Fandom Distorted Mirror [IC]

[MyrtenRose]

Weiss thought about it.

"...Okay, ma'am." There was nothing okay about it but Helios didn't say that. Gwen wanted to sigh too, express that disappointment and sadness but she ultimately didn't. As much as she enjoyed learning new things, as much as she believed knowing all these things would only make her better able to support...she supposed she couldn't blame the councilwoman. Trust had to be in short supply, after James and Carnelian's stunt. As much as she wished to know the whole picture, she could still help without it. Her attention returned to the screens.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"—Hey!"

He repeated, more emphatically, Yang finding higher ground brought her no solace because bird. He wasn't a bird by the time he touched down, though, his own pace not as motivated but still dogged as he took a step or two after her and uttered one final, solemn repetition.

"...Hey. Hey, Yang, look. I've been a pretty rotten uncle. Saw how lousy things were going in Atlas and I just thought—Figured maybe you kids'd be better off working separate from me for a while. You know."

The slur in his voice suggested he barely knew himself, at least right then. But he wanted to take the chance to at least try and explain it, to make sure Yang especially knew the reason someone in her life had bailed out on her had nothing to do with her and everything to do with his curse.

Or maybe just his flakiness. Like he could ever really tell the difference.

"Your sister and me, we're trying to deal with... all of this... in our own ways. Me with the drinking, her... going back inside that pre-Beacon shell of hers a little. Maybe we're not doing the best job. I know you're having a tough time too, you just got better than us at hiding it." He sighed, pinching his brow. "...We don't have to get into it now. I just hope none of that messes with the fact that if you need anything... to talk, or... you know, anything. I'll be... around. And I hope it doesn't mean you've felt like a paranoid wackjob version of your friend is the only person you've been able to lean on these past few months."

Yang let out a flustered huff as she heard the telltale sound of flapping wings behind her and quickly gave up on any hope of power walking her way out of this one. She crossed her arms and glanced to the side "She... no I'm... I'm fine, Uncle Qrow. I just think we could've done more in Atlas, and I'm worried about her. I know she's not the only one I have to lean on, and you know I love you guys. Its just that I'm afraid that I'm the only one that she- Wait. Did you say you're drinking? Are you drunk righkghrl-"

Super speed brought up Miss In Her Shell after both Yang and the uncle that pursued her, catching up with both in time to overhear the second half of that little speech. The only reason she missed the first half was she got delayed some. A delay that was explained, as when she reformed from her petal burst, all the Branwens were there too! Okay, maybe she had been more than a little touched by that strange but AMAZING display back there, and inspired too. After all, technically they were all family, to varying degrees of connection. "We all can be!" She tacked on to her uncle's statement(and she appreciated that they had sort of similar trains of thought just now), before rushing forth to pin Yang to the ground in a tackle hug. It had been TOO long.

"After all this, your first thought is to try and run away?! That's a big noooooooope."

One Raven was smiling, but her short-haired doppelganger and the other Qrow were just caught up feeling extremely awkward and uncomfortable, like they didn't belong anywhere near this. The kind of unpleasant things a portal semblance made it conveniently easy to avoid, but well...in this case the only portals she could make were to the people standing here. What's more, the former maiden couldn't bring herself to do it, even if there was another option.

Unfortunately for Yang her faculties still hadn't recovered enough to counteract that tackle, so unlike last time Ruby tried to grapple with the terror that was Yang Xiao Long in close quarters she came out on top with Yang's arms pinned to the side, and Yang let out all of her breath in a few laughs as she gave Ruby a fond smirk.

"Oh yea, totally what I was doing. Running away from the three birds with two portals and the living anime wind effect that is my sister."

Then she flexed her arms with the vaguest of efforts and freed herself almost immediately, because it had been like four minutes top and she was still supercharged from getting wailed on by two of the strongest bruisers on Remnant, and immediately reversed the hug with a snuggle. "BUT ITS SO GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN SIS ITS FELT LIKE MONTHS!"

 

[Gus Gungus]

Crap, he was drunk! He totally thought she already knew that! Just how the hell long had it been since he'd seen Yang?? And who was it who kept following him around into bars and stuff harassing him about it over and over???

...

There were way too many people hovering around now who looked alike.

He taught about joining in on the family reunited cuddle stuff, but a quick sniff of his collar told him maybe it wasn't the most stellar idea. He always saw himself more as the reluctantly cool uncle, anyway.

"Ookaaaaaay. Well, firecracker, eyes on the prize, huh? If there's anyone who can take care of herself it's that chick, plus there's a whole mess of problems and a slightly less nuts Weiss waiting for ya back home. Now that the whole gang's here, there's a tavern owner on the outskirts of town I helped out with a worm problem when I first got here. Guy agreed to dispense payment in the form of room and board for a... way bigger group than I was honestly expecting." He muttered, running a quick headcount between the rooftop and alley.

"So be ready to double up on rooms. Place's called Obsidian. I'll go make sure everything's set, then we can regroup there and figure out next steps."

And lo did he fly away before he did or said anything else dicey.

​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Ruby might've been one Penny's best friend, but Cinder had been the others, and not once had she not returned a hug with a concerning amount of fervor, until now. This time, her arms stayed limp at her sides, and she even tried to back step a way slightly. "No... You all aren't listening, why are we just accepting all of this? Weiss has lied to us before-~"

"So has the general"

Whatever Watts had been doing on his hardlight screens was apparently finished, and he stepped up beside the pair and put an armored hand on Cinder's shoulder, giving a quick nod to where a faint glow had started coming from The Dragon. As she walked off to ensure they didn't all die while Xiao Long and the former Ozpinite were busy with their little soap opera episode, Watts focused on Penny, his face inscrutable behind the visor. "The same lies, in fact."


"That... that was different!" Penny tried to say, but before she could try to com up with a reason why, Watts shook his head

"Don't take my word for it-" Another screen flickered into existence next to him, and he pressed a few buttons before swiping it in Penny's direction. "-See for yourself. The last five minutes from the office's cameras."

Ironwood said nothing.

Just kept his eyes on the horizon, and the look in them spoke volumes.

In his mind it was worth any price.





Those that stepped through the portal emerged to the wondrous, majestic sight of Vacuo, or more specifically Qrow passed out in an alley in Vacuo. Time differences and all.

"Miss Rose, Miss Xiao Long. A word."

Weiss was too preoccupied at this point to notice when Ironwood lightly cleared his throat, motioning for the siblings from the other Remnant to stay as the rest of the room started to file out. He didn't turn around until everyone who was going to leave was on the other side of the portal, leaving only the sisters and the one or two stragglers who might've had the gut instinct to stay and observe, if that; though he made sure Raven wasn't one of them, the knowledge that what he had to say wasn't for the ears of a Salem associate clearly imparted via a stare.

The councilwoman had taken to completely ignoring the rest of the room as they made preparations to leave and Cinder spent a really long time texting someone, eyes glued to the screens and the tip of her ponytail in her mouth as she chewed it in idle apprehension. She didn't even know over what. Suspicious by nature, Weiss had spent more time than she could count watching these very prisoner feeds, and right now they just looked... off. She was so caught up trying to figure out why that Ironwood's request only struck her as strange a good ten seconds after it should have, and her eyes narrowed sharply as she started to turn in her chair—

BANG

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—Too late to do anything about the barrel of the gun she felt pressed against her head, or the gravity dust round it jettisoned straight into it to knock her from her chair.

Her aura shimmered, but held; his gun's bullets high caliber enough to rattle her average protective layer at such a close range. The second, third and fourth rounds he unloaded into her torso were enough to ensure it disintegrated completely, vanishing along with the glyphs that were only just starting to form as Weiss sputtered and tried to say something with wide eyes, a task made more difficult by the boot that had slammed into her lower back to drive the air from her lungs and keep her pinned there.

The entire thing happened in about two seconds, so sudden and unexpected it was over by the time any onlookers even processed what was going on. Ironwood ignored her struggling other than to level the barrel at her head again, and his eyes were deathly calm as he lifted them to regard Ruby and Yang.

In place of any sort of explanation, he offered only the following.

"The relics."

The hammer was thumbed back.

"Or the next one goes in her head."

Spoiler

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It wasn't quite arresting Neo, but at the very least there was a lot to unpack when the elevator dinged and Gwen stepped out. Ex-general Ironwood pinning an auraless Weiss to the floor with a gun to her head being chief among them, though the maiden had stopped obeying the kneejerk reaction to flail in favor of trying to catch her breath with wide, moderately horrified eyes, uncharacteristically and utterly speechless.

View attachment 816511

"...Excuse me?????????"

"I'm sorry it came to this, Weiss. You convinced me you were the best option for Atlas's future, and I believed you. I don't know what happened in the time since, but it's plain to see that's no longer the case."

Her face dropped, some form of comprehension appearing to dawn as a horrific screech of warping metal came from the open elevator.

"And unfortunately, I've been given a better one."

She stopped struggling entirely to slump limply with a quiet, rueful laugh, honestly a bit delirious from such an utter blindside.

"...Am I that bad?"

"Eh. Don't beat yourself up too much, ice queen. Turns out I just have quite the way with men."

The newest voice to make itself known technically wasn't actually new, its owner dropping down through the gash ripped in the elevator roof to confidently saunter out and lean up against the doors, keeping them open for the first of five figures to drop down behind her. Atlas's killer general stood up from his landing crouch with a typical look of cold, featureless rage, swords in hand and robotic eye pulsing as it scanned those present in the room.

Yang threw her longer-haired counterpart a cheery wink, curling a lock of her own around one finger in ditzy fashion as she finished in an elated, screechy cackle.

"Even tin ones! Pahahahahaha!~"​

"..."

"This has always been James." Watts continued after the playback stopped. "Always so sure his version of right was the only right. A narrowminded, frustating-

*Sniff*

Watts' tirade of frustrations against his former headmaster stopped short at the noise. He'd always held miss Polendina in high esteem. Much like his partner, she had a refreshingly honest viewpoint of the world, and she didn't even have to be an idiot to achieve it. To say nothing of her absolutely fascinating internal workings and design. On top of that, every time she had taken the field, her abilities had been momentous, eminently impressive, and with a resolve and morale to match. Even against a maiden, with the threat of a second, she'd been unwavering. It was easy to assume such a person was invincible.

It was also much harder to tell when a robotic lifeform was trying to cry. No tear ducts and such. But as emotionally dense as Watts could be at times, he'd been around enough sadness the last few months to be able to pick it up even without the excess moisture. He cleared his throat and moved a hand up to grip Penny's shoulder with a whir of servos.

"...Which is to say, sometimes someone who's trying to do right is wrong, and they have to be stopped."

"...Then what am I supposed to do?"

"Whatever you think is right. And just hope that it is. And right now, the best answer to that probably lies through that portal."

"...But... the general, my father-"

"Have the staunchest ally they could ever have in the other you. I think your friends from the other Remnant could use that help just as much."

The air of misery was still clear on her face, but she eventually gave a slow nod and turned for the portal. Weiss had made her return by then, and the android hesitated next to her before she passed. "Miss Schnee..."

Despite the harrowed look her eyes, she gave a short nod.

"Thank you, for helping my friends and I. And I am sorry for being so loud."

And with that she stepped through to the other side, only for Weiss to hear the sound of throat clearing from behind her as Watts interrupted her master plan being set into motion right after Penny had.

"Miss Schnee. Two things; Assuming I'm not fired, you can consider this my two weeks notice; there's a moderately advanced AI at my home terminal who should perform to minimum expecations before it wipes my parent's server. The other-"

The Penny they were going to be traveling with had all the memories of both; in essence, she was just as much his friend as the other. But the other was, at the end of the day, the one that had actually earned those memories. More to the point, she was the only one that would be left here if and when those of Remnant 1 finally made it home.

"-Miss Polendina already died once under you watch, as it were. Her and her father have suffered enough, I'd say. Consider looping them into your plan if it would help that from happening again. Or keep them as far out of the way as possibleif it wouldn't. I'd say you owe them that much."

He flickered a light smile under his visor before he stepped through as well, the last of Salem's motley crew to leave Atlas

 

[Gus Gungus]

The air of misery was still clear on her face, but she eventually gave a slow nod and turned for the portal. Weiss had made her return by then, and the android hesitated next to her before she passed. "Miss Schnee..."

Despite the harrowed look her eyes, she gave a short nod.

"Thank you, for helping my friends and I. And I am sorry for being so loud."

Weiss didn't look up when the android offered her farewell, initially; continuing the uncharacteristic silence she had lapsed into for the duration of the others' efforts to help the poor girl digest what had happened with the general. There were a variety of potential reasons why that might have been so, enough that it was impossible to discern the truth through the councilwoman's cold resolve. Maybe she was simply hyperfocused, compartmentalizing as only someone of her perennial stress level could. Maybe it was the fact that Ironwood, for as strained and fraught with tension as their relationship had become, had been a man who offered her guidance and encouragement through some of her worst years, and the fact that he had turned on her so completely and viciously had struck a heavy blow against the already fractured imperviousness she touted with such surety.

Maybe it was the reason why. Maybe it was the terrible mistake and failure on her part that had managed to shatter whatever shaky trust James held in her that had her biting her tongue; Maybe that whole side of it was something she just didn't have the capacity to face right now. Not when there was still work to be done.

Or maybe she just hated today. Maybe today was just a really, really bad day, one of her worst, and as warming a dalliance as Yang had been she just wanted it to be over, and if she stopped to fully contemplate it all now she was just going to run back through the portal into those arms and never leave them. And then she wouldn't just be awful; worse. She'd be pointless. She really would become her father.

"Penny."

Her voice sounded far away when it did finally reach the android, barely a second before she stepped through the portal. Not far away in the physical sense; just... every other one. It was a remarkably calm voice, in light of the fact that just about every biological sensor Penny had was telling her the maiden had an 86.6% probability of experiencing severe heart troubles by the time she reached middle age based solely off the day's stress alone. Not even in the general had she seen someone whose outward presentation was so utterly divorced from what was happening inside, and it was remarkable that only a hint of pain came through in the smile she finally glanced up to flash her, wan but reassuring.

"You were worth every lien."

"Miss Schnee. Two things; Assuming I'm not fired, you can consider this my two weeks notice; there's a moderately advanced AI at my home terminal who should perform to minimum expecations before it wipes my parent's server. The other-"

The Penny they were going to be traveling with had all the memories of both; in essence, she was just as much his friend as the other. But the other was, at the end of the day, the one that had actually earned those memories. More to the point, she was the only one that would be left here if and when those of Remnant 1 finally made it home.

"-Miss Polendina already died once under you watch, as it were. Her and her father have suffered enough, I'd say. Consider looping them into your plan if it would help that from happening again. Or keep them as far out of the way as possibleif it wouldn't. I'd say you owe them that much."

He flickered a light smile under his visor before he stepped through as well, the last of Salem's motley crew to leave Atlas

This boy, on the other hand, she simply had no time for. He reminded Weiss of those summer interns her labs occasionally hired who liked to assume she was an airheaded source of funding who knew nothing about the products she backed. That was precisely what Watts was doing now, in her mind. Telling her things she already knew.

"Mister Watts, make demands of me again and I'll ensure the most well-paid position your parents can obtain for the remainder of their lives is repairing used car engines at the scrapyard. Given recent developments, you may be thinking I'm in no position to make good on any such threats; that would be your prerogative. And mistake."

Weiss couldn't help but feel everyone in the room had become the tiniest bit too comfortable around her. Yang's doing, quite frankly. Apparently she had work to do to make sure she was treated with the proper gravitas on the off chance she ever met any of them again, and to remind them that Weiss Schnee was a name that was as feared in certain circles of Atlas as it was revered.

She never gave him a second of eye contact, as she had Penny; she appeared far too focused on what she was doing at this stage. But as with her, just as he was primed to step through the portal he heard a quiet noise from behind; little more than a soft, prim tinkle of a laugh, concealed behind closed lips.

"Goodness, that just reminded me. Did you know you were Merlot's favorite student?"

However he might've taken that, she said nothing further.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Unfortunately for Yang her faculties still hadn't recovered enough to counteract that tackle, so unlike last time Ruby tried to grapple with the terror that was Yang Xiao Long in close quarters she came out on top with Yang's arms pinned to the side, and Yang let out all of her breath in a few laughs as she gave Ruby a fond smirk.

"Oh yea, totally what I was doing. Running away from the three birds with two portals and the living anime wind effect that is my sister."

Then she flexed her arms with the vaguest of efforts and freed herself almost immediately, because it had been like four minutes top and she was still supercharged from getting wailed on by two of the strongest bruisers on Remnant, and immediately reversed the hug with a snuggle. "BUT ITS SO GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN SIS ITS FELT LIKE MONTHS!"

“I KNOW, RIGHT!? This world’s sense of time might just be as crazy as so much of the other stuff in it!!!” She didn’t even care a bit about how the hug was reversed, content on just appreciating it in full.​

"Ookaaaaaay. Well, firecracker, eyes on the prize, huh? If there's anyone who can take care of herself it's that chick, plus there's a whole mess of problems and a slightly less nuts Weiss waiting for ya back home. Now that the whole gang's here, there's a tavern owner on the outskirts of town I helped out with a worm problem when I first got here. Guy agreed to dispense payment in the form of room and board for a... way bigger group than I was honestly expecting." He muttered, running a quick headcount between the rooftop and alley.

"So be ready to double up on rooms. Place's called Obsidian. I'll go make sure everything's set, then we can regroup there and figure out next steps."

And lo did he fly away before he did or said anything else dicey.

“...Couldn’t have helped out a hotel owner or something, instead...?” Raven grumbled but shrugged. “To the tavern then?” She immediately started to move in the indicated direction without waiting for the others’ to even confirm.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Mister Watts, make demands of me again and I'll ensure the most well-paid position your parents can obtain for the remainder of their lives is repairing used car engines at the scrapyard. Given recent developments, you may be thinking I'm in no position to make good on any such threats; that would be your prerogative. And mistake."

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

This boy, on the other hand, she simply had no time for. He reminded Weiss of those summer interns her labs occasionally hired who liked to assume she was an airheaded source of funding who knew nothing about the products she backed. That was precisely what Watts was doing now, in her mind. Telling her things she already knew.

"Mister Watts, make demands of me again and I'll ensure the most well-paid position your parents can obtain for the remainder of their lives is repairing used car engines at the scrapyard. Given recent developments, you may be thinking I'm in no position to make good on any such threats; that would be your prerogative. And mistake."

Weiss couldn't help but feel everyone in the room had become the tiniest bit too comfortable around her. Yang's doing, quite frankly. Apparently she had work to do to make sure she was treated with the proper gravitas on the off chance she ever met any of them again, and to remind them that Weiss Schnee was a name that was as feared in certain circles of Atlas as it was revered.

She never gave him a second of eye contact, as she had Penny; she appeared far too focused on what she was doing at this stage. But as with her, just as he was primed to step through the portal he heard a quiet noise from behind; little more than a soft, prim tinkle of a laugh, concealed behind closed lips.

"Goodness, that just reminded me. Did you know you were Merlot's favorite student?"

However he might've taken that, she said nothing further

"...Unfortunately" came his terse reply. He gave her a stiff nod and started for the portal with the clank of metallic boots before he slowed and briefly thought over the ramifications of Weiss' words

He turned back towards her "I'd like to demand five lien-"

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

Watts entered Vacuo with his backside landing in the same heap nora had been laid on with a crash of metal against trash and concrete courtesy of a maiden blast

 

[Gus Gungus]

"...Unfortunately" came his terse reply. He gave her a stiff nod and started for the portal with the clank of metallic boots before he slowed and briefly thought over the ramifications of Weiss' words

He turned back towards her "I'd like to demand five lien-"

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

Watts entered Vacuo with his backside landing in the same heap nora had been laid on with a crash of metal against trash and concrete courtesy of a maiden blast

A fifty lien bill riding an unnatural air current fluttered to the ground at his feet. As if she'd be caught dead carrying fives.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Watts entered Vacuo with his backside landing in the same heap nora had been laid on with a crash of metal against trash and concrete courtesy of a maiden blast

 

[MyrtenRose]

"C-Councilwoman Schnee." Gwen called out to inform. "Good news and bad news. As you requested, the whole building's been sealed off. Might as well be airtight. That, and the androids have been activated. They're up and about, should bring the chaos you need to get to...wherever you have planned. No sign of--" She grunted just then, one hand moving from typing to rest against her torso. God, the pain... "-no sign of James." She forced herself onward. "But Carnelian? He's below and getting troops up to start blasting through the ice. Haven't seen the redhead again yet, either. Unsure if that is good or bad." There was another pained grunt, and now bore witness to her vision beginning to darken, black shadows emerging at the edges of her sight and gradually consuming more. The focus that kept her going, iron will to push through the pain of being struck full force by a metal man just about run its limit. "But I know which this is." The one hand that had been typing slipped away.

"Clocking out here, b-boss." She managed to mutter before the darkness took her vision completely and she fell forwards, slumping over the desk as she fainted into unconsciousness, able to fight it no longer. Helios could only hope whatever plan Weiss Schnee had concocted proved to be good enough to succeed.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"Gwendolyn." Weiss returned politely, if with a vague hint of an icy strain. She reminded herself to check the scarring on her knee if she ever had a single moment to herself again. "I have a list of instructions."

Presuming said instructions were followed, wherever Blake was coordinating her clones' assault from—Be it the same classroom or another location on-site—she heard the security mechanisms engage a split second before thick steel barriers shuttered down over the walls and exits, a layer of hardlight that seemed to glow brighter than the norm fizzling to life over them.

With everything that had happened, how close she seemed to have veered to a complete breaking point, it would've been easy to assume that she was done; that her reign was at an end, that she was out of cards to play. That Weiss Schnee didn't have a plan.


That would've been a mistake.

Blake had not been idle.

When the dome of ice had sprung into existence, barely visible through the window of the classroom, she'd sneered. If anything, it proved once more that rushing to her revenge was only going to ensure she never got it.

She really was going to have to thank the Dragon after all of this. But there was work to do first. Weiss was an obstacle she could not overcome as she was, and so only one goal mattered; Protecting the staff until her lord arrived. The first step was simple; three shadowy forms swirled into more substantial forms around her, black mist that solidified into bone then muscle then skin then cloth and steel. She strode over to the desk nearby and laid her torso flat across it, as two of the other forms followed silently to take position behind her and grip her arms and shoulders to pin her in place, while the third ghosted around to the other side of the desk and pulled out one of the smaller, sharper knives that the Hand kept on her person as Blake dropped her aura.



Anything for the dream; Anything for that brighter future.

The only reaction she had as the blade pierced her neck was a hiss of pain, the slight, involuntary twitches that were all bodily instinct held down by the other two clones as the maskless surgeon cut a thin, deep slice just beside the Hand's spine. She was not immune to pain; she weaponized it. The High leader had not dulled her sense to pain, she had opened it, guided Blake to the very edge of her limits and just past them, again and again until they existed no more. Pain was what it was always meant to be now; a tool, a warning system, a and a guide. Nothing was done to the weapon without it knowing where it had been scored and how best to retaliate.

a minute later, the faceless surgeon gently pulled out a chip buried deep within Blake's flesh, and began the motion to toss it aside before a silent command bade it stop. There was no hesitation; it immediately turned slit a hole in the back of Blake's robes, pressed the chip against the flesh beneath, and pierced the chip with its knife.

The lightning dust that ignited within blasted enough electricity through Blake that most would've died on the spot, the energy coursing through the three clones as well and forcing all three to stagger backwards before they fell to the ground and vanished into black mist.

The scar it left was barely visible atop the mess of lines and healed over burns that were already a pattern across the Hand's back. She sucked in a shuddering breath and slowly pushed herself back up to standing, planting the staff into the ground like a cane as she willed her aura back into existence and made her way out of the room, the shadows swirling around her and taking shape. This time, she spoke the command aloud.

"Slaughter anyone who gets in my way"

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

When the cameras found and stopped her, she was in a hallway. She knew the hallway, as well as she'd knew every hallway in this wretched bastion. The steel shutters were a known factor. The hardlight was a new one.

The squad of Atlesian soldiers that were strewn across the hall behind her was no longer one, the floor and walls of the school slick with blood as the last one tried to crawl away, only for a shadow boot to plant square against their neck before two gunshots echoed through the hall, and the only truly alive soul inside it was Blake. She took a moment of thought, rerunning through the blueprints and floorplans she'd spent dozens of hours pouring over and over again for every weakness they could find, for any and every way to get to Weiss' throat unnoticed.

A few shades that weren't inside the hall itself suddenly ceased their silent prowling and turned their heads towards some unknown objective before they slipped off.

But for now, that seemed to be it, the Hand continuing her calm, staff assisted stride towards one of the doors before she paused in front of it, in wait of something.

 

[Gus Gungus]

The tower was bedlam.

There was no other way to describe it. The scores of her own private guard Weiss had flooded the tower with were engaged in heated gunplay with the Atlesian shock troops Carnelian had deployed, but it was a fight they were ill-positioned to win; the guns-for-hire had been bored, complacent, unassuming when the state army had stormed the building with shoot-on-sight orders and a missive to apprehend Weiss Schnee dead or alive. Another factor was their lack of an overarching commanding figure to coordinate their tactics the way Carnelian—and, to the relief of many, a man they had never stopped acknowledging as general in Ironwood—had been for their opposition, at least until a certain colonel patched himself into their radio feed.

That guidance had helped them mobilize some sort of resistance, but it wasn't enough. Their enemy were too many, too dogged, too unrelenting. They were on the cusp of being overwhelmed when the tower's security protocols engaged and the AK-200s dropped, and many had taken that moment to make peace with a world where they didn't see sunrise. Schnee money only got you the best, after all.

So when those same androids stood, cocked their rifles, and promptly opened fire on their own military instead, many were unsure of who to thank. Schnee? Ector? God, maybe?

The truth was one a battered, bleeding James Ironwood knew instantly as he strode through the halls with purpose, as deeply acquainted with the academy's layout through experience as Blake was through research. He used that experience to travel from camera blindspot to blindspot, and gritted his teeth as he was forced to witness the cutting-edge android model he co-opted open fire on his own men.

She should've stayed down.

Unbeknownst to him, for a time at least, she did. And when she awoke, some time later on board a fleet of Mantas bound for a presumable haven with Ector, his second, and his personal unit, it was to the sight of a faint, blueish glow still permeating her aura that didn't match any known energy signature she could trace, along with a sobering realization.

Her injuries were all completely healed. As if by magic.

---

One occupant of the tower who did not seem overly perturbed by the tornado of violence, chaos and disarray it had descended into was a man who was glimpsed walking the halls so infrequently he was regarded as something of an urban legend by many of the guardsmen who patrolled them. Ever since councilwoman Schnee had repurposed the Academy's technical lab for his use and imbursed Merlot with a number of private grants, the sum of which was unknown to all save the two of them, the doctor had lived beneath the tower practically day and night. He slept in his lab. He washed in his lab. When he required fresh air to retain optimum function he activated the ventilation subsystems in his lab, and when he needed to relieve himself... heh.

He went to the third floor, since the lavatory in his lab was broken. :|

The most any guards tended to see of him were the deliveries. Sealed containment pods, some small, some large, some massive, flown in from outside the kingdom and wheeled down to his lair via the cargo elevator by teams of four. None of them were ever told what was inside, and the doctor was never forthcoming when he answered their buzz to impatiently wave it in, plainly and skittishly excited. But they had all noticed, and they all left those shifts with the same question playing on their minds.

Just why was delivery duty a four-man job?

And why were those four men always armed to the teeth?

What was inside those crates?



They called him mad.

Salem, Ironwood, the sanctimonious twits and small minds who had the arrogance to declare themselves their kingdom's shepherds, their means of safeguarding them effete and archaic. He went to all of them. ALL of them with his hypotheses, his theories, his volumes and volumes of research.

And they dismissed him. At first, before the accusations, because there was 'nothing conclusive'; because mankind had delved into this field of grimm study countless times and yielded nothing, turned their attention to other, more immediately promising fields such as aura and dust development to fend off the encroaching darkness.

And lo did their great species of hunters and thinkers plateau. Cycle after cycle, locked in an endless war with nature's perfect killers. Every year countless villages fell to the Grimm. Expansion efforts innumerable were attacked, ravaged and abandoned to the elements, dusty tombs that stood as monuments to nothing but unabashed failure. Scores of huntsmen and huntresses emerged, fought, and then died in the pursuit of their neverending struggle, one every statistic and prediction suggested they were destined to lose.

And yet he was the mad one.

He became so unrelenting in his pitches, his own impromptu, poorly funded field tests so unpredictable and dangerous, that soon the implication that he was mad was the only excuse they needed to dismiss him. By the gods, could they not see? That the only true victory against mankind's natural predator lay not through bloody combat, but in synthesis? That he was the only sane voice in sight?

But they didn't see. His persistence cost him everything; his reputation, his colleagues, his career. That was his role, it appeared. The madman. The outcast. Had it been Polendina waddling his rotund self back and forth in front of a starry-eyed Ironwood he'd have been throwing research grants at him before he could speak so much as a word. For the unhinged, unsavory, offputting Doctor Merlot? Nobody ever so much as tried to see.

Until Weiss Schnee.

She bore no love for the traditions and structures of the kingdoms. She saw the ways in which they stood in the path of true progress, as he did. Unlike the general, she was open to new ways of thinking. New ideas. She heard him out.

And she funded him.

Then she kept doing so. It was impossible, really. Never in all his years had he been privy to the use of such a profoundly bottomless piggybank. If there was a particular genus of Grimm he wished to study, she acquired it for him. Were there a piece of technology in Atlas he didn't have access to, with barely so much as a word he'd be holding it in his hands. All things considered, there were worse things than having the backing of the woman responsible for most of the kingdom's GDP. A madman might've buckled; a madman might have been unable to provide returns satisfactory for the investment.

But he was no madman.

He was a genius.

And someone was finally listening to him.

The professor whistled a jovial tune as he strolled through the corridors at an indulgent pace, under no particular pressure to reach his destination. The time had come to proceed to the next stage, and the councilwoman's pieces arrayed themselves against her.

He would not be one of them, and the reason why was very simple. Up until recently, there had only been one voice in all the kingdoms capable of exerting control over the creatures of Grimm.

Now, because of the breakthroughs the councilwoman had backed, there were two.

He walked, but behind him a veritable horde of nightmares teemed as they scampered, slithered, bounded and crawled across every surface of the corridor, more flesh visible than metal. The Grimm were hideous to a degree unrivalled even by their counterparts in the wild; they were mutants, deep green veins throbbing against their outer layer of flesh, so many growths, tumors and swellings strewn across their bodies some were virtually unrecognizable from the creatures they started off as.

He loved each and every one of them. They were his children, and stood as proof that the very nature of the war for humanity's future was about to change. Perhaps a new species name was in order. Merlonites? Merlotians?

He was going to have to work on that.

Blake had not been idle.

When the dome of ice had sprung into existence, barely visible through the window of the classroom, she'd sneered. If anything, it proved once more that rushing to her revenge was only going to ensure she never got it.

She really was going to have to thank the Dragon after all of this. But there was work to do first. Weiss was an obstacle she could not overcome as she was, and so only one goal mattered; Protecting the staff until her lord arrived. The first step was simple; three shadowy forms swirled into more substantial forms around her, black mist that solidified into bone then muscle then skin then cloth and steel. She strode over to the desk nearby and laid her torso flat across it, as two of the other forms followed silently to take position behind her and grip her arms and shoulders to pin her in place, while the third ghosted around to the other side of the desk and pulled out one of the smaller, sharper knives that the Hand kept on her person as Blake dropped her aura.



Anything for the dream; Anything for that brighter future.

The only reaction she had as the blade pierced her neck was a hiss of pain, the slight, involuntary twitches that were all bodily instinct held down by the other two clones as the maskless surgeon cut a thin, deep slice just beside the Hand's spine. She was not immune to pain; she weaponized it. The High leader had not dulled her sense to pain, she had opened it, guided Blake to the very edge of her limits and just past them, again and again until they existed no more. Pain was what it was always meant to be now; a tool, a warning system, a and a guide. Nothing was done to the weapon without it knowing where it had been scored and how best to retaliate.

a minute later, the faceless surgeon gently pulled out a chip buried deep within Blake's flesh, and began the motion to toss it aside before a silent command bade it stop. There was no hesitation; it immediately turned slit a hole in the back of Blake's robes, pressed the chip against the flesh beneath, and pierced the chip with its knife.

The lightning dust that ignited within blasted enough electricity through Blake that most would've died on the spot, the energy coursing through the three clones as well and forcing all three to stagger backwards before they fell to the ground and vanished into black mist.

The scar it left was barely visible atop the mess of lines and healed over burns that were already a pattern across the Hand's back. She sucked in a shuddering breath and slowly pushed herself back up to standing, planting the staff into the ground like a cane as she willed her aura back into existence and made her way out of the room, the shadows swirling around her and taking shape. This time, she spoke the command aloud.

"Slaughter anyone who gets in my way"

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

When the cameras found and stopped her, she was in a hallway. She knew the hallway, as well as she'd knew every hallway in this wretched bastion. The steel shutters were a known factor. The hardlight was a new one.

The squad of Atlesian soldiers that were strewn across the hall behind her was no longer one, the floor and walls of the school slick with blood as the last one tried to crawl away, only for a shadow boot to plant square against their neck before two gunshots echoed through the hall, and the only truly alive soul inside it was Blake. She took a moment of thought, rerunning through the blueprints and floorplans she'd spent dozens of hours pouring over and over again for every weakness they could find, for any and every way to get to Weiss' throat unnoticed.

A few shades that weren't inside the hall itself suddenly ceased their silent prowling and turned their heads towards some unknown objective before they slipped off.

But for now, that seemed to be it, the Hand continuing her calm, staff assisted stride towards one of the doors before she paused in front of it, in wait of something.

The minor inconveniencing rug pull when it was the door across the hall and behind Blake, rather than the one she was staring at, that unbolted and slid open was probably unintentional. Probably.

"Hello."

It was something of a tame way to introduce herself to a room so fraught with tension by the councilwoman's standards, and lacked the venom and seething hatred one might expect of her when faced with the woman who took her sister away. Yet if Blake turned, there she stood. Tired, ragged, and even more drained of color than usual, save for the darkening crimson patch on her tights from Ironwood's bullet; Weiss Schnee had certainly seen better days, but it was hard to deny she carried a certain grace and elegance about herself even now, legs crossed in a semi-pirouette and leaned up against the doorframe on her shoulder in a manner that recalled their last face-to-face conversation as tentative 'allies' on board her flagship. Even with months of trauma, warfare, and harrowing mind games between now and then, Weiss Schnee still carried an aura, presentable and ladylike to a fault.

Less ladylike was the way she threw her head back, hoisted up the wine bottle she was gripping by its neck and straight up chugged its contents for five seconds that seemed to stretch out longer. Whatever else anyone may have thought of her, Weiss drank too much too regularly to be any kind of a lightweight, and had no reaction when the rim left her mouth save to huff softly and dab around her lips with her sleeve.

"Enjoying yourself, I see." She remarked noncommittally, giving the mountain of corpses behind Blake a raised eyebrow as the door's field fizzled out and she stepped into the hall. Quick as lightning dust, her hand was up—

—To hold up a finger. Not even the one Blake may have been expecting; just the pointer, bidding the faunus stay her hand for at least a moment as she sighed and leaned back on the door the second it slid shut, far more of an inebriated wobble to her gait than frankly seemed appropriate for what the Hand saw as a fated confrontation with an arch nemesis.

"I have something to say. Shocking, I know."

Once she was certain the ceiling lights weren't spinning, she cleared her throat and pushed herself upright, using the cool metal on her back both to steady herself and bring her back to reality. Her next words were hurried, as if she were rushing to get ahead of anything Blake said or did.

"—You aren't interested, you hate me, you'll kill me, more bodies for the body stack etcetera etcetera, believe me you've made your position clear. I am keenly aware of how you think this has to go, Blake, but stalling only benefits you here. So before anything else, I thought maybe..."

She slowly held the bottle out, and equally slowly dangled it in a manner that was probably supposed to be enticing. The thin smirk on her face was too fatigued to really register as anything else, but by the same token the note of self-conscious irony in it was too present to completely rule out, Weiss apparently fully aware of how absolutely, comprehensively and unfathomably absurd what she was proposing was.

Oh well. What was the harm in one last try?​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The tower was bedlam.

There was no other way to describe it. The scores of her own private guard Weiss had flooded the tower with were engaged in heated gunplay with the Atlesian shock troops Carnelian had deployed, but it was a fight they were ill-positioned to win; the guns-for-hire had been bored, complacent, unassuming when the state army had stormed the building with shoot-on-sight orders and a missive to apprehend Weiss Schnee dead or alive. Another factor was their lack of an overarching commanding figure to coordinate their tactics the way Carnelian—and, to the relief of many, a man they had never stopped acknowledging as general in Ironwood—had been for their opposition, at least until a certain colonel patched himself into their radio feed.

That guidance had helped them mobilize some sort of resistance, but it wasn't enough. Their enemy were too many, too dogged, too unrelenting. They were on the cusp of being overwhelmed when the tower's security protocols engaged and the AK-200s dropped, and many had taken that moment to make peace with a world where they didn't see sunrise. Schnee money only got you the best, after all.

So when those same androids stood, cocked their rifles, and promptly opened fire on their own military instead, many were unsure of who to thank. Schnee? Ector? God, maybe?

The truth was one a battered, bleeding James Ironwood knew instantly as he strode through the halls with purpose, as deeply acquainted with the academy's layout through experience as Blake was through research. He used that experience to travel from camera blindspot to blindspot, and gritted his teeth as he was forced to witness the cutting-edge android model he co-opted open fire on his own men.

She should've stayed down.

Unbeknownst to him, for a time at least, she did. And when she awoke, some time later on board a fleet of Mantas bound for a presumable haven with Ector, his second, and his personal unit, it was to the sight of a faint, blueish glow still permeating her aura that didn't match any known energy signature she could trace, along with a sobering realization.

Her injuries were all completely healed. As if by magic.

---

One occupant of the tower who did not seem overly perturbed by the tornado of violence, chaos and disarray it had descended into was a man who was glimpsed walking the halls so infrequently he was regarded as something of an urban legend by many of the guardsmen who patrolled them. Ever since councilwoman Schnee had repurposed the Academy's technical lab for his use and imbursed Merlot with a number of private grants, the sum of which was unknown to all save the two of them, the doctor had lived beneath the tower practically day and night. He slept in his lab. He washed in his lab. When he required fresh air to retain optimum function he activated the ventilation subsystems in his lab, and when he needed to relieve himself... heh.

He went to the third floor, since the lavatory in his lab was broken. :|

The most any guards tended to see of him were the deliveries. Sealed containment pods, some small, some large, some massive, flown in from outside the kingdom and wheeled down to his lair via the cargo elevator by teams of four. None of them were ever told what was inside, and the doctor was never forthcoming when he answered their buzz to impatiently wave it in, plainly and skittishly excited. But they had all noticed, and they all left those shifts with the same question playing on their minds.

Just why was delivery duty a four-man job?

And why were those four men always armed to the teeth?

What was inside those crates?



They called him mad.

Salem, Ironwood, the sanctimonious twits and small minds who had the arrogance to declare themselves their kingdom's shepherds, their means of safeguarding them effete and archaic. He went to all of them. ALL of them with his hypotheses, his theories, his volumes and volumes of research.

And they dismissed him. At first, before the accusations, because there was 'nothing conclusive'; because mankind had delved into this field of grimm study countless times and yielded nothing, turned their attention to other, more immediately promising fields such as aura and dust development to fend off the encroaching darkness.

And lo did their great species of hunters and thinkers plateau. Cycle after cycle, locked in an endless war with nature's perfect killers. Every year countless villages fell to the Grimm. Expansion efforts innumerable were attacked, ravaged and abandoned to the elements, dusty tombs that stood as monuments to nothing but unabashed failure. Scores of huntsmen and huntresses emerged, fought, and then died in the pursuit of their neverending struggle, one every statistic and prediction suggested they were destined to lose.

And yet he was the mad one.

He became so unrelenting in his pitches, his own impromptu, poorly funded field tests so unpredictable and dangerous, that soon the implication that he was mad was the only excuse they needed to dismiss him. By the gods, could they not see? That the only true victory against mankind's natural predator lay not through bloody combat, but in synthesis? That he was the only sane voice in sight?

But they didn't see. His persistence cost him everything; his reputation, his colleagues, his career. That was his role, it appeared. The madman. The outcast. Had it been Polendina waddling his rotund self back and forth in front of a starry-eyed Ironwood he'd have been throwing research grants at him before he could speak so much as a word. For the unhinged, unsavory, offputting Doctor Merlot? Nobody ever so much as tried to see.

Until Weiss Schnee.

She bore no love for the traditions and structures of the kingdoms. She saw the ways in which they stood in the path of true progress, as he did. Unlike the general, she was open to new ways of thinking. New ideas. She heard him out.

And she funded him.

Then she kept doing so. It was impossible, really. Never in all his years had he been privy to the use of such a profoundly bottomless piggybank. If there was a particular genus of Grimm he wished to study, she acquired it for him. Were there a piece of technology in Atlas he didn't have access to, with barely so much as a word he'd be holding it in his hands. All things considered, there were worse things than having the backing of the woman responsible for most of the kingdom's GDP. A madman might've buckled; a madman might have been unable to provide returns satisfactory for the investment.

But he was no madman.

He was a genius.

And someone was finally listening to him.

The professor whistled a jovial tune as he strolled through the corridors at an indulgent pace, under no particular pressure to reach his destination. The time had come to proceed to the next stage, and the councilwoman's pieces arrayed themselves against her.

He would not be one of them, and the reason why was very simple. Up until recently, there had only been one voice in all the kingdoms capable of exerting control over the creatures of Grimm.

Now, because of the breakthroughs the councilwoman had backed, there were two.

He walked, but behind him a veritable horde of nightmares teemed as they scampered, slithered, bounded and crawled across every surface of the corridor, more flesh visible than metal. The Grimm were hideous to a degree unrivalled even by their counterparts in the wild; they were mutants, deep green veins throbbing against their outer layer of flesh, so many growths, tumors and swellings strewn across their bodies some were virtually unrecognizable from the creatures they started off as.

He loved each and every one of them. They were his children, and stood as proof that the very nature of the war for humanity's future was about to change. Perhaps a new species name was in order. Merlonites? Merlotians?

He was going to have to work on that.





The minor inconveniencing rug pull when it was the door across the hall and behind Blake, rather than the one she was staring at, that unbolted and slid open was probably unintentional. Probably.

"Hello."

It was something of a tame way to introduce herself to a room so fraught with tension by the councilwoman's standards, and lacked the venom and seething hatred one might expect of her when faced with the woman who took her sister away. Yet if Blake turned, there she stood. Tired, ragged, and even more drained of color than usual, save for the darkening crimson patch on her tights from Ironwood's bullet; Weiss Schnee had certainly seen better days, but it was hard to deny she carried a certain grace and elegance about herself even now, legs crossed in a semi-pirouette and leaned up against the doorframe on her shoulder in a manner that recalled their last face-to-face conversation as tentative 'allies' on board her flagship. Even with months of trauma, warfare, and harrowing mind games between now and then, Weiss Schnee still carried an aura, presentable and ladylike to a fault.

Less ladylike was the way she threw her head back, hoisted up the wine bottle she was gripping by its neck and straight up chugged its contents for five seconds that seemed to stretch out longer. Whatever else anyone may have thought of her, Weiss drank too much too regularly to be any kind of a lightweight, and had no reaction when the rim left her mouth save to huff softly and dab around her lips with her sleeve.

"Enjoying yourself, I see." She remarked noncommittally, giving the mountain of corpses behind Blake a raised eyebrow as the door's field fizzled out and she stepped into the hall. Quick as lightning dust, her hand was up—

—To hold up a finger. Not even the one Blake may have been expecting; just the pointer, bidding the faunus stay her hand for at least a moment as she sighed and leaned back on the door the second it slid shut, far more of an inebriated wobble to her gait than frankly seemed appropriate for what the Hand saw as a fated confrontation with an arch nemesis.

"I have something to say. Shocking, I know."

Once she was certain the ceiling lights weren't spinning, she cleared her throat and pushed herself upright, using the cool metal on her back both to steady herself and bring her back to reality. Her next words were hurried, as if she were rushing to get ahead of anything Blake said or did.

"—You aren't interested, you hate me, you'll kill me, more bodies for the body stack etcetera etcetera, believe me you've made your position clear. I am keenly aware of how you think this has to go, Blake, but stalling only benefits you here. So before anything else, I thought maybe..."

She slowly held the bottle out, and equally slowly dangled it in a manner that was probably supposed to be enticing. The thin smirk on her face was too fatigued to really register as anything else, but by the same token the note of self-conscious irony in it was too present to completely rule out, Weiss apparently fully aware of how absolutely, comprehensively and unfathomably absurd what she was proposing was.

Oh well. What was the harm in one last try?​

The shades that had survived the skirmish all snapped their heads up towards the sound of the door opening, weapons whirling to the ready in blade or gun form depending on how far they were, but they all froze in place before they made it any farther than that. As the first person to see them not in the throes of combat, it was immediately apparent to Weiss that there was more wrong with whatever these beings were than the lack of anything behind those masks. Their breathing came a bit too fast, more akin to a bird than a person's, and tiny shivers and flicks seemed to pass involuntarily through their bodies. Where one's robes and armor had been torn up in the last fight, a vicious gash that would've had a real person blacked out from sensory overload across a huge chunk of its shoulder, she could see that large swaths of anatomy had been entirely skipped over in its creation.

Life with shortcuts. They lived and breathed and fought and died and nothing else.

it made it easy to pick out where the real Blake was, even if she hadn't been holding the staff in her hands. She didn't turn away from the door at first, or even seem to register that Weiss was speaking to her. Just sat and waited. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, she finally put raised a shaky, weak hand to the side of her mask and quietly whispered something into it, before she turned around to face Weiss.

She looked like a corpse.

Her own robes still bore the scorch marks of her clash with Ector and Weiss herself, the uniform more armored steel than cloth at this point, the only thing keeping it any sort of modest the bandaging that wound across her form. Her mask was still missing an entire chunk, the side of her head still covered in scoremarks from the shrapnel, and a torn bit of Atlesian uniform was wrapped around her neck like a child's attempt at a ribbon, stained deep crimson. Her hair was matted underneath both ears with more dark liquid, a bit of it dripping to the ground at her feet as she still gripped the ancient artifact, still let its energies comingle with her body and soul. It would've been easy to look at her and write her off as a victim of her own hubris; someone who'd pushed herself too far and simply hadn't realized she was supposed to keel over and die hours ago.

Except for the eyes. The eyes were far too clear, too sharp, to belong to a dead woman walking. Weiss could see straight into Blake's soul through them, and there wasn't a piece of herself Blake felt the need to hide in it. The hope, the rage, the grief that threatened to subsume them both, and the hatred that coated it all as those eyes studied every breath and shift in Weiss' form, drinking it in with the completeness that could only belong to eyes that loathed or loved as they sought the truth of how wounded or unsteady that body really was, how soft or how violent the thoughts behind those icy orbs lurked. The tone of her voice carried it all when she finally answered

"Why?"

She believed that Weiss would do anything close to stalling without it benefiting her as much as she believed she'd spent one second on the wrong path. But this might've been the last time she'd see Weiss still able to form a coherent thought, before one of them was a corpse or worse. Before Weiss could misconstrue that as a response to her own question, she added

"Why did you kill her, and not me?"

 

[MyrtenRose]

Unbeknownst to him, for a time at least, she did. And when she awoke, some time later on board a fleet of Mantas bound for a presumable haven with Ector, his second, and his personal unit, it was to the sight of a faint, blueish glow still permeating her aura that didn't match any known energy signature she could trace, along with a sobering realization.

Her injuries were all completely healed. As if by magic.

As reawakenings went, this one set the bar for the most unique by far. No groggy stirring atop a pile of papers after a long night in the lab, or in bed after a hazy night celebrating a victory the best way she knew how, nothing like that. No feeling of warm sheets to tell her she woke up comfy, just the cold hard steel and not exactly gentle shaking of a Manta in motion to wake her...and yet, she felt...good. Better than good and far more than she should have felt, knowing her condition when she had passed out. He'd shattered her ribs like it was breaking a toothpick. Bone gave way to the metal and it stung like an absolute son of a bitch, but she fought through it to...to do her duty. For as long as she was able.

But now? Now she didn't feel an ounce of that pain, of her ribs splintered apart and digging into places they should not have. None of it.

That was beyond any medical practice she knew of, especially given the amount of time that had passed, if the clock was to be trusted. What's more...her own aura, usually entirely navy blue, had a far lighter shade that spread throughout her darker aura. It had this energy to it too, like...like none she had seen before. Another thread that connected to the mystery that seemed to be hanging over her like a raincloud. Those things, relics they said. Why Carnelian would bust out the prisoners they had just captured for bombing the academy. Why Ironwood would be in league with him...and this Ozpin. She knew nothing but the name. However...

Her eyes settled on Ector. The colonel, or...well, likely ex-colonel by now...on more than one occasion he had been the councilwoman's confidant. Gwen rose up and strode over, yelling in no uncertain terms that after everything that she had been forced to do, everything she had to endure, that she was not going to be kept out of the loop for one single second longer. That she wished to know everything, or everything that Ector at least knew about. Fortunately, he was more obliging than Weiss had been, and the rest of the trip was spent from her perspective was spent being filled in.

It had to be the least entertaining information she had ever discovered.

She had sank into a seat once all was said and done, hardly registering the fact that they had landed. The Grimm, the creatures of darkness that lived only to destroy and consume, they...they were ruled. They took orders from a dark quasi-immortal figure. A man who came back with a new face and a new name whenever he died, if one was even strong enough to kill him in the first place. The relics that had the potential power to change the whole world, affect the lives of everyone on it, whether they knew it or not. The secretive group that clung to the shadows, doing all they could to safeguard the relics from behind closed doors. Salem, Glynda, Theodore, James, others...they did all that in secret. As well as protecting...the maidens. Four beings, gifted with incredible power that went beyond aura and semblances. That was what she surmised Weiss had done to her, as a maiden herself. But more than that, the four...the nature of them was just as important if not more so than the power they wielded. Each was a key to a vault spread across the kingdoms, hidden among the huntsman academies. Only they could allow the relics to be taken.

It was that which Ozpin desired above all else.

The same man that...that Weiss had worked for in the past. That whole battle back there, she...

Gwen had thought she was protecting a councilwoman from danger, from men who had lost it to side with criminals and terrorists. And in a way, she had been. But beyond that, she had been defending someone who had worked with those very same people herself. It...everything...was it all lies? Everything? Her world felt turned upside down by that piece of disturbing information. People she had respected, people she had idolized...they all had this other side to them, hidden behind the shiny veneer of Atlas manners and politics and fake smiles. Kept secrets, told lies, withheld information from the world. With cold logic, she could see why. All of this knowledge, it could very easily lead to panic. Messy panic that would serve to attract the grimm, which would only lead to even more panic and more monsters. But on the other end of that spectrum, it just...felt wrong.

She was silent for a long time, just sitting there even if or when all the others had departed the ship. Trying to process all of it, it wasn't easy. One of the smartest minds of her generation and she had never known any of this, hadn't even realized a clue about it. Still...no matter. Whether the approach that Salem, the other headmasters and the likes of Raven, Glynda, Tock had taken was the right one, that was not on her to say. It was the past. Now there was only the future to look towards, and that was something Gwen had always excelled at. She knew what was truly at stake now, had a target that stood out among all others and perhaps the hardest test she'd ever have to put her mind towards: how to end a nearly immortal foe. One that even a truly immortal being had never managed to accomplish.

Gwen finally exited the ship, making her way to the depths of Merlot's lab. Another very smart man, if...eccentric, and that was putting it mildly...but it did give her access to a lot of infrastructure that she could make full use of, given that she either already had been or was very soon about to be dishonorably discharged from the military she had given her life to. Imagining that so many of the soldiers, technicians, and robots she knew in there were going to see her as a traitor was not a pleasant thought. But there were still people she could hopefully trust, beyond just the ones already present here. Her old academy team, SHDW. Scarlett Luna, Dawn Vespera, Selene Wolfe...Team Shadow...those were good and fun times, though it had been a long while since she'd seen them. Longer for some, in particular. Their leader had grown disillusioned with and disgusted by a lot of the things about Atlas. Last Gwen had checked, she was still in Vacuo, in many ways the opposite of Atlas. But the others, they could still be around. There was only one way to be sure.

She could only hope that they were, that they were also agreeable and that they did not hold a grudge against her for the silence. This was likely to be a painful call. But no more painful than having one of your heroes break your ribs with a kick. Helios sighed, mentally readying herself before clicking and bringing the scroll up to her ear.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

The shades that had survived the skirmish all snapped their heads up towards the sound of the door opening, weapons whirling to the ready in blade or gun form depending on how far they were, but they all froze in place before they made it any farther than that. As the first person to see them not in the throes of combat, it was immediately apparent to Weiss that there was more wrong with whatever these beings were than the lack of anything behind those masks. Their breathing came a bit too fast, more akin to a bird than a person's, and tiny shivers and flicks seemed to pass involuntarily through their bodies. Where one's robes and armor had been torn up in the last fight, a vicious gash that would've had a real person blacked out from sensory overload across a huge chunk of its shoulder, she could see that large swaths of anatomy had been entirely skipped over in its creation.

Life with shortcuts. They lived and breathed and fought and died and nothing else.

it made it easy to pick out where the real Blake was, even if she hadn't been holding the staff in her hands. She didn't turn away from the door at first, or even seem to register that Weiss was speaking to her. Just sat and waited. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, she finally put raised a shaky, weak hand to the side of her mask and quietly whispered something into it, before she turned around to face Weiss.

She looked like a corpse.

Her own robes still bore the scorch marks of her clash with Ector and Weiss herself, the uniform more armored steel than cloth at this point, the only thing keeping it any sort of modest the bandaging that wound across her form. Her mask was still missing an entire chunk, the side of her head still covered in scoremarks from the shrapnel, and a torn bit of Atlesian uniform was wrapped around her neck like a child's attempt at a ribbon, stained deep crimson. Her hair was matted underneath both ears with more dark liquid, a bit of it dripping to the ground at her feet as she still gripped the ancient artifact, still let its energies comingle with her body and soul. It would've been easy to look at her and write her off as a victim of her own hubris; someone who'd pushed herself too far and simply hadn't realized she was supposed to keel over and die hours ago.

Except for the eyes. The eyes were far too clear, too sharp, to belong to a dead woman walking. Weiss could see straight into Blake's soul through them, and there wasn't a piece of herself Blake felt the need to hide in it. The hope, the rage, the grief that threatened to subsume them both, and the hatred that coated it all as those eyes studied every breath and shift in Weiss' form, drinking it in with the completeness that could only belong to eyes that loathed or loved as they sought the truth of how wounded or unsteady that body really was, how soft or how violent the thoughts behind those icy orbs lurked. The tone of her voice carried it all when she finally answered

"Why?"

She believed that Weiss would do anything close to stalling without it benefiting her as much as she believed she'd spent one second on the wrong path. But this might've been the last time she'd see Weiss still able to form a coherent thought, before one of them was a corpse or worse. Before Weiss could misconstrue that as a response to her own question, she added

"Why did you kill her, and not me?"

Silence reigned unopposed in the moments following Blake's question, a contemplative narrowing of the eyes the only initial answer she received from the woman whose name had been the cause of so much suffering in the lives of just about everyone she held dear. There was, as ever, a layer of inscrutability to every shift in her facial cues, every alteration of her stance; even to Blake's eyes, eyes that had been searching for chinks in that armor to turn into fissures for years, and even after what had been done to her older sister, there was just something utterly opaque about Weiss. An impregnable mask of guarded focus and self-surety ironically not too far removed from Blake's own, whenever she spoke in defense of their cause or led her cohorts on the field of battle.

The sobering reality Weiss was beginning to accept was, no matter how hard they tried and for what reason, neither were equipped to remove the other's mask. There was too much history, too much bad blood, too much animosity that stretched back farther than either of them had even been alive. The only people capable of prying off those masks even slightly were those who approached from the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum, who wormed their way in with warmth, trust and dependability rather than knives in the dark and explosive shows of force. There weren't many people like that out there.

And now, because of who they were, two of those people were gone.

Weiss took a long time mulling over the question. Then, completely of her own volition, something strange happened.



She took the mask off.



"I... wanted to hurt you."

Given their prior interactions—especially recently—Blake would've been well within her rights to expect the silence to be one that preceded a bog standard self-righteous Schnee spiel. Some grandiose speech about how killing Eve had been justified, or a necessary wrong, or how people like Eve Taurus had been injecting misery and pain into Weiss's life since she was a child no matter how adept she had become at hiding it.

It wasn't. When the veil of ice lifted from the councilwoman's eyes, what she saw there may have surprised Blake. Sincerity. Shame. Regret. And above all else, a resigned dose of abject sadness and that this, right now, was as far as the story of Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna went, regardless of what was about to happen in this room. Two broken-down ruins of people savagely tearing into each other until there was nothing left of one, and hardly anything of the other.

"Not because... not for any of the reasons you may be thinking. I never hated you for who or what you are, Blake. I still don't. I simply... think it's sad that you can't be more. Because the truth is, I actually like you."

She gave a light, self-deprecating scoff.

"Isn't that messed up? Isn't that the most insane thing anyone has ever said in the history of anything? No matter who you hurt or what you do, I am never going to hate you the way you hate me. And that isn't a statement about you or anything; it's a luxury I was born with. I know that."

She shook her head, taking another swig of the bottle before she pursed her lips and passed it to the pale, faceless humanoid that manifested through an impromptu glyph.

"One of... many things I was born with. Things my father harvested off the suffering of you and so many others like you. Yet in spite of that—in active defiance of it, even—you're smart, driven, passionate about things that matter. And dust, on some level maybe you're right, Blake, I don't know. Maybe it is the faunus's turn, and this is simply natural selection at work. Human beings are deplorable. I look around and I can't stand most of the people I meet. I look in the mirror and feel that way. But I had to believe we could be better, do you at least understand that?" There was a quiet, pleading desperation in the way she asked that, Weiss for the first time in as long as she could remember baring her throat to an enemy in at least the emotional sense. "I'd... have stopped making it out of bed in the morning if I didn't."

She coughed and fiddled with her dress's straps, shattering yet another basic tenet of Weiss Schnee in that for at least a moment she looked like she didn't know how to continue. The summon had crossed the hall into Blake's territory by this point, as opposite from the clones surrounding it as could be in that its movements were calm and smooth, the chest under its well-tailored suit one that neither rose nor fell with the rhythm of breath. It held its arms out, offering Blake the bottle like she was being served the house selection at a five-star restaurant, and however she responded Weiss eventually did proceed. She crossed her arms and ventured a laugh, shaky and uneasy.

"That's... all I wanted. From the moment we met, I thought if I could just get you to understand... or... or simply acknowledge that I had more to offer than my name, that I was different from my father..." Her icy glare saw a momentary resurgence as it pinned itself to the back of the summon standing before Blake, his leather shoes and white suit burned into her memory. "One last grand act of defiance, I suppose."

Then she snorted, and there was something ruefully pensive about the way her gaze fell.

"...I should've taken a longer look in the mirror. I tried everything, and yet all I ended up proving was all the different ways I'm exactly like him. You just... you never listened, Blake, there was never anything I could've said that would've convinced you because you wouldn't even give me the time to say it, and it just..."

She exhaled.

"It made me furious, being judged like that for who I was born. So I decided to hurt you. Not overpower you or beat you, because you've already come to terms with those eventualities; I wanted to show you consequences you couldn't just... run away from. A shock to the system, as it were. But it... it was cruel, I see that now, and as soon as I did it everything started going wrong, and I just... I never wanted this!"

The frustrated snap was a long time coming, as much the words of the councilwoman as they were the young girl who had no concept of the various forces out to victimize her, or why all their hatred and disdain seemed to channel through her father and trickle down to her. She had taken to pinching her brow, but by the time she was through her hands had fallen to her sides, limp.



"But then... neither did you. I'm going to say what I wanted to say now, Blake. And I know it's not something you care to hear, or something that changes anything that's about to happen, or even—Even enough. Lord knows I'm aware it's not enough. I'm beginning to understand that nothing will ever be enough. But I have to say it anyway."

She sucked in a breath, mustered up all the fortitude and resolve she had left in her body, bit her lower lip, and looked Blake square in the eye.

"I'm sorry."​

 

[MidwayLives]

Masque had left the others behind.

The arm situation felt as though it were getting worse by the second. She couldn't be with the others and leave that unaccounted for. Which left her stumbling in and out of alleyways clutching at her stump. Although the Masque wasn't in the right state of mind to truly appreciate it, the Grimm arm gestating in her body felt like a constant reminder of what she'd put her Yang through.

Her fingers dug against the flesh of her stump and she winced.

Whatever this thing was going to turn into...she really hoped something stopped it.
​

 

[MidwayLives]

Ever since she crawled all the way back to camp all those years ago. Even as blood dripped from where two of her fingers had once resided and the grotesqque burn at the center of her chest was fresh, she put the pain aside. She'd been tricked by the faunus who went by the moniker of 'Shark' and unknown to her both she and Masque paid dearly for it. With his prodding for Masque to leave indirectly putting her on the path she'd take to meet Ozpin himself. Niebla paid a much more physical cost. Her right knee needed time to heal after all that time and wooden prosthetics were made in lieu of anything a touch more advanced to replace the missing fingers. When she closed her left hand, the prosthetics gave a slight click. Not unlike the buzzing and whirring that Ruby's prosthetic arms had made over the years.

In the years since she'd never given up her search.

Masque had to be out there and she had to be alive. The slightest notion that she was anything but breathing simply didn't register in the faunus's head. How could it after all, Ruby was all that Niebla had for all those months spent in the woods. The two became close to a point that although neither was able to say it directly to the other's face, they loved eachother. Which meant that no matter how long it took her or how far she had to travel, she'd find her. If anyone had hurt her? She'd make them pay. The most recent leg of her journey had brought her to Vacuo where she'd been staying for quite a while in a less than fruitful hope that Ruby would be here.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and for the first time in her journey it seemed as though Niebla was going to possibly consider the idea that maybe...Ruby just hadn't survived all this time. But what Niebla didn't know was that a portal had brought an assorted company of folks over to Vacuo. One in particular being just the girl she was looking for. Her nose twitched and she rose to her feet. Her semblance had evolved over time to the point that if she managed to devour even a sample of your blood whether it was recently or otherwise, she'd recognize the scent wafting off your body if you were in the area. Tilting her head back and pushing up her mask slightly, Niebla's wooden fingers clicked and cackled as she sniffed and bared her fangs.

"Ruby...After all this time..."

She pulled her mask down.

"Have I really found you?" ​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Silence reigned unopposed in the moments following Blake's question, a contemplative narrowing of the eyes the only initial answer she received from the woman whose name had been the cause of so much suffering in the lives of just about everyone she held dear. There was, as ever, a layer of inscrutability to every shift in her facial cues, every alteration of her stance; even to Blake's eyes, eyes that had been searching for chinks in that armor to turn into fissures for years, and even after what had been done to her older sister, there was just something utterly opaque about Weiss. An impregnable mask of guarded focus and self-surety ironically not too far removed from Blake's own, whenever she spoke in defense of their cause or led her cohorts on the field of battle.

The sobering reality Weiss was beginning to accept was, no matter how hard they tried and for what reason, neither were equipped to remove the other's mask. There was too much history, too much bad blood, too much animosity that stretched back farther than either of them had even been alive. The only people capable of prying off those masks even slightly were those who approached from the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum, who wormed their way in with warmth, trust and dependability rather than knives in the dark and explosive shows of force. There weren't many people like that out there.

And now, because of who they were, two of those people were gone.

Weiss took a long time mulling over the question. Then, completely of her own volition, something strange happened.



She took the mask off.

View attachment 824123

"I... wanted to hurt you."

Given their prior interactions—especially recently—Blake would've been well within her rights to expect the silence to be one that preceded a bog standard self-righteous Schnee spiel. Some grandiose speech about how killing Eve had been justified, or a necessary wrong, or how people like Eve Taurus had been injecting misery and pain into Weiss's life since she was a child no matter how adept she had become at hiding it.

It wasn't. When the veil of ice lifted from the councilwoman's eyes, what she saw there may have surprised Blake. Sincerity. Shame. Regret. And above all else, a resigned dose of abject sadness and that this, right now, was as far as the story of Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna went, regardless of what was about to happen in this room. Two broken-down ruins of people savagely tearing into each other until there was nothing left of one, and hardly anything of the other.

"Not because... not for any of the reasons you may be thinking. I never hated you for who or what you are, Blake. I still don't. I simply... think it's sad that you can't be more. Because the truth is, I actually like you."

She gave a light, self-deprecating scoff.

"Isn't that messed up? Isn't that the most insane thing anyone has ever said in the history of anything? No matter who you hurt or what you do, I am never going to hate you the way you hate me. And that isn't a statement about you or anything; it's a luxury I was born with. I know that."

She shook her head, taking another swig of the bottle before she pursed her lips and passed it to the pale, faceless humanoid that manifested through an impromptu glyph.

"One of... many things I was born with. Things my father harvested off the suffering of you and so many others like you. Yet in spite of that—in active defiance of it, even—you're smart, driven, passionate about things that matter. And dust, on some level maybe you're right, Blake, I don't know. Maybe it is the faunus's turn, and this is simply natural selection at work. Human beings are deplorable. I look around and I can't stand most of the people I meet. I look in the mirror and feel that way. But I had to believe we could be better, do you at least understand that?" There was a quiet, pleading desperation in the way she asked that, Weiss for the first time in as long as she could remember baring her throat to an enemy in at least the emotional sense. "I'd... have stopped making it out of bed in the morning if I didn't."

She coughed and fiddled with her dress's straps, shattering yet another basic tenet of Weiss Schnee in that for at least a moment she looked like she didn't know how to continue. The summon had crossed the hall into Blake's territory by this point, as opposite from the clones surrounding it as could be in that its movements were calm and smooth, the chest under its well-tailored suit one that neither rose nor fell with the rhythm of breath. It held its arms out, offering Blake the bottle like she was being served the house selection at a five-star restaurant, and however she responded Weiss eventually did proceed. She crossed her arms and ventured a laugh, shaky and uneasy.

"That's... all I wanted. From the moment we met, I thought if I could just get you to understand... or... or simply acknowledge that I had more to offer than my name, that I was different from my father..." Her icy glare saw a momentary resurgence as it pinned itself to the back of the summon standing before Blake, his leather shoes and white suit burned into her memory. "One last grand act of defiance, I suppose."

Then she snorted, and there was something ruefully pensive about the way her gaze fell.

"...I should've taken a longer look in the mirror. I tried everything, and yet all I ended up proving was all the different ways I'm exactly like him. You just... you never listened, Blake, there was never anything I could've said that would've convinced you because you wouldn't even give me the time to say it, and it just..."

She exhaled.

"It made me furious, being judged like that for who I was born. So I decided to hurt you. Not overpower you or beat you, because you've already come to terms with those eventualities; I wanted to show you consequences you couldn't just... run away from. A shock to the system, as it were. But it... it was cruel, I see that now, and as soon as I did it everything started going wrong, and I just... I never wanted this!"

The frustrated snap was a long time coming, as much the words of the councilwoman as they were the young girl who had no concept of the various forces out to victimize her, or why all their hatred and disdain seemed to channel through her father and trickle down to her. She had taken to pinching her brow, but by the time she was through her hands had fallen to her sides, limp.

View attachment 824152

"But then... neither did you. I'm going to say what I wanted to say now, Blake. And I know it's not something you care to hear, or something that changes anything that's about to happen, or even—Even enough. Lord knows I'm aware it's not enough. I'm beginning to understand that nothing will ever be enough. But I have to say it anyway."

She sucked in a breath, mustered up all the fortitude and resolve she had left in her body, bit her lower lip, and looked Blake square in the eye.

"I'm sorry."​

Blake had never been a good liar. The closest she could get was turning it all off; hardening her resolve, and doing what had to be done. She’d never been able to honey her words or entice with what she couldn’t offer.

It made it so much easier to hate Weiss Schnee, then, when she saw how effortlessly she weaved her words. It didn’t matter how calm, how promising, how sweet or cold the words were; Blake may not have been able to pierce what the truth was, but her eyes were too sharp, her senses too keen, and her embattled soul too tuned to what others felt to not see that there was always something more, something unsaid. The extra layer between Weiss’ soul and her words made it so Blake could fill in the extra space with whatever truth she preferred, whatever truth helped make the work she had to do a little easier. Weiss Schnee the monster. Weiss Schnee the ice hearted. Remnant’s self proclaimed messiah, as self important as it sounded. The woman who leashed monsters even the rest of humanity balked at, and had the gall to call their lord any worse. Weiss the butcher, who fell back on what every human did when backed into a corner, or when faced with even the most pointless, pyrrhic defiance; Killed. Maimed. Hurt. Because she could. Because it was the only language humans like her spoke.

Apparently that wall was protecting Blake as much as it was Weiss. She didn’t want to hear this. Not anything like it. Weiss could feel Blake’s eyes practically ripping her to shreds, flickering across every motion and glance and word for any signs of falsehood and growing more frantic the longer they went without finding any The bottle bearing spectre found two blades at its throat to impede its progress at the room’s halfway point, two shades moving as quick as their progenitor and staring it down with their masked voids. But they didn’t strike it down.

The low, quiet rasp of a laugh that Blake let out when Weiss finished talking was a broken sound.

“You’re right. I didn’t want this. Not just what happened today.”

She slowly reached up with her wounded arm and gripped her mask, and took it off.

Blood dripped from both eyes of a tired, haggard face as Blake let go of the resolve, if only for a moment, and instead just let herself be Blake Belladonna. Exhausted, grief stricken, angry, but with none of the razor edge.

“I didn’t want any of this. I still don’t” she all but whispered with a limp gesture at herself, the robes, wounds, and blood. “All the death, the bloodshed on my hands, and everything that Lord Ozpin’s going to bring, I know how terrible it is. I know I’m a monster, that every pound of flesh a grimm tears out is on my hands as much as his. But I have to be” She said, the fire behind those amber eyes still flickering even in this state. “Because we are right, Weiss. You think people like your Xiao Long, Hill, or the little maiden are the first humans to ever see how wrong things are in the world? That they're the first one who've ever wanted to help? No. They’ve been around just as long as we have, and it hasn’t changed an inch because Salem and all those humans in power don't want it to”

She swung her arm out as she turned to face Weiss all the way. “Its not survival of the fittest, Weiss, its survival, period! Not for the faunus like me, the lucky ones, with parents who care and could afford to care, but for all the others. The ones with scarred faces. The ones who's parents die before they even get a chance to live. All that I want, the only thing I’m doing this for, is so that those faunus can live their lives in peace, without human hatred and fear hanging over their heads like a guillotine. And…” her eyes flickered downward. “...and I wanted to be in that world. I... I know I won’t deserve it. But I wanted to be in that world with her, at the end of this all”

She hadn’t realized just how much of the dream that was until it was taken away from her. Just how much she wasn’t just fighting for every faunus, but for her, specifically. To make a world where Eve didn’t have to flinch at the sight of any armed human, where she could have the peace she needed to work through her traumas and find a peaceful sleep, Blake buried in her arms and both their weapons long discarded.

“And you took that from us. From me. The only thing I ever wanted for myself, and you took it from me to prove a point. And now... you’re saying sorry?”

Clear liquid drew lines through the blood on her cheeks as her eyes snapped back up.

“You take that from me, and can’t even have the decency to own it anymore?! Not even after what I did to your sister?! You hurt me in the worst way possible, and you won’t even let me hate you for it!? You can’t even do that!? Be the one person I wouldn’t have to hate hurting at the end of it all?!”

It was true; she could feel that inferno already starting to flicker. She still had her drive, she still had her resolve, but whatever freedom she had from the weight of her actions against Weiss Schnee was already settling back on her shoulders; Blake Belladonna was just never a hateful person, no matter how much fiddling the gods did with her past or her soul, and through all the enemies she’d earned and all of the blood she’d spilled, only Carnelian, Weiss, and Salem had ever reached those lofty heights. And now she couldn’t even count one of them any more as another broken laugh snaked through Blake’s teeth.

“No. Of course not. You’re just another human, who thinks she knows whats best, who wants to promise this time will be different from the thousand times before, and who’s in my way. I don’t know why I ever let myself think it was different. So just like the rest, Weiss-” She said as she slipped the mask back on with a deep breath, and when it settled back into place and her eyes met Weiss’ once more, it was the Hand she was looking at, every inch the weapon of violence and fury it had been forged to be.

“-You die.”

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Penny had a wan smile flicker across her face as she watched Watts and Cinder, but it flickered out of existence in short order as her eyes swept back to the portal.

This was the first time it had ever felt like she was truly cut off from home.

At Beacon, she’d had her father, and later Ciel, along with the entirety of the Atlas military. And of course in Atlas she was surrounded by it.

Now she was truly away from it, with no recourse or contact to be had. This version of her father, the General… Winter… all gone away from her, along with the people she’d been built to protect. Her home was about to face the worst threat it ever had, with the two leaders who were supposed to defend it at each other’s throats, and she was an entire continent away.

Her hand started to reach for the portal before it dropped back to her side as it finally flickered out of existence, cutting off that pathway to Atlas for good

 

[Gus Gungus]

Apparently that wall was protecting Blake as much as it was Weiss. She didn’t want to hear this. Not anything like it. Weiss could feel Blake’s eyes practically ripping her to shreds, flickering across every motion and glance and word for any signs of falsehood and growing more frantic the longer they went without finding any The bottle bearing spectre found two blades at its throat to impede its progress at the room’s halfway point, two shades moving as quick as their progenitor and staring it down with their masked voids. But they didn’t strike it down.

She forced a soft huff out through the nostrils, exasperated. "You do realize I'm entirely capable of manifesting my summons wherever I so please. More to the point, I don't need any contrived circumstances to take that away from you."

She nodded to the staff. There was nothing boastful about the statement; As far as Weiss was concerned, it was just true. But then, she reminded herself with a curl of the lower lip, that wasn't why Blake Belladonna was never going to share a drink with Weiss Schnee.

That was just the way it was.

“You’re right. I didn’t want this. Not just what happened today.”

She slowly reached up with her wounded arm and gripped her mask, and took it off.

Blood dripped from both eyes of a tired, haggard face as Blake let go of the resolve, if only for a moment, and instead just let herself be Blake Belladonna. Exhausted, grief stricken, angry, but with none of the razor edge.

“I didn’t want any of this. I still don’t” she all but whispered with a limp gesture at herself, the robes, wounds, and blood. “All the death, the bloodshed on my hands, and everything that Lord Ozpin’s going to bring, I know how terrible it is. I know I’m a monster, that every pound of flesh a grimm tears out is on my hands as much as his. But I have to be” She said, the fire behind those amber eyes still flickering even in this state. “Because we are right, Weiss. You think people like your Xiao Long, Hill, or the little maiden are the first humans to ever see how wrong things are in the world? That they're the first one who've ever wanted to help? No. They’ve been around just as long as we have, and it hasn’t changed an inch because Salem and all those humans in power don't want it to”

She swung her arm out as she turned to face Weiss all the way. “Its not survival of the fittest, Weiss, its survival, period! Not for the faunus like me, the lucky ones, with parents who care and could afford to care, but for all the others. The ones with scarred faces. The ones who's parents die before they even get a chance to live. All that I want, the only thing I’m doing this for, is so that those faunus can live their lives in peace, without human hatred and fear hanging over their heads like a guillotine. And…” her eyes flickered downward. “...and I wanted to be in that world. I... I know I won’t deserve it. But I wanted to be in that world with her, at the end of this all”

She hadn’t realized just how much of the dream that was until it was taken away from her. Just how much she wasn’t just fighting for every faunus, but for her, specifically. To make a world where Eve didn’t have to flinch at the sight of any armed human, where she could have the peace she needed to work through her traumas and find a peaceful sleep, Blake buried in her arms and both their weapons long discarded.

“And you took that from us. From me. The only thing I ever wanted for myself, and you took it from me to prove a point. And now... you’re saying sorry?”

Clear liquid drew lines through the blood on her cheeks as her eyes snapped back up.

“You take that from me, and can’t even have the decency to own it anymore?! Not even after what I did to your sister?! You hurt me in the worst way possible, and you won’t even let me hate you for it!? You can’t even do that!? Be the one person I wouldn’t have to hate hurting at the end of it all?!”

It was true; she could feel that inferno already starting to flicker. She still had her drive, she still had her resolve, but whatever freedom she had from the weight of her actions against Weiss Schnee was already settling back on her shoulders; Blake Belladonna was just never a hateful person, no matter how much fiddling the gods did with her past or her soul, and through all the enemies she’d earned and all of the blood she’d spilled, only Carnelian, Weiss, and Salem had ever reached those lofty heights. And now she couldn’t even count one of them any more as another broken laugh snaked through Blake’s teeth.

“No. Of course not. You’re just another human, who thinks she knows whats best, who wants to promise this time will be different from the thousand times before, and who’s in my way. I don’t know why I ever let myself think it was different. So just like the rest, Weiss-” She said as she slipped the mask back on with a deep breath, and when it settled back into place and her eyes met Weiss’ once more, it was the Hand she was looking at, every inch the weapon of violence and fury it had been forged to be.

“-You die.”

Weiss... listened.

There was no scathing counterargument. No eloquent rundown of Blake's ideologies one by one, no structured debate to be had today. She just listened; and by the time the Hand was through, all the councilwoman really had to offer was a haggard, wistful smile that was as tenuous as a rare glimpse of the stars in Atlas's light-polluted sky; wan and flickering, soon to fade.

It wasn't focused on the Hand herself. Rather, it had drifted towards one of the corridor's sealed windows situated about halfway between them, as if with enough persistence and focus she could catch a view of those same stars in spite of the thick metal shutter sealing them off. Not even Blake's renewing fire seemed to catch her attention the way the Hand may have wanted it to, save for eliciting a dreamy hum as the maiden shifted her crossed arms.

"My, has it only been a day? I don't know about you, but I feel significantly older." The wry edge to her voice, again, stood at odds with Blake's surging fervor, and when her gaze did wander back over to where she stood it was with a tight smirk and a cheekily raised eyebrow. "Though I'll point out that since it has only been a day it's also been a mere few hours since I heard these exact same points made, and I don't seem to recall asking for clarification. Which begs the question of who exactly it is you're trying to convince."

She didn't broach the subject further, nor did she seem to be overly concerned about the prospect of Blake launching a sudden offensive as she accepted the bottle back from the summon and brought it to her lips again; without breaking eye contact this time. It would've been ill-advised to mistake that lack of concern for inattention. She tossed the bottle aside haphazardly when she was done, a pool of broken glass and red she was happy to make someone else's job to clean up, and there was a renewed steel in her own voice that had nothing to do with alcohol buzz when she spoke again.

"I'm sorry, Blake."

If there was an objective, ubiquitous truth somewhere in the vortex of dishonesty, manipulation and intrigue that was Weiss Schnee, it was that she wasn't fond of repeating herself. Hated it, in fact; hated the implication that she wasn't being listened to, that her voice was going unheard.

More irony. She'd been making other people feel that way for as long as she could remember. And as much as a strange part of her wished she could give Belladonna some vague spark of validation now, as much as she wished she could just let the poor girl vent and do what she had to...

That simply wasn't going to happen.

The sound that escaped her lips was bittersweet, in equal parts a huff, a sigh, and a quiet laugh, and then the apologies were tumbling from her lips en masse as if they'd been waiting to for years.

"I'm sorry the world is so cruel; I'm sorry I can't be the one to change that. I'm sorry there's more than you know to what happened to Eve Taurus that I can't disclose, and I'm sorry that unless something changes I likely never will. Above all else, I'm sorry for whoever or whatever it was that reduced you to a point where you can actually believe the things you're saying. I really am. But I can't believe them. Understand? I can't. Because it isn't about human and faunus at the end of the day—" A finger immediately shot up. "—Okay, no no it completely is, please just bear with me for one more moment I'm just illustrating a point—"

The hand went down as soon as she knew she wasn't getting stabbed, or did whatever she needed to to prevent such. When she continued it was with a note of deflation, though no less resolutely.

"...It's cruelty. Those with everything are always going to be cruel to those with nothing. It's the nature of power, or more specifically the nature of the sort of greedy, self-serving individuals power has an unfortunate habit of ending up with. Men like my father and Ozpin; women like Salem... like me. And your darling Sienna, make no mistake," she added with a dry roll of the eyes. "Men and women who deceive. Ideologues who lurk and scheme in the shadows while glorifying themselves as guiding lights. Who manipulate the ones around them, twist their undying faith in them, and turn them into nothing more than pawns and tools."

Her demeanor changed then, eyes flashing with glacial steel, and she gave Blake a long, hard look of disapproval; though the Hand had the inescapable sense it wasn't a look truly meant for her, and it swiftly faded.

"Or have them believing that the most value they can offer the world is as a tool. Only someone truly wretched could convince another person of that, no matter how righteous they think their cause to be. I'm sorry you've found yourself in the unenviable position of being under the thrall of not one, but two. And I hope you learn to see them for what they are someday."

She didn't sound hopeful. Weiss didn't sound much of anything anymore, after the day she'd had. She gave a rueful, dispirited snort, and let her gaze fall, shaking her head.

"...You want the truth, Blake? I don't know what's best. I've spent years and years convincing myself I do, but the sobering reality is I'm nowhere close. I don't think anyone is. But I'll tell you what I do know; this? Your whole... operation?" She gestured towards the Hand and her clones in a vague, irritable flap. "This is about as far away from 'what's best' as I've been in my worst moments. And the truly sad part in all this isn't that you're right about me being nothing new; it's that you can't see how you aren't, either. Because really, an armed, militant uprising staged by a group of disenfranchised faunus? It's almost played out at this point, dear. Ask yourself how likely it is that in a thousand years you're even the first group of angry, disillusioned faunus Ozpin has reached out to, and ask yourself what happened to the promises he made them?"

She held her hands up.

"And I know, I know, the ShAdOw fAnG aRe DiFfErEnT, look at how mysterious and organized we all are and how we're all ninjas or something, wow, how special. Except what happens if you do win, Belladonna? What happens if your brand of cruelty floats to the top over all the others? How long before your actions give rise to someone like you among the humans, someone who promises more bloodshed, more suffering, and more misery for everyone until it's all ripped away from you again? I'm sorry, I just—"

She pinched her brow as she apologized again, a terse, frustrated hiss forced out through clenched teeth.

"...It's just not a solution. And I know it's not going to stop you from trying. I know you believe this is the solution because you've wracked your brain and you can't see any others, and maybe there aren't any, I just..." She sighed. "I don't even have a point here. I know I can't convince you, I'm just... just sorry. If for no other reason than no matter how long and how hard you fight, Blake, no matter what you put yourself through? That world you spoke about... isn't coming. Not like this. The light at the end of the tunnel is a dream, and this is reality, and on the day you realize it was all for nothing I hope I'm not there to see it. Because I just spent a day living that. And I don't think I can handle watching it again."

She fell silent, and perhaps for the first time it struck Blake just how drained Weiss looked; how her arms seemed to hang a bit heavier by her sides, or how her shoulders slumped in a fashion very unbecoming of the picture-perfect posture that had been instilled in her since youth. Whatever mental image she might have had of a Weiss Schnee who stood defeated, this wasn't it. She just looked... done. Ready for the cheque.

She exhaled, jettisoning the last of her existential angst along with it, clasped her hands graciously in front of her, and lifted eyes that couldn't be described as anything but hangdog and miserable to offer Blake one final, solemn apology.

"...And I'm sorry... I'm sorry that even now, today of all days, I'm not going to give you what you want. I'm sorry you don't get that. Because not only am I not going to kill you, Blake..." She gave another faint, exhausted smile, completely at odds with the casual revelation of what the Hand wanted from this. Her next words were just as inappropriately casual, given the circumstances and veritable horde of clone monstrosities she was faced with.

Yet it was hard to dismiss their sheer confidence, either.



"I'm not even going to fight you. But I'm afraid I am going to be taking that staff."​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

She forced a soft huff out through the nostrils, exasperated. "You do realize I'm entirely capable of manifesting my summons wherever I so please. More to the point, I don't need any contrived circumstances to take that away from you."

She nodded to the staff. There was nothing boastful about the statement; As far as Weiss was concerned, it was just true. But then, she reminded herself with a curl of the lower lip, that wasn't why Blake Belladonna was never going to share a drink with Weiss Schnee.

That was just the way it was.






Weiss... listened.

There was no scathing counterargument. No eloquent rundown of Blake's ideologies one by one, no structured debate to be had today. She just listened; and by the time the Hand was through, all the councilwoman really had to offer was a haggard, wistful smile that was as tenuous as a rare glimpse of the stars in Atlas's light-polluted sky; wan and flickering, soon to fade.

It wasn't focused on the Hand herself. Rather, it had drifted towards one of the corridor's sealed windows situated about halfway between them, as if with enough persistence and focus she could catch a view of those same stars in spite of the thick metal shutter sealing them off. Not even Blake's renewing fire seemed to catch her attention the way the Hand may have wanted it to, save for eliciting a dreamy hum as the maiden shifted her crossed arms.

"My, has it only been a day? I don't know about you, but I feel significantly older." The wry edge to her voice, again, stood at odds with Blake's surging fervor, and when her gaze did wander back over to where she stood it was with a tight smirk and a cheekily raised eyebrow. "Though I'll point out that since it has only been a day it's also been a mere few hours since I heard these exact same points made, and I don't seem to recall asking for clarification. Which begs the question of who exactly it is you're trying to convince."

She didn't broach the subject further, nor did she seem to be overly concerned about the prospect of Blake launching a sudden offensive as she accepted the bottle back from the summon and brought it to her lips again; without breaking eye contact this time. It would've been ill-advised to mistake that lack of concern for inattention. She tossed the bottle aside haphazardly when she was done, a pool of broken glass and red she was happy to make someone else's job to clean up, and there was a renewed steel in her own voice that had nothing to do with alcohol buzz when she spoke again.

"I'm sorry, Blake."

If there was an objective, ubiquitous truth somewhere in the vortex of dishonesty, manipulation and intrigue that was Weiss Schnee, it was that she wasn't fond of repeating herself. Hated it, in fact; hated the implication that she wasn't being listened to, that her voice was going unheard.

More irony. She'd been making other people feel that way for as long as she could remember. And as much as a strange part of her wished she could give Belladonna some vague spark of validation now, as much as she wished she could just let the poor girl vent and do what she had to...

That simply wasn't going to happen.

The sound that escaped her lips was bittersweet, in equal parts a huff, a sigh, and a quiet laugh, and then the apologies were tumbling from her lips en masse as if they'd been waiting to for years.

"I'm sorry the world is so cruel; I'm sorry I can't be the one to change that. I'm sorry there's more than you know to what happened to Eve Taurus that I can't disclose, and I'm sorry that unless something changes I likely never will. Above all else, I'm sorry for whoever or whatever it was that reduced you to a point where you can actually believe the things you're saying. I really am. But I can't believe them. Understand? I can't. Because it isn't about human and faunus at the end of the day—" A finger immediately shot up. "—Okay, no no it completely is, please just bear with me for one more moment I'm just illustrating a point—"

The hand went down as soon as she knew she wasn't getting stabbed, or did whatever she needed to to prevent such. When she continued it was with a note of deflation, though no less resolutely.

"...It's cruelty. Those with everything are always going to be cruel to those with nothing. It's the nature of power, or more specifically the nature of the sort of greedy, self-serving individuals power has an unfortunate habit of ending up with. Men like my father and Ozpin; women like Salem... like me. And your darling Sienna, make no mistake," she added with a dry roll of the eyes. "Men and women who deceive. Ideologues who lurk and scheme in the shadows while glorifying themselves as guiding lights. Who manipulate the ones around them, twist their undying faith in them, and turn them into nothing more than pawns and tools."

Her demeanor changed then, eyes flashing with glacial steel, and she gave Blake a long, hard look of disapproval; though the Hand had the inescapable sense it wasn't a look truly meant for her, and it swiftly faded.

"Or have them believing that the most value they can offer the world is as a tool. Only someone truly wretched could convince another person of that, no matter how righteous they think their cause to be. I'm sorry you've found yourself in the unenviable position of being under the thrall of not one, but two. And I hope you learn to see them for what they are someday."

She didn't sound hopeful. Weiss didn't sound much of anything anymore, after the day she'd had. She gave a rueful, dispirited snort, and let her gaze fall, shaking her head.

"...You want the truth, Blake? I don't know what's best. I've spent years and years convincing myself I do, but the sobering reality is I'm nowhere close. I don't think anyone is. But I'll tell you what I do know; this? Your whole... operation?" She gestured towards the Hand and her clones in a vague, irritable flap. "This is about as far away from 'what's best' as I've been in my worst moments. And the truly sad part in all this isn't that you're right about me being nothing new; it's that you can't see how you aren't, either. Because really, an armed, militant uprising staged by a group of disenfranchised faunus? It's almost played out at this point, dear. Ask yourself how likely it is that in a thousand years you're even the first group of angry, disillusioned faunus Ozpin has reached out to, and ask yourself what happened to the promises he made them?"

She held her hands up.

"And I know, I know, the ShAdOw fAnG aRe DiFfErEnT, look at how mysterious and organized we all are and how we're all ninjas or something, wow, how special. Except what happens if you do win, Belladonna? What happens if your brand of cruelty floats to the top over all the others? How long before your actions give rise to someone like you among the humans, someone who promises more bloodshed, more suffering, and more misery for everyone until it's all ripped away from you again? I'm sorry, I just—"

She pinched her brow as she apologized again, a terse, frustrated hiss forced out through clenched teeth.

"...It's just not a solution. And I know it's not going to stop you from trying. I know you believe this is the solution because you've wracked your brain and you can't see any others, and maybe there aren't any, I just..." She sighed. "I don't even have a point here. I know I can't convince you, I'm just... just sorry. If for no other reason than no matter how long and how hard you fight, Blake, no matter what you put yourself through? That world you spoke about... isn't coming. Not like this. The light at the end of the tunnel is a dream, and this is reality, and on the day you realize it was all for nothing I hope I'm not there to see it. Because I just spent a day living that. And I don't think I can handle watching it again."

She fell silent, and perhaps for the first time it struck Blake just how drained Weiss looked; how her arms seemed to hang a bit heavier by her sides, or how her shoulders slumped in a fashion very unbecoming of the picture-perfect posture that had been instilled in her since youth. Whatever mental image she might have had of a Weiss Schnee who stood defeated, this wasn't it. She just looked... done. Ready for the cheque.

She exhaled, jettisoning the last of her existential angst along with it, clasped her hands graciously in front of her, and lifted eyes that couldn't be described as anything but hangdog and miserable to offer Blake one final, solemn apology.

"...And I'm sorry... I'm sorry that even now, today of all days, I'm not going to give you what you want. I'm sorry you don't get that. Because not only am I not going to kill you, Blake..." She gave another faint, exhausted smile, completely at odds with the casual revelation of what the Hand wanted from this. Her next words were just as inappropriately casual, given the circumstances and veritable horde of clone monstrosities she was faced with.

Yet it was hard to dismiss their sheer confidence, either.

View attachment 824935

"I'm not even going to fight you. But I'm afraid I am going to be taking that staff."​

Blake's eyes were a smoldering storm of anger, and Weiss could practically see the Hand rebuilding the wall of resolve for the task at hand; reminding herself that despite whatever honesty, whatever glimpse into Weiss Schnee's own soul she'd just been allowed, that this woman was an enemy, a Schnee, a figurehead and symbol of so much faunus suffering, and a maiden who lived in defiance of lord Ozpin.

An obstacle. A human who, even if she was speaking from the heart, had her viewpoint tainted by that very humanity, the basic survival instinct any living thing had. Lord Ozpin would keep his word.

But nonetheless...

"...hm."

Blake's eyes narrowed behind the mask, and she finally turned back away from Weiss for the door. "Don't mistake that for forgiveness Schnee. Don't think I have any intention on treating you kindly"

Eve would never forgive her. Even if Weiss admitted fault, even if she said it was a moment of weakness, and even if she really thought she was in the right, she'd still taken Eve from her. Besides-

" You're far too annoying for that."

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

A shade finally reached its destination, deep within the ventilation system near the hall the maiden and the Hand were trapped inside. A slat of paneling was pried open with Gambol's blade to reveal a gout of wiring beneath, a crossways for different systems before they went on their separate paths. Finding the right wire for what this Shade had been ordered would've taken minutes.

Instead, it merely twisted the blade and jammed it straight through all of them, the shaft filling with the acrid smell of ozone and electric burns before the shade went limp and began to fade away.

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

The hallway lights suddenly blackened before the hallway was aglow in red moments later as the emergency lights kicked in; just at the same time the shuttters snapped open and the hardlight flickered off.

Blake... seemed to stand right where she was, the staff still in hand as she stared blankly ahead, and the six or so shades in the hallway all lunged at Weiss with feral aggression

 

[Gus Gungus]

Blake's eyes were a smoldering storm of anger, and Weiss could practically see the Hand rebuilding the wall of resolve for the task at hand; reminding herself that despite whatever honesty, whatever glimpse into Weiss Schnee's own soul she'd just been allowed, that this woman was an enemy, a Schnee, a figurehead and symbol of so much faunus suffering, and a maiden who lived in defiance of lord Ozpin.

An obstacle. A human who, even if she was speaking from the heart, had her viewpoint tainted by that very humanity, the basic survival instinct any living thing had. Lord Ozpin would keep his word.

But nonetheless...

"...hm."

Blake's eyes narrowed behind the mask, and she finally turned back away from Weiss for the door. "Don't mistake that for forgiveness Schnee. Don't think I have any intention on treating you kindly"

Eve would never forgive her. Even if Weiss admitted fault, even if she said it was a moment of weakness, and even if she really thought she was in the right, she'd still taken Eve from her. Besides-

" You're far too annoying for that."

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

A shade finally reached its destination, deep within the ventilation system near the hall the maiden and the Hand were trapped inside. A slat of paneling was pried open with Gambol's blade to reveal a gout of wiring beneath, a crossways for different systems before they went on their separate paths. Finding the right wire for what this Shade had been ordered would've taken minutes.

Instead, it merely twisted the blade and jammed it straight through all of them, the shaft filling with the acrid smell of ozone and electric burns before the shade went limp and began to fade away.

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

The hallway lights suddenly blackened before the hallway was aglow in red moments later as the emergency lights kicked in; just at the same time the shuttters snapped open and the hardlight flickered off.

Blake... seemed to stand right where she was, the staff still in hand as she stared blankly ahead, and the six or so shades in the hallway all lunged at Weiss with feral aggression

"Hey! Annoying???"

Rude. Whatever other tunnels of insight and self-reflection Weiss may have dived headlong down, it appeared a lifetime of canned smiles, sycophantic laughter and generally being treated like the most important person in the room had bred someone entirely unprepared to confront that particular truth of her character. She may not have had a high opinion of herself overall, but she knew what she was good at! She was someone who spoke a high volume of words when the situation demanded it. Every single one of them enrapturing!!!!

That kneejerk prickliness was why it was strange the most she could muster up in her defense was a flustered, frankly goofy grin, strained to the point of awkwardness as she (of all things) checked her scroll.



"That's... an interesting choice of words in light of what's about to happen?"

It wasn't that Weiss thought she was an annoying person. That was just absurd! Heartless and a noxious, malignant influence on indigenous life, maybe, but she had charisma!! Anyone claiming otherwise was nothing more than a jealous begrudger envious of her astonishing grasp of cadence and vocabulary.

But as an opponent and obstacle to overcome, yes, she supposed she could see how the word might find some use. Annoying in the way a mountain was to climb in a hurry, or annoying like trying to fly a kite in a hurricane. Frustrating annoying. She ran people around in circles, let them tire themselves out with pointless tasks and broadly made sure they couldn't inconvenience her in any way, all while hardly bothering to deal with them herself until she was ready for them. Obviously that was what Blake meant. And whatever else Yang may have thought of her, annoying definitely wasn't one of them she was a personable delight.

That specialized branch of annoying under which the definition could theoretically apply to her was about to be on full display. Weiss's features reverted smoothly back to a firm, neutral portrait of calm and composure at whatever her scroll told her, and though it was hard to escape the feeling she wasn't giving Blake her undivided attention it would've been foolish to assume her thoughts were anywhere other than what was about to happen in this room.



"Blake. Just so we're clear." There was a more level, hardened edge to her tone than the one of regret and apology they carried before, no less raw or sincere than those words had been. "I don't consider you the person truly at fault for what happened to my sister. I was killing her for years before you ever did."

In contrast to before, words weren't spoken with any degree of shame or regret, and she definitely didn't leave any room for self-pity. It was a simple admission of a fact, tempered by a bitter edge of something Weiss was clearly having to dull just to keep in check as her eyes narrowed.

"Mistaking that understanding for forgiveness would be ill-advised. Because at the end of the day, you still hurt her. Still made her final moments ones of unimaginable suffering, not even to prove a point or aid your cause—Simply to make her pay for my sins. That wasn't a necessary cruelty or a choice forced on you by someone else; that was what you wanted. Because that's who Blake Belladonna has become. Not a martyr. Not a revolutionary. A self-indulgent beast who acts first and foremost in the service of her own rage. You say you never wanted any of this? In some respects, I believe it. In others? Not for one second. Because believe me, there were moments in our lives when we did have a choice, Belladonna. And at every single point it mattered most, we chose wrong."

The lights flickered, went dark, and Weiss didn't blink. Her stare didn't waver from where it had resettled on Blake with renewed icy intensity as she waited for the inevitable, and in the darkness before the backup generators went to work Blake had the benefit of one last statement spoken to crystallize her intent.

"Winter knew that. So did Taurus. In their final months, it destroyed them both. And she died ashamed of you."

The shutters snapped open, as did the door behind Weiss and even with her adapted vision Blake barely had a moment to process the shifting mass of warped bone, growling maws and distended black flesh waiting on the other side, a sea of green glows and eyes that stared at her with a mindless, catatonic patience atypical of Grimm. She had even less time to identify the eye that instead glowed a stark cybernetic red at their forefront, the smug, weathered face it illuminated smirking as its owner keyed something into his prosthetic arm.

Then she felt a painful jolt in her chest, and something was wrong. Her aura started flickering madly, trying to process a wound it had no way of protecting from; an electrical current passed not through Blake's entire body, meant to immobilize and pacify, but through one part of her specifically not covered by a protective aura.

Her heart.

And whatever else Blake may have thought in that moment, she knew immediately that it wasn't intended to pacify.

With the Hand's resolve, and whatever anger Weiss's words may have sparked in her, it almost didn't matter. Her clones still almost made it all the way across the corridor to a Weiss who showed no signs of responding, in spite of the sudden unsettling stillness in her chest and the cold spreading from its center.

Then that cold took a more universal hold, and one by one the clones started to vanish. It wasn't even that her semblance was being actively suppressed; it was as though the strength to keep using it simply... wasn't there anymore. It was terrifying how quickly that weakness reached her legs, and wherever the real Blake was she abruptly felt them buckle beneath her, landing flat on her back with a view of the ceiling as her breaths grew more and more labored. Blake had felt many shades of pain throughout her tormented existence, but this was different. It didn't even feel like pain; it just felt... final.

The last image she could recall was that of Weiss standing over her, speaking words that registered too garbled to make out over her shoulder to someone too blurry to see, before her lungs gave up and she breathed her last, falling still.

Quite dead.

---

Which was what made it such an unpleasant surprise when her eyes flickered open and she came alive an unspecified amount of time later, crimson light flooding her senses as her starved lungs heaved to recoup their losses.

She hadn't moved. They were once more alone in the hallway, Weiss kneeling over her, a serene demureness about her as she shifted back from where her hands had been laced over Blake's heart like defibrillators, giving a quiet huff of relief as she shook the last few sparks of an electrical discharge free and clasped them atop her own lap instead.

"Welcome back. I'm afraid I cheated again. My apologies, but, well, that's Atlas for you."

There was a light, airy affectation to her apology this time, as if she were offering a casual 'better luck next time' after the concluding move in a chess match. She nodded in the direction of Blake's neck, which the Hand had become acutely aware was fully healed under her makeshift dressing. Along with the rest of her injuries, aura bearing the same light cerulean glow as Gwen's did many floors up.

"You honestly think I'd stop there for someone as ridiculous as you are? Please. I don't install failsafes that aren't failsafes, dear, and I don't underestimate my opponents." She scowled a bit, sounding faintly offended at the very implication. "Your cohorts were all fitted with one shock chip—the same one you removed. No more than the usual for enemies I want made obedient, no less. But because, as I said, you're ridiculous, I gave Merlot a particular set of instructions to follow during your procedure."

She waved a hand, explaining with all the forthright manner of a substitute teacher.

"Two chips; one incision. The man's unsavory, but the strides he's made in nanosurgery as a result of studying Grimm biology are truly without peer. With that in mind, I imagine you'll be needing a professional scalpel to remove the one I had him graft to your heart." The reveal came in a smooth, confident drawl. Her bedside manner probably could've used work, a trace of undeniable smugness to her words even now at dispatching Belladonna without engaging her on the level she wanted her to. "I'd tell whoever you get to be careful, though. An electric shock of that voltage, at that proximity to your most vital organ?"

She clucked her tongue.

"Not just a failsafe. A killswitch. I don't care if you have the determination of a blizzard in spring, dear, you simply aren't going to be continuing. Well, barring an intervening miracle."

She pointed to herself like she expected Blake to be impressed, no apparent accounting for modesty amid the wave of self-awareness that had hit her today. The maiden considered briefly, cocking her head to one side with one final ponderous sigh.



"I suppose I should feel inclined to offer one last apology. Technically, I lied. I said I wouldn't be killing you, but in point of fact you've been dead for the last..." She pinched her chin. "...Four minutes? No, five, even. I was beginning to think resuscitation was impossible. For posterity, are you experiencing any noticable onset of brain damage? How many fingers am I holding up?"

She held up seven split across both hands, because of course her version of that test was more complicated than it needed to be. If Blake's attention roved around in search of the staff, naturally she found no trace in sight.

Meaning there was an entire prospective five minutes between her and Weiss and wherever it was.​

 

[MidwayLives]

Penny had a wan smile flicker across her face as she watched Watts and Cinder, but it flickered out of existence in short order as her eyes swept back to the portal.

This was the first time it had ever felt like she was truly cut off from home.

At Beacon, she’d had her father, and later Ciel, along with the entirety of the Atlas military. And of course in Atlas she was surrounded by it.

Now she was truly away from it, with no recourse or contact to be had. This version of her father, the General… Winter… all gone away from her, along with the people she’d been built to protect. Her home was about to face the worst threat it ever had, with the two leaders who were supposed to defend it at each other’s throats, and she was an entire continent away.

Her hand started to reach for the portal before it dropped back to her side as it finally flickered out of existence, cutting off that pathway to Atlas for good

All that'd happened lately only served to further annoy the diminutive killer. They were apparently down a relic and too busy being on the otherside of things to really do anything about getting it back. Which kinda defeated the whole reason why Neo had gone through all that she had to even end up being here. Get the relic by teaming up with those who disliked her and vice versa. Figure out the way to get home. Go back and bring Emerald and go home to their mediocre lives in the other world. She still wouldn't be HAPPY but y'know after some time spent in this world, she doubted that'd be a possibility no matter where she went.

Still, as she folded her arms across her chest and waited for whatever was going to happen to happen...She noticed something out of the corner of her eye. The last time she'd seen Atlas's tin can, they'd been going on about how she and Emerald needed an eye to be kept on them/to be placed under arrest. Whcih was all well and good yeah(she GUESSED)but Neo didn't know whether it was the frustration bubbling inside her or Penny's expression but the robot seemed in kinda a funk. Looking down at herself, Neo shrugged. She had left Hush behind unwillingly after the beating she'd gotten courtesy of a maiden and if she tried fleeing now she'd be doing it in a region she knew nothing about. Which meant that like it or not(and she REALLY didn't like it...)she was going to have to share a space with them. It also meant that if they wanted to arrest and or kill her...welp...wasn't really much she could DO about it.

Penny felt a tap on her shoulder.

If she turned and looked down, she'd have seen Neo looking up at her.

"?" Neo gave a small wave and gestured to where the portal had once floated and done portal things. Then she pointed back to Penny.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"Hey! Annoying???"

Rude. Whatever other tunnels of insight and self-reflection Weiss may have dived headlong down, it appeared a lifetime of canned smiles, sycophantic laughter and generally being treated like the most important person in the room had bred someone entirely unprepared to confront that particular truth of her character. She may not have had a high opinion of herself overall, but she knew what she was good at! She was someone who spoke a high volume of words when the situation demanded it. Every single one of them enrapturing!!!!

That kneejerk prickliness was why it was strange the most she could muster up in her defense was a flustered, frankly goofy grin, strained to the point of awkwardness as she (of all things) checked her scroll.

View attachment 825079

"That's... an interesting choice of words in light of what's about to happen?"

It wasn't that Weiss thought she was an annoying person. That was just absurd! Heartless and a noxious, malignant influence on indigenous life, maybe, but she had charisma!! Anyone claiming otherwise was nothing more than a jealous begrudger envious of her astonishing grasp of cadence and vocabulary.

But as an opponent and obstacle to overcome, yes, she supposed she could see how the word might find some use. Annoying in the way a mountain was to climb in a hurry, or annoying like trying to fly a kite in a hurricane. Frustrating annoying. She ran people around in circles, let them tire themselves out with pointless tasks and broadly made sure they couldn't inconvenience her in any way, all while hardly bothering to deal with them herself until she was ready for them. Obviously that was what Blake meant. And whatever else Yang may have thought of her, annoying definitely wasn't one of them she was a personable delight.

That specialized branch of annoying under which the definition could theoretically apply to her was about to be on full display. Weiss's features reverted smoothly back to a firm, neutral portrait of calm and composure at whatever her scroll told her, and though it was hard to escape the feeling she wasn't giving Blake her undivided attention it would've been foolish to assume her thoughts were anywhere other than what was about to happen in this room.



"Blake. Just so we're clear." There was a more level, hardened edge to her tone than the one of regret and apology they carried before, no less raw or sincere than those words had been. "I don't consider you the person truly at fault for what happened to my sister. I was killing her for years before you ever did."

In contrast to before, words weren't spoken with any degree of shame or regret, and she definitely didn't leave any room for self-pity. It was a simple admission of a fact, tempered by a bitter edge of something Weiss was clearly having to dull just to keep in check as her eyes narrowed.

"Mistaking that understanding for forgiveness would be ill-advised. Because at the end of the day, you still hurt her. Still made her final moments ones of unimaginable suffering, not even to prove a point or aid your cause—Simply to make her pay for my sins. That wasn't a necessary cruelty or a choice forced on you by someone else; that was what you wanted. Because that's who Blake Belladonna has become. Not a martyr. Not a revolutionary. A self-indulgent beast who acts first and foremost in the service of her own rage. You say you never wanted any of this? In some respects, I believe it. In others? Not for one second. Because believe me, there were moments in our lives when we did have a choice, Belladonna. And at every single point it mattered most, we chose wrong."

The lights flickered, went dark, and Weiss didn't blink. Her stare didn't waver from where it had resettled on Blake with renewed icy intensity as she waited for the inevitable, and in the darkness before the backup generators went to work Blake had the benefit of one last statement spoken to crystallize her intent.

"Winter knew that. So did Taurus. In their final months, it destroyed them both. And she died ashamed of you."

The shutters snapped open, as did the door behind Weiss and even with her adapted vision Blake barely had a moment to process the shifting mass of warped bone, growling maws and distended black flesh waiting on the other side, a sea of green glows and eyes that stared at her with a mindless, catatonic patience atypical of Grimm. She had even less time to identify the eye that instead glowed a stark cybernetic red at their forefront, the smug, weathered face it illuminated smirking as its owner keyed something into his prosthetic arm.

Then she felt a painful jolt in her chest, and something was wrong. Her aura started flickering madly, trying to process a wound it had no way of protecting from; an electrical current passed not through Blake's entire body, meant to immobilize and pacify, but through one part of her specifically not covered by a protective aura.

Her heart.

And whatever else Blake may have thought in that moment, she knew immediately that it wasn't intended to pacify.

With the Hand's resolve, and whatever anger Weiss's words may have sparked in her, it almost didn't matter. Her clones still almost made it all the way across the corridor to a Weiss who showed no signs of responding, in spite of the sudden unsettling stillness in her chest and the cold spreading from its center.

Then that cold took a more universal hold, and one by one the clones started to vanish. It wasn't even that her semblance was being actively suppressed; it was as though the strength to keep using it simply... wasn't there anymore. It was terrifying how quickly that weakness reached her legs, and wherever the real Blake was she abruptly felt them buckle beneath her, landing flat on her back with a view of the ceiling as her breaths grew more and more labored. Blake had felt many shades of pain throughout her tormented existence, but this was different. It didn't even feel like pain; it just felt... final.

The last image she could recall was that of Weiss standing over her, speaking words that registered too garbled to make out over her shoulder to someone too blurry to see, before her lungs gave up and she breathed her last, falling still.

Quite dead.

---

Which was what made it such an unpleasant surprise when her eyes flickered open and she came alive an unspecified amount of time later, crimson light flooding her senses as her starved lungs heaved to recoup their losses.

She hadn't moved. They were once more alone in the hallway, Weiss kneeling over her, a serene demureness about her as she shifted back from where her hands had been laced over Blake's heart like defibrillators, giving a quiet huff of relief as she shook the last few sparks of an electrical discharge free and clasped them atop her own lap instead.

"Welcome back. I'm afraid I cheated again. My apologies, but, well, that's Atlas for you."

There was a light, airy affectation to her apology this time, as if she were offering a casual 'better luck next time' after the concluding move in a chess match. She nodded in the direction of Blake's neck, which the Hand had become acutely aware was fully healed under her makeshift dressing. Along with the rest of her injuries, aura bearing the same light cerulean glow as Gwen's did many floors up.

"You honestly think I'd stop there for someone as ridiculous as you are? Please. I don't install failsafes that aren't failsafes, dear, and I don't underestimate my opponents." She scowled a bit, sounding faintly offended at the very implication. "Your cohorts were all fitted with one shock chip—the same one you removed. No more than the usual for enemies I want made obedient, no less. But because, as I said, you're ridiculous, I gave Merlot a particular set of instructions to follow during your procedure."

She waved a hand, explaining with all the forthright manner of a substitute teacher.

"Two chips; one incision. The man's unsavory, but the strides he's made in nanosurgery as a result of studying Grimm biology are truly without peer. With that in mind, I imagine you'll be needing a professional scalpel to remove the one I had him graft to your heart." The reveal came in a smooth, confident drawl. Her bedside manner probably could've used work, a trace of undeniable smugness to her words even now at dispatching Belladonna without engaging her on the level she wanted her to. "I'd tell whoever you get to be careful, though. An electric shock of that voltage, at that proximity to your most vital organ?"

She clucked her tongue.

"Not just a failsafe. A killswitch. I don't care if you have the determination of a blizzard in spring, dear, you simply aren't going to be continuing. Well, barring an intervening miracle."

She pointed to herself like she expected Blake to be impressed, no apparent accounting for modesty amid the wave of self-awareness that had hit her today. The maiden considered briefly, cocking her head to one side with one final ponderous sigh.

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"I suppose I should feel inclined to offer one last apology. Technically, I lied. I said I wouldn't be killing you, but in point of fact you've been dead for the last..." She pinched her chin. "...Four minutes? No, five, even. I was beginning to think resuscitation was impossible. For posterity, are you experiencing any noticable onset of brain damage? How many fingers am I holding up?"

She held up seven split across both hands, because of course her version of that test was more complicated than it needed to be. If Blake's attention roved around in search of the staff, naturally she found no trace in sight.

Meaning there was an entire prospective five minutes between her and Weiss and wherever it was.​

Whatever Blake's response was would've been lost in a garble of half whispered coughs, except never in her life had Weiss been given a more clear and concise 'fuck you' from eyes alone before Blake passed out