Fandom Shattered Hourglass [IC] [CLOSED]

[Gus Gungus]

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

A fair opinion, and she was entitled to it. There was just one small problem with that.

They were insufferably good at getting their way.
​

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....​

Nevertheless, she drew her blade, red sword whistling through the air as she summoned a portal, giving them their way forward.​

"...Gonna make me hold you to that, man."

There was a sharper, more thoughtful bent to his voice by now; a half-glance over Roman's shoulder confirming the realization of his ulterior motive in engaging his teammate in conversation at this distance, in pacing a semicircle around him in this manner, when he caught sight of the crimson gash in reality tearing its way open behind him, his back now to the manta.

"Cause no offense or anything, but getting snuffed by a psycho bandit's fist through your chest? Cool. Metal. May or may not have cast a wicked voodoo revenge curse on her entire arm that left her deeply and darkly disturbed for the rest of her life starting from that very night, I dunno. We never ran into her again, honestly. I just heard stuff."

That was one score he was very much looking forward to settling, new timeline or no, and any god, devil, or intermediary being looking to take even the littlest bit of shine off of it could sit on his dick, truth be told.

"Dying from a glorified OD?"



He smirked, raising a fist to catch one half of Thief's Respite in its kusarigama form emphatically as Emerald suddenly appeared past Roman's shoulder and whipped it straight for him; MTEN's formerly deceased component hearing the chain whoosh by his ear even from the depths of his fiery prison, Cinder's continuous efforts allowing it to hold onto its form and integrity in a way Yatsuhashi and Ivori's weapons hadn't. Mercury gave it a stiff yank, and he felt the chain tighten smoothly around his ankles where Emerald had looped it around him from a distance in the makings of a complex knot that connected to the matching set, the kind of visualization skills under pressure only a practiced illusionist could bring to bear as she yanked on her half of the kusarigama in turn, sighed, and finished the sentence.

"That's just lame."

She disappeared, and Mercury flung himself forward onto his hands with his end of the chain wrapped around his boots to empty both barrels of his prosthetics at once, firing off shot after shot and spinning around and around on his head up the alleyway until he was a miniature hurricane unto himself; most of the smoke and steam Cinder and Raven's efforts had yielded sucked down into his vortex as the two generated a localized typhoon to combat the volcano Roman was rapidly becoming. By the time Roman felt the makeshift shackles go taut around his ankles he had built up so much momentum that it ripped his heels free of their magma-encrusted foothold in the ground in a shower of sparks, and even with the ridiculous spike in physical power he had experienced over the last five minutes it was a pure and simple matter of physics that had him wrenched off his feet and swung around like a blazing wrecking ball at the opposite end of Mercury's tether, the son of the assassin watching the world spin and the portal inch ever-closer until he was sure he had the rhythm down.

Then he pushed up, pivoted, and Neo watched Emerald's illusion dispel just in time to see the chain detach and a flaming Roman plunge into the inky depths of the portal, disappearing from view.

​

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?!?!?!"​

If the words were capable of getting to Ruby in whatever headspace she was in it didn't show, the dark, simmering frown on her face seemingly implacable as she clenched her jaw and kept her gaze angled down at the ground.

Yet even she couldn't ignore when the monstrous, blazing form of Roman Torchwick came hurtling through the portal with a chain wrapped around his ankles, eyes flaring wide with shock as she instinctively tried to semblance to Yang's side and sort of just ended up running facefirst into the hardlight between their cells with a thud.

"Good lord!"

Winter, at least, could invoke a measure of productivity in her reaction, and Yang's hardlight was deactivated with a fizzle practically inaudible under the crackle of the blaze from whoever this was as twin glyphs appeared above and below him, the purple cartridge in one of her sabers glowed, and a miniaturized hardlight field appeared to encase Roman instead. Winter was a bundle of frayed energy as she cast a listless glance around like she was waiting for an order for somewhere, took the raised brow from Carnelian as a sign that none was immediately forthcoming beyond an expectation that she do the obvious, and promptly ran out of the room like she'd just removed a flaming dish from the oven, the twin glyphs following in her wake.

Carnelian's militant instincts were a little different than Winter's. His most active service came during the years where Atlas were the invaders, the conquerors, and he was already two steps down the corridor towards Yang's cell—

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What had ensued back in the alley was a game of speed-rock-paper-scissors between Mercury and Emerald as they stood framed against the glow of the crimson doorway, and while the result was hard to make out it became evident in their reactions. Emerald sagged in a way that somehow channeled equal parts frustration and relief, while Mercury gave a comprehending nod, throwing his hands up in resigned 'what-can-ya-do' fashion.

It was better this way. He was the only one here with a debt to settle.

The two slapped each other a high-five and a fistbump, and a nonchalant "Don't die" was fielded by a testy "Don't snitch" as Mercury turned towards the portal and Emerald turned away from it.

Whatever progress Neo had made at this point suddenly found itself impeded, one Emerald fanning out into ten to block her way, and however many she managed to avoid it was the one solid copy who more or less dove for her ankles that sent the two of them crashing to the ground in a tangle, the larger girl doing her best to pin her down long enough for Mercury to do what he had to do.

Which apparently was take a running start, jump, and twist around in midair at the very last second to shoot Penny the 'call me' gesture with his thumb and pinkie, right before he vanished through the portal and it closed.

"AND YOU BETTER BRING BACK MY GUN!"

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—When from the other side of the portal plunged a figure recognizable to everyone present (save Carnelian) as the somewhat crispy figure of Mercury Black, who rolled through off his back to alight on one knee, dusted himself off, and let his eyes rove over Yang, Ruby, Carnelian, Blake, the incapacitated duo of Salem and Goodwitch and Roman's still-combusting form as it was shunted through the door to the bridge like a hockey puck in turn.

"Heady."

Raven's door vanished, likely disappointing Yang if not really surprising her, leaving them bathed in the cooler hues cast by the hardlight in its stead. As his immediate cellmate, it was her his eyes went back to, the leader of what were known as team MTEN on this Remnant rolling the dice and assuming their group was pretty much in the same shoes his were, vaguely cognizant in that moment of the fact that he had literally never seen this chick and her sister again after that night at Haven.

"Sup blondie. You guys got caught right away, huh?"

Carnelian just stared, one foot over the threshold of Yang's cell as his semblance worked in overdrive to try and lend him some context for what he was seeing, the man never one for being out of the loop for as common as it had become in the back half of his military career. Whatever he found in Mercury's head appeared to irritate him, enough that his brow twinged and the deep lines in his forehead grew deeper.

"Well hello there, son. You wouldn't happen to have taken Entropy in the last hour, would you?"

"Sorry, I don't talk to old people."​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Then he pushed up, pivoted, and Neo watched Emerald's illusion dispel just in time to see the chain detach and a flaming Roman plunge into the inky depths of the portal, disappearing from view.

Whatever progress Neo had made at this point suddenly found itself impeded, one Emerald fanning out into ten to block her way, and however many she managed to avoid it was the one solid copy who more or less dove for her ankles that sent the two of them crashing to the ground in a tangle, the larger girl doing her best to pin her down long enough for Mercury to do what he had to do.

The illusion shattered, Neo's eyes widened, and she started to sprint forward with a distressed frown right up until Emerald broke her ankles.

Literally, into a hundred pieces along with the rest of Neo as she shattered and the real one's foot planted into the side of the now revealed to be real Emerald's head with a vicious pirouette spin, intent on putting her into the nearby wall and pushing off from the spin in a mad dash for the portal where she leaped the final few yards-

Which apparently was take a running start, jump, and twist around in midair at the very last second to shoot Penny the 'call me' gesture with his thumb and pinkie, right before he vanished through the portal and it closed.

-and found herself a few scant inches short as Raven snapped the portal back shut, twisting her dive into a haphazard roll that left her on her knees and her palms planted into the hot concrete a few feet from where her Partner had been standing a few moments earlier. She stared blankly at the ground, her breath coming in waves. Watts, who outside of putting a hand on Penny's shoulder when she first moved to essentially ignore Emerald's direction had just let the other two partners do their thing, frowned and took a step forward. "Its alright, Neo, there is a plan. it was his best chance at survival, and its a good ch-"

She stood and turned at the same time, and even through his aura Watts' bell was rung as Hush caught him straight across the temple and sent him sprawled flat against the alley's road with a thud, a few dazed blinks his only response at first as Neo just stalked down deeper into the alleyway herself, as far away from everyone as she could get for now as she gripped the sides of her head and hyperventilated.

Penny jumped slightly as Watts was laid out, and couldn't keep a deep, vexed frown off her face as she gripped one of her wrists with the other hand and pressed them against her chest.

"...This was not right, Mercury does not know Atlas procedures, he does not have the training for entropy treatment, or the ability to move Torchwick safe-"

"-He'll figure it out, Penny. Have some trust" came Watts' groggy response as he tried to stumble to his feet, the android catching his hand to help him. "He's clever enough, and a team leader's responsiblity and all that. WE need to leave"

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

—When from the other side of the portal plunged a figure recognizable to everyone present (save Carnelian) as the somewhat crispy figure of Mercury Black, who rolled through off his back to alight on one knee, dusted himself off, and let his eyes rove over Yang, Ruby, Carnelian, Blake, the incapacitated duo of Salem and Goodwitch and Roman's still-combusting form as it was shunted through the door to the bridge like a hockey puck in turn.

"Heady."

Raven's door vanished, likely disappointing Yang if not really surprising her, leaving them bathed in the cooler hues cast by the hardlight in its stead. As his immediate cellmate, it was her his eyes went back to, the leader of what were known as team MTEN on this Remnant rolling the dice and assuming their group was pretty much in the same shoes his were, vaguely cognizant in that moment of the fact that he had literally never seen this chick and her sister again after that night at Haven.

"Sup blondie. You guys got caught right away, huh?"

Carnelian just stared, one foot over the threshold of Yang's cell as his semblance worked in overdrive to try and lend him some context for what he was seeing, the man never one for being out of the loop for as common as it had become in the back half of his military career. Whatever he found in Mercury's head appeared to irritate him, enough that his brow twinged and the deep lines in his forehead grew deeper.

"Well hello there, son. You wouldn't happen to have taken Entropy in the last hour, would you?"

"Sorry, I don't talk to old people."

Yang had to go through about seven micro emotions in half as many seconds; shock that what came through the portal wasn't her mom but a definitely alive except definitely on fire Youngwick followed by Mercury, surprise at the cell door opening, a weak but undeniable sprout of humor as Ruby went full songbird into window against her cell wall, much more present distress about that, dismay at the portal closing, annoyance at the little punk's random jibe, and the immediate kick in of her own fight or flight reflex the moment she caught Carnelian take a step forward.

One of those instincts usually won out, and lots of people had questioned whether Yang even had one half of the usually inextricable pair.

So as ill advised as it might've been, with the cell doors down and her soul flaring back to life, she planted her feet and moved to drive a fist straight into Carnelian's stomach while he was trying to parse Merc's drug addled brain at the same time Blake lunged for one his swords still in its scabbard from behind.

 

[MyrtenRose]

-and found herself a few scant inches short as Raven snapped the portal back shut, twisting her dive into a haphazard roll that left her on her knees and her palms planted into the hot concrete a few feet from where her Partner had been standing a few moments earlier. She stared blankly at the ground, her breath coming in waves. Watts, who outside of putting a hand on Penny's shoulder when she first moved to essentially ignore Emerald's direction had just let the other two partners do their thing, frowned and took a step forward. "Its alright, Neo, there is a plan. it was his best chance at survival, and its a good ch-"

She stood and turned at the same time, and even through his aura Watts' bell was rung as Hush caught him straight across the temple and sent him sprawled flat against the alley's road with a thud, a few dazed blinks his only response at first as Neo just stalked down deeper into the alleyway herself, as far away from everyone as she could get for now as she gripped the sides of her head and hyperventilated.

Penny jumped slightly as Watts was laid out, and couldn't keep a deep, vexed frown off her face as she gripped one of her wrists with the other hand and pressed them against her chest.

"...This was not right, Mercury does not know Atlas procedures, he does not have the training for entropy treatment, or the ability to move Torchwick safe-"

"-He'll figure it out, Penny. Have some trust" came Watts' groggy response as he tried to stumble to his feet, the android catching his hand to help him. "He's clever enough, and a team leader's responsiblity and all that. WE need to leave"

With Roman gone, and however that played out from here out of their hands, Cinder finally descended. She'd done all she could to help there, and she landed with a soft thud just in time to...to wince, apparently, as Neo smacked Watts silly with her weapon. She reached out too to catch her partner's opposite hand and help pull him up alongside Penny. Cinder turned her head slightly, glancing over in the direction where the sirens and sounds of the approacing craft were getting yet closer. "Yeah. Yeah, we need to go. Now."

Sun looked over in their direction, even as her clones began to reemerge with people in tow. "Go? Oh, where we going?" Sun, without hesitation and very much on brand for her, included herself in the group even though she'd only gotten here like a minute ago. Barely helped with all that mess, but honestly, that chick in red was getting it done, and miss roller skates, and the rest of them too.​

 

[MidwayLives]

"...Gonna make me hold you to that, man."

Roman smiled.

Was probably hard to tell but he hoped Mercury felt it at least.

"Thank you, Mercury. I-"

She disappeared, and Mercury flung himself forward onto his hands with his end of the chain wrapped around his boots to empty both barrels of his prosthetics at once, firing off shot after shot and spinning around and around on his head up the alleyway until he was a miniature hurricane unto himself; most of the smoke and steam Cinder and Raven's efforts had yielded sucked down into his vortex as the two generated a localized typhoon to combat the volcano Roman was rapidly becoming. By the time Roman felt the makeshift shackles go taut around his ankles he had built up so much momentum that it ripped his heels free of their magma-encrusted foothold in the ground in a shower of sparks, and even with the ridiculous spike in physical power he had experienced over the last five minutes it was a pure and simple matter of physics that had him wrenched off his feet and swung around like a blazing wrecking ball at the opposite end of Mercury's tether, the son of the assassin watching the world spin and the portal inch ever-closer until he was sure he had the rhythm down.

"WHOA!"

It wasn't nearly as scary as the idea of dying AGAIN or being cooked alive by his own aura turning on him.

Still, he couldn't help but let out a shrill shriek as he was yanked off his feet.

Seconds before he hit the portal...

Then he pushed up, pivoted, and Neo watched Emerald's illusion dispel just in time to see the chain detach and a flaming Roman plunge into the inky depths of the portal, disappearing from view.

His eyes met with Neo's.

Then, he was gone. Just like that.

But this time, he knew it wouldn't be for good.

He'd do whatever he had to make that so.

If the words were capable of getting to Ruby in whatever headspace she was in it didn't show, the dark, simmering frown on her face seemingly implacable as she clenched her jaw and kept her gaze angled down at the ground.

Yet even she couldn't ignore when the monstrous, blazing form of Roman Torchwick came hurtling through the portal with a chain wrapped around his ankles, eyes flaring wide with shock as she instinctively tried to semblance to Yang's side and sort of just ended up running facefirst into the hardlight between their cells with a thud.

"Good lord!"

Winter, at least, could invoke a measure of productivity in her reaction, and Yang's hardlight was deactivated with a fizzle practically inaudible under the crackle of the blaze from whoever this was as twin glyphs appeared above and below him, the purple cartridge in one of her sabers glowed, and a miniaturized hardlight field appeared to encase Roman instead. Winter was a bundle of frayed energy as she cast a listless glance around like she was waiting for an order for somewhere, took the raised brow from Carnelian as a sign that none was immediately forthcoming beyond an expectation that she do the obvious, and promptly ran out of the room like she'd just removed a flaming dish from the oven, the twin glyphs following in her wake.

Carnelian's militant instincts were a little different than Winter's. His most active service came during the years where Atlas were the invaders, the conquerors, and he was already two steps down the corridor towards Yang's cell—

Okay, call him a weenie if you really wanted to and were cruel as hell.

But, yes, Roman DID close his eyes after being yoinked through the portal.

It was only after Winter had 'caught' him so to speak that he deigned to open them.

Well...he was still on fire, sure. But, BUT, he was still ALIVE enough to feel everything.

Which, on on hand: terrifying. On the other?

He really REALLY wanted some help. Urgently.

'thank you....'

 

[Indolent]

"Why?"

It was the simplest word yet, comprised only of three letters and sounded exactly like one. Yet it was the one out of the five commonly used Ws used the most and oft for delving into the exceedingly complex as much as the simple. The only question becomes, what to even ask about before moving to explore the why of it.

In Hazel's case, it was an ambiguous ask he made, to not anybody but himself. Exceedingly unclear in what relation at that. But the thing of it, it was a multifaceted question he posed, various lines of thoughts colliding in his mind that surrounded the equally multifaceted scenario that just played out. Factors that set everything into motion with WTCH MTEN and Penny, the appearance of CFVY and FNKI. The Bouncers. They all added their own flavors of chaos, each group comprised of individuals with their own motivations and direction. On the face of it all, it was too easy to look at it as two groups vying against each other.

What'd just happened towards the scene's conclusion showed both the individuality of these people and the unity they just came so close to achieving, in helping others.

Hazel was asking why it'd had to have come to this point for that to manifest, so close yet so far, and doubly so, he was asking why did they even have to be in the situation to begin with. Why that Roman had to nearly kill himself in a bid to stymie the efforts of those that came to apprehend them. There was a lingering thought on that, specifically. What possessed him? Was it a moment of weakness and feeling unable to accomplish anything?

That was an all together too familiar a feeling Hazel himself felt. Especially the first time... the first time Roman'd died. He had been there when it happened. At least the cognitive shade of his former self in the previous timeline had been, and while armed with the full understanding of that, it did nothing to mitigate the emotional balloon that very nearly ruptured every-time he revisited the memory. The core emotion of it there wasn't so much as the sense of loss but the regret that surmounted everything, save for the accompaniment of feeling useless. A severe despondency in its own way.

Nor did anything help mitigate the lingering sensations of when the team, in passing hazes of memories that were closer to a slideshow of poorly organized stills, split apart. Or when he'd been defeated by a gargantuan faunus at Argus and barely did anything to help Cinder then there either.

So lost in thought was he that it wasn't until someone-- perhaps Brosel or the local vermin instead-- that brought him back to the present, alerted him that he could rest now. Step aside and lay down his load, having bore the building with Yatsuhashi just long enough that the evacuation was just done. He ambled out from the mess towards the others, swathed in the debris of plaster and cement speckling body, in mottling colors thanks to a mix of sweat and other liquids dousing him amid the chaos.

A gaze around only reinforced his misgivings, his features growing hard as he growled and turned his frustrations inwards. Condemning himself, berating himself.​

With Roman gone, and however that played out from here out of their hands, Cinder finally descended. She'd done all she could to help there, and she landed with a soft thud just in time to...to wince, apparently, as Neo smacked Watts silly with her weapon. She reached out too to catch her partner's opposite hand and help pull him up alongside Penny. Cinder turned her head slightly, glancing over in the direction where the sirens and sounds of the approacing craft were getting yet closer. "Yeah. Yeah, we need to go. Now."

Sun looked over in their direction, even as her clones began to reemerge with people in tow. "Go? Oh, where we going?" Sun, without hesitation and very much on brand for her, included herself in the group even though she'd only gotten here like a minute ago. Barely helped with all that mess, but honestly, that chick in red was getting it done, and miss roller skates, and the rest of them too.​

"-He'll figure it out, Penny. Have some trust" came Watts' groggy response as he tried to stumble to his feet, the android catching his hand to help him. "He's clever enough, and a team leader's responsiblity and all that. WE need to leave"

"... Yeah, we do." Hazel murmured, welcoming the distraction that was less so and more a necessity, diverging his thoughts away from the internal self-flagellation, as he stated to canter towards the Manta before realizing an important detail and started turning only to find an arm looping through one of his, a diminutive limb in comparison.

"I... yeah. This sucks. I don't have it together either. Maybe together we do?"

Came his little sister's words, uttered with the most minute volume possible, almost subsumed by the strange humming she maintained, casting her eyes about here and there, with Brosel affixing himself to her right shoulder once more. Right between the twins.

"This time... I don't know about that."

It hurt him to even say it but in its own way, the admission was a relief, one easily received by her, a meager nod of the head proffering her assent and recognition of the same for herself.

Both started for the damaged manta, the assumption that the vehicle was still able to fly even with the ruined windows; these things were notoriously durable and they only needed to exit the immediate vicinity at the least.

​

She stood and turned at the same time, and even through his aura Watts' bell was rung as Hush caught him straight across the temple and sent him sprawled flat against the alley's road with a thud, a few dazed blinks his only response at first as Neo just stalked down deeper into the alleyway herself, as far away from everyone as she could get for now as she gripped the sides of her head and hyperventilated.

Neo did catch Hazel's eye though and gave him pause in his movement, which in turn led to Gretchen's own. A forward tilt of her body so to see past her brother's silhouette and she understood why, electing to say nothing for now and disentangled herself. A wordless murmur was all she really had to offer at this point as she kept moving for the manta. Out of them all here aside maybe Emerald and Watts, she probably was the best option to evaluate the Manta.

Hazel himself, for his part, approached Neo though not with urgency in his movements the situation surely called for. It was until he was about fifteen feet away from her that he called out. As out of it as he'd been for those minutes past, it wasn't difficult for him to have had pieced everything together.

"Neo. We have to go. Roman may be gone but Mercury's with him. Please. Come with us. If you don't want to, please. Please tell me instead of your disappearing act."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

-and found herself a few scant inches short as Raven snapped the portal back shut, twisting her dive into a haphazard roll that left her on her knees and her palms planted into the hot concrete a few feet from where her Partner had been standing a few moments earlier. She stared blankly at the ground, her breath coming in waves. Watts, who outside of putting a hand on Penny's shoulder when she first moved to essentially ignore Emerald's direction had just let the other two partners do their thing, frowned and took a step forward. "Its alright, Neo, there is a plan. it was his best chance at survival, and its a good ch-"

She stood and turned at the same time, and even through his aura Watts' bell was rung as Hush caught him straight across the temple and sent him sprawled flat against the alley's road with a thud, a few dazed blinks his only response at first as Neo just stalked down deeper into the alleyway herself, as far away from everyone as she could get for now as she gripped the sides of her head and hyperventilated.​

With one small caveat, as at the last second prior to impact with its intended target the umbrella was just about parried by the curved dip of the sickle Emerald hadn't sent through the portal with Roman, catching on one of the jagged edges and holding fast as the more cerebric illusionist blurred back into vision and pushed back against Neo with a bit of bite.

"I love you and we'll talk more when there's time, but if you and this boy don't get off your bullshit and start being healthy about each other then as soon as we're not on the lam I will break you up. A day of texting, tops. That's all it'll take."

It was, admittedly, far less scathing a reprimand than she would've given just about anyone else who necessitated the act of picking charred dust and wall detritus from her hair, but it was more pushback than Neo had grown accustomed to expecting from Emerald, whose outward mean girl stylings she had seemed to occupy a curious blind spot within from an early stage in their relationship and in the months after Roman's death especially. She wrenched her grip so the umbrella slid through, watching her stalk further into the alley with a sullen frown assuming the act provoked no further followup.
​

"...This was not right, Mercury does not know Atlas procedures, he does not have the training for entropy treatment, or the ability to move Torchwick safe-"

"-He'll figure it out, Penny. Have some trust" came Watts' groggy response as he tried to stumble to his feet, the android catching his hand to help him. "He's clever enough, and a team leader's responsiblity and all that. WE need to leave"​

"It's called being a friend. Not some robotic imitation of one."

From how casually she tossed that in their direction she had far less reservations about the spite she could bring to bear for the likes of Watts and Penny, though with her deigning not to look at either of them it wasn't entirely clear who in particular she was referring to. Hazel got a short nod when he went to diffuse matters, the thief honestly unsure of who else was even an option to go bite that particular bullet right now, and a pang of obligation had her make her way over to Tyrian; shooing away the gaggle of evacuated rugrats and one old man who were still beating the absolute shit out of him and scooping him up in her arms.

She was about halfway back to the manta when she became aware of the gaping wound in his thigh left by the rebar, and immediately stopped with a yech of disgust. "Seriously? Are you fucking bleeding all over this outfit again?"

As much as her pang of obligation tried, it just couldn't quite overcome that, and her path curved right over to where Sun was standing to greet her by shoving the other faunus bodily into her arms. Her fellow Vacuo native got a hard, skeptical, scrutinizing glower held on her for about five good seconds, but at the end of the day it was just Sun and she couldn't really think of a good reason not to accept the help.
​

"Go? Oh, where we going?" Sun, without hesitation and very much on brand for her, included herself in the group even though she'd only gotten here like a minute ago. Barely helped with all that mess, but honestly, that chick in red was getting it done, and miss roller skates, and the rest of them too.​

"Option one, creepy island. Option two, White Fang. There's gonna be an attack on the colosseum tonight and we need to stop it." She sighed tersely. "Also, we're fugitives. Decide if you wanna be part of this in the next five seconds or not then go stand in the corner, since we both know you're not doing anything. Try not to catch any unassigned drama."

She skulked over to the manta and leaned against the hatch with arms folded, rubbing her shoulders while she waited for Neo. There was an almost blank look on her face as she kept her gaze posted in that direction, but spoke in the direction of Watts, throat still faintly raw from the mauling she'd given Raven.

"It's probably better if we just split up here, honestly. Assuming anyone actually has a lead on the White Fang, that group's gonna have to go on foot. Minus illusions."

Anyone who wanted to pry into the specifics of why exactly that was without being willing to follow the line of logic for themselves could bite her. Giving the manta starting to pepper the skyline two trails to pick up from here instead of one could only work in their favor, and as dark a thought as it was to entertain so would the continued evacuation efforts as the blaze continued to spread across the building's interior, with first responders more likely to devote their immediate attention to that.
​

"Neo. We have to go. Roman may be gone but Mercury's with him. Please. Come with us. If you don't want to, please. Please tell me instead of your disappearing act."​

"HAZEL, SHOVE HER IN A SACK IF YOU HAVE TO! WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!"

Emerald couldn't help but be cognizant of the bleak irony in Hazel, their loose coalition's wrecking ball, opting for a soft touch, while she of light fingers was essentially burning bridges left and right. God, Gretchen really had all the balls in that family.
​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

With one small caveat, as at the last second prior to impact with its intended target the umbrella was just about parried by the curved dip of the sickle Emerald hadn't sent through the portal with Roman, catching on one of the jagged edges and holding fast as the more cerebric illusionist blurred back into vision and pushed back against Neo with a bit of bite.

"I love you and we'll talk more when there's time, but if you and this boy don't get off your bullshit and start being healthy about each other then as soon as we're not on the lam I will break you up. A day of texting, tops. That's all it'll take."

It was, admittedly, far less scathing a reprimand than she would've given just about anyone else who necessitated the act of picking charred dust and wall detritus from her hair, but it was more pushback than Neo had grown accustomed to expecting from Emerald, whose outward mean girl stylings she had seemed to occupy a curious blind spot within from an early stage in their relationship and in the months after Roman's death especially. She wrenched her grip so the umbrella slid through, watching her stalk further into the alley with a sullen frown assuming the act provoked no further followup.

It didn't; outside of a wild glare thrown in her direction by Neo as she tried to yank Hush free of her own accord, but it did mean that Watts had merely flinched instead of getting knocked into next week and that Cinder and Penny were just hovering next to him for like, emotional support or something. The outburst of aggression was spent by the time Emerald released Neo's weapon, but the words breezed past the smaller trickster like she didn't even hear them, far too down her burrow of anger and distress to bother giving that jab the time of day as she stalked down the alley with her back to the rest of them and Hush in a death grip.

Hazel himself, for his part, approached Neo though not with urgency in his movements the situation surely called for. It was until he was about fifteen feet away from her that he called out. As out of it as he'd been for those minutes past, it wasn't difficult for him to have had pieced everything together.

"Neo. We have to go. Roman may be gone but Mercury's with him. Please. Come with us. If you don't want to, please. Please tell me instead of your disappearing act."

Oh, he wanted her to tell him.

He was worried about HER disappearing act!

She glared over her shoulder as he spoke, pinpricks of moisture at the side of her eye she was fighting with all of her will to keep from becoming angry tears. Then she turned fully and opened her mouth so she could 'tell' him; a spew of acrid red flames sprayed out of it and right into Hazel's face. Obviously the fire was painless, because it was Hazel and it wasn't real, the telltale shards of her semblance splashing splashing out from the flames as they made contact with the most solid obstacle anyone on WTCHMTEN could present, but when they stopped his face was blackened with soot and his hair was just gone.

As was Neo, vanished from sight until the light tinkling of her semblance breaking was overshadowed by her thwacking the side of the manta's like a gong right above Emerald's head just as Neo stepped inside



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

"It's called being a friend. Not some robotic imitation of one."

From how casually she tossed that in their direction she had far less reservations about the spite she could bring to bear for the likes of Watts and Penny, though with her deigning not to look at either of them it wasn't entirely clear who in particular she was referring to.

Watts narrowed his eyes in response to that, missing how that subtext could've been angled at him when she'd been much more textually beating Penny over the head with that point ever since she'd shown up on the manta. At first he was giving it some measure of grace due to the entire 'just got attacked by her in Salem's office' bit, and afterwards it felt as if Penny and Emerald were the only ones actually helping with any direction, but that didn't change the fact that-

"I would like to think a friend would disregard their pride if their teammate's life was in danger" came Penny's own response past a a firm glare towards Emerald. Watts winced, his own retort cut short from the third party perspective and reminder that this was so extremely not the place and time for this-

Sun looked over in their direction, even as her clones began to reemerge with people in tow. "Go? Oh, where we going?" Sun, without hesitation and very much on brand for her, included herself in the group even though she'd only gotten here like a minute ago. Barely helped with all that mess, but honestly, that chick in red was getting it done, and miss roller skates, and the rest of them too.

"Option one, creepy island. Option two, White Fang. There's gonna be an attack on the colosseum tonight and we need to stop it." She sighed tersely. "Also, we're fugitives. Decide if you wanna be part of this in the next five seconds or not then go stand in the corner, since we both know you're not doing anything. Try not to catch any unassigned drama."

She skulked over to the manta and leaned against the hatch with arms folded, rubbing her shoulders while she waited for Neo. There was an almost blank look on her face as she kept her gaze posted in that direction, but spoke in the direction of Watts, throat still faintly raw from the mauling she'd given Raven.

"It's probably better if we just split up here, honestly. Assuming anyone actually has a lead on the White Fang, that group's gonna have to go on foot. Minus illusions."

He whirled at the sound of the voice, eyes wide with surprise and hand halfway to drawing last resort back out of its holster before his hands caught up to his brain in figuring out who the sudden interjection was.

"...How???" He asked no one in particular except maybe Sun herself in regards to her sudden presence, unaware of Tyrian's text and wondering just how the hell she'd found them so easily when they were trying to hide from the transplanted Atlas Military Police State. He shook his head and was going to launch into the same spiel Emerald had before she beat him to the punch, not that he really doubted Sun's response.

"Nevermind, whatever. Penny, would you-"

She immediately did the exact opposite of what he was going to say and simply scooped Watts and Cinder each under an arm to take off back towards the manta. "I will be joining the island strike team" she declared as she weaved them through the broken windows to land inside.

 

[Gus Gungus]

Watts narrowed his eyes in response to that, missing how that subtext could've been angled at him when she'd been much more textually beating Penny over the head with that point ever since she'd shown up on the manta. At first he was giving it some measure of grace due to the entire 'just got attacked by her in Salem's office' bit, and afterwards it felt as if Penny and Emerald were the only ones actually helping with any direction, but that didn't change the fact that-

"I would like to think a friend would disregard their pride if their teammate's life was in danger" came Penny's own response past a a firm glare towards Emerald. Watts winced, his own retort cut short from the third party perspective and reminder that this was so extremely not the place and time for this-​

"No one knows what that MEANS!" Emerald yelled after her as she jetted up into the cockpit, having made a point of examining her nails in disinterest the second Penny's mouth opened but let the insinuation bring her glare back up towards the android with a scoff of incredulity. "AND IF ANYONE HERE EVER HAS A QUESTION ABOUT FRIENDSHIP YOU'RE THE LAST ONE THEY'RE CALLING, SWEETHEART!"

Seriously. Whose friend even was she? She scoffed again, resuming her manicure inspection while she waited for—
​

As was Neo, vanished from sight until the light tinkling of her semblance breaking was overshadowed by her thwacking the side of the manta's like a gong right above Emerald's head just as Neo stepped inside

—That.

Emerald, as it turned out, really didn't like when people did to her the thing she spent at least half her free time doing to basically everyone, and had whirled with a start when Neo went from lighting Hazel up Bugs Bunny style to suddenly banging stuff next to her head, fists balled up at her side.

"You're such a bitch sometimes, you know that?" She muttered, demonstrating her prowess both for hypocrisy and rhetorical questions as she trailed after her up the ramp. "I'm obsessed."

They could avoid the elephant in the room for now, but she seriously hoped Neo didn't think any of this meant they weren't sitting together.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

As much as her pang of obligation tried, it just couldn't quite overcome that, and her path curved right over to where Sun was standing to greet her by shoving the other faunus bodily into her arms. Her fellow Vacuo native got a hard, skeptical, scrutinizing glower held on her for about five good seconds, but at the end of the day it was just Sun and she couldn't really think of a good reason not to accept the help.

"Option one, creepy island. Option two, White Fang. There's gonna be an attack on the colosseum tonight and we need to stop it." She sighed tersely. "Also, we're fugitives. Decide if you wanna be part of this in the next five seconds or not then go stand in the corner, since we both know you're not doing anything. Try not to catch any unassigned drama."​

Spoiler

It wasn't easy with a bleeding Tyrian in her arms, but Sun nevertheless managed to shoot Emerald some finger guns without any hesitation, even after hearing that part about being fugitives. "Bitchin'. Hells yeah, I'm in." She glanced down at the bleeding Tyrian, and then to her white shirt, before she adjusted position aiming to make sure he didn't stain her shirt red by accident. "Hey there by the way, Ty." Sun greeted her fellow faunus with a smirk. "You look like you've seen better days."​

"...How???" He asked no one in particular except maybe Sun herself in regards to her sudden presence, unaware of Tyrian's text and wondering just how the hell she'd found them so easily when they were trying to hide from the transplanted Atlas Military Police State. He shook his head and was going to launch into the same spiel Emerald had before she beat him to the punch, not that he really doubted Sun's response.

"Text. Also I happened to be close by-ish and the sounds of a gatling gun being unleashed in full, explosions and all the rest of whatever y'all brought down, that was pretty hard to miss."​

"Nevermind, whatever. Penny, would you-"

She immediately did the exact opposite of what he was going to say and simply scooped Watts and Cinder each under an arm to take off back towards the manta. "I will be joining the island strike team" she declared as she weaved them through the broken windows to land inside.

"......So....where should I go...?" She looked down. "Ty, you're going white fang or whatever, right? Think that's what the text said. What's up with the creepy island thing though?" Sun questioned.

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

"Penny, Penny, hey you don't have to--I can walk fine, you know, you don't gotta...please put me down!" Gods this was embarrassing.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Yang had to go through about seven micro emotions in half as many seconds; shock that what came through the portal wasn't her mom but a definitely alive except definitely on fire Youngwick followed by Mercury, surprise at the cell door opening, a weak but undeniable sprout of humor as Ruby went full songbird into window against her cell wall, much more present distress about that, dismay at the portal closing, annoyance at the little punk's random jibe, and the immediate kick in of her own fight or flight reflex the moment she caught Carnelian take a step forward.

One of those instincts usually won out, and lots of people had questioned whether Yang even had one half of the usually inextricable pair.

So as ill advised as it might've been, with the cell doors down and her soul flaring back to life, she planted her feet and moved to drive a fist straight into Carnelian's stomach while he was trying to parse Merc's drug addled brain at the same time Blake lunged for one his swords still in its scabbard from behind.

“Okay, wrong vibe.”

Mercury kept his hands half thrown up in a lackadaisical shrug, but his eyes were sharp as they kept pace with the various steps of the emotional gauntlet Yang’s brain ran through the tension flooding her muscles, and he had just started leading with a subtle shake of the head to break the unfortunate news that this wasn’t a rescue when his focus swivelled back to Blake and he realised how much of an exercise in futility that was.

He gave it a shot anyway, not really tuned to the whole psychic girlfriend FM radio station these two were on or remotely here for it.

“You’re probably thinking to yourself ‘man, is this a crappy rescue’. Well, guys, here’s the thing. It’s not really a “rescue” so much as it is NOT A RESCUE—“

​

So as ill advised as it might've been, with the cell doors down and her soul flaring back to life, she planted her feet and moved to drive a fist straight into Carnelian's stomach while he was trying to parse Merc's drug addled brain at the same time Blake lunged for one his swords still in its scabbard from behind.

Concerted an effort as Mercury was making to keep things light and breezy, there was nothing comical or deadpan to be added to how things developed from there.

Carnelian’s impassive look never wavered from the new arrival, patience personified as he measured him up in silence. It was almost insulting how undisturbed that calm remained in the face of the sudden tandem offence, a shift in stance so minute even Mercury didn’t pick up on it in time the only indication that he even felt threatened enough to bother acknowledging the attempt.

Then, at what pushed the very concept of ‘the last possible second’ to new horizons, he did.

That terrible acknowledgment was what brought about the current state of affairs, as with a contemptuous lack of pomp or flourishes Carnelian stepped back and twisted around with one hand perfectly alighting against the cell interface, so close to the hardlight as it sprang back up he might’ve lost a mustache hair or two.

More immediate and concerning was what his other hand did, as in the same motion it lashed out and snatched the back of Blake’s scalp. His fist was like tree bark over granite as it tightened, exerting an obscene amount of force and bunching her hair up against her crown viciously with about as much regard for comfort as one might extend a napkin.

From there it was as simple as angling his knee so she went sprawling over it, letting her momentum—Along with a crude shove from his end—carry her directly forward.

Into the hardlight.

“I was there when they first invented this stuff, you know.”



Yang’s fist collided with the field centimetres from his torso, impact harmless enough save for some bruising of the knuckles and/or ego.

“This might sound hard to believe, but time was the boys all scoffed at it. In our line of work, you see, gravity dust was always the most useless kind. Good if you were a miner or dockworker, less so if you weren’t as much to do with the making of the sausage as you were a provisioner of the blood that thickened it.”

Blake was less fortunate, though one would be forgiven for wondering how much luck had to do with it. The hardlight was closed around her arms up as far as the elbows, cuffed hands and wrists extending through into Yang’s cell, a steady sizzle of flesh just barely audible over the technology’s usual hum as it carved symmetrical lines the whole of the way around the circumference of her limbs. Her ears had just about avoided a similar fate provided she flattened them in time, the tips still not quite managing to escape the field before it left the upmost tips of them scalded; sending a searing pain through her nervous system from two of its most delicate points, Carnelian’s grip tight and steady as it held her there.

“Then one day our military took to the skies. Can you imagine that? Human ingenuity at its finest, finding a way to let our least valued fuel variety carry us from the lowest pit to the highest peak. Not long after they started wrapping tanks, birds, whole encampments in hardlight. And when that happened, we started to realize that perhaps the grav dust was never the problem. Maybe our creativity just wasn’t up to snuff.”

The general eyed the last of the cameras he’d taken offline, as if to contemplate his options from here.

“From there, we started to explore just what was possible. And then, well… then we started discovering all kinds of practical applications.”

With agonizing slowness he started to drag Blake’s head backwards, the faint whirr of internal servos emitting from the region of his elbows, so precise in movement it was like he was operated via crank as millimetre by millimetre he approached the point where the force exerted would start to draw her arms back through the field as well. He let his gaze drop back to the cells, and with it came the sort of cruel, pitiless smirk a man as adept at camouflage as Carnelian only let slip in his most private moments, matching the rising sadistic current to his tone.

“Should I demonstrate some of them?”​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

“Okay, wrong vibe.”

Mercury kept his hands half thrown up in a lackadaisical shrug, but his eyes were sharp as they kept pace with the various steps of the emotional gauntlet Yang’s brain ran through the tension flooding her muscles, and he had just started leading with a subtle shake of the head to break the unfortunate news that this wasn’t a rescue when his focus swivelled back to Blake and he realised how much of an exercise in futility that was.

He gave it a shot anyway, not really tuned to the whole psychic girlfriend FM radio station these two were on or remotely here for it.

“You’re probably thinking to yourself ‘man, is this a crappy rescue’. Well, guys, here’s the thing. It’s not really a “rescue” so much as it is NOT A RESCUE—“







Concerted an effort as Mercury was making to keep things light and breezy, there was nothing comical or deadpan to be added to how things developed from there.

Carnelian’s impassive look never wavered from the new arrival, patience personified as he measured him up in silence. It was almost insulting how undisturbed that calm remained in the face of the sudden tandem offence, a shift in stance so minute even Mercury didn’t pick up on it in time the only indication that he even felt threatened enough to bother acknowledging the attempt.

Then, at what pushed the very concept of ‘the last possible second’ to new horizons, he did.

That terrible acknowledgment was what brought about the current state of affairs, as with a contemptuous lack of pomp or flourishes Carnelian stepped back and twisted around with one hand perfectly alighting against the cell interface, so close to the hardlight as it sprang back up he might’ve lost a mustache hair or two.

More immediate and concerning was what his other hand did, as in the same motion it lashed out and snatched the back of Blake’s scalp. His fist was like tree bark over granite as it tightened, exerting an obscene amount of force and bunching her hair up against her crown viciously with about as much regard for comfort as one might extend a napkin.

From there it was as simple as angling his knee so she went sprawling over it, letting her momentum—Along with a crude shove from his end—carry her directly forward.

Into the hardlight.

“I was there when they first invented this stuff, you know.”

View attachment 1103337

Yang’s fist collided with the field centimetres from his torso, impact harmless enough save for some bruising of the knuckles and/or ego.

“This might sound hard to believe, but time was the boys all scoffed at it. In our line of work, you see, gravity dust was always the most useless kind. Good if you were a miner or dockworker, less so if you weren’t as much to do with the making of the sausage as you were a provisioner of the blood that thickened it.”

Blake was less fortunate, though one would be forgiven for wondering how much luck had to do with it. The hardlight was closed around her arms up as far as the elbows, cuffed hands and wrists extending through into Yang’s cell, a steady sizzle of flesh just barely audible over the technology’s usual hum as it carved symmetrical lines the whole of the way around the circumference of her limbs. Her ears had just about avoided a similar fate provided she flattened them in time, the tips still not quite managing to escape the field before it left the upmost tips of them scalded; sending a searing pain through her nervous system from two of its most delicate points, Carnelian’s grip tight and steady as it held her there.

“Then one day our military took to the skies. Can you imagine that? Human ingenuity at its finest, finding a way to let our least valued fuel variety carry us from the lowest pit to the highest peak. Not long after they started wrapping tanks, birds, whole encampments in hardlight. And when that happened, we started to realize that perhaps the grav dust was never the problem. Maybe our creativity just wasn’t up to snuff.”

The general eyed the last of the cameras he’d taken offline, as if to contemplate his options from here.

“From there, we started to explore just what was possible. And then, well… then we started discovering all kinds of practical applications.”

With agonizing slowness he started to drag Blake’s head backwards, the faint whirr of internal servos emitting from the region of his elbows, so precise in movement it was like he was operated via crank as millimetre by millimetre he approached the point where the force exerted would start to draw her arms back through the field as well. He let his gaze drop back to the cells, and with it came the sort of cruel, pitiless smirk a man as adept at camouflage as Carnelian only let slip in his most private moments, matching the rising sadistic current to his tone.

“Should I demonstrate some of them?”​

Yang was ready for it. She had awful, first hand experience with what these stupid hardlight walls could do, that visual burned into the back of her mind all the way back six days ago or so. She knew this asshole was fast. But there was a chance to get one over on this monster, and she took it, same as she always had. Just like she had with Ozpin, and just like she knew she would've with Salem back home, no matter how hopeless the shot might've been in the grand scheme of things. If her arm got caught, damn, that sucked, but it was what it was and it was a chance she would've taken in a heartbeat if it meant saving Blake or Ruby.

If her arm had been caught.

It took half a second for it to really hit her. Her fist rebounded off the hardlight the same way it had minutes ago, and for a moment she just held onto her aggressive snarl as she met Carnelian's eyes, a fearless glint of anger in the lilac starting to shade red that was nonetheless totally controlled, far from the sort of wild fury of someone who really felt back into a corner. The sort of intimate eye contact that said Yang didn't really give a shit if he was reading her mind, because she wasn't hiding anything.

The sort of intimate eye contact that made it easy to pinpoint the moment she began to register what exactly had happened, the red snuffing out like a stamped out match as her eyes began to round off just a instant before Blake screamed.

Blake Belladonna was tough, both versions of her. From the moment she'd been born, life had not been kind to her, and it had been even worse to the people she wanted so badly to champion, to be a voice for. Just because this one hadn't been beaten and molded down into a sword, didn't mean she couldn't cut, or that she didn't have a strength of her own; life had never changed from being unkind; she had just made that kindness herself, with all the blood and sweat that it took. But this wasn't the pain of a fight. She jolted at the first bite against her arms, adept enough at her own kinesis to understand what happened and where she was now situated.

Except even that small jolt was enough turn pain into agony, and she failed miserably at keeping the scream that followed in. The Hand would've continued, would've just ripped her arms clean through and relied on foot and tooth as her weapons, regardless of the consequences. Blake instead took a deep, shuddering breath back in after the scream, ignoring how her vision blurred and the feeling of Carnelian's hand threatening to tear her scalp off with the slow, inexorible pull, and did everything she could to keep her arms from moving any more.

"Stop, STOP!" Yang didn't have a bone in her body that was capable of begging; but this was as close as she was going to get, as her entire body seemed to cringe inward on itself at the sound Blake had made, her hands reaching out for Blake's but stopping just short out of a deathly fear of pushing or pulling wrong and making it that much worse. "Don't, d-don't you dare, if you hurt her I'LL-"

"Its okay Yang, I-I'm okay." Blake heaved out another heavy breath, unable to keep a whimper out of her throat that made it that much more painfully obvious how much of a lie that was

 

[MidwayLives]

"It's called being a friend. Not some robotic imitation of one."

From how casually she tossed that in their direction she had far less reservations about the spite she could bring to bear for the likes of Watts and Penny, though with her deigning not to look at either of them it wasn't entirely clear who in particular she was referring to. Hazel got a short nod when he went to diffuse matters, the thief honestly unsure of who else was even an option to go bite that particular bullet right now, and a pang of obligation had her make her way over to Tyrian; shooing away the gaggle of evacuated rugrats and one old man who were still beating the absolute shit out of him and scooping him up in her arms.

She was about halfway back to the manta when she became aware of the gaping wound in his thigh left by the rebar, and immediately stopped with a yech of disgust. "Seriously? Are you fucking bleeding all over this outfit again?"

As much as her pang of obligation tried, it just couldn't quite overcome that, and her path curved right over to where Sun was standing to greet her by shoving the other faunus bodily into her arms. Her fellow Vacuo native got a hard, skeptical, scrutinizing glower held on her for about five good seconds, but at the end of the day it was just Sun and she couldn't really think of a good reason not to accept the help.

"hi emerald."
His aura had taken much more of a beating than he'd expected and it wasn't even due to the people he'd been fighting.

Getting blasted through a wall, having superheated rubble fall on you and pin you down, then having to strip your weapons off before they scalded your skin...Not good times at all, no sir.

Now that Roman was gone-hopefully they could help him out-Tyrian scooped up his weapons and didn't resist as he was pulled up to his feet.

Or, at least until Emerald noticed the extent of his injuries.

"oh, that? it'll heal.'

As he was casually dumped into Sun's arms, the faunus grumbled something under his breath. What it was was between him and the Brothers.

"If Roman had been a bit closer maybe he could have cauterized the wound just by standing there..."

Spoiler

It wasn't easy with a bleeding Tyrian in her arms, but Sun nevertheless managed to shoot Emerald some finger guns without any hesitation, even after hearing that part about being fugitives. "Bitchin'. Hells yeah, I'm in." She glanced down at the bleeding Tyrian, and then to her white shirt, before she adjusted position aiming to make sure he didn't stain her shirt red by accident. "Hey there by the way, Ty." Sun greeted her fellow faunus with a smirk. "You look like you've seen better days."

"Not everyday you get a length of rebar stuck where it shouldn't be, no."

He really wasn't HAPPY to see Sun but if the situation required it...well...

"......So....where should I go...?" She looked down. "Ty, you're going white fang or whatever, right? Think that's what the text said. What's up with the creepy island thing though?" Sun questioned.​

The faunus grunted in response.

"yeah, something like that. Need to talk to em. Only thing is that I don't have a clue where they're currently based and it's a 50/50 shot we don't get attacked for poking our nose where it doesn't belong. I have a...I know someone who's part of them but she's not gonna be happy to see me either. It's a whole thing."

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Not everyday you get a length of rebar stuck where it shouldn't be, no."

He really wasn't HAPPY to see Sun but if the situation required it...well...

"Yeah, was gonna ask bout that, how'd that happen? Big dude with the shaved head spiking you like a volleyball through a building or what?" She, on the other hand, was all smiles as she stared down at Tyrian. "You should really watch out for that if so." ​

"yeah, something like that. Need to talk to em. Only thing is that I don't have a clue where they're currently based and it's a 50/50 shot we don't get attacked for poking our nose where it doesn't belong. I have a...I know someone who's part of them but she's not gonna be happy to see me either. It's a whole thing."

"Yoooooooo wait, dude, you been holding out on me? You got an ex with the White Fang?? Bro, and here I was thinking you'd never had one before. What's her name?" ​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Yang was ready for it. She had awful, first hand experience with what these stupid hardlight walls could do, that visual burned into the back of her mind all the way back six days ago or so. She knew this asshole was fast. But there was a chance to get one over on this monster, and she took it, same as she always had. Just like she had with Ozpin, and just like she knew she would've with Salem back home, no matter how hopeless the shot might've been in the grand scheme of things. If her arm got caught, damn, that sucked, but it was what it was and it was a chance she would've taken in a heartbeat if it meant saving Blake or Ruby.

If her arm had been caught.

It took half a second for it to really hit her. Her fist rebounded off the hardlight the same way it had minutes ago, and for a moment she just held onto her aggressive snarl as she met Carnelian's eyes, a fearless glint of anger in the lilac starting to shade red that was nonetheless totally controlled, far from the sort of wild fury of someone who really felt back into a corner. The sort of intimate eye contact that said Yang didn't really give a shit if he was reading her mind, because she wasn't hiding anything.

The sort of intimate eye contact that made it easy to pinpoint the moment she began to register what exactly had happened, the red snuffing out like a stamped out match as her eyes began to round off just a instant before Blake screamed.

Blake Belladonna was tough, both versions of her. From the moment she'd been born, life had not been kind to her, and it had been even worse to the people she wanted so badly to champion, to be a voice for. Just because this one hadn't been beaten and molded down into a sword, didn't mean she couldn't cut, or that she didn't have a strength of her own; life had never changed from being unkind; she had just made that kindness herself, with all the blood and sweat that it took. But this wasn't the pain of a fight. She jolted at the first bite against her arms, adept enough at her own kinesis to understand what happened and where she was now situated.

Except even that small jolt was enough turn pain into agony, and she failed miserably at keeping the scream that followed in. The Hand would've continued, would've just ripped her arms clean through and relied on foot and tooth as her weapons, regardless of the consequences. Blake instead took a deep, shuddering breath back in after the scream, ignoring how her vision blurred and the feeling of Carnelian's hand threatening to tear her scalp off with the slow, inexorible pull, and did everything she could to keep her arms from moving any more.

"Stop, STOP!" Yang didn't have a bone in her body that was capable of begging; but this was as close as she was going to get, as her entire body seemed to cringe inward on itself at the sound Blake had made, her hands reaching out for Blake's but stopping just short out of a deathly fear of pushing or pulling wrong and making it that much worse. "Don't, d-don't you dare, if you hurt her I'LL-"

"Its okay Yang, I-I'm okay." Blake heaved out another heavy breath, unable to keep a whimper out of her throat that made it that much more painfully obvious how much of a lie that was

“Do you know the difference between a temper tantrum and rage, young lady?”

So brisk was the manner in which he pressed on, so utterly implacable and urbane, that one would be forgiven for presuming it belonged to an elderly tutor in the midst of a lecture than a decorated military officer doing his very best to torment two young women, save for one thing.

Carnelian hated them.

“A temper tantrum is what happens when someone grows up insulated from the reality of what life truly is. A childish impulse, really. It’s the bedtime stories your whore mother read far too many of when you were little.”

Yang had known it by the end of the first night their paths crossed. Blake had known it as soon as he walked in the room, as soon as he looked her way, as soon as his name was uttered. The old soldier was a beast of pure animosity, every single foe who crossed his path merely the latest name added to a long, winding list of personal vendettas, because if every enemy was your worst enemy, every opponent one who deserved no quarter, then eventually there remained no more quarter to be given. In some ways, the sheer spite he exuded was oddly reminiscent of Adam; except he was a monster whose actions had earned him the fear and revulsion of the world at large, and made that his identity. He was still young when he died, directionless, a blade of spite lashing out at everything that moved.

His inexorable reeling of Blake’s head suddenly became a harsh yank as he jerked his grip upwards, forcing her to look Yang in the eye as the nerves in her arms lit up with white-hot agony once more. “It’s the picket signs and banners you started waving around the day you and your little troupe of circus animals first figured out how to crawl out of the mud.”

Carnelian’s acts, at least on this Remnant, had earned him medals. His mask was far less literal, the innocuous bearing of a refined older gentleman that afforded him protection under man’s laws and social etiquette, his true face one shown only to his enemies.

And most crucially, unlike Adam, he was old. He’d had years and years to sow his wild oats and indulge himself. Now? He saved this side of himself for special occasions.

And he had the luxury of choosing its recipients very carefully.

He slipped a hand into the folds of his longcoat.

“It’s the entitlement that’s come to define your generation. Wanting it one way, when it’s the other. This insufferable modern notion that heart, sass, and a plucky attitude are all it takes to win the war we’ve been waging since the dawn of man.” He sneered, a very different sight on Carnelian than it was on most men, and a far more dangerous one: a sign the mask was slipping. “Do you have any idea how arrogant that is, you naive little cockroaches? You live in these kingdoms, take advantage of their systems, but you haven’t the foggiest inkling what it took to raise them. No stomach for the hard facts of life, that sometimes it doesn’t matter what mommy said or which comforting little lies you tell yourself in the mirror. The world around you doesn’t care. Kindness is weakness. Compassion is a handicap. History is written by the victors with pens dipped in the blood of the ones who lost. See, the problem with whelps like you is you all believe you’re something new. You aren’t. I’ve seen hundreds like you come and go. You spend your entire lives burning the candle on both ends, then pick some pointless little hill to die on and disappear, taking all your precious ideas to the grave. Meanwhile? I’m still here.”

He grinned, baring his teeth for the first time since arriving on the scene, a twisted snarl of pure sadistic menace that juxtaposed how perfectly kempt he kept his appearance, every individual bristle of facial hair clipped to the exact same length. It was Yang he gave his eyes to again, and whether it was fear, fury or something in between he saw there he made no effort to conceal how much he relished in it.

“Hate to burst your bubble, but you don’t know the first thing about rage.”

The hand returned from the depths of his coat, now brandishing a bowie knife with a blade denser than many swords and an edge as thin as wire, which he admired in the light briefly before—no less casually than one might move to peel a potato—bringing it to the front of Blake’s scalp.

“Let me show you.”

Only Blake could truly comprehend how little he was bluffing or making empty threats, how the serrated edge started to grind relentlessly against her aura as the grip on her ears and hair grew tighter, and how fully this genuine nightmare of the past intended on inflicting the same grisly fate on her he had so many other faunus in that moment.

Mercifully, the moment was all it lasted.

A rotating sigil no more than a millimetre in breadth appeared between the blade and her skull, and the knife went ricocheting out of Carnelian’s hand with such force it embedded in the ceiling halfway to the hilt. Winter stood by the door, faintly paler than usual despite her uniform and face being adorned with soot, but otherwise stoic as she kept one saber’s tip trained on Carnelian and her free hand gripping its pair on the opposite hip, primed to draw.



“Get out.”

It was unclear how long she’d been standing there, but apparently it was long enough. Carnelian’s sigh was droll, hands going up in mock appeasement as he let go of Blake abruptly and took a step back.

“Now now, specialist. Rest assured, I acted only to defend myself from this dangerous reprobate.”

“A fine excuse. It’s the one I’ll use if you make me kill you.”

He scoffed at that, but still didn’t entirely appear to take her seriously, the step he took in her direction alone enough to make her stiffen. “Was that a statement of intent towards a commanding officer, Schnee?”

“A declaration.” She corrected, jaw tight, managing to iron out the small crack that had developed in her voice at the veiled threat through sheer force of will. “I’m invoking article eleven, subsection thirty-six point eight, amendment nine of the Vytal Accords to reassume command of these prisoners. A specialist with full huntress certification may circumvent the chain of command on such an occasion as she feels the judgment of superior officers is compromised to such a degree as to—“

“Your back foot’s out of alignment.” He took another step.

“Don’t.” She bristled, unable to prevent herself from correcting the mistake.

“You used to be such a polite young lady.” Another.

Her eyes flared, something about the chiding, overly familiar tone he adopted appearing to strike a nerve as she simultaneously jabbed her saber at him while stepping back and to one side, giving off something of a mixed message. “Ja—The general will be told about EVERYTHING that’s transpired in this room, and if he hears you started getting nostalgic—“

Again, he sighed. “Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ll go running back to your precious tin man with more outlandish accusations about me. And as I pointed out at the injunction, not so long ago it was me on the receiving end of those stories, only back then it was your father whose good name you did your very best to despoil, god rest his soul. It’s neverending with you, isn’t it?”

The truly insidious thing about Carnelian, discounting the obvious, was that he always seemed to know exactly what buttons to push, as much to do with his semblance as it was the frankly abnormal psychological interest he developed in any foolish enough to end up in his crosshairs. Winter appeared more impervious than most, but her lips were nevertheless a thin line, grasp on the sword at her hip slightly shaky by the time he took his final step to loom over her; every ounce of poise in her body committed to ensuring the one she pointed at him held firm.

“I have given you every warning I am willing to give.”

She spoke low, more to quash the tremble in her voice than anything; an endeavor that wasn’t entirely successful as she stole a glance back in the direction of the bridge, little doubt in her mind who the men stationing it would side with if pressed regardless of what provisions she cited. His hand moved in the corner of her vision, timing that could only be intentional, and she whirled back around with a start—

—Only to see him gently tap his temple, the eye under his patch flashing red momentarily before the cameras in the block resumed standard operations as he continued on his way.

“It’s quite a pity, you know. As I said; you were very well mannered.”

“And you were always a cretin.” She didn’t let herself relax until he was at the door, finally allowing the sword to drop, posture sagging as if exhausted the moment she did so as she issued her eventual retort. “One who’s getting senile if you truly believe General Ironwood doesn’t see you for what you really are.”

He laughed at that, a harsh guffaw of little mirth, pausing to look back in the doorframe. “I know he does. He always has. That’s what’s so fascinating to me about all this.”

His thumb hit the access panel, and the wink he threw curdled her blood like milk if the visceral look of disgust she gave was anything to go by as the doors slid shut.

"Jimmy's the one who requested me."

He left that one to simmer, Winter's lips pursed and eyes downcast as she bit her cheek, stewing in her thoughts. Her weapon didn't find its sheath again until she was certain he wasn't coming back, and only when she was did she move over to the hardlight, looking about as overtaxed as a Schnee could despite the fact that it was barely lunchtime by the standards of most.

"Move back against the wall," she instructed Yang dully, only moving to lower the hardlight and free Blake from her predicament when she complied.

"Hey, uh, so about my friend?" That was when Mercury finally decided to make himself known again, never really thinking he'd have the opportunity in his lifetime to see Borous goddamn Carnelian do his thing but here they were. Be they huntsman, soldier, killer or simply a thug, if their name was the sort to ring out anywhere for matters relating to combat prowess then usually Mercury was all about it.

He never wanted to see that again.

Keepin it light. Keepin it breezy.​

 

[MidwayLives]

"Yeah, was gonna ask bout that, how'd that happen? Big dude with the shaved head spiking you like a volleyball through a building or what?" She, on the other hand, was all smiles as she stared down at Tyrian. "You should really watch out for that if so."

"No. I got blasted through a wall by Roman taking a LOT of something he SHOULDN't have."
The faunus hoped Roman would be okay. He'd left quite the trail of destruction in his wake.

"Yoooooooo wait, dude, you been holding out on me? You got an ex with the White Fang?? Bro, and here I was thinking you'd never had one before. What's her name?"

Tyrian snarled and nearly jumped out of Sun's arms at that point.

"Her NAME is Trifa and she's NOT my...we...She's just an old....acquaintance of mine. It's a long story. She and I don't exactly...see eye to eye anymore. Haven't for years at this point. It's probably not going to go over too well when we show up there but I'll deal with it then."

 

[MyrtenRose]

"No. I got blasted through a wall by Roman taking a LOT of something he SHOULDN't have."
The faunus hoped Roman would be okay. He'd left quite the trail of destruction in his wake.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn."​

Tyrian snarled and nearly jumped out of Sun's arms at that point.

"Her NAME is Trifa and she's NOT my...we...She's just an old....acquaintance of mine. It's a long story. She and I don't exactly...see eye to eye anymore. Haven't for years at this point. It's probably not going to go over too well when we show up there but I'll deal with it then."

Sun couldn't help but snicker a little bit at that reaction. "Hey, chill out, dude. It was just an innocent question, thooooooooooough..." She fell silent for a sec as she raised a skeptical eyebrow up, highlighting the amusement in her eyes. "I don't know, man, did you just see the look on your face just now? I mean, I know you can't. No mirrors around. But I did see, and I gotta say, that seems like a whole lot of passion and annoyance and baggage for somebody who's just supposed to be an "old acquaintance" of yours. Long story, huh? That's cool." She nodded, briefly intending to just leave it at that, but she only managed to stay quiet for a handful of seconds before she couldn't resist pressing him further. "Sooooooooooo....Trifa...she from Mistral? Vacuo? Still got her number?" ​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

View attachment 1103405

“Do you know the difference between a temper tantrum and rage, young lady?”

So brisk was the manner in which he pressed on, so utterly implacable and urbane, that one would be forgiven for presuming it belonged to an elderly tutor in the midst of a lecture than a decorated military officer doing his very best to torment two young women, save for one thing.

Carnelian hated them.

“A temper tantrum is what happens when someone grows up insulated from the reality of what life truly is. A childish impulse, really. It’s the bedtime stories your whore mother read far too many of when you were little.”

Yang had known it by the end of the first night their paths crossed. Blake had known it as soon as he walked in the room, as soon as he looked her way, as soon as his name was uttered. The old soldier was a beast of pure animosity, every single foe who crossed his path merely the latest name added to a long, winding list of personal vendettas, because if every enemy was your worst enemy, every opponent one who deserved no quarter, then eventually there remained no more quarter to be given. In some ways, the sheer spite he exuded was oddly reminiscent of Adam; except he was a monster whose actions had earned him the fear and revulsion of the world at large, and made that his identity. He was still young when he died, directionless, a blade of spite lashing out at everything that moved.

His inexorable reeling of Blake’s head suddenly became a harsh yank as he jerked his grip upwards, forcing her to look Yang in the eye as the nerves in her arms lit up with white-hot agony once more. “It’s the picket signs and banners you started waving around the day you and your little troupe of circus animals first figured out how to crawl out of the mud.”

Carnelian’s acts, at least on this Remnant, had earned him medals. His mask was far less literal, the innocuous bearing of a refined older gentleman that afforded him protection under man’s laws and social etiquette, his true face one shown only to his enemies.

And most crucially, unlike Adam, he was old. He’d had years and years to sow his wild oats and indulge himself. Now? He saved this side of himself for special occasions.

And he had the luxury of choosing its recipients very carefully.

He slipped a hand into the folds of his longcoat.

“It’s the entitlement that’s come to define your generation. Wanting it one way, when it’s the other. This insufferable modern notion that heart, sass, and a plucky attitude are all it takes to win the war we’ve been waging since the dawn of man.” He sneered, a very different sight on Carnelian than it was on most men, and a far more dangerous one: a sign the mask was slipping. “Do you have any idea how arrogant that is, you naive little cockroaches? You live in these kingdoms, take advantage of their systems, but you haven’t the foggiest inkling what it took to raise them. No stomach for the hard facts of life, that sometimes it doesn’t matter what mommy said or which comforting little lies you tell yourself in the mirror. The world around you doesn’t care. Kindness is weakness. Compassion is a handicap. History is written by the victors with pens dipped in the blood of the ones who lost. See, the problem with whelps like you is you all believe you’re something new. You aren’t. I’ve seen hundreds like you come and go. You spend your entire lives burning the candle on both ends, then pick some pointless little hill to die on and disappear, taking all your precious ideas to the grave. Meanwhile? I’m still here.”

He grinned, baring his teeth for the first time since arriving on the scene, a twisted snarl of pure sadistic menace that juxtaposed how perfectly kempt he kept his appearance, every individual bristle of facial hair clipped to the exact same length. It was Yang he gave his eyes to again, and whether it was fear, fury or something in between he saw there he made no effort to conceal how much he relished in it.

“Hate to burst your bubble, but you don’t know the first thing about rage.”

The hand returned from the depths of his coat, now brandishing a bowie knife with a blade denser than many swords and an edge as thin as wire, which he admired in the light briefly before—no less casually than one might move to peel a potato—bringing it to the front of Blake’s scalp.

“Let me show you.”

Only Blake could truly comprehend how little he was bluffing or making empty threats, how the serrated edge started to grind relentlessly against her aura as the grip on her ears and hair grew tighter, and how fully this genuine nightmare of the past intended on inflicting the same grisly fate on her he had so many other faunus in that moment.

Mercifully, the moment was all it lasted.

A rotating sigil no more than a millimetre in breadth appeared between the blade and her skull, and the knife went ricocheting out of Carnelian’s hand with such force it embedded in the ceiling halfway to the hilt. Winter stood by the door, faintly paler than usual despite her uniform and face being adorned with soot, but otherwise stoic as she kept one saber’s tip trained on Carnelian and her free hand gripping its pair on the opposite hip, primed to draw.

View attachment 1103616

“Get out.”

It was unclear how long she’d been standing there, but apparently it was long enough. Carnelian’s sigh was droll, hands going up in mock appeasement as he let go of Blake abruptly and took a step back.

“Now now, specialist. Rest assured, I acted only to defend myself from this dangerous reprobate.”

“A fine excuse. It’s the one I’ll use if you make me kill you.”

He scoffed at that, but still didn’t entirely appear to take her seriously, the step he took in her direction alone enough to make her stiffen. “Was that a statement of intent towards a commanding officer, Schnee?”

“A declaration.” She corrected, jaw tight, managing to iron out the small crack that had developed in her voice at the veiled threat through sheer force of will. “I’m invoking article eleven, subsection thirty-six point eight, amendment nine of the Vytal Accords to reassume command of these prisoners. A specialist with full huntress certification may circumvent the chain of command on such an occasion as she feels the judgment of superior officers is compromised to such a degree as to—“

“Your back foot’s out of alignment.” He took another step.

“Don’t.” She bristled, unable to prevent herself from correcting the mistake.

“You used to be such a polite young lady.” Another.

Her eyes flared, something about the chiding, overly familiar tone he adopted appearing to strike a nerve as she simultaneously jabbed her saber at him while stepping back and to one side, giving off something of a mixed message. “Ja—The general will be told about EVERYTHING that’s transpired in this room, and if he hears you started getting nostalgic—“

Again, he sighed. “Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ll go running back to your precious tin man with more outlandish accusations about me. And as I pointed out at the injunction, not so long ago it was me on the receiving end of those stories, only back then it was your father whose good name you did your very best to despoil, god rest his soul. It’s neverending with you, isn’t it?”

The truly insidious thing about Carnelian, discounting the obvious, was that he always seemed to know exactly what buttons to push, as much to do with his semblance as it was the frankly abnormal psychological interest he developed in any foolish enough to end up in his crosshairs. Winter appeared more impervious than most, but her lips were nevertheless a thin line, grasp on the sword at her hip slightly shaky by the time he took his final step to loom over her; every ounce of poise in her body committed to ensuring the one she pointed at him held firm.

“I have given you every warning I am willing to give.”

She spoke low, more to quash the tremble in her voice than anything; an endeavor that wasn’t entirely successful as she stole a glance back in the direction of the bridge, little doubt in her mind who the men stationing it would side with if pressed regardless of what provisions she cited. His hand moved in the corner of her vision, timing that could only be intentional, and she whirled back around with a start—

—Only to see him gently tap his temple, the eye under his patch flashing red momentarily before the cameras in the block resumed standard operations as he continued on his way.

“It’s quite a pity, you know. As I said; you were very well mannered.”

“And you were always a cretin.” She didn’t let herself relax until he was at the door, finally allowing the sword to drop, posture sagging as if exhausted the moment she did so as she issued her eventual retort. “One who’s getting senile if you truly believe General Ironwood doesn’t see you for what you really are.”

He laughed at that, a harsh guffaw of little mirth, pausing to look back in the doorframe. “I know he does. He always has. That’s what’s so fascinating to me about all this.”

His thumb hit the access panel, and the wink he threw curdled her blood like milk if the visceral look of disgust she gave was anything to go by as the doors slid shut.

"Jimmy's the one who requested me."

He left that one to simmer, Winter's lips pursed and eyes downcast as she bit her cheek, stewing in her thoughts. Her weapon didn't find its sheath again until she was certain he wasn't coming back, and only when she was did she move over to the hardlight, looking about as overtaxed as a Schnee could despite the fact that it was barely lunchtime by the standards of most.

"Move back against the wall," she instructed Yang dully, only moving to lower the hardlight and free Blake from her predicament when she complied.

"Hey, uh, so about my friend?" That was when Mercury finally decided to make himself known again, never really thinking he'd have the opportunity in his lifetime to see Borous goddamn Carnelian do his thing but here they were. Be they huntsman, soldier, killer or simply a thug, if their name was the sort to ring out anywhere for matters relating to combat prowess then usually Mercury was all about it.

He never wanted to see that again.

Keepin it light. Keepin it breezy.​

Yang's breath came out in heaves from where she was pressed against the hardlight, hot, angry tears spilling freely, a few still sizzling against it from where they'd splashed across while she'd been practically beating herself against the cell wall near the end. The adrenaline was still pumping, the fire still there as she just stared at Winter without complying. Furious at her for letting this happen, at Atlas for not following through on its bullshit in this timeline, at Ironwood for already falling so far he'd invite this psychopath-

"Yang, p-please"

Her breath caught, and she immediately looked down in shame and dutifully stumbled backwards for the wall. Winter got at least one last test of her reflexes and will before the days end when Yang immediately pushed off of it when the cell wall came down, but it was only to catch Blake when she stumbled forward. The faunus let out a sob of involuntary relief as the tearing heat was replaced by the dull pain of a fresh burn, letting Yang catch her weight and immediately pull her back into the cell with her between Blake and the rest, gently letting her onto her knees as she assessed the damage and got Blake out of the cuffs so her aura could mitigate it as best it could

It was bad.

The hardlight had left symmetric rings on either arm, the burns well past the skin to reach into the muscle below. The fabric from her longcoat had been seared into them at places, flecks of white against the dark red. Absolutely going to scar, if it even healed right, and it... it was her fault. If she was furious at all the things before, it all paled to what she was pointing at herself. Every single time she tried to fight back here,

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.

Someone got hurt. Or worse.

Were she still conscious, Raven would have been instantly aware of the pain. Of the total numbness, the lack of any feeling in her legs no matter how much she tried to move them. But she wasn't. That crunch, the painful sound of her back breaking under the weight of that attack

None of them would've happened if she'd just been as strong as she'd been trying to be. But Dragon, Maria,

Yang's shoulders dropped in exhausted relief she let herself bask in for all of two seconds before a horrifying scream of pain echoed through the hall, followed by a crash and another scream, this one of raw, animal fury.

...The other Blake. They'd all put her down practically with a passing thought, and someone else paid for it. Like she'd been stupid for even trying. But she'd kept trying, kept punching above her weight class because thats who she was, because thats who her team needed her to be. Except this time it wasn't some kid she barely knew who got hurt, or her Mom and all the baggage that brought, or Weiss' stupid sister who was probably judging Yang for the same stupid choice on the other side of that cell.

She'd tried to be the big, dumb hero, and someone had gotten hurt again, and this time it was Blake. Curled against her, her own tears going down her face, and unbeknownst to Yang in her own special pit of shame at her partner seeing her like she'd never wanted her to; a victim.

All this meant that Winter had ample time to answer Mercury's question, as Yang tried to carefully as possible pull the ruined sleeves off, Blake wincing past the tears as the stray threads tore out of her skin.

 

[Indolent]

​

"It's probably better if we just split up here, honestly. Assuming anyone actually has a lead on the White Fang, that group's gonna have to go on foot. Minus illusions."

"Yeah, we need to go to Forever Fall. I can get us there. There's a rally--"
​

"......So....where should I go...?" She looked down. "Ty, you're going white fang or whatever, right? Think that's what the text said. What's up with the creepy island thing though?" Sun questioned.

"hi emerald."
His aura had taken much more of a beating than he'd expected and it wasn't even due to the people he'd been fighting.

Getting blasted through a wall, having superheated rubble fall on you and pin you down, then having to strip your weapons off before they scalded your skin...Not good times at all, no sir.

Now that Roman was gone-hopefully they could help him out-Tyrian scooped up his weapons and didn't resist as he was pulled up to his feet.

Or, at least until Emerald noticed the extent of his injuries.

"oh, that? it'll heal.'

As he was casually dumped into Sun's arms, the faunus grumbled something under his breath. What it was was between him and the Brothers.

"If Roman had been a bit closer maybe he could have cauterized the wound just by standing there..."


"Not everyday you get a length of rebar stuck where it shouldn't be, no."

He really wasn't HAPPY to see Sun but if the situation required it...well...



The faunus grunted in response.

"yeah, something like that. Need to talk to em. Only thing is that I don't have a clue where they're currently based and it's a 50/50 shot we don't get attacked for poking our nose where it doesn't belong. I have a...I know someone who's part of them but she's not gonna be happy to see me either. It's a whole thing."

"Yeah, was gonna ask bout that, how'd that happen? Big dude with the shaved head spiking you like a volleyball through a building or what?" She, on the other hand, was all smiles as she stared down at Tyrian. "You should really watch out for that if so."



"Yoooooooo wait, dude, you been holding out on me? You got an ex with the White Fang?? Bro, and here I was thinking you'd never had one before. What's her name?" ​

"No. I got blasted through a wall by Roman taking a LOT of something he SHOULDN't have."
The faunus hoped Roman would be okay. He'd left quite the trail of destruction in his wake.


Tyrian snarled and nearly jumped out of Sun's arms at that point.

"Her NAME is Trifa and she's NOT my...we...She's just an old....acquaintance of mine. It's a long story. She and I don't exactly...see eye to eye anymore. Haven't for years at this point. It's probably not going to go over too well when we show up there but I'll deal with it then."

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn."



Sun couldn't help but snicker a little bit at that reaction. "Hey, chill out, dude. It was just an innocent question, thooooooooooough..." She fell silent for a sec as she raised a skeptical eyebrow up, highlighting the amusement in her eyes. "I don't know, man, did you just see the look on your face just now? I mean, I know you can't. No mirrors around. But I did see, and I gotta say, that seems like a whole lot of passion and annoyance and baggage for somebody who's just supposed to be an "old acquaintance" of yours. Long story, huh? That's cool." She nodded, briefly intending to just leave it at that, but she only managed to stay quiet for a handful of seconds before she couldn't resist pressing him further. "Sooooooooooo....Trifa...she from Mistral? Vacuo? Still got her number?" ​

"Wow that's. There's a lot to unpack there, guys, but maybe we shouldn't and instead get moving. Before the Rescuers Down under finish rescuing and resume their manhunt for us. What a travesty this's been so far."

The tension was so visible in Gretchen's body that it showed through in her shoulders, in spite of the burnt scarf's mounting piled atop them, stemming from the anxiety that was barely beginning to wane from the entire ordeal literally minutes ago. Where someone she knew almost died, and probably more people got hurt as a result, and now they were all splitting. The urgency was there, just that she couldn't process it fast enough, and Brosel could only do so much. That said, it was the same urgency that lent itself to bolstering her focus as necessary

"I used to roam around here and then some, I could get us there. Fast. Well, faster than your typical traveler and away from prying eyes. The animals'll tell me."

-------------------------------------------------------​

"HAZEL, SHOVE HER IN A SACK IF YOU HAVE TO! WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!"

Emerald couldn't help but be cognizant of the bleak irony in Hazel, their loose coalition's wrecking ball, opting for a soft touch,

Hazel didn't really insomuch as ignore her as react, almost as if he were numb to external stimuli beyond the one compelling him on with Neo. Almost as if in this very instance, his semblance manifested beyond the physical and dulled all other emotional and cognitive responses but the imminent to narrow his focus. It obviously wasn't that but a culmination of shock and a desperation to try to accomplish one thing against the alternative of someone else leaving again. That he thought would have been the case given Roman's abrupt depature and the state Neo was in. Whether or not that sense originated entirely from him or the memories of those prior, he couldn't tell. Either way, it compounded matters to make them worse.​

Oh, he wanted her to tell him.

He was worried about HER disappearing act!

She glared over her shoulder as he spoke, pinpricks of moisture at the side of her eye she was fighting with all of her will to keep from becoming angry tears. Then she turned fully and opened her mouth so she could 'tell' him; a spew of acrid red flames sprayed out of it and right into Hazel's face. Obviously the fire was painless, because it was Hazel and it wasn't real, the telltale shards of her semblance splashing splashing out from the flames as they made contact with the most solid obstacle anyone on WTCHMTEN could present, but when they stopped his face was blackened with soot and his hair was just gone.

As was Neo, vanished from sight until the light tinkling of her semblance breaking was overshadowed by her thwacking the side of the manta's like a gong right above Emerald's head just as Neo stepped inside

And yeah, he immediately realized how stupid and insensitive he sounded in spite of his wholehearted faith in Neo to understand both his meaning and intention. The issue was that it was weighed against what was a very dire set of emotional circumstances. Which was why, in his own way, he was glad to have received a response of some kind from, Neo, that was anything but her straight up dipping, accepting it with no misgiving on his end. Even after she vanished and returned to the Manta, he still stood there in that very same fashion, eyes having closed with a mild expression of relief simmering in his features. Selfish was it was, he clung onto that mild relief.

Even though it was followed by the very fact they were all splitting up.

Hazel turned to face everyone else from the alley where Neo had just been, staring down the way, before taking ponderous steps back. To rejoin his sister and the others that were going to find the White Fang by some means. It was then he overheard his sibling and despite his tired state, managed a raise brow of wariness concerning that tidbit of information and more importantly, by what circumstance and how she'd come by it.

"... Just tell me later. Or us, whichever." Hazel murmured, eyes cast over the raging flames that was Roman's handiwork and the busy response of huntsmen and local enforcement working to put it out.

"We need to go."​

 

[MidwayLives]

"I don't know, man, did you just see the look on your face just now? I mean, I know you can't. No mirrors around. But I did see, and I gotta say, that seems like a whole lot of passion and annoyance and baggage for somebody who's just supposed to be an "old acquaintance" of yours. Long story, huh? That's cool." She nodded, briefly intending to just leave it at that, but she only managed to stay quiet for a handful of seconds before she couldn't resist pressing him further.

"Sun!"

Tyrian wrestled his way out of his fellow faunus's embrace and landed on his feet, staggered though he was and one hand cupped over his injury.

"What I should have said was DROP IT. This is gonna be hard enough on me."

He wasn't sure HOW yet but he was going to get Cinder back for entertaining the idea of dragging Sun into this.

"Sooooooooooo....Trifa...she from Mistral? Vacuo? Still got her number?"

"She's from Mistral, born and raised."

At the second question, the faunus shook his head as he began to walk after Gretchen, as best as he could and with as much speed as he could muster.

"No. I did when we still hung around the same circles. But that's all over for me now."

Wincing for as while he knew his aura would help this wound, it didn't negate the majority of the pain. "..Look, I don't mean to snap. But she's not gonna be happy to see me and I'll call it a blessing if we get through this without a fist fight breaking out. Just stay on your guard and we'll figure it out." Tyrian then continued to limp-walk after Gretchen. At least she and her trusty stoat wouldn't be so damn nosey.

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Sun!"

Tyrian wrestled his way out of his fellow faunus's embrace and landed on his feet, staggered though he was and one hand cupped over his injury.

"What I should have said was DROP IT. This is gonna be hard enough on me."

He wasn't sure HOW yet but he was going to get Cinder back for entertaining the idea of dragging Sun into this.

"She's from Mistral, born and raised."

At the second question, the faunus shook his head as he began to walk after Gretchen, as best as he could and with as much speed as he could muster.

"No. I did when we still hung around the same circles. But that's all over for me now."

"Okay okay okay, got it. Mysterious lady friend from Mistral, real real sore subject. Consider it dropped." Sun was quick to do her best to placate Tyrian. Though she couldn't help but be strangely curious about what had gone down in the past that had him so riled up in the present, she didn't press any further. "So, Forever Fall, huh? I hear it's supposed to be quite a view in some places. Think they'll have accounted for that in their rally or whatever? That'd be nice." She commented as she jogged up after Ty. Once she caught up and fell into step with the poor stumbling guy, she turned and began to jog backwards, hands folded behind her head.

"Still, dummy, you shouldn't be walking in that condition yet." She winked, and before he knew it, he got swept up in another pair of arms. Her arms, but not her arms, as a single clone of light manifested to do the carrying while the actual Sun continued ahead, still going backwards.​

"..Look, I don't mean to snap. But she's not gonna be happy to see me and I'll call it a blessing if we get through this without a fist fight breaking out. Just stay on your guard and we'll figure it out."

"Hey, don't sweat it. Water under the bridge." She replied with a carefree wave of the hand. "But gotta say, that's a surprise though, Ty. You, not wanting a fight...that's gotta be a first, right?"​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"I used to roam around here and then some, I could get us there. Fast. Well, faster than your typical traveler and away from prying eyes. The animals'll tell me."

“Oh really, Gretch? They’re gonna tell you? The animals? The rats and the little cockroaches and the, all Neo’s—stupid cartoon friends?” Emerald threw out the window with a note of strain, and if Coco’s earlier energy had invoked that of the white girl speeding away in her two-seater Porsche then in that moment she was the ratchet in the passenger seat of the Bugatti yelling back from the opposite lane. “Well, that’s just peachy. That is just CHARMING and KOOKY and ADORABLE and I HOPE IT WORKS OUT FOR YOU—“

And with that rousing parting message thus was the fellowship broken, again, not that it had been forged particularly strongly in quite some time. After a stressful minute or so of prompting the manta finally responded to Penny, Watts, and eventually Emerald’s wanton switch flipping—a good two thirds of which consisted of them unflipping switches one of the others had already flipped—before it sputtered to life and achieved enough lift to be guided somewhat steadily out of the alley, a trail of smoke and distinct engine rattle following it across the skies.

—————————————————

Led by the twins, the second ragtag unit proceeded in the opposite direction, deeper into the alley and towards the far exit.

Alas, her position of prominence meant it was Gretchen who found herself in the unenviable position of occupying the second popular girl’s crosshairs in as many minutes, their loose formation’s progress impaired by the duo of Coco and Velvet leading evacuations on this side of the building. The faunus was already standing in the alley, but clocked them in tandem with her team’s leader as she burst through the emergency exit and started ushering the hallway of people behind them out. Both looked battered and singed, but Coco seemed as invigorated by the prospect of further tension as Velvet shied away from it.



“Just so everything’s crystal, I still hate your group. The entire campus does. You’re ultra cliquey, you make everything about you, Salem gives you blatant special treatment; Mercury and Emerald think they’re with the popular kids but we all agree they’re shallow and lack depth and we stopped inviting them places months ago. Torchwick and Neo’s whole deal is weird and kinda ick in ways I don’t care to ponder on. Cinder’s fifteen, and—honestly you can tell her I said this—not that special in a fight, sooo… no one gets why she’s here. Watts is just objectively insufferable. Callows, you’re creepy. Hazel just stands around; guy was probably separated at birth from his actual twin, which was a plank of wood. You lack basic chemistry; honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen WTCH even try to work together as a team for all the attention you guys seem to get, you pretty much all just charge off in four directions and do your own thing, so that pisses me off. You rope Sun’s poor, mediocre ass—who’s supposed to have a team of her own to run, by the way—into every single thing you do, she might as well carry your bags. And you?”

She adjusted her remarkably well-preserved glasses, narrowing her eyes in judgment at Gretchen over the frames as she concluded her scathing review.

“I barely even know who you are. But—“

“Don’t worry, everyone! There is a but!” Velvet declared, triumph overriding the dawning look of mortification that had taken root on her face as Coco seemingly went full tilt towards reinitiating hostilities.

Coco held up a finger, Velvet’s mouth shutting as if by voodoo magic, to which she looked annoyed but not enough to do anything about it. “—But that sure as hell looks like a weasel in your scarf.”

Velvet looked visibly deflated, but quickly hurried to keep the momentum flowing. “…But…”

She immediately wilted, keenly aware of how much the second ‘but’ lacked in power compared to the first. Nevertheless, she pressed on. “…basically, we don’t think you’re criminals anymore! Yay.”

“Speak for yourself, kid. Arson’s a crime. Jacking a manta’s a crime. Displacing a building full of innocent people’s a crime. Black market drugs are a crime.” She sniffed, flapping a hand, as if genuinely harrowed by what she saw in that moment. “And if we’re counting crimes against fashion I might as well be looking at death row right now, quite frankly.”

“ALL RIGHT SO I THINK MAYBE COCO MIGHT STILL WANT TO FIGHT,” Velvet came back more forcefully, which at the very least drew a sigh of approval from Coco rather than disdain. “The point is, I think we’ve all seen for ourselves now that Penny isn’t kidnapped. They didn’t react the way bad people do to burning buildings—“

“—Which they caused—“

“—And most importantly, something just feels… so odd about all this. The whole school’s noticed it. Salem didn’t even give assembly this morning. General Ironwood seems to have taken the reins on everything…”

She frowned, but whatever further thought she felt inclined to give that would have to wait as a Manta in far better condition than the one that had recently taken off finally arrived on the scene, doing a cursory pass over the alley. Its priority was the burning building, and its spotlights only passed over them for a second; but if one was here then it meant the swarm was imminent, and Velvet was spurred by a sudden sense of urgency as she waved them over to the neighboring building’s sizeable sewer grate.

“You have to go. If you’re trying to get to Forever Fall the fastest way is by using the sewer network to get to the docks, then stowing away on one of the SDC trains.”

“Ha! Yeah, get back in the gutter you bugs.”

“You should know… within the hour your faces are going to be all over the city. We’ll do what we can to cover for you, but…”

“Again, speak for yourself—“

“COCO! WILL YOU EVER SHUSH!”

If the need to skedaddle wasn’t pressing enough already, Gretchen and company started to get the sense that this was very much the kind of zany, characterful team CFVY interaction tailor made to happen offscreen.

—————————————————

In contrast to the second task force as they set off on their trek, any efforts at conversation would be stolen from the aircraft passengers’ lips by its complete lack of defence against the wind at this point as it howled through the interior cabin when they picked up speed, a fact that seemed to suit Emerald fine as much as it made flying a veritable nightmare for whoever was in the pilot’s chair. The look on her face was about as effective of a deterrent; like she’d just taken a bite out of a lemon as she sat next to Neo, seemingly uncannily adept at scouting her out no matter what lengths (if any) were taken to evade her. She actually looked like she thought she was the one with the right to be mad, hence the silence, though whether Neo was truly the main target of that ire or just collateral was as inscrutable as much regarding the thief’s inner mechanisms were—To herself, perhaps, more than anyone.

However she may have felt about her team’s obvious glaring attachment issues, that was one aspect of Neo she’d always be at least just a little jealous of: the girl knew exactly who she was and what she was about, even if she struggled with expressing it to the rest of the world sometimes. More than either of the Y chromosomes on their team, probably more than any single person they knew, Emerald could, at the very least, relate to the back half of that.

She didn’t need to be mute to have written the book on it. Turned out debilitating trust issues could carry the load just fine.

The fact that she kept her weight tipped against Neo in a resolute show of support did little to make her current frame of mind less murky.

Far away and below, missed by all save perhaps Penny in the cockpit if she was making liberal use of her optical zoom, one man’s thoughts brooked no such uncertainty. On the contrary, they were almost a mantra.

This was ridiculous.

Did these punks know who he was? The kind of weight his name carried in this town?

The food chain went like this: Valkyrie, his family, everyone else. That was the way things worked around here. There was an ecosystem. There wasn’t any room for little tooled up pissants coming down from their magical castle on the cliff, dumping on his image and screwing everything up.

His bouncers were useless, and for what it was worth he hoped they both enjoyed their new careers as
firefighters.

He was about to have Atlas military breathing down his neck.

Enough was enough.

Something had to be done.



And it looked like he was gonna have to do it himself.

Junior hoisted his weapon, checked his aim, and gave the manta a final one fingered salute from where he stood on the corner of his chosen rooftop.

“DO. NOT. COME. BACK!”

Three missiles fanned out from the launcher’s muzzle with his emphatic roar, and no matter how slick Watts or Penny’s evasive maneuvers proved to be the manta simply lacked the legs to prevent at least a single of those rockets from blowing out its last one. The right rotor went up in a shower of shrapnel and sparks, and the smoke trailing from it grew far blacker and denser as the plane rapidly started to spiral down towards the city.​

 

[MidwayLives]

Led by the twins, the second ragtag unit proceeded in the opposite direction, deeper into the alley and towards the far exit.

Alas, her position of prominence meant it was Gretchen who found herself in the unenviable position of occupying the second popular girl’s crosshairs in as many minutes, their loose formation’s progress impaired by the duo of Coco and Velvet leading evacuations on this side of the building. The faunus was already standing in the alley, but clocked them in tandem with her team’s leader as she burst through the emergency exit and started ushering the hallway of people behind them out. Both looked battered and singed, but Coco seemed as invigorated by the prospect of further tension as Velvet shied away from it.

“Just so everything’s crystal, I still hate your group. The entire campus does. You’re ultra cliquey, you make everything about you, Salem gives you blatant special treatment; Mercury and Emerald think they’re with the popular kids but we all agree they’re shallow and lack depth and we stopped inviting them places months ago. Torchwick and Neo’s whole deal is weird and kinda ick in ways I don’t care to ponder on. Cinder’s fifteen, and—honestly you can tell her I said this—not that special in a fight, sooo… no one gets why she’s here. Watts is just objectively insufferable. Callows, you’re creepy. Hazel just stands around; guy was probably separated at birth from his actual twin, which was a plank of wood. You lack basic chemistry; honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen WTCH even try to work together as a team for all the attention you guys seem to get, you pretty much all just charge off in four directions and do your own thing, so that pisses me off. You rope Sun’s poor, mediocre ass—who’s supposed to have a team of her own to run, by the way—into every single thing you do, she might as well carry your bags. And you?”

She adjusted her remarkably well-preserved glasses, narrowing her eyes in judgment at Gretchen over the frames as she concluded her scathing review.

“I barely even know who you are. But—“

“Don’t worry, everyone! There is a but!” Velvet declared, triumph overriding the dawning look of mortification that had taken root on her face as Coco seemingly went full tilt towards reinitiating hostilities.

Coco held up a finger, Velvet’s mouth shutting as if by voodoo magic, to which she looked annoyed but not enough to do anything about it. “—But that sure as hell looks like a weasel in your scarf.”

Velvet looked visibly deflated, but quickly hurried to keep the momentum flowing. “…But…”

She immediately wilted, keenly aware of how much the second ‘but’ lacked in power compared to the first. Nevertheless, she pressed on. “…basically, we don’t think you’re criminals anymore! Yay.”

“Speak for yourself, kid. Arson’s a crime. Jacking a manta’s a crime. Displacing a building full of innocent people’s a crime. Black market drugs are a crime.” She sniffed, flapping a hand, as if genuinely harrowed by what she saw in that moment. “And if we’re counting crimes against fashion I might as well be looking at death row right now, quite frankly.”

“ALL RIGHT SO I THINK MAYBE COCO MIGHT STILL WANT TO FIGHT,” Velvet came back more forcefully, which at the very least drew a sigh of approval from Coco rather than disdain. “The point is, I think we’ve all seen for ourselves now that Penny isn’t kidnapped. They didn’t react the way bad people do to burning buildings—“

“—Which they caused—“

“—And most importantly, something just feels… so odd about all this. The whole school’s noticed it. Salem didn’t even give assembly this morning. General Ironwood seems to have taken the reins on everything…”

She frowned, but whatever further thought she felt inclined to give that would have to wait as a Manta in far better condition than the one that had recently taken off finally arrived on the scene, doing a cursory pass over the alley. Its priority was the burning building, and its spotlights only passed over them for a second; but if one was here then it meant the swarm was imminent, and Velvet was spurred by a sudden sense of urgency as she waved them over to the neighboring building’s sizeable sewer grate.

“You have to go. If you’re trying to get to Forever Fall the fastest way is by using the sewer network to get to the docks, then stowing away on one of the SDC trains.”

“Ha! Yeah, get back in the gutter you bugs.”

“You should know… within the hour your faces are going to be all over the city. We’ll do what we can to cover for you, but…”

“Again, speak for yourself—“

“COCO! WILL YOU EVER SHUSH!”

"Oh, you *******, you think you can just come over here and say that to us, you *****-"

Tyrian caught himself and stopped before continuing on saying on whatever foul shit he'd just dropped. He wasn't ready to face Trifa or the White Fang in general and he just so did NOT have time for this, any of it!

"Stay safe, Velvet."

Tyrian moved to try and rip the grate open before continuing on.

Whenever Sun was alongside him again, her fellow faunus muttered matter of factly.

"You're not mediocre. Ass or not."

 

[MyrtenRose]

“Just so everything’s crystal, I still hate your group. The entire campus does. You’re ultra cliquey, you make everything about you, Salem gives you blatant special treatment; Mercury and Emerald think they’re with the popular kids but we all agree they’re shallow and lack depth and we stopped inviting them places months ago. Torchwick and Neo’s whole deal is weird and kinda ick in ways I don’t care to ponder on. Cinder’s fifteen, and—honestly you can tell her I said this—not that special in a fight, sooo… no one gets why she’s here. Watts is just objectively insufferable. Callows, you’re creepy. Hazel just stands around; guy was probably separated at birth from his actual twin, which was a plank of wood. You lack basic chemistry; honestly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen WTCH even try to work together as a team for all the attention you guys seem to get, you pretty much all just charge off in four directions and do your own thing, so that pisses me off. You rope Sun’s poor, mediocre ass—who’s supposed to have a team of her own to run, by the way—into every single thing you do, she might as well carry your bags. And you?”

She adjusted her remarkably well-preserved glasses, narrowing her eyes in judgment at Gretchen over the frames as she concluded her scathing review.

“I barely even know who you are. But—“

“Don’t worry, everyone! There is a but!” Velvet declared, triumph overriding the dawning look of mortification that had taken root on her face as Coco seemingly went full tilt towards reinitiating hostilities.

Coco held up a finger, Velvet’s mouth shutting as if by voodoo magic, to which she looked annoyed but not enough to do anything about it. “—But that sure as hell looks like a weasel in your scarf.”

Velvet looked visibly deflated, but quickly hurried to keep the momentum flowing. “…But…”

She immediately wilted, keenly aware of how much the second ‘but’ lacked in power compared to the first. Nevertheless, she pressed on. “…basically, we don’t think you’re criminals anymore! Yay.”

“Speak for yourself, kid. Arson’s a crime. Jacking a manta’s a crime. Displacing a building full of innocent people’s a crime. Black market drugs are a crime.” She sniffed, flapping a hand, as if genuinely harrowed by what she saw in that moment. “And if we’re counting crimes against fashion I might as well be looking at death row right now, quite frankly.”

“ALL RIGHT SO I THINK MAYBE COCO MIGHT STILL WANT TO FIGHT,” Velvet came back more forcefully, which at the very least drew a sigh of approval from Coco rather than disdain. “The point is, I think we’ve all seen for ourselves now that Penny isn’t kidnapped. They didn’t react the way bad people do to burning buildings—“

“—Which they caused—“

“—And most importantly, something just feels… so odd about all this. The whole school’s noticed it. Salem didn’t even give assembly this morning. General Ironwood seems to have taken the reins on everything…”

She frowned, but whatever further thought she felt inclined to give that would have to wait as a Manta in far better condition than the one that had recently taken off finally arrived on the scene, doing a cursory pass over the alley. Its priority was the burning building, and its spotlights only passed over them for a second; but if one was here then it meant the swarm was imminent, and Velvet was spurred by a sudden sense of urgency as she waved them over to the neighboring building’s sizeable sewer grate.

“You have to go. If you’re trying to get to Forever Fall the fastest way is by using the sewer network to get to the docks, then stowing away on one of the SDC trains.”

“Ha! Yeah, get back in the gutter you bugs.”

“You should know… within the hour your faces are going to be all over the city. We’ll do what we can to cover for you, but…”

“Again, speak for yourself—“

“COCO! WILL YOU EVER SHUSH!”

Tyrian moved to try and rip the grate open before continuing on.

Whenever Sun was alongside him again, her fellow faunus muttered matter of factly.

"You're not mediocre. Ass or not."

"Thanks, bud. 'You might be an ass, but you're not mediocre.' That really plucks at my heartstrings." The sarcasm was flowing from Sun's mouth like lava from a volcano. At least for that part. "Thing is though, she's got it all wrong. I may be a visitor from the east, but I can tell ya this much. Let me go down the list. The whole campus doesn't hate you. I mean, like really, Mercury and Emerald know how to party, really liven things up. You, you just got this raw enthusiasm that you only let out in fights, which is kinda a shame I'll admit because seeing that applied to other things would be hella. Arty...yeah, okay, he can be insufferable sometimes, but man, when he quits pretending to be so above it all, it's a treat to watch. I mean did you see him in that food fight? Rhetorical, by the way, cuz of course you did, you were freaking there! Also, if you need solid back up in some video games, he's your guy. Lost against him enough to know that. Romes and Neo, they're just close, ain't nothin wrong with that. Hazel's your freakin' emotional rock! Or glue. Whatever, he keeps you together. And who in the hell could hate Cinder, I mean, just look at her. I'll be honest, I never met somebody who could make anger look so damn adorable. Ya know, same energy aunts you haven't seen in a while have when they meet you at some party or something, and they just pinch your cheeks in the most annoying way possible and it's lowkey awkward, it's like that. She wears rage like that." Sun grinned.

"And don't even get me started on how wrong she is about me. Like, hoo boy, that's a level of wrong that Cardin guy would be proud to achieve." Sun shook her head. "Like, c'mon. Me? Mediocre? Talk about talkin' out your ass. Y'know, between us, I just think she's jealous. Or is it envious, I always get those two mixed up. Anyways, either one, feeling pretty confident it's like that. Because, like you guys get to have so many cool misadventures and they're just back there, doing their thing which isn't nearly as fun, and so she takes it out on you. At least back there she did. That for all her dressing up in the finest fashions, she still don't stand out as much as you guys do in the huntsmen and huntress crowds. Plus, like, she is obviously super jealous of me. Not that I blame her, I got a way simpler outfit-" Sun proudly pulled on her plain white shirt, unbuttoned as it always was and revealing the sarashi wrap around her chest, plus her gloves, jeans and sneakers.

"-and yet I'm still both hotter and cooler at the same time." She beamed as they continued to rush on for their destination. "Still, when she's not trying to be that chick, she can be pretty cool. Her and the rest of that team, they can be chill. Especially bunny girl." ​

Something had to be done.

And it looked like he was gonna have to do it himself.

Junior hoisted his weapon, checked his aim, and gave the manta a final one fingered salute from where he stood on the corner of his chosen rooftop.

“DO. NOT. COME. BACK!”

Three missiles fanned out from the launcher’s muzzle with his emphatic roar, and no matter how slick Watts or Penny’s evasive maneuvers proved to be the manta simply lacked the legs to prevent at least a single of those rockets from blowing out its last one. The right rotor went up in a shower of shrapnel and sparks, and the smoke trailing from it grew far blacker and denser as the plane rapidly started to spiral down towards the city.

"Oh gods oh no oh crap oh hell oh shit oh jesus oh crapbaskets, what the fuck was that?!" She managed to blurt out even as she stumbled around from the impact.

"Guys the ship's on fire now and we're falling!!!"

Cinder helpfully pointed out the obvious, though she wasn't sure she was heard over the fierce winds howling through the ship. Between Roman blasting out all the windows, Coco penetrating the hull with her gunshots and the rest, and now this, the ship had seen much better days. She made her way over to Penny, and leaned in close to hopefully be heard clearly. "Penny, do you think you can go out there and like...stabilize? Maybe hold it up and guide us as you fly yourself with your rocket jet boots? Is that a good idea or a bad idea, I'm not sure myself!"

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

Elsewhere, there was a shocked gasp that escaped someone's throat. Salem's, that is, as the headmistress at last suddenly ironically shot up like a bullet herself, her unique nature of existence finally finishing up putting her back together. There was a few seconds of heavy, labored breathing before she managed to compose herself into a more steady, relaxed rhythm. She had been staring down James, her old friend and ally, berating him for going too harshly on people who'd more than earned the benefit of the doubt, with what might as well have been planted evidence...and then there had been pain, and then it had been dark. Right up until now. Now, she took in the sight of the hardlight in front of her, and the blood that stained the floor where she had been lying down. A clear sign to where she currently was located.

Her palm met her face right then. "Oh, James...what have you done?" She whispered under her breath. He had always possessed unfortunate tendencies, as did almost everyone she counted, or had counted, among those hushed voices in her inner council. Glynda, Raven, Qrow, James, Liadan, Theodore, Summer, Xanthe, Leonardo, others long past...no one was without faults. But this, to go so far...

Salem let out a deep, sullen sigh. What he had done, she was not yet in a position to address. Not while she was locked away like this. She glanced around, first taking note of Glynda also occupying one of the cells, which itself prompted a second but quieter sigh, but then moving to the others nearby. The blonde who looked so familiar it was uncanny, the dark-haired one, majorly injured and held by the former, and....is that...? Her eyes narrowed slightly at the third figure but her thought went unfinished and she said nothing outward before her gaze moved on to Winter, on the other side of the cell walls. It was only a quick glance, however, before her eyes settled on one of her students.

She stood up then, approaching the wall that separated them.

"Mercury. Are they..." She swallowed, an uncharacteristically nervous gesture given who she was, and who she had to present herself to be for every student of her academy. She took a breath and continued more strongly: "What occurred while I was...indisposed?" ​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

In contrast to the second task force as they set off on their trek, any efforts at conversation would be stolen from the aircraft passengers’ lips by its complete lack of defence against the wind at this point as it howled through the interior cabin when they picked up speed, a fact that seemed to suit Emerald fine as much as it made flying a veritable nightmare for whoever was in the pilot’s chair. The look on her face was about as effective of a deterrent; like she’d just taken a bite out of a lemon as she sat next to Neo, seemingly uncannily adept at scouting her out no matter what lengths (if any) were taken to evade her. She actually looked like she thought she was the one with the right to be mad, hence the silence, though whether Neo was truly the main target of that ire or just collateral was as inscrutable as much regarding the thief’s inner mechanisms were—To herself, perhaps, more than anyone.

However she may have felt about her team’s obvious glaring attachment issues, that was one aspect of Neo she’d always be at least just a little jealous of: the girl knew exactly who she was and what she was about, even if she struggled with expressing it to the rest of the world sometimes. More than either of the Y chromosomes on their team, probably more than any single person they knew, Emerald could, at the very least, relate to the back half of that.

She didn’t need to be mute to have written the book on it. Turned out debilitating trust issues could carry the load just fine.

The fact that she kept her weight tipped against Neo in a resolute show of support did little to make her current frame of mind less murky.

Neo wasn't hiding; she'd figured she'd spent enough aura on nonsense when they were on their way to death mountain or whatever, and was simply seated on the far edge of one of the benches with arms and legs crossed, glowering at the other occupants with a simmering sneer that blossomed into a vicious glare to meet Emerald's own sour look as she got closer. But she didn't totally vanish of the face of the earth when Emerald ignored the hint either, instead rolling her eyes and turning her back to her teammate, letting that be what Emerald squashed her against she kept her arms crossed and stewed in her absolutely not gone anger.

It just wasn't all she was feeling.

A lot of people thought Roman and her had some kind of weird, psychic link or whatever; he always seemed to know what she was thinking or feeling despite the obvious barriers. It wasn't anything that esoteric; they'd just been together long enough for him to pick up on all the little extra emotes Neo couldn't help but give off, no matter how far into her own head she was, and by now Emerald and Mercury had known her long enough to pick up on a few of her own. The way one hand was picking at the sleeve on her elbow, anxiously rubbing the fabric between her fingers. The way her back was tensed. When she wasn't putting on a show, Neo could be a bit of an open book; just one in a dead language. She was angry, yea, but she was also scared, and guilty.

After a few seconds, she reached down and tugged on the leg of Emerald's pants without looking back to get her attention. Just because she was furious with them didn't mean that MTEN weren't suddenly the most important people in the world to her, and Em and Merc could slide back into their emotional armor all they wanted; She wasn't gonna let herself go back to what she'd been, even if it was just to try and get across why she was so angry, as Emerald saw a bit of neo's semblance start to take shape in her own hand, and lead off toward-

He was about to have Atlas military breathing down his neck.

Enough was enough.

Something had to be done.

And it looked like he was gonna have to do it himself.

Junior hoisted his weapon, checked his aim, and gave the manta a final one fingered salute from where he stood on the corner of his chosen rooftop.

“DO. NOT. COME. BACK!”

Three missiles fanned out from the launcher’s muzzle with his emphatic roar, and no matter how slick Watts or Penny’s evasive maneuvers proved to be the manta simply lacked the legs to prevent at least a single of those rockets from blowing out its last one. The right rotor went up in a shower of shrapnel and sparks, and the smoke trailing from it grew far blacker and denser as the plane rapidly started to spiral down towards the city.

"INCOMING!-"

The entire manta rocked, and Neo's small size meant she flipped off the bench entirely with a half graceful recovery twist that ended with her on all fours like a terrified cat as she whipped her head towards the black smoke out the window.

Watts was on the floor. He'd in fact already been on the floor; once they'd gotten the manta over, he'd somewhat listlessly pointed at Penny and then the pilot's seat and meandered back into the hold, where he'd simply laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling.

He was drained. Everything had been a thousand miles a minute since the moment they'd gotten back here, from their haphazard sprint to Salem's office, all the way to now. Even while everyone else took a breather in the club, he'd been wracking his thoughts on trying to coordinate two to three different strike teams, two of which were now completely dead pathways. Emerald was right in that he'd not even spared more than half a thought to how different this Remnant was from the one they'd called home the rest of their lives, but it was simply because he hadn't had a god damn second to do so. So he was going to do so now.

Just after a soft brain reset. A bit of zen. A brief period of nothing before he threw himself back into the fucking mess of somethings his life was.

So of course then the manta exploded. He didn't even move at first, instead just letting the force slide himself across the floor in a bit of a rag doll as he let out a heavy sigh that no one was going to be able to hear past all the whipping wind and screaming everyone was about to be doing.

Oh gods oh no oh crap oh hell oh shit oh jesus oh crapbaskets, what the fuck was that?!" She managed to blurt out even as she stumbled around from the impact.

"Guys the ship's on fire now and we're falling!!!"

Cinder helpfully pointed out the obvious, though she wasn't sure she was heard over the fierce winds howling through the ship. Between Roman blasting out all the windows, Coco penetrating the hull with her gunshots and the rest, and now this, the ship had seen much better days. She made her way over to Penny, and leaned in close to hopefully be heard clearly. "Penny, do you think you can go out there and like...stabilize? Maybe hold it up and guide us as you fly yourself with your rocket jet boots? Is that a good idea or a bad idea, I'm not sure myself!"

"CORRECT!" Penny agreed with CInder's obvious initial statement, fighting with the controls with a grimace; not that she couldn't handle the torque, but if she turned the wheel any harder she was going to tear it off of the console. At Cinder's suggestion, she gave a sharp nod.

"I SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE IT A GUIDED FALL AT LEAST, BUT WE WILL NEED OTHER TRANSPORTATION!" she reached out to put Cinder's hand on the wheel and yelled "JUST HOLD IT IN PLACE TILL I GET OUTSIDE" before she pushed off of the seat and rocketed straight out the remnants of the windshield to coast to beneath the manta; two swords shot out from her back to snag onto the wings, pulls she could leverage for steering, and she pressed her back against the ship with a grunt of effort as her thrusters kicked into high gear while she turned the nose off in the direction of the Emerald forest.

Watts had stumbled to his feet in the midst of that, almost lurching right back off of them as he caught himself on one of the chairs next to Emerald and Neo.

"CAN ONE OF YOU MAKE US A LITTLE LESS CONSPICIOUS?"