Fandom Distorted Mirror [IC]

[Gus Gungus]

Cinder blinked in surprise, as not only was Emerald still here despite the quite frankly overwhelming awkwardness, but the other girl had actually slid down to sit beside her. She hadn't asked for it, in fact the whole point of her initially excusing herself had been so that she would be away from the group for a little while, let it out in solitude. But she had to admit, she really did appreciate that Emerald went so far. In fact, that appreciation in Cinder probably rivaled the awkwardness she was sure Emerald felt inside about this situation. It was probably greater, even! She hesitated for only a second or two before moving to rest her head on the offered shoulder. It was so...nice. So warm.

She was silent for the whole time Emerald was talking, even after the older girl had pulled away and stood back up. Cinder was simply grateful for even that brief time. Emerald didn't have to, and as she herself admitted, she really wasn't the type of person to do so...but she had anyway. The maiden only spoke up after that last, swiftly scrambling back to her feet with an affronted "hey!" at the fact that Emerald had taken her wallet. She did her best to swipe it back but whether that failed or not, the tears had dried up as she fell in step alongside the mint-haired thief. "So hey, you know...you may not consider yourself that type of person, but you're good at it! Really good! You could probably make a killing, charging hourly for stuff like that." Cinder joked, some of that more positive energy coming back out. "But seriously, thanks. Not just for the forgiveness or whatever, but like...painting that picture. About the differences between me, and...the other me. The older me. Evil me. The trashy ho." In spite of her mood just a little bit ago, Cinder broke into a raucous fit of giggles.

That was such a good way to describe her. "You know, that should be trademarked."

"Not gonna lie, this crying hobo's feeling pretty good right now." She remarked, thumbing at herself. Enough to poke fun even at herself, it seemed. "And brave too! Thanks again for reminding me of that. That I'm more than just some reflection of that other me, that unlike her I'm brave enough to try to own up to my mistakes. Whatever happens with Neo, no matter if it goes badly or not...thanks." Cinder couldn't say that word enough. "I mean it." She hesitated for a second before she leaned over, and as if adding an exclamation point to her last statement, gave Emerald a quick kiss on the cheek.

Any time Cinder came close to snatching her wallet back was also when it suddenly jumped to Emerald's other hand as if teleporting, so that was a trip. The thief didn't shy away from being smug about her one-woman game of keepaway, either, more and more of a reluctant smile gradually poking out from behind her grifter's mask the harder the maiden tried that definitely had nothing to do with the eyeroll-inducing corniness of the words themselves. "Okay okay. What is this, a very special episode? Can we not—Can we just get back to—CINDER!"

The shove the younger huntress received the moment her lips brushed against Emerald's cheek was far harsher and more defensive than it needed to be, and her reaction in the aftermath made it clear she knew it. Her glower burned every bit as much with contrite guilt as it did with irritation, and it was tough to figure out exactly which one the flush on her face was coming from as she avoided eye contact, rubbing her arm.



"I specifically asked for less mush, junior." Was all she said, firm in its setting of boundaries yet somehow evasive at the same time. "Don't wanna make it awkward, I'm just saying. Now c'mon. This is a terrible neighborhood."

And with that, as far as Cinder's perception was telling her the illusionist backed up, reversed and then awkwardly wheeled away, like she was wearing Heelys.

She wasn't, though.

"If I somehow convince myself to go back to Beacon after all this is done, I implore you to put a bullet in the base of my neck" He answered. "Its not about that; I'd be delighted if I didn't feel like the smartest person in the room. But the first time I didn't take the time to dig the holes in the underyling logic of a situation, it got me expelled from Atlas. And the second...."

The second was Haven. Not taking the time to think about why they were the ones being sent along, and just how everything could go terribly, violently wrong.

At the offer, he gave him a leery frown, but it was hard to miss the way his eyes glimmered with a bit of intrigue. For all Watts' talk of playing it safe, and for all his preening and sarcastic bite, the eagerness to know anything about everything was something that was ingrained into his soul; it was why he'd gone to atlas academy in the first place, why he'd taken that loss and soldiered on into making his way into Beacon by any means necessary, and why he'd not taken the time he should've to think things through when presented with the opportunity to acquire an object that literally had the answers to everything.

A friend's secret past, while perhaps not as universally useful, nor something he'd dig into without permission, and how exactly these four (five? seriously who the hell was this middle aged man with the absolute worst mustache he'd ever seen) were hiding out here was something that had his interest.

Oh, and he supposed they should probably meet back up with Tyrian.

"I suppose there's no harm in it. We need a safe place to stow this anyways while the other idiots all kill themselves."

That was how Emerald reappeared to the other two, gliding towards them on invisible skates just in time to see Mercury yoink Watts into a headlock and slap his hand over his mouth so fast and hard the impact was like the crack of a towel, fully intent on cutting off the tail end of his last sentence.



"LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH, don't wanna hear it, don't wanna know about it. We got a good thing going, Artholomew." He cautioned, knowingly using the completely incorrect extension of 'Art' as a power move. He narrowed his eyes. "And unless you want Neo and Tyrian charging off to gore themselves on the same sword of righteousness those idiots are, you and the matchstick better make sure they don't catch wind of any suicide missions in the area either. Capeesh? There's a good nerd. Oh, and don't ever worry about being the smartest guy in the room when I'm around."

Whether it was a veiled threat from a bully or earnest advice from a friend (or some strange, strange midpoint between the two), he finally let him go with an affectionate hair tousle right as Emerald rolled on past, stiff as a board and eyes firmly front-facing as she disappeared deeper into the shadows of the alley.

"You ladies all done making out back there?"



"Cool. Yet also hot." He pivoted on the balls of his feet, starting to follow her in a backwards walk as he tossed a fingergun at both other parties (assuming Cinder was following). "Try keep up, dorks."

Thus did the shadows swallow him, too.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"WHOA-"

A birdish squawk rang out somewhere in the midst of him getting disassembled into molecules, shunted all the way to the other end of the hall and reassembled in the shape of a man, glad he didn't follow his instinct to shift forms in the middle of that in case he came back together as some kinda horrifying half-crow half-guy. Like that one movie, only not a bug.

But on the whole he was better prepared to weather the disorienting effects of his niece's semblance than most, and he touched down with Harbinger already in rifle mode so the Grimm chasing her down were obliterated with twice the efficiency.

"Yang's fine, but we could use a little more silver sauce back on our end! What's the deal??"

"I..." Ruby's face fell, her expression straddling the line between ashamed and hurting. Even now, Maria's words to her all those months ago echoed in her mind. Don't think about your light as a means of destroying evil, but as a way to protect the people of Remnant. She tried, she really did. Tried to focus her thoughts, saw Yang and Qrow and Penny and Nora and even Raven, all of them stuck on this Remnant...she saw all their faces. Even nice Cinder and kinda(?) nicer Mercury and Emerald and all the rest of this Remnant, they were there too. But none of them stuck in her mind's eye for long enough, all of them flickering and twisting apart and getting replaced by...that. As if not referring to her by name made it easier to handle.

Were they not in such a dangerous place, she might have not had it within her to even stand. But they were, and so she did stand, and she fought back to keep herself safe and to try to keep everyone else safe too. But her mind was too troubled by that image searing its way into her thoughts to fully harness her strongest weapon against the grimm.

"...I can't." She finally finished her sentence. "We just have to get out of here as soon as we can." ​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Any time Cinder came close to snatching her wallet back was also when it suddenly jumped to Emerald's other hand as if teleporting, so that was a trip. The thief didn't shy away from being smug about her one-woman game of keepaway, either, more and more of a reluctant smile gradually poking out from behind her grifter's mask the harder the maiden tried that definitely had nothing to do with the eyeroll-inducing corniness of the words themselves. "Okay okay. What is this, a very special episode? Can we not—Can we just get back to—CINDER!"

The shove the younger huntress received the moment her lips brushed against Emerald's cheek was far harsher and more defensive than it needed to be, and her reaction in the aftermath made it clear she knew it. Her glower burned every bit as much with contrite guilt as it did with irritation, and it was tough to figure out exactly which one the flush on her face was coming from as she avoided eye contact, rubbing her arm.

"I specifically asked for less mush, junior." Was all she said, firm in its setting of boundaries yet somehow evasive at the same time. "Don't wanna make it awkward, I'm just saying. Now c'mon. This is a terrible neighborhood."

And with that, as far as Cinder's perception was telling her the illusionist backed up, reversed and then awkwardly wheeled away, like she was wearing Heelys.

She wasn't, though.

The rough shove was so unexpected on her end that she actually fell over backwards, landing somewhat painfully on her butt. Not enough to get her to grunt or anything, but enough to feel it. She was quiet for a few moments, looking over at Emerald with a fairly sheepish look as the older girl got what she needed to say out.

"Right...okay. Sorry." Cinder responded, pushing herself back up to standing and rubbing her own arms nervously when back on her feet. "Won't happen again." The maiden dashed up after Em until close enough to resume walking speed.​

That was how Emerald reappeared to the other two, gliding towards them on invisible skates just in time to see Mercury yoink Watts into a headlock and slap his hand over his mouth so fast and hard the impact was like the crack of a towel, fully intent on cutting off the tail end of his last sentence.

"LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH, don't wanna hear it, don't wanna know about it. We got a good thing going, Artholomew." He cautioned, knowingly using the completely incorrect extension of 'Art' as a power move. He narrowed his eyes. "And unless you want Neo and Tyrian charging off to splatter themselves all over whatever sword of righteousness those idiots are throwing 'emselves on, you and the matchstick better make sure they don't catch wind of any suicide missions in the area either. Capeesh? There's a good nerd."

Whether it was a veiled threat from a bully or earnest advice from a friend (or some strange, strange midpoint between the two), he let him go with an affectionate hair tousle right as Emerald rolled on past, stiff as a board and eyes firmly front-facing as she disappeared deeper into the shadows of the alley.

"Pfft. Artholomew." That was enough to get a snort out of her but she said nothing beyond that, and any thoughts about the more serious stuff Mercury had just spoken remained just that, thoughts.​

"You ladies all done making out back there?"

"N-no we didn't, I mean that didn't h--I mean shut up Mercury!" She wasn't really helping her own case here.
​

"Cool. Yet also hot." He pivoted on the balls of his feet, starting to follow her in a backwards walk as he tossed a fingergun at both other parties (assuming Cinder was following). "Try keep up, dorks."

Thus did the shadows swallow him, too.

Yes. Following was good. Anything that wasn't talking about that. "Tch!" Cinder grunted dismissively. "I can freakin' fly! Of course I can keep up. If anythin' it would be you two who'd have to try to keep up." The complicated well of emotions that had sprang up in the last few minutes didn't do much to dull her sarcasm when she felt like flexing it. Cinder crossed her arms but her eye drifted over to rest on Arthur as they went. "So...you guys have good...uh...dude talk?"​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"I..." Ruby's face fell, her expression straddling the line between ashamed and hurting. Even now, Maria's words to her all those months ago echoed in her mind. Don't think about your light as a means of destroying evil, but as a way to protect the people of Remnant. She tried, she really did. Tried to focus her thoughts, saw Yang and Qrow and Penny and Nora and even Raven, all of them stuck on this Remnant...she saw all their faces. Even nice Cinder and kinda(?) nicer Mercury and Emerald and all the rest of this Remnant, they were there too. But none of them stuck in her mind's eye for long enough, all of them flickering and twisting apart and getting replaced by...that. As if not referring to her by name made it easier to handle.

Were they not in such a dangerous place, she might have not had it within her to even stand. But they were, and so she did stand, and she fought back to keep herself safe and to try to keep everyone else safe too. But her mind was too troubled by that image searing its way into her thoughts to fully harness her strongest weapon against the grimm.

"...I can't." She finally finished her sentence. "We just have to get out of here as soon as we can."

Qrow didn't exactly consider himself a family man at the best of times, or a world's best uncle candidate by any stretch.

But he tried. He liked to think he had pretty steady bonds with both his nieces, even if the exact nature of those bonds had diverged and developed differently over time; Yang was old (her soul older) and independent enough by now that he had no qualms phasing out any active mentoring on his part a while back, content to chum around with her the same way he would an old huntress buddy. Or the closest thing she had to an older brother figure, if being eternally pigeonholed as the protective elder sibling type herself ever got to be a lot, complete with the occasional 'you're a dumbass' speech on the occasions he felt she needed it. Even if he had made a mental note to be way more open to the prospect of some asshole with an illusion-weaving semblance setting her up to look like the bad guy next time.

Ruby, though... Ruby was different. She'd developed into one hell of a huntress, and a leader, but the fall of Beacon hadn't really... changed her the way it had Yang. The elder sister had come through the other side of that nightmare stronger than ever, without a doubt, but it was hard to deny she wasn't quite the same fountain of ceaseless optimism and happy-go-lucky breeziness she'd been in those days, when her life was simple and she felt unstoppable; having all that so brutally ripped away from her in a heartbeat had left her with a jaded edge that wasn't there before, a weariness she didn't deserve.

Ruby was still Ruby. Somehow she seemed to have found a way of not letting the world get to her in the same way it had just about everyone else in her family, or at the very least of not showing that it had. To a certain extent, it was still hard not to look at her and see the kid who didn't know which way to swing a scythe when he started teaching her all those shattered moons ago.

Which made moments like this, when that bright-eyed face wore expressions like that, stick out like a sore thumb. And he would've had to have been a pretty outright lousy uncle not to notice.

"...Ruby, did something—"

Unfortunately, he would've been an even lousier huntsman if he didn't notice the guttural roar of oncoming darkness being drawn to his niece like a beacon reverberate from around the corner, and he stylishly ejected Harbinger's empty magazine to slot in a new one in time with its unfolding back into sword form.

"Let's shelve that. Grab our numbskull sisters and ditch this hellhole?"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"...Ruby, did something—"

Unfortunately, he would've been an even lousier huntsman if he didn't notice the guttural roar of oncoming darkness being drawn to his niece like a beacon reverberate from around the corner, and he stylishly ejected Harbinger's empty magazine to slot in a new one in time with its unfolding back into sword form.

"Let's shelve that. Grab our numbskull sisters and ditch this hellhole?"

“Yeah. Let’s do that.” Ruby nodded in agreement, already having reloaded Crescent. She didn’t say much but the sooner they were off this nightmarish creature and back in the far more safe Vacuo desert, the better. This place had worn out its welcome. Ruby didn’t waste any time before speeding off, starting to rush back for the room where Yang and Raven were.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The hail of fire ceased after that roll, Ren taking the moment for himself to reload both his weapons as Yang's shot soared across the room...to strike a small griffon, the grimm practically diving into the way. The shot obliterated it, the monster fading away in a black smoky haze, but just beyond that, Ozwen was smirking in a smug way. "Oh, I'd say the odds of that happening are pretty slim, wouldn't you agree?" She questioned in that oh so familiar voice. "How did he put it? Your window's closing." Ren's gunfire resumed then, as if it were a period on the end of Ozwen's statement. Her head turned, eyes flickering over to Raven still moving and fighting with ferocity against the rest of the grimm, even as more came. The insufferable smile widened, and her gaze returned to Yang.

"How long will your stubbornness not allow you to see the obvious? I'm curious to find out."

"This pretty much goes on forever, actually." Ozwen somewhat weirdly chose to butt in over herself, her vainglorious smile souring quicker than a dairy product left out in the sun as it drifted into a cerebral, matter-of-fact scowl. It was, again, fleeting, but even from across the room the way the composite being's eyes abruptly leapt to an entirely different spoke in the color wheel and then back again was obvious.

"Yang read one too many young adult novels as a child and now believes she's the protagonist of one. It's stupidly cute."

...

"OBNOXIOUS! Obnoxiously cute!!! NO!!! STUPIDLY OBNOXIOUS-"

Unfortunately (or mercifully, depending on one's perspective), whatever incorrigible know-it-all streak was strong enough for Weiss to keep inserting her two lien unsolicited and unfiltered had been reined in again by the time the next sentence finished leaving her mouth. Any traces of her at this stage were still impulsive, surface level reactions forcing their way up in response to whatever the eyes and ears formerly belonging to her were perceiving, and it just so happened that her overwhelming impulse to crawl under a rock and stay there had chosen that moment to spontaneously overpower all else.

There was a part of Yang that was absolutely, totally offended and kinda mortified that Weiss had just basically called her a nerd. That was Ruby's whole schtick, she was the cool sister.

It got shoved down in the same hole her fear and slowly growing panic about their timetable was being smothered in. Sometimes, a girl had to compartmentalize and prioritize, something Ozwen was clearly still working on. There'd be time for that all later, once Weiss was actually back in control, once she'd kicked Oz out, or just tore him apart from the inside out more permanently, anything, whichever solution put Weiss back in the driver's seat and directly in Yang's crosshairs for a course correction on just who was the geek in this relationship. She had more important things to worry about.

Like getting Weiss to someone who could actually help . Someone who could bring more to this problem than just muscle, shotgun shells, a winning smile, and a magic she barely understood.



Which meant giving Ozwen the worst beatdown she'd ever gotten in her last fifteen lifetimes.

The time Weiss spent in the driver's seat wasn't wasted; Yang foot blasted off the whale's floor with a squelch of breaking flesh and bone as she charged for her target, before suddenly careening to the side as Ren opened fire with a gauntlet assisted momentum shift to tackle a hapless griffon out of the air with a prosthetic choke-hold. Its head smashed into the ground to keep it dazed as Yang landed, not losing any speed as she kept the beast between her and Ren's fire as an inhuman shield.

"The only thing I see-"

The same moment Ozwen's eyes shifted back to red was the same moment Yang took her final step to get into range, and the poor grimm's beak slammed at a downward angle into Ozwen's face so hard that it shattered. Yang pivoted in a full rotation, and the creature's last moments as a sold being instead of a cloud of dust were used to swing it at Mach-Sun Dragon straight down like a carnival strength test, with Ozwen's head as both the target and the bell.

"-is someone who's dumb enough-"

Yang's low stance from the hammer swing was turned into the starting point for an uppercut as she slid her foot forward to put her herself into range to put her fist into Ozwen's back as she rebounded off the floor to send her rocketing towards the cieling.

If all that happened, she brought both her hands low, and if Ren was charging forward to assist his master, he felt the temperature skyrocket as Yang's eyes flared with lilac and red fire at the same time.

"To NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!"

She swung both hands upwards, and the sound of her aura shattering from the heat was absolutely lost in the sheer decibles as flame erupted towards the cieling in a fiery blaze that matched the colors of her eyes.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The golden monster's face was scarcely a millimeter from Neo's by the time of her savior's intervention, euphorically deranged in the way it heaved in greedy, palpitated breaths through its nostrils almost in rhythm with the increasingly desperate noises tumbling from the illusionist's lips, as if the scent of her fear had some manner of marinading properties. She was delicious, this paltry little woman of blades and deceptions, her terror practically virginal in its untapped purity. So used to being the one sowing fear, not experiencing it—so sure of her ability to be predator, not prey.

It was... intoxicating. The deep veins of rage, misery, shame and loneliness running through the Dragon's core were raw, heady, infinitely intense; but she was a candle burning itself out, and it was readily apparent to the Grimm dwelling within that wretched, pathetic creature that it was far from the first to use her as its chew toy. As a cocoon for gestation, she was ideal: devoid of joy, love, hope or purpose, a consistent wellspring of daily sustenance for the evil feeding on her soul.

But she was stale.

That soul was a broken one, denounced, forgotten and unloved, who had slipped through so many cracks that the only place she found her haven was in this fleeting world's lowest pit, a source of twisted amusement and violence for its cruelest master in return for the vaguest modicum of affection. That suffering was her reality. Take the hits. Keep moving. Hit back. Day-in, day-out. She burned with the fury of a collapsing star, but her light was waning.

It had tired of her.

It wanted fresh torment.

It wanted to wring its misery from unwilling bones.

It—




—Had taken absolutely no notice of Penny in the depths of its debauched revelry, and as the appendage it grew from fell apart into diced pieces it screeched its disdain and took a step back in a frenzy of raging, flailing body parts, something entirely inhuman about the way Yang's form convulsed and contorted. Yet her soul still remained, her semblance still flared and shone to such a degree that Penny had to calibrate her visual receptors accordingly, and it made for a dazzling clash of colors when the beam cut through that celestial aura to engulf her shrieking head.

That was around when the protector of Mantle received a grim, enlightening dose of primary data on something that couldn't really be adequately measured through aura readings and biometric scans.

Yang Xiao Long was a powerhouse.

This wasn't Yang Xiao Long anymore, and the case could have been made that it hadn't been for a long, long time. But it wore the flesh of what had once been Yang Xiao Long, if you squinted, and the same semblance that the kinder bearer of that name had grown to rely on only as a necessity had been stoked and indulged by this one's self-destructive and masochistic tendencies at every turn. The way a sponge absorbed water or a plant absorbed sunlight, she absorbed pain. It was the closest thing she had to a friend. Such thinking had probably played a major part in her current state, her aura in tatters, the sheer volume of blood caking her hair and clothes enough to give her fire a reddish tint, all of it hers.

Something else Penny learned about Yang's semblance was that it, unlike most, didn't need an aura to function.

The false Dragon dug her heels in and staggered, stumbled, but didn't fly. And even as her human hand came up to deflect the majority of the beam from her face, Penny suddenly found the kinetic force she was exerting dwarfed by what the beast was pushing back against it with, a veritable juggernaut with no apparent regard for how Yang's body could possibly hope to keep up. The hand that had been shielding her abruptly cut forward, shoving straight through the last of the beam to cut it off, clamp down around Penny's hand and wrench, and the immediate protesting groan of her metal digits told her everything she needed to know about even her chances of stopping the monstrosity before her in a test of strength as its empty eyes probed her soul with a curious sniff that abruptly contorted into a disgusted snarl.

"H̷o̴l̷l̸o̵w̵ ̴i̷m̸i̴t̶a̵t̷i̸o̶n̶n̵n̷n̸n̴!̷ ̴A̷l̴l̵ ̵w̷i̶t̶h̵i̴n̴n̵n̴ ̸y̴o̵u̷ ̸i̶s̴s̶s̸ ̵EMPTY, ̶m̶i̷n̸e̶d̴A̷N̵D̵s̶h̴a̷p̸e̴d̶A̶N̷D̸m̵a̵a̸a̵a̵d̶e̶! Y̵o̴u̸r̸ ̶f̵a̶t̷e̸ ̶i̷s̷ ̸o̸b̸s̸o̶l̴e̶t̵i̵o̶n̵n̵n̵n̸,̵ ̵t̴o̴ ̶b̶e̶ ̵r̷i̴p̶p̷e̴d̷ ̶a̴s̴s̴s̴u̶n̴d̵e̸r̴ ̵a̴n̸d̸ ̷r̶e̸f̷o̷r̸g̶e̵d̸ ̵i̷n̶ ̷a̵ ̸s̷s̵s̸u̷p̶e̵r̵i̴o̵r̶ ̵m̶o̵l̸d̸d̵d̷d̴! ̶Y̶o̸u̴ ̴a̵r̷e̵ ̵N̷O̷T̵H̷I̸N̷G̶G̴G̷G̵G̴!̴"​

Penny let out a mewl of surprised, frustrated pain as her arm was twisted downwards, and the words reverberated against her audio sensors even as she struggled to not buckle entirely under the weight.

"I... may not be... a normal human girl... but..."

"You think just because you've got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts that you're any less real?"

"...You're... taking this... remarkably well."

"You're not like those things back there Penny. You've got a heart, and a soul, I can feel it!"

He stepped forward.

"Penny..."

The sound of groaning, warping metal filled the room, and no one was entirely sure who it belonged to.

"It's alright. Thank you for bringing them here. It's good to see you weren't hurt."

"...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."

"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."

"That doesn't mean... that I'm not me. That I'm... hollow. I'm just.... as real.... as anyone else! And the only thing in... this room... that's hollow-"

The synthetic, glowing green eyes that tilted up to meet grimm ones were more resolved the more she spoke. There were too many people who cared about her, who were friends with her, for her to not be real. She wasn't siphoning off someone's body like the creature in front of her; her aura may have been born from her father, but it was her own.

Yet it took more than resolve to overpower brute strength. There was no adreniline in her tubing to turn this emotional strength into anything more concrete, and she was pushed farther and farther down, her arms absolutely grinding in protest, sparks bursting from her elbows.

But her aura wasn't the only those eyes were glowing. Penny was the only being in the room who senses could be called more finely honed than the Hand's own; the steam and mist were far easier to pierce with them than a military complex. She saw the sheathe sliding, she properly measured the pace of Raven's charge, and she felt the vibrations through the air of the hand's own prowl through the mists, on a path straight for the portal; Clearly as aware as Raven of where they had to get to to retreat, and intent on making it an impossible task, right up until a blade whipping silently through the mist suddenly gave Blake a taste of her own clotheslining medicine.

It hit her with enough force that she spun a full rotation in the air before landing roughly on all fours, miraculously still on her feet but with a split second of daze from being caught so off guard.

"-Is YOU!"

The other eight swords all came flying through the smoke and mist at the same moment Raven stepped in for her strike, intent on impaling the Dragon's auraless other arm to keep her from delivering Raven a reply; opting out of the test of strength entirely.

This battle was rough, fierce, ferocious. One of Ozpin's most devoted murderers and one of Salem's chief protectors, locked in combat. As proficient as Blake was in bladed combat, Raven's own skill in swordsmanship was greater still, parrying and deflecting and counter-striking in an absolute blur of speed...and yet, even without the bad luck of her brother bringing her down, she was giving ground to the Hand's assault. She was losing, slowly but surely. Though she held the advantage in pure skill, it was not by that much, and on top of that the faunus's semblance was far more combat oriented than hers. And on top of even that, the fact that Blake was a maiden let her pour even more power into that semblance. That slash had been blocked, but the fiery explosion that immediately followed hit her full force.

The experienced huntress got knocked back, propelled into one of the place's walls, her aura flickering. She didn't even get the time to recover before a second one burst apart right beside her. That one sent her skidding across the floor before her blade flew free, thrown out ahead of her...and Raven grabbed hold when she caught up to it, slowing her forward momentum as the sword tore a jagged scar into the floor of this creepy place until she came to a complete halt. She jumped up then, assessing the situation in a glance. None of us are leaving, huh? We'll see about that.

Omen got shoved back into its scabbard and withdrawn in an instant, a new color of blade adorned upon the hilt but only briefly seen before Raven jabbed it into the ground again. The blade burst apart this time, and the steam dust within nigh immediately spread out across the majority of the room in a foggy smokescreen intent on giving her an opening. Not to assault Blake, but rather to temporarily fall back from that fight.



And to focus on a new target. Raven rushed forward towards where the sound of that inhuman voice was coming from, the stomps of her footsteps joined by a metallic screech as something slid along the floor beside her. Raven came to a stop when the Dragon came into sight, and though the beast could feel something else nudge her boot, the swordswoman didn't give a chance to look. A slash from Omen came down, intending to force the thing that was not her daughter to relinquish that grip or risk losing the hand from that heavy swing. Raven didn't even give herself time to see how that went, though.

Her slash continued downwards, shifting into a stab for the thing by Yang's boots. If the creature looked, the thing was plainly recognized as Omen's scabbard. The stab penetrated right into the center of it, and Raven spun away in the split-seconds before all of them right there were engulfed in a multi-colored massive explosion that consumed the room as lightning, fire, gravity, ice, wind, rock and more types of dust all erupted in a single moment. A pure desperation move. From an outside perspective, the blast that eclipsed their silhouettes was strikingly beautiful.

The sheer force from that sent them all back, though whether they all flew as she intended, Raven couldn't say. She'd turned her back on the Dragon and as a consequence of using her own body to cover Penny and Neo, she took the major brunt of the damage. The blast had cleared away her smokescreen, what remained of her aura was gone in an instant, and she could feel the burns and damage spread out across herself but still she forced herself to stand. The veteran huntress winced but bit down on it, shoving Penny closer towards where her crimson portal was. "Go!" Raven barked, her tone of voice clearly revealing that she would not tolerate a refusal or any argument. "Take her-" Raven jerked her head towards Neo. "-and go!"

She spun back around then, eyes searching for any sign of the Dragon or the Hand, readying herself to do what she must to hold them back if the situation required it...as well as resigning herself to immediately close the portal behind the two if or when Penny acquiesced to Raven's demand.

She barely had time to turn and cover Neo with her arms back before the explosion engulfed the room, and even Penny's metallic bulk was sent tumbling through the air to crash into the wall next to the portal, shielding the drained assassin from the brunt of blast and the impact as her aura flared brightly, even with Raven providing a shield for her in turn.

She was barely halfway to her feet, an objection on the tip of her tongue, when she felt the blood splatter straight across her optic sensors.



Raven hadn't even completed her turn before Blake's sword slammed into her shoulder, electricity coursing across the Hand's form like a vengeful storm incarnate, maidenfire spilling from the mask like sickly yellow grimm ash, even her bandages in ruin at this point to show the scarred, muscled form beneath. The blade pierced clean through both Raven and the wall behind her, and then her eyes turned down towards Penny.

She was used to be looked at as inhuman herself. Like an object, just another war drone. That's not what this was though; Even those kind of looks offered her a modicum of respect or jealousy or pride or even anger, some sort of acknowledgement of her existence, of her strength, at least as a weapon.

She saw nothing behind those eyes except the hand running through just how she was going to dismantle her. Prey. An obstacle to be removed.

"I said none of you-"

There was the sound of shattering glass as the illusion over three of penny's blades shattered at the same time they slashed straight up into Blake's chin, and Penny thrusters kicked on to send them rocketing straight through the portal.

She couldn't hyperventilate, because she did not require breath, but a sort of fear that she'd never felt before still gripped Penny's iron heart as she stumbled to the other side of the portal with Neo in tow, somewhat gracelessly dropped onto the floor as Penny crash landed on her knees.

Yet even so, she turned. She would not leave Raven behind; not when she had fought so hard to get them back out; not when she'd been personally entrusted with everyone's safety. It didn't matter if she was scared, she had to-

The portal closed right in front of her, one hand outstretched towards it as her eyes froze in place with shock

 

[Gus Gungus]

And to focus on a new target. Raven rushed forward towards where the sound of that inhuman voice was coming from, the stomps of her footsteps joined by a metallic screech as something slid along the floor beside her. Raven came to a stop when the Dragon came into sight, and though the beast could feel something else nudge her boot, the swordswoman didn't give a chance to look. A slash from Omen came down, intending to force the thing that was not her daughter to relinquish that grip or risk losing the hand from that heavy swing. Raven didn't even give herself time to see how that went, though.

Her slash continued downwards, shifting into a stab for the thing by Yang's boots. If the creature looked, the thing was plainly recognized as Omen's scabbard. The stab penetrated right into the center of it, and Raven spun away in the split-seconds before all of them right there were engulfed in a multi-colored massive explosion that consumed the room as lightning, fire, gravity, ice, wind, rock and more types of dust all erupted in a single moment. A pure desperation move. From an outside perspective, the blast that eclipsed their silhouettes was strikingly beautiful.

The other eight swords all came flying through the smoke and mist at the same moment Raven stepped in for her strike, intent on impaling the Dragon's auraless other arm to keep her from delivering Raven a reply; opting out of the test of strength entirely.

Penny's rebuttal drew naught save a dreadful, bestial, undying roar right back in her face, the thing inside Dragon overcome by wrath and loathing at the mechanical girl's nature. In a world as waning, cadaverous, and gripped by strife as this one, practically everything was food for this particular predator; from the tiniest pang of pettiness or envy to the most devastating sense of loss or grief. Morsels or meals, they were all delicacies. They were all prey.

This whelp was not prey. As far as the beast was concerned, she was what it had deemed her to be: Nothing. The inanimate obstacle between it and its prey, of no more consequence than these mortal creatures' most stalwart shield or resilient wall. Yet it had been many, many years since the creatures called Grimm first manifested in this realm, one so different from their point of origin; the monstrosity Penny was grappling with had endured for most of them, and over time and countless hosts it had not stayed the mindless beast it started existence as. In that time, there was one invariable truth it had come to learn about humanity's defences, their barriers, their walls.

They fell.

The task of making this tool of the light fall held so much of the entity's undivided attention that Raven could've been forgiven for thinking it failed to notice her approach. That the pelting of her footfall went unheard in the din of combat, the sparks of Omen's razor-honed blade unseen among the dense curls of mist. But it wasn't so. It knew what was coming.

It just didn't care.

This vessel, pitiful and fading as it was, was a hardy one. This woman, this self-proclaimed 'Dragon', she knew pain—She knew what it was to suffer, and endure. The pain had made her what it was. Without it, she was nothing. The Grimm parasite leeching off that pain had no concern for her wellbeing, no reservations over her ability to survive what violence was wrought upon her, no inclination whatsoever to act in the name of her preservation. She was Ozma's pet. His vicious, broken mutt. She would suffer and die in the name of his cause, as was the fate of all his creatures of darkness, and use her final breath to whisper thanks and veneration to the true master of this world. And as far as her Grimm cohabitant thought in regards to this pain?

It welcomed it.

The more this woman suffered, the more it fed.

The stronger it grew.

And even through the outraged screech it gave as Penny again sent its own limb through a blender, the look on Raven's daughter's face as her blade cut a clean arc through the air for her vulnerable, human arm was unmistakable.

A grin.

SLISH

It was a dainty, elegant trail of blood that spattered across the floor at their feet, thin and neat enough that it could've been the work of a brushstroke. A testament to Omen's honed edge and the skill with which Raven wielded it. Less elegant was the weight Penny could still feel dangling from her own hand even as she spun to defend Neo, the grip interlaced with her fingers no longer tight enough to apply active pressure but still enough to cling on until she removed it. She didn't even need to look to know what it was.



Such delightful irony. Such delectable torment. Yet it was never enough. It could never have enough. There was always more grief to be sown. Always more distress to be inflicted. As their shared vessel lurched back, blood beginning to pour from her second stump in earnest, a more panicked, uneven uptick to her chest's heaving breaths preempted the look in the eyes that whirled to meet Raven's in the last moment before contact between sword and sheathe being so, eyes that were so much more horrible for the huntress to look at than those of a possessed beast.

They were eyes that were familiar, pained, and so utterly confused it was as though they had just been roused from the depths of a deep and endless slumber, not comprehending what they had done wrong, what was happening, or why everything hurt so much.



"Mom—?"

Then Omen's blade ignited, and anything more that may have been said was lost to the storm of elements that was unleashed. By the time the dust settled everyone's positions had been upturned, and it was uncertain in the depths of the smoke and fog where exactly the Dragon may have landed.

If there was even anything left of her.​

 

[MidwayLives]

The golden monster's face was scarcely a millimeter from Neo's by the time of her savior's intervention, euphorically deranged in the way it heaved in greedy, palpitated breaths through its nostrils almost in rhythm with the increasingly desperate noises tumbling from the illusionist's lips, as if the scent of her fear had some manner of marinading properties. She was delicious, this paltry little woman of blades and deceptions, her terror practically virginal in its untapped purity. So used to being the one sowing fear, not experiencing it—so sure of her ability to be predator, not prey.

It was... intoxicating. The deep veins of rage, misery, shame and loneliness running through the Dragon's core were raw, heady, infinitely intense; but she was a candle burning itself out, and it was readily apparent to the Grimm dwelling within that wretched, pathetic creature that it was far from the first to use her as its chew toy. As a cocoon for gestation, she was ideal: devoid of joy, love, hope or purpose, a consistent wellspring of daily sustenance for the evil feeding on her soul.

But she was stale.

That soul was a broken one, denounced, forgotten and unloved, who had slipped through so many cracks that the only place she found her haven was in this fleeting world's lowest pit, a source of twisted amusement and violence for its cruelest master in return for the vaguest modicum of affection. That suffering was her reality. Take the hits. Keep moving. Hit back. Day-in, day-out. She burned with the fury of a collapsing star, but her light was waning.

It had tired of her.

It wanted fresh torment.

It wanted to wring its misery from unwilling bones.

Neo's free hand continued to pull at the extremity that was quickly engulfing her face.

Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours, it was absolutely horrible.

Neo's mouth twitched and her eyes widened with the same expression she'd had back on that damn train.

Neo's hand fell to her side.
​

—Had taken absolutely no notice of Penny in the depths of its debauched revelry, and as the appendage it grew from fell apart into diced pieces it screeched its disdain and took a step back in a frenzy of raging, flailing body parts, something entirely inhuman about the way Yang's form convulsed and contorted. Yet her soul still remained, her semblance still flared and shone to such a degree that Penny had to calibrate her visual receptors accordingly, and it made for a dazzling clash of colors when the beam cut through that celestial aura to engulf her shrieking head.

That was around when the protector of Mantle received a grim, enlightening dose of primary data on something that couldn't really be adequately measured through aura readings and biometric scans.

Yang Xiao Long was a powerhouse.

The assassin fell to the floor, her frame twitching all the while.

What she'd just gone through...Was absolutely horrible. She clutched at her throat and hacked up a storm. Wiping at her face as though a nasty stain needed to be washed out.

The entire left side of her face had that...that THING on it.

The one she'd been looking to torture, to kill, she wasn't here anymore.

This was a different beast altogether.
​

The beast that lived within the dragon heard the sound of thrusters entering the room one moment, and just as Penny crested over Neo's frame in the monster's visions, six swords arced across the arm that had her ally trapped in a bid to absolutely filet the offending appendage before Penny landed between the two, shoved Neo back with one hand, and put her palm of the other directly towards the dragon's face that lanced out a brilliant green beam of kinetic energy to try and launch her back from her prey.

"Are you ok, Miss Politan?!"

Neo paused in her coughing fit only to glance over at whoever addressed her.

It was her, the robot.

The one that had decided to give Neo a chance. Even after what she'd done.

It was far from the time to share niceities/wasn't really a thing Neo did regardless...but...

She was happy to see her.
​

The sheer force from that sent them all back, though whether they all flew as she intended, Raven couldn't say. She'd turned her back on the Dragon and as a consequence of using her own body to cover Penny and Neo, she took the major brunt of the damage. The blast had cleared away her smokescreen, what remained of her aura was gone in an instant, and she could feel the burns and damage spread out across herself but still she forced herself to stand. The veteran huntress winced but bit down on it, shoving Penny closer towards where her crimson portal was. "Go!" Raven barked, her tone of voice clearly revealing that she would not tolerate a refusal or any argument. "Take her-" Raven jerked her head towards Neo. "-and go!"

She spun back around then, eyes searching for any sign of the Dragon or the Hand, readying herself to do what she must to hold them back if the situation required it...as well as resigning herself to immediately close the portal behind the two if or when Penny acquiesced to Raven's demand.

This whole mess in this world had been something of a topsy-turvy mess.

Never in her life had Neo expected not only to be saved by Penny or...Raven Brawnen of all people.

Neo went to push herself up but her legs shook and buckled under her.

"...!" Damn it! That abomination had left her drained like a used battery.

Neo looked towards Penny.

There wasn't a chance to win this fight. As much as admitting that pissed her off.

They had to leave.

​

There was the sound of shattering glass as the illusion over three of penny's blades shattered at the same time they slashed straight up into Blake's chin, and Penny thrusters kicked on to send them rocketing straight through the portal.

She couldn't hyperventilate, because she did not require breath, but a sort of fear that she'd never felt before still gripped Penny's iron heart as she stumbled to the other side of the portal with Neo in tow, somewhat gracelessly dropped onto the floor as Penny crash landed on her knees.

Yet even so, she turned. She would not leave Raven behind; not when she had fought so hard to get them back out; not when she'd been personally entrusted with everyone's safety. It didn't matter if she was scared, she had to-

That'd been all of it.

That was all Neo had.

She clung to Penny like her life depended on it. As the two went through the portal and Neo was dumped onto the floor, she closed her eyes.

Her mouth opened as if she were going to do something...Say anything...

"...-"

-Then she fell asleep.​

 

[MidwayLives]

The blow Masque had suffered had been absolutely painful. Had the situation been even slightly different, it probably wasn't an exaggeration to say that it would have left Masque's face looking like a pile of scrambled eggs. A fate that she at one point might have welcomed. But as Penny and Neo made their escape and Raven had seemingly been left behind, if one paid close enough attention they'd have seen the faintest twitch coming from Masque's fingers and the slow series of breaths flowing past her lips. Her fingers twitched once....twice...then stopped.

"Aw, feeling like you need a hand, Ruby?"

Masque didn't respond. She couldn't. She was still out of it.

"That's okay. I've got one for both of us."

It'd started off as a hallucination. Born of Masque's addled mind. The her that Masque had never wanted to be. The one who didn't care about what others thought of her. She'd kiss on her sister however much she wanted. If others didn't like it then that was their business. She couldn't and wouldn't give a damn. As the Grimm infesting her only got worse, Masque began to genuinely wonder if this other her she was seeing...was real or not. Standing over Masque, 'Ruby' looked almost identical with one key distinction. She had both of her flesh and blood arms. A luxury that Masque had lost early on in life and Dragon? Just a couple of seconds ago. Was it a sign of something? Or just a subconscious desire on Masque's part? Only she knew and she wasn't even sure anymore.

'Ruby' knelt down and extended a hand towards Masque.

"We'll never be apart, Ruby...." The voice took on a slightly different tone. Sounding less like Masque or Ruby Rose in general but something...

Spoiler: worse

​

"Mom—?"

Then Omen's blade ignited, and anything more that may have been said was lost to the storm of elements that was unleashed. By the time the dust settled everyone's positions had been upturned, and it was uncertain in the depths of the smoke and fog where exactly the Dragon may have landed.

If there was even anything left of her.

Masque's heavy eyelids slowly opened after a couple of attempts.

Everything was pain, no matter what she did. Even the effort of slightly lifting her chin ached like the world's worst headache.

Digging her fingers into the floor, she tried to drag her broken body further into the smoke.

"Yang..."

She'd come here for her sister...She'd taken that pain for her sister.

She needed her and she would GET her.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

There was a part of Yang that was absolutely, totally offended and kinda mortified that Weiss had just basically called her a nerd. That was Ruby's whole schtick, she was the cool sister.

It got shoved down in the same hole her fear and slowly growing panic about their timetable was being smothered in. Sometimes, a girl had to compartmentalize and prioritize, something Ozwen was clearly still working on. There'd be time for that all later, once Weiss was actually back in control, once she'd kicked Oz out, or just tore him apart from the inside out more permanently, anything, whichever solution put Weiss back in the driver's seat and directly in Yang's crosshairs for a course correction on just who was the geek in this relationship. She had more important things to worry about.

Like getting Weiss to someone who could actually help . Someone who could bring more to this problem than just muscle, shotgun shells, a winning smile, and a magic she barely understood.



Which meant giving Ozwen the worst beatdown she'd ever gotten in her last fifteen lifetimes.

The time Weiss spent in the driver's seat wasn't wasted; Yang foot blasted off the whale's floor with a squelch of breaking flesh and bone as she charged for her target, before suddenly careening to the side as Ren opened fire with a gauntlet assisted momentum shift to tackle a hapless griffon out of the air with a prosthetic choke-hold. Its head smashed into the ground to keep it dazed as Yang landed, not losing any speed as she kept the beast between her and Ren's fire as an inhuman shield.

"The only thing I see-"

The same moment Ozwen's eyes shifted back to red was the same moment Yang took her final step to get into range, and the poor grimm's beak slammed at a downward angle into Ozwen's face so hard that it shattered. Yang pivoted in a full rotation, and the creature's last moments as a sold being instead of a cloud of dust were used to swing it at Mach-Sun Dragon straight down like a carnival strength test, with Ozwen's head as both the target and the bell.

"-is someone who's dumb enough-"

Yang's low stance from the hammer swing was turned into the starting point for an uppercut as she slid her foot forward to put her herself into range to put her fist into Ozwen's back as she rebounded off the floor to send her rocketing towards the cieling.

If all that happened, she brought both her hands low, and if Ren was charging forward to assist his master, he felt the temperature skyrocket as Yang's eyes flared with lilac and red fire at the same time.

"To NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!"

She swung both hands upwards, and the sound of her aura shattering from the heat was absolutely lost in the sheer decibles as flame erupted towards the cieling in a fiery blaze that matched the colors of her eyes.

Faced with the discomfiting reality that her aura had just broken at the heart of a frenzied grimm hive—Something it didn't take a full four years at Beacon to learn was pretty much the be-all, end-all worst case scenario as far as huntressing was concerned, even discounting the presence of the most malevolent being Remnant had ever seen—Yang would've been well within her rights not to notice it. Her heart was pumping in her ears, her adrenaline surging at the kind of caliber only boxing with the devil could induce, the rapidly dwindling fuse on this would-be rescue mission growing harder and harder to ignore as her every instinct homed in and focused on combat, on vanquishing the foe before her.

But if she was paying attention, and if her and said foe happened to establish even a fleeting instant of eye contact in the span between Ozwen touching both heels against the ceiling and being engulfed by the pillar of flame, the second after her aura broke it may have struck her as slightly odd that rather than launch herself away from the glyph she landed on she instead sort of just hung there. And it was definitely odd to see such a corrupted soul's eyes flare so wide with dismay, concern and then panic, in that order, before they snapped shut entirely with a hiss of infuriated pain as her hand flew to her temple.

FWOOOOOOOSH

Of course, it was pretty hard to make anything out with all the fire.

The sheer strength and volatility of the flame was unlike anything most of them had ever felt before, spurring Ren to fall back from his charge with lips pulled taut in a subtle grimace as it spread out from its point of contact with the ceiling and swallowed up some of the airborne Grimm closer to it, their death screeches as lost to the inferno as their ashes were. Looking directly at it was like looking at the sun, and by the time Yang's vision cleared she was staring straight into StormFlower's barrel held scarcely an inch away, the way Ren's normally unruffled features contorted with bottomless, vengeful rage at the thought of whose niece he was about to kill making his intent clear as his finger curled around the trigger—

"Enough."

Ren, along with every Grimm left standing in the room, froze. He didn't tear his eyes from Yang, but the monsters surrounding Raven all swivelled their gaze in a new direction, a few questioning growls and curious cocks of the head as they obeyed their mistress's command.



Ozwen was singed and blackened, her aura flickering dangerously as she picked herself up from one knee. Yet shockingly it still held, and the red eyes weighing Yang with clinical disinterest appeared to have entirely run out of patience for whatever this exercise in futility was.

"I assure you, I'm affording you every ounce of seriousness a yammering little girl who likes setting herself on fire is due. But I think I'm bored now."

A blue glow washed over both mother and daughter from below, and before either could protest coils of nightmarish Grimm hands burst through the centre of the glyphs manifesting under their feet to ensnare their every limb, dragging them down to the floor and pinning them there with deceptive strength. They were more numerous than the ones Ozwen had called forth before, the fact that they bore an ethereal glow rather than a squirming mass of inky black denoting them as products of Weiss's semblance rather than their limited magic pool. She dusted herself off and turned her eyes to Ren, whose teeth were clenched and eyes burning with a darkness entirely uncharacteristic of the placid huntsman she knew as they bore into Yang, suggesting the degree to which he wanted to put a bullet in her skull was entirely personal.

"Leave us."

"But—"

"Think very carefully before you question me. I am in no mood."

The cold edge to her voice seemed to be one he recognized, even if he was still getting used to serving Ozma in this form, and he finally tore his hateful eyes from Yang to take Ozwen in carefully. His eyes narrowed for a split-second at what his semblance saw, as if in scrutiny, but—No. There was no mistaking it.

The being he was looking at was cold. Pragmatic; Willing to do anything to suit her own ambitions. She had a heart made of stone.

Or in other words, nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Go. Ensure the Hand and Dragon have their end of things in hand."

"What about the drunk?!"

Her eyes narrowed sharply at what sounded very much like a demand, though she was positive they both knew how inadvisable that would've been. "In time. Is your intention to make me repeat myself twice?"

"...No. Master."

Finally cowed, he bowed his head and turned to leave, though not before spitting on the floor near where Yang lay. The Grimm filling the room were trickling out in turn, Ozwen turning to watch while they did and gaze out over the ocean skyline as both hands clasped in front of her demurely. She didn't look at either Yang or Raven when she spoke again, eyes clouded and distant, words carefully chosen.

"Why did you come here?"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

And even through the outraged screech it gave as Penny again sent its own limb through a blender, the look on Raven's daughter's face as her blade cut a clean arc through the air for her vulnerable, human arm was unmistakable.

A grin.

SLISH

It was a dainty, elegant trail of blood that spattered across the floor at their feet, thin and neat enough that it could've been the work of a brushstroke. A testament to Omen's honed edge and the skill with which Raven wielded it. Less elegant was the weight Penny could still feel dangling from her own hand even as she spun to defend Neo, the grip interlaced with her fingers no longer tight enough to apply active pressure but still enough to cling on until she removed it. She didn't even need to look to know what it was.

Such delightful irony. Such delectable torment. Yet it was never enough. It could never have enough. There was always more grief to be sown. Always more distress to be inflicted. As their shared vessel lurched back, blood beginning to pour from her second stump in earnest, a more panicked, uneven uptick to her chest's heaving breaths preempted the look in the eyes that whirled to meet Raven's in the last moment before contact between sword and sheathe being so, eyes that were so much more horrible for the huntress to look at than those of a possessed beast.

They were eyes that were familiar, pained, and so utterly confused it was as though they had just been roused from the depths of a deep and endless slumber, not comprehending what they had done wrong, what was happening, or why everything hurt so much.

"Mom—?"

Then Omen's blade ignited, and anything more that may have been said was lost to the storm of elements that was unleashed. By the time the dust settled everyone's positions had been upturned, and it was uncertain in the depths of the smoke and fog where exactly the Dragon may have landed.

If there was even anything left of her.

In the heat of the moment, with the fierce fighting that had gone on, she didn't allow herself to hesitate. There was too much and too many people relying on her, for her to falter now. But even so, there was a flicker of conflicted and troubled feeling on Raven's face as that went down not at all as she had expected it would. Instead of the Dragon relinquishing the grip and pulling back to avoid the swing, the swordswoman claimed Yang's remaining flesh and blood hand. Instead of the Dragon responding with hate or rage, there was only a pained confusion and an unexpected softness in that one word spoken. Anything more beyond that was eclipsed by the thunderous boom and obscured by the tempest born of dust that followed.​

She was barely halfway to her feet, an objection on the tip of her tongue, when she felt the blood splatter straight across her optic sensors.

Raven hadn't even completed her turn before Blake's sword slammed into her shoulder, electricity coursing across the Hand's form like a vengeful storm incarnate, maidenfire spilling from the mask like sickly yellow grimm ash, even her bandages in ruin at this point to show the scarred, muscled form beneath. The blade pierced clean through both Raven and the wall behind her, and then her eyes turned down towards Penny.

She was used to be looked at as inhuman herself. Like an object, just another war drone. That's not what this was though; Even those kind of looks offered her a modicum of respect or jealousy or pride or even anger, some sort of acknowledgement of her existence, of her strength, at least as a weapon.

She saw nothing behind those eyes except the hand running through just how she was going to dismantle her. Prey. An obstacle to be removed.

"I said none of you-"

There was the sound of shattering glass as the illusion over three of penny's blades shattered at the same time they slashed straight up into Blake's chin, and Penny thrusters kicked on to send them rocketing straight through the portal.

She couldn't hyperventilate, because she did not require breath, but a sort of fear that she'd never felt before still gripped Penny's iron heart as she stumbled to the other side of the portal with Neo in tow, somewhat gracelessly dropped onto the floor as Penny crash landed on her knees.

Yet even so, she turned. She would not leave Raven behind; not when she had fought so hard to get them back out; not when she'd been personally entrusted with everyone's safety. It didn't matter if she was scared, she had to-

The portal closed right in front of her, one hand outstretched towards it as her eyes froze in place with shock

A pained howl filled the room as the Hand's blade skewered her right through the shoulder and stabbed right through into the wall behind her, leaving Raven pinned against it, with ragged breaths coming after but the huntress's eyes barely wavered. An eye was kept on the pair of Penny/Neo and it was only after they were on the other side of the now gone portal, after they were safely out of the way of any further immediate harm, that she turned to look at Blake. Despite the pain there was some level of satisfaction in her eyes and a smile at the corner of her mouth. "Heh. Looks like you were wrong." Raven commented. She was auraless, injured and pinned to the wall and left alone without her weapon in this nightmarish abomination that served as Oz's flying fortress, but that cocky smile only grew. It was seemingly meant solely to mock and get a rise out of Blake.

She had no further words for the brainwashed cultist, that look said enough as far as she was concerned. Raven tried to find any sign of the Dragon, but she could not spot anything through the heavy smoke and fog that lingered. After a few moments she let out a sigh under her breath, resigned to whatever fate awaited her. Whether it was death, or torture, or interrogation, or imprisonment...whatever it was. She'd accomplished her mission as a distraction and even got the others out. Or most of them, at least, Raven glancing with an impossible to read look over in the direction Masque's voice came from. Any trace of the smile was gone now and her gaze shifted back to Blake, crimson eyes staring the faunus down unflinchingly.​

Yet even so, she turned. She would not leave Raven behind; not when she had fought so hard to get them back out; not when she'd been personally entrusted with everyone's safety. It didn't matter if she was scared, she had to-

The portal closed right in front of her, one hand outstretched towards it as her eyes froze in place with shock

Her mouth opened as if she were going to do something...Say anything...

"...-"

-Then she fell asleep.

It was about then Vernal reentered the room, a likewise unconscious, scarred Nora held in her arms but she stopped when she caught sight of Penny and Neo. And only one portal still up.

"...The hell did I miss now?" She questioned, even as her thoughts went over likely possibilities. None of them were really pleasant. She got over her hesitation and moved forward, carefully dropping the ginger beside the even tinier woman.
​

A blue glow washed over both mother and daughter from below, and before either could protest coils of nightmarish Grimm hands burst through the centre of the glyphs manifesting under their feet to ensnare their every limb, dragging them down to the floor and pinning them there with deceptive strength. They were more numerous than the ones Ozwen's had called forth before, the fact that they bore an ethereal glow rather than a squirming mass of inky black denoting them as products of Weiss's semblance rather than their limited magic. She dusted herself off and turned her eyes to Ren, whose teeth were clenched and eyes burning with a darkness entirely uncharacteristic of the placid huntsman she knew as they bore into Yang, suggesting the degree to which he wanted to put a bullet in her skull was entirely personal.

Well this sucked.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The blow Masque had suffered had been absolutely painful. Had the situation been even slightly different, it probably wasn't an exaggeration to say that it would have left Masque's face looking like a pile of scrambled eggs. A fate that she at one point might have welcomed. But as Penny and Neo made their escape and Raven had seemingly been left behind, if one paid close enough attention they'd have seen the faintest twitch coming from Masque's fingers and the slow series of breaths flowing past her lips. Her fingers twitched once....twice...then stopped.

"Aw, feeling like you need a hand, Ruby?"

Masque didn't respond. She couldn't. She was still out of it.

"That's okay. I've got one for both of us."

It'd started off as a hallucination. Born of Masque's addled mind. The her that Masque had never wanted to be. The one who didn't care about what others thought of her. She'd kiss on her sister however much she wanted. If others didn't like it then that was their business. She couldn't and wouldn't give a damn. As the Grimm infesting her only got worse, Masque began to genuinely wonder if this other her she was seeing...was real or not. Standing over Masque, 'Ruby' looked almost identical with one key distinction. She had both of her flesh and blood arms. A luxury that Masque had lost early on in life and Dragon? Just a couple of seconds ago. Was it a sign of something? Or just a subconscious desire on Masque's part? Only she knew and she wasn't even sure anymore.

'Ruby' knelt down and extended a hand towards Masque.

"We'll never be apart, Ruby...." The voice took on a slightly different tone. Sounding less like Masque or Ruby Rose in general but something...

Spoiler: worse

Masque's heavy eyelids slowly opened after a couple of attempts.

Everything was pain, no matter what she did. Even the effort of slightly lifting her chin ached like the world's worst headache.

Digging her fingers into the floor, she tried to drag her broken body further into the smoke.

"Yang..."

She'd come here for her sister...She'd taken that pain for her sister.

She needed her and she would GET her.​

In the heat of the moment, with the fierce fighting that had gone on, she didn't allow herself to hesitate. There was too much and too many people relying on her, for her to falter now. But even so, there was a flicker of conflicted and troubled feeling on Raven's face as that went down not at all as she had expected it would. Instead of the Dragon relinquishing the grip and pulling back to avoid the swing, the swordswoman claimed Yang's remaining flesh and blood hand. Instead of the Dragon responding with hate or rage, there was only a pained confusion and an unexpected softness in that one word spoken. Anything more beyond that was eclipsed by the thunderous boom and obscured by the tempest born of dust that followed.



A pained howl filled the room as the Hand's blade skewered her right through the shoulder and stabbed right through into the wall behind her, leaving Raven pinned against it, with ragged breaths coming after but the huntress's eyes barely wavered. An eye was kept on the pair of Penny/Neo and it was only after they were on the other side of the now gone portal, after they were safely out of the way of any further immediate harm, that she turned to look at Blake. Despite the pain there was some level of satisfaction in her eyes and a smile at the corner of her mouth. "Heh. Looks like-​

"-RRRRRRRRAGH!"

Blake's fist slammed straight into Raven's forehead halfway through her sentence with a downright feral shout of frustration, like a shark stuck on the outside of a diver's cage. She kept it to one hit; her master may have still had a use for the huntress. She left her fist there as she drew in shaky breaths, eyes wild beneath her mask, bits of the tatters of her robes still smoldering from the dust blast as she gathered herself once more.

*scrrrrrraaaaaaape*

her ears flicked towards the sound of a body dragging itself across the fleshy, scorched floor. She'd almost forgotten; the dragon's own prey was still here.



Ruby was halfway across the floor when a foot suddenly stopped against her remaining arm at the elbow, the extendable spikes fitted into them for their encounter against Schnee digging in far enough to scrape the bone.

If masque looked up at her aggressor, she met a far different set of eyes than Penny or Raven had. They were enemies; obstacles to be removed. Blake's opinion of them as people didn't feed into it; Sienna had helped her sharpen the skill to turn that process of thought off entirely when it came time to do her bloody work. Blake could have thoughts, opinions; the Hand simply did the work.

But there was one thing both her masters prided over all else; Loyalty. Traitors were scum. A disease to be cut out. She'd almost killed Eve herself, so long ago on that first night when everything started to go wrong, for fear of what Sienna or Oz would to do her, and that Sienna had accepted the bull faunus back was a shock that shook down to Blake's core. This wouldn't be the same as that night; this wasn't an act of mercy that proved blessedly not required; there was far too much hate in those eyes for it to be that. The only mercy was that Blake intended to make it quick, as she pulled the hammer back on Gambol before she pointed it at Ruby's skull, intent on removing any chance for her to hurt her lord or the dragon entirely.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Faced with the discomfiting reality that her aura had just broken at the heart of a frenzied grimm hive—Something it didn't take a full four years at Beacon to learn was pretty much the be-all, end-all worst case scenario as far as huntressing was concerned, even discounting the presence of the most malevolent being Remnant had ever seen—Yang would've been well within her rights not to notice it. Her heart was pumping in her ears, her adrenaline surging at the kind of caliber only boxing with the devil could induce, the rapidly dwindling fuse on this would-be rescue mission growing harder and harder to ignore as her every instinct homed in and focused on combat, on vanquishing the foe before her.

But if she was paying attention, and if her and said foe happened to establish even a fleeting instant of eye contact in the span between Ozwen touching both heels against the ceiling and being engulfed by the pillar of flame, the second after her aura broke it may have struck her as slightly odd that rather than launch herself away from the glyph she landed on she instead sort of just hung there. And it was definitely odd to see such a corrupted soul's eyes flare so wide with dismay, concern and then panic, in that order, before they snapped shut entirely with a hiss of infuriated pain as her hand flew to her temple.

FWOOOOOOOSH

Of course, it was pretty hard to make anything out with all the fire.

The sheer strength and volatility of the flame was unlike anything most of them had ever felt before, spurring Ren to fall back from his charge with lips pulled taut in a subtle grimace as it spread out from its point of contact with the ceiling and swallowed up some of the airborne Grimm closer to it, their death screeches as lost to the inferno as their ashes were. Looking directly at it was like looking at the sun, and by the time Yang's vision cleared she was staring straight into StormFlower's barrel held scarcely an inch away, the way Ren's normally unruffled features contorted with bottomless, vengeful rage at the thought of whose niece he was about to kill making his intent clear as his finger curled around the trigger—

"Enough."

Ren, along with every Grimm left standing in the room, froze. He didn't tear his eyes from Yang, but the monsters surrounding Raven all swivelled their gaze in a new direction, a few questioning growls and curious cocks of the head as they obeyed their mistress's command.

View attachment 857337

Ozwen was singed and blackened, her aura flickering dangerously as she picked herself up from one knee. Yet shockingly it still held, and the red eyes weighing Yang with clinical disinterest appeared to have entirely run out of patience for whatever this exercise in futility was.

"I assure you, I'm affording you every ounce of seriousness a yammering little girl who likes setting herself on fire is due. But I think I'm bored now."

A blue glow washed over both mother and daughter from below, and before either could protest coils of nightmarish Grimm hands burst through the centre of the glyphs manifesting under their feet to ensnare their every limb, dragging them down to the floor and pinning them there with deceptive strength. They were more numerous than the ones Ozwen had called forth before, the fact that they bore an ethereal glow rather than a squirming mass of inky black denoting them as products of Weiss's semblance rather than their limited magic pool. She dusted herself off and turned her eyes to Ren, whose teeth were clenched and eyes burning with a darkness entirely uncharacteristic of the placid huntsman she knew as they bore into Yang, suggesting the degree to which he wanted to put a bullet in her skull was entirely personal.

"Leave us."

"But—"

"Think very carefully before you question me. I am in no mood."

The cold edge to her voice seemed to be one he recognized, even if he was still getting used to serving Ozma in this form, and he finally tore his hateful eyes from Yang to take Ozwen in carefully. His eyes narrowed for a split-second at what his semblance saw, as if in scrutiny, but—No. There was no mistaking it.

The being he was looking at was cold. Pragmatic; Willing to do anything to suit her own ambitions. She had a heart made of stone.

Or in other words, nothing was out of the ordinary.

"Go. Ensure the Hand and Dragon have their end of things in hand."

"What about the drunk?!"

Her eyes narrowed sharply at what sounded very much like a demand, though she was positive they both knew how inadvisable that would've been. "In time. Is your intention to make me repeat myself twice?"

"...No. Master."

Finally cowed, he bowed his head and turned to leave, though not before spitting on the floor near where Yang lay. The Grimm filling the room were trickling out in turn, Ozwen turning to watch while they did and gaze out over the ocean skyline as both hands clasped in front of her demurely. She didn't look at either Yang or Raven when she spoke again, eyes clouded and distant, words carefully chosen.

"Why did you come here?"​

Yang barely heard Ozwen over the sound of her grunts as she strained against the arms, a frustrated groan capping her efforts as she managed to get her head a few inches off the ground before it slammed back against it.

This was bad.

...Probably.

Yang was a straightforward problem solver, and it wasn't like she got straight As in school or anything, but she was always quicker on the draw than people liked to give a pretty girl credit for. But there were too many possibilities for her to lock into any one hope or despair as she gave a weak, sarcastic snort and went back to redoubling her efforts to break free.

"Oh, you know, we... looked at our watches.... and they said.... 'it's beat the shit out of Oz-O'clock' and we're nothin' if not.... punctual rrrgh-!"

 

[MidwayLives]

*scrrrrrraaaaaaape*

her ears flicked towards the sound of a body dragging itself across the fleshy, scorched floor. She'd almost forgotten; the dragon's own prey was still here.

Masque still felt out of it. Slight electrical discharge from having been struck right in the face by Nora sparked off her hair. Disgustingly messy and matted with blood, she continued pulling herself along. Each flick of her wrist, each injection of her nails into the floor, the grunts of pain escaping her as she crawled. None of it mattered to her. The only thing that did was getting to the person that this had all been for.

"Yang...."

Masque knew she had sins that wouldn't be shut away so easily. She'd known that even before the bandit had smashed into Schnee's home looking for refuge. None of it would be simply washed away by her trying to be good. To truly atone for her crimes, numerous as they were, she'd probably have to do time behind bars again. The very thought frightened her more than anything else ever had. She'd be all alone. With no one to talk to. No one to humor her strange indulgences. No one to even smile at.

When her Yang had infected her stump with a piece of Grimm, Masque felt that staying away from the others had been the right thing to do. The Grimm could do whatever it was going to do to her body, to her soul, and that'd be it for her. She'd just stew in her own vileness. ..Except, she'd wanted to help still. Even as people like Qrow derided Masque's seeming good intentions, Masque stuck to them.

She had been there to help.

"It was for you, Yang..." Masque mumbled through a wad of blood in her mouth.

She grunted and dragged herself a bit further.

"I took it for you...I took that pain.."

Masque could feel her breath hitching and her cheeks flushing. Her mind running amok with what she was going to do to her beloved sister once she got to her. However long it took to drag this bloodied and battered body over there. "We'll...*pant* be together, Yang. Just...*pant*...how it used to be....I love youIloveyouIlove you..." Masque repeated.

Right as it seemed she'd caught a glimpse of her fallen sister, Masque reached out-
​

Ruby was halfway across the floor when a foot suddenly stopped against her remaining arm at the elbow, the extendable spikes fitted into them for their encounter against Schnee digging in far enough to scrape the bone.

"AGH!!!!"

Masque screamed like a banshee. Her fingers bending and her wrist flailing from side to side. Having had her aura shattered after taking Nora's last hit directly to the face, Masque looked over at the blood starting to ooze out of where Blake's spikes had dug in.

She didn't have any words. The Masque just bared her teeth like a cornered fox and flared her nostrils repeatedly.

Making her hand into a fist, Masque tried to pull her arm inwards. Tearing more of her flesh up in the process as it was sliced against the spikes. Her nostrils continuing to flare. For a moment or two it seemed as though Masque would have been willing to do anything to keep going. Whether that meant chewing her own remaining arm off or ripping it to pieces.

That was until she looked up and met Blake's eyes with her own.
​

But there was one thing both her masters prided over all else; Loyalty. Traitors were scum. A disease to be cut out. She'd almost killed Eve herself, so long ago on that first night when everything started to go wrong, for fear of what Sienna or Oz would to do her, and that Sienna had accepted the bull faunus back was a shock that shook down to Blake's core. This wouldn't be the same as that night; this wasn't an act of mercy that proved blessedly not required; there was far too much hate in those eyes for it to be that. The only mercy was that Blake intended to make it quick, as she pulled the hammer back on Gambol before she pointed it at Ruby's skull, intent on removing any chance for her to hurt her lord or the dragon entirely.

Masque shuddered.

To anyone who didn't know her, she just might have looked like a vagabond. Dirty matted hair with dried blood sprinkled in, a trail of blood running down her forehead, and just a generally unhygienic/filthy appearance. But to someone like Blake, Masque may as well have looked like a deer caught in a car's headlights. Her nostrils continued to flare but she didn't say or do anything.

She just stared down the barrel of her death.

*drip*

Blood continued to run down from where she'd further mangled her arm by trying to 'rip' it free.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

She had no further words for the brainwashed cultist, that look said enough as far as she was concerned. Raven tried to find any sign of the Dragon, but she could not spot anything through the heavy smoke and fog that lingered. After a few moments she let out a sigh under her breath, resigned to whatever fate awaited her. Whether it was death, or torture, or interrogation, or imprisonment...whatever it was. She'd accomplished her mission as a distraction and even got the others out. Or most of them, at least, Raven glancing with an impossible to read look over in the direction Masque's voice came from. Any trace of the smile was gone now and her gaze shifted back to Blake, crimson eyes staring the faunus down unflinchingly.

"-RRRRRRRRAGH!"

Blake's fist slammed straight into Raven's forehead halfway through her sentence with a downright feral shout of frustration, like a shark stuck on the outside of a diver's cage. She kept it to one hit; her master may have still had a use for the huntress. She left her fist there as she drew in shaky breaths, eyes wild beneath her mask, bits of the tatters of her robes still smoldering from the dust blast as she gathered herself once more.

Had Raven been conscious enough to process it, she might have noticed the darkened silhouette prowling through the mist as she fell, and definitely would've noticed the gnarled, shadowy claw that shot forth from the smoky depths to pin her back against the wall barely a second after Blake had wrenched her blade free and stormed off for her new prey. The low-pitched, rattling gurgle that came from her daughter's lips as she lunged in to an uncomfortable distance may well have been enough to steer the huntress's dreams towards nightmares all on its own, and it was fortunate she wasn't awake to see the damage that had been wrought on the Dragon's body from the explosion, already skewered and severed following the encounter as it was.

Yet still her tortured carcass moved, and there would've been no mistaking the scratchy, distorted noise bubbling up from the back of her throat as anything other than a laugh.

"D̷o̴ ̸I̴ ̷h̶a̵v̵e̶ ̴y̴o̸u̶r̶ ̴a̴t̴t̶e̸n̷t̵i̷o̴n̷nnn ̴n̷o̵w̷, m̶mmo̸t̶h̴e̵r̵?̵ W̵i̸l̴l̸ ̴y̶o̸u̸ ̸l̸o̷o̶k̷ ̵a̶t̵ ̵m̵e̵ ̴n̸o̷w̴wwww?̷"

It inhaled close to her skin, its malicious laughter flowing into a low moan of euphoria as its shoulders shook from the negativity it siphoned from the huntress even while she slept. Such a heavy heart. So many regrets. The beast had no doubt rousing the Dragon's mother to consciousness would've proven a delectable meal in its own right.

Yet it knew how to leverage the situation into a more delectable one still. The flavor of a soul's unmitigated anguish, the ideal seasoning to complement the medley of physical agony already awaiting it.

The claws around Raven's throat started to tighten—

The only mercy was that Blake intended to make it quick, as she pulled the hammer back on Gambol—

"—G̸k̵t̵h̴!"

The creature's hand flew to the Dragon's mouth in shock, where the subtle click of a weapon's hammer a short distance away had prompted the sudden and violent expulsion of a trickle of black ichor from between her lips. Her head had whipped towards the source of the noise, Blake and the Red Masque's silhouettes barely distinguishable through the slowly dissipating fog, before the confusing storm of emotions erupting from the beating core in its vessel's chest had it double over with an inhuman shriek of pain, single intact arm flying to her gut.

"W̷h̶a̵a̸a̷a̵t̸t̵t̶t̶.̸... ̵i̵s̵s̴s̶s̷s̷s̶...... t̶h̶i̵s̷s̶s̷s̸s̵?̴! H̶o̴w̸ ̸i̸s̸ ̶t̷h̵i̴s̴s̷s̵s̵?̵!̷"

Where the wretched, demonic voice had previously been powerful and resounding, whatever abrupt case of poisoning or indigestion had assailed it now barely let it muster up the strength for it to rise over a nauseated hiss, shaken by rage and incredulity.

"B̷u̴t̴ ̷s̷h̶e̴ ̶i̷s̷ ̵t̴h̵e̴ ̴s̶s̷s̷o̵u̴r̸c̴e̸ ̴o̴f̶ ̵a̸l̴l̶ ̵y̸o̶u̸r̸ ̴s̶s̷s̸s̵u̵f̸f̵e̴r̷i̴n̵g̴g̸g̸g̴g̷g̶—!"

—before she pointed it at Ruby's skull, intent on removing any chance for her to hurt her lord or the dragon entirely.

Masque shuddered.

To anyone who didn't know her, she just might have looked like a vagabond. Dirty matted hair with dried blood sprinkled in, a trail of blood running down her forehead, and just a generally unhygienic/filthy appearance. But to someone like Blake, Masque may as well have looked like a deer caught in a car's headlights. Her nostrils continued to flare but she didn't say or do anything.

She just stared down the barrel of her death.

*drip*

Blood continued to run down from where she'd further mangled her arm by trying to 'rip' it free.

"KITTY, NO, STOPPPPPPPPPPP!"

The face that flung itself in front of Gambol Shroud's barrel barely a split-second before its trigger pulled back cut it so fine that even most top-flight huntsmen and huntresses would've fallen short of the requisite reflexes or trigger discipline to stay their hand before perforating it, the panicked heedlessness with which she did so for all the world suggesting the body now prostrated between Blake and her target in a manner that held a twinge of irony lost on all of them had some sort of reason to think she was bulletproof.

It only took a single look to determine that she wasn't.

The clean impalement Neo dealt her had left a thick patch of crimson over much of her midriff, front and back, staining the dusky fabric of her jacket. The last of the arms Dragon was born with had, like her first at the hands of Eve on the night Haven fell, been neatly severed below the elbow, no effort made to tourniquet the grievous wound as shocking amounts of blood continued to drain the ichor from her body and the color from her face, her skin a worryingly ghostly pale.

They were grievous, mortal wounds.

They were nothing in comparison to the burns.

Dragon had been auraless when her mother's explosion detonated at point-blank range, the abomination that had taken her form eager to weather the assault. The strength and vigour her semblance offered her in the deepest, darkest depths of pain was the only reason she was breathing at all.

Yet that strength did not equate to invincibility, a fact this particular iteration of Yang Xiao Long never seemed to have taken much notice of. The entire left side of her body looked as if someone had doused it in kerosene and struck a match. Much of her sleeve and trouser leg had been torched away, what little hadn't little more than a charred crust of fabric that had seared into her outer layer of skin. The most visibly affected area was her face, where the flesh around her left eye had practically fused it shut, the pupil beneath entirely unseeing and stained a more mottled, sickly red than the vibrant crimson of her other.

This woman shouldn't have been conscious.

She shouldn't have been alive.

And yet she was, and rather than any sort of self-preservation instinct guiding her hand was instead following whatever deep-buried protective drive the sight of Blake preparing to execute her sister had unearthed. It was almost laughable, really. The Dragon could barely lift her remaining arm, the Grimm appendage just barely touching her wrist in staying fashion rather than applying any actual force. There was absolutely nothing Ozpin's fearsome savage could do to avert Blake's course other than plead.

Her wide, deferential eyes were all the confirmation the faunus needed that she was doing exactly that. The rule of might philosophy she lived by had been discarded, the law-of-the-jungle outlook preached by the tribe tossed to one side; In that moment, utterly deprived of strength and staring down the barrel of a gun, Yang was less dragon and more a helpless, wounded animal, the mother who stood alone between its young and the predator who'd come to claim them.

Most of the strength she had left appeared to have been spent on that single, desperate cry, and when her voice came again it was little more than a plaintive wheeze.

"She's... she's just a fucking spaz, okay? She just doesn't know any better. Schnee got in her head, that's all. I'm handling it. Please, just, p-please just let me handle it."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Yang barely heard Ozwen over the sound of her grunts as she strained against the arms, a frustrated groan capping her efforts as she managed to get her head a few inches off the ground before it slammed back against it.

This was bad.

...Probably.

Yang was a straightforward problem solver, and it wasn't like she got straight As in school or anything, but she was always quicker on the draw than people liked to give a pretty girl credit for. But there were too many possibilities for her to lock into any one hope or despair as she gave a weak, sarcastic snort and went back to redoubling her efforts to break free.

"Oh, you know, we... looked at our watches.... and they said.... 'it's beat the shit out of Oz-O'clock' and we're nothin' if not.... punctual rrrgh-!"

"I see."

For a time, it seemed as though that was all the dark lord had to say. The voice was like a bucket of ice in the face of Yang's fire, completely indifferent to her shows of resistance and attempts at gallantly heroic banter as far as the eye could ascertain. She watched the last of the Grimm Ozwen had mustered jettison themselves from the room, and when they were gone a single dainty hand stretched out towards the hole she'd made earlier with fingers curled to gauge something as her features contorted with sudden exertion.

"You are so..."

Her teeth clenched, and slowly but surely the squirming, malleable umbra that constituted the flesh and sinew of a Grimm started to knit itself back together, strand by strand.

"...Unfathomably—"

The moment the impromptu blowhole closed over was the same one Yang and Raven felt the summons pinning them recede, disappearing back into the glyphs they had been bound to before they too vanished.

"—Inexcusably—"

She whirled, and if the icy blue coloration that flooded her eyes wasn't enough to validate any inklings Yang may have harbored then the way her fists balled up and started flailing by her sides with the sort of impotent rage only a tiny person with a large personality could muster surely were, only the benefit of a cultured upbringing and elegant nature to keep her from literally hopping from foot to foot.



"LAME, YANG! I MEAN ALL OF THIS, IT'S JUST—just LAME! AND YOUR JOKES AREN'T EVEN JOKES, THEY'RE SIMPLY SENTENCES THAT MAKE NO SENSE! WHAT IS 'OZ O'CLOCK'? WHAT IS ANY OF THIS?? WHAT IN THE WORLD IS EVEN HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?????????"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Yang barely heard Ozwen over the sound of her grunts as she strained against the arms, a frustrated groan capping her efforts as she managed to get her head a few inches off the ground before it slammed back against it.

This was bad.

...Probably.

Yang was a straightforward problem solver, and it wasn't like she got straight As in school or anything, but she was always quicker on the draw than people liked to give a pretty girl credit for. But there were too many possibilities for her to lock into any one hope or despair as she gave a weak, sarcastic snort and went back to redoubling her efforts to break free.

"Oh, you know, we... looked at our watches.... and they said.... 'it's beat the shit out of Oz-O'clock' and we're nothin' if not.... punctual rrrgh-!"

She whirled, and if the icy blue coloration that flooded her eyes wasn't enough to validate any inklings Yang may have harbored then the way her fists balled up and started flailing by her sides with the sort of impotent rage only a tiny person with a large personality could muster surely were, only the benefit of a cultured upbringing and elegant nature to keep her from literally hopping from foot to foot.

"LAME, YANG! I MEAN ALL OF THIS, IT'S JUST—just LAME! AND YOUR JOKES AREN'T EVEN JOKES, THEY'RE SIMPLY SENTENCES THAT MAKE NO SENSE! WHAT IS 'OZ O'CLOCK'? WHAT IS ANY OF THIS?? WHAT IN THE WORLD IS EVEN HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?????????"

"..."

Well between the color of those eyes and the fact those summons pulled away and faded back into the glyphs from where they had come, Raven felt reasonably sure that she was looking at the real Weiss, having wrenched control back from Oz. That frustrated yelling only cemented it in her mind, because exactly none of that felt like something the guy would have said if he was still pulling the strings. Yeah, she was pretty sure the word lame didn't even exist in his vocabulary. But...how had...Raven blinked as she came to her own conclusions, and her gaze fell to the floor not out of sadness or shame but out of sheer fucking disbelief. "Goddamn, did you literally manage to punch his consciousness into submission...?" Such a thing seemed absurd and sounded just as ludicrous. Yet here was Weiss, and Oz was, well, in whatever that complicated mess of minds and souls mixing entailed. Deep inside, from all appearances. Raven had thought such a thing would be impossible, but from a certain perspective, that is basically what had occurred.

I suppose I should not have doubted you.

A hint of a proud smirk crossed her face but by the time she looked back up and fixed her gaze upon Weiss, it was gone. "Oh, this? Suicide mission." She explained matter of factly. "At least, I thought it was. A bunch of the others staged an attack on the Dragon, a distraction to draw your followers away for us to try to take out Oz and somehow get to you. Something I deemed unlikely and as delusional as it was optimistic, but...well, Yang's a better huntress than I ever was. In mind and in spirit, if not in skill. Figured it wasn't my place to argue if this was the plan they wanted to go with, to take advantage of Oz's current vulnerability. Which we could do at will, ever since you did this-" She gestured to her mismatched eyes of red and icy blue. "-and stole the power of spring from me, some small part of our souls have been...connected, in a strange way. Intertwined."

Which technically also meant that Weiss also engineered the means for her own rescue, albeit completely accidentally for as much as the councilwoman liked to scheme and think up all the scenarios and plan ahead for them, Raven didn't think the one about the dark lord of the grimm taking you as a new host was one the insufferable Atlesian legitimately prepared for. "So you're welcome. Bitch." Raven narrowed her eyes in an intense glare. "Question is, what happens now?"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"-RRRRRRRRAGH!"

Blake's fist slammed straight into Raven's forehead halfway through her sentence with a downright feral shout of frustration, like a shark stuck on the outside of a diver's cage. She kept it to one hit; her master may have still had a use for the huntress. She left her fist there as she drew in shaky breaths, eyes wild beneath her mask, bits of the tatters of her robes still smoldering from the dust blast as she gathered herself once more.

Had Raven been conscious enough to process it, she might have noticed the darkened silhouette prowling through the mist as she fell, and definitely would've noticed the gnarled, shadowy claw that shot forth from the smoky depths to pin her back against the wall barely a second after Blake had wrenched her blade free and stormed off for her new prey. The low-pitched, rattling gurgle that came from her daughter's lips as she lunged in to an uncomfortable distance may well have been enough to steer the huntress's dreams towards nightmares all on its own, and it was fortunate she wasn't awake to see the damage that had been wrought on the Dragon's body from the explosion, already skewered and severed following the encounter as it was.

Yet still her tortured carcass moved, and there would've been no mistaking the scratchy, distorted noise bubbling up from the back of her throat as anything other than a laugh.

"D̷o̴ ̸I̴ ̷h̶a̵v̵e̶ ̴y̴o̸u̶r̶ ̴a̴t̴t̶e̸n̷t̵i̷o̴n̷nnn ̴n̷o̵w̷, m̶mmo̸t̶h̴e̵r̵?̵ W̵i̸l̴l̸ ̴y̶o̸u̸ ̸l̸o̷o̶k̷ ̵a̶t̵ ̵m̵e̵ ̴n̸o̷w̴wwww?̷"

It inhaled close to her skin, its malicious laughter flowing into a low moan of euphoria as its shoulders shook from the negativity it siphoned from the huntress even while she slept. Such a heavy heart. So many regrets. The beast had no doubt rousing the Dragon's mother to consciousness would've proven a delectable meal in its own right.

Yet it knew how to leverage the situation into a more delectable one still. The flavor of a soul's unmitigated anguish, the ideal seasoning to complement the medley of physical agony already awaiting it.

The claws around Raven's throat started to tighten—


"—G̸k̵t̵h̴!"

The creature's hand flew to the Dragon's mouth in shock, where the subtle click of a weapon's hammer a short distance away had prompted the sudden and violent expulsion of a trickle of black ichor from between her lips. Her head had whipped towards the source of the noise, Blake and the Red Masque's silhouettes barely distinguishable through the slowly dissipating fog, before the confusing storm of emotions erupting from the beating core in its vessel's chest had it double over with an inhuman shriek of pain, single intact arm flying to her gut.

"W̷h̶a̵a̸a̷a̵t̸t̵t̶t̶.̸... ̵i̵s̵s̴s̶s̷s̷s̶...... t̶h̶i̵s̷s̶s̷s̸s̵?̴! H̶o̴w̸ ̸i̸s̸ ̶t̷h̵i̴s̴s̷s̵s̵?̵!̷"

Where the wretched, demonic voice had previously been powerful and resounding, whatever abrupt case of poisoning or indigestion had assailed it now barely let it muster up the strength for it to rise over a nauseated hiss, shaken by rage and incredulity.

"B̷u̴t̴ ̷s̷h̶e̴ ̶i̷s̷ ̵t̴h̵e̴ ̴s̶s̷s̷o̵u̴r̸c̴e̸ ̴o̴f̶ ̵a̸l̴l̶ ̵y̸o̶u̸r̸ ̴s̶s̷s̸s̵u̵f̸f̵e̴r̷i̴n̵g̴g̸g̸g̴g̷g̶—!"

Except unconscious.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"..."

Well between the color of those eyes and the fact those summons pulled away and faded back into the glyphs from where they had come, Raven felt reasonably sure that she was looking at the real Weiss, having wrenched control back from Oz. That frustrated yelling only cemented it in her mind, because exactly none of that felt like something the guy would have said if he was still pulling the strings. Yeah, she was pretty sure the word lame didn't even exist in his vocabulary. But...how had...Raven blinked as she came to her own conclusions, and her gaze fell to the floor not out of sadness or shame but out of sheer fucking disbelief. "Goddamn, did you literally manage to punch his consciousness into submission...?" Such a thing seemed absurd and sounded just as ludicrous. Yet here was Weiss, and Oz was, well, in whatever that complicated mess of minds and souls mixing entailed. Deep inside, from all appearances. Raven had thought such a thing would be impossible, but from a certain perspective, that is basically what had occurred.

I suppose I should not have doubted you.

A hint of a proud smirk crossed her face but by the time she looked back up and fixed her gaze upon Weiss, it was gone. "Oh, this? Suicide mission." She explained matter of factly. "At least, I thought it was. A bunch of the others staged an attack on the Dragon, a distraction to draw your followers away for us to try to take out Oz and somehow get to you. Something I deemed unlikely and as delusional as it was optimistic, but...well, Yang's a better huntress than I ever was. In mind and in spirit, if not in skill. Figured it wasn't my place to argue if this was the plan they wanted to go with, to take advantage of Oz's current vulnerability. Which we could do at will, ever since you did this-" She gestured to her mismatched eyes of red and icy blue. "-and stole the power of spring from me, some small part of our souls have been...connected, in a strange way. Intertwined."

Which technically also meant that Weiss also engineered the means for her own rescue, albeit completely accidentally for as much as the councilwoman liked to scheme and think up all the scenarios and plan ahead for them, Raven didn't think the one about the dark lord of the grimm taking you as a new host was one the insufferable Atlesian legitimately prepared for. "So you're welcome. Bitch." Raven narrowed her eyes in an intense glare. "Question is, what happens now?"

As it would happen, Raven actually had a fairly concrete idea of what was about to happen now by the time her little recap was through. That sobering clarity came from the Grimm restraints that had emerged from the pocked floor midway through to gently snake around her arms and ankles, slowly lifting her off her feet and elevating her into the air as though she were being crowd-surfed at a concert. When the bandit was finished, Weiss's body language was worryingly serene, and rather than any sort of scowl, glare or glower at Raven's choice of verbiage the expression etched in her face was somehow so much more terrifying than all three as she leaned forward and gave her arm a gentle touch of faux gratitude, smiling what was simultaneously the most disingenuous, passiveaggressive, condescending, and quite frankly terrifying smile to have ever been smiled. Her voice rang out, thick with a hollow note of magnanimous appreciation.

"Now?"

Spoiler

"Why, now I thank you, of course."

The precise nature of that thanks came in the form of all four summoned limbs coiling, rearing back and absolutely hurling Raven headlong towards her own portal at full tilt, little in the way of regard spared for the elder Branwen's dignity or comfort.

Because obviously she had surmised every single word of that dumb explanation already.

Bitch.

Regardless of whether she managed to right herself by whatever means before disappearing back into Vacuo, by the time Weiss was in her line of sight again the former councilwoman was already turning away, arms crossed with one finger drumming in agitation as she pinned Yang with a look that was far less false and far more a conflicting jumble of emotions that seemed to be beginning to crystallize into some variation of 'irate'.



"First of all, I'd like to stress how much that is empirically NOT what happened. No, Yang, you did not 'punch' the ancient disembodied lord of darkness back inside my head. His arrogance deluded him into thinking he could make a prisoner of me—of all people—in my own body, and I've spent the better part of the last several hours using my limited scope of consciousness to meticulously reverse engineer how things work in there so I could punish that lapse in judgment and figure out exactly what layer of my subconscious memory I needed to bury him in so he can't return. THAT'S what happened." She pulled a face, flapping her hand dismissively as if to bat off some nonexistent argument. "Yes, fine, whatever, you broke his concentration and gave me an opportunity, but if anything you're forcing me to play my hand early, and I—WOULD YOU WIPE THAT STUPID GIDDY LOOK OFF YOUR FACE?! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU CAME HERE!"

Yang knew enough about this variant of Weiss by now to know the only time she really raised her voice without purpose was when she felt overwhelmed, bouts of chronic semi-hysteria that could shatter her image of calm, poised serenity as suddenly and violently as a crack of thunder; a kneejerk defensive reflex cultivated somewhere between the endless scrutiny she lived under as a child and all the years she'd spent snipping and pruning her own emotional state like some sort of bonsai tree thereafter.

She also knew Weiss well enough to know full well it was coming. They were subtle cues, the growing shortness of the woman's breathing, the way her folded arms had tightened in on her slender frame so she stood with shoulders hunched and thumbs tracing anxious circles on her midriff, how the tiniest, most imperceptible note of strain entered her voice as she went on and on. But they were there, and given just how practiced the former maiden had become at keeping her nerves buried during her day-to-day dealings spoke to just how overwhelmed she felt by what was happening right now, by what had happened to her, by Yang's being here and how it all ended up going in Atlas and—Just—by all of this.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

The complexities that arose when two souls, two consciousnesses, attempted to occupy the same body were intricate indeed. Even Weiss, as many efforts as she had taken over her life to rule her own mind, become a paragon of discipline and will and drive and master over every single aspect of her psyche save the obvious ones she had so woefully neglected, couldn't claim to truly understand the full breadth of it. But she knew one thing.

There were certain memories she just didn't think about. Specific life events she kept in a sealed, chained box next to the one she kept her more sentimental emotions in, which Yang and various other recent events had so inconsiderately kicked over. Experiences she sequestered off from herself, that she had picked apart and dissected endlessly and refused to give any more of her time.

One such memory was where Ozma found himself.

He was flat on his back, the transition from his vision being consumed by a raging inferno to a bare and gloomy ceiling a jarring one. Weiss remembered every detail of that ceiling. Every crack, every chip, every cobweb. The air was thickened with dust and the stale scent of wine, row upon row of racks bearing various expensive looking bottles visible as far as the eye could see; the cellar seemed to stretch on infinitely, though it was difficult to tell in the lowlight. His cheek stung and his neck felt swollen, and the solitary source of light in the room came from the open door at the top of the stairs, where a faceless man in a finely tailored white suit stood, hand gripping the doorknob and gazing impassively down at where Ozma lay crumpled at the bottom step with his nonexistent features.

"You will remain here until you remember your place."

Then the door swung shut, and the only sound was the click of a lock and the echoing, receding rhythm of the man's footfall growing more and more distant as the cellar was plunged into darkness.

No matter how hard he tried, it didn't budge.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Now?"

Spoiler

"Why, now I thank you, of course."

The precise nature of that thanks came in the form of all four summoned limbs coiling, rearing back and absolutely hurling Raven headlong towards her own portal at full tilt, little in the way of regard spared for the elder Branwen's dignity or comfort.

How dare you...​

 

[MyrtenRose]

The complexities that arose when two souls, two consciousnesses, attempted to occupy the same body were intricate indeed. Even Weiss, as many efforts as she had taken over her life to rule her own mind, become a paragon of discipline and will and drive and master over every single aspect of her psyche save the obvious ones she had so woefully neglected, couldn't claim to truly understand the full breadth of it. But she knew one thing.

There were certain memories she just didn't think about. Specific life events she kept in a sealed, chained box next to the one she kept her more sentimental emotions in, which Yang and various other recent events had so inconsiderately kicked over. Experiences she sequestered off from herself, that she had picked apart and dissected endlessly and refused to give any more of her time.

One such memory was where Ozma found himself.

He was flat on his back, the transition from his vision being consumed by a raging inferno to a bare and gloomy ceiling a jarring one. Weiss remembered every detail of that ceiling. Every crack, every chip, every cobweb. The air was thickened with dust and the stale scent of wine, row upon row of racks bearing various expensive looking bottles visible as far as the eye could see; the cellar seemed to stretch on infinitely, though it was difficult to tell in the lowlight. His cheek stung and his neck felt swollen, and the solitary source of light in the room came from the open door at the top of the stairs, where a faceless man in a finely tailored white suit stood, hand gripping the doorknob and gazing impassively down at where Ozma lay crumpled at the bottom step with his nonexistent features.

"You will remain here until you remember your place."

Then the door swung shut, and the only sound was the click of a lock and the echoing, receding rhythm of the man's footfall growing more and more distant as the cellar was plunged into darkness.

No matter how hard he tried, it didn't budge.​

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

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

hat was how Emerald reappeared to the other two, gliding towards them on invisible skates just in time to see Mercury yoink Watts into a headlock and slap his hand over his mouth so fast and hard the impact was like the crack of a towel, fully intent on cutting off the tail end of his last sentence.

"LAH LAH LAH LAH LAH, don't wanna hear it, don't wanna know about it. We got a good thing going, Artholomew." He cautioned, knowingly using the completely incorrect extension of 'Art' as a power move. He narrowed his eyes. "And unless you want Neo and Tyrian charging off to gore themselves on the same sword of righteousness those idiots are, you and the matchstick better make sure they don't catch wind of any suicide missions in the area either. Capeesh? There's a good nerd. Oh, and don't ever worry about being the smartest guy in the room when I'm around."

Whether it was a veiled threat from a bully or earnest advice from a friend (or some strange, strange midpoint between the two), he finally let him go with an affectionate hair tousle right as Emerald rolled on past, stiff as a board and eyes firmly front-facing as she disappeared deeper into the shadows of the alley.

"You ladies all done making out back there?"


"Cool. Yet also hot." He pivoted on the balls of his feet, starting to follow her in a backwards walk as he tossed a fingergun at both other parties (assuming Cinder was following). "Try keep up, dorks."

Thus did the shadows swallow him, too.

Watts grunted as he was suddenly headlocked, one hand slapping down at Mercury's legs with an irate "Let go of me-mmph!" that was muffled by the end of it. He shoved himself off Mercury as after he was released, a irritated glare shot at the kickboxer that was weirdly accompanied by a smirk as he fluffed out his jacket and straightened out his sleeves as he waited a bit for Cinder to catch up.

The rough shove was so unexpected on her end that she actually fell over backwards, landing somewhat painfully on her butt. Not enough to get her to grunt or anything, but enough to feel it. She was quiet for a few moments, looking over at Emerald with a fairly sheepish look as the older girl got what she needed to say out.

"Right...okay. Sorry." Cinder responded, pushing herself back up to standing and rubbing her own arms nervously when back on her feet. "Won't happen again." The maiden dashed up after Em until close enough to resume walking speed.



"Pfft. Artholomew." That was enough to get a snort out of her but she said nothing beyond that, and any thoughts about the more serious stuff Mercury had just spoken remained just that, thoughts.

"N-no we didn't, I mean that didn't h--I mean shut up Mercury!" She wasn't really helping her own case here.



Yes. Following was good. Anything that wasn't talking about that. "Tch!" Cinder grunted dismissively. "I can freakin' fly! Of course I can keep up. If anythin' it would be you two who'd have to try to keep up." The complicated well of emotions that had sprang up in the last few minutes didn't do much to dull her sarcasm when she felt like flexing it. Cinder crossed her arms but her eye drifted over to rest on Arthur as they went. "So...you guys have good...uh...dude talk?"​

"Of a sort" he answered, apparently not intending to elaborate much past that. "And I think it was less an issue of speed and more an issue of us not losing them in the shadows. But I don't think that should be a problem." he said as he raised his hand, now short one of their usual rings, and snapped his fingers. Somewhere in the shadowy alleyway, Merc's legs suddenly snapped together mid step with the hum of a magnet coming to life, and Watts strode confidently past his fallen fellow in former leader of friends, an absolutely petty grin on his face as his hand extending outand his rings lit up. The hum shifted before the ring snapped back up to his hands, freeing their compatriot's legs.

"Try to keep your footing, Mercury, I've been told these are dangerous streets"

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Of a sort" he answered, apparently not intending to elaborate much past that. "And I think it was less an issue of speed and more an issue of us not losing them in the shadows. But I don't think that should be a problem." he said as he raised his hand, now short one of their usual rings, and snapped his fingers. Somewhere in the shadowy alleyway, Merc's legs suddenly snapped together mid step with the hum of a magnet coming to life, and Watts strode confidently past his fallen fellow in former leader of friends, an absolutely petty grin on his face as his hand extending outand his rings lit up. The hum shifted before the ring snapped back up to his hands, freeing their compatriot's legs.

"Try to keep your footing, Mercury, I've been told these are dangerous streets"

"Heh. Good one." Cinder remarked. She stifled chuckling but that didn't stop the small smile from emerging. That, this right here, was one of the things she missed most about Beacon. Not the big, world changing stuff, or training to hunt down the monsters that infest the kingdoms, or reading through textbooks and prepping for tests...but the quiet moments. When they were allowed to just relax and goof off or mess around with each other like this. To just...be a kid. Maybe make up for all the time she missed out on while living under that roof in Mistral. They didn't get that much time at Beacon before...before all this, but every minute they did get...it was...she loved it all.

Some part of her down deep wanted it to be a thing again, to just try and turn back time and go back to the way things were. But with everything that had happened since, that just didn't seem...possible. To carry on again after all they had suffered and lost was a tremendous ask. It wasn't her place to even bring it up. So she did not, and that part of her was silenced as she walked along with the others. This was already going to be hard enough, no matter how Neo or Tyrian reacted to seeing her again.

Gods what am I even going to say???

She was still no closer to solving that dilemma.​