her got shut the hell down by the rest. This...she had tried to not deal with it, had stubbornly and perhaps foolishly tried to pretend she hadn't seen her actual daughter in the room. She didn't think she would have been strong enough to face it, not in person. But now necessity demanded it.

That she stare the consequences of her failures and her mistakes in the eyes.

The next intended slam from the Dragon got intercepted, a swing of a red blade coming down to force that punch to pull back. She pivoted and another slice followed, meant to slice that horrendous dark limb in half and give the other Yang room to breathe. Raven straightened up after that, a quick sidestep to slide in between the both of them and block off sight from one another. "Yang." She firmly directed at the Dragon, crimson eyes staring down crimson eyes in a harsh glare. "Leave her be." Her gaze softened greatly after that, and the guilt became even more apparent in how her shoulders fell. "We both know if there's anyone who deserves your hate, who you should be directing all that rage at..."

No names were given, but it was supremely obvious. "But leave her out of it." ​

 

[MidwayLives]

It seemed that Nora had intended that one hammer strike to be the definitive blow to finish this, given that despite having a bold and determined smile on her face and hands raised up eagerly to trade blows with the big faunus...​

Tiger couldn't have been happier if she tried.

She was literally tearing her body apart by forcing her semblance like this.

But this was her choice! Her decision to make! Nobody else's!

"FIGHT ME!!"

Tiger threw the first punch of what she hoped to be a series of great ones.

....Something didn't feel right though....
​

he ginger warrior didn't manage to take two steps forward before she dropped to the floor. This was, apparently, not the tale of two empowered bruisers going at it in a legendary fistfight, but rather the story of whose body gave out first from the strain put upon it.

Tiger's fist stopped inches from Nora's face and the faunus watched in disbelief as Nora toppled over.

It hadn't been anything Tiger had done.

The girl simply was too exhausted/drained to go on.

Tiger....was genuinely upset.

"..That...It wasn't how it was..."

Reaching down with bits and pieces of muscle exposed in her forearms, Tiger gently moved Nora so she wasn't laying down facefirst.

"A warrior....*cough cough* deserves to...lay on their back..."

Tiger frowned but knew she had to accept this. She didn't have a choice. With every step she took, she could feel the smoke in her chest, waiting to burst out through her mouth. Cupping a hand over her mouth, Tiger's herculean frame shook and shuddered as though she were freezing. In reality her body was having a seriously hard time coping with the 'boost' that her semblance had granted her. "No...urk....not...yet.." She croaked as a trail of smoke ebbed through her fingers. The relic still had to be obtained.
​

. The faunus got a friendly pair of thumps on the back from Yang while Tiger was still distracted as she strode towards this world's Rose Xiao Long sisters.

"Don't feel bad; Nora absolutely woulda loved to be the one to rock your world, I'm sure."

"...Huh...?"

Tiger felt the taps and looked over her shoulder.

"You...-"

Tiger had come into this expecting a great fight.
​

Then she flicked her wrist without looking back, and a pair of explosions sent tiger flying into the wall with a metallic crash.

"You can try again whenever you two wake up, kay?"

What she got was more akin to this:

"BLEGH...."

The initial blow caused Tiger to let it all loose. A couple babysteps were taken and her face twisted and contorted, a desperate attempt to keep her smoke from escaping her body. The pain overwhelmed her and her mouth opened and it all came rushing out.

Purple smoke billowed out of her mouth, her arms, her legs, wherever there was any avenue for it to escape.

The explosions only made it worse.

Her frame left a 'Tiger-shaped' dent in the wall. As she started to slide down it, she tried in vain to cup her hands over her mouth.

"No...I...I can't..."

The remaining smoke flowed out and dissipated and Tiger's muscles quickly returned to normal. What had once been hulking biceps were blood covered twigs covered in gruesome tears and sores. Her legs were thin and shaky and she coughed up a few more tufts of smoke. The combination of pushing herself and Yang's strength were too much. As she began to wobble back and forth, she remembered what she'd done for Nora. Balling her left hand up into a fist, Tiger swung it inwards.

"URK!"

She punched herself dead on in the stomach. Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed onto the floor, back-first.

"Warrior...land on back..." ​

 

[MidwayLives]

She hadn't kept her eyes forward out of any disrespect for the massive faunus; her ears were tuned in for any sound of her still rumbling around behind her; she just knew better than to take her eyes off the other Yang in the room once she had her focus. It would've been no different than taking her eyes off a circling shark.

Despite that, despite the torrent of feelings inside her, and the determination rolling off her steps in waves as she swung her fists to either side to reload Ember Celica, she answered Yang's smirk with one of her own.

"Sorry hun, you just weren't second date material! Clingy is so not cute on us."

Ruby giggled.

Though it still felt as though the bandit's heart wasn't in it.

"She's got you there, Yang..." She hummed playfully or at least tried to.
​

So no matter how much she wanted to, she knew that wasn't the best way to help her sister. That was what really mattered. If she'd been any less angry, any less laser focused, a fist fight would've been what she chose, but not this time.

Instead, her monstrous rush of speed from strength blasted her right by Yang to instead snatch the Staff of creation as it spun through the air, land with a pivot, and absolutely demolish Bear's knees using one of the oldest things on Remnant as a baseball bat with all her borrowed strength to send up him spinning across the floor with a grunt of shock as his aura flared dangerously close to breaking in one blow just before he could followup with Carnelian's assist. Yang shoved the staff into Raven's hands and yelled "Quit goofing around with these idiots and GO!"

"Yang...you're not.."

Ruby blinked and rubbed at her eyes.

"...Gonna just leave are you....?"
​

"..."

Ruby felt her head thump against the hard office floor as it was unceremoniously dumped from Yang's lap, though somehow she just couldn't bring herself to care all that much. The numbness in her chest wasn't cold anymore; kind of warm, actually. All the pain, heartbreak and fear she'd been feeling had drained away—all that was left was the warm, heady feeling of the first kind words the Dragon had spoken to her in years.

It was nice.

"Ow."

Ruby didn't really make any move to get up.

She just kind of shifted herself so she was gazing up at the ceiling.

She inhaled....held it for a second or two....and exhaled....

"....I've been so stressed lately...."

She smiled.
​

Deep in her arm, something growled.

If Ruby wasn't so relaxed, the growling might have bothered her something fierce.

A snarling beowulf had been the one to initially take her arm.

To hear a growl so close to her...

....But as it stood, Ruby just closed her eyes.

Life wasn't so bad like this.....Yang was right....​

 

[MidwayLives]

With the following blows, she didn't even have it in her to scream in pain. Her breath got expelled so violently, her head swimming with so much pain and dizziness that even if her whole head wasn't enveloped by the gigas' massive gauntlet and her vision wasn't cut off, she likely wouldn't have even known where exactly she was at that moment. Then the last blow hit so hard that Cinder choked up blood with the last remnants of her breath, bits of red launching out at great velocity and staining the white snow of Atlas, some even splattering across Weiss's cheek just as that Cinder disappeared from sight. The grimm maiden dropped into the abyss below, even the raging fire in her eye eclipsed by the dark that swallowed her whole.

And this time she didn't come back up.

Once it became clear Cinder wasn't coming back up, Grey slipped his jacket back on.

It was pretty chilly out after all. Just more exposed skin meant quicker expulsion of his fog.

"....I'm glad we're not the ones fighting her anymore..." He muttered to Penny in reference to Weiss's ....thoroughness.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Ow."

Ruby didn't really make any move to get up.

She just kind of shifted herself so she was gazing up at the ceiling.

She inhaled....held it for a second or two....and exhaled....

"....I've been so stressed lately...."

She smiled.

If Ruby wasn't so relaxed, the growling might have bothered her something fierce.

A snarling beowulf had been the one to initially take her arm.

To hear a growl so close to her...

....But as it stood, Ruby just closed her eyes.

Life wasn't so bad like this.....Yang was right....

There was no disguising what had been so mind-breakingly terrible about what she had just seen, how horrifying it was to see Yang gleefully pull until that arm ripped right off so she could shove something else in, and just how inherently wrong it was that it was a Yang doing it to a Ruby. It felt like something had broken inside at that fact, enough so that she had collapsed to her knees from it. But even at this lowest point...Ruby never forgot what was right. As a huntress, as someone who always wanted to make the world better, she would never give up on that. That desire to help, to protect, to save. It was that which snapped Ruby back to her senses, and though she had initially started to move in her sister's direction after her evil double began to lose it and take out her inhuman anger upon her, Raven's intervention on that front gave her pause. The caped huntress skidded to a halt, briefly considered and then nodded, putting her trust in Raven managing to handle that. Please be alright after all this, Yang.

With that thought in mind, Ruby turned to another person who so desperately needed help. Herself. She dashed up to the girl, dropping to her knees in a different manner to before as she grabbed hold of her counterpart's remaining arm by the wrist. "No no no." She gasped, watching as those eyes slowly closed. That got her hands to move up, gently lifting her double's head...and then shaking it something fierce! "Did you hear me? No! Whatever's happening, whatever you're feeling with that...that horribleness inside, don't give in! You have to be stronger than it!" Ruby demanded. "Wake up, open your eyes! You have to, you hear me?!? Focus on your feelings and join me." If the Masque opened her eyes then, she was greeted with the sight of her other self's eyes shining bright.

"The two of us, together, I know that the thing in there won't have a chance. If we both use our special gift at once..."



"WE'LL BURN THAT THING RIGHT OUT OF YOU!" Ruby finished with a wholeheartedly confident declaration.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"Yang." She firmly directed at the Dragon, crimson eyes staring down crimson eyes in a harsh glare. "Leave her be." Her gaze softened greatly after that, and the guilt became even more apparent in how her shoulders fell. "We both know if there's anyone who deserves your hate, who you should be directing all that rage at..."

No names were given, but it was supremely obvious. "But leave her out of it."

Yang was mad.

On some level, everything Raven said may well have been true.

But from the look in her wayward daughter's eyes you just wouldn't know it, nor indeed that there was any connection between the malefic Yang and tragically flawed Raven Branwen of this Remnant at all beyond that of a frenzied lion watching a mouse stand up for its prey.



"FUCK THE FUCK OFF, LADY!"

It was too little too late for all that bullshit.

As the Dragon's knuckle made initial contact with the sword, a loud, echoing KABLAM partially deafened those in immediate proximity even with the benefit of aura, propelling her fist back in an arc so blindingly fast her backhand actually connected with Raven's jaw before the huntress's second stroke could sever her arm, which sought to coil and twist around her double even further until the air was being squeezed from her lungs. On the surface it was nothing more than a glancing swipe, but there was so much more to it than that.

26 years of nothing. Of pain, of neglect, of abandonment and suffering and rage all capped off with this self-righteous twat deciding it was time to take an interest now, for her. Yang screamed again. She wasn't just mad; she was feral, rabid, insane. Whatever you wanted to call it. The moment before connection, a wave of explosive flame warped the metal around them and washed across their auras like a gust in the desert. It was a wild, untamed strike, all instinct, ferocity and bestial power, and Raven could've sworn she blacked out for just a second or two as she sped across the office as hard and as fast as she ever had as a bird. The vague awareness she had of crashing through something hard shook her back to her senses, and when she opened her eyes she was no longer in Ironwood's office. She wasn't even in the academy.

By her approximation she was a good 2-300 meters away, watching the towering monolith of Atlesian architecture (and the tiny Raven-shaped pinprick of a hole in its ceiling) hurtle away from her fast.

The most unbelievable part was she had yet to slow.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

The colonel didn't return the courtesy whatsoever, his words flush with scorn for the man.

"General, spare the pretenses. You know already. Were you not a bloodthirsty hound, I'd have appealed to your humanity. Not that I would bother with Ironwood either..."

It was an uncharacteristically rigid shift in his posture, the ever slightest tilt of the head as Ector concluded with words that were resoundingly pithy.

"Look in my mind's eye and see my qualms where the world's future is concerned. You aren't in it."

If he did peer inside, the general would witness the visage of Ector illuminated in the flickering glow of a candle, his shadow cast far and long. The weak flame belied the power, focus, and determination he carried in equal parts, the intensity reflecting in his eyes.

Despite the bold pronouncement made, it wasn't punctuated with a flurry of explosions. If anything, it was plain as day his stance and intentions against Carnelian were entirely defensive, his goal to affix a bead on the general's position and respond accordingly, though not to the extent it was detrimental to his battlefield awareness.

The glance he indeed took into his subordinate's thoughts was met with little more than a derisive, contemptuous sneer, a bit more disgust slipping through the aged general's mask than was customary as he tore his eyes from the sniper's position on the horizon and spat in the direction of the colonel's boots.

"Your generation makes me fucking sick to my stomach, boy, you know that? There's no respect. No deference to the systems and traditions that made this kingdom great once upon a time, for the men and women who bled so you could have the freedom to grow up swaddled in your cuffed boots and fancy cologne and stand in front of me now yapping on about humanity and the future and all these prissy little fairy tales of peace and togetherness. That's not humanity, runt. Humanity is blood. Humanity is the war for dominance, it's our god-given right to sit at the head of the table because we carved that chair out of the bones of those too weak to take it for themselves."

His sneer had twisted into a dark, antagonistic grimace of amusement, that last sentence having pointedly seen him switch his eyeline from Ector to Navano wherever he was sprawled in the room without the slightest fear of reprisal from either. He was crossing the room, now, a leisurely canter to his step and his back to the younger officer as his pace took him all the way over to where the Relic of Knowledge hung, telepathic reach allowing his voice to continue reaching Ector's ears.

"Candles get snuffed, son, but you're not even that. I've seen men who burned, and that's not what you are; you're not any kind of fire. You're a speck, just another snowflake like the Schnee whelp, floating all the way down to live with the animals below same as all the rest. But the snow doesn't fall in Atlas."



It was clear in everything from his voice to his pace to his posture. He wasn't worried. He had no reason to be.

Men like Ector were a fad. Men like him were forever.

He had all the time in the world.

He ripped his sword free, a labor Ruby had struggled with carried out by his augmentations in a single clean yank, and caught the falling lamp's handle between his teeth in a grip so tight not even the highest caliber of bullet was going to dislodge it. He spun in the same motion, swords swept out to either side of him in a low, powerful crane stance, and let his eyes settle back on the colonel with a gleam of genuine excitement at the prospect of a duel with the man who wanted to replace him. Like the other soldier, he didn't move. Didn't launch into an offensive or try to close the distance, despite Ector's obvious advantage at a range. A contest like this wouldn't be decided like that.

As always when it came to clashes of ideology on ideology, it would be conviction. The lesser man who blinked first and showed their throat, that was who was wrong. Who had to die out to build a stronger future.

He looked forward to seeing if that was him this time.

"It never has."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

For a moment there, she had genuinely believed she had managed to get through to him. That her words had disarmed him of his belief in this being the only way. But that was nothing more than overly optimistic sentiment. Desperation to pull back a childhood hero, stop him from making a mistake before it was too late. Cynics would have said she should have known better, and right then, right as she felt the bullet hit her between the eyes...she would have found it difficult to argue that point. The high caliber nature of the bullet and close proximity between them flung her back, navy blue aura shimmering, breaking entirely before she had even hit the ground. Gwen grunted as she landed back first, adding to the ache from her much rougher landing shortly beforehand. She laid there still, seemingly obliging those two words he said. Ones that she heard as both sincere advice and a warning of what would happen if she didn't.

But then her eyes flickered to the corner of her holographic visor, focusing on what she saw there. With the tap of a button on her wristpad, it enlarged to take up the majority of space along that visor.

The professional license she had gotten the day she graduated, one of the most proud days in her life. And she was keenly reminded of what it meant. What that simple license stood for. Then she knew, in her heart, that she couldn't stay down. A huntress was meant to do what was right, all the way to the end. Whenever it came. Before he had gotten too far, she was back on her feet with a shaky arm reaching down and snatching up Malware. Then she fired, emptying the whole clip of her own high caliber rounds aimed at his departing back.

"I...can't do that, sir." She said with profound sadness, feeling herself growing significantly more teary-eyed as she stood there. The only way this ended, from her perspective, is if she took him down, brought him into custody...or he finished the job by knocking her out. Or...worse.

The first shot staggered him, and Ironwood whirled on her with a snarl of pure frustration as he took a step in her direction. It was so unlike any expression she could recall seeing on her former superior-come-headmaster's face before, so far from the look of staunch, reassuring calm that had resolved so many conflicts and steered Atlas through so many troubling times.

He could have shot her right then and there. There wasn't a single part of him unaware that it was the efficient, logical thing to do.

He didn't. He kept walking, the bullets drawing less and less of a reaction each time as they pinged off his aura and metal. It took only a few short strides for him to loom over her, eyes wide with stress and anger, compounding with the tired bags lining them to paint a picture of many sleepless nights and the troubled, burdened mind that lay within.

Though this was his office, quite frankly it looked like he would rather have been anywhere else. But he'd thought it through. Done the math. This was the only way.

The only way to avoid a war he truly, in his heart of hearts no longer believed they could win. That he, and Weiss and Carnelian and Salem, all of them, could no longer be trusted to lead.



"I TOLD YOU-"

His first kick swiped the gun from her hand, the sheer emotion it carried suggesting that the tin man did indeed have a heart buried somewhere in there.

Welcome to Atlas Academy, miss Helios. I hope you're settling in.

"-TO STAY-"

His second caught her flush in the ribs, a worrying crack sending blinding pain shooting through her body as he sought to make sure she wouldn't be getting up this time.

This sort of behavior just isn't becoming of a student of this academy, Gwen. The rest of the world looks to Atlas to set an example.

It was funny though, so I suppose this one time they can be disappointed.

"-DOWN!"

His incensed pace carried him around to her side, where he batted the second pistol from her grip and prepared himself to deliver a final boot to the head to ensure she stayed out of this fight for good.

I know it's a gamble, Operative. I know that. All I'm asking is that you trust me.

His leg swung forward, plotting a course straight for her temple and promising what at this point probably would've been the sweet embrace of unconsciousness for Gwen.

It never landed.

If her vision cleared enough to look up, she saw the general's eyes wide with stunned, disbelieving surprise, fixed as they were on the lone flickering glyph that had snared it and prevented it from following through on its threat.

For a second she almost thought she could see the relief swallow those eyes, just briefly, before they drifted shut in quiet resignation.

Then a blue stream of ice blasted him square in the back, fired from the frail, pallid hand emerging from underneath the headmaster's desk where a trail of blood led from the spot she'd last seen the councilwoman slumped in. It finished the job Gwen started, shattering his aura and launching him back out the window again in a forward swandive.

This time he didn't return.

The hand darted back under the desk before anyone could notice what happened (she hoped), and a much fainter blue glow emerged from underneath it as Weiss closed her eyes with a resolute frown and refocused on trying to heal herself, aura weakly flickering and solidifying from the primordial light her palms were treating it with.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

The first shot staggered him, and Ironwood whirled on her with a snarl of pure frustration as he took a step in her direction. It was so unlike any expression she could recall seeing on her former superior-come-headmaster's face before, so far from the look of staunch, reassuring calm that had resolved so many conflicts and steered Atlas through so many troubling times.

He could have shot her right then and there. There wasn't a single part of him unaware that it was the efficient, logical thing to do.

He didn't. He kept walking, the bullets drawing less and less of a reaction each time as they pinged off his aura and metal. It took only a few short strides for him to loom over her, eyes wide with stress and anger, compounding with the tired bags lining them to paint a picture of many sleepless nights and the troubled, burdened mind that lay within.

Though this was his office, quite frankly it looked like he would rather have been anywhere else. But he'd thought it through. Done the math. This was the only way.

The only way to avoid a war he truly, in his heart of hearts no longer believed they could win. That he, and Weiss and Carnelian and Salem, all of them, could no longer be trusted to lead.

View attachment 819769

"I TOLD YOU-"

His first kick swiped the gun from her hand, the sheer emotion it carried suggesting that the tin man did indeed have a heart buried somewhere in there.

Welcome to Atlas Academy, miss Helios. I hope you're settling in.

"-TO STAY-"

His second caught her flush in the ribs, a worrying crack sending blinding pain shooting through her body as he sought to make sure she wouldn't be getting up this time.

This sort of behavior just isn't becoming of a student of this academy, Gwen. The rest of the world looks to Atlas to set an example.

It was funny though, so I suppose this one time they can be disappointed.

"-DOWN!"

His incensed pace carried him around to her side, where he batted the second pistol from her grip and prepared himself to deliver a final boot to the head to ensure she stayed out of this fight for good.

I know it's a gamble, Operative. I know that. All I'm asking is that you trust me.

His leg swung forward, plotting a course straight for her temple and promising what at this point probably would've been the sweet embrace of unconsciousness for Gwen.

It never landed.

If her vision cleared enough to look up, she saw the general's eyes wide with stunned, disbelieving surprise, fixed as they were on the lone flickering glyph that had snared it and prevented it from following through on its threat.

For a second she almost thought she could see the relief swallow those eyes, just briefly, before they drifted shut in quiet resignation.

Then a blue stream of ice blasted him square in the back, fired from the frail, pallid hand emerging from underneath the headmaster's desk where a trail of blood led from the spot she'd last seen the councilwoman slumped in. It finished the job Gwen started, shattering his aura and launching him back out the window again in a forward swandive.

This time he didn't return.

The hand darted back under the desk before anyone could notice what happened (she hoped), and a much fainter blue glow emerged from underneath it as Weiss closed her eyes with a resolute frown and refocused on trying to heal herself, aura weakly flickering and solidifying from the primordial light her palms were treating it with.​

When he sharply turned back on her with that fierce snarl, it was met only with one of teary resignation, any of her own anger that had been present had since evaporated away. The look on his face then was unlike any she'd ever seen, even in the most stressful of times, but she didn't falter. She didn't even move backwards as he began to stomp back towards her. Gwen stood her ground firmly, and by the time the gun clacked empty...he was right in front of her, dwarfing over her. Her head rose up to meet his haggard glare unflinchingly. Logic dictated that she retreat, fall back...but that would only delay the inevitable, now that she was without any aura. Beyond that...she owed it to him to look him straight in the eyes.

The first kick sent her weapon skidding off along the floor into a darkened corner, but still she remained staring back at him, unmoving. It was only with the second that she moved, striking her with enough force that she flipped over. More than that, a frustrated and angry kick from a man almost wholly made of metal? That was never gonna be good. The cracking sounds of multiple ribs breaking under the impact reached her ears split-seconds before the intense pain lanced through her, and the special operative yelled in pure agony, accompanied shortly thereafter by more than a few wheezing coughs. That was when her backup gun got knocked away too, leaving her both weaponless and auraless as she laid there, struggling to breathe.

Tear-filled eyes looked up at Ironwood then, and through the hazy wet nature of her eyes, she managed to zero in on his boot, already swinging in to slam into her skull and finish the job. Her eyes slid shut then in anticipation of the blow, accepting it as a consequence of the choice she had made, to stand for what she thought was right. But the kick never connected, and after a moment her eyes opened back up in confusion. Confusion that was quickly rectified as even with her less than ideal sight, she recognized the glyph that held him back. Her gaze quickly shot up to his face just in time to catch a glimpse of what seemed to be relief, but it was there and gone so swiftly she couldn't be sure her hopeful mind had not simply imagined it.

What was definitely not imaginary was the assault that decimated the former general's own aura and knocked him out the window once more, and it seemed to stick this time. Her attention was not on him by that point though, and through her visor she managed to pick up on that faint blue glow. The councilwoman, she was...well, she was decidedly not okay, but she was conscious and doing what she could. That brought a small relieved smile to her face, though she neither called out for Weiss or tried to move over there. Even in her current condition, she understood the councilwoman was doing her best to stay hidden.

Instead, she crawled over to the shattered window, not trusting in her ability to stand without sending more pain shooting through her. Even now, with her desperate crawling along the floor, one or two motions still managed to provoke lances of pain. But she gritted her teeth and endured it until she was by the window. She took in as good a breath as she could manage before she poked her head out and looked to the city below. A slow and shaky hand moved to tap on her wristpad and the magnification on her visor's sight zoomed in greatly, trying to find where the former general had landed. Despite her choice, despite what she saw as his huge mistake, despite the pain he left her in, despite it all...he had been someone she had idolized for a long time.

The tears fell far more freely then, running down her face and then down to the distant streets below, the wretched sobbing having little to do with the sting of her broken ribs.​

 

[MidwayLives]

With that thought in mind, Ruby turned to another person who so desperately needed help. Herself. She dashed up to the girl, dropping to her knees in a different manner to before as she grabbed hold of her counterpart's remaining arm by the wrist. "No no no." She gasped, watching as those eyes slowly closed. That got her hands to move up, gently lifting her double's head..

Ruby's eyes slowly drifted open.

The vision was blurry at first but after a couple of blinks, she smiled at the oh-so familiar face.

"Oh....it's you...Hi."

Ruby shivered a little.

"...Sorry about the mess....me. I'm a big messup....but I feel better. Better than I ever have."

As battle raged on around her, Ruby chuckled softly.

"....I could take a nap right here and let my problems fade away."

Her stump was looking worse and worse by the second, a misty trail that resembled an arm beginning to form ebbing from it.

"...Couldn't save Weiss....or stop my Yang....but that's okay. I'm okay. You don't need to worry about me....Nobody does...."

​

"Did you hear me? No! Whatever's happening, whatever you're feeling with that...that horribleness inside, don't give in! You have to be stronger than it!" Ruby demanded. "Wake up, open your eyes! You have to, you hear me?!? Focus on your feelings and join me." If the Masque opened her eyes then, she was greeted with the sight of her other self's eyes shining bright.

Ruby frowned and shook her head.

"....I'm not all that strong. I can barely throw a good punch..." Ruby mumbled. Her nose still stung after Yang punched her earlier. "Everything will be fine, me. You guys can go home and I'll stay here...with my Yang....like I always have." The end of the trail began absentmindely flicking it's 'fingers' but Masque didn't pay it any mind. "We'll be together forever. Just the two of us....and we'll be happy..."

​

"The two of us, together, I know that the thing in there won't have a chance. If we both use our special gift at once..."

....

It was an odd sight. Seeing her....well...kinda her own eyes glowing.

It was a beautiful sight. One you could paint a picture of.

'I wonder if I ever looked as nice when my eyes glowed'

Or did she always look like a monster?

"....Together, huh? I guess you're not giving me much choice..."

Ruby closed her eyes and tried to think.
​

"WE'LL BURN THAT THING RIGHT OUT OF YOU!" Ruby finished with a wholeheartedly confident declaration.

It was only after the fact that Masque pondered.

'if the Grimm is a part of me...then will this hurt-'​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Muted though it may have been, it served to reify her low opinion of the power-hungry Fall Maiden that the shrill gasp from beneath the Grimm hand was one of affronted disgust rather than fear or panic, like an especially large bug she'd been staring at had just flown in her mouth. It gave way to a torrent of muffled, vociferous protests, the contents of which doubtless would've set off Penny's parental control filter had they been intelligible, as Weiss's pride and lack of bonafide huntress experience proved inauspicious. She reacted not as a warrior but as a rich girl—one entirely unused to being touched, let alone smothered and drained of energy by a biological nightmare. Her immediate reaction was to buck, scratch, and try to pull the claw off her face rather than the multitude of other things she could've done, none of which proved particularly effective against Cinder's grip strength.

It was just... a lot. Being choked always made her uneasy to begin with, and she had dropped Myrtenaster in surprise; The lack of air, coupled with Cinder's larger frame wrapping around her like a human-sized facehugger, already had her stumbling backward, off balance.

Then there was the drain. It really was quite a ghastly feeling, like a vacuum being taken straight to the soul. The glyphs that were forming around them manifested weakly, faint and flickering before they vanished entirely; it wasn't that the wretch had managed to sap so much of her power already, the process just... made her a bit too tired... to concentrate...*

She caught herself starting to buckle at the knees, only realizing how much the impulse to lie down had overtaken her moments before she succumbed to it. With how much of the world's weight she'd taken on her shoulders these past few months, it was almost tempting. But she could feel it. Everything she'd worked for, the power she'd amassed. The power she needed to win. Being sucked away.

No.

She stood up straight, and the suffocated groans her protests had faded to suddenly gave way to a more frustrated sound as she battered her fists against Cinder more vigorously. Weiss wasn't the first, second, or even third maiden Cinder had tried to drain with her arm, but she was the most powerful; Cinder had never attacked one so close to grasping the full spectrum of their abilities before, to say nothing of the fact that she wielded the power of not one but two. She had managed to chip away at some of Weiss's reserves a bit when the flow of energy suddenly slowed, then stopped, as though a dam had been put up. The clashing lights coming from Weiss's face shone more brightly, now, erupting from under Cinder's palm like twin volcanoes of fire and ice, and as the blizzard started to howl around them her arm started to feel something she couldn't recall it ever feeling before.

Cold.




It may have registered as curious when Penny's first sword skewered the arm not with the soft, squishy noise of metal cleaving through Grimm flesh, but with the dense chink of a blade embedding itself in something solid. Like a pick being wedged in ice.

The next was the same, and the one after, and three blades later a sudden flare of Weiss's eyes shattered the hand covering her face into solid, fractal pieces, leaving the rest of Cinder's arm intact as a frozen pincushion sculpture. There was a moment where Weiss's eyes bored into Cinder's like a pair of icy drills, then everything went dark. The latter didn't see why.

Penny did, and it was as simple as the giant suit of armor that appeared behind her closing its titanic gauntlet over her entire head as it ripped her off its mistress like a bandaid and promptly slammed a fist into her gut.

BOOM

"That's for touching me."

It reeled back and spiked her headfirst into the ice, leaving a crater that sent a spiderweb of cracks out in all directions.

BOOOM

"That's for having the mere conceit to think you can touch me."

The veil of darkness lifted as the gigas's gauntlet left her face, just in time for Cinder to see its enormous sword swing down for her like a headman's axe.

"AND THIS IS SO YOU REMEMBER YOUR PLACE!"

BOOOOM

If it hit, it struck with a strength that bore as much savage ferocity as her arm and drove the maiden deep, deep into the earth, the ice surrounding her crumbling and giving way as Weiss's light-bearing summon sent her into the dark where she belonged.

With the other monsters.​

"...I..." There was plenty she wanted to say, but recognized that right then in the thick of battle was not for the time for it. So she just got to the heart of it, the most important of it all as the staff got shoved into her free hand. "I can't! Not until I'm sure you're going before me!" She knew the relic's key level of importance, that she was their chief exit plan for this mess but...she had left a Yang behind before. The other Raven had too. It seemed to be an inescapable part of being Raven Branwen...or at least it had. But not this time. Yang wouldn't be stuck behind again. Not if she could help it. The relic just got thrust right back into Yang's hands with stubborn determination. That was her guarantee that Yang would go. If Yang had the relic, she couldn't afford not to. Even if that meant she had to linger and stay behind to make sure nobody going against them followed them through.

With both hands she gripped her blade and sliced away at the open air, another portal manifesting then. "You're going!" She yelled in a voice that said there would be no arguing that point, pushing her towards it, head on a swivel to keep track of any approaching threats and ready to fend them off.



"For a smart guy, Arthur, you're a pretty bad liar." Cinder couldn't help but comment, grabbing hold of his hand to help pull him up even though the exertion sent spikes of pain shooting through her shoulder, prompting a wince. One that she immediately brushed off as best she could manage. Despite the sarcasm, she looked nothing but concerned for her former team leader. One hand reached out, projecting a bit of ice cold to help balance out some of that scorching heat.



"We don't always get to pick the fights, Arthur. Sometimes they come to us and leave us no choice in the matter." That was the only thing she said on his brief lecture, which she had 100% expected. It just wouldn't be a Watts reunion without that being directed at somebody, and that familiarity got a small smirk out of her.



"Wait, hold on I forgot to..." Her words drifted away unfinished, her attention briefly stolen away by the battle as well...



...and by the time it returned to Watts, the topic had changed. "...Yeah." She answered sheepishly, a bit more casual about it than might have been expected. It hurt, a lot, to be sure. But pain was an old friend, and she had suffered way worse as a child thanks to her own family. "I was going to ask if I should rip it out or not, whether that was a good idea before we go to a hospital or something for some help..."

Nothing was said on Cinder's part as she suddenly recoiled from the biting pain of the extreme cold, especially as nearly auraless as she now was. No! NO, this isn't how it is meant to go! The power, it was promised to her, destined for her! All of it!



But that was quickly the least of her concerns, her thought process interrupted as she howled in extreme pain from the blades sinking their way into that monstrous limb, and she roared even more so loudly as her whole hand shattered into pieces that scattered across the ground. Her fiery counterattack with her other arm only got as far as the planning stages, thanks to...



...that.



With the following blows, she didn't even have it in her to scream in pain. Her breath got expelled so violently, her head swimming with so much pain and dizziness that even if her whole head wasn't enveloped by the gigas' massive gauntlet and her vision wasn't cut off, she likely wouldn't have even known where exactly she was at that moment. Then the last blow hit so hard that Cinder choked up blood with the last remnants of her breath, bits of red launching out at great velocity and staining the white snow of Atlas, some even splattering across Weiss's cheek just as that Cinder disappeared from sight. The grimm maiden dropped into the abyss below, even the raging fire in her eye eclipsed by the dark that swallowed her whole.

And this time she didn't come back up.​

Which left Weiss Schnee as the victor.

Which meant she was the one Penny ended up hovering a good distance away from with Grey hanging on her back, all ten of her swords hovering at the ready behind her and a very nervous frown on her face.

Neither Penny had actually come face to face with the Weiss Schnee of this world until this moment, and neither of them had bad memories of her; one, a kind if distant councilwoman who helped ensure her father had the funding he needed to make her a reality, and the other a dear friend.

Everything else had been hearsay, from very trusted sources, all of which seemed to contradict one another. That she was their most dangerous enemy, that she was their best chance at saving Atlas, that she was Ozpin's enemy and also theirs.

What wasn't hearsay was the power that she'd just displayed. That the five of them had barely held their own against Fall; That Ruby was still frozen, Cinder's aura had yet to begin repairing itself, and Watts was far worse for wear than when he'd arrived.

If Weiss was here as an enemy, their chance of victory was well below 1%. She didn't want to think about how many zeroes she was going to have to put after that decimal point to make it accurate.

But that didn't matter. If Weiss was here to hurt her friends, Penny would stand in her way, no matter the cost.

"...Miss Schnee?"

 

[Gus Gungus]

Which left Weiss Schnee as the victor.

Which meant she was the one Penny ended up hovering a good distance away from with Grey hanging on her back, all ten of her swords hovering at the ready behind her and a very nervous frown on her face.

Neither Penny had actually come face to face with the Weiss Schnee of this world until this moment, and neither of them had bad memories of her; one, a kind if distant councilwoman who helped ensure her father had the funding he needed to make her a reality, and the other a dear friend.

Everything else had been hearsay, from very trusted sources, all of which seemed to contradict one another. That she was their most dangerous enemy, that she was their best chance at saving Atlas, that she was Ozpin's enemy and also theirs.

What wasn't hearsay was the power that she'd just displayed. That the five of them had barely held their own against Fall; That Ruby was still frozen, Cinder's aura had yet to begin repairing itself, and Watts was far worse for wear than when he'd arrived.

If Weiss was here as an enemy, their chance of victory was well below 1%. She didn't want to think about how many zeroes she was going to have to put after that decimal point to make it accurate.

But that didn't matter. If Weiss was here to hurt her friends, Penny would stand in her way, no matter the cost.

"...Miss Schnee?"

The Weiss Schnee in question had been staring pensively into the abyss Cinder had plunged to the depths of, weighing the pros and cons of going down there to retrieve the body herself. The main point she kept coming back with was now that she'd had her share of hostile encounters with them she was beginning to realize she really, really didn't like Grimm.

Maybe she'd just send some androids down.

Penny's loud voice appeared to startle her, and exactly which of those mental pictures Weiss embodied best would be for her to decide as the councilwoman whirled on her so quickly perfectly it was as if her heels were mounted on frictionless spinning plates of some kind.



"EXCUSE ME BUT WHAT DID I JUST SAY TO YOU NOT FIVE MINUTES AGO??? Because I seem to recall telling you to scurry on your way! You are the multi-billion lien product of over THIRTY YEARS of research distilled by one of the BRIGHTEST MINDS Remnant has to offer and I am NOT IMPRESSED with how devoted you appear to be to jeopardizing yourself! Seriously, is it a FEATURE to simply have no regard for your own wellbeing? I own entire COMPANIES worth less than the amount it took to fix you in the time they did, millions I will IN ZERO RESPECTS be spending again! GET A GRIP AND STOP THROWING YOURSELF INTO THESE SITUATIONS WITH RECKLESS ABANDON OR YOU'LL AMOUNT TO NOTHING MORE THAN THE MOST EXPENSIVE FAILURE THIS KINGDOM HAS EVER FINANCED!!!!!!!!!!"

And so it was with that final scathing blast of criticism the winter maiden propelled herself into the air, emphasizing her point and ensuring her departure was as stylish and dazzling as her arrival as her blue dot tore across the sky towards Atlas, one final note tossed back as an afterthought.

"AND TALK QUIETER!"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"EXCUSE ME BUT WHAT DID I JUST SAY TO YOU NOT FIVE MINUTES AGO??? Because I seem to recall telling you to scurry on your way! You are the multi-billion lien product of over THIRTY YEARS of research distilled by one of the BRIGHTEST MINDS Remnant has to offer and I am NOT IMPRESSED with how devoted you appear to be to jeopardizing yourself! Seriously, is it a FEATURE to simply have no regard for your own wellbeing? I own entire COMPANIES worth less than the amount it took to fix you in the time they did, millions I will IN ZERO RESPECTS be spending again! GET A GRIP AND STOP THROWING YOURSELF INTO THESE SITUATIONS WITH RECKLESS ABANDON OR YOU'LL AMOUNT TO NOTHING MORE THAN THE MOST EXPENSIVE FAILURE THIS KINGDOM HAS EVER FINANCED!!!!!!!!!!"

 

[Gus Gungus]

​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"..."

Ruby felt her head thump against the hard office floor as it was unceremoniously dumped from Yang's lap, though somehow she just couldn't bring herself to care all that much. The numbness in her chest wasn't cold anymore; kind of warm, actually. All the pain, heartbreak and fear she'd been feeling had drained away—all that was left was the warm, heady feeling of the first kind words the Dragon had spoken to her in years.

It was nice.

Deep in her arm, something growled.







Raven's rebuttal had barely registered with Yang when the latter felt a fistful of hair get yanked as roughly as it had ever been touched in her life, so close to the scalp and with such strength even she was wrenched clean off her feet. Raven's attempt to return the relic met nothing but air as the blonde was ripped almost the full length across the room, reeled in by a Grimm arm that meant to slither around her throat like a boa and slam her into the metal wall on the other side of the office hard enough that it dented.

"YOU DON'T GET TO JUST TURN YOUR BACK ON ME!"

The fist that followed left a much larger one, whether it made contact with Yang's face or the metal itself in time with the feral scream accompanying it. Her own eyes, cast in that same stark shade of crimson that had defined Yang's own fits of temper when she was younger, were the ones she was looking into, only flared wider and more unhinged than she had ever seen them in the mirror. Whether it was through recognition or the exact opposite, even for just that split-second she saw everything in them; the intricacies (or lack thereof) of the most truly lost of what passed for this world's team RWBY laid utterly bare. The desperation. The insecurity born of low self esteem born of abandonment. The allergy to being alone, the longing for connection; how all those things had beaten her down far, far worse than any pummeling, past the threshold even their semblance could take. How it had all come together and made her weak, not strong like Yang, no matter how much macho posturing she tried to make up for it with. It begged the question how different it all could've been with just one change, the one constant pillar of inspiration, strength and support Yang had that the Dragon didn't.

And how much whoever she was looking at despised Yang Xiao Long for that. Jury was out on which one.

Her double screamed again, a horrible, wordless howl of emotions so untamed and confused even the grimm infesting her couldn't quite wrangle them all as she sought to give Yang a good idea of just how much she fucking hated that face by slamming Ember Celica into it again. And again. And again.
​

Yang was mad.

On some level, everything Raven said may well have been true.

But from the look in her wayward daughter's eyes you just wouldn't know it, nor indeed that there was any connection between the malefic Yang and tragically flawed Raven Branwen of this Remnant at all beyond that of a frenzied lion watching a mouse stand up for its prey.

View attachment 819687

"FUCK THE FUCK OFF, LADY!"

It was too little too late for all that bullshit.

As the Dragon's knuckle made initial contact with the sword, a loud, echoing KABLAM partially deafened those in immediate proximity even with the benefit of aura, propelling her fist back in an arc so blindingly fast her backhand actually connected with Raven's jaw before the huntress's second stroke could sever her arm, which sought to coil and twist around her double even further until the air was being squeezed from her lungs. On the surface it was nothing more than a glancing swipe, but there was so much more to it than that.

26 years of nothing. Of pain, of neglect, of abandonment and suffering and rage all capped off with this self-righteous twat deciding it was time to take an interest now, for her. Yang screamed again. She wasn't just mad; she was feral, rabid, insane. Whatever you wanted to call it. The moment before connection, a wave of explosive flame warped the metal around them and washed across their auras like a gust in the desert. It was a wild, untamed strike, all instinct, ferocity and bestial power, and Raven could've sworn she blacked out for just a second or two as she sped across the office as hard and as fast as she ever had as a bird. The vague awareness she had of crashing through something hard shook her back to her senses, and when she opened her eyes she was no longer in Ironwood's office. She wasn't even in the academy.

By her approximation she was a good 2-300 meters away, watching the towering monolith of Atlesian architecture (and the tiny Raven-shaped pinprick of a hole in its ceiling) hurtle away from her fast.

The most unbelievable part was she had yet to slow.​

The Dragon barely needed to catch Yang by surprise, because Yang was too busy being flabbergasted that the lady who already loST HER PORTAL ONCE THIS FIGHT-

Then she got put into the wall, and the follow up punch struck true harder than any hit she'd taken her life. So did the next,and the one after. She took it all, every hit, all of the strength in those fists and all of the emotions they carried; all of the anger, the rage, the sadness and despair, the fear, and the hatred. She took all of it into herself.

She got it. Gods did she get it. A world without her dad? Where Ruby hated and tortured her and worse? Where her mom still left, and no Summer took her place? Where she didn't meet Blake until she was a human hating murder ninja, or Weiss until the dragon had already been too far gone to help? She didn't have to imagine hell; that was hell. Just thinking about living the life this Yang had to live made her wanna curl up into a ball and cry.

But she had to believe she wouldn't have; that she would've gotten away, still broken, but not like this; that this wasn't a life that she could've ever lived. And more than that; it didn't matter how she got here at this point, in this moment. All that mattered was that this bitch had threatened one Ruby and maimed the other. Maybe deep down, she really did feel something for her double past the anger and disdain she'd shown her up to this point. Sympathy. Pity. Fear for what could've been.

All she let herself feel in the now was absolutely sure she was gonna kick this lady's ass.



Her hand snatched the grimm near the base, and showed it just how strong the feelings it had been trying to consume and suppress were with a grip could have almost threatened to tear Atlas academy straight out of its roots by itself.

"Hey"

The punch the dragon inevitably threw was caught in a vice grip that didn't budge an iota, and the heat that had started to fill the room at Raven's interjection started to burn gold instead of red.

"My turn"

She planted a boot straight into the Dragon's chest with just a fraction of her strength, planted her feet, used her grip on the grimm arm to reel the Dragon back in, and let loose with with the most powerful haymaker she'd ever thrown in her life without letting go of the black appendage

 

[MyrtenRose]

"FUCK THE FUCK OFF, LADY!"

It was too little too late for all that bullshit.

As the Dragon's knuckle made initial contact with the sword, a loud, echoing KABLAM partially deafened those in immediate proximity even with the benefit of aura, propelling her fist back in an arc so blindingly fast her backhand actually connected with Raven's jaw before the huntress's second stroke could sever her arm, which sought to coil and twist around her double even further until the air was being squeezed from her lungs. On the surface it was nothing more than a glancing swipe, but there was so much more to it than that.

26 years of nothing. Of pain, of neglect, of abandonment and suffering and rage all capped off with this self-righteous twat deciding it was time to take an interest now, for her. Yang screamed again. She wasn't just mad; she was feral, rabid, insane. Whatever you wanted to call it. The moment before connection, a wave of explosive flame warped the metal around them and washed across their auras like a gust in the desert. It was a wild, untamed strike, all instinct, ferocity and bestial power, and Raven could've sworn she blacked out for just a second or two as she sped across the office as hard and as fast as she ever had as a bird. The vague awareness she had of crashing through something hard shook her back to her senses, and when she opened her eyes she was no longer in Ironwood's office. She wasn't even in the academy.

By her approximation she was a good 2-300 meters away, watching the towering monolith of Atlesian architecture (and the tiny Raven-shaped pinprick of a hole in its ceiling) hurtle away from her fast.

The most unbelievable part was she had yet to slow.

It all happened so fast. One moment, she was there, rushing to put herself between them. The next there was an intense flash of pain across her jaw, things went dark and the next thing she knew, she was flying through the air outside, the academy rapidly becoming smaller and smaller the more distant she became. What's more was that the speed she was going yet even now had not slowed in the slightest. Such tremendous power, fueled by raw anger and venomous hatred. It was...remarkable. Almost everybody who had ever been a part of Salem's inner circle devoted to protecting the maidens was an incredible fighter in their own right. Salem, herself, Glynda, Theodore, James, Liadan, Xanthe, Sienna, Qrow and Taiyang and Summer, once upon a time. As a group, it held some of Remnant's finest warriors. But the power and speed behind that blow, the blow that had struck before she had even finished her second slash...it pointed to an indisputable fact.

Her daughter had grown incredibly capable working under Ozpin's shadow. Far beyond simply dangerous. There was no denying that many of those who served in Ozpin's dark cabal also counted amongst the world's most exceptional killers. Light and dark, tied up in a constant struggle far beyond what most people knew. And...it was all her fault that her daughter stood with the latter. She was just as responsible for all the murder and destruction her child had a part in. It was too late to change that, to take back any of the lives that had ended at Yang's hands. All she could do now was to do everything in her power to keep that list from getting any longer.

She shifted into bird form then, wings flapping furiously as she tried to counter the fierce velocity imparted from that punch. For a time it was as ineffective as flying against hurricane force winds pushing you back, and despite that furious flapping she continued to soar backwards. If she had been observing it from an outside perspective, she would have found it utterly comical. But there was no laughter to be found in this serious situation, and when she managed to take back control of her own flight, a portal popped into existence right before her. A bird went in.

And out the other end of that portal, the human Raven Branwen lunged forth with sword in hand, eyes immediately scanning the area to try and determine that in her absence, Yang had not suffered too much--
​

Her hand snatched the grimm near the base, and showed it just how strong the feelings it had been trying to consume and suppress were with a grip could have almost threatened to tear Atlas academy straight out of its roots by itself.

"Hey"

The punch the dragon inevitably threw was caught in a vice grip that didn't budge an iota, and the heat that had started to fill the room at Raven's interjection started to burn gold instead of red.

"My turn"

She planted a boot straight into the Dragon's chest with just a fraction of her strength, planted her feet, used her grip on the grimm arm to reel the Dragon back in, and let loose with with the most powerful haymaker she'd ever thrown in her life without letting go of the black appendage

"Oh."​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The Weiss Schnee in question had been staring pensively into the abyss Cinder had plunged to the depths of, weighing the pros and cons of going down there to retrieve the body herself. The main point she kept coming back with was now that she'd had her share of hostile encounters with them she was beginning to realize she really, really didn't like Grimm.

Maybe she'd just send some androids down.

Penny's loud voice appeared to startle her, and exactly which of those mental pictures Weiss embodied best would be for her to decide as the councilwoman whirled on her so quickly perfectly it was as if her heels were mounted on frictionless spinning plates of some kind.

View attachment 819849

"EXCUSE ME BUT WHAT DID I JUST SAY TO YOU NOT FIVE MINUTES AGO??? Because I seem to recall telling you to scurry on your way! You are the multi-billion lien product of over THIRTY YEARS of research distilled by one of the BRIGHTEST MINDS Remnant has to offer and I am NOT IMPRESSED with how devoted you appear to be to jeopardizing yourself! Seriously, is it a FEATURE to simply have no regard for your own wellbeing? I own entire COMPANIES worth less than the amount it took to fix you in the time they did, millions I will IN ZERO RESPECTS be spending again! GET A GRIP AND STOP THROWING YOURSELF INTO THESE SITUATIONS WITH RECKLESS ABANDON OR YOU'LL AMOUNT TO NOTHING MORE THAN THE MOST EXPENSIVE FAILURE THIS KINGDOM HAS EVER FINANCED!!!!!!!!!!"

And so it was with that final scathing blast of criticism the winter maiden propelled herself into the air, emphasizing her point and ensuring her departure was as stylish and dazzling as her arrival as her blue dot tore across the sky towards Atlas, one final note tossed back as an afterthought.

"AND TALK QUIETER!"​

Penny hovered there in silence as Weiss took off, for what felt like the first time ever in her life at an utter and abject loss for words as the biggest wave of relief she'd ever felt in her life warred with just how much those words really hurt she was doing her best and she hadn't even talked that loud it was just windy out in Solitas and there were a few small fires still burning she just wanted to ensure miss Schnee could hear her and it wasn't like she could run away with her friends all in such bad state truly those words were at least a little uncalled for even if they did ring fairly true especially since she just warned Cinder about essentially the same thing-

She sucked in a breath and swirled in the air to shoot the other Penny and two friends a salute

"The danger has past- Ruby!"

"On it! Excuse us Watts but-"

Penny suddenly scooped Cinder back into her arms and rocketed off towards where Ruby had ended up, leaving Watts staring blankly towards where Weiss had flown off to with a blank look of surprise.

"Ok. What the fuck just happened and CINDER GET BACK HERE YOU STILL HAVE A KNIFE IN YOUR-"

 

[MyrtenRose]

"On it! Excuse us Watts but-"

Penny suddenly scooped Cinder back into her arms and rocketed off towards where Ruby had ended up, leaving Watts staring blankly towards where Weiss had flown off to with a blank look of surprise.

"Ok. What the fuck just happened and CINDER GET BACK HERE YOU STILL HAVE A KNIFE IN YOUR-"

"I'LL BE RIGHT BACK! PROMISE! JUST GOTTA DO A THING REAL QUICK!" She shouted back to try and ease his concern, adding under her breath. "god sorry weapon maintenance partner with the cool and also bad lightshow that just went on here I totally blanked on you please don't be mad." Her eye drifted over to Penny, the embarrassed blush returning now that Watts was unable to see it from his position. "Erm...you know, I could've just flown by myself. Not that I'm against being carried, there was this one time with Hazel but..." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Also do you think other Penny is gonna be...okay? That was a really harsh lecture. Like, I've had similar sentiment thrown at me about risking myself...including by a you...but that was like, up to eleven on the harsh scale."​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

There was quite the light show in the office as two warriors of silver eyes both activated their bloodline's power at the same time.

Bright enough that the sniper in the airship across the way had to squint her eyes and glance away as her scope suddenly filled with nothing but white.

A warrior knew how to use the light just as well as the shadow, and it seemed that everyone else all had their focus on other problems; The Rubies with each other, the Dragon with Raven and Yang, Ector and Carnelian; All of them had their eyes set anywhere but on the Hand, save for one

And now she was blinded, even for only a moment.

The light faded, Liza focused her scope back on the office, and she swore as she saw Blake Belladonna and the staff of creation both missing out of the room

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

Gwen had felt a breeze over her head as she crawled, but by the time she made it to the edge, whatever she saw outside only included the general's fate

 

[MidwayLives]

Penny hovered there in silence as Weiss took off, for what felt like the first time ever in her life at an utter and abject loss for words as the biggest wave of relief she'd ever felt in her life warred with just how much those words really hurt she was doing her best and she hadn't even talked that loud it was just windy out in Solitas and there were a few small fires still burning she just wanted to ensure miss Schnee could hear her and it wasn't like she could run away with her friends all in such bad state truly those words were at least a little uncalled for even if they did ring fairly true especially since she just warned Cinder about essentially the same thing-

She sucked in a breath and swirled in the air to shoot the other Penny and two friends a salute

Grey tapped on Penny's shoulder.

"Hey. For what it's worth....I think we make a pretty good team."
​