Fandom Shattered Hourglass [IC] [CLOSED]

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Wherever Neo Actually Was, she found herself dealing with the always—even moreso for her—uncanny experience of having a brick quite simply whipped at her head with pinpoint accuracy, impacting her dead in the nose with such vicious crunchiness it shattered her right out of her illusion state and drew gasps from Mercury and Emerald in unison.

“Please let’s not start with all that.”

At least five sets of eyes all swivelled towards CFVY’s most elusive member as one, and while two of those sets were already planning some bloody revenge or another the team around him erupted in applause.

​

Neo's aura shattered immediately, she hit the ground about as hard as Mercury hit the dumpster, and she didn't get back up. A pool of red began to spool out from where her head met the street, her eyes wide and vacantly staring down the alleway towards their aggressors. A single beam of sunlight managed to break through the cloudy morn above to shimmer gently across her fallen form, and mayhap a dozen tiny creatures of the forest alleyway (so some rats and squirrels and birds really) crept out from the shadowy corners, looking aghast, as if the world itself was gasping in shock and despair at the loss of such a beautiful soul. A pigeon was wiping away one of the rat's tears. They could almost hear the touch of a violin coasting out across the dreary air, as Neo was Dick Grayson'd from the world. A few flowers started to sprout around her-

Thats what everyone else saw anyways. Penny and Fox could see/tell that Neo had immediately rolled up to seated after the initial impact and was now crosslegged and scowling at him, scroll in hand and the gootube video titled 'top ten saddest anime tracks' playing, having snagged onto some shops unprotected bluetooth speaker across the street. She'd had the brief, initial thought of making the use of her semblance much less obvious in hopes of the others feel at least a little guilty of being so happy about seeing her GET HIT WITH A BRICK (REALLY?!) and maybe start getting mad at fox, but with how out of sorts all of her friends were the last thing she needed to do was leave them out of the bit and then suddenly Torchwick would be crying and Cinder was blowing up buildings and gods forbid it became a whole thing.

What might've been disconcerting for everyone not named Fox or on a manta/in a dumpster was that what she was doing was much more complex than anything she'd done with her semblance. Up to and including two days ago when their team had a surprisingly difficult opening bout in the Vytal festival.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The minuscule Rainart craned her head towards Watts, her mouth moving to formed a lopsided O in Watts's direction: "Yeah. Yeah I can. Only if you don't ask how and if you keep Hazy off my butt bout it."

That said...

"I'm leaving him here though, in case you need muscle." And with a sidestep, Gretchen almost affected a blur for the cockpit with the only remainder of her having been where she was aside Watts was... a stoat rubbing his eyes awake and yawning with a sidelong glance up to WTCH's team leader.

If Watts could even tell, Brosel was more than displeased that he was going to be mid-air again.

Watts gave the rodent a mild stare for a good few seconds, obviously meant to be taken in by how adorable the little creature was. His expression didn't budge an iota as he looked up after where Gretchen had gone as he gestured down towards Brosel with otherwise busy hands, stating what he considered the obvious but what seemingly had to be clarified in the face of Gretchen calling it muscle.

"This is a stoat."

Featuring backing tracks by Flynt Coal.

He spared her no more than a second’s worth of a pitying look where she lay, vanquished, shaking his head and taking it as his cue to step in.

“Took the wrong read from all that, kid. Forgiveness ain’t part of the package. S’never really been Ironwood’s style, anyhow.” He tweaked his shades, lenses gleaming in the midday sun. “What he’s offering you is a pass. Maybe yall didn’t notice down here in the land of peaches and cream, but everywhere else Remnant’s just about gone to hell. Guy’s had his head in a hydraulic press just tryin to hold this show together. Got four kingdoms plus change dumping their problems in one man’s shiny metal lap; Fang, crooks and cults from the east, wannabe revolutionaries in the west, cartels and assassin networks makin all kinds of waves down here. And some of the Grimm crawlin outta the glaciers back home… the way they’ve been acting… well, you were shipped off to boarding school too soon to see ‘em, Polendina. That’s a good thing, don’t get it twisted. Then there’s everything Hill and her Happy Hoodlums been doing to Mantle; Everything that junk they peddle has done all over.”

He spat at that, eyes searing over the peak of his glasses, a personal note to his voice rendering that last indictment more scathing than the others.

“Look, ain’t a lot to be gained beatin around the bush. Whatever Ironwood saw in you, it gave him hope. Enough to field you in the starting lineup a little earlier than he maybe should’ve. You stepped up to the plate. You weren’t ready. You choked. It happens.” He flicked his fedora to the other side of his crown, letting his head cock with it, but when his shades slid down the bridge of his nose the look beneath was bereft of its typical dauntless swag.

“…We all wish we could live in a world where hope sells. Fact is, no one’s buyin anymore. He needs results. So, now he’s moving ahead with other options. This whole ‘Penny Project’, whatever that was… it’s shelved. Tabled. And brass tacks for you is you’re done. Discharged. Whatever you wanna call it; word your boy over there might use is expelled.”

He pitched that one Watts’ way like one might lob a sucker punch to the back of the skull, but didn’t spare him anything more than a sniff of disdain where he stood inside the cockpit otherwise as he kept his attention on the android.

“Your dad’s comin, alright. He’s comin to drive you home. Whatever happens after that, it’s between you and him. What it won’t be is Academy business, or military for that matter. Ironwood regrets the spot he put you in enough to give you the chance to get in that car yourself, but that’s all you get; one chance. One free pass. One opportunity to come back from all this. Past that…”

He sighed, though contrary to his barbs towards Watts he appeared to take no pleasure in his next statement as he raised his trumpet to his lips.

“We do what we gotta do.”

If Flynt's intent was to wound Penny with his words, it worked; everyone could almost see the moment her heart broke as he told Penny she was no longer going to be welcome in Atlas' halls.

It was ostensibly the entire reason for her existence, the genesis of her creation. She would have been nothing but a thought in the back of Pietro Polendina's mind, a forever what if, if the Penny Project had not been greenlit. Some part of her had known that was the obvious endpoint of this, that going against Atlas would mean the ruination of her father's life work. Yet having it so crystalized.... hurt, and she gripped her hands against her chest with a somber frown. If she was being honest with herself, she very much wanted to just listen. She did not want to fight any of these people here, they were the very people she was built to protect. She wanted to go to her father; to apologize. To be comforted.

But if she did that, then she would not be here. And if she was not here, then she could not help, if Beacon really was attacked.

This was not a matter of want. It was a matter of responsibility. One that her father had always said was hers, not those she took orders from.

"I am becoming very tired with people saying they are doing what they have to-" she began, still frowning "-when all they would need to do is listen. Everyone here swore an oath to defend people against the dark, and that is all any of us are trying to do. My friends included. If you would please just hear us out-" she started to plead earnestly.

"I think they've made their disinterest clear, Penny." Watts cut in, striding to the forefront of the cockpit to stare down at Flynt and Neon with his arms crossed behind his back, sneering. "You could tell them that Ironwood had Salem's head blown off in her own office, and they'd bend over backwards hemming and hawing about how what James did was necessary."

Penny's eyes shot wide as she glanced down through the window. "...That is exa-"

"-honestly flynt," Watts didn't let her continue. Outside of the extreme immediate, it wasn't going to do Beacon any favors for people to start questioning Ironwood, not if what came last time was still coming "-Despite how closed of a book you seem to find me, you're one who's pages seem to be out of order. For someone who claims to have 'issues' with James, your words have you so far up his ass its not even surprising you can't smell the shit at this point. Ironwood wouldn't be in this fight alone if he wasn't determined to be. We want to help. In fact, we're helping regardless of whether its wanted or not. But James, you, every other moron from that academy, you all have the same problem; you're all bloody sure the rest of the world is so incompetent, you have to clean up every mess yourself without seeing what the rest of the world offers. I was expelled from Atlas, yes. And its the best thing that could've happened to me. We've seen how scary this world can get-"

There was no heavy stomping or thudding that heralded the arrival of this one, unlike so many of its brethren. It glided with an almost ghostly eerie silence as it neared the edge of the treeline. The thing was huge, it had to be pushing almost forty feet. 3 sets of wings decorated its back side, its lower half lacked anything that even remotely resembled limbs, instead a swirling mass of rock and heat rested there. And its unnaturally long arms ended with even more creepily elongated fingers that...weren't truly fingers at all. Each digit snaked out, culminating in the spiky head of a dragon. Every inch of it black and red and a bony white like every creature of grimm, but it was clear this abomination was no common grimm.

Truthfully, it didn't even bear more than a passing resemblance to Cinder's arm. Judging by the effects it had had on her insane self's psyche, her attitude, everything, this was something completely different. Something horrible. Not much was known about whatever parasite of the soul Ozpin had seen fit to graft to her darker counterpart, but twice now Yang had been present while it survived a direct, sustained dose of silver eyes; and the only Grimm that could do that were old.

Which meant the brawler now found herself holding onto a long, shadowy tendril that spanned about two and a half times the length it had been on her first yank, and her immediate realization was that it was far from limp. The opposite.

It went into an absolute frenzy, and the way it suddenly lashed around her body was like something out of the nightmare every child had the night after they first saw a Grimm. In the time it took to blink, it was all over her; tightening around her arms and legs, looping in between them and in on its own folds so it tied itself in knots so tight they groaned and creaked with the friction, to say nothing of the human ensnared within. It was less a question of the Arm's strength against Yang's and more one of pure leverage, the trappings of the human body when compared to a boneless, shapeless entity like the grimm; unless Yang's semblance spontaneously developed a new trait that let her dislocate large parts of her skeleton on command, raw power just wasn't going to cut it. It could've been Tiger herself standing there, supercharged to 300% and straining every muscle in her body, and it wouldn't have made a difference. She had form, structure, limitations.

Whatever she was wrestling with did not.

What had once been the palm hovered just above her eyes, its elongated wrist wound around and around her mouth and jaw to force her head back at an angle so she had no choice but to stare up into it. For a moment, only the faceless black abyss of a Grimm piece stared back.

Then she heard a crack. And another. And another. A continuous, warping crackle like woodchips grated against her ears as the hand's claws fused together and it started to fold backwards, the bone structure it had seen fit to adopt within deemed unnecessary for the moment. At the center of what had been the palm she saw a jagged seam crack open and begin to widen, revealing nothing inside save for a malignant red glow. It took a second before she realized the jaggedness came from the fact that what she was looking at was a row of teeth, spontaneously grown and separated into two uneven halves; a gruesome picture made all the worse by the lone, blinking slit that opened up just above it to stare at her with unnerving stillness.

An eye. Only it didn't look like any Grimm eye she'd ever seen before. This one had an iris, a sclera, a pupil, even. It was engorged, bloodshot, but it looked almost human. Horrible enough in its own right, but it got worse. It wasn't red.

It was the exact shade of lilac as Yang's own.

The teeth moved.

"̴T̸H̸E̵N̴ ̴T̶R̸Y̶.̶"̵

Then it lashed forward with a snarl to clamp down over her eyes as well, and the sensation she felt most as she was plunged into darkness and it started to drain her was a strange one, considering.

the distant gash in the earth began to glow, burning orange illuminating that area at least just as brightly as Weiss's attack, if much less visible given the ground obscured most of it.

Again, that Cinder seemed to be a volcano personified as she exploded out of the ground just then. A dark figure, framed by the scorching flames behind her

"-we've met these monsters you're all still stumbling around in the dark trying to find-"

She hit the ground behind him so hard that like her counterpart, the floor cracked underneath her boots. A one-two combo followed, using all she could of the power-up she got from the damage she endured plus Jaune's amplification in the two blows. The first absolutely obliterated what was left of Roman's weakened aura. The second? It went right through him. A point-blank shotgun blast tore open a hole in his back that her fist followed through and emerged out the other side so fast that depending on where he was looking, he might have seen the bloodsoaked fist poking through the center of his abdomen before the pain even registered.

One last Tug ended with Cinder’s head careening into Blake’s outstretched hand from where they were on a nearby roof, her fingers clawing into Cinder’s hair before slamming the side of her head against the brick of a nearby wall hard enough to crack it, then smashing straight through it with a repeat.

“You weren’t even supposed to be here. But if Salem’s pet maiden is still trying to get in Lord Ozpin’s way-”

While she was still half buried in the wall, a foot slammed into her knee and rather than pulling away after the kick, kept a violent pressure on it till the miserable sound of a joint coming out of place filled the air.

“-then she dies.”

Only then did the violence in the air fade even a little bit, the hostile intent that had been overloading CInder’s aura with danger from every direction ever since that ribbon first came around her neck. She let go of the maiden hair so she could start to go slack before she pulled her upright with the ribbon, glaring into her eyes as she put Gambol's blade against her throat....

But when she was firmly back on her feet, Pyrrha lashed out with a slice of her blade. Cinder refused to give her the satisfaction, the black-haired student moving to dodge. She wasn't nearly fast enough. The attack still cut along her face and the amount of agonizing pain that shot through her system was unbearable. She fell backwards onto the ground again, writhing around and rolling in suffering as her hands gripped her face. Her anguished screams would have made most anybody feel sorry for her. If either of the others felt that, it didn't show.

When her now bloodstained hands pulled away...it was with her one remaining good eye that she saw both of them standing over her. Pyrrha's face was remarkably composed and Nora...Nora seemed like she was about two seconds away from bursting into gleeful laughter.

"-and all we're trying to do is stop them. No matter how the rest of this spins out, know that we're worried beacon is being attacked tonight. Be ready for it." He sighed, frowning. "Maybe Penny's right. Maybe we can discuss this." He said quietly, meeting Flynt's eyes with something other than scorn or irritation for the first time. "You really don't have to do what you think you 'gotta do', Flynt. We can discuss this. Calmly. Team leader to team leader, and act like the huntsman and huntresses we're supposed to be trai-"

Then he snapped his fingers and a rocket from the manta hit Flynt square in the chest, carrying him forward and then upwards into the sky, before it pivoted at the last minute to give Flynt a taste of the afterburner and give enough of a safe distance before it exploded.

Genuinely, Watts had believed his own words there. It wasn't impossible for them to talk this out. They couldn't be Ironwood in reverse, trusting no one and burning every bridge in a crusade to do what was right.

They just didn't have the time. Atlas reinforcements were doubtlessly on the way, and once they showed up everything was hosed. He appreciated Penny managing to draw Flynt's attention off him long enough to get that to work, even if she was staring up in the sky in total horror up until the point the missile disentangled itself from Flynt.

"Coco and Velvet, biggest danger to the manta. Don't get off if you can't get back on once we're airborne" He ordered simply to his teammates , at the same time Neon and Ivori saw the manta's chaingun spinning up and pointed directly at them.

"And Tyrian; try to keep the maiming to a minimum"

 

[Gus Gungus]

"I am becoming very tired with people saying they are doing what they have to-" she began, still frowning "-when all they would need to do is listen. Everyone here swore an oath to defend people against the dark, and that is all any of us are trying to do. My friends included. If you would please just hear us out-" she started to plead earnestly.

"I think they've made their disinterest clear, Penny." Watts cut in, striding to the forefront of the cockpit to stare down at Flynt and Neon with his arms crossed behind his back, sneering. "You could tell them that Ironwood had Salem's head blown off in her own office, and they'd bend over backwards hemming and hawing about how what James did was necessary."​

"Did you guys ever just think 'hey waiiiitttttt, we sound really stupid and crazy and nothing we're saying has any discernible basis in reality and also most of us aren't really known for being sweethearts and maybe THAT'S why nobody wants to listen to us'?? Plus, why would anyone believe you over the leader of an entire academy???" Neon started quizzing so rapidfire and in such a loud voice nobody could really stop her from interjecting her two cents, back on her feet by now and skating in far more defensive patterns around her team's perimeter as she pointedly avoided looking at Penny. "Flynnnt, who's this kid? He's so DUMB. You said he went to our school?"

"Do you seriously not remember?"

"I was hoping to give them the benefit of the doubt, personally. But..."

Yatsuhashi frowned, deep with thought and tight with consternation as he stared down at the literal cartoon playing out in the alleyway.
​

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Neo's aura shattered immediately, she hit the ground about as hard as Mercury hit the dumpster, and she didn't get back up. A pool of red began to spool out from where her head met the street, her eyes wide and vacantly staring down the alleway towards their aggressors. A single beam of sunlight managed to break through the cloudy morn above to shimmer gently across her fallen form, and mayhap a dozen tiny creatures of the forest alleyway (so some rats and squirrels and birds really) crept out from the shadowy corners, looking aghast, as if the world itself was gasping in shock and despair at the loss of such a beautiful soul. A pigeon was wiping away one of the rat's tears. They could almost hear the touch of a violin coasting out across the dreary air, as Neo was Dick Grayson'd from the world. A few flowers started to sprout around her-

Thats what everyone else saw anyways. Penny and Fox could see/tell that Neo had immediately rolled up to seated after the initial impact and was now crosslegged and scowling at him, scroll in hand and the gootube video titled 'top ten saddest anime tracks' playing, having snagged onto some shops unprotected bluetooth speaker across the street. She'd had the brief, initial thought of making the use of her semblance much less obvious in hopes of the others feel at least a little guilty of being so happy about seeing her GET HIT WITH A BRICK (REALLY?!) and maybe start getting mad at fox, but with how out of sorts all of her friends were the last thing she needed to do was leave them out of the bit and then suddenly Torchwick would be crying and Cinder was blowing up buildings and gods forbid it became a whole thing.

What might've been disconcerting for everyone not named Fox or on a manta/in a dumpster was that what she was doing was much more complex than anything she'd done with her semblance. Up to and including two days ago when their team had a surprisingly difficult opening bout in the Vytal festival.​

"...she's semblance spiking. Neopolitan's illusions are not nearly this mechanically elaborate."

He sighed, hefting his greatsword over one shoulder as he glanced at the rest of his team.

"Can be a sign of sustained Entropy use."

"Yuck! Even I don't touch that stuff. You're SOOOO gonna regret it in a year or two when your butt gets big and those itty bitty titties start to sag, cutie! Hey are you really dead?" She threw another brick at Neo's corpse, just in case. It looked super convincing to her! All those little animals looked so sad!
​

"-honestly flynt," Watts didn't let her continue. Outside of the extreme immediate, it wasn't going to do Beacon any favors for people to start questioning Ironwood, not if what came last time was still coming​

"Aw, here he goes."

Watts' epic nerd rants had gone down real well in Atlas.


​

"-Despite how closed of a book you seem to find me, you're one who's pages seem to be out of order. For someone who claims to have 'issues' with James,​

"Beef," he corrected, not about to let himself be misquoted by a square like this dude.

​

Ironwood wouldn't be in this fight alone if he wasn't determined to be. We want to help. We want to help. In fact, we're helping regardless of whether its wanted or not.​

"Ohhhh, you wanna help?" His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, as though the clouds had parted and the sun dawned down on him. He stole glances both ways up the street and cupped a hand to project his voice, sounding out the good word. "Hey y'all, nine kids on a bad trip and their stoat wanna help! We're good! The worst year Remnant's seen since the Great War is over! This guy, man."
​

But James, you, every other moron from that academy, you all have the same problem; you're all bloody sure the rest of the world is so incompetent, you have to clean up every mess yourself without seeing what the rest of the world offers. I was expelled from Atlas, yes. And its the best thing that could've happened to me. We've seen how scary this world can get-"



"-we've met these monsters you're all still stumbling around in the dark trying to find-"


"-and all we're trying to do is stop them. No matter how the rest of this spins out, know that we're worried beacon is being attacked tonight. Be ready for it." He sighed, frowning. "Maybe Penny's right. Maybe we can discuss this." He said quietly, meeting Flynt's eyes with something other than scorn or irritation for the first time.​

"You buyin a word of this?"

"Hehe, naaaaah. He's SO winding up for something."

"Yup." They didn't even appear to be listening to him by this point, not that anyone really had all day. Flynt nodded up at the rooftop. "Be ready. You're up, Alistair."

Better to make sure the lack of open ears was two-way.
​

Then he snapped his fingers and a rocket from the manta hit Flynt square in the chest, carrying him forward and then upwards into the sky, before it pivoted at the last minute to give Flynt a taste of the afterburner and give enough of a safe distance before it exploded.

Genuinely, Watts had believed his own words there. It wasn't impossible for them to talk this out. They couldn't be Ironwood in reverse, trusting no one and burning every bridge in a crusade to do what was right.

They just didn't have the time. Atlas reinforcements were doubtlessly on the way, and once they showed up everything was hosed. He appreciated Penny managing to draw Flynt's attention off him long enough to get that to work, even if she was staring up in the sky in total horror up until the point the missile disentangled itself from Flynt.​

Neon was simply outta there with a skittish "EEP", the rest of her team swift in following suit. The Flynt whose snappy jazz ensemble was styled with blue accents wasn't so lucky, ragdolled into the sky and exploding in a ball of fire that surely would've been a demoralizing sight for his team.

Had it not been for the yellow, green, and red-tinged versions of the trumpeter who burst forth from the original's form in rhythm a split-second before the rocket carried him away, and they scattered along with the rest of the combatants as things kicked off in earnest, three separate cones of sound all engulfing the manta at once from equidistant points across the alley to keep it locked in place while it dealt with some very immediate ongoing issues from above.

About 10 seconds earlier...
​

"........" Already more than frustrated by Ivori and everything else, that cheap insult hit her even harder. If Coco wanted to go there, she'd go there.

"Oh look at me, I'm Coco, I dress myself in the highest end, most luxurious clothes so I can look like I'm the best around and try to mask the fact that I'm actually pretty freaking mid as a person! Oh, what's that, you broke my expensive shades in the middle of a fight? Yeah, I hate you now. So much so that I'm going to go against my classmates and join up with the dude who decided it was necessary to take like half his freaking army to what's basically a sporting event, even though things are so, so apparently super awful everywhere that it would've been better if most of them got stationed elsewhere! Yeah, that's the guy to trust right there. He says somebody got kidnapped, manipulated? That's enough for me. One little lie, some bending of the truth and I'm going to go out there and hunt down my fellow Beacon academy students, because I'm Coco, and I'm so great, and I look fabulous, and look at my glasses! See them? Cool, right? These awesome shades I'm wearing that don't let me see how much of a douchey tool I'm being right now!!!"​

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Guess Watts rubbed off on her too." Mercury grinned deviously, making sure he held a nice, long zoom on Coco's face to cap off his recording of that, having snatched some rando's scroll on his way out of the club because he didn't feel like dealing with not having one.

"You still didn't answer my question," noted Ivori.

The response from CFVY's leader, while slightly delayed, was about what you'd expect.

A storm of bullets descended on the manta, giving any who needed it a reminder of the sheer stopping power Coco packed and why Emerald and Mercury's gameplan in their doubles round had very much revolved around not being hit as even the first volley of them punctured the ship hull like it was forged from wet tissue paper; leaving those aboard with precious few seconds to respond if they wanted to avoid major engine or systems damage. Beacon's top diva kept her finger on the trigger until the ammo belt clicked empty, absolutely rending the manta to shreds if she got her way in tandem with Flynt's assault, sending a dry shrug Velvet's way in response to the aghast look the sudden offensive garnered as Fox and Yatsu leapt down to pick the bones.

"We were going in circles."​

 

[MidwayLives]

"Coco and Velvet, biggest danger to the manta. Don't get off if you can't get back on once we're airborne" He ordered simply to his teammates , at the same time Neon and Ivori saw the manta's chaingun spinning up and pointed directly at them.

"And Tyrian; try to keep the maiming to a minimum"

Tyrian was gone before Watt's words even finished hitting the air.

He LEAPED down the side of the ramp and dropped to all fours, his tail curving up behind him as he took on absolutely devilish expression.

Had these people done anything to HIM personally? Not so much beyond get in his way and be rude to his friends. Certainly not anything worth catching an ass beating for. But the second they raised their hands? The figurative gloves came off right then and there and the faunus was on cloud nine. Others enjoyed drugs, stimulants, alcohol, none of that ever appealed to Tyrian. The thrill of battle, the rush of raining blow after blow upon your opponent until they were a quivering mass of flesh and bone beneath you! It was ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING! His head snapped towards Coco and Velvet. He pulled his lips back and let out a horrible laugh. "Hahahahahaha!" This was just the chance he'd been waiting for! To defend those he truly cared about AND fight worthy opponents!

Which meant that the twins were going to have to either move or BE moved.

Tyrian hoped they picked the latter.

His palms glowed and there was a low, barely audible, rumble emitting from his hands as he sprinted forward, with his tail bringing up the rear (literally!). His gaunlets opened up and he unleashed a stream of bullets at the two, all the better to try and keep them on their toes, for as he approached, he did a (rather magnificent if he was being boastful) overhead flip and skidding a few feet behind the two, he swung out with his tail, intending to use the back end of his stinger like a makeshift wrecking ball to slam straight into Milita's stomach before pouncing straight for Melanie. His semblance eroding away at her aura the second he got his hands on her...

"You should have taken whatever beating my partner gave you as a lesson: and stayed OUT of our BUSINESS!!!!"


~~~

Roman wanted absolutely nothing more than to be helpful to those he cherished and held dear. Even if he lacked the type of skills that'd win him some kind of award in bravery or kick assdom. But as he stood in the pilot's seat, he felt sweat dripping down his face.

One of them HAD to be the one that fired the rockets, yeah? What else could he have pressed and goofed up? Wasn't as though he'd accidentally eject himself out of the Manta-oh man if he did that, he'd REALLY have egg on his face. But, jerks they may have been, they were also people his age. While he'd never been Beacon's darling, he'd formed a tightly knit bond with Neo, Emerald, Mercury and the rest. Firing missiles at them just didn't seem right.

...Now if only he could figure out which one it was-

Gretchen came into the cockpit and gripped the overhead compartments to swing around to the side of the seat and hip-check Roman out of the way, a sincere "Sorry!" thrown his way as she went through systems check and the start up sequence for the manta, hands moving to throw switches and more.

"Aaaaaaaahhhhhh...."

Roman stumbled out of the seat, the many seatbelts he'd strapped himself in with coming undone and flailing as he twirled and twirled.

In his mind, it probably looked more like this:

Sadly. everyone (including Roman) lived in the real world. So, it was actually more along the lines of this:

Roman wasn't a poor sport or anything though. "No problem." He mumbled back to Gretchen as he went about picking himself up off the floor. With his luck, he really would have ended up finding the 'pilot eject button' and launched himself up, up, and far away. Besides, this was Hazel's sister. ...He wasn't really sure what that exactly merited but it DID mean that he had the utmost confidence in her!

The response from CFVY's leader, while slightly delayed, was about what you'd expect.

A storm of bullets descended on the manta, giving any who needed it a reminder of the sheer stopping power Coco packed and why Emerald and Mercury's gameplan in their doubles round had very much revolved around not being hit as even the first volley of them punctured the ship hull like it was forged from wet tissue paper; leaving those aboard with precious few seconds to respond if they wanted to avoid major engine or systems damage. Beacon's top diva kept her finger on the trigger until the ammo belt clicked empty, absolutely rending the manta to shreds if she got her way in tandem with Flynt's assault, sending a dry shrug Velvet's way in response to the aghast look the sudden offensive garnered as Fox and Yatsu leapt down to pick the bones.

"We were going in circles."

Getting shot to pieces and looking equivalent to swiss cheese wasn't healthy for anything. Airships, armored windshields of said airship/helicopter/things, or more importantly, the people inside of them. Fun as an idea as it sounded in his head, Roman couldn't exactly *VWOOMP* every single bullet that fired out of Coco's gun. Would have looked absolutely killer if he did. But there just wasn't much he could do.

He looked down at the vial of entropy he'd managed to sneak off with during the chaos in Salem's office.

...At least not like he was. While the others moved however they did, Roman tried to stay low to the ground and slink off on his stomach, his fist closed around the vial. He wasn't any good to any of them like this. He couldn't stop the Manta from being torn asunder. He couldn't go out there and fight half of those people, except maybe for Neon and those two girls Hazel had apparently mopped the floor with. He'd only be a burden...

A liability...

'Do it...'

Clutching at his chest with his free hand, Roman sidled up to one of the unoccupied seats in the back of the Manta. His breathing had gotten so heavy and he..He couldn't really understand why. Or was that just his psyche's half-hearted way of protecting him? There had barely been a moment's peace for him to get a single freaking chance to try, even just fucking TRY to cope with the REALITY that he'd DIED! Fucking end of the road, man! Expired!

'The worms fed on your decaying flesh. Who's to say they won't again? They'll devour you...'

The pain in his chest grew tighter. He grit his teeth and let his hat fall beside him on the floor. Normally, he'd have scooped it up in a heartbeat but he couldn't. He just couldn't...focus. It was as though his consciousness was against him. Violence after violence with barely a chance to stop and get a drink in between. He looked down at the vial in his hand and his bottom lip trembled. He'd tried, er, borrowed some of Mercury's cigars. They were better than the ones Roman's dad used to smoke. In both cases Roman tried them and looked like a fool coughing up a lung and needing to wash his mouth out. This was a totally different beast. Roman didn't mind a little pickpocketing or pranking here or there. But, he wouldn't dabble in drugs. Nothing good ever came of it. To torture your body and develop an addiction, it's own battle in it of itself, and for what? What would it end up reducing you to?

'A corpse is all you'll ever be...It'll just take longer to get there...'

....But, maybe, just this once. It could help him. Make a difference and save his friends.

He smashed the top of the vial against the seat and downed the contents.

"...."

The vial fell from his hands and shattered against the floor. Roman tried to let out an exhale of air only to catch himself. He felt so hot and it boggled his mind. Why was something so trivial on his mind at this moment?? He couldn't help it however. He felt like his skin was tingling, like somebody was setting off all his goosebumps at once. It was a rush! The kind of excitement and thrill that he imagined Tyrian got whenever he got into a fight or whenever Watts managed to show someone up. He rose to his feet, using Melodic Cudgel to support himself, as his vision grew ever so blurry. It felt like his mind was playing tricks on him. Saying all these horrible things, pushing him to do this, and now? He could see a warm glow spreading across his aura. Shaking his head, he looked down and saw the truth of it all. Downing a whole vial's worth of Entropy had been a fool's errand to begin with but on someone who'd only just unlocked his semblance and was unsteady enough as it was?

It was a nightmare waiting to happen.

~~~



*THUMP THUMP THUMP*

Every step left a small flicker of fire in it's wake down the ramp.

He slammed Melodic Cudgel down and pulled the trigger.

*BOOM*

Chunks of all shapes and sizes flew in the air. Swiping his right hand across, it all vanished in the blink of an eye.

*VWOOOOOMP*

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."

You could barely see him, his silhouette shrouded amongst the flames cascading along his shimmering aura.

It was frightening and his heart felt as though it was racing faster than the Manta could ever hope to achieve.

He was sure he'd be horrified if he learned what'd happened.

...If he lived to be told.

 

[MyrtenRose]

"-and all we're trying to do is stop them. No matter how the rest of this spins out, know that we're worried beacon is being attacked tonight. Be ready for it." He sighed, frowning. "Maybe Penny's right. Maybe we can discuss this." He said quietly, meeting Flynt's eyes with something other than scorn or irritation for the first time. "You really don't have to do what you think you 'gotta do', Flynt. We can discuss this. Calmly. Team leader to team leader, and act like the huntsman and huntresses we're supposed to be trai-"

Then he snapped his fingers and a rocket from the manta hit Flynt square in the chest, carrying him forward and then upwards into the sky, before it pivoted at the last minute to give Flynt a taste of the afterburner and give enough of a safe distance before it exploded.

Genuinely, Watts had believed his own words there. It wasn't impossible for them to talk this out. They couldn't be Ironwood in reverse, trusting no one and burning every bridge in a crusade to do what was right.

They just didn't have the time. Atlas reinforcements were doubtlessly on the way, and once they showed up everything was hosed. He appreciated Penny managing to draw Flynt's attention off him long enough to get that to work, even if she was staring up in the sky in total horror up until the point the missile disentangled itself from Flynt.

"Coco and Velvet, biggest danger to the manta. Don't get off if you can't get back on once we're airborne" He ordered simply to his teammates , at the same time Neon and Ivori saw the manta's chaingun spinning up and pointed directly at them.

"And Tyrian; try to keep the maiming to a minimum"

The response from CFVY's leader, while slightly delayed, was about what you'd expect.

A storm of bullets descended on the manta, giving any who needed it a reminder of the sheer stopping power Coco packed and why Emerald and Mercury's gameplan in their doubles round had very much revolved around not being hit as even the first volley of them punctured the ship hull like it was forged from wet tissue paper; leaving those aboard with precious few seconds to respond if they wanted to avoid major engine or systems damage. Beacon's top diva kept her finger on the trigger until the ammo belt clicked empty, absolutely rending the manta to shreds if she got her way in tandem with Flynt's assault, sending a dry shrug Velvet's way in response to the aghast look the sudden offensive garnered as Fox and Yatsu leapt down to pick the bones.

"We were going in circles."

Yeah, that went about as she figured. Those had definitely been fightin' words, and Coco showed her lack of appreciation for said words in her barrage against the temporarily pinned manta. The first shots of the fight were fired, and Cinder exited the manta. She knew they had to make this as quick as possible or they just weren't gonna manage to get out of this one. So regardless of how those piloting the manta reacted, she thrust her hand up, and in response a strong gust of wind came out of nowhere to redirect Coco's aim harmlessly into the sky above.

"The name's Cinder." She finally answered that dumb, stupid, ignorant idiot, whoever he even was. The maiden hovered into the air, a fireball crackling to life in each hand. Both were thrown, aiming to catch Fox in the air mid-jump down, while she herself shot forward at Yatsu, aiming to just straight up high speed tackle him through the wall of the building he'd been on as he likewise jumped down.

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

Melanie looked at Miltia. Miltia looked at Melanie, and both nodded at their brief shared look. The fight had come, and they knew those all too well with how many of Vale's drunk or shady or shady and drunk people regularly visited the club. The only question was who to fight. Mercury was out, no way they were gonna risk touching the guy who'd just got smacked into a dumpster. Talk about disgusting. Neo...was an intriguing choice, though her semblance seemed it would be annoying to fight, and that it also seemed the group on the roof had a guy more suited for her anyway. So...who then--
​

Tyrian was gone before Watt's words even finished hitting the air.

He LEAPED down the side of the ramp and dropped to all fours, his tail curving up behind him as he took on absolutely devilish expression.

Had these people done anything to HIM personally? Not so much beyond get in his way and be rude to his friends. Certainly not anything worth catching an ass beating for. But the second they raised their hands? The figurative gloves came off right then and there and the faunus was on cloud nine. Others enjoyed drugs, stimulants, alcohol, none of that ever appealed to Tyrian. The thrill of battle, the rush of raining blow after blow upon your opponent until they were a quivering mass of flesh and bone beneath you! It was ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING! His head snapped towards Coco and Velvet. He pulled his lips back and let out a horrible laugh. "Hahahahahaha!" This was just the chance he'd been waiting for! To defend those he truly cared about AND fight worthy opponents!

Which meant that the twins were going to have to either move or BE moved.

Tyrian hoped they picked the latter.

His palms glowed and there was a low, barely audible, rumble emitting from his hands as he sprinted forward, with his tail bringing up the rear (literally!). His gaunlets opened up and he unleashed a stream of bullets at the two, all the better to try and keep them on their toes, for as he approached, he did a (rather magnificent if he was being boastful) overhead flip and skidding a few feet behind the two, he swung out with his tail, intending to use the back end of his stinger like a makeshift wrecking ball to slam straight into Milita's stomach before pouncing straight for Melanie. His semblance eroding away at her aura the second he got his hands on her...

That worked. The pair seemed...pretty casual about Tyrian's mad approach, given, well...how Hazel had dealt with them previously. Miltia moved swiftly enough to manage to block every single bullet sent their way, claws a veritable blur as every shot was caught and deflected, but he was swift as well. His overhead flip took him well over them, but...though the her white-clad twin showed a hint of concern now, Miltia did not. His tail came in, and hit......nothing.

The red-clad twin seemed to just vanish in the blink of an eye right before the end of his tail could make contact. She reappeared in the next blink, only now she was a few yards away from him. She even threw in a sassy little wave for him from her new position.

​

"You should have taken whatever beating my partner gave you as a lesson: and stayed OUT of our BUSINESS!!!!"

Melanie, for her part, moved in tandem with Miltia's sudden disappearance, and.....it did not suffice. The faunus pounced, her aura dissipated for a moment under his touch, much to her incredible shock, and he managed to get a strike in before she managed to send him back with a kick that transitioned gracefully into a backflip of her own to put some distance between them. That ability...was that his semblance? It changed things. To pierce through aura entirely like that...the white clad twin rubbed where she had been struck. It hurt. Quite a lot.

"Right. Good to know."

Both twins sprinted forward in perfect unison, charging forward to meet Tyrian from right and left sides...only for Miltia to once again disappear from sight in a split-second. She popped back up several feet behind Tyrian, but her sprint was unbroken, still moving in sync with Melanie as the two now came from front and back. The two came together in a veritable ballet of strikes, slices and kicks, intending to overwhelm him from both directions, each covering the other as best they could to minimize contact with that aura-disabling ability.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"Roman, holy fuck? What???"

That was the most an atypically shaky Emerald could manage peeking out from the chair she'd thrown herself behind the second Roman's aura ignited itself at temperatures roughly equivalent to the interior of a volcano, giving those present their first true sense of just how potent Entropy could be in high doses when a garnish like red dust was added to the mix as she stared blankly at the prints of molten steel denoting where he stepped on his path out of the manta. Those in the cockpit with him when he pounded the vial practically had his outline burned into their retinas if they made the mistake of looking directly at him, unable to clear it from their vision no matter how many times they blinked, and the heat was such that their aura started to slough off in droves if they didn't seek adequate cover or distance as every one of the windscreens not wiped out already cracked and exploded outward.

Emerald's eyes were flared wide, and hadn't returned to their original positions by the time she vanished.​

 

[Indolent]

Watts gave the rodent a mild stare for a good few seconds, obviously meant to be taken in by how adorable the little creature was. His expression didn't budge an iota as he looked up after where Gretchen had gone as he gestured down towards Brosel with otherwise busy hands, stating what he considered the obvious but what seemingly had to be clarified in the face of Gretchen calling it muscle.

"This is a stoat."

"Oh! Is that what he is? I'd been trying to figure that out for yeaaaaaaaaaaaars." Gretch called back, with a sardonic drawl to her words as she kept going through the pilot check.

"Did you guys ever just think 'hey waiiiitttttt, we sound really stupid and crazy and nothing we're saying has any discernible basis in reality and also most of us aren't really known for being sweethearts and maybe THAT'S why nobody wants to listen to us'?? Plus, why would anyone believe you over the leader of an entire academy???" Neon started quizzing so rapidfire and in such a loud voice nobody could really stop her from interjecting her two cents, back on her feet by now and skating in far more defensive patterns around her team's perimeter as she pointedly avoided looking at Penny. "Flynnnt, who's this kid? He's so DUMB. You said he went to our school?"

"Do you seriously not remember?"

"I was hoping to give them the benefit of the doubt, personally. But..."

Yatsuhashi frowned, deep with thought and tight with consternation as he stared down at the literal cartoon playing out in the alleyway.




"...she's semblance spiking. Neopolitan's illusions are not nearly this mechanically elaborate."

He sighed, hefting his greatsword over one shoulder as he glanced at the rest of his team.

"Can be a sign of sustained Entropy use."

"Yuck! Even I don't touch that stuff. You're SOOOO gonna regret it in a year or two when your butt gets big and those itty bitty titties start to sag, cutie! Hey are you really dead?" She threw another brick at Neo's corpse, just in case. It looked super convincing to her! All those little animals looked so sad!

"Aw, here he goes."

Watts' epic nerd rants had gone down real well in Atlas.





"Beef," he corrected, not about to let himself be misquoted by a square like this dude.





"Ohhhh, you wanna help?" His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, as though the clouds had parted and the sun dawned down on him. He stole glances both ways up the street and cupped a hand to project his voice, sounding out the good word. "Hey y'all, nine kids on a bad trip and their stoat wanna help! We're good! The worst year Remnant's seen since the Great War is over! This guy, man."

"You buyin a word of this?"

"Hehe, naaaaah. He's SO winding up for something."

"Yup." They didn't even appear to be listening to him by this point, not that anyone really had all day. Flynt nodded up at the rooftop. "Be ready. You're up, Alistair."

Better to make sure the lack of open ears was two-way.



Neon was simply outta there with a skittish "EEP", the rest of her team swift in following suit. The Flynt whose snappy jazz ensemble was styled with blue accents wasn't so lucky, ragdolled into the sky and exploding in a ball of fire that surely would've been a demoralizing sight for his team.

Had it not been for the yellow, green, and red-tinged versions of the trumpeter who burst forth from the original's form in rhythm a split-second before the rocket carried him away, and they scattered along with the rest of the combatants as things kicked off in earnest, three separate cones of sound all engulfing the manta at once from equidistant points across the alley to keep it locked in place while it dealt with some very immediate ongoing issues from above.

About 10 seconds earlier...



"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Guess Watts rubbed off on her too." Mercury grinned deviously, making sure he held a nice, long zoom on Coco's face to cap off his recording of that, having snatched some rando's scroll on his way out of the club because he didn't feel like dealing with not having one.

"You still didn't answer my question," noted Ivori.

The response from CFVY's leader, while slightly delayed, was about what you'd expect.

A storm of bullets descended on the manta, giving any who needed it a reminder of the sheer stopping power Coco packed and why Emerald and Mercury's gameplan in their doubles round had very much revolved around not being hit as even the first volley of them punctured the ship hull like it was forged from wet tissue paper; leaving those aboard with precious few seconds to respond if they wanted to avoid major engine or systems damage. Beacon's top diva kept her finger on the trigger until the ammo belt clicked empty, absolutely rending the manta to shreds if she got her way in tandem with Flynt's assault, sending a dry shrug Velvet's way in response to the aghast look the sudden offensive garnered as Fox and Yatsu leapt down to pick the bones.

"We were going in circles."​

"Holy crap you people talk too much--"

The .50 whateverliber rounds from Coco started slamming into the Manta, peppering holes into the side of it that Gretchen slid out from the seat and down to the side for further cover, anticipating her chances of being strike to be lowered if she did so. And the thing was mostly ready to take off.

"Take her out before she takes us out of the skies!!!"

"Aaaaaaaahhhhhh...."

Roman stumbled out of the seat, the many seatbelts he'd strapped himself in with coming undone and flailing as he twirled and twirled.

In his mind, it probably looked more like this:

Sadly. everyone (including Roman) lived in the real world. So, it was actually more along the lines of this:

Roman wasn't a poor sport or anything though. "No problem." He mumbled back to Gretchen as he went about picking himself up off the floor. With his luck, he really would have ended up finding the 'pilot eject button' and launched himself up, up, and far away. Besides, this was Hazel's sister. ...He wasn't really sure what that exactly merited but it DID mean that he had the utmost confidence in her!

"I'll teach you what I know later, promise--"

Getting shot to pieces and looking equivalent to swiss cheese wasn't healthy for anything. Airships, armored windshields of said airship/helicopter/things, or more importantly, the people inside of them. Fun as an idea as it sounded in his head, Roman couldn't exactly *VWOOMP* every single bullet that fired out of Coco's gun. Would have looked absolutely killer if he did. But there just wasn't much he could do.

He looked down at the vial of entropy he'd managed to sneak off with during the chaos in Salem's office.

...At least not like he was. While the others moved however they did, Roman tried to stay low to the ground and slink off on his stomach, his fist closed around the vial. He wasn't any good to any of them like this. He couldn't stop the Manta from being torn asunder. He couldn't go out there and fight half of those people, except maybe for Neon and those two girls Hazel had apparently mopped the floor with. He'd only be a burden...

A liability...

'Do it...'

Clutching at his chest with his free hand, Roman sidled up to one of the unoccupied seats in the back of the Manta. His breathing had gotten so heavy and he..He couldn't really understand why. Or was that just his psyche's half-hearted way of protecting him? There had barely been a moment's peace for him to get a single freaking chance to try, even just fucking TRY to cope with the REALITY that he'd DIED! Fucking end of the road, man! Expired!

'The worms fed on your decaying flesh. Who's to say they won't again? They'll devour you...'

The pain in his chest grew tighter. He grit his teeth and let his hat fall beside him on the floor. Normally, he'd have scooped it up in a heartbeat but he couldn't. He just couldn't...focus. It was as though his consciousness was against him. Violence after violence with barely a chance to stop and get a drink in between. He looked down at the vial in his hand and his bottom lip trembled. He'd tried, er, borrowed some of Mercury's cigars. They were better than the ones Roman's dad used to smoke. In both cases Roman tried them and looked like a fool coughing up a lung and needing to wash his mouth out. This was a totally different beast. Roman didn't mind a little pickpocketing or pranking here or there. But, he wouldn't dabble in drugs. Nothing good ever came of it. To torture your body and develop an addiction, it's own battle in it of itself, and for what? What would it end up reducing you to?

'A corpse is all you'll ever be...It'll just take longer to get there...'

....But, maybe, just this once. It could help him. Make a difference and save his friends.

He smashed the top of the vial against the seat and downed the contents.

"...."

The vial fell from his hands and shattered against the floor. Roman tried to let out an exhale of air only to catch himself. He felt so hot and it boggled his mind. Why was something so trivial on his mind at this moment?? He couldn't help it however. He felt like his skin was tingling, like somebody was setting off all his goosebumps at once. It was a rush! The kind of excitement and thrill that he imagined Tyrian got whenever he got into a fight or whenever Watts managed to show someone up. He rose to his feet, using Melodic Cudgel to support himself, as his vision grew ever so blurry. It felt like his mind was playing tricks on him. Saying all these horrible things, pushing him to do this, and now? He could see a warm glow spreading across his aura. Shaking his head, he looked down and saw the truth of it all. Downing a whole vial's worth of Entropy had been a fool's errand to begin with but on someone who'd only just unlocked his semblance and was unsteady enough as it was?

It was a nightmare waiting to happen.

~~~



*THUMP THUMP THUMP*

Every step left a small flicker of fire in it's wake down the ramp.

He slammed Melodic Cudgel down and pulled the trigger.

*BOOM*

Chunks of all shapes and sizes flew in the air. Swiping his right hand across, it all vanished in the blink of an eye.

*VWOOOOOMP*

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."

You could barely see him, his silhouette shrouded amongst the flames cascading along his shimmering aura.

It was frightening and his heart felt as though it was racing faster than the Manta could ever hope to achieve.

He was sure he'd be horrified if he learned what'd happened.

...If he lived to be told.

"Roman, holy fuck? What???"

That was the most an atypically shaky Emerald could manage peeking out from the chair she'd thrown herself behind the second Roman's aura ignited itself at temperatures roughly equivalent to the interior of a volcano, giving those present their first true sense of just how potent Entropy could be in high doses when a garnish like red dust was added to the mix as she stared blankly at the prints of molten steel denoting where he stepped on his path out of the manta. Those in the cockpit with him when he pounded the vial practically had his outline burned into their retinas if they made the mistake of looking directly at him, unable to clear it from their vision no matter how many times they blinked, and the heat was such that their aura started to slough off in droves if they didn't seek adequate cover or distance as every one of the windscreens not wiped out already cracked and exploded outward.

Emerald's eyes were flared wide, and hadn't returned to their original positions by the time she vanished.​

"Was it cuz of what I did? Cuz I'm so fuckin' sorry--"

The smaller Rainart couldn't finish her words, they more than died in her mouth, they dissipated as she squawked and realized that, one, she shouldn't be looking at him and now she was looking elsewhere and still somehow looking at him, and two, temperatures spiked such that even with the aura inherent to every person here, herself included, it didn't seem enough to protect her clothing. More specifically, the excessively long scarf that was well over 27 feet long that she adored and had wrapped around her neck with a grand length of it left out that made it beyond impractical.

That length completely caught aflame and manifested soot sprites come to life. She'd have cried under the realization if the tears didn't immediately evaporate. She was only thankful that she managed to be on the side of the pilot's seat opposite to Roman that it probably buffered a lot of the damage for her.

In the next moment, there was an extremely bizarre string of gibberish that escaped her mouth before, through excellent spatial recognition and memory of her surroundings and those around her proximal to her own position, that she swung out from behind cover and grabbed Watts in an abrupt tackle grab that showcased her strength belying her diminutive form as she shotgunned out of the shattered windows of the cockpit with him in hand and onto the nose, getting away from the sauna adventure that went sideways to Hell.

"Oh my god that. That went downhill really fast!" Gretchen cried, eyes finally blearing with tears now as Roman's silhouette started to fade. Hopefully. In the same time frame as those words, Dearth snapped into its crossbow form, the sister listening for the brother's words for what was likely going to be a necessary dust infusion for this complete shitshow.

Brosel was nowhere to be seen, having vanished in tandem with Emerald, following that strange noise sequence from Gretchen--

Melanie, for her part, moved in tandem with Miltia's sudden disappearance, and.....it did not suffice. The faunus pounced, her aura dissipated for a moment under his touch, much to her incredible shock, and he managed to get a strike in before she managed to send him back with a kick that transitioned gracefully into a backflip of her own to put some distance between them. That ability...was that his semblance? It changed things. To pierce through aura entirely like that...the white clad twin rubbed where she had been struck. It hurt. Quite a lot.

"Right. Good to know."

Both twins sprinted forward in perfect unison, charging forward to meet Tyrian from right and left sides...only for Miltia to once again disappear from sight in a split-second. She popped back up several feet behind Tyrian, but her sprint was unbroken, still moving in sync with Melanie as the two now came from front and back, the two coming together in a veritable ballet of strikes, slices and kicks, intending to overwhelm him from both directions, each covering the other as best they could to minimize contact with that aura-disabling ability.

That one of the twins, Melanie, immediately found herself assailed by a stoat that'd launched itself from the side of the Manta as if shot from a cannon, his aura flickering with heat dissipating off his minky person added context to what the hell transpired inside the manta, if they'd even taken note.

The effect of a rodent being subjected to stresses from flying earlier and then almost being broiled alive inside a proverbial pressure cooker brought to the fore a life-like rendition of what it was for one to be backed into a corner.

It was a feral, gibbering Brosel more than content to shred anything front of him and it was Gretchen's missive for everyone to get the fuck out as intact as possible that directed the tinier Tyrian in stoat form to strike down what he perceived as the weaker foes.

 

[Indolent]

"Coco and Velvet, biggest danger to the manta. Don't get off if you can't get back on once we're airborne" He ordered simply to his teammates , at the same time Neon and Ivori saw the manta's chaingun spinning up and pointed directly at them.

"And Tyrian; try to keep the maiming to a minimum"

Hazel looked out the side ramp and down, eyes roving off to the side of it in anticipation before he called out to his team leader, his tone stoic as his posture had been the entire time both sides exchanged their barbs and attempts at convincing argumentation for Penny and on. "I'm going, if I don't come back, just go, Watts. Seriously. I'll get the others in if I can but if it comes to it, just do it."

He didn't leave much room for any rebuttals as he lumbered down a few feet of the ramp before hopping down off the side and maneuvering around to face the assembled might of the shitty Avengers in FNKY, CFVY, and the bouncers. In that span of time, he'd retrieved a pair of dust crystals, one a burnished red and the other a surging yellow.

They were embedded by the time he walked the distance that he was parallel to the nose of the manta, his arms in a cross with a sharp inhale of breath as the combined elemental energies of the dust surged through his body before his appendages went slack with his head lolling back.



He maintained the posture for a split second before his eyes opened again, affixing literally everyone within line of sight a burning stare.

​

"Did you guys ever just think 'hey waiiiitttttt, we sound really stupid and crazy and nothing we're saying has any discernible basis in reality and also most of us aren't really known for being sweethearts and maybe THAT'S why nobody wants to listen to us'?? Plus, why would anyone believe you over the leader of an entire academy???" Neon started quizzing so rapidfire and in such a loud voice nobody could really stop her from interjecting her two cents, back on her feet by now and skating in far more defensive patterns around her team's perimeter as she pointedly avoided looking at Penny. "Flynnnt, who's this kid? He's so DUMB. You said he went to our school?"

"Do you seriously not remember?"

"I was hoping to give them the benefit of the doubt, personally. But..."

Yatsuhashi frowned, deep with thought and tight with consternation as he stared down at the literal cartoon playing out in the alleyway.




"...she's semblance spiking. Neopolitan's illusions are not nearly this mechanically elaborate."

He sighed, hefting his greatsword over one shoulder as he glanced at the rest of his team.

"Can be a sign of sustained Entropy use."

"Yuck! Even I don't touch that stuff. You're SOOOO gonna regret it in a year or two when your butt gets big and those itty bitty titties start to sag, cutie! Hey are you really dead?" She threw another brick at Neo's corpse, just in case. It looked super convincing to her! All those little animals looked so sad!

"Aw, here he goes."

Watts' epic nerd rants had gone down real well in Atlas.





"Beef," he corrected, not about to let himself be misquoted by a square like this dude.





"Ohhhh, you wanna help?" His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, as though the clouds had parted and the sun dawned down on him. He stole glances both ways up the street and cupped a hand to project his voice, sounding out the good word. "Hey y'all, nine kids on a bad trip and their stoat wanna help! We're good! The worst year Remnant's seen since the Great War is over! This guy, man."

"You buyin a word of this?"

"Hehe, naaaaah. He's SO winding up for something."

"Yup." They didn't even appear to be listening to him by this point, not that anyone really had all day. Flynt nodded up at the rooftop. "Be ready. You're up, Alistair."

Better to make sure the lack of open ears was two-way.



Neon was simply outta there with a skittish "EEP", the rest of her team swift in following suit. The Flynt whose snappy jazz ensemble was styled with blue accents wasn't so lucky, ragdolled into the sky and exploding in a ball of fire that surely would've been a demoralizing sight for his team.

Had it not been for the yellow, green, and red-tinged versions of the trumpeter who burst forth from the original's form in rhythm a split-second before the rocket carried him away, and they scattered along with the rest of the combatants as things kicked off in earnest, three separate cones of sound all engulfing the manta at once from equidistant points across the alley to keep it locked in place while it dealt with some very immediate ongoing issues from above.

About 10 seconds earlier...



"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Guess Watts rubbed off on her too." Mercury grinned deviously, making sure he held a nice, long zoom on Coco's face to cap off his recording of that, having snatched some rando's scroll on his way out of the club because he didn't feel like dealing with not having one.

"You still didn't answer my question," noted Ivori.

The response from CFVY's leader, while slightly delayed, was about what you'd expect.

A storm of bullets descended on the manta, giving any who needed it a reminder of the sheer stopping power Coco packed and why Emerald and Mercury's gameplan in their doubles round had very much revolved around not being hit as even the first volley of them punctured the ship hull like it was forged from wet tissue paper; leaving those aboard with precious few seconds to respond if they wanted to avoid major engine or systems damage. Beacon's top diva kept her finger on the trigger until the ammo belt clicked empty, absolutely rending the manta to shreds if she got her way in tandem with Flynt's assault, sending a dry shrug Velvet's way in response to the aghast look the sudden offensive garnered as Fox and Yatsu leapt down to pick the bones.

"We were going in circles."​

Spoiler: So anyway

Hazel immediately retaliated by slinging bolts of lightning and blasts of flame in a widespread scattering attack, his intent to force their loss of footing and to split them. A wave of lightning surged for Team CFVY above even with Cinder's redirection of Coco's aim and a cascade of flames for Flynt's clones to disrupt their restraining the manta in place.

If anything, it was blatantly obvious he intended to out himself as a major target that needed attention so his compatriots could get away.

"Get aboard, Neo!"​

Getting shot to pieces and looking equivalent to swiss cheese wasn't healthy for anything. Airships, armored windshields of said airship/helicopter/things, or more importantly, the people inside of them. Fun as an idea as it sounded in his head, Roman couldn't exactly *VWOOMP* every single bullet that fired out of Coco's gun. Would have looked absolutely killer if he did. But there just wasn't much he could do.

He looked down at the vial of entropy he'd managed to sneak off with during the chaos in Salem's office.

...At least not like he was. While the others moved however they did, Roman tried to stay low to the ground and slink off on his stomach, his fist closed around the vial. He wasn't any good to any of them like this. He couldn't stop the Manta from being torn asunder. He couldn't go out there and fight half of those people, except maybe for Neon and those two girls Hazel had apparently mopped the floor with. He'd only be a burden...

A liability...

'Do it...'

Clutching at his chest with his free hand, Roman sidled up to one of the unoccupied seats in the back of the Manta. His breathing had gotten so heavy and he..He couldn't really understand why. Or was that just his psyche's half-hearted way of protecting him? There had barely been a moment's peace for him to get a single freaking chance to try, even just fucking TRY to cope with the REALITY that he'd DIED! Fucking end of the road, man! Expired!

'The worms fed on your decaying flesh. Who's to say they won't again? They'll devour you...'

The pain in his chest grew tighter. He grit his teeth and let his hat fall beside him on the floor. Normally, he'd have scooped it up in a heartbeat but he couldn't. He just couldn't...focus. It was as though his consciousness was against him. Violence after violence with barely a chance to stop and get a drink in between. He looked down at the vial in his hand and his bottom lip trembled. He'd tried, er, borrowed some of Mercury's cigars. They were better than the ones Roman's dad used to smoke. In both cases Roman tried them and looked like a fool coughing up a lung and needing to wash his mouth out. This was a totally different beast. Roman didn't mind a little pickpocketing or pranking here or there. But, he wouldn't dabble in drugs. Nothing good ever came of it. To torture your body and develop an addiction, it's own battle in it of itself, and for what? What would it end up reducing you to?

'A corpse is all you'll ever be...It'll just take longer to get there...'

....But, maybe, just this once. It could help him. Make a difference and save his friends.

He smashed the top of the vial against the seat and downed the contents.

"...."

The vial fell from his hands and shattered against the floor. Roman tried to let out an exhale of air only to catch himself. He felt so hot and it boggled his mind. Why was something so trivial on his mind at this moment?? He couldn't help it however. He felt like his skin was tingling, like somebody was setting off all his goosebumps at once. It was a rush! The kind of excitement and thrill that he imagined Tyrian got whenever he got into a fight or whenever Watts managed to show someone up. He rose to his feet, using Melodic Cudgel to support himself, as his vision grew ever so blurry. It felt like his mind was playing tricks on him. Saying all these horrible things, pushing him to do this, and now? He could see a warm glow spreading across his aura. Shaking his head, he looked down and saw the truth of it all. Downing a whole vial's worth of Entropy had been a fool's errand to begin with but on someone who'd only just unlocked his semblance and was unsteady enough as it was?

It was a nightmare waiting to happen.

~~~



*THUMP THUMP THUMP*

Every step left a small flicker of fire in it's wake down the ramp.

He slammed Melodic Cudgel down and pulled the trigger.

*BOOM*

Chunks of all shapes and sizes flew in the air. Swiping his right hand across, it all vanished in the blink of an eye.

*VWOOOOOMP*

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."

You could barely see him, his silhouette shrouded amongst the flames cascading along his shimmering aura.

It was frightening and his heart felt as though it was racing faster than the Manta could ever hope to achieve.

He was sure he'd be horrified if he learned what'd happened.

...If he lived to be told.

Then that happened, the spectacle of the Manta's windows completely shattering with a percussive explosion that was definitely an audible noise the block heard, with the heat inside intense enough that even with his proximity he at least felt the ambient temperature increase by whole degrees. The biggest draw of the whole spectacle was the burning man that walked out of the increasingly damaged Manta, painful as it was to look at him.



"Roman??? Roman, why-- why would you do that??? Did you-- Gretchen?! Watts?! Emerald??? Is anyone still inside?"

In that instant, he forgot about the enemy before him and turned to his allies, fear inscribed across his features.

Shit I completely forgot about Raven in my previous post huh.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

She threw another brick at Neo's corpse, just in case.

Neo rolled to her feet in time for this block of cement as it obliterated the Disney movie knockoff scene, the tiny huntress pocketing her scroll as she gave Neon a far more wounded frown. They had so much in common! Three out of four of the letters in her name! And... Some other stuff probably! Why was that just the default assumption for everyone here that she was tweaking? Seriously, what idiot would slam this stuff without even knowing what it really did?

"...nnnnh... hnnnnnhhhhh..."

What followed was Mercury, who judging from his moon-sized pupils may or may definitely have injected a dose of the Entropy Ironwood brought with him into the office a few minutes ago as a last ditch mode of pain management, advancing menacingly towards the pilot's chair, carrying out some manner of extraordinarily intricate kata or another as the nunchaku became twin whirlwinds spinning up and down his biceps, over his shoulders, and between his hands. Whether it was his way of demonstrating to Neo that yeah, he was freaking fine, to Roman that A. he hadn't forgotten the sucker punch and B. he still wasn't over him not being dead anymore (nor his seeming desire to just sweep that entire thing under the rug because who does that???), or just the good old-fashioned frenzied delirium of a dude in the throes of an extremely potent and mysterious drug for the first time, it quickly became apparent that it had been an inadvisable decision on his part; he sank low and assumed a horse stance in the center of the cockpit, rooting himself in place, the sound his lungs were making growing more and more akin to a cross between an out-of-tune accordion and a set of bagpipes with a hole in it as the dance of the nunchaku grew more and more complex until he finally just collapsed under the weight of his own wheezing, technically proficient hubris.

"Glaaark, ghluhgonna fuck you all up."

Besides that one.

She gave a heavy sigh and shook her head. Whatever. It was whatever! Neon wasn't important right now. What was important right now was...

A storm of bullets descended on the manta, giving any who needed it a reminder of the sheer stopping power Coco packed and why Emerald and Mercury's gameplan in their doubles round had very much revolved around not being hit as even the first volley of them punctured the ship hull like it was forged from wet tissue paper; leaving those aboard with precious few seconds to respond if they wanted to avoid major engine or systems damage. Beacon's top diva kept her finger on the trigger until the ammo belt clicked empty, absolutely rending the manta to shreds if she got her way in tandem with Flynt's assault, sending a dry shrug Velvet's way in response to the aghast look the sudden offensive garnered as Fox and Yatsu leapt down to pick the bones.

The maiden hovered into the air, a fireball crackling to life in each hand. Both were thrown, aiming to catch Fox in the air mid-jump dow

Whether it was by dodge or by crash, wherever Fox came to a landing to in the Alley, he looked up to see Neo a few feet away, one leg crossed over the other as she rested both hands atop Hush like a cane. She gave him a friendly smile and a wave as he came up, the act somehow radiating far more malice than if she'd came at him scowling for his brick-throwing ways. she turned her cheek slightly to the side and tapped it as she gave him a wink, close as she could possibly get to verbalizing for him to take his best shot.

This was probably just more proof that Neo was on drugs to them, honestly, particularly for CFVY as fellow Beacon students. No one really considered her a slouch in hand to hand by any means, the girl squarely MTEN's second best technical fighter. but something higher years up noted (and what sore losers in sparring matches muttered) was that she absolutely used her semblance as a crutch. On very rare occasions when Glynda had combat training done sans semblance use, Neo seemed out of sorts, tripping over fundamentals she'd normally have one of the best handles on.

Yet she was waiting patiently for Fox to make the first move, and her eyes were so calm and sharp for someone supposedly on a bender, their only motion so far a narrowing without breaking her smile as she weighed listening to Hazel's order against her ego-

*THUMP THUMP THUMP*

Every step left a small flicker of fire in it's wake down the ramp.

He slammed Melodic Cudgel down and pulled the trigger.

*BOOM*

Chunks of all shapes and sizes flew in the air. Swiping his right hand across, it all vanished in the blink of an eye.

*VWOOOOOMP*

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."

You could barely see him, his silhouette shrouded amongst the flames cascading along his shimmering aura.

It was frightening and his heart felt as though it was racing faster than the Manta could ever hope to achieve.

He was sure he'd be horrified if he learned what'd happened.

...If he lived to be told.

- until they widened in shock at the sound of that voice. She'd assumed the heat was Cinder or Raven, that the maidens were handling this threat a little more seriously than she was, admittedly in a hurry as they should be.

Not this. She turned and saw the stuff of nightmares, one hand clasped over her mouth as tears tried to form at the side of her eyes only to get evaporated by the wind and heat.

Actual, genuine nightmares she'd had, ever since Haven. Ever since Mt Glenn. Roman, getting destroyed before her eyes, with nothing she could do about it. She hadn't been there at Haven, she hadn't seen the actual act, so her brain had helpfully filled in the gaps with Yang Xiao Long's fire and rage. It was so similar.

She was here this time.

Fox went ignored entirely as she instead took off straight for the inferno, even as her aura started to shimmer from the heat.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Neon was simply outta there with a skittish "EEP", the rest of her team swift in following suit. The Flynt whose snappy jazz ensemble was styled with blue accents wasn't so lucky, ragdolled into the sky and exploding in a ball of fire that surely would've been a demoralizing sight for his team.

Had it not been for the yellow, green, and red-tinged versions of the trumpeter who burst forth from the original's form in rhythm a split-second before the rocket carried him away, and they scattered along with the rest of the combatants as things kicked off in earnest, three separate cones of sound all engulfing the manta at once from equidistant points across the alley to keep it locked in place while it dealt with some very immediate ongoing issues from above.

There was a brief moment of pure, genuine shock and concern at Flynt getting rocketed away on Penny's face, the girl horrified. She had truly wanted to avoid this fight entirely, and Watts had sunk to a sneak attack-

Then the Manta was blasted, and she almost felt abashed for underestimating her fellow Atlas students. Almost. What she actually felt was frustration. Beacon was in imminent danger. Irregardless of whether her friends were correct, or if they had lost their touch with reality entirely, something was happening, or else any version of Blake Belladonna would not be in the middle of Amity Coliseum on the day of the finals. But yet again the people of Atlas, her people, had decided that it was time to fight instead of listen. She did not agree with Watts. She was starting to believe getting others to question Ironwood was going to be necessary. She was going to begin by making team FNKI question the general's decision to shelve the Penny Project.

She pushed off the nose of the manta with such force that the whole thing rocked for a moment, her thrusters powering straight through the sound and sending her crashing into the street in front of the Flyntette's with enough force to launch them into the air. All six swords were swift to follow, pressed together to form a single mass of force intent on catching all three with a single swipe and send them crashing into the alley walls-

BOOM*

Chunks of all shapes and sizes flew in the air. Swiping his right hand across, it all vanished in the blink of an eye.

*VWOOOOOMP*

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."

You could barely see him, his silhouette shrouded amongst the flames cascading along his shimmering aura.

It was frightening and his heart felt as though it was racing faster than the Manta could ever hope to achieve.

He was sure he'd be horrified if he learned what'd happened.

...If he lived to be told.

Then all that happened and she froze herself, caught about to deliver a firm ultimatum to Neon and instead whirling towards the destruction and immediately clocking what it must have been. More than the others on her side, perhaps even more than FNKI and CFVY, understood the dangers that entropy presented, and the priority shift from her was swift, her eyes lighting up as her face went taught with anxious determination past her initial shock as she tried to get a read on how much danger Torchwick had put his own aura in and was already plotting a route to the nearest emergency services.


--------


Watts was totally unprepared for any of this shit and just kinda ate shit as Gretchen tackled him out of the way

 

[Gus Gungus]

The thrill of battle, the rush of raining blow after blow upon your opponent until they were a quivering mass of flesh and bone beneath you! It was ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING! His head snapped towards Coco and Velvet. He pulled his lips back and let out a horrible laugh. "Hahahahahaha!"​

"Ew."

Thankfully for Tyrian's pride, a whole lot of stuff happened before she could make further comment.


​

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."​

And Kobalt and Ivori, well, they were the most horrified of all. You'll just have to take my word for it.

No matter where they were or what the outcome of the opening vollies had been, Roman walking out of the manta was impossible to miss. They all felt the heat, all saw the amber light engulf the alleyway from top to bottom, filling the edges of their vision. And when they did, the tone changed, the recovery of Penny suddenly shunted to the back of their minds.

Any remote enjoyment CFVY may have been taking from the chance for a crack at their apparent long nursed one-sided grudge vanished as the instincts of practically full-blooded huntsmen and huntresses kicked in; about a millisecond too late to save Coco and Velvet, their attention preoccupied by exchanging fire with Cinder and Hazel as it was. When Roman launched his sudden offensive they both disappeared through the roof as it caved in in a shower of miniature comets, little more than twin yelps of surprise to mark their descent.

FNKI’s reaction was similar, but with one key difference: the four hailed from the frozen continent where Entropy had originated, their experience with what the compound could do personal rather than secondhand like most denizens of Vale, and all but froze themselves as a result. Neon's brakes squealed where her team were regrouping by Flynt, the trumpeter reabsorbing his clones and rising back up from a knee as he kept his sunglasses flush over his eyes out of necessity rather than stylistic choice for a change, himself, Coco and Fox the only ones even really able to look at Roman directly without immediate risk of blindness.

“…Are you people crazy?" Neon asked, an unusual hush falling over her tone. "How much did you let him take?"

"Neon, evacuate the buildings on either side of us." Flynt ordered, his own voice low but level, brain fishing around for some manner of plan that wasn't just straight damage control at this point and coming up empty. "Kobalt, don't let anyone down this street. Move."

"But if he burns up all his aura—!"

"Yea." He answered quietly.

If that happened, whether the buildings were evacuated or not wasn't going to matter.

He snorted, ever sardonic despite the gravity of the situation. "I was the one who kept sayin the festival was light on fireworks this year, right?"

Neon looked like she wanted to say more, but the stakes seemed to take precedence over whatever manic state she normally occupied for once, and she settled for a perturbed nod before skating up the alley wall and letting herself into the neighboring apartment block through an open window, prompting a cacophony of terrified screams from within. Kobalt did Kobalt stuff, which meant he turned and sprinted back out onto the street. Kobalt was kinda basic.

But Ivori… well, far as Flynt was concerned, Ivori happened to be Atlas Academy’s best-kept secret. The hidden x-factor of their team. There was a reason he had benched him after the opening rounds of the tournament, and it had nothing to do with his prowess relative to himself and Neon and everything to do with not wanting to let their competition get too good of a look before the finals. His faith in the whip-wielder was unshakable, and the firm nod he received in response to his own confirmed that faith was mutual. They could do this. They had to do this.

That was what being a huntsman was all about.

“Ivori, let’s hit it!!”


​

Then all that happened and she froze herself, caught about to deliver a firm ultimatum to Neon and instead whirling towards the destruction and immediately clocking what it must have been. More than the others on her side, perhaps even more than FNKI and CFVY, understood the dangers that entropy presented, and the priority shift from her was swift, her eyes lighting up as her face went taught with anxious determination past her initial shock as she tried to get a read on how much danger Torchwick had put his own aura in and was already plotting a route to the nearest emergency services.​

Spoiler

What Penny saw was very bad.

The specificities of Entropy’s effects were still being studied, and concerned enough with matters of the soul and aura that even Penny’s sensors yielded confusing results. What she could ascertain was that Roman’s aura was using itself as a fuel source, the properties of the drug even the upmost shelf in the field of Atlesian chemical research had yet to understand facilitating an interaction between the manifestation of humanity’s soul and Dust that was simply never meant to be. His gauge was dropping at the same rate his temperature was increasing, and if not for the absurd aura magnification properties of the drug there was frankly a chance he would’ve been nothing but cinders before he ever set foot off the manta.

While she was parsing that, FNKI made their move.

Flynt went low, Ivori went high, the solo jazzster a quartet once more following his propulsion of his teammate high into the air, briefly framing his silhouette against the sun. His whip lashed out, coiling around Roman once, thrice, three times, aiding the tunnel of soundwaves Flynt sought to keep him pinned down with that the blazing figure had frankly been wading through with as much ease as Penny and Hazel had. Its wielder quickly—

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

—let out a scream as pitched, chilling, and bloodcurdling as any they had ever heard, accompanied by the same sort of hiss one might expect if they stuck their hand on an open griddle with their aura down.

It wasn’t supposed to work this way; common sense told all of them that as much as Penny’s scans did her. A huntsman’s weapon was his fifth limb, an extension of the self to be strengthened and imbued with aura to every bit the same extent as the body was, and thus both should’ve been afforded some degree of protection.

But the edges of Torchwick’s inferno was turning purple, licks of blue, green, and just about everything else in between snaking up from the blaze, and Flynt’s tune hit a bum note of an entirely involuntary nature this time as the entirety of the whip turned molten red seconds before melting away into ash and slag; not a moment before Ivori bounced off the manta and crashed down into the alley, sobbing, writhing, nursing a hand the sort of color and texture where amputation ended up on the table as Flynt froze like a deer in headlights, the breath necessary to use his trumpet not coming.

Yatsuhashi’s concurrent attack at least brought him closer, having belted Cinder right back out of the wreckage they ended up in when she tried to go Superman on him clearly also under the influence of Entropy, proximity to the searing glow forcing him to avert his eyes and screw them shut as he landed from a pounce and nevertheless swung low for Roman’s midriff with a fierce roar.

That meant he didn’t see the top half of his mighty cleaver melt away in two as if held under a blowtorch where it struck, and he stared at it for a moment with a disconcerted frown just before Fox came in like a cannonball to tackle him out of the way of Torchwick’s retaliation.

Interlude - Inside the Manta:
​

Raven, for her part, just sat there and took a sip from the bottle. A long sip.​

Watts’ chosen method of getting Raven to wake up and pay a little attention to everything going on earlier had been to clap in her face.

Emerald wasn’t as tactful as all that, and the back of her hand suddenly clapped Raven full across the face hard enough to send her tumbling from her seat in the manta unless she happened to be strapped in, the thief apoplectic as she shimmered back into sight in front of her and grabbed a fistful of hair to start physically dragging the bandit over to the ramp by force.

“GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, DEADBEAT! HE NEEDS TO COOL DOWN!”

This wasn’t happening again. Not so soon. Not to Roman.

Not to Neo.

She jerked her towards their teammate and pushed the barrel of Thief’s Respite up against her lower back, honestly not really giving a shit if she went blind or not in that moment as long as it got her off her mediocre unmotivated ass. She was past pretending this chick’s cut-and-run, negligent parent figure schtick on either Remnant hadn’t struck a personal chord of resentment in her from pretty much the second she first briefly skirted around the edges of their lives, either.



“FOR ONCE IN YOUR WORTHLESS LIFE DO SOMETHING!”

Nor could she ignore how much she hated the extent to which she saw herself in it.

End Interlude
​

She was here this time.

Fox went ignored entirely as she instead took off straight for the inferno, even as her aura started to shimmer from the heat.​

Neo was here, but found herself faced with an immediate and apparent obstacle as, like her team leader at the hands of Yatsu earlier, someone chose that exact moment to hit her with a move she had a zero percent success rate at defending against to date.

She would’ve been forgiven for thinking it was Fox, seizing on her distracted state to retaliate to her frankly insufferable challenge from a few moments ago.

It was not.

Spoiler

Instead, that someone was the team leader in question.

Mercury had been strategically watching everything go down with mounting sobriety from inside the dumpster, but the moment he saw the direction Neo’s feet started carrying her was when he chose to vault out, snatch her arm, whip her momentum around and judo toss her inside it; lid slamming shut from the impact, the bricks she’d had lobbed at her earlier stacked on top of it along with a pile of others were the ambush to prove successful as he made the executive call to stop whatever that stupid decision was before she finished making it.

Then he started making it himself, mouth locked in a tight frown as his gaze switched from the dense plumes of smoke starting to curl up from the roof Roman had just sent a bombardment of molten asphalt through to the man himself. A hand came up to shield his eyes, but he still had to squint in the face of the light streaming through his fingers as he set his heels and started walking towards the member of his team he least expected to ever spiral out of control and need curtailing, voice rife with a clarity it had been lacking in recent hours.

He knew he was probably robbing Neo of some big, cathartic moment she felt needed to be hers, or whatever. That sucked for her. He didn’t care.

It had to be him.

And from the moment he made the one truly fatal mistake that sent his team tumbling off the edge of the mountain face, that brought them from riding high to bottom of the deepest, darkest abyss, it was always going to be.

“Roman?” His aura started to sheen and flicker, peeling away in flecks of silver as he immediately grit his teeth in pain the likes of which even he hadn’t felt before. “Lights still on in there, chief? Time to come back now. Sun’s gettin real low, big fella. Hey, remember when we saw that movie? Remember how crappy it was? Oh how we laughed.”

“CUT THE CRAP AND GET THE FUCK BACK IN THE DUMPSTER, ASSWIPE! YOU TWO CAN SCREW LATER!”

His free hand went up towards the manta at the sound of Emerald’s borderline hysterical screech, Mercury putting everything he had into the rueful shake of the head and devil-may-care smirk he threw up just on the off chance it was his last. The paintwork on his prosthetics started to peel away, joining the burning scatter of particles on the breeze that was his aura at this point, his skin beginning to scorch and blister.

The sound of sirens and military aircraft rotors had started to slice through the air even at a distance, but somehow none of them were a match in urgency for the single, stark noise every single one of their instincts were trained to recognise, wafting up with the smoke from the hole Roman had made in the roof. One that had the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, and the remaining members of CFVY in the alley blanch, abandoning any pretense of the manta, Penny, or teams WTCH or MTEN being their main priority anymore as they scrambled to join their team members already inside:

The wailing of an infant.​

 

[MidwayLives]

That worked. The pair seemed...pretty casual about Tyrian's mad approach, given, well...how Hazel had dealt with them previously. Miltia moved swiftly enough to manage to block every single bullet sent their way, claws a veritable blur as every shot was caught and deflected, but he was swift as well. His overhead flip took him well over them, but...though the her white-clad twin showed a hint of concern now, Miltia did not. His tail came in, and hit......nothing.

The red-clad twin seemed to just vanish in the blink of an eye right before the end of his tail could make contact. She reappeared in the next blink, only now she was a few yards away from him. She even threw in a sassy little wave for him from her new position.

Tyrian huffed.

Teleportation? How absolutely annoying.

Melanie, for her part, moved in tandem with Miltia's sudden disappearance, and.....it did not suffice. The faunus pounced, her aura dissipated for a moment under his touch, much to her incredible shock, and he managed to get a strike in before she managed to send him back with a kick that transitioned gracefully into a backflip of her own to put some distance between them. That ability...was that his semblance? It changed things. To pierce through aura entirely like that...the white clad twin rubbed where she had been struck. It hurt. Quite a lot.

"Right. Good to know."

Both twins sprinted forward in perfect unison, charging forward to meet Tyrian from right and left sides...only for Miltia to once again disappear from sight in a split-second. She popped back up several feet behind Tyrian, but her sprint was unbroken, still moving in sync with Melanie as the two now came from front and back. The two came together in a veritable ballet of strikes, slices and kicks, intending to overwhelm him from both directions, each covering the other as best they could to minimize contact with that aura-disabling ability.

"Hmph. Two on one, three on one, doesn't make a difference. I could..."
He wasn't sure what Melanie's semblance was. If it was anything like her sister's, it was going to likely be annoying and a pain in the ass to deal with.
Blow after blow rained down upon him but the faunus didn't falter for even a moment. No, as a matter of fact he immediately tried to go back on the offensive. His tail coiled up and struck out like a bolt of lightning, striking here and there and everywhere to keep any attacks away from his back/blindspot. Sure, one of them COULD teleport and it'd make keeping her in one place consistently enough to swing on her a bother, she HAD to close the distance in order to strike at him, it was just inevitable! So, as long as he used his tail and the implied threat of being struck by his stinger to try and keep the other sister at bay, he'd give as good as he got and threw punch after punch at Melanie, the grin never leaving his face.
"...Crush ALL of you singlehandedly!"

Sure, things were bad, terrible even, but this was the kind of stuff he LIVED for!

He'd have his fun, beat these two jokers, and they'd be on their way!

They-

*THUMP THUMP THUMP*

Every step left a small flicker of fire in it's wake down the ramp.

He slammed Melodic Cudgel down and pulled the trigger.

*BOOM*

Chunks of all shapes and sizes flew in the air. Swiping his right hand across, it all vanished in the blink of an eye.

*VWOOOOOMP*

From upon their perch, Coco and Velvet would see shadows of varying size pool overhead as flaming debris began to crash down upon them.

The sound of roaring flames screamed across the impromptu battlefield and it all lead back to one man.

"N....e...o...."

You could barely see him, his silhouette shrouded amongst the flames cascading along his shimmering aura.

It was frightening and his heart felt as though it was racing faster than the Manta could ever hope to achieve.

He was sure he'd be horrified if he learned what'd happened.

...If he lived to be told.

"...Roman???"
Having to raise an arm up to shield his eyes, Tyrian could make out the faint outline of Roman.
It looked as though his friend was locked in a blazing suit of armor. Flames washed over his aura like water cascading down a raging river. So much black smoke trailed from his body to the point that those who saw only from a distance wouldn't have at all been misblamed for assuming a gas fire had gone off with all the explosions and gun play. Tyrian'd understandable distraction of course allowed an opening for the two girls as a kick slammed into his back and a punch into his gut, his aura flickering across his person as he stumbled back against the closest wall. "cheap..." He muttered under his breath before cupping his mouth to try and not cough as Roman's sheer prescence at this point was turning this area into the epicenter for a wildfire.
Roman, slowly but surely, quirked his head in the direction of all the noise.

"Roman, holy fuck? What???"

"Roman??? Roman, why-- why would you do that??? Did you-- Gretchen?! Watts?! Emerald??? Is anyone still inside?"

In that instant, he forgot about the enemy before him and turned to his allies, fear inscribed across his features.

Shit I completely forgot about Raven in my previous post huh.

"Was it cuz of what I did? Cuz I'm so fuckin' sorry--"

It wasn't as though Roman couldn't hear his friends and their desperate pleas for anything, SOME kind of explanation, any reasoning at all. For why he'd gone and done such a horribly irresponsible and irrational thing. But his mind...the pieces weren't coming together true. One couldn't truly blame Flynt or Coco or even those two twins of little importance, they were all just screws and bolts in a bigger machine. One that seemed destined to keep throwing challenge after challenge, obstacle after obstacle, their way. Towards him and the people he loved and cared about. To not allow him a moment's peace to consider the ramifications of what had been beaten into his stupid, idiotic, head.

That he'd died.

Obviously, he couldn't tell what happened after that. But if it weren't for the flames currently molesting his aura, he might have had a nervous breakdown at some other point, during some other fight where everyone was at risk in one way or another. ...It was so hard to see. When his head was on straight and his mind wasn't so jumbled, he'd have probably described it in a comical way as was befitting his team, his nature, just who Roman Torchwick was: like being inside a human sized sauna. Only there was no option to just get up and walk out and the heat kept rising and rising and all the while, your blood pressure felt like it was through the roof and you were inhaling, exhaling, trying your best to just catch ONE goddamn breath and let it all out. But nobody could hear it or see you. It was almost euphoric in a sense. Living it up in the heat of the moment while your body, your aura, your soul ITSELF turned into the spectacle that everyone could stare at.



But, even in the throes of the drug sinking it's teeth into him, he could remember WHY he did it.

...Because he was afraid of being hurt again, of seeing those around him getting up and fighting, doing what they had to do to keep each other safe.

But who could HE keep safe? Who could HE help?

'No one.'

There it was again.

'You think this changes anything? Makes you better? Stronger? Please. You're just a scared little kid trying to run away. But it's inevitable, Roman."
'You're dead and the worst part is? Your friends know it too.'

It was so hard to see. Everything just looked like blurry outlines and everyone's voices sounded so far away. But this one was as clear as day. As though she was standing right next to him, whispering venom into his ear.

'You know what they say don't you? It's better to burn out than to fade away. So go on, go out on your own terms....hero.'

For the briefest of moments, the others could see the flames part around Roman's head allowing his own eyes to look out. His pupils were dilated and he looked absolutely terrified. His eyes darted everywhich way. He could see her eyes staring back at him in all of them. Those girls, Flynt and his teammates, Coco and hers. If he let things get too far, if someone else got hurt. Like...Like...

"N....e.....o...."

Raising his right arm, Roman's black t-shirt had been completely burned away by the sheer force of his aura, his fingers twitched and flicked. He looked towards the twins and raised his right hand in the form of a claw.



'You think you could kill me? Me?'

The flames hid Roman's face away once again.

'Don't make me laugh.'

Before Tyrian even had a chance to try and plead for Roman to stop, the burning man had already moved. He swung his right hand down right where Militia had (presumably previously given her abiliy to teleport and all) been standing and smashed it right into the ground. The ground immediately gave way and cracked under his strength and heat, the sheer shockwave of heat being enough to pull Tyrian off his feet and throw him THROUGH the wall he'd been leaning up against. Roman either couldn't hear or was too far gone in his rage to acknowledge Tyrian's cries of pain as he lay under the heated rubble, his own aura flickering like a dim light about to go out, his gauntlets laying at his side lest they leave second-third degree burns from the heat Roman's attack gave off.

"n....ot.....ag...ain...." Roman croaked as he slowly stood back up and glowered at 'her.'

It was as though Team FNKI and Team CYFV had simply vanished in his eyes. All there was her.

Staring at him, mocking him, judging him with those horrible...horrible eyes.

e snorted, ever sardonic despite the gravity of the situation. "I was the one who kept sayin the festival was light on fireworks this year, right?"

Neon looked like she wanted to say more, but the stakes seemed to take precedence over whatever manic state she normally occupied for once, and she settled for a perturbed nod before skating up the alley wall and letting herself into the neighboring apartment block through an open window prompting a cacophony of terrified screams from within. Kobalt did Kobalt stuff, which meant he turned and sprinted back out onto the street. Kobalt was kinda basic.

But Ivori… well, far as Flynt was concerned, Ivori happened to be Atlas Academy’s best-kept secret. The hidden x-factor of their team. There was a reason he had benched him after the opening rounds of the tournament, and it had nothing to do with his prowess relative to himself and Neon and everything to do with not wanting to let their competition get too good of a look before the finals. His faith in the whip-wielder was unshakable, and the firm nod he received in response to his own confirmed that faith was mutual. They could do this. They had to do this.

That was what being a huntsman was all about.

“Ivori, let’s hit it!!”

"...Ghhk....."

Roman was pushed back ever so slightly by Flynt's impromptu attack. If he'd been of sound mind, maybe he wouldn't have resisted.

He would have let them do whatever they needed to do. He'd let his own fear of his innate mortality and how it'd already been stripped from him once get the better of him.

Sadly, for everyone involved, including Roman, he wasn't in the driver's seat right now.

Instinct was and instinct had a funny way of treating those it perceived as enemies.

"Gkkk.....agahhhhhhhhh!"

While she was parsing that, FNKI made their move.

Flynt went low, Ivori went high, the solo jazzster a quartet once more following his propulsion of his teammate high into the air, briefly framing his silhouette against the sun. His whip lashed out, coiling around Roman once, thrice, three times, aiding the tunnel of soundwaves Flynt sought to keep him pinned down with that the blazing figure had frankly been wading through with as much ease as Penny and Hazel had. Its wielder quickly—

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

—let out a scream as pitched, chilling, and bloodcurdling as any they had ever heard, accompanied by the same sort of hiss one might expect if they stuck their hand on an open griddle with their aura down.

It wasn’t supposed to work this way; common sense told all of them that as much as Penny’s scans did her. A huntsman’s weapon was his fifth limb, an extension of the self to be strengthened and imbued with aura to every bit the same extent as the body was, and thus both should’ve been afforded some degree of protection.

But the edges of Torchwick’s inferno was turning purple, licks of blue, green, and just about everything else in between snaking up from the blaze, and Flynt’s tune hit a bum note of an entirely involuntary nature this time as the entirety of the whip turned molten red seconds before melting away into ash and slag; not a moment before Ivori bounced off the manta and crashed down into the alley, sobbing, writhing, nursing a hand the sort of color and texture where amputation ended up on the table as Flynt froze like a deer in headlights, the breath necessary to use his trumpet not coming.

"..."

He felt his heartrate pick up again.

They wouldn't stop him. No matter what they did or tried. They wouldn't hurt him.

"no...t.....ag...gain...."

Roman raised Melodic Cudgel and held it out towards Flynt.

"Wo...n't....die....again...."

He fired.

Yatsuhashi’s concurrent attack at least brought him closer, having belted Cinder right back out of the wreckage they ended up in when she tried to go Superman on him clearly also under the influence of Entropy, proximity to the searing glow forcing him to avert his eyes and screw them shut as he landed from a pounce and nevertheless swung low for Roman’s midriff with a fierce roar.

That meant he didn’t see the top half of his mighty cleaver melt away in two as if held under a blowtorch where it struck, and he stared at it for a moment with a disconcerted frown just before Fox came in like a cannonball to tackle him out of the way of Torchwick’s retaliation.

Watching as the melted slag dripp down at his feet, Roman's chest rose with each and every ragged breath he took.

It was getting harder to breathe wasn't it? Again, like a suit of armor he just couldn't find the way out of.

Without another word, he raised his right hand and took another swipe. His hand barely missing Yatsuhashi's face. It didn't bare any kind of good omens to imagine what Roman's semblance might have done to organic tissue when pumped up with this much Entropy. He may have simply taken his fellow student's head right off and shunted it who knows where? Or he may have simply cooked him alive inside his own aura? Who's to say...?

With nothing organic in the path of his attack however, Roman's intended swipe went farther than he intended, slamming his palm into the nearest alley-side wall, and just like that? A chunk of the wall was gone, ruining the remainder of the wall's structural integrity and leaving a cavalcade of half-melted bricks and steel to come crashing down on anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. The chunk of wall that Roman had managed to scoop up with his semblance however? He held his right hand out towards the building that he'd previously attacked now that he'd seen Team CYFV and Team FNKI racing in. With this much junk, it wouldn't have been remiss to imagine that Roman could potentially bring the whole building collapsing in on itself, killing and injuring who knows how many people.

He could have done it all so easily.

Wiped them out, got rid of the threats.

To himself and the others....that's....that's what...he wanted.

So, why then? Did she sit perched up on the burning roof? As if she still held all the power?

"Do it. Coward."

Cross the line that divides all men. Take a life, end one, whatever it took.

...To keep everyone safe...

...To avoid the cold hands of death again.

In terrible pain himself from where he was buried up to his waist in the remains of the wall that Roman had absolutely demolished, the melted bricks burning his chest and a pole of rebar having gone through his left thigh pinning him to the ground, Tyrian tried in vain to reach for it. It would have been child's play to try and pluck it out with his tail. Just wrap the sucker around it and yank it out. Any and all patchwork could be done later. But his tail and right leg were stuck under a pile of very hot rubble. "Ugh....son of a..." He STILL didn't have a CLUE what had just happened. But as he saw one of Roman's portals open up above the building he'd just attacked, Tyrian tried to hasten his efforts. "ROMAN, STOP!! THERE'RE INNOCENT PEOPLE IN THAT BUILDING!! IT'S OVER!!! THEY RAN!!!"

The portal slowly came into being over the building.



"She....won't kill me....again...."

His free hand went up towards the manta at the sound of Emerald’s borderline hysterical screech, Mercury putting everything he had into the rueful shake of the head and devil-may-care smirk he threw up just on the off chance it was his last. The paintwork on his prosthetics started to peel away, joining the burning scatter of particles on the breeze that was his aura at this point, his skin beginning to scorch and blister.

The sound of sirens and military aircraft rotors had started to slice through the air even at a distance, but somehow none of them were a match in urgency for the single, stark noise every single one of their instincts were trained to recognise, wafting up with the smoke from the hole Roman had made in the roof. One that had the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, and the remaining members of CFVY in the alley blanch, abandoning any pretense of the manta, Penny, or teams WTCH or MTEN being their main priority anymore as they scrambled to join their team members already inside:

The wailing of an infant.

"....?"

Roman lowered his hand and the portal began to dissipate before it's payload could be dropped.

He turned to face Mercury but did not approach.

"...why?"

The flames continued to roll off Roman's aura and Mercury could hear him beginning to cough. Terribly.

"...why...did....you not....go......?"

He fell to a knee and clung onto Melodic Cudgel to the point the exterior of the weapon started to look as though it was melting. Putting as much of his will power into it as he could, the flames parted around Roman's face to allow him a chance to actually BREATHE and allow Mercury a chance to see his friend's sweat-soaked, terrified, and pale face.



"...are they...*cough cough cough*....really gone.....? Did...I save us....?"

He still made no sudden moves towards Mercury.

Mercury was one of the people he loved. That he did this for.

Right...?

 

[MyrtenRose]

Watts’ chosen method of getting Raven to wake up and pay a little attention to everything going on earlier had been to clap in her face.

Emerald wasn’t as tactful as all that, and the back of her hand suddenly clapped Raven full across the face hard enough to send her tumbling from her seat in the manta unless she happened to be strapped in, the thief apoplectic as she shimmered back into sight in front of her and grabbed a fistful of hair to start physically dragging the bandit over to the ramp by force.

“GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, DEADBEAT! HE NEEDS TO COOL DOWN!”

This wasn’t happening again. Not so soon. Not to Roman.

Not to Neo.

She jerked her towards their teammate and pushed the barrel of Thief’s Respite up against her lower back, honestly not really giving a shit if she went blind or not in that moment as long as it got her off her mediocre unmotivated ass. She was past pretending this chick’s cut-and-run, negligent parent figure schtick on either Remnant hadn’t struck a personal chord of resentment in her from pretty much the second she first briefly skirted around the edges of their lives, either.

“FOR ONCE IN YOUR WORTHLESS LIFE DO SOMETHING!”

Nor could she turn a blind eye to how much she hated how much of herself she saw in it.

Raven had also recoiled from the sudden explosive burst of heat and light inside the manta as Roman did that, an armored forearm raised up to hide her eyes from the blinding glow. It had shattered the now empty bottle at her feet as well as it had the windows of this ship, and the feeling of heat rivaled what Cinder had brought to bear against her when the two had fought inside of Haven's fault back on their world. A shock, to be sure, feeling such raw fire from someone who lacked magic. This drug was certainly...something. Between that and whoever it was that had peppered the ship with bullet holes, she had sighed and got ready to stand up--only to be smacked right out of her seat by the younger Emerald of this world, and dragged right over to the exit ramp.

She stared forward, taking in the whole scene, how many they were fighting against, the damage caused so far and more, all in an instant. She managed to do so without getting blinded, though it was unclear how given how much fire Roman was exuding. The fierce grip on her hair, the cold feeling of the barrel against her spine, both she was aware of but she did not so much as voice an objection or even grunt in pain. Rather, she simply couldn't help but hear how much she had sounded like Qrow just then. When they had both ended up on this strange world, even before time had been rewinded and they had ended up back here.​

"ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TELLING ME THAT'S ALL YOU ARE? WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF YOU, RAVEN!? WHY COULDN'T YOU JUST BE WORTH A DAMN?!"​

Qrow...​

"Getting through to you was the only worthwhile thing I've done in years, Raven. And it wasn't even hard. I'm sorry I never tried harder to do it sooner; I'm sorry I treated you that way. Truth is, you were never my bad luck charm."

"I was yours.—*"

Flesh turned to ash and mingled with flecks of aura until it was impossible to discern where one ended and the others began, and Raven was standing alone in Ozpin's office, little to indicate it had ever been otherwise; little outside of the shattered glass at her feet, the unscrewed bottle on the desk, and a dispersing cloud of crimson particles that drifted away on a breeze like petals.

She still did not feel like she had drank nearly enough after that had happened in front of her, but she had pushed that feeling aside for now. "Relax, kid. I was about to step in. Trust--" Raven bit her lip, recognizing she hadn't really done much for trust. Still, she had fully intended to do so just then even before Emerald's intervention, for the simple fact she recognized they simply did not have time for this. She wrenched her hair free from Emerald's grip and straightened up before she rushed forward into this mess.​

The sound of sirens and military aircraft rotors had started to slice through the air even at a distance, but somehow none of them were a match in urgency for the single, stark noise every single one of their instincts were trained to recognise, wafting up with the smoke from the hole Roman had made in the roof. One that had the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, and the remaining members of CFVY in the alley blanch, abandoning any pretense of the manta, Penny, or teams WTCH or MTEN being their main priority anymore as they scrambled to join their team members already inside:

The wailing of an infant.

Even in her less than sober state, even amidst the sounds of fierce combat, the sounds of sirens and approaching military craft in the horizon, and the sizzling in the air from the fiery drugged out Roman, she did not miss that.
​

That one of the twins, Melanie, immediately found herself assailed by a stoat that'd launched itself from the side of the Manta as if shot from a cannon, his aura flickering with heat dissipating off his minky person added context to what the hell transpired inside the manta, if they'd even taken note.

The effect of a rodent being subjected to stresses from flying earlier and then almost being broiled alive inside a proverbial pressure cooker brought to the fore a life-like rendition of what it was for one to be backed into a corner.

It was a feral, gibbering Brosel more than content to shred anything front of him and it was Gretchen's missive for everyone to get the fuck out as intact as possible that directed the tinier Tyrian in stoat form to strike down what he perceived as the weaker foes.

One twin had stumbled backwards from their fight because she now had to deal with a seemingly feral tiny mammal assailing her face and just about everywhere else on her too. The little bastard was squirmy, swift and elusive, and it took her more than a few moments before she'd managed to catch the stoat in her grip and pull it away from her face. Melanie glared both angrily and in confusion at Brosel, where had this thing even come from??? But that look didn't last long, as she likewise did not miss the infant crying and her head tilted up towards the sound of it. Sure, she was no stranger to criminal activity, but a baby dying because of their actions? That was way too far. "Mil--" That was as far as she got in calling out to her sister as she caught sight of someone else beating her to the punch.
​

It looked as though his friend was locked in a blazing suit of armor. Flames washed over his aura like water cascading down a raging river. So much black smoke trailed from his body to the point that those who saw only from a distance wouldn't have at all been misblamed for assuming a gas fire had gone off with all the explosions and gun play. Tyrian'd understandable distraction of course allowed an opening for the two girls as a kick slammed into his back and a punch into his gut, his aura flickering across his person as he stumbled back against the closest wall. "cheap..." He muttered under his breath before cupping his mouth to try and not cough as Roman's sheer prescence at this point was turning this area into the epicenter for a wildfire.

'Don't make me laugh.'

Before Tyrian even had a chance to try and plead for Roman to stop, the burning man had already moved. He swung his right hand down right where Militia had (presumably previously given her abiliy to teleport and all) been standing and smashed it right into the ground. The ground immediately gave way and cracked under his strength and heat, the sheer shockwave of heat being enough to pull Tyrian off his feet and throw him THROUGH the wall he'd been leaning up against. Roman either couldn't hear or was too far gone in his rage to acknowledge Tyrian's cries of pain as he lay under the heated rubble, his own aura flickering like a dim light about to go out, his gauntlets laying at his side lest they leave second-third degree burns from the heat Roman's attack gave off.

"n....ot.....ag...ain...." Roman croaked as he slowly stood back up and glowered at 'her.'

Miltia was already gone by the time Roman's fist went down, because she had only needed to take one (very, very brief because holy shit, that was blinding) glance at the fiery dude before she knew she wanted none of that. She'd scarcely reemerged into sight before Raven was upon her, rough hands grabbing her and spinning her right around.

"You. Make yourself and your semblance useful--" She was fully aware of the irony in her words as her eyes darted towards where the sounds of the infant were coming from. "-and help attend to that. A child is not going to die because of us." As many hands on deck as possible to get the poor infant/anyone else out of danger.

Miltia just nodded immediately, because one, there was just something about this lady that said not listening to her was a really, really bad idea. And two, she, like her sister, was more than uncomfortable with the idea of an innocent baby suffering because of their actions. Then she was gone, a couple teleports and the slightly younger twin was out of sight.

Raven took off likewise, lifting into the air and soaring for a specific person.​

Yatsuhashi’s concurrent attack at least brought him closer, having belted Cinder right back out of the wreckage they ended up in when she tried to go Superman on him clearly also under the influence of Entropy, proximity to the searing glow forcing him to avert his eyes and screw them shut as he landed from a pounce and nevertheless swung low for Roman’s midriff with a fierce roar.

She landed right by where the younger, more innocent version of the person she'd thought she had killed in their duel at Haven was lying down after being belted back by her chosen opponent, either having overestimated her own strength or underestimated his. Whatever the case, Raven pulled Cinder up to her feet. "Come on, kid. We're needed." The older maiden didn't even let the teen get a word in before she took off into the air again, with her in tow. She stopped when they were in the sky a good thirty feet or so above the roof and Roman's raging inferno, not at all caring who in the city or among those approaching military ships saw them. There was at least one who didn't miss it, having already started that way after catching sight of the disturbance earlier, a mop of blonde hair tilting up to the pair in the sky. Raven's hands clasped Cinder's own, dull red eyes staring into vibrant gold.

"Focus. We need to cool Roman down. Not only for his own stupid sake, but-"​

His free hand went up towards the manta at the sound of Emerald’s borderline hysterical screech, Mercury putting everything he had into the rueful shake of the head and devil-may-care smirk he threw up just on the off chance it was his last. The paintwork on his prosthetics started to peel away, joining the burning scatter of particles on the breeze that was his aura at this point, his skin beginning to scorch and blister.

"-your friends' as well." Cinder nodded vigorously, in shocked disbelief that Roman was in the middle of that somehow. Roman, what were you thinking??? Her eyes shut tight as she focused, intent on bringing sheer cold down on Roman and this entire area to snuff out all the fire that was raging. Raven did add to that as well, the power of two maidens brought down together, but the far more experienced maiden also focused attention on the others. It was more than extreme levels of cold she intended to bring down, and she had to be extremely precise. That was why, in contrast to Cinder, Raven kept her eyes open, taking in the position of everyone she could see from up here. With a deep exhaled breath, every single member of teams FNKI and CFVY that she could still see from here, as well as the white clad twin, felt a sudden chill creep up from their feet all the way to their waists. All of them now stuck in place for the moment with their legs frozen.

She cleared her throat next.

"LISTEN, KIDS. I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH HERE. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR IT, AND CONTRARY TO WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOLD, WE ARE TRYING TO DO GOOD HERE. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS COMING. WHAT IS AT RISK. WE ARE TRYING TO SAVE PEOPLE FROM THAT. THERE ARE TWO CHOICES FOR YOU RIGHT NOW. EITHER YOU STAND DOWN AND LET US GO TO DO THAT, OR YOU CONTINUE TO TRY AND GET IN OUR WAY...AND I SHOW YOU JUST HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE THERE IS BETWEEN A BUNCH OF STUDENTS, AND A VETERAN HUNTRESS WHO'S BEEN DOING THIS FOR LONGER THAN YOU'VE BEEN ALIVE."

Not to mention a maiden, at that. Her eyes roved over all of them in sight, as well as looking for any sign that the twin in red or anybody else who had gotten in there had the baby in hand, safe and sound.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"..."

He felt his heartrate pick up again.

They wouldn't stop him. No matter what they did or tried. They wouldn't hurt him.

"no...t.....ag...gain...."

Roman raised Melodic Cudgel and held it out towards Flynt.

"Wo...n't....die....again...."

He fired.

She cleared her throat next.

"LISTEN, KIDS. I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH HERE. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR IT, AND CONTRARY TO WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOLD, WE ARE TRYING TO DO GOO-

Melodic Cudgel's explosive round hit and splashed a roar of flames, right across a raised hardlight shield as Watts staggered in front of his fellow Atlesian with a grimace, his other arm half carrying/dragging Ivori along with him farther away from the heat and flames that the Maidens were starting to douse as he immediately full throat shouted right over Raven

"-WE ARE WELL PAST THE CONVINCING STAGE RAVEN!"

He turned towards Flynt and raised his weapon-

-about a quarter inch as he squeezed of a shot, a gout of flame dust that was pitiable compared to Roman's inferno that immediately melted Raven's entrapment, a further barrage of accurate shots freeing the rest of FNKI and CFVY that had been caught as he spoke with a determined growl, more directly to Flynt.

"We're in damage control, regardless of whatever whoever thinks is doing what. These people come first."

He moved to hand Ivori off to Flynt, as open as he was ever going to be if Flynt didn't take the ceasefire, but otherwise he turned and spun Last Resort's smaller cylinder to what he had stored of ice rounds, immediately blasting out some of the smaller fires before they could spread any farther as he barked an order. "Hazel, help Tyrian, Penny, we don't know what we're dealing with, is there anything-"

"-He is going to die"

Penny's words were sharp and firm over the comms as she herself as she multitasked; FNKI and CFVY (as well as any from WTCH or MTEN who were not otherwise occupied) found their scrolls suddenly dinging as she slipped herself back into the Atlas Military Network, well aware that it would reveal their location but well past the point of that being a worry, or obvious anyways. Her eyes were moving at a rapid rate, looking all the world like she was having a siezure, as she flicked from building to building and highlighted civilians who were in immediate danger, ready to lift off herself if any were not to be reached in time. Still she answered Watts' question.

"His aura is being subsumed, even with the decrease in temperature slowing it. Unless he is immediately put into an aura inhibition state and recieves immediate medical care, it will burn through entirely, and he will be... essentially braindead, irregardless if he survives the heat"

It was at that point that everyone heard the ear grating sound of metal cutting metal, as the bladed edge of Hush suddenly stabbed through the side of the dumpster and started to drag out a circle.

Watts grimaced. "How soon?" he asked grimly as Penny landed next to him if the rescue efforts were well underway, as close as they could get to the maiden cyclone without coming into contact with one of the warring elements. "Is there anywhere close enough?"

"....I do not believe so. The local hospitals aren't equipped to handle this sort of flare, and he has less then five minutes at the curren-" her eyes suddenly widened. "Wait! We have immediate access to an aura inhibitation cell, one on a ship that will for sure have the medical technology necessary. A direct line to an Atlesian prison barge, and right into a cell."

Watts' brow furrowed in confusion, before he clocked it as well, and immediately shot his eyes over to Raven. It'd completely ruin any chances at a prison break, and thus totally remove the silver eyes from play barring a sudden change of heart from James Ironwood of all people.

And otherwise it would mean Roman dying.

"...Shit."

"I could take him through" Penny said quietly, though loud enough that MTEN and WTCH/Raven could hear her. "I am the only one who could safely touch him." a relative safety, anyways.

 

[MyrtenRose]

Melodic Cudgel's explosive round hit and splashed a roar of flames, right across a raised hardlight shield as Watts staggered in front of his fellow Atlesian with a grimace, his other arm half carrying/dragging Ivori along with him farther away from the heat and flames that the Maidens were starting to douse as he immediately full throat shouted right over Raven

"-WE ARE WELL PAST THE CONVINCING STAGE RAVEN!"

"Tch. Fine, suit yourself." Just as well. These people didn't seem worth wasting words on. Honestly, that one's in a fedora, that guy has a plunging neckline, and really who the hell wears thigh high boots in this day and age...​

Watts' brow furrowed in confusion, before he clocked it as well, and immediately shot his eyes over to Raven. It'd completely ruin any chances at a prison break, and thus totally remove the silver eyes from play barring a sudden change of heart from James Ironwood of all people.

And otherwise it would mean Roman dying.

"...Shit."

"What."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"LISTEN, KIDS. I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH HERE. WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR IT, AND CONTRARY TO WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOLD, WE ARE TRYING TO DO GOO-​

"-WE ARE WELL PAST THE CONVINCING STAGE RAVEN!"​

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"HAVE YOUR WITS ABANDONED YOU COMPLETELY?!"
"NO ONE CARES!!!!!"
"EEEEYAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHH! MY HAND!"
"Ohmigod that chick is soooOOOO wasted, I did shots with her earlier what's she doing here-"
"I TOLD YOU TO DO ONE THING, NOT ALL THAT OTHER CRAP YOU STUPID WHORE!"

The escalating chaos of the once-peaceful alley was further exacerbated as Watts' roar found itself joined by an ensemble of others, both those Raven prevented from reaching the building and those already inside, all shouting her down in varying combinations of dismay, disbelief, and disdain. It was clear to all of them by now that the fourth 'dis' of the day was going to be disaster if they didn't move quickly, and the remaining members of the two teams paid the maiden no further mind as they resumed their mad dashes for the building, pure and honed instinct to act in the preservation of life taking over the wheel.

The sole exception was Flynt, who didn't even seem to notice the ice creep over his legs so rooted in place was he already. Ivori's semblance, the absorption and redirection of energy, had been the focal point of just about every tactic developed by FNKI were they ever to run up against a dusted Entropy fiend; a subject that had dominated many a team strategic brainstorming night back home after it became clear the drug wasn't going away, and one that held a personal significance for their leader.

The inferno roared in the reflection of his shades—
​

—in full swing by now as his trumpet case clattered to the ground, what had initially been written off as just another among dozens of smoke clouds marring the Mantle skyline of late having drawn more and more urgency out of his step—typically so calm and collected—the closer he drew to his street. It was a full-tilt frenetic sprint he rounded the last bend before his family shop in, by then harboring no illusions as to the sight that awaited him.

The sign hung loosely from one of its hinges, swaying and creaking in an unnatural breeze, blackened and charred; but not to the point one couldn't make out the embossed metal print his dad had been so proud to keep gleaming, bearing the words DUSTAFINADO (COAL & SONS LTD), or the hastier, more recent addition by way of spray paint: CLOSED FOREVER. The shop's shelves had been bereft of its chief commodity for months, the Dust embargo declared in response to dwindling early yields from the mines this year having rendered small, family-run businesses like the one owned and operated by Clifford "Fats" Coal little competition for the monopolizing SDC, and while a wave of community support helped keep the lights on those last few months Flynt wasn't always so sure those same lights were on in his dad following its inevitable closure. He had been so proud to inherit that store, the same one started up by his old man's old man to commemorate the end of active service and the end of the War; so proud to be able to support his son's pursuit of being a bigshot huntsman up in Atlas. So proud every time he came back tired and beat-up from combat school, but thriving, learning, improving his game one uptempo tune at a time. And so proud in his assurance that, when whatever monsters he thought needed killing were dead and whatever bad guys he thought needed stopping were stopped, that shop would be waiting for him too.

He was a proud guy, old Fats Coal. Too proud, Flynt kept telling him, to keep taking that junk he'd been screwing around with "for the pain".

"Dad?"

Way too proud to go out like this.

"DAD, WHAT'D YOU DO?! DAD!"

He snatched up his trumpet, sneakers pounding hard against gravel as he made for what was already more identifiable as a blazing ruin than a building, but a sudden surge of flame blew out the storefront and knocked him on his ass seconds before he made it to the door. He scrambled up, hand shielding eyes that were already dry from the heat for as much as they were streaming tears, but he only made it a step or two towards the shattered window before he stopped, feet no longer working, like they refused to move another inch in the direction of what they saw.

It was his dad, standing behind the counter, same place he always stood. Except...

Except there was nothing left of him. Nothing or close to it, his clothes melted into his skin, his skin little more than char, the right half of his blackened, soot-covered skull visible where the inferno had already spread across the shelves to engulf it. Flynt saw it all at the heart of the blaze, but his dad just... wouldn't move, wouldn't acknowledge the pain, wouldn't do any of the stuff you were supposed to do.

"Dad!"

It was less a yell and more a desperate, ratcheting sob that parted his lips this time, one final plea for anyone who might've been up there to listen if his dad wouldn't. But to his surprise, his dad did hear him. He knew because he turned. Knew because he saw his eye bubble and melt inside its socket as he moved it into the direct path of the flame. Knew from the way whatever was left of his teeth and cheeks contorted up in the twisted effigy of a smile, how all five fingers of his immolated hand somehow splayed themselves into a hearty, welcoming wave, the same one he gave every customer, the same one he gave him every time he came home from school—​

"We're in damage control, regardless of whatever whoever thinks is doing what. These people come first."

He moved to hand Ivori off to Flynt, as open as he was ever going to be if Flynt didn't take the ceasefire, but otherwise he turned and spun Last Resort's smaller cylinder to what he had stored of ice rounds, immediately blasting out some of the smaller fires before they could spread any farther as he barked an order. "Hazel, help Tyrian, Penny, we don't know what we're dealing with, is there anything-"​

At some point his stare had switched from being tethered to the blaze to Ivori's hand, the shriveled, blackened remains of the appendage splayed wide on instinct as he continued to bawl, leaning the entirety of his quite frankly deceptive—enough so that Arthur found the whole ordeal of getting him over here fairly annoying even moreso than he normally would've—weight on the musician when he was passed over. The act had him snap out of whatever stupor he was in to at least some degree, blank stare affixing itself to Watts as he watched him begin to delegate commands, weighing the reactions he and his friends were having to Torchwick up against his initial impressions of what was happening when he came lurching from the manta.

Hazel's missive, at least, was entirely unnecessary, the heavyset brawler having begun a purposeful stride the moment he heard Tyrian cry out; working together with Yatsuhashi to not only lift the rubble off his partner but begin propping up that entire half of the building, its supports already beginning to creak and warp dangerously with the fire raging and Roman having taken out entire sections of the wall and floor. Neon came skidding out from under the rubble almost the second there was enough room to accommodate her, Tyrian scooped up under one arm in a heartbeat from where Hazel had graphically lifted him off the rebar. She was already juggling what looked to be an entire family in her grip, two parents and a confounded old man hefted over her shoulders, channeling extreme overwhelmed babysitter energy as no less than six infants of varying ages clambered all over her arms; screaming and crying as they relentlessly tugged, punched, and bit her hair and face, seemingly impervious to her attempts to frantically coo, serenade, and otherwise comfort them into shushing.

"N-now now, babies, grandpa settle down, let's see who we have heeeeere? Why, it's only another big, strong huntsman in training who's gonna—" She caught sight of his tail, seemingly for the first time(???). "—EEEEEEEEEEKKK THIS IS THAT PSYCHO WHO POISONED ME AND PUT ME IN HOSPITALLLLLLLLL! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE SAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!"

They were all pretty sure they recalled her making some manner of reference to that barely a few minutes ago, but it seemed unworthy of discussion just then. Tyrian was dumped, and the family far more gently placed, down behind Flynt as Mercury continued to redirect Roman's attention away, the wailing of the toddlers (now joined by the elderly man) tripling in volume preempting them all turning their wrath upon Tyrian instead, hammering him with rattles, tiny fists, and in the old man's case a cane. Neon had already delved back into the flames for another batch when Miltia started appearing at the mouth of the alley with her own evacuees, porting in and out at a rate that quickly surpassed anything the faunus could manage on her skates. Between their efforts, those of CFVY already inside, and a substantial measure of luck, Penny's scans had yet to detect a single casualty, though haste was nevertheless of the essence; approximately two hundred occupants had been home when Roman started the blaze, the Vytal period one of Remnant's most noted holidays.

"...Do what you gotta do."

Somewhere in all the chaos, a voice he recognised as Flynt's reached Watts' ears, low, somber, and pensive, almost regarding the Atlesian in a new light; if ever-so-slightly begrudging as he harkened back to his rationale for his own actions from earlier.

"Just do it quick."

It was as close to a concession of defeat as he was ever likely to get from the student, and whether Watts turned to see the single stiff nod he gave was for him to decide before he vanished to aid in the evacuation.
​

"His aura is being subsumed, even with the decrease in temperature slowing it. Unless he is immediately put into an aura inhibition state and recieves immediate medical care, it will burn through entirely, and he will be... essentially braindead, irregardless if he survives the heat"

It was at that point that everyone heard the ear grating sound of metal cutting metal, as the bladed edge of Hush suddenly stabbed through the side of the dumpster and started to drag out a circle.​

"LIE! Bullshit, this thing just lied to us."

Emerald's voice came from right by Penny's ear, the thief apparently deft enough at this point that an imperviousness to her semblance didn't make her any less capable of sneaking up on the android than she was anyone else. She didn't even look at Penny, just jabbed a finger in her face as she stalked around her to the forefront of the group, the confrontation between Mercury and Roman occupying all of her attention; However hard Penny had worked to suppress her hiccup that time, her moderate omission of the truth didn't seem to make it past the starting gates with Emerald, who frankly jumped on it so quickly it gave off the impression she had been waiting to catch the synthetic student out on something.

"There's no 'braindead' about it. I looked into Entropy. Y'know, since I'm the only person who seems to care about all this twisted end-of-days shit happening in Remnant that we never had to worry about before." Bitchy though her words may have been, she felt entitled to them; because seriously she was the only one who had even reacted in passing to any of it what was up with that. "If Roman's aura runs out he's gonna go up with enough force to take out both these buildings, and bury all of us in the rubble. All of which is helpful to know but not that important because we are NOT LETTING ROMAN BLOW UP!"

Something caught her eye, and she stretched out a hand—

​

It was at that point that everyone heard the ear grating sound of metal cutting metal, as the bladed edge of Hush suddenly stabbed through the side of the dumpster and started to drag out a circle.​

—as the metal sheet hit the ground and Neo exited the dumpster to see... the same thing everyone else saw. Roman still going nuclear, Mercury standing far too close to him for it to be healthy or painless as they exchanged words, and Emerald, Watts, and the others all clustering around nearby discussing their options.

She just saw it happening way, waaaaaaaay down the far end of the alley instead of by the manta, a trail of molten footsteps leading off in that direction for her to follow. :|

​

Watts' brow furrowed in confusion, before he clocked it as well, and immediately shot his eyes over to Raven. It'd completely ruin any chances at a prison break, and thus totally remove the silver eyes from play barring a sudden change of heart from James Ironwood of all people.

And otherwise it would mean Roman dying.

"...Shit."

"I could take him through" Penny said quietly, though loud enough that MTEN and WTCH/Raven could hear her. "I am the only one who could safely touch him." a relative safety, anyways.​

"How about no." She threw flatly at Penny, keeping pace with the logic but unwilling to even entertain the idea of letting the mechanical girl waltz back onto the general's ship with Torchwick in tow to get back in her irondaddy's good graces. She joined Watts in his stare at the former bandit chief, and at her continued obliviousness drew in a deep, centering breath.

"I think I can break this down in a way she'll understand."

She disappeared from view.
​

"What."​

If Emerald had reminded her of Qrow before, she was gonna love this.

Rather than the courtesy of an open palm this time Emerald gave her a full-blown invisible haymaker across the jaw, the various rings on her hand leaving indents in Raven's cheek as she shook it out and reappeared before her again with a snarl. Except, in the inebriated Raven's eyes, it wasn't Emerald who did the swinging; nor the appearing.

It was her brother.

"HEY YOU MESSY HO, MY MOM WAS A BUM AND A NOBODY WHO SPENT ALL THE MONEY I LIFTED ON HOOCH SO SHE COULD DRINK HERSELF TO DEATH IN AN ALLEY JUST LIKE THIS ONE ON MY NINTH BIRTHDAY AND RIGHT NOW YOU'RE MAKING ME WISH SHE WAS HERE TO GIVE US HER SAGE COUNSEL INSTEAD OF YOU! LOOK! LOOK AT ME!!! LISTEN!!!!!!"

Spoiler

Both hands snatched the maiden's collar to bring her to eye level, Emerald not appearing overly concerned with the prospect of retaliation with everything else going on as she reared in like a snarling beast, the tirade reaching Raven's ears in Qrow's graveled voice.

"You are a MESS. You are WASTED. YOU ARE A FORTY YEAR OLD GOTH LADY SUCKING YOUR THUMB IN THE CORNER WHILE A BUNCH OF TEENAGERS DO EVERYTHING AND MAKE ALL THE IMPORTANT DECISIONS AND YOU ARE NOT GONNA DO ANOTHER THING WITHOUT MY EXPRESS SAYSO, YA DIG? NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR A SPEECH. IT’S NOT TIME TO STRESS HOW COOL AND SPECIAL IT IS THAT YOU’RE A FULL BLOODED HUNTRESS MAIDEN WHATEVERTHEFUCK. NOW IS THE TIME TO DO UP A PORTAL THINGY AND SPEAK TO YOUR FUCKING DAUGHTER BEFORE I STICK MY ENTIRE LEG UP YOUR VAGINA WITH CLEATS ON!"

​

"....?"

Roman lowered his hand and the portal began to dissipate before it's payload could be dropped.

He turned to face Mercury but did not approach.

"...why?"

The flames continued to roll off Roman's aura and Mercury could hear him beginning to cough. Terribly.

"...why...did....you not....go......?"

He fell to a knee and clung onto Melodic Cudgel to the point the exterior of the weapon started to look as though it was melting. Putting as much of his will power into it as he could, the flames parted around Roman's face to allow him a chance to actually BREATHE and allow Mercury a chance to see his friend's sweat-soaked, terrified, and pale face.

"...are they...*cough cough cough*....really gone.....? Did...I save us....?"

He still made no sudden moves towards Mercury.

Mercury was one of the people he loved. That he did this for.

Right...?​

"...Bet."

Mercury threw back simply, having to bring a fist to his lips to mask the snicker trying to force its way out despite everything as he overheard Emerald going absolutely postal off in the distance with a very specific flavor of energy not even Roman in his current state could bring to bear. He cleared his throat, refocusing his confidence as well as his attention. "They're like, waaaaaay gone. Pretty sure we're breathing parts of 'em in right now. Neo's sittin pretty in a pile of trash somewhere right around here, safe as can be. And you know what else?"

He was still having a hard time looking directly at Roman, and took to eyeballing the steam wafting off of him in droves as Cinder kept up her cooling efforts with a degree of fascination. He flicked a finger towards him.

"I know you took my nunchucks. It's cool, man. I decided you can keep them. Maybe I'll show you how to use 'em one of these days, too. Hey, wouldn't that be fun? If your thing suddenly became nunchucks out of nowhere? Bet I could get you better than Sun at it in like, a month, tops. Then you could have nunchucks and a stick to make up for that kinda lame semblance you got saddled with. Sorry, bro."

He couldn't imagine finally gaining access to his semblance after all this time just to discover it was something absolutely garbage that couldn't even be used in a fight unless you took supermeth, like storing tables. One hand came up to rub the back of his head, and when he spoke again it was with a sheepish aspect that ill-suited him, figuring he'd danced around what needed to be said long enough. Lot of that going around lately.

"...And... just while we're apologizing, I'm... I'm sorry I got you killed. If you could please not die again that'd be rad, because if you explode from this then it's probably 'cause you idolize me and I made you think drugs are cool, just like the nunchucks. And I really can't handle your death on my conscience twice, know what I mean?"​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Tyrian was dumped, and the family far more gently placed, down behind Flynt as Mercury continued to redirect Roman's attention away, the wailing of the toddlers (now joined by the elderly man) tripling in volume preempting them all turning their wrath upon Tyrian instead, hammering him with rattles, tiny fists, and in the old man's case a cane. Neon had already delved back into the flames for another batch when Miltia started appearing at the mouth of the alley with her own evacuees, porting in and out at a rate that quickly surpassed anything the faunus could manage on her skates. Between their efforts, those of CFVY already inside, and a substantial measure of luck, Penny's scans had yet to detect a single casualty, though haste was nevertheless of the essence; approximately two hundred occupants had been home when Roman started the blaze, the Vytal period one of Remnant's most noted holidays.

It was then that another friendly, familiar face showed up on the scene, Sun in all her messy short blonde hair glory, first drawn in by a message from Tyrian and then from, well, the craziness that had gone down within the last couple minutes. Between Neon, that bouncer chick from the club who'd joined a long list of people to reject Neptune's attempts a while back, the others, and the state of that building holy crap, she was quick to catch on to the situation. Even quicker to jump in to help, a swift clap of her hands and a number of light clones jumped into action, rushing in the building as well. The OG Sun looked around, spotting a couple recognizable faces but unable to do anything more than give a "sup dude" shake of the head from where she stood. At least for now.

Though there was a crucial situation happening, she knew her twin's semblance was infinitely more useful than her own in handling that, and she felt she'd just get in the way of the roller skates chick. Besides, there was another matter to attend to. Melanie was still holding on tight to the stoat with both hands. "Whose pet is this?!" ​

If Emerald had reminded her of Qrow before, she was gonna love this.

Rather than the courtesy of an open palm this time Emerald gave her a full-blown invisible haymaker across the jaw, the various rings on her hand leaving indents in Raven's cheek as she shook it out and reappeared before her again with a snarl. Except, in the inebriated Raven's eyes, it wasn't Emerald who did the swinging; nor the appearing.

It was her brother.

"HEY YOU MESSY HO, MY MOM WAS A BUM AND A NOBODY WHO SPENT ALL THE MONEY I LIFTED ON HOOCH SO SHE COULD DRINK HERSELF TO DEATH IN AN ALLEY JUST LIKE THIS ONE ON MY NINTH BIRTHDAY AND RIGHT NOW YOU'RE MAKING ME WISH SHE WAS HERE TO GIVE US HER SAGE COUNSEL INSTEAD OF YOU! LOOK! LOOK AT ME!!! LISTEN!!!!!!"

Both hands snatched the maiden's collar to bring her to eye level, Emerald not appearing overly concerned with the prospect of retaliation with everything else going on as she reared in like a snarling beast, the tirade reaching Raven's ears in Qrow's graveled voice.

"You are a MESS. You are WASTED. YOU ARE A FORTY YEAR OLD GOTH LADY SUCKING YOUR THUMB IN THE CORNER WHILE A BUNCH OF TEENAGERS DO EVERYTHING AND MAKE ALL THE IMPORTANT DECISIONS AND YOU ARE NOT GONNA DO ANOTHER THING WITHOUT MY EXPRESS SAYSO, YA DIG? NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR A SPEECH. IT’S NOT TIME TO STRESS HOW COOL AND SPECIAL IT IS THAT YOU’RE A FULL BLOODED HUNTRESS MAIDEN WHATEVERTHEFUCK. NOW IS THE TIME TO DO UP A PORTAL THINGY AND SPEAK TO YOUR FUCKING DAUGHTER BEFORE I STICK MY ENTIRE LEG UP YOUR VAGINA WITH CLEATS ON!"

Silence.

Other than an involuntary grunt of pain as her jaw got rocked by the unseen punch, silence was the only response. Even as she got knocked down, as Qrow's voice raged in her ears, as those ringed hands grabbed hold of her collar and pulled her in so very close, there was only silence. It looked like Qrow. It sounded like Qrow. It even spoke a little like he would have, used some of the same words and particular phrases he would have. She remembered Emerald's semblance. She knew it wasn't him, but in that moment, his face twisted up in frustration and anger and tore her down...in her drunken stupor, she almost felt like she could get away with pretending it was actually him. From beyond the grave, a phantom voice echoing in her ears, prickles on the back of her neck, that familiar guttural growl tearing her down in that way that only family members or real close friends could manage to do...and she didn't have any of the latter left.

Not many of the former, either.

She couldn't help it, couldn't restrain herself as a single tear emerged and ran down her cheek, though it wasn't intended for any sort of pity response and was quickly wiped away with the back of her hand as Raven's expression hardened. They were actually going to go this route, sacrifice any chance of their proposed plan...so be it. Though she mentally skipped on the talking to her daughter part, because that was just a whole can of worms she wasn't yet sure how to handle, whether to say what she had seen happen to Qrow before her eyes...or to keep it secret entirely. Probably a decision best left for when she was sober. Nevertheless, she drew her blade, red sword whistling through the air as she summoned a portal, giving them their way forward.

She turned her back on it for the moment. If there was one material thing she wished she had, in this specific moment, it would have been her helmet. Something to hide behind.​

 

[MidwayLives]

"...Bet."

Mercury threw back simply, having to bring a fist to his lips to mask the snicker trying to force its way out despite everything as he overheard Emerald going absolutely postal off in the distance with a very specific flavor of energy not even Roman in his current state could bring to bear. He cleared his throat, refocusing his confidence as well as his attention. "They're like, waaaaaay gone. Pretty sure we're breathing parts of 'em in right now. Neo's sittin pretty in a pile of trash somewhere right around here, safe as can be. And you know what else?"

He was still having a hard time looking directly at Roman, and took to eyeballing the steam wafting off of him in droves as Cinder kept up her cooling efforts with a degree of fascination. He flicked a finger towards him.

"I know you took my nunchucks. It's cool, man. I decided you can keep them. Maybe I'll show you how to use 'em one of these days, too. Hey, wouldn't that be fun? If your thing suddenly became nunchucks out of nowhere? Bet I could get you better than Sun at it in like, a month, tops. Then you could have nunchucks and a stick to make up for that kinda lame semblance you got saddled with. Sorry, bro."

He couldn't imagine finally gaining access to his semblance after all this time just to discover it was something absolutely garbage that couldn't even be used in a fight unless you took supermeth, like storing tables. One hand came up to rub the back of his head, and when he spoke again it was with a sheepish aspect that ill-suited him, figuring he'd danced around what needed to be said long enough. Lot of that going around lately.

Roman blinked.
He thought he'd been pretty sneaky about it.
But he supposed that was the least of his concerns now.
A small portal manifested in the palm of Roman's right hand and the nunchucks sorta just popped out.

"Sorry. I think...*cough cough cough* I got so...joyed at what I could do...Finally having a semblance...'lame' as it was... *Cough cough cough* I just started trying to grab whatever I could..." It was clear enough that it was taking almost if not all of Roman's concentration to keep the flames away from around his face. "...I don't think I've ever used nunchucks a day in my life...."

They vanished once more into the great nothing that Roman held a chain to with his semblance.
Finally able to hear all the screams and worries echoing around him, Roman quirked his head from side to side. Only stopping once he saw his reflection on a broken mirror. It pained him to look and so it wasn't a full on viewing. But it was absolutely enough.


There'd been the unspoken hope that he'd have simply passed out or whatever else may have happened before this did. That he wouldn't have to actually stop and see what the drug had done to his aura. How it'd left him encased in a suit of fire. One that'd nearly demolished an entire building and almost took who knows how many people down with it? Innocent people at that. As the flames licked at the corners of Roman's face, he sighed and looked off in the distance. He didn't know where exactly.
He just...knew he couldn't bare looking at himself any longer...

He couldn't imagine finally gaining access to his semblance after all this time just to discover it was something absolutely garbage that couldn't even be used in a fight unless you took supermeth, like storing tables. One hand came up to rub the back of his head, and when he spoke again it was with a sheepish aspect that ill-suited him, figuring he'd danced around what needed to be said long enough. Lot of that going around lately.

"...And... just while we're apologizing, I'm... I'm sorry I got you killed. If you could please not die again that'd be rad, because if you explode from this then it's probably 'cause you idolize me and I made you think drugs are cool, just like the nunchucks. And I really can't handle your death on my conscience twice, know what I mean?"

He laughed.

Perhaps it was in-no, it was inappropriate.

But, he just couldn't help himself.

"It's funny you say that...Mercury....I've been so scared...I can remember everything up to the End. Then it all goes black and it hits me."

He let Melodic Cudgel drop to the ground and splayed his hands out to the side.

"I died."

The flames surged on either side of his head and Roman's expression grew quite strained.

"...I've been trying to keep it together...For you, Emerald, Neo....'

Neo...

"she's going to be so upset with me...."

Roman's breathing grew heavier and hoarse.

"...I see her. Mercury. The one who...." Roman let that sentence drop where it did. "...Taunting me...scaring me.. It works. I'm horrified....of being buried, dying, seeing any of you get hurt....I lost it. I just gave in..." Seeing his dear friend get struck with a brick of all things, Mercury get tossed around, he'd even been unable to help them after seeing them in cuffs and at the mercy of Ironwood and his goons.

The flames started to grow brighter despite Roman's best efforts and his face began to vanish beneath the flames, once more.

"...I promise you. I won't die. Not...like....this...."

The ground beneath Roman's feet began to rumble as he drew his arms in close and tried to focus. His aura and by extension this fire was out of control. It took nearly all he had to just keep it at bay for a few minutes. But if he could just restrain it...for just a little while longer...Until he could figure out some...thing....anything....

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"There's no 'braindead' about it. I looked into Entropy. Y'know, since I'm the only person who seems to care about all this twisted end-of-days shit happening in Remnant that we never had to worry about before." Bitchy though her words may have been, she felt entitled to them; because seriously she was the only one who had even reacted in passing to any of it what was up with that.

"I've been a little preoccupied!" Watts snapped as he holstered Last Resort after one last blast of ice, fully tapped on that flavor of dust by now-

"If Roman's aura runs out he's gonna go up with enough force to take out both these buildings, and bury all of us in the rubble. All of which is helpful to know but not that important because we are NOT LETTING ROMAN BLOW UP!"

"-He's going to explode?!" he hissed, shooting both girls an incredulous look that Penny didn't meet.

"I-I did not want you all to panic, the severity of the situation was already understo-"

"There are degrees to these things Penny!" Watts said, exasperated as he nonetheless waited to let Emerald do whatever she was going to do to Raven.

Rather than the courtesy of an open palm this time Emerald gave her a full-blown invisible haymaker across the jaw, the various rings on her hand leaving indents in Raven's cheek as she shook it out and reappeared before her again with a snarl. Except, in the inebriated Raven's eyes, it wasn't Emerald who did the swinging; nor the appearing.

It was her brother.

"HEY YOU MESSY HO, MY MOM WAS A BUM AND A NOBODY WHO SPENT ALL THE MONEY I LIFTED ON HOOCH SO SHE COULD DRINK HERSELF TO DEATH IN AN ALLEY JUST LIKE THIS ONE ON MY NINTH BIRTHDAY AND RIGHT NOW YOU'RE MAKING ME WISH SHE WAS HERE TO GIVE US HER SAGE COUNSEL INSTEAD OF YOU! LOOK! LOOK AT ME!!! LISTEN!!!!!!"

Both hands snatched the maiden's collar to bring her to eye level, Emerald not appearing overly concerned with the prospect of retaliation with everything else going on as she reared in like a snarling beast, the tirade reaching Raven's ears in Qrow's graveled voice.

"You are a MESS. You are WASTED. YOU ARE A FORTY YEAR OLD GOTH LADY SUCKING YOUR THUMB IN THE CORNER WHILE A BUNCH OF TEENAGERS DO EVERYTHING AND MAKE ALL THE IMPORTANT DECISIONS AND YOU ARE NOT GONNA DO ANOTHER THING WITHOUT MY EXPRESS SAYSO, YA DIG? NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR A SPEECH. IT’S NOT TIME TO STRESS HOW COOL AND SPECIAL IT IS THAT YOU’RE A FULL BLOODED HUNTRESS MAIDEN WHATEVERTHEFUCK. NOW IS THE TIME TO DO UP A PORTAL THINGY AND SPEAK TO YOUR FUCKING DAUGHTER BEFORE I STICK MY ENTIRE LEG UP YOUR VAGINA WITH CLEATS ON!"

Which was a lot.

Watts looked a bit shell shocked himself, even as Penny kept her own stare firm as the portal opened.

"We still need to get him to the other side, and someone will have to let them know what is happening."

—as the metal sheet hit the ground and Neo exited the dumpster to see... the same thing everyone else saw. Roman still going nuclear, Mercury standing far too close to him for it to be healthy or painless as they exchanged words, and Emerald, Watts, and the others all clustering around nearby discussing their options.

She just saw it happening way, waaaaaaaay down the far end of the alley instead of by the manta, a trail of molten footsteps leading off in that direction for her to follow. :|

Unfortunately for Emerald, Neo's ears had been working just fine before she'd shredded her way out of the dumpster like a rabid pastel raccoon, and she rolled out of the side with a downright feral, wild look in her eyes only to see that that her senses were totally pointed in the opposite direction all of a sudden, and she put two and two together.

She screamed.



As well as she could anyways. It was still barely a sound, the air of impotent fury and frustration vibrating against long atrophied vocal chords, but there was a sound to it nonetheless, and it was all she could do. She knew she didn't know enough about what was going on to do anything to help, she knew she couldn't say anything to Roman to calm him down, but she just wanted to be there. No matter how useless it was, it was what she could do, and it was all Roman had done for her all those years ago, in that blood splattered hallway in the midst of that dead city. It had saved her life. She just wanted to try to return that favor, just once. To be at his side even if she failed to do anything.

And Mercury and Emerald could go right the fuck to hell if they wanted to stop her.

She closed her eyes and focused as best she could, doing her best to sort out the phantom sensations of temperature from the real as the maidens fought and contained against the elemental implosion, and started to take dogged steps in the direction of the maelstrom.

The flames started to grow brighter despite Roman's best efforts and his face began to vanish beneath the flames, once more.

"...I promise you. I won't die. Not...like....this...."

Towards the voice that had been hers as much as Torchwick's for as long as she could remember

 

[Gus Gungus]

Blake stared at the cuffs on the ground, wide eyed. There had been fear in them a few moments ago at the mention of Carnelian already being here, but that wasn't what was staying her hand now. Yang cut in with a weak jab as she waved her hand, trying to find her footing in this conversation via mild antagonizement of Winter as a sort of like, centering exercise "So am I just gonna wear mine like a wristband or what?"

Blake finally answered, having been paying much more attention to Winter's words as she looked up, words shaky but eyes firm. "I am not leaving my teammates with that monster. Just because they're not faunus doesn't mean he won't..."

...do what he did.

A few minutes ago Yang might've encouraged Blake otherwise; it was better for all three of them if any of them were outside stupid little box of a room, and maybe her and Ruby could.... handle it, or whatever.

That had changed, and the thought of psychic psycho getting his claws into a very not okay Ruby struck Yang like a bullet, not a problem she had ever really considered as she glanced between her sister and Winter with her mouth stuck slightly open, genuinely unsure what to say.​

The mental image Yang provoked actually garnered something vaguely interpretable as a snort of all things, but any faint trace of amusement she might've felt never quite reached her face even before Blake served her ultimatum back on the plate it went in on. She just glowered at her in the aftermath, the wariness she felt towards the younger woman still plain yet heavily offset by the sudden overwhelming impulse to regard her as a child refusing her greens, arms crossed rigidly and single finger tapping against her bicep as she took a deep breath that came out in a profoundly dissatisfied sigh and looked inward for a solution. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty.

She found one.

Unfortunately, it was the same one that had occurred to her right away.

"We can't always get what we want."

She lowered the field.

Spoiler

Not even Ruby's self-imposed exile into angst could continue unabated in the face of Winter Schnee donning her second regrettable look in as many Remnants, albeit one full crisis ahead of her counterpart as she very adamantly took to the task of cuffing the faunus herself, one knee pressing down on her lower back. She wasn't gentle, but the sock to the jaw at the very least only became necessary if Blake made it so as she tugged her back to her feet, lightly pushing her past the threshold the hardlight would've been erected on and giving it a once-over before she stepped through in turn, firmly marching her towards the bridge past a jeering Ruby.

"THIS IS, THAT'S—BRUTALITY! YOU STOOD THERE FOR A WHOLE MINUTE AND THAT'S THE BEST YOU COULD COME UP WITH?! BOOOO! SCREW YOU, WINTER! SCREW YOU, REMNANT TWO!"

The specialist ignored her, an urgent frown weathering the smoothness of her features by now as she led Blake up to the exit. Her hand went towards the panel—

—And the doors slid open, about a full half-second before it got there.

A wave of dread flooded the room, and everything grew so cold.

Winter wasn't the most warming presence herself; rare was the soldier hailing from the harsh lands of Solitas who was. This... just wasn't the same. For as much as the defensive properties of aura ultimately eclipsed all others, those with the full potential of the human soul unlocked were host to an array of abilities geared towards the overarching preservation of life—any who aspired to be huntress or huntsman could recall with a certain vividness the first time they were alone in the deep wilds, nothing but the senses and sounds of nature to keep their minds company, and something suddenly bid their feet to stop. A low snarl in the back of their minds, or the scrape of a ridged claw tamping down dirt; as if, at the most crucial juncture, their soul simply knew to tune the senses out of nature and onto another frequency entirely. To seek out the unnatural instead.

Following that logic, and for the three residents of another Remnant in particular, Borous Carnelian was as unnatural a presence as they had ever felt.

Even Yang and Ruby, who'd had the abject misfortune of crossing his path the first time, felt an immediate difference. A pressure exuded by his very being, one that felt like it should've been warping and denting the walls and floors as he passed such was its potency. The warning their soul tried to convey every single time they saw those red eyes in the darkness, the one those of their profession were trained to disregard, was a simple one, at its core: get away. This has no place here. It doesn't belong.

The one they felt now was similar, with one key modification to the last sentiment.

He's supposed to be gone.

None were struck more deeply by that sentiment than Blake. She was the only one who'd seen the footage, as had many on Menagerie, the evidence many of her generation and the one before it had demanded, a necessity in the interest of a sound night's sleep; proof that the boogeyman was dead, and would trouble them no more. It was footage she had seen Adam watch countless times, with more and more regularity the further he slipped away from her and down his path, as though it was fuel for his hatred somehow.

Footage of a much younger man, his shoulders broad, his posture proud even when cuffed at the wrists; looking up at the morning sky, drawing in one final lungful of the bracing tundra air before he turned to face the firing squad, waived his right to his final words with a knowing smile. A smile that took pride in everything it had done.

A smile that, in the last second before the muzzles flashed and a hail of bullets painted the snow with his blood, contorted into a snarl. Like that of a cornered apex predator, its leg caught in a trap, the first and last slip of the veil of class and sophistication Carnelian had always masked himself with, exposing the true self. Adam had used to freeze on that frame, and his sparring partner for the day suffered all the more for it. Oftentimes that was Blake herself.

"Dereliction of duty is a capital offense, soldier."

His voice seemed to ring out in their minds as much as it did their ears, Winter's reaction no less potent than Blake's as she shot ramrod straight and took two massive steps back and to the left, arms still hooked around the faunus's elbow so she followed suit. Where their roads diverged was when she snapped into a salute almost on impulse, face flushed with shame as if she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar by a particularly stern parent.

"Sir—I—Sir."

She just kept her gaze forward, defaulting to instinct with adrenaline setting her veins alight and her heart hammering too quickly to think.

"Is that what you've become, Schnee? A derelict?"

"No sir, there was a matter of regulatory—I just felt—"

She cut off, lips clamping shut in a frown as tight as it was shaky, knowing full well based on experience that nothing she could say was going to disguise the truth of the situation from him, nor the last several hours if he cared to peruse.

But neither would it stand up in court, with the statutes Ironwood had put into effect years ago. Not so long as she didn't give him the rope to hang her with.

"You just felt."

He raised his brows almost approvingly, gaze moving on from Winter with almost a reluctance to pass right through Blake, corners of his mouth twitching upward in a sneer, and right away she could feel him browsing, measuring her will, taking a cursory glance over the inner workings of her mind as though window shopping; laying her bare to a degree of familiarity it took months if not years for the faunus to broach with those she let past those walls by choice. Whatever he saw had him snort, a brief, derisive sound booming in the back of his throat before he kept going, Blake getting the vaguest notion of what it might be like to have a Leviathan swim past you in the deepest, blackest pit of the ocean, turn to size you up, and decide you weren't worth bothering with just then.

"That's why our kingdom is in the shape it's in, you know. When I enlisted, it wasn't about feeling. It was about doing. Simple arithmetic. You did right by you and yours. You did what you had to for the good and the prosperity of your kingdom. Fifteen years of Ironwood in charge, and look at us. Your tin man stripped us of everything that made us great. Started funding the robotics and the research departments. Started gutting our armed forces and favoring the huntsmen and the huntresses, his 'specialists'. Pah." He spat the word out through his teeth.

"Started listening to the witches and soothsayers down south, is what happened. Started letting them fill his head with all sorts of nonsense and hocus pocus. Started putting all of his attention into that academy of his, patterning everything after the lady in Vale's emerald tower, and now look where we stand."

His words echoed through the cells and through their skulls, carrying him right up to the ones containing Goodwitch and the grisly scene that was Salem; the sight striking enough to draw a snort from him as he finally allowed the smile that had been threatening to emerge break out in earnest.

He looked almost giddy.

"It's nice to see Jimmy get some of that old mettle back."

He moved onto Yang, and finally a more attentively silent Ruby who gave him nothing more than a level stare back. Nothing he found in Goodwitch or Yang's thoughts appeared to intrigue him enough to spare them more than a passing look, and Salem's mind hadn't grown back enough for him to read it.

Whatever it was about Ruby, though, had him pause, all mirth vanishing from his face as he stared long and hard at her, murmuring to himself almost in wonderment.

"There's nothing."

Winter, who had been watching his progress carefully and making a concerted effort to tune out the rest, took a moment to respond. "Sir?"

"Gods, you're like an autistic parrot. 'Sir? Sir?'" His imitation of her stiff demeanor might've been amusing had it come from anyone else, but Winter took it without flinching as the officer unclasped his hands from behind his back for the first time since entering the room, jabbing a finger Ruby's way with brow furrowed in displeasure. "I said this one is empty. Did you bother to check if she's synthetic? Under the influence of a semblance?"

"She isn't." Winter shot back with some steel in her voice for the first time, eyes narrowing as she stepped forward. "If you'd like to review before I turn over custody of my prisoners, I have a detailed account—"

"You have a book of nonsense and hocus pocus. One you've let our enemies deceive you into wasting your time documenting."

Winter froze, and next to her the words were likely to hit Yang the heaviest when weighed against the accelerated timeframe and the path Carnelian ultimately went down the first time this all played out as he drew his mouth into a cruel smirk, gesturing to Blake, Yang, and Ruby in turn.

"What you have here are a terrorist, a bandit and a degenerate who've been conspiring with the kingdom of Vale to exploit Ironwood's weakness and indecision and lay our once-proud nation low on the grandest stage. Or were you expecting to hear something different when I walked in here and read their minds?"

If her thoughts didn't suffice, then the crestfallen, almost betrayed look on her face as it sank in mortification all but confirmed she had; or at least, that she had expected something more to the story after all that. So deep was the pit in her stomach that she couldn't even muster an accusatory glare towards any of the prisoners, too busy considering the implications of her actions from here; how Ironwood was going to take them considering his frame of mind lately, what her sister—whose strange behavior of late could not, it seemed, be accounted for by grand conspiracy and some twelve dimensional plot to save Remnant she could frankly barely follow after the third dimension—was going to think when word reached Atlas. She had little doubt that Weiss hardly needed another reason to be ashamed of her, particularly one as base as gullibility.

"Of course, all of that is just from a surface glance."

He tapped the side of his skull housing the cybernetic eye with a soft, electronic deet, and every camera in every corner of the room ceased its programmed oscillation to sink from their mounts with the faintest of whirrs, Carnelian's pupil briefly flashing red through its patch as he finally turned back to Blake with a smile so pleasant it was almost grandfatherly.

"I haven't really even gotten going yet."

Then a red, swirling gateway opened up right beside Yang, venting an ungodly amount of heat into the cell block to offset the chill Carnelian had arrived with, and both military operatives looked up sharply as their faces were suddenly awash with crimson; Carnelian rather mildly, all things considered, Winter with eyes flared in recognition.

"What the hell's that?"​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

The mental image Yang provoked actually garnered something vaguely interpretable as a snort of all things, but any faint trace of amusement she might've felt never quite reached her face even before Blake served her ultimatum back on the plate it went in on. She just glowered at her in the aftermath, the wariness she felt towards the younger woman still plain yet heavily offset by the sudden overwhelming impulse to regard her as a child refusing her greens, arms crossed rigidly and single finger tapping against her bicep as she took a deep breath that came out in a profoundly dissatisfied sigh and looked inward for a solution. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty.

She found one.

Unfortunately, it was the same one that had occurred to her right away.

"We can't always get what we want."

She lowered the field.

Not even Ruby's self-imposed exile into angst could continue unabated in the face of Winter Schnee donning her second regrettable look in as many Remnants, albeit one full crisis ahead of her counterpart as she very adamantly took to the task of cuffing the faunus herself, one knee pressing down on her lower back. She wasn't gentle, but the sock to the jaw at the very least only became necessary if Blake made it so as she tugged her back to her feet, lightly pushing her past the threshold the hardlight would've been erected on and giving it a once-over before she stepped through in turn, firmly marching her towards the bridge past a jeering Ruby.

"THIS IS, THAT'S—BRUTALITY! YOU STOOD THERE FOR A WHOLE MINUTE AND THAT'S THE BEST YOU COULD COME UP WITH?! BOOOO! SCREW YOU, WINTER! SCREW YOU, REMNANT TWO!"

The specialist ignored her, an urgent frown weathering the smoothness of her features by now as she led Blake up to the exit. Her hand went towards the panel—

—And the doors slid open, about a full half-second before it got there.

The punch had definitely been necessary, and the reason the door opened before Winter got there was that Blake wasn't any more cooperative after the cuffs went on than before; bucking and dragging her feet for the first few steps with a growled out "I- wasn't- kidding, I am NOT-"

A wave of dread flooded the room, and everything grew so cold.

Winter wasn't the most warming presence herself; rare was the soldier hailing from the harsh lands of Solitas who was. This... just wasn't the same. For as much as the defensive properties of aura ultimately eclipsed all others, those with the full potential of the human soul unlocked were host to an array of abilities geared towards the overarching preservation of life—any who aspired to be huntress or huntsman could recall with a certain vividness the first time they were alone in the deep wilds, nothing but the senses and sounds of nature to keep their minds company, and something suddenly bid their feet to stop. A low snarl in the back of their minds, or the scrape of a ridged claw tamping down dirt; as if, at the most crucial juncture, their soul simply knew to tune the senses out of nature and onto another frequency entirely. To seek out the unnatural instead.

Following that logic, and for the three residents of another Remnant in particular, Borous Carnelian was as unnatural a presence as they had ever felt.

Even Yang and Ruby, who'd had the abject misfortune of crossing his path the first time, felt an immediate difference. A pressure exuded by his very being, one that felt like it should've been warping and denting the walls and floors as he passed such was its potency. The warning their soul tried to convey every single time they saw those red eyes in the darkness, the one those of their profession were trained to disregard, was a simple one, at its core: get away. This has no place here. It doesn't belong.

The one they felt now was similar, with one key modification to the last sentiment.

He's supposed to be gone.

None were struck more deeply by that sentiment than Blake. She was the only one who'd seen the footage, as had many on Menagerie, the evidence many of her generation and the one before it had demanded, a necessity in the interest of a sound night's sleep; proof that the boogeyman was dead, and would trouble them no more. It was footage she had seen Adam watch countless times, with more and more regularity the further he slipped away from her and down his path, as though it was fuel for his hatred somehow.

Footage of a much younger man, his shoulders broad, his posture proud even when cuffed at the wrists; looking up at the morning sky, drawing in one final lungful of the bracing tundra air before he turned to face the firing squad, waived his right to his final words with a knowing smile. A smile that took pride in everything it had done.

A smile that, in the last second before the muzzles flashed and a hail of bullets painted the snow with his blood, contorted into a snarl. Like that of a cornered apex predator, its leg caught in a trap, the first and last slip of the veil of class and sophistication Carnelian had always masked himself with, exposing the true self. Adam had used to freeze on that frame, and his sparring partner for the day suffered all the more for it. Oftentimes that was Blake herself.

"Dereliction of duty is a capital offense, soldier."

His voice seemed to ring out in their minds as much as it did their ears, Winter's reaction no less potent than Blake's as she shot ramrod straight and took two massive steps back and to the left, arms still hooked around the faunus's elbow so she followed suit. Where their roads diverged was when she snapped into a salute almost on impulse, face flushed with shame as if she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar by a particularly stern parent.

"Sir—I—Sir."

She just kept her gaze forward, defaulting to instinct with adrenaline setting her veins alight and her heart hammering too quickly to think.

"Is that what you've become, Schnee? A derelict?"

"No sir, there was a matter of regulatory—I just felt—"

She cut off, lips clamping shut in a frown as tight as it was shaky, knowing full well based on experience that nothing she could say was going to disguise the truth of the situation from him, nor the last several hours if he cared to peruse.

But neither would it stand up in court, with the statutes Ironwood had put into effect years ago. Not so long as she didn't give him the rope to hang her with.

"You just felt."

He raised his brows almost approvingly, gaze moving on from Winter with almost a reluctance to pass right through Blake, corners of his mouth twitching upward in a sneer, and right away she could feel him browsing, measuring her will, taking a cursory glance over the inner workings of her mind as though window shopping; laying her bare to a degree of familiarity it took months if not years for the faunus to broach with those she let past those walls by choice. Whatever he saw had him snort, a brief, derisive sound booming in the back of his throat before he kept going, Blake getting the vaguest notion of what it might be like to have a Leviathan swim past you in the deepest, blackest pit of the ocean, turn to size you up, and decide you weren't worth bothering with just then.

Salem's headless, regenerating corpse had been a shock to the system; a visceral gut punch of a confirmation that Ruby and Yang were telling the truth. This wasn't some awful prank, or some messed up semblance; Proof that this wasn't their Remnant. That man walking through the door was proof that this one was worse. It almost looped things around to it all being some sick joke; the sort of dumb stuff edgy preteens said, wearing out the name of some heinous monster from history until even they were tired of it, ripped out of the history books to become a cliche. She had never found those sorts of things funny.

She found it even less funny now.

She finally looked the part that Winter expected, at least. Her shoulders immediately hunched as her ears pinned back, her eyes widened as far as they would go as she bared her teeth, every instinct telling her that no matter how blase he and Winter were being, the time for Fight or Flight was now as her breath came in sharp waves. She looked angry, in a way that Ruby had never seen before, and Yang had only seen once.

Yang also knew as well as Carnelian did now that what she really was was terrified. And at least one person in the room knew that was never gonna be the Hand if she'd been in Blake's place.

He moved onto Yang, and finally a more attentively silent Ruby who gave him nothing more than a level stare back. Nothing he found in Goodwitch or Yang's thoughts appeared to intrigue him enough to spare them more than a passing look, and Salem's mind hadn't grown back enough for him to read it.

If Bourous was expecting the same kick out of Yang, he didn't get it. If there was one thing Yang excelled at in a crisis, it was compartmentalization baby. She hadn't suddenly forgotten Ruby, but past the initial racist jumpscare, all Carnelian got was a dull glare as his eyes roved to her cell, Yang gripping was was left of her arm in a facsimile of crossing them as she snarled.

"'Sup Carny. You look worse with all of your face back. Could fix that for you if you want"

She wasn't totally without fear or anything, but it was all pointing at concern for Blake and Ruby. All he got from her was how nice it would be if he decided to go full machismo and crack that cell door open for a bit of military brutality that she could shove right back down his throat-

"There's nothing."

Winter, who had been watching his progress carefully and making a concerted effort to tune out the rest, took a moment to respond. "Sir?"

"Gods, you're like an autistic parrot. 'Sir? Sir?'" His imitation of her stiff demeanor might've been amusing had it come from anyone else, but Winter took it without flinching as the officer unclasped his hands from behind his back for the first time since entering the room, jabbing a finger Ruby's way with brow furrowed in displeasure. "I said this one is empty. Did you bother to check if she's synthetic? Under the influence of a semblance?"

"She isn't." Winter shot back with some steel in her voice for the first time, eyes narrowing as she stepped forward. "If you'd like to review before I turn over custody of my prisoners, I have a detailed account—"

"You have a book of nonsense and hocus pocus. One you've let our enemies deceive you into wasting your time documenting."

Winter froze, and next to her the words were likely to hit Yang the heaviest when weighed against the accelerated timeframe and the path Carnelian ultimately went down the first time this all played out as he drew his mouth into a cruel smirk, gesturing to Blake, Yang, and Ruby in turn.

"What you have here are a terrorist, a bandit and a degenerate who've been conspiring with the kingdom of Vale to exploit Ironwood's weakness and indecision and lay our once-proud nation low on the grandest stage. Or were you expecting to hear something different when I walked in here and read their minds?"

If her thoughts didn't suffice, then the crestfallen, almost betrayed look on her face as it sank in mortification all but confirmed she had; or at least, that she had expected something more to the story after all that. So deep was the pit in her stomach that she couldn't even muster an accusatory glare towards any of the prisoners, too busy considering the implications of her actions from here; how Ironwood was going to take them considering his frame of mind lately, what her sister—whose strange behavior of late could not, it seemed, be accounted for by grand conspiracy and some twelve dimensional plot to save Remnant she could frankly barely follow after the third dimension—was going to think when word reached Atlas. She had little doubt that Weiss hardly needed another reason to be ashamed of her, particularly one as base as gullibility.

"Of course, all of that is just from a surface glance."

He tapped the side of his skull housing the cybernetic eye with a soft, electronic deet, and every camera in every corner of the room ceased its programmed oscillation to sink from their mounts with the faintest of whirrs, Carnelian's pupil briefly flashing red through its patch as he finally turned back to Blake with a smile so pleasant it was almost grandfatherly.

"I haven't really even gotten going yet."

Then a red, swirling gateway opened up right beside Yang, venting an ungodly amount of heat into the cell block to offset the chill Carnelian had arrived with, and both military operatives looked up sharply as their faces were suddenly awash with crimson; Carnelian rather mildly, all things considered, Winter with eyes flared in recognition.

"What the hell's that?"

Well, she was okay at compartmentalization anyways, because that comment had her blink a few times with her frown unintentionally shifting into a confused one as she shifted to look at Ruby- No. Bullshit. He was lying (like he SUPER LITERALLY DID RIGHT AFTER), or Ruby's silver eyes had more than just laser beams going for them. "Ignore him Rubes, he's just-"

Then the portal opened and she felt her hair whip past her face from the blast of air, otherwise the most comfortable person in the room temperature wise as she slowly turned towards the portal with a genuinely incredulous look.

"....NOW?!?!?!"

 

[Gus Gungus]

If Bourous was expecting the same kick out of Yang, he didn't get it. If there was one thing Yang excelled at in a crisis, it was compartmentalization baby. She hadn't suddenly forgotten Ruby, but past the initial racist jumpscare, all Carnelian got was a dull glare as his eyes roved to her cell, Yang gripping was was left of her arm in a facsimile of crossing them as she snarled.

"'Sup Carny. You look worse with all of your face back. Could fix that for you if you want"​

​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

​

​

 

[Indolent]

One twin had stumbled backwards from their fight because she now had to deal with a seemingly feral tiny mammal assailing her face and just about everywhere else on her too. The little bastard was squirmy, swift and elusive, and it took her more than a few moments before she'd managed to catch the stoat in her grip and pull it away from her face. Melanie glared both angrily and in confusion at Brosel, where had this thing even come from??? But that look didn't last long, as she likewise did not miss the infant crying and her head tilted up towards the sound of it. Sure, she was no stranger to criminal activity, but a baby dying because of their actions? That was way too far. "Mil--" That was as far as she got in calling out to her sister as she caught sight of someone else beating her to the punch.

Yeah, the fight went out of Brosel just as quickly as it'd came when he'd hear the cry of the innocent, of a babe that'd only been caught up in this clusterfuck especially with the crumbling apartment complex threatening the lives of those around him.

Before he'd scamper off to assist with the rescue operation by sifting through the rubble and designating those trapped within's locations, Melanie had the unfortunate experience of being judo-tossed by the rodent who somehow acted as his own fulcrum mid-air:

Gretchen for her part was crestfallen, her eyesight having returned by the time Roman'd caused the havoc he had with the entropy-empowered destruction of the building. She was in a cross-legged position, apart from the others that'd banded together in a coalition of sorts to mitigate the ensuing chaos and upon closer inspection, it was an uncomfortable crossed legged position, her right extending to her side with the left overlaid the top.

It was reasonable to assume that she'd collapsed simultaneously when her emotions did. She'd overheard the details between the other three characters with the same fricking color family as her dialogue converse regarding Torchwick's state.

It really was just simple. Get to the Manta. Get out. Get to the Falls while disseminating the details she'd gotten from schmoozing with the boozy floozy. Not that one, the other one. Decide on next steps with that in mind.

Instead, for whatever reason, Roman did what he did, and there were literal classmates from her school feuding with a friend group of hers (could they really be called at that this point) and another group that had a bone to pick with her brother's own team, especially his team leader. It just all came to a head and it was an overload at that point, especially when she'd been nearly blinded and taken out of the game. So much could happen in mere minutes and they did.

Spoiler: The distillation of her mood

The only thing that roused her was the infant's cry and Brosel's frenetic screeching that she somehow heard plain as day over the din of it all. Snapping back to reality wasn't a smooth transition as people thought it was, it was a jagged dragging to the present that accelerated all too quickly and it was with a groggy ramrod straightening of her back that Gretchen took a sharp intake of break and then closed her eyes.

Before prostrating herself in the middle of the alley, murmuring to herself aloud in tones that frankly sounded like nothing in the domain of spoken languages.

The only effect that seemed real clear to those that knew her was that there was suddenly more than the one vermin they'd witnessed on her person making themselves known, emerging from the rubble in something of a strange tide seeing the debris shift and open further pathways and obvious telltale of people's presence.

Something to be said for a girl being overcome with the unrelenting need to help in a situation beyond her own control.
​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Yeah, the fight went out of Brosel just as quickly as it'd came when he'd hear the cry of the innocent, of a babe that'd only been caught up in this clusterfuck especially with the crumbling apartment complex threatening the lives of those around him.

Before he'd scamper off to assist with the rescue operation by sifting through the rubble and designating those trapped within's locations, Melanie had the unfortunate experience of being judo-tossed by the rodent who somehow acted as his own fulcrum mid-air:

Before she could get any answer to her question, that happened. Because apparently that was a thing the little creature had in him. She hit the ground with a loud thud, though it was hard to notice among the chaos around them...and she just kind of decided to lay there for a while. She was a little dazed, but it wasn't because of that, it was because she was just. so. confused. Where had that thing come from? Who did he belong to?? Why did he pick her out of everybody else he could have chosen to jump??? What on Remnant was he being fed to be capable of doing a goddamn judo toss to someone fifty times his size????

She moved her head slightly, glancing at her hands, which were both covered in a lot of fur that still clung to her hands, her semblance being what it was. Oh, this is going to take forever to remove. God, if Miltia saw it...the last thing she needed today was her twin laughing her head off.​