Fandom Shattered Hourglass [IC] [CLOSED]

[MyrtenRose]

The irony of Raven's statement became apparent before she was even finished speaking it. His trademark flask had been loaded with water, just as it had out in the Solitas tundras that night with Clover, the last thing he remembered before any of this; a night that had either been a few moments or a lifetime ago, or was years from ever happening at all, depending on whether you asked his eyes, soul, or brain.

The glass of choice bourbon poured straight-up he was gesturing to, on the other hand, very much wasn't, nor for that matter was the bottle of it sitting on Salem's desk.

"Yeah, well, it's now too. You know me, sis... Always happy to play to type." There was a sense of ruefulness to his words as his gaze slipped down to the glass, more bitter than the burnished gold liquid within. "Oz, Salem, Remnant One, Remnant Two... guess when you're a lying, ageless sack of crap, instincts are to keep your hooch in the third drawer down on the left. Glad there are still some universal constants."

"...Damn. Suppose I should've put some actual money on that." She was only half sarcastic as she looked over at her brother with concern. All that work to go clean, and now here they were. Not to mention it wasn't that hard to pick up on the bitterness in his voice and his body language. Any idiot could have seen that much. She didn't say anything about that though, didn't press the subject. It was his choice, and frankly she could hardly blame him. "Yeah. Ugly truths, beautiful lies...some things don't change across universes." Raven agreed, though she abstained from the bourbon for now.​

"God..."

Instead he went back to his earlier point, but lower this time, quieter, so far under his breath it was more magma than gravel. Even for all the years they'd spent estranged, the countenance of Raven's twin was no great mystery to her, and yet as she joined him at the window the haggard, faraway look in his eye was one she couldn't profess to having seen before. His fist tightened where it gripped one of the room's support struts, aura shimmering and metal starting to creak and warp, the small indentations forming around his thumbs and fingers the sole indicator to be had of what was to come as his mind raced back over recent—or was it future?—events with a sharper clarity than the others could lay claim to.

An eyebrow raised as she studied his face. He was right next to her, but he looked...so far away. That didn't inspire any reassuring feelings, that was for certain.​

"...god damn it."

His breath hitched, and the sentence had a much quieter end than its beginning, his free hand shooting to pinch the bridge of his nose, then scrub at his eyes, wiping away more than simple frustration.

"Raven, I... I think I really screwed up this time."

It was a quiet, broken admission, one so uncharacteristic of everything Qrow Branwen had ever presented as Raven might've wondered if she were even talking to her sibling at all. Inside was another story. He screwed up, but what else was new? His whole life, beginning to end, could've been construed as one long, monumental screw-up. It was all he was ever good for. It was the only thing he ever was.

"What...what do you mean? Screwed up what?" ​

He finally looked at her, and though there was a tremulous aspect to his voice and uneven quality to his breathing he still managed to conjure up a small, wan smile for his twin, if one entirely offset by the sadness keeping it afloat.

"I did it for them, OK? Ruby and Yang. Whatever happens now, however this shakes out, just—Just remember that. Ozpin, Salem, this world... I stopped giving a crap about any of it a while back. I just, I just wanna get them home to their dad. For all I know the only reason they're even in this hellhole is..." He exhaled, leaving that thought unfinished. Waste of breath, and he didn't know how many he had left. But he had never been able to shake the thought that every bad thing that happened in their lives was something to do with him, with the sick joke of a semblance whichever asshole was paying attention up there stuck him with.

It wasn't clear to her what he had done, it seemed he was annoyingly, purposefully, being vague as hell about it. What was clear was that it seemed to be tearing him up inside, and that it was something huge. That he'd done it for them, and was blaming himself for it. What a load of garbage. "Hey, moron. Cut that crap out. You're not responsible for this. I don't care what you think you did, whatever happens, it's not on--"​

Something about his palm appeared to catch his eye, and it was a deeply disturbed look he gave its various creases and callouses.

"He said a few minutes. Hnh. More lies."

He quickly downed the rest of the whiskey, using the burn in his chest to power through the rest of what he wanted to say. Were Raven paying attention to anything more than his frantic state at this point she might've started to notice something terribly, deeply wrong; the lack of any kind of color in his face, muted crimson flicker beginning to appear around the edges of his aura, as if it were being eaten through by cold on a timescale multiplied by a million. He couldn't keep his eyes off his palm, nor could he keep hiding what had him so transfixed; it wasn't just his aura peeling away, it was his skin, flakes beginning to dry up, break off and flutter away like ashes over a burning village.

"--what the hell?" That's not where her sentence had been going originally. Her eyes widened even as she asked, it wasn't even just his aura simply starting to flicker. His skin, it was coming undone. It drew her eye almost immediately, and she didn't know what to say after that. Damn it...he literally was tearing apart inside.​

"Guess that tracks. All I've ever done is swallow lies, buy into whatever story I wanted to hear. I spent so many years hating you, telling myself you were too much of a coward to fight the good fight, when the truth all along was you just got a clue before anyone else did. We could've worked it out. I should've seen it then too, when Summer... when she..."

She wanted to refute him, to say she had been too much of a coward, that she had been with Summer on that day, that she'd.......but she couldn't. She didn't. The words simply stuck in her throat. That's how stricken speechless she was, by what was happening right before her eyes. What made it worse was that she had no clue what was happening, and no idea how to stop it. One of the best to graduate from Beacon, and a maiden now too, and yet....she'd never felt so...powerless. Unable to act, unable to do any fucking thing at all.​

Some of his usual grit returned, and it was with a firmer, more resolute tone that he finally brought his eyes back up to meet his sister's, doing his best to establish a small, reassuring smirk for her benefit (and hers alone, since he was pretty much crapping his pants by now).

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

"I was yours.—*"

She still said nothing, even as she recognized that lie and wanted to throw it back in his face...hadn't done anything else worthwile in years...what an absurd lie. Yet she did nothing but stand there, petrified, watching in silence as he deteriorated in real time right before her eyes. It was only after he was gone, as she stared at the last signs of him drifting away with the wind, that she managed to speak again at last. A pained whisper in the lonely silence.

"Qrow, you idiot...no. No, brother. I'm sorry.....................for everything."

She stood there motionless a few seconds longer before she strode over to grab the whole bottle, not bothering with any glasses as she began to drink directly from it. She took a long sip before she pulled it away from her mouth and poured a bit of it onto the floor, thinking he'd appreciate the gesture. Man, that really had been a hideous carpet back then. She slowly lowered herself until she was sitting down on the floor herself, some of his last words echoing in her head.​

"What that says about me, I dunno. But those two—They can be so much better than we turned out, Ray. They already are. I know you see it too."

"Yeah. They really are." She raised the bottle back to her lips.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

Oblivious to any of this, or indeed to the fact that anything out of the ordinary was happening at all outside of preparations for the imminent tournament final they had literally spent several years planning, an expression that managed to strike the perfect balance between annoyed, concerned, impatient and bemused was what adorned the face of one Glynda Goodwitch, custodian, disciplinarian, and teacher (in order of priority) of Beacon Academy, as she was beset from all sides by an absolutely deranged assemblage of students from teams WTCH and MTEN outside the dormitory building, all of whom appeared to be trying to articulate something at once. Loudly.

She'd been trying really, really hard to make her voice the loudest in the group, as the one most connected to it, cause maiden, but sheeeesh did they not make it easy. Emerald could shout with the best of them(or have Mercury do it on her behalf hahaha), Tyrian...well he was just Tyrian, and Roman...oh bless his (LIVING!!!!) heart, he was just so lost. But between her and all the others talking at once, ultra loudly, it was completely undecipherable as anything other than a wall of noise. Still, Cinder couldn't help but feel equally as annoyed with Glynda as the professor probably felt with them. They didn't have time for this!!!​

Watts had never been one to let himself be talked over, but neither had the rest of WTCH or MTEN, and by the time Glynda was starting to hallucinate presumably at the behest of someone or another's semblance, he was dragging his fingers down either side of his cheeks, pulling his skin as he went with how hard he was gripping. He took a deep, steadying breath, before he pressed a few buttons on his watch and held it up to his mouth

"EVERYONE SHUT UP"

The voice came from a PA Speaker atop a pole behind them, and came loud enough that even Watts winced at the sound of his own voice, but he nonetheless leered at the others in warning before turning the same gaze on Glynda herself, a disconcerting departure from the usual politeness he'd always shown her.

It was Watts who won the day in the loudness department, because he cheated of course he did, but she nevertheless shut up, wincing in pain from the speaker shout.​

"Miss Goodwitch, to put it in very simple, one voice terms; we know about Oz and his obnoxiously prevalent cult, the four important things HE's looking for and SHE's hiding, and other such information we really should not be discussing on school grounds. Please take us to Salem, and everyone involved can learn how this very important information has leaked."

​

"Yes!! That!! RIGHT NOW!!!" She added, perhaps unnecessarily.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

*poke*

Something was nudging her shoulder.

Whatever it was could wait. Everything felt... bad. It wasn't pain, per say, but it felt like someone had very carefully taken her apart and put her back together again, and everything hadn't quite yet connected back the way it was supposed to.

Then she got rolled onto her back by a rough pair of hands, one staying in place to keep her pinned, and her eyes snapped open to see a very distraught Yang Xiao Long with her mechanical fist pulled back and ready to strike, eyes flickering a dim, darker purple than the norm as her breaths came in and out.

"....Yang?" Her voice came out with a bit of a waver, but more concerned than anything. "Whats going on- Oh!"

She found herself pulled off the ground and into a haphazard hug that threatened to crush all the air out of her at once, both of them on their knees as Yang buried her face in Blake's shoulder and heaved in a deep, shuddering breath.

Blake tried to make sense of what was happening, a little too stunned to return the hug as she did her best to take in their surroundings, which looked a lot like.... Amity coliseum? She saw Ruby to the side, and started to ask her what was wrong and why they'd gone all the way out to Solitas, but quickly noted that Ruby was looking at her utterly flabbergasted and stumbling over her words

"Okay...Whats... happening?" She managed to squeeze out. She ran back over the last thing she remembered and only found really, really distressing and literally not helpful information given Yang's apparent rib crushing health.​

What frustration Ruby had been venting Yang's way—brought on more by the general status quo they were now apparently being forced to deal with than by anything her sister did, if she was honest—had already yielded a fair amount of ground to cautious optimism when they discovered the third quarter of their standard quartet, and by the time Yang made sure Blake passed the vibe check in the most Yang way possible the hand that had been twitching by Crescent's hilt just in case relaxed fully. Her shoulders followed suit, as did her eyes, and for what felt like the first time in years regardless of timeline team RWBY's unduly elected leader actually felt a little mileage come off the odometer.

For as much as the sight flooded her chest with warmth, and as much as her impulse might've been to let old habits die hard and pile in on the cuddle puddle too, whatever burgeoning spark of social awareness she'd gradually been stoking these last couple years told her to ease off and just... give them a minute. Or rather, give Yang a minute, and give Blake a minute to catch up since going off her kneejerk responses here she was operating on a level of being lost several orders of magnitude higher than even theirs.

"...We can tell you what we know, but as far as what's happening goes... probably gonna have to settle for 'I—bu—you—whaaaaa' for now. Sorry, Blake. But from the look on your face I'm guessing you have... no idea how good it is to see you."

Internally, she cringed the second she said that. She didn't know why—maybe it was that they were both kinda bookworms (by choice, not out of habit like Weiss), or that the faunus had a sense of having been ground down and matured by the world the rest of them lacked even back when they first started at Beacon—but sounding dumb in front of Blake always made her feel a special kind of childish compared to her other friends, and she quickly scrambled for something, anything, to contextualize things even a little.

"Umm, remember that book you let me borrow? About the time machine? What was that called again?"

She liked that one. There was just one problem she had with it, and it played on her thoughts now as the genuine glow she had at recognising Blake started to fade when the further inspections she carried out of the chairs, rows, and aisles in their immediate vicinity came back with a disheartening amount of nothing.

What kind of genius built a time machine with only one seat?​

 

[Gus Gungus]

Neo stood off to the side, Torchwick's had in a vice grip ever since they left the dorms as her head moved on a swivel, carefully checking any and every corner and and nook and cranny and far off horizon for anything resembling danger. Danger that she had for obvious reasons not been able to explain to Torchwick, so any caught up-ness he'd acquired would've had to have come from somebody else.​

And because that somebody else probably would've had to be Mercury or Emerald it just didn't happen, and so poor Roman stood there, still completely clueless as to why his friends had all apparently woken up and chosen insanity.

​

Neo stood off to the side, Torchwick's had in a vice grip ever since they left the dorms as her head moved on a swivel, carefully checking any and every corner and and nook and cranny and far off horizon for anything resembling danger. Danger that she had for obvious reasons not been able to explain to Torchwick, so any caught up-ness he'd acquired would've had to have come from somebody else.

Watts had never been one to let himself be talked over, but neither had the rest of WTCH or MTEN, and by the time Glynda was starting to hallucinate presumably at the behest of someone or another's semblance, he was dragging his fingers down either side of his cheeks, pulling his skin as he went with how hard he was gripping. He took a deep, steadying breath, before he pressed a few buttons on his watch and held it up to his mouth

"EVERYONE SHUT UP"

The voice came from a PA Speaker atop a pole behind them, and came loud enough that even Watts winced at the sound of his own voice, but he nonetheless leered at the others in warning before turning the same gaze on Glynda herself, a disconcerting departure from the usual politeness he'd always shown her.

"Miss Goodwitch, to put it in very simple, one voice terms; we know about Oz and his obnoxiously prevalent cult, the four important things HE's looking for and SHE's hiding, and other such information we really should not be discussing on school grounds. Please take us to Salem, and everyone involved can learn how this very important information has leaked."​

Roman certainly would have loved nothing more than to be filled in with the deets. But having seen what an effect his mere presence and continued breathing and existing on the mortal coil had done for his teammates and Neo, he thought better to hold all questions until they all got settled in. Whenever that'd be and whatever that looked like anyhow. "Neo, I don't have a clue WHAT exactly happened beyond bits and pieces and-" Well, he was going to say his chest having the consistency of a jelly-filled donut with bone 'sprinkles'. But he didn't wanna see Neo cry again so he kept that to himself. "Well, I got an idea anyhow. But I'm not a baby, you don't have to-"



View attachment 1095337

"SO extra..."
~~~


Tyrian opened his mouth to speak.
He had some choice words on how to get the point across.
**MASSIVE INHALE**


*Deflated exhale*

View attachment 1095340

"Hey, not bad!"

Double the points for enthusiasm for sure!


Tyrian idly counted off the other vague remnants off his fingers.

"...Well, yeah that's about the size of it!"

She'd been trying really, really hard to make her voice the loudest in the group, as the one most connected to it, cause maiden, but sheeeesh did they not make it easy. Emerald could shout with the best of them(or have Mercury do it on her behalf hahaha), Tyrian...well he was just Tyrian, and Roman...oh bless his (LIVING!!!!) heart, he was just so lost. But between her and all the others talking at once, ultra loudly, it was completely undecipherable as anything other than a wall of noise. Still, Cinder couldn't help but feel equally as annoyed with Glynda as the professor probably felt with them. They didn't have time for this!!!



It was Watts who won the day in the loudness department, because he cheated of course he did, but she nevertheless shut up, wincing in pain from the speaker shout.

"Yes!! That!! RIGHT NOW!!!" She added, perhaps unnecessarily.​

"...Leaked...?"

Between the eight of them, the occasions on which the various components of teams WTCH and MTEN had drawn Goodwitch's ire had been numerous. Rare though it was, one or two of the more dedicated troublemakers in their midst could even attest to having seen her lose her temper.

The wide-eyed, off-kilter configuration her face snapped into from about midway through Watts' rundown was something they had never seen, and quite frankly felt so alien and out of place on the woman's typically stern features as to be uncanny valley. Her eyes first flicked to Cinder in almost accusatory fashion, but her thoughts caught up a barely a moment later; even as the Fall Maiden, even with some understanding of her destiny, there was no earthly way miss Fall should have known about the relics. About him.

Then a second possibility crossed her mind, one that had her cast a far more thoughtful, scrutinizing look back in Arthur's direction, followed by a scowl up at the PA system he apparently had easy access to. Somewhat antiquated, but of Atlesian design, if she wasn't mistaken.

With an emphatic swish that always made Mercury in particular flinch for whatever reason, her riding crop came out, the students found themselves roughly lifted off their feet, and just in case the entire flagpole housing the offending speaker was launched like a javelin into space before Goodwitch and her cargo took off with similar velocity, the huntress not keen on wasting so much as another second after what she'd just heard.

If they wanted to take this matter to Salem, far be it from her to deny them.

Down below, a handful of early risers and student rubberneckers were already starting to gather, others blearily sliding open their windows to ask what the ruckus was; all wondering precisely what some of Beacon's tournament favorites had said or done to end up so completely and imminently dead. Emerald, for her part, was grateful to whichever god wasn't one of the assholes hassling them in their dreams that none of them took notice of her, gingerly extricating herself from the bush she'd concealed herself a few yards away, dusting herself off, picking twigs and leaves out of her hair as she squinted up at her friends' fading dots on the skyline with a weary sigh.

"Just saying, guys. There were better plays."

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

Meanwhile, on the other side of campus...

"SALUTATIONS, headmistress! Why, you've just caught me carrying out my vocal exercises for today's THRILLING arrangement of bouts! Fah-la-la-la-lahhhhhhh!~♪ Indeed, such a compelling field of finalists DEMANDS no less than the FINEST in play-by-play accompaniments, and Bartholomew and I SHALL NOT DISAPPOINT! Tell me, have you ever imagined an imaginary Menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary Menagerie?! Hoho, I think not! Impressed that I was able to question you with such fluidity, though, aren't you?! HmhmhmHMMMM. Brrrrr. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Red leather, yellow leather. Oho, wait until you hear THIS one! Professor Peter Port picked a peck of pickled peppers; A peck of pickled peppers Peter Port picked; If Professor Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Professor Peter Port picked?! Well? WELL?! Shall I color you impressed, or THUNDEROUSLY impressed?!"

...

"Eh? Hmm? Been trying to say something, have you? Speak up, madame headmistress! What's all this about miss Branwen?"​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

What frustration Ruby had been venting Yang's way—brought on more by the general status quo they were now apparently being forced to deal with than by anything her sister did, if she was honest—had already yielded a fair amount of ground to cautious optimism when they discovered the third quarter of their standard quartet, and by the time Yang made sure Blake passed the vibe check in the most Yang way possible the hand that had been twitching by Crescent's hilt just in case relaxed fully. Her shoulders followed suit, as did her eyes, and for what felt like the first time in years regardless of timeline team RWBY's unduly elected leader actually felt a little mileage come off the odometer.

For as much as the sight flooded her chest with warmth, and as much as her impulse might've been to let old habits die hard and pile in on the cuddle puddle too, whatever burgeoning spark of social awareness she'd gradually been stoking these last couple years told her to ease off and just... give them a minute. Or rather, give Yang a minute, and give Blake a minute to catch up since going off her kneejerk responses here she was operating on a level of being lost several orders of magnitude higher than even theirs.

"...We can tell you what we know, but as far as what's happening goes... probably gonna have to settle for 'I—bu—you—whaaaaa' for now. Sorry, Blake. But from the look on your face I'm guessing you have... no idea how good it is to see you."

Internally, she cringed the second she said that. She didn't know why—maybe it was that they were both kinda bookworms (by choice, not out of habit like Weiss), or that the faunus had a sense of having been ground down and matured by the world the rest of them lacked even back when they first started at Beacon—but sounding dumb in front of Blake always made her feel a special kind of childish compared to her other friends, and she quickly scrambled for something, anything, to contextualize things even a little.

"Umm, remember that book you let me borrow? About the time machine? What was that called again?"

She liked that one. There was just one problem she had with it, and it played on her thoughts now as the genuine glow she had at recognising Blake started to fade when the further inspections she carried out of the chairs, rows, and aisles in their immediate vicinity came back with a disheartening amount of nothing.

What kind of genius built a time machine with only one seat?​

"The one... with... the on the nose... capitalism metaphor... or... the fun-"

"You are both so NERDY!" Yang exclaimed with such delighted exuberance that it was almost possible not to take that as an insult. She came at least partway to releasing her grip, settling for leaving her hands on either of Blake's shoulders as she glanced over to Ruby. "But let me keep it simple, for my sake if no one else." she took a deep breath "We're in an alternate timeline where our team are all Salem's goons, and all of Salem's goons are Ozpin's students" She let go of Blake entirely, not so much on purpose except out a need to gesticulate as she held up both their fingers then crossed them passed each other "except you switch Ozpin and Salem around so instead of an immortal grimm monster queen we have a reincarnating grimm monster king. And to get home we had to collect all the relics, like we were doing back home anyways, and it was just me Rubes Qrow and my mom here, oh and Ilia too-

"Huh-?"

"-please save all questions til the end" Yang said with a snap of her fingers and a point, not entirely sure when she ended up standing but starting to pace "So we were running all over Remnant with a small and much less stabby Cinder and all her friends, and... a lot of things happened that I don't even know if I want to get into, because now we're all the way back in Vale again because apparently the brothers are back and they called, like, an audible or a foul or something AND THIS IS APPARENTLY SOME KIND OF GAME TO THEM SO WE GET SENT BACK TO THE START LIKE SOME STUPID OFFSIDES CALL"

She realized she was starting to raise her voice, and took another deep breath as she stopped pacing and covered her face with her hands.

"And Adam's a girl here. SO any questions?" She asked as she spun back towards Blake

"..."



she had... a lot of those, though for now she settled for glancing helplessly over to Ruby for some sort of... confirmation, or rebuttal, or an escape from some very confusing, unfunny, overly elaborate prank, the latter being her biggest hope despite all the unflattering descriptors.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"Just saying, guys. There were better plays."

Watts had no idea what she was talking about. This was all according to plan.

Unless Glynda was just flying them to one of those atlesian warships in the sky for detainment, which would be decidedly not to chalk.

 

[MyrtenRose]

With an emphatic swish that always made Mercury in particular flinch for whatever reason, her riding crop came out, the students found themselves roughly lifted off their feet, and just in case the entire flagpole housing the offending speaker was launched like a javelin into space before Goodwitch and her cargo took off with similar velocity, the huntress not keen on wasting so much as another second after what she'd just heard.

If they wanted to take this matter to Salem, far be it from her to deny them.

"Aboard the Goodwitch express....and Tyrian didn't even have to break any rules this time...nice."​

 

[MidwayLives]

"Aboard the Goodwitch express....and Tyrian didn't even have to break any rules this time...nice."​

'think there's still time for me to break some before we get there?'

Such was Tyrian's thought process anyhow.

With an emphatic swish that always made Mercury in particular flinch for whatever reason, her riding crop came out, the students found themselves roughly lifted off their feet, and just in case the entire flagpole housing the offending speaker was launched like a javelin into space before Goodwitch and her cargo took off with similar velocity, the huntress not keen on wasting so much as another second after what she'd just heard.

If they wanted to take this matter to Salem, far be it from her to deny them.

Down below, a handful of early risers and student rubberneckers were already starting to gather, others blearily sliding open their windows to ask what the ruckus was; all wondering precisely what some of Beacon's tournament favorites had said or done to end up so completely and imminently dead. Emerald, for her part, was grateful to whichever god wasn't one of the assholes hassling them in their dreams that none of them took notice of her, gingerly extricating herself from the bush she'd concealed herself a few yards away, dusting herself off, picking twigs and leaves out of her hair as she squinted up at her friends' fading dots on the skyline with a weary sigh.

Roman, still holding Neo's hand, looked from side to side.

"hey, maybe while we're all floating like this ISN'T the best time. But, given our increased proximity and all, I was thinking that MAYBE someone(not Neo) could maybe explain things to me? Just a thought."

 

[MyrtenRose]

It had been a long time since she'd ever felt this.......unsettled. Yes, that felt like the right word. Unsettled. As far back as she could remember, there had only been one or two instances that felt comparable to this in her life. Those few times had been awful to say the least, and so far this time was proving no different. From the morning she woke up in a cold sweat until now, all of them huddled around a couple fires in the middle of camp, it hung over her like a miserable storm cloud that she was unable to will away. There was something about it that she couldn't shake off. So she sat there by the biggest fire, just thinking about it, and doing her best to take comfort from the warmth of the flames, or the smell meat being cooked to perfection from a few fires down that managed to waft over this way.

They didn't give much comfort.

So she waited. Waited until most had gone off to do their own thing, whether that was just calling it a night and hitting the bed, or to continue their meal in solitude, or to play some ridiculous drinking game. Waited until at last, he got up, striding towards the big tent. Well, stumbling would have been more accurate, actually. She gave it a minute before she got up and followed after him, entering the tent as well. If she had been anyone else, a couple of the others who saw her might've made some smartass comment, taunt her about the idea of her in his bed. One of the stupider, drunker ones...but she was who she was. Respect was warranted to the second in command, not to mention by far the most powerful among them all. So the mouths stayed shut.

Almost a shame, really. She would have liked breaking someone's jaw, if only to at least try and get her mind off things.

Her entrance didn't go unnoticed, with Qrow sitting there, back slumped against his chair and facing her already, as if he had been expecting her to--

"About 55 seconds slower than I figured." His voice came out equal parts playful and gravelly.

Ah. He had.

"......I needed to talk to you."

"Yeah? Well spit it out already, V."

"Right. Sorry, boss." She sighed, a deep one, a hand simultaneously running through her hair. "This mornin', I woke up in a cold sweat. This dream I had, I...don't know how I'd put it all to words. There were.....flashes. I remember my arm--" Her hand softly rubbed down the opposite arm from elbow to wrist. "--it felt like it was dunked in lava. Every inch burning, melting away. An uncontrollable pain I couldn't soothe. And another flash, it felt....it felt like my life was being sucked away from me. Like everything that made me...me...was being torn away. Ripped from me. Taken by....something else. Fuck if I know. But worst of all, I just haven't been able to get rid of this feeling that....it wasn't a dream. That it was a warning, or a promise, or....shit, I don't know. It's been weighing on me all day. And.........................."

"And.......?"

She sighed again, already knowing how this would sound.

"A couple times today, when I was awake, moving.....I could have sworn I heard someone calling to me. Not like somebody in the camp, it was...a voice I didn't recognize. It...sounded strange, like it was both right next to me and yet coming from way out in the horizon. Like I said, this whole day...I haven't been able to shake this feeling that something big, potentially problematic is on the way."

"...So the reason you're bothering me is cause you got a drink that somebody spiked?"

"What."

"You heard me." His voice came out in a low, harsh growl.

"No, it's not like that--"

"Really?" He interrupted without a care, not even looking at her anymore. "Cause that's all I heard. Is this what you really came to say, V? You down the wrong liquor and now you're out of it, just like that?"He snapped his fingers mockingly.

"It wasn't like that."

"That's where you're wrong. It is exactly like that. I know it is. I felt...something similar."

"W-wait, you have?!"

"Yeah. You know what else? It was just a fever dream. It doesn't mean anything. Doesn't matter."

"But--"

"No." He shook his head. "No more. We're done here."

He won't listen. Ask yourself why. She heard that voice, deep within, but unlike the strange one from before, this one she recognized. She was silent for just long enough that he had gotten up and turned away from her entirely before she spoke again. "What if you're wrong?"

He almost immediately stopped in the middle of his stride. "I'm not."

"What if you are?"

"Then whatever happens, happens. We'll get by. Like we always do. We survive."

There it is. Do you see, at last? Vernal was silent for a little while following that, deep in thought. "We'll get by?" She eventually questioned. "See, I hear ya saying that but what I get out of it is that you mean, you will."

"What."

"You heard me." She echoed him from before, throwing that right back in his face.

He turned back around to stare her down after that, his eyes narrowed. "Care to repeat it?"

"Sure. This. Is. All. About. You."

He took a step closer in his drunken state, hand gripping his weapon hanging at his side, but that's the only step he took before he stopped. Stopped at the sight of her eyes burning the way they were, excess blue erupting out of the corners of them. Even drunk as he was, he wasn't that foolish. The glow in her eyes receded, for now. "Ya know, I grew up with stories about you. Qrow and Raven, the greatest of the generation before me. They sent you both off because you were already the best they had, and they hoped when you came back you'd be their anti-huntsmen weapons. That we wouldn't need to fear them anymore. Your sister turned her back when she was away, but you, you returned. A lot of them out there--" She waved her hand towards the exit of the tent. "-they celebrated your return. The prodigal son, back at last. Here to take us all to greatness! Tch." She scoffed.

"But I see it now. For you, it isn't about us. You don't really care, not one bit. You're here with us because it lets you do what you want. To get drunk all the time and waste away, and they just go along with it because you're the best of them. None of the others can challenge you, not truly. They know it and you know it." She hesitated. "I...I could, but......there's bigger things coming than playing kingdom in the dirt. I may not be able to explain it, but I feel it, and I've been raised my whole life to never ignore my instincts. If you want to stick your head in the sand and ignore it and continue on like this, fine, but I won't be here for it."

"Hmph. So what are you waitin' for, then? Go on, go! Get out. Leave. You won't be missed."

She left the tent without another word, but he wasn't the last thing she heard. It was the voice again. I knew you had it in you.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"And Adam's a girl here. SO any questions?" She asked as she spun back towards Blake

"..."

she had... a lot of those, though for now she settled for glancing helplessly over to Ruby for some sort of... confirmation, or rebuttal, or an escape from some very confusing, unfunny, overly elaborate prank, the latter being her biggest hope despite all the unflattering descriptors.​

What she found instead of any of those things was a girl with a very flustered, goofy, perhaps marginally ill-conceived grin of apology on her face, and worse: what seemed to be the most unfortunate combo of a shrug and jazz hands ever.

"Eeheheh... maybe my time machine analogy wasn't as good as I thought. Way to ease her into it, Yang."

The dig had no bite, nor did the huff of exasperation she followed it up with, eyes drifting half-shut in thought as she chewed her bottom lip and replayed the back half of that recap in her mind.

"That does sound like the gist of things, except... where are you getting this stuff about the Brothers?"



The question hung heavy in the air like a stormcloud over the horizon, and while it wasn't quite accusatory there was almost a frustration to the tone she uttered it with, if not directed towards Yang. Because while the Brothers rearing their big, pointy heads at any stage of this nightmare would've been news to Ruby, she did get the strangest feeling now that Yang was bringing it up; not quite deja vu, but like she was stumbling onto a memory that existed, some prior event or occurrence that would've validated what Yang was saying if she could only pin it down.

"I mean, that feels kinda big. And it doesn't sound wrong, so why don't I..."

Except... trying to focus on that feeling was like trying to hunt down a bolt of lightning in the stormcloud before it struck. The harder she tried the further it flitted out of reach, and if she tried too much it actually... kinda... hurt...

"...I just don't... really..."

"...remember that part..."

...
















"...aaaaaAAAAAAAAANDSUDDENLYIDON'TCAREANYMOREBECAUSEISEEWEISSSSSSS!"

Spoiler: But with Weiss heads

Ruby's mental hiccup was right on the verge of being too long, too harrowing, and too debilitating to really be classified as a hiccup anymore, but scarcely a fraction of a second before either of the other two could find words to articulate any concern did Ruby suddenly explode to life like an animatronic having a coin inserted into it. It seemed as though the target of her hopeful search following their discovery of Blake had actually been located, and Ruby giddily flapped her arms, pointing manically up at a distant skybox the full breadth of the stadium away; where, in fairness, they could just about make out a prim figure gripping the railing and looking down at them, a shock of neatly segmented white hair framing equally pale skin.

"WEISS! WEISSSSSSSS! DOWN HEEEEERE!!! HOW COME YOU'RE SO FAR AWAY, DUMB DUMB??? WEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS! HEY, WHO'S THAT GUY BESIDE YOU? WEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS! IT'S USSSSSSSSSS! TEAM RWBY REUNITED!"

Devoid of sugar and already hoarse, burned out and exhausted, Ruby sagged, fighting to catch her breath with a sullen pout.

"Why is she ignoring me? Blake, can you see that far?"

Spoiler: What Blake's faunus eyes see in the skybox

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



"Gravitational thrusters?"

Swipe. "100%."

"Zero-point energy diffusion buffers?"

Swipe. "100%."

"Pressurization field."

Swipe. "Online."

"Backup hardlight generation capacitors."

Pause. "We did the backup, sir."

"The auxiliary backup?"

"I wasn't aware there were auxiliary backups. One moment..." Winter Schnee, Atlesian operative, crossed to the bridge overlooking the arena proper, swiping through a few more systems diagnostics on the scroll she'd been issued until she found the pertinent schematic. "...The projections bottom out around 89%. Just the odd flicker every now and then, still well within acceptable parameters."

Ironwood scratched his neck, mulling it over for all of zero seconds where he was standing in the elevated portion of the skybox, staring at some consoles. "Let's not take any chances."

A soft exhale through the nose, imperceptible from that range, was all that preempted her next response, Winter chiming back dutifully without so much as a delay. "Very good, sir."

Winter liked her job. Truly, she did. The general had given her a home when she needed one, a sense of belonging when she lacked one, and a firm shoulder to lean on in her perennial want of one; He was a good man, and any decisions he made were with the best interests of his kingdom, his soldiers, in mind. He had never given her any reason to doubt that.

That said, even she was inclined to think getting her up at 0500 hours to conduct the same routine checks they'd carried out every morning for the last week, checks engineers far more knowledgeable than either of them in the field were being paid to conduct, was a bit much.

"Do I detect a note of dismay, specialist Schnee?"

He could also be annoyingly perceptive when he had the mind to be.

She sighed, a fuller rendition of the sound she wanted to make earlier. "...No, sir. I just... can't help but wonder whether this is the most productive use of our time."

Ironwood's hum was a sound so neutral it could've formed its own political party with a few signatures. "And was picking a fight with Salem's top huntress immediately upon arrival in the kingdom, while on duty no less, a productive use of your time? Of Atlesian military time?"

Winter sniffed. "I'd hardly call Branwen her best at this point. And she was... being disorderly. I had to make an example."

"Had to?"

"Chose to."

His second hum still rang with a note of disapproval, though skewed more plainly towards amusement this time.

"She was sloppy."

"She was taking it easy on you."

"That's doubtful. Still no word?"

He sighed, a sentiment far wearier than anything he was intent on externalizing briefly making its way to the surface before he shut it down. "Raven was never one for these things. Tournament fighting or... festivals. Togetherness. She'll turn up in due course. Either way, it's for Salem to deal with her people; I have my hands full with mine. Speaking of which..." He cleared his throat. "Get the rest of this done and I'll give you a few hours' leave before the preliminaries start. You can catch up on your sleep then."

"Sir." She gave a stiff nod of gratitude, though an earnest one. "I've left a note for the technicians to examine the auxiliary generator. Shall we proceed?"

"Excess dust dispersal systems."

Swipe. "100%."

"Environmental hydraulics."

Swipe. "Online."

"Can I get your opinion on something?"

"Always, sir."

He tensed up his jaw, stroking it pensively as he gazed deeply into his reflection on one of the console screens. "I'm thinking of growing my beard."

"Shut up." She almost dropped the scroll, grateful the general was too busy examining himself to notice as she fumbled madly to catch it before it disappeared into the stands below.

He ignored her momentary lapse in subordination, continuing to preen himself as he touched his hair and inspected his profile from either side. "I've been wanting to do something about all this grey stuff, too."

"...Sir."

"I'm 39, for god's sake--"

"Sir."

"Specialist?"

"There are people down there." She wouldn't even have clocked it had she not practically flung herself over the railing to snatch the scroll, so far off in a distant corner of the arena floor were they, but now that she was looking in their direction it was unmistakable. One of them even appeared to be shouting at her.

"...What? No," he denied flatly, suddenly alert.

"There are."

"The colosseum isn't configured to accept spectators until noon, Winter. The techs don't show up until 8, and we're the only ones with this morning's access codes."

"Unless we aren't." A few much more fervent taps on the scroll's interface brought up a live feed of that quarter of the arena on the monitors, eliminating any further room for skepticism; three figures, one clad in scarlet reds, the other yellows and tans, and the final in monochrome hues. Those color schemes alone meant they were unlikely to be Atlesian. At first she and the general were merely baffled, heads tilting almost in unison as they stared at the feed in bewilderment.

It was only when they studied the last figure in particular that that bewilderment started to shift towards recognition. Then comprehension; then horror.

"...That couldn't be-?"

"It is."

The general's voice was almost a growl, now, a stark contrast to his usual steely composure, metal hand clutching at the railing tightly enough to warp it beyond all recognition. Ironwood was hardly one for letting his emotions get the better of him, but when he did it was a fearsome sight; Winter had to actively quash an old impulse to flinch trying to worm its way to the surface. "She's even younger than the files say," she murmured, thoughtful. "Then the other two... the reports of Sienna liaising with the local criminal element here are true. Any ideas who they may be?"

"Some."

The general sounded far away, his eyes screwed shut, mind racing to try to get ahead of this quite frankly unprecedented occurrence. Winter turned her attention back to the scroll, beginning the motions of raising Salem. "We need to get ahead of this. I'll contact Salem then get a squad-"

"No." He grabbed her wrist, shocking her slightly, and this time the old impulse couldn't be ignored as she pulled away on instinct. "I... apologies, Winter. But let's keep this closed circuit. Military channels only... for now."

There was a moment—A singular, fleeting moment, yet one that seemed to hang in the air all the same—where Winter looked like she didn't believe what she was hearing. But that moment passed, and the ironclad tones of the specialist returned.

"Sir, I don't—We need to cancel the event. Postpone, at the very least. Surely this changes everything?"

He considered it, and in fairness to him, took more than zero seconds to reach a conclusion this time.

It took him all of two.

"And let Atlas look like a kingdom of naive idiots in front of the entire world?" He shook his head.

"I can't have that. Get Ciel on the line and activate the hardlight barriers. Trap them on the arena floor."

He reached below the folds of his coat for his concealed holster, one of two engraved handguns—Though they had more in common with hand cannons—glinting in the lowlight.

"We'll handle this in-house."

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

Back down below and several hundred yards away, the heartwarming reunion was suddenly juxtaposed by a clinical blue glow as hardlight shields sprang up around the bleachers and tunnel exits.

"Y'know, I guess a lot of people have white hair."​

 

[MyrtenRose]

"SALUTATIONS, headmistress! Why, you've just caught me carrying out my vocal exercises for today's THRILLING arrangement of bouts! Fah-la-la-la-lahhhhhhh!~♪ Indeed, such a compelling field of finalists DEMANDS no less than the FINEST in play-by-play accompaniments, and Bartholomew and I SHALL NOT DISAPPOINT! Tell me, have you ever imagined an imaginary Menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary Menagerie?! Hoho, I think not! Impressed that I was able to question you with such fluidity, though, aren't you?! HmhmhmHMMMM. Brrrrr. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Red leather, yellow leather. Oho, wait until you hear THIS one! Professor Peter Port picked a peck of pickled peppers; A peck of pickled peppers Peter Port picked; If Professor Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Professor Peter Port picked?! Well? WELL?! Shall I color you impressed, or THUNDEROUSLY impressed?!"

"No, Peter, I hardly think that will be neces--" Despite her attempt, it was already too late. The booming nature of his exercises drowned out her polite insistence on not being subjected to that, and she knew well enough by now that once he got started, he would not stop until he decided he was done. Some other headmasters might have had less decorum, Theo came to mind, but she did not interrupt. She listened through that whole exercise with the utmost politeness, even reacting with a soft clap when he finished. "You may color me impressed, indeed." She didn't truly mean it but there was no point to raining on his parade.​

"Eh? Hmm? Been trying to say something, have you? Speak up, madame headmistress! What's all this about miss Branwen?"

"Yes, as I was saying. I have not seen her lately, and she's not answering her scroll. I simply wished to know if you had--"

That question went unfinished, as a most unexpected occurrence decided now was the time. Glynda landed like an errant rocket before her, followed almost immediately after by a whole congregation of students. The action threw up a whole lot of dust and the wind raced through her hair from the impact but Salem hardly reacted to it at all, simply raising her mug to her lips and taking a quick sip, her offhand brushing some dust off her outfit. She had lived a really long time, and she felt relatively confident she could say she had seen it all before. Even if she had not, this occurence did not faze her."Glynda. Good to see you. What is the occasion? A reenactment of your own landing strategy, is it?" She joked, swirling her mug with a sly smile.

Before there was any answer, Cinder swiftly interjected. "Um, actually, headmistress...we were hoping to have a talk with you. Privately?"

Her eyes moved from Glynda to their young maiden and back again. "I see. It must be urgent."

"It is."

"Very well." Salem agreed without further delay. Glynda would not have taken such an approach if it was not important. "My office, then, shall we?" She turned towards Port and nodded in farewell for now before turning to lead the way to the elevator.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

What she found instead of any of those things was a girl with a very flustered, goofy, perhaps marginally ill-conceived grin of apology on her face, and worse: what seemed to be the most unfortunate combo of a shrug and jazz hands ever.

"Eeheheh... maybe my time machine analogy wasn't as good as I thought. Way to ease her into it, Yang."

The dig had no bite, nor did the huff of exasperation she followed it up with, eyes drifting half-shut in thought as she chewed her bottom lip and replayed the back half of that recap in her mind.

"That does sound like the gist of things, except... where are you getting this stuff about the Brothers?"



The question hung heavy in the air like a stormcloud over the horizon, and while it wasn't quite accusatory there was almost a frustration to the tone she uttered it with, if not directed towards Yang. Because while the Brothers rearing their big, pointy heads at any stage of this nightmare would've been news to Ruby, she did get the strangest feeling now that Yang was bringing it up; not quite deja vu, but like she was stumbling onto a memory that existed, some prior event or occurrence that would've validated what Yang was saying if she could only pin it down.

"I mean, that feels kinda big. And it doesn't sound wrong, so why don't I..."

Except... trying to focus on that feeling was like trying to hunt down a bolt of lightning in the stormcloud before it struck. The harder she tried the further it flitted out of reach, and if she tried too much it actually... kinda... hurt...

"...I just don't... really..."

"...remember that part..."

Yang had winced when Blake opted not to play into her offer to clarify what she was genuinely aware was total nonsense in favor of Ruby, and she was rubbing the back of her head and trying to figure out how to compound 3 months of insanity into some sort of sensical explanation. But Ruby's words, and more importantly her tone, were setting warning bells of in her head, and she took a step closer to her.

"Hey, hey, its okay. You were..."

Off to one side were the outsiders, migrants from another world, another story; Qrow Branwen's form indicated a flurry of motion before they had all been rendered still, posture coiled as if mid-flight, scythe clenched in one fist and teeth bared in a fierce snarl. His twin and her daughter flanked either side of him, almost a mirror for one another in themselves, while rounding out their quartet hung one Ruby Rose: eyes closed, skin pale, a match even for Roman in her uncompromising stillness.

"... out of it." Yang finished weakly, worry clawing up her throat like bile as her memories continued to sharpen. Ruby had to be okay. There genuinely wasn't a worse scenario in Yang's mind than Ruby not being okay, if the brother's had-

..aaaaaAAAAAAAAANDSUDDENLYIDON'TCAREANYMOREBECAUSEISEEWEISSSSSSS!"

Ruby's mental hiccup was right on the verge of being too long, too harrowing, and too debilitating to really be classified as a hiccup anymore, but scarcely a fraction of a second before either of the other two could find words to articulate any concern did Ruby suddenly explode to life like an animatronic having a coin inserted into it. It seemed as though the target of her hopeful search following their discovery of Blake had actually been located, and Ruby giddily flapped her arms, pointing manically up at a distant skybox the full breadth of the stadium away; where, in fairness, they could just about make out a prim figure gripping the railing and looking down at them, a shock of neatly segmented white hair framing equally pale skin.

"WEISS! WEISSSSSSSS! DOWN HEEEEERE!!! HOW COME YOU'RE SO FAR AWAY, DUMB DUMB??? WEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS! HEY, WHO'S THAT GUY BESIDE YOU? WEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSS! IT'S USSSSSSSSSS! TEAM RWBY REUNITED!"

Devoid of sugar and already hoarse, burned out and exhausted, Ruby sagged, fighting to catch her breath with a sullen pout.

"Why is she ignoring me? Blake, can you see that far?"

In Yang's defense, her nerves had been utterly shot over the hour in whatever sense of fucked up temporality you measured jumping backwards in time, and her hand that been reaching out for a comforting shoulder suddenly snapped back to her side as she bounced on her feet with a flustered gasp as Ruby went from looking like she was on downard spiral to calling out the last member of team RWBY. She whirled to follow Ruby's eyeline, squinting to try and make out if Weiss god damn Schnee really was up in that box as she put her hands out in exasperation.

"Seriously?"

Blake, who'd finally gotten back to her feet in the midst of Ruby's silence and Yang's obvious worry, let out a small sigh of relief and turned her gaze up to follow Ruby's, far less excited or flabbergasted than the other two considering as far as she knew she'd seen Weiss like... ten minutes ago.

"Gravitational thrusters?"

Swipe. "100%."

"Zero-point energy diffusion buffers?"

Swipe. "100%."

"Pressurization field."

Swipe. "Online."

"Backup hardlight generation capacitors."

Pause. "We did the backup, sir."

"The auxiliary backup?"

"I wasn't aware there were auxiliary backups. One moment..." Winter Schnee, Atlesian operative, crossed to the bridge overlooking the arena proper, swiping through a few more systems diagnostics on the scroll she'd been issued until she found the pertinent schematic. "...The projections bottom out around 89%. Just the odd flicker every now and then, still well within acceptable parameters."

Ironwood scratched his neck, mulling it over for all of zero seconds where he was standing in the elevated portion of the skybox, staring at some consoles. "Let's not take any chances."

A soft exhale through the nose, imperceptible from that range, was all that preempted her next response, Winter chiming back dutifully without so much as a delay. "Very good, sir."

Winter liked her job. Truly, she did. The general had given her a home when she needed one, a sense of belonging when she lacked one, and a firm shoulder to lean on in her perennial want of one; He was a good man, and any decisions he made were with the best interests of his kingdom, his soldiers, in mind. He had never given her any reason to doubt that.

That said, even she was inclined to think getting her up at 0500 hours to conduct the same routine checks they'd carried out every morning for the last week, checks engineers far more knowledgeable than either of them in the field were being paid to conduct, was a bit much.

"Do I detect a note of dismay, specialist Schnee?"

He could also be annoyingly perceptive when he had the mind to be.

She sighed, a fuller rendition of the sound she wanted to make earlier. "...No, sir. I just... can't help but wonder whether this is the most productive use of our time."

Ironwood's hum was a sound so neutral it could've formed its own political party with a few signatures. "And was picking a fight with Salem's top huntress immediately upon arrival in the kingdom, while on duty no less, a productive use of your time? Of Atlesian military time?"

Winter sniffed. "I'd hardly call Branwen her best at this point. And she was... being disorderly. I had to make an example."

"Had to?"

"Chose to."

His second hum still rang with a note of disapproval, though skewed more plainly towards amusement this time.

"She was sloppy."

"She was taking it easy on you."

"That's doubtful. Still no word?"

He sighed, a sentiment far wearier than anything he was intent on externalizing briefly making its way to the surface before he shut it down. "Raven was never one for these things. Tournament fighting or... festivals. Togetherness. She'll turn up in due course. Either way, it's for Salem to deal with her people; I have my hands full with mine. Speaking of which..." He cleared his throat. "Get the rest of this done and I'll give you a few hours' leave before the preliminaries start. You can catch up on your sleep then."

"Sir." She gave a stiff nod of gratitude, though an earnest one. "I've left a note for the technicians to examine the auxiliary generator. Shall we proceed?"

"Excess dust dispersal systems."

Swipe. "100%."

"Environmental hydraulics."

Swipe. "Online."

"Can I get your opinion on something?"

"Always, sir."

He tensed up his jaw, stroking it pensively as he gazed deeply into his reflection on one of the console screens. "I'm thinking of growing my beard."

"Shut up." She almost dropped the scroll, grateful the general was too busy examining himself to notice as she fumbled madly to catch it before it disappeared into the stands below.

He ignored her momentary lapse in subordination, continuing to preen himself as he touched his hair and inspected his profile from either side. "I've been wanting to do something about all this grey stuff, too."

"....No. No, its Ironwood and Winter. Are you guys really sure we're not just in Solitas-" she started to ask as she turned, only to see Yang's face locked into a snarl as her fist's clenched, the small sound of her prosthetic grinding against itself making Blake's ears flatten.

"We're sure, I promise. What are they saying?" She asked. Blake turned back up to the box with a frown as she tried to make anything out, but it was too far for any sort of lip reading

"There are people down there." She wouldn't even have clocked it had she not practically flung herself over the railing to snatch the scroll, so far off in a distant corner of the arena floor were they, but now that she was looking in their direction it was unmistakable. One of them even appeared to be shouting at her.

"...What? No," he denied flatly, suddenly alert.

"There are."

"The colosseum isn't configured to accept spectators until noon, Winter. The techs don't show up until 8, and we're the only ones with this morning's access codes."

"Unless we aren't." A few much more fervent taps on the scroll's interface brought up a live feed of that quarter of the arena on the monitors, eliminating any further room for skepticism; three figures, one clad in scarlet reds, the other yellows and tans, and the final in monochrome hues. Those color schemes alone meant they were unlikely to be Atlesian. At first she and the general were merely baffled, heads tilting almost in unison as they stared at the feed in bewilderment.

It was only when they studied the last figure in particular that that bewilderment started to shift towards recognition. Then comprehension; then horror.

"...That couldn't be-?"

"It is."

The general's voice was almost a growl, now, a stark contrast to his usual steely composure, metal hand clutching at the railing tightly enough to warp it beyond all recognition. Ironwood was hardly one for letting his emotions get the better of him, but when he did it was a fearsome sight; Winter had to actively quash an old impulse to flinch trying to worm its way to the surface. "She's even younger than the files say," she murmured, thoughtful. "Then the other two... the reports of Sienna liaising with the local criminal element here are true. Any ideas who they may be?"

"Some."

The general sounded far away, his eyes screwed shut, mind racing to try to get ahead of this quite frankly unprecedented occurrence. Winter turned her attention back to the scroll, beginning the motions of raising Salem. "We need to get ahead of this. I'll contact Salem then get a squad-"

"No." He grabbed her wrist, shocking her slightly, and this time the old impulse couldn't be ignored as she pulled away on instinct. "I... apologies, Winter. But let's keep this closed circuit. Military channels only... for now."

There was a moment—A singular, fleeting moment, yet one that seemed to hang in the air all the same—where Winter looked like she didn't believe what she was hearing. But that moment passed, and the ironclad tones of the specialist returned.

"Sir, I don't—We need to cancel the event. Postpone, at the very least. Surely this changes everything?"

He considered it, and in fairness to him, took more than zero seconds to reach a conclusion this time.

It took him all of two.

"And let Atlas look like a kingdom of naive idiots in front of the entire world?" He shook his head.

"I can't have that. Get Ciel on the line and activate the hardlight barriers. Trap them on the arena floor."

He reached below the folds of his coat for his concealed holster, one of two engraved handguns—Though they had more in common with hand cannons—glinting in the lowlight.

"We'll handle this in-house."

"It... looks like they've seen us. and they're arguing about something." Not a pleasant argument either, both of them moving more animatedly than Blake had ever seen outside of a fight. "Do our scrolls still work? I'm gonna try something-"

Back down below and several hundred yards away, the heartwarming reunion was suddenly juxtaposed by a clinical blue glow as hardlight shields sprang up around the bleachers and tunnel exits.

"Y'know, I guess a lot of people have white hair."

Yang's fists immediately went up a moment after the shield's did, her scowl deepening as she quickly scanned the rest of the arena for threats. Blake, meanwhile, suddenly hunched her shoulders from where she was leaned over her scroll, eyes widening as the shields went up just a moment before she'd pressed the call button. Her eyes flicked back up to the control room, and at the same time she pressed it; nothing complex or devious, but simply trying to patch into whatever atlesian comm channel they'd normally used with the Ace Ops, genuinely not even sure if she really believed Yang and Ruby's haphazard explanations of what was going on, and equally unsure if this channel would even be open if they were backwards in time, in an alternate timeline.

"...Hello?" She eventually said into the speaker.

 

[MidwayLives]

It'd been the same dream.
Every time he tried to sleep.
He awoke in a furious unconceivable state.

Sitting at the edge of his bed, the man who'd gone by too many titles, too many monikers, to count ran his hands through his hair.

"30 years of ambition. All to be undone by...mere children?"

It sounded absolutely ludicrous; it WAS outrageous. But these hot flashes, these vague allusions. They were not just the inane creations of a restless mind. He was too sharp for that, too well composed. He was not a mad man you'd see locked away in a sanitarium. He'd made something out of Mistral. An entire organization of scoundrels and criminals feared him and yet knew absolutely nothing about him. Just as he preferred it. His room wasn't overly illustrious. Spending too much could draw unnecessary attention, arouse suspicious questions. Even the mansion that he lived in wasn't the 'best' mansion he could have bought with his riches but it suited him just fine. To live so openly beyond your means was no different than flaunting your wealth and that made you both an idiot and a target.

He'd not gotten this far by being foolish.

The windows around his bedroom were closed, not even a ray of sunlight peeked through the closed shades. Keeping one hand cupped to the side of his head, he reached out for his scroll and grabbed it from his nightstand. Holding it up to his ear, he began to speak.

"Aurora. I have need of you."

Another voice chimed in on the other end. It was young, squeamish, and most of all nervous.

"Y-Yes, Boss! W-What was it you needed?? Er, I'm sorry! I should have composed myself better before the call! I-"

"Enough. I ask if you've still had those reoccurring thoughts."

"...You mean of that gang? Those huntsmen who interfered in our business, Boss?"

There was an audible crack as the scroll was gripped so tightly the screen started to crack.

"Yes."

"I'd never lie to you, Boss. I just wish I understood what it all meant. Like...what are they? Dreams? Nightmares?"

The man inhaled and just as quickly exhaled. Standing up from his bed, he moved to one of the closest windows and gently began to pull at the blinds. "I've never been an overly religious man, my dear Aurora. But perhaps this is the handiwork of something greater than ourselves."

"I'm...I'm afraid I don't follow, Boss..."

"That's quite alright, my boy. What I'm getting at is that perhaps a higher power has granted us these images, these after-thoughts. For what reason you might ask? I think I know. This is a test."

"A test...?"

"A test to see if all our effort so far has been worth it. To prove to not just ourselves but the world that we've come too far to fall. To let ourselves be frightened by mere dreams that've yet come to pass? Insane. I'd sooner slit my own throat than risk throwing away my hard earned ambitions on the mere idea that someone might challenge my authority. Many have tried, Aurora and what's become of them? They've crashed against me and torn themselves asunder! I'll not see the fruits of my labor pissed away over mere DREAMS! Utter fiction!" The cracks began to spread across the scroll. Aurora yelped, gave it a moment, and then responded full of vigor. "Y-You're right, Boss! If that's what you truly think then I'm behind you 100%! Nothing's going to stand in our way! Absolutely nothing!"

A smile drew across the man's lips as he simultaneously relaxed his iron grip on the scroll.

"Now, onto more pressing matters. Has Émeraude gotten word to you yet on if we've received our latest shipment of Entropy?"

Aurora huffed and grumbled somethings under his breath. "It's coming in just fine! But, I...I don't like second-guessing you, Boss. You know I trust you wholeheartedly. But I just really don't know if we can trust Emeraude or that dealer. They just seem so shady!"

"Such is the nature of the beast, young innocent. The world of narcotics is not one for naivety or the ignorant. While I hear your concerns, let me put them to rest. That disgusting bat knows better than to risk double-crossing me. There're dozens of villages scattered across the whole of Mistral that'd love to see her head on a stake. It's only due to my protection that she escapes such a violent and, depending on who you might ask, well-deserved end. If she were to step out of line. Even just once, then that'd be it. She'd be thrown to the wolves. Whether it's literally or figuratively is up to whoever takes her first I suppose. As for our business partner, I'd be a hypocrite if I were to judge them too harshly for keeping their cards close to their chest. I'd be even more of a liar if I didn't admit that their secrecy also irritates me to no end. But we shall it be for now. Push them too hard and we risk losing revenue. Until the Narcotics Team can reverse-manufacture Entropy for ourselves and remove the need to keep from pulling back the veil on our mysterious friend, let them sleep a little easier at night knowing their privacy is safe."

For now.

"What of our Atlas operations?"

Aurora seemed to hesitate, and the man jumped upon it like a lion seizing his prey.

"Aurora? What are you so reluctant to tell me?"

"well...um...it's just that another one of our Atlas contacts got himself pinched. From what I was told they hacked his scroll and set up a false meeting. When he went there believing it was another pass off, the security forces nabbed him. He tried putting up a fight but obviously it didn't go his way or else I wouldn't be so upset having to report this to you and I was going to! Right away! The next time you talked to me. Heh....heh..." Aurora chuckled, nervously.

"...An utter idiot. Is this really the modicum of standards that our assets in Atlas are comfortable with? We're never going to expand further if our contacts are too incompetent to stay one step ahead of the authorities. Is Satin's position still safe?"

"I'm really sorry, Boss. It's...it's just different in Atlas I guess! Here we pretty much OWN the authorities, minus the huntsmen or whatever! Not much happens here without us knowing about it but Atlas is a whole different story. You try offering a soldier a bribe and it'll get fed up all the way through the chain of command. Can't even scratch your head without that damned Ironwood catching wind of it. But, no, uhm, Satin wasn't apprehended. He cut contacts with the informant before he got captured and even if he talks, he wouldn't have any information on Satin's current whereabouts." The man sighed and cracked open the blinds as little by little, rays of sunlight began to pierce trough the shadows of the room. "Pass along a message to Émeraude for me if you could, Aurora."

"S-Sure, Boss!"

"Tell her I want a prototype sample of Entropy produced in-house by the end of this month or I'll take the fingers on her left hand first and feed them to Shark. Then if she continues to delay, I'll start moving up the arm. The sooner we can refine this drug and get a better foothold in Atlas, the better. I'm loathe to rely on an outside for too long."

"Eugh..." The Boss was always so, uh, creative with his motivational instructions. "I'll get the message to her, Boss. But, don't worry about a thing. No matter what happens, you can always rely on me!"

"Thank you, Aurora. Goodbye for now."

"o-oh, um, bye Boss!"

The man set the scroll away from him and moved to exit the room.


If one were to look at the scroll he'd set aside, you'd never see the supposed call he'd just had in the messages.

As though it'd all been in his head...

 

[MyrtenRose]

She blinked several times in quick succession, letting out a groan as she returned to full consciousness. She rose up off the floor she was lying down on, and the first thing Ilia noticed was the darkness around her. It was not well lit here. Something that came as no surprise as her eyes began to adjust and she noticed that she was on the wrong side of a cell. A barely noticeable sigh of frustration escaped her then, along with a few choice words. "That really could have gone better."

Her hand pressed against her forehead as she went over the sequence of events to try and see where she had messed up. She'd awoken in Vale, far from home, and no idea how she'd even gotten there. Troubling was putting it mildly. She'd never been to Vale, let alone being there with no clue how. She didn't know the city much apart from the fact that Beacon was nearby, but she knew how the Fang operated. She'd gone looking for hideouts, safehouses, any sign of the White Fang at all. She found them, naturally. She had also apparently bit off more than she could chew. The last thing she could recall was sneaking in, trying to find a familiar face if there were any...either friend or foe. Either could potentially explain how she ended up here...especially the latter, given her strange arrival in this kingdom.

Unfortunately, she didn't make it that far. Last thing she knew before waking up in this cell was being knocked unconscious. Damn. It hasn't been that long since I've snuck into a place, how did I get caught off guard? She shook her head and sighed again. Her attention swiftly moved on, eyes glancing around the shadows, trying to determine if anybody was nearby.​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"It... looks like they've seen us. and they're arguing about something." Not a pleasant argument either, both of them moving more animatedly than Blake had ever seen outside of a fight. "Do our scrolls still work? I'm gonna try something-"​

Animated was certainly a word for it.

While Blake could make out the broad strokes, Winter had a much clearer picture of the mood the latest developments were casting over her commanding officer, and she couldn't much say she cared for it. His impatience was such that he practically snatched the scroll from her grasp when she succeeded in raising Ciel on the third or fourth try, and he shoved a chair out of his way with such force it collided with the far wall as he stalked across the bridge, issuing stern orders through the receiver. Once he hung up, he accessed Vale's remote equipment retrieval network and keyed in a choice few digits known only to him before tossing the device back her way, neglecting to look at her once throughout the process.

Though focused on the instructions she'd been given, she couldn't help but keep one eye on the general, watching with a small frown of consternation as he leaned over a console and waited, weary. It wasn't as if this were anything new. As someone who had chosen a fairly stressful career herself, she was of the opinion that James Ironwood had the single most stressful job in Remnant. The likes of Salem may have had the luxury of keeping things running on goodwill and a strong community of huntsmen and huntresses alone, but things on the frozen continent simply couldn't work that way. The amount of capital their kingdom generated, the industry required to keep it running, the military strength warranted to defend it and the sheer scope of the checks and balances one had to keep track of to hold it all together... if you hadn't seen him on a bad day, you couldn't possibly understand the crushing weight of the pressure this man existed under. At all times. That was his life.

It took a certain caliber of human to do what he did, as well as he had, for as long as he had done it. Winter had seen men break far worse dealing with far less significant amounts of stress. She'd grown up under the thumb of one.

Compared to some of the outbursts she'd seen then, this was nothing. Still...

She couldn't shake the thought as James' locker crashed into the skybox in a cacophony of noise.

She didn't care for it.

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

The Vytal Festival was supposed to be a celebration of peace.

That really, truly was the only agenda he'd come here in the interest of promoting. To show the other kingdoms that Atlas could defend itself, and it would defend them, too, if they let it. He had already proven as much with Mistral, these past months; when Lionheart's hold slipped, when its organized crime rings mobilized to an unprecedented degree, when the mountain kingdom's lowest gutter to its highest peak had been ravaged by a drug he knew Robyn Hill and her merry band of lowlifes were distributing to every corner of Remnant from their foothold in Mantle (even if he couldn't prove it). It hadn't been Salem who sent entire fleets of humanitarian aid, who split her kingdom's forces to stage a military intervention, who delivered on the promises she made to all of them. If it wasn't to do with Ozpin, she wasn't interested.

CRASH

That fell to him.

It always fell to him. To serve and protect. To do things the right way.

Others may have cut corners. Taken the path of least resistance. Done things the easy way. Lately, with certain revelations that had come to light about everything he had been told, everything he thought he believed, that was more apparent than ever. But he was no fool. The Vytal Festival stood for peace, yes, but for him it served as a reminder—A reminder of the debt his kingdom had yet to fully pay off.

A reminder that they were just three generations away from the worst conflict their world had ever known. War born from his kingdom's folly.

Two generations from sanctioned genocide. Ironwood had first entered the service answering to the men and women who fought to quell the Faunus uprising. He understood what they were, men and women with no place in any kind of future he intended to build, and had made it a mission to rip them out by the root and stem.

He hadn't entirely been successful. One gripe he would take with his own kingdom was its habit of venerating its history while refusing to learn from it, and some old 'war heroes' were beyond even his reach. He could reassign them, send them off to die in frozen corners of the world where they could be among their own; but he couldn't get rid of them. Not completely. Not without outcry.

This was different.
​

"...Hello?" She eventually said into the speaker.​

Winter's eyes widened slightly as her scroll beeped to signify the unauthorized attempt at transmission, causing Ironwood to snap over his shoulder as he assembled his tools. "What is that?"

"I... Belladonna is attempting to make contact."

"And how could she possibly have access to that frequency?"

"...It's... unclear, sir. It's not even part of the current rotation, it's Amity's pilot signal for if the CCT system ever fails... I'm patching it through to the console."

He said nothing, and no sooner than she had done so and Belladonna's ID appeared on-screen did her voice crackle through the speakers.

"...Hello?"

Winter's frown deepened. A bizarrely innocuous way for a ruthless killer to make contact, all things considered, and she didn't sound at all like she'd... imagined. She was just about to probe Ironwood for how to respond when she became aware of the man moving past her, carrying something large, cumbersome and metallic enough that the sound rang out when he braced it heavily against the railing. There was an accompanying click as the general slid a scope attachment into place, and she finally found the question she wanted to ask as she eyed the device with a look of hesitance.

"Sir? What do I... should we read them their rights?"

He snorted as though something about the question amused him, lining it up so the three fugitives were dead-center in his sights.

"Sure, Winter."

"You do that."

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



Several seconds of tense silence that lingered on for an eternity passed after Blake's message, the arena beginning to reconfigure itself around them as various hardlight-encased segments of the floor started to shift, detach, and levitate away from the main dais. Just when hope seemed grim that her transmission had gone anywhere useful did she receive her response, right as a green glow started to wash out the interior of the skybox.

"Hello. You're all under arre—"

Whatever warning, exclamation, or articulation Blake managed to express in that split-second was enough for Ruby, and the three reconstituted on one of the higher platforms in a shower of petals as she stared back down at the massive smoking crater where they'd just been standing blankly.

"...Did that dude just try to kill us—?"

Wherever she was going with that thought would have to wait as they were cut off by the distant shattering of glass followed by a far less distant hail of bullets bearing down on them, Ironwood's cannon attachment slung over his back for now as he fired down at them with dual pistols off a glyph-powered propulsion. While the general took the direct route from above, they could just about make out Winter pull up from a far more elegant dive through the window off the back of a radiant white gryphon, cutting a wide arc through the air and endeavoring to slash at all three of them as James landed heavily enough to leave a slight dent himself.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Animated was certainly a word for it.

While Blake could make out the broad strokes, Winter had a much clearer picture of the mood the latest developments were casting over her commanding officer, and she couldn't much say she cared for it. His impatience was such that he practically snatched the scroll from her grasp when she succeeded in raising Ciel on the third or fourth try, and he shoved a chair out of his way with such force it collided with the far wall as he stalked across the bridge, issuing stern orders through the receiver. Once he hung up, he accessed Vale's remote equipment retrieval network and keyed in a choice few digits known only to him before tossing the device back her way, neglecting to look at her once throughout the process.

Though focused on the instructions she'd been given, she couldn't help but keep one eye on the general, watching with a small frown of consternation as he leaned over a console and waited, weary. It wasn't as if this were anything new. As someone who had chosen a fairly stressful career herself, she was of the opinion that James Ironwood had the single most stressful job in Remnant. The likes of Salem may have had the luxury of keeping things running on goodwill and a strong community of huntsmen and huntresses alone, but things on the frozen continent simply couldn't work that way. The amount of capital their kingdom generated, the industry required to keep it running, the military strength warranted to defend it and the sheer scope of the checks and balances one had to keep track of to hold it all together... if you hadn't seen him on a bad day, you couldn't possibly understand the crushing weight of the pressure this man existed under. At all times. That was his life.

It took a certain caliber of human to do what he did, as well as he had, for as long as he had done it. Winter had seen men break far worse dealing with far less significant amounts of stress. She'd grown up under the thumb of one.

Compared to some of the outbursts she'd seen then, this was nothing. Still...

She couldn't shake the thought as James' locker crashed into the skybox in a cacophony of noise.

She didn't care for it.

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

The Vytal Festival was supposed to be a celebration of peace.

That really, truly was the only agenda he'd come here in the interest of promoting. To show the other kingdoms that Atlas could defend itself, and it would defend them, too, if they let it. He had already proven as much with Mistral, these past months; when Lionheart's hold slipped, when its organized crime rings mobilized to an unprecedented degree, when the mountain kingdom's lowest gutter to its highest peak had been ravaged by a drug he knew Robyn Hill and her merry band of lowlifes were distributing to every corner of Remnant from their foothold in Mantle (even if he couldn't prove it). It hadn't been Salem who sent entire fleets of humanitarian aid, who split her kingdom's forces to stage a military intervention, who delivered on the promises she made to all of them. If it wasn't to do with Ozpin, she wasn't interested.

CRASH

That fell to him.

It always fell to him. To serve and protect. To do things the right way.

Others may have cut corners. Taken the path of least resistance. Done things the easy way. Lately, with certain revelations that had come to light about everything he had been told, everything he thought he believed, that was more apparent than ever. But he was no fool. The Vytal Festival stood for peace, yes, but for him it served as a reminder—A reminder of the debt his kingdom had yet to fully pay off.

A reminder that they were just three generations away from the worst conflict their world had ever known. War born from his kingdom's folly.

Two generations from sanctioned genocide. Ironwood had first entered the service answering to the men and women who fought to quell the Faunus uprising. He understood what they were, men and women with no place in any kind of future he intended to build, and had made it a mission to rip them out by the root and stem.

He hadn't entirely been successful. One gripe he would take with his own kingdom was its habit of venerating its history while refusing to learn from it, and some old 'war heroes' were beyond even his reach. He could reassign them, send them off to die in frozen corners of the world where they could be among their own; but he couldn't get rid of them. Not completely. Not without outcry.

This was different.



Winter's eyes widened slightly as her scroll beeped to signify the unauthorized attempt at transmission, causing Ironwood to snap over his shoulder as he assembled his tools. "What is that?"

"I... Belladonna is attempting to make contact."

"And how could she possibly have access to that frequency?"

"...It's... unclear, sir. It's not even part of the current rotation, it's Amity's pilot signal for if the CCT system ever fails... I'm patching it through to the console."

He said nothing, and no sooner than she had done so and Belladonna's ID appeared on-screen did her voice crackle through the speakers.

"...Hello?"

Winter's frown deepened. A bizarrely innocuous way for a ruthless killer to make contact, all things considered, and she didn't sound at all like she'd... imagined. She was just about to probe Ironwood for how to respond when she became aware of the man moving past her, carrying something large, cumbersome and metallic enough that the sound rang out when he braced it heavily against the railing. There was an accompanying click as the general slid a scope attachment into place, and she finally found the question she wanted to ask as she eyed the device with a look of hesitance.

"Sir? What do I... should read them their rights?"

He snorted as though something about the question amused him, lining it up so the three fugitives were dead-center in his sights.

"Sure, Winter."

"You do that."

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



Several seconds of tense silence that lingered on for an eternity passed after Blake's message, the arena beginning to reconfigure itself around them as various hardlight-encased segments of the floor started to shift, detach, and levitate away from the main dais. Just when hope seemed grim that her transmission had gone anywhere useful did she receive her response, right as a green glow started to wash out the interior of the skybox.

"Hello. You're all under arre—"

Whatever warning, exclamation, or articulation Blake managed to express in that split-second was enough for Ruby, and the three reconstituted on one of the higher platforms in a shower of petals as she stared back down at the massive smoking crater where they'd just been standing blankly.

"...Did that dude just try to kill us—?"

Wherever she was going with that thought would have to wait as they were cut off by the distant shattering of glass followed by a far less distant hail of bullets bearing down on them, Ironwood's cannon attachment slung over his back for now as he fired down at them with dual pistols off a glyph-powered propulsion. While the general took the direct route from above, they could just about make out Winter pull up from a far more elegant dive through the window off the back of a radiant white gryphon, cutting a wide arc through the air and endeavoring to slash at all three of them as James landed heavily enough to leave a slight dent himself.​

Blake hadn't even registered what Winter was saying; her ears pinned back as she managed to yelp out "MOVE!" just an instant before the glass shattered. For a moment it looked as if she'd not followed her own advice, seemingly frozen in fear right before the blast enveloped her, but she and Yang came out of a tackle assisted roll through the side of the smoke a moment later

"You okay?"

"yea, yea" Yang cut off, her eyes still hardened into a glare she watched both the Atlesian's begin their descent. They separated with a mutual push as the gunfire started to rain, and it just took a glance and a flick of the eyes from Yang for them both to be on the same page as Blake drew her weapon; both of Yang's arms came up in a boxer's guard to catch the slash from Winter's sword while Blake's form once again vanished once it, the shadow clone's final moment catching the image of her preparing to throw Gambol. A gunshot rang out, and the chain scythe whipped around where it had been thrown so the ribbon's midpoint was wrapped around the gryphon's chest as its momentum circled back to Blake's waiting hand from where her dash opposite her throw had left her. It pulled Blake up with it, until she had enough upward momentum to give enough slack and launch herself at high speed towards the hard light shielding. she flipped mid-air land on the wall with a crouch and immediately leap off, angled towards the arena's jumbotron as she called out to the specialist.

"We're not here to fight you Winter! We're on the same-"

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

Down below, Yang's battlecry marked an Ember Celica-powered beeline straight for Ironwood's landing spot but it wasn't easy going, and definitely not a straight sprint; for as simple as they were, she knew Ironwood's pistols packed a serious punch, way more than she could just soak up and return before her aura broke. She moved with her fists up, eyes barely peeking over the top as she kept low and weaved left and right. Shots she couldn't fully couldn't avoid were caught on the edges of her gauntlets at as much of an angle as she could to shave power, the arena floor pocketing with small craters left in her wake. One shot she caught clean in the shoulder made her aura flare, but she rolled with the angle of the hit in a pirouette that left as little of her speed broken as possible as the closed the last few steps and swung both her fists down to blast herself upwards, only to roll with the jump and blast herself right back down, aiming to twist in the air to hit James with a spinning elbow strike. whether it struck or was blocked, she rebounded off the strike to land with her feet planted, both fists swinging once to eject the spent shells.

"Jimmy" She growled with an angry contempt it usually took familiarity to breed.


"...side." That glance had been less telepathic than it felt

 

[Gus Gungus]

There was always a downright hilarious level of disparity between how Glynda flitted down before Salem every bit as elegantly as her namesake, while the various aspects of WTCHMTEN along for the ride were dropped at her feet as unceremoniously as a snail shell dropped from on high by a hungry bird trying to extricate its occupant.

“Peter,” she said stiffly, largely to be polite.

“Hoho, Madame Goodwitch! As I live and breathe! It heartens me to know the word around campus travels fast with respects to the adroitness of my lexical prowess—“

That was as far as he got before his stout figure disappeared into the clouds as though he had downed a bottle of procured fizzy lifting drink, Glynda’s idea of obligatory politeness clearly far more limited in scope than Salem’s as she lowered her riding crop with a peremptory sniff.

“Headmistress. Put simply, prepare to have your morning ruined,” she uttered plainly, heels clacking in a metronomic rhythm as she stalked after her towards the elevator. “Were it any other group of students I wouldn’t be troubling you with this. All things considered, however, I think mister Watts and miss Fall at the very least have earned the right to plead their case to you prior to any punitive measures; Hence why I’ve opted to bring them to you as requested, and not directly to James.”

After about half those gathered entered she whirled, whipped the Disciplinarian out as a barrier, and glared at the others with brows that brooked no room for argument.

“This elevator is a maximum six occupancy.”

Arthur and Cinder were ushered inside, and after that it was a free for all to secure the final two spots.

The rest would be taking the same mode of transportation up Port had.​

 

[MidwayLives]

The rest would be taking the same mode of transportation up Port had.

Roman would NOT be left behind on whatever the hell was going on.

But he'd have to play it smart. He wasn't the strongest or the smartest.

Which may have sounded like negatives when looked at face value.

But nobody expected the wild card.

Having jabbed whoever was NOT Neo and was the closest to him, he made a rush for the elevator.

"GO, NEO, GO!"

Tyrian, for his part, took a less fist-oriented way to try and nab himself a spot.

Immediately dropping to all fours, his tail swung out, intending to use the length of it to try and sweep the feet of his compatriots.

He wouldn't have at all minded taking the alternative route. But he didn't really wanna pass up an opportunity to get physical.

 

[Gus Gungus]

Hazel was more rhinoceros than man as he barrelled through the corridors of the school, any students unfortunate enough to impede his massive frame little more than bowling pins in his path. His mission was simple, his motives as pure as such things came, and the adrenaline pumping through his mighty veins may as well have been rocket fuel.

The duo who came round the bend to block his progress on the final turn into the corridor housing Gretchen’s team, however, could not accurately be referred as ‘students’. At least, not with the knowledge he in particular could lay claim to.

It was at this point that Hazel encountered the first major oddity of the brave new world he found himself in, aside from the existence of that world itself. The man who stood before him was familiar, and yet his presence here was not; in his heart Hazel knew it should not have been, that Lie Ren’s systematic thrashing of the powerhouse on a certain train several months prior to their school year’s tragic end should have precluded him from standing where he now stood. He could recall it vividly, Valkyrie’s hired enforcer’s face as stoic and implacable as the dawn as he ducked and weaved around his every strike, landing three for each one Hazel failed to.

Yet disquietingly, he could now too recall a slightly different version of those same events, and indeed a slightly different version of Lie Ren. The broad strokes remained the same, yet for as much as his heart and soul screamed otherwise his memory now drew an image of the assassin on the train as a man who donned a simple yet effective mask when conducting business for his employer; a mask that spoke only in haiku for as long as it was worn, keeping the man beneath shrouded in mystery.

He smiled, an image every bit as mild as the rest of him.

“You look harried, friend. I daresay, emotional. Careful where you step.”

It was an innocent enough remark on the surface, yet there was no mistaking the air of menace behind it; made all the more apparent by the far less contradictory form of Pyrrha Nikos stepping around the corner behind him.

Indolent​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Roman would NOT be left behind on whatever the hell was going on.

But he'd have to play it smart. He wasn't the strongest or the smartest.

Which may have sounded like negatives when looked at face value.

But nobody expected the wild card.

Having jabbed whoever was NOT Neo and was the closest to him, he made a rush for the elevator.

"GO, NEO, GO!"

Tyrian, for his part, took a less fist-oriented way to try and nab himself a spot.

Immediately dropping to all fours, his tail swung out, intending to use the length of it to try and sweep the feet of his compatriots.

He wouldn't have at all minded taking the alternative route. But he didn't really wanna pass up an opportunity to get physical.

Watts had been taciturn the entire flight over, as well as through Cinder and Glynda's explanations, outside a slight furrowing of his brow at the mention of Ironwood. His thoughts had been scattered, admittedly, and the fact that his former headmaster turned the late joiner of the ozpinites as far as their last encounter had been concerned was just... doing general stuff right here in Vale hadn't registered yet. His relationship with Ironwood had been fraught to say the least, but he did have a perspective that none of the others did; he was the only one among them who actually hailed from Atlas. He at least understood what Ironwood had been trying to protect, even if he agreed with the general sentiment that his methods by the end were a bit shit, to say the least.

He wondered if that fall could be avoided this time

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

*Sounds of incredible violence in Amity Arena*

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

That, along with the likely utterly insane conversation they were about to attempt to have weighed heavily on his mind. Heavy enough that he only let out a tired sigh as the front of the elevator turned into an impromptu melee for the last two spots. Neo, who had honestly thought they were just going to talk this out like normal people, was caught totally off guard when Roman lashed out with a punch, so much so that her normally keen reflexes failed to avoid Tyrian's tail, and she let out a breathy squawk as she hit the floor with enough force that if it hadn't really been her the illusion would've shattered. She looked up to see Roman separated from her for the first time since their reunion, and her eyes widened slightly as she turned towards Tyrian with a pleading look as he stepped in-

Then the doors slid close, Watts jamming the door close button repeatedly because every second wasted was lives at this point frankly, and did his best to just ignore how betrayed Neo looked as they finished sliding shut and the elevator made a quiet ding.

Neo, for her part, stood frozen in place with her arm stretched for the elevator, just short of getting it jammed in there to force her way in, six person limit be damned.

This was fine. Roman was with two of the most powerful people in Vale, and a Maiden, and a two terrible traitors who nonetheless would protect him, and they were just riding an elevator. No one had ever died in an elevator, right? There was no chance of a mechanical failure resulting in a catostrophic fall, or an invisible assassin in the enclosed space, or for it to go too fast and shoot through the ceiling like a rocket, or-

 

[MidwayLives]

Spoiler: The Lab

"Entropy Test #...Ugh."

A hand that seemed to be made entirely out of darkness grabbed a nearby notepad and flipped through it before settling it's crooked thumb on a specific line of text. "Ahhh. #20. Alright." Some among the rest of the Narcotics Team considered her old fashioned for keeping so much of her data and test results in journals and notepads rather than solely on her scrolls and computers. It wasn't anything to do with preferring one or the other, it all came down to simple practicality above all else. Scrolls could be hacked, computers could be smashed apart or need updates and there might be no guarantee that everything you'd want would transfer over during the process. Besides, paper burned rather easily. If her team's position ever became compromised, she could always throw down some fire dust and burn the whole place down. After taking whatever, she'd had enough time to hold in her semblance. Sitting at a desk with a shadowy figure standing behind her massaging her shoulders and a web of elongated shadowy limbs performing other functions around the room. Some were carefully holding beakers filled with mysterious colorful liquids and labeling them, others were filing various canisters of dust away in containers and the two directly in front of her line of sight were jotting down notes in her notebook while the left took on the task of typing in her scroll.

This woman was none other than Émeraude Veloutée, the head of the Bound Ashes's Narcotics Team. It was through contact with her that the gang went about shipping and analyzing whatever drugs came their way. Others handled the whole money-handling bit of it all. That stuff was too mundane and boring for her to even consider sticking her nose in. Drugs were all well and good sure, they were how the gang raked in a huge source of their income, their tenuous standing in Atlas notwithstanding of course, but she tended to dabble in other projects with the resources she was afforded. Some of it under her benefactor's nose. The poor man sitting in a chair a few feet away from her with his arms and legs bound together and stuck to the chair was a part of said side work. Having managed to wriggle the covering down from his mouth, he coughed so hard his entire body seemed to tremble. His body coloration was corpse-like to put it generously. His eyes were bloodshot and a light trail of blood was running out from under his left nostril. There was also some slight swelling across his face, likely where he'd been punched or smacked around a good bunch. Standing over him were various monitors keeping track of his vital signs and on a metal table to his left there were various small canisters labeled 1-3.

"p...please...please let me go..."

Emeraude didn't give the man the dignity of turning to face him.

"You and I both know that's an impossibility at this point. You've seen too much. Besides, you were the one who approached us. Wanting to clear up your debt and all."

"I...I just...just wanted to pay back my loan...."

"-And you didn't have the lien to pay it. Or anything worth seizing. No family, no friends of any significance. I'm unsure of why you're suddenly experiencing cold feet now. When my colleague offered to wipe away the debt if you'd do a couple of peer-reviewed studies for me, you hopped on board right away."

The man struggled at his restraints but it was no good. He lacked the strength to break free of his own volition.

"I don't see any peers...*cough cough cough* you didn't even explain anything to me! You just roughed me up and stuck me here!" The man screamed and two of the hands facing him posed in a 'what can ya do?' type manner. "You're right. I was a bit untruthful. The truth is nobody's smart enough in the whole of Mistral to be a peer to me and well if I'd just gone ahead and explained every minute detail, you may have tried to run. Wouldn't have done you any good but you might have ended up more significantly damaged in the attempt and that could potentially effect my results. Can't have that, no no."

Before the man could protest any further, the sound of a door opening caught his attention. "oh thank the gods, help me! Help me!!" He screeched as he tried his best to rock from side to side in the chair, the metal legs screeching against the tiled floor. Descending the steps with a vanilla folder tucked under his left arm, which was a prosthetic, as a matter of fact, BOTH of his arms were prosthetics! Coming to a stop directly in between the captive man and Emeraude, the newcomer sighed and quietly pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"It doesn't look like you're synthesizing any Entropy to me."

"Are you here for a reason, Vio? Coming into my lab and nagging me doesn't count." The chemist snarked, the hands curling up defensively as Vio got closer and slapped the folder down on Emeraude's desk. "Reality check for you. This isn't YOUR lab. This is the Boss's lab and if Aurora and him find out that you've been spending time doing...whatever the hell it is you're doing rather than trying to produce some Entropy of our own, it's gonna be bye-bye Emeraude, bye-bye Cobalt, and bye bye Vio!"

"Oh no, however would the gang keep their books in order if they had to get rid of you?" Emeraude mocked, sounding as dispassionate as one possibly could. "If he's so concerned about how long it's taking me then perhaps you should run over how much lien is being put INTO this place, Vio. I'm not particularly interested in finances but I can tell you that it's not nearly enough. I've not had the pleasure of meeting our dear supplier face to face but I imagine their lab is a bit more well put together than some dingy warehouse. I'm trying to make the best of what I've been given. Don't ask me for rain while sticking me in a desert."

Vio squeezed at his forehead. It'd taken some years to be able to do it without threatening to rip off a piece of his own skin by accident. "Look, I get that. I do. But you gotta understand that if I were to go to Aurora right now and demand more money? I'd be lucky if all I get away with is Shark threatening to bite off my feet or legs. Atlas...for better or worse, is what the Boss has his eyes set on right now. He's apparently confident that if we can get our own supply of Entropy going and get it spread out there? It doesn't matter what Ironwood does, every scoundrel poking under Atlas's skin is gonna wanna get their hands on it." He looked back at the man who'd taken advantage of the two talking to try and scoot his chair closer to the stairs. Only for the shadowy hands to grab the legs of the chair and audibly drag it back to the center of the room. All while Emeraude continued to look up from her desk. "I mean, what are you even DOING here?"

"Atlas is a money hole. Unless we can get significant forces over there to make a dent in the weight their security has, we'll constantly be playing chicken trying to do business before the authorities come in and rip it all down. But I suppose you're right, Vio. I'm not being paid (and not very well I might add) for my opinion on matters such as that. If you really must know, I'm attempting to see if I can do one better than our gracious partner. Manufacture something that does more than affect one's aura."

"I'm not following."

"Have you ever thought of the possibility of replicating one's semblance? The sheer potential behind such a prospect?"

Vio's eyes widened as did the resident captive. "What?!" They both shouted in unison. "THAT's what you've been throwing our money into?! You're not the first person to think of something like that, Emeraude! Don't you think that if it was possible that Atlas would have rolled it out years before any other kingdom?? They'd have armies of semblance-clones walking down the streets, patrolling every corner, and what have you! If THEY can't hack it, why the hell do you think you're going to be able to?!"

"If you'd go ahead and relax for a moment, I can try to explain. Have you heard of the man...? Ichabod Crane?" Emeraude asked, her bat wings folding in slightly as she leaned back in her chair. Vio seemed a bit befuddled before eventually shrugging. "Uh, yeah? Kinda? He was some kinda infamous guy who fought in the war or something right? Why bring him up? Thought you faunus hated his guts."

Emeraude brushed off that last comment with a dismissive flick of her wrist. "Holding grudges takes up far too much unnecessary time and energy. Neither of which I can afford to throw away. Whatever crimes he may or may not have done matters little today. Besides, even if I were the least bit spiteful it'd be too late anyhow. The man's been dead for years." Again, Vio seemed puzzled and annoyed, mostly annoyed. "Okay??? So you brought up a dead guy who may or may not have comitted grievous war crimes against your people. Maybe I'm just an idiot but I'm really not getting the relevance here??"

"Entropy acts as a stimulant to one's aura. Mixing in fire aura will turn you into a walking burning man. Electric aura will turn you into a walking EMP. But what if you upped the dosage? In an effort to try and irreversibly alter the soul as a whole." Vio held up his hands and shook them as he took a step back. "Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Messing with the soul?? I mean, Emeraude, we don't even know how exactly THEY got Entropy working! Sounds like it'd be a whole lot less of a hassle if you just tried imitating it wholesale than this weird divergent strain you're going for??"

Emeraude nodded and she rested her cheek against one of her manifested hands. "I'm certain it'd be a lot less troublesome if I were to have direct access to Ichabod's corpse. If I were to mix in DNA samples with an increased dosage of fire dust infused Entropy, if my theories bare any fruit, it could potentially lead to a remnant of Ichabod's being, his soul, manifesting inside the user's own soul, his aura mixing with theirs and if all goes well? Allowing them to use his semblance as he had. Replicate that on a mass scale and you could bring entire kingdoms to heel." Vio, too flustered to stand, pulled up a chair next to Emeraude and propped his elbows on the closest side of her desk. "Ok. Ok, let's...let's run with this crazy-"

The hands suddenly grabbed at Vio, their fingers turning into razor sharp claws.

"I am NOT crazy!"

"ok! okay! Sorry, sorry!"

Emeraude glared daggers and flared her nostrils before the darkness relented and pulled back.

"...phew. A-All I'm saying is that all you're operating on is JUST theories! I mean, you said something about increasing the dosage, do we even have any verifiable proof on what happens when you OD on this stuff and I mean, as far as DNA stuff goes, wouldn't the guy have been buried in a veteran's cemetery? No that I'm suggesting we go grave robbing or anything."

"Presumably, yes, he would have been buried in Atlas. But rumor has it that he was done in by a member of that faunus extremist group."

"The Shadow Claw?"

"Is that what they're calling themselves these days?"

"I dunno. That might have been one that didn't last long. Shinjiro or something? Meh."

"Right. Anyhow, that club that Ichabod was rumored to have had a hand in after the war burned down around the same time. If he was murdered there's probably nothing but ashes left. Nothing worth investigating or exhuming the site for." It was only then that Emeraude finally stood up and pushed her desk in, her shadow walking alongside her as one of the hands reached over and grabbed a vial off the metal table. "As for your other question, no, we haven't. But I believe our friend here will let us see just how high we can go. Won't you?"

"help me!!!" The man screamed his lungs out but it was to no avail. Emeraude gave him the first dose of Entropy, mixed in with fire dust.

The man had answered a couple of preliminary questions while Emeraude had gotten everything set up. He hadn't been able to unlock his aura on his own or even had a clue what his semblance was! Another facet that she was greatly interested in: if she had managed to secure a sample of another deceased individual's DNA and mixed it in with the Entropy, would it force their semblance to unlock and if it did, if it did carry a remnant of that person's soul, who's to say for certain that they wouldn't be able to assert some degree of control over the user, provided they were weak willed enough? All theories that she would have liked answers to. Which meant that she and a couple of her associates were going to have to take a trip to the local cemetery later. As for the here and now, the man screeched like a banshee as his aura shimmered around him, flames dancing across it as though he was wearing a coat of fire. It looked absolutely horrific to an outsider's perspective but for the man, he'd never felt SUCH A RUSH BEFORE!

It felt like every orifice was burning but that was HIS aura! He-He'd done that and this stuff had helped him do it! He panted like a bitch in heat and gripped tightly onto the armrests of his chair as the flames continued to writhe across his aura like a dragon coursing through the sky. "More! More!!!!" He yelled and Emeraude nodded and her hands went to work supplying him with another dose, all while making sure to detail every little window of his reaction. The next dosage caused the flames to flare and lash out as they began to take on a blue shade. "MORE!! MORE!!!" Shouted a man who'd before this point had never even given the slightest thought to activating his aura. That was a huntsman's job. He was content with just being who he was. Who he was...WHO HE WAS!! The flames began to spread across the chair and Emeraude took a cautious step back.

"You know I've gotta be honest, I've never touched the stuff myself. Don't get high on your own supply and all that. But, uh, is this...normal?? After what, just three doses??" Vio asked.

"They made it very clear that when used on those who hadn't unlocked their aura through their own means would have a stronger reaction than most. I just wasn't expecting it to be this strong. Perhaps it all depends on the individual themself. You, for example, might not have such an adverse reaction." Another dose was added from afar and the flames soared even higher, the man a humanoid-shaped silhouette inside the roaring embers. Emeraude believed the drug was most safely used with intervals in between. Rushing it all at once like this..

She could see his aura cracking, his flesh beginning to bubble. The restraints burning to cinders under the intense heat. "Vio! Behind me!" Her darkness rose up and Vio didn't hesitate as he stood behind Emeraude as the man clambered to his feet, his body awash with blue fire. "MORE....MORE!!" Glancing down at his hands and seeing the shimmer of his aura flowing over them, his hands snapped up and gripped either side of his face. "I can FEEL it! The rush! It's...It's absolutely INTOXICATING! I NEED to FEEL IT INSIDE AND OUT!"

Vio cupped a hand over his mouth.

Spoiler: PLEASE ONLY CLICK IF HAVE STRONG STOMACH

"Emeraude!! Y-You've gotta do something!! He's gonna burn this whole place down!"

"No.."

"No?! He's literally ripping his own face off!! And he's STILL on fire!!" Vio watched as the burning man looked over at the table full of other samples of Entropy that the Narcotics Team had put off to the side to run tests on. "More...I NEED MORE!!" The man gargled, bits of burning flesh falling from his exposed bones as he reached out towards them. "If he touches all those different samples, who KNOWS what kind of reaction the fire dust will have with it?! He could blow this entire building and neighborhood sky-high! We've GOTTA stop him!" Thrusting out his left arm and inserting a cylinder of Ice Dust in a slot on the back of his hand, a light centered in the palm of his hand lit up and fired a stream of ice that froze over the samples. There was still the potential for an adverse reaction if any of the samples got broken out of their containers but at least a huge disaster had been averted. For the time being anyhow. The man hadn't exactly been too thrilled about the denial of his continued high however and looked towards Emeraude and Vio.

"Don't get in ...my...way...IN MY WAY!!!" He roared as he slammed his palm against the wall of ice and in an instant, steam began sizzling off and filling the room. Emeraud looked absolutely fascinated. "...Amazing. This man's constitution must not have been strong enough to handle all these doses in quick succession and yet even as he falls apart at the seams, he craves more of the drug. I'm quite interested to see what it'd do on someone with a bit more resiliency."

"DO SOMETHING!!!"

She sighed.

Interested as she may have been, she supposed that Vio, even in the midst of all his frantic panicking had a point. If this man was allowed to continue until his body fell apart of it's own volition, he could risk burning the entire lab to the ground and she could ill afford that. Holding her own hand out, the shadows in the room were pulled to the wall directly facing the Man's back and began swirling in the shape of a portal.

But it was as though the Man had never even bothered to look over his shoulder. Having burned a hole through the ice, he moved to scoop up the samples, irregardless of whatever happened to him or his surroundings if he did. Before his hand got close enough to make contact, he felt a dozen hands wrap around his burning body and began to pull him towards the shifting mass of darkness spread across the wall. Emeraude winced and watched as the flames began to spread across every limb that came in touch with the Man's body. "NO!!! I...NEED...IT..I..need itneeditneeeeeeddddditttttttt!!" The Man howled, his exposed jawbone gnashing together as he reached the makeshift portal and with Emeraude closing her hand into a fist, the Man's life was brought to an abrupt and undignified end.

*SNAP* *TWIST* *CRUNCH*

The multitude of hands and tendrils snapped the Man's body every which way as though he was a flaming ragdoll. A leg bent this way, an arm that way and his back snapped in half. But even as his aura faded, the flames that had already spread to Emeraud's darkness and the ice wall didn't go. Watching as the man's mutilated body began to practically fall apart, Emeraude narrowed her eyes.

Spoiler: the effect of too many drugs

Vio slumped down onto his rear, having fallen right out of his chair.

"By the gods, Emeraude!!! You nearly got us and maybe the entire block killed if you hadn't stepped in! Why the HELL did you let it get that far?!"

"I thought that'd be obvious by now. Science. Did you see how singlemindely he pursued the rest of the Entropy samples? Even as his body was caving in on itself? That those flames were begining to be more than his own newly manifested aura could deal with? Utterly fascinating and look! The flames continue to burn even after his death."

"Are we even SURE he's dead...?"

"Hrm. Better safe than sorry..."

*SNAP*

She broke the Man's neck.

"Now, he is."

Watching as the Man's corpse was subsumed by the darkness of Emeraude's semblance, Vio sat back with his head resting against the underside of the faunus's desk. If it'd had a reaction like that on a guy who didn't seem to have a clue about aura or whatever?

...He had to admit he was kind of curious what kind of effect it'd have on HIM...

 

[MyrtenRose]

“Headmistress. Put simply, prepare to have your morning ruined,” she uttered plainly, heels clacking in a metronomic rhythm as she stalked after her towards the elevator. “Were it any other group of students I wouldn’t be troubling you with this. All things considered, however, I think mister Watts and miss Fall at the very least have earned the right to plead their case to you prior to any punitive measures; Hence why I’ve opted to bring them to you as requested, and not directly to James.”

After about half those gathered entered she whirled, whipped the Disciplinarian out as a barrier, and glared at the others with brows that brooked no room for argument.

“This elevator is a maximum six occupancy.”

Arthur and Cinder were ushered inside, and after that it was a free for all to secure the final two spots.

She was more than content to let Glynda take charge here as she marshalled the students to fit according to the elevator's specifications, as her thoughts were elsewhere. Prepare to have your morning ruined, yes that was indeed simply put. Not to mention, rather cryptic. What this could possibly be about, she was not certain, but she was almost completely certain it would be quite something to hear. Her gaze flickered to Arthur and Cinder in turn, trying to discern if there was anything in their facial expressions or body language that might shed a clue on what they so apparently needed to say.​

That, along with the likely utterly insane conversation they were about to attempt to have weighed heavily on his mind. Heavy enough that he only let out a tired sigh as the front of the elevator turned into an impromptu melee for the last two spots. Neo, who had honestly thought they were just going to talk this out like normal people, was caught totally off guard when Roman lashed out with a punch, so much so that her normally keen reflexes failed to avoid Tyrian's tail, and she let out a breathy squawk as she hit the floor with enough force that if it hadn't really been her the illusion would've shattered. She looked up to see Roman separated from her for the first time since their reunion, and her eyes widened slightly as she turned towards Tyrian with a pleading look as he stepped in-

Then the doors slid close, Watts jamming the door close button repeatedly because every second wasted was lives at this point frankly, and did his best to just ignore how betrayed Neo looked as they finished sliding shut and the elevator made a quiet ding.

She let out an amused smile as the children made it a challenge to get into the elevator for the last pair of spots, partly because she was amused, but also to cover for the fact that her eyes were still studying the students with a certain intensity. This was not at all something she had expected this morning, and it was more than apparent that they felt they truly needed to reveal what was on their minds. That furious jamming of the door close button cemented their urgency, if it was ever in doubt. Cinder for her part could only wince at the look on Neo's face, that betrayed expression hitting her like a train. The young maiden mouthed sorry right before the doors closed, hoping that it was noticed.

The ride up was brief, the silence only broken by the elevator music up until doors slid open again, at which point Salem took the lead again, stepping into her office."Here we are--" Salem cut short midsentence as she caught sight of a most, most unexpected sight. That being Raven Branwen, curled up on the floor on the far side of her office by the window with an empty bottle by her side. A bottle she recognized as her own. And...were those tears?

She stared at Raven for a few more silent seconds before she glanced back at the others. "How did you put it? My morning would be ruined? I don't know about ruined, exactly, but some of that sentiment seems appropriate. Glynda, do you want to check up on that?" She asked, proceeding to her seat regardless and readying herself for listening intently to what the students needed to share.​

 

[MidwayLives]

It was at this point that Hazel encountered the first major oddity of the brave new world he found himself in, aside from the existence of that world itself. The man who stood before him was familiar, and yet his presence here was not; in his heart Hazel knew it should not have been, that Lie Ren’s systematic thrashing of the powerhouse on a certain train several months prior to their school year’s tragic end should have precluded him from standing where he now stood. He could recall it vividly, Valkyrie’s hired enforcer’s face as stoic and implacable as the dawn as he ducked and weaved around his every strike, landing three for each one Hazel failed to.

Yet disquietingly, he could now too recall a slightly different version of those same events, and indeed a slightly different version of Lie Ren. The broad strokes remained the same, yet for as much as his heart and soul screamed otherwise his memory now drew an image of the assassin on the train as a man who donned a simple yet effective mask when conducting business for his employer; a mask that spoke only in haiku for as long as it was worn, keeping the man beneath shrouded in mystery.

He smiled, an image every bit as mild as the rest of him.

“You look harried, friend. I daresay emotional. Careful where you step.”

It was an innocent enough remark on the surface, yet there was no mistaking the air of menace behind it; made all the more apparent by the far less contradictory form of Pyrrha Nikos stepping around the corner behind him.

"He's right you know? Wouldn't want you making a blunder and falling, now would we?" Another voice chimed in as a hand gently reached out to place itself upon the youth's shoulder as a friendly smile was also shot his way.


"You could get hurt."

In the world that the girls currently being beset upon by Ironwood called home, Pyrrha Nikos was more or less a hero. One who'd tried and given everything to stop scoundrels like Cinder Fall from achieving their goals. The same couldn't be said for the smiling warrior standing before Hazel. She'd still trained in Argus, loathe as she was to bring it up in idle conversation, she DID still have her face put across cereal boxes. But this wasn't a friend. This was a woman who'd fight you and savor every minute of it. The thrill, the euphoric rush that ebbed and flowed during the heat of battle. It was helped fuel her drive to keep on improving, to keep going.

Even if that meant stepping over those trying to genuinely do good.

But, she'd do it with a friendly demeanor all the while and, really, didn't that make up for it?

Indolent Gus Gungus

 

[Gus Gungus]

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

Down below, Yang's battlecry marked an Ember Celica-powered beeline straight for Ironwood's landing spot but it wasn't easy going, and definitely not a straight sprint; for as simple as they were, she knew Ironwood's pistols packed a serious punch, way more than she could just soak up and return before her aura broke. She moved with her fists up, eyes barely peeking over the top as she kept low and weaved left and right. Shots she couldn't fully couldn't avoid were caught on the edges of her gauntlets at as much of an angle as she could to shave power, the arena floor pocketing with small craters left in her wake. One shot she caught clean in the shoulder made her aura flare, but she rolled with the angle of the hit in a pirouette that left as little of her speed broken as possible as the closed the last few steps and swung both her fists down to blast herself upwards, only to roll with the jump and blast herself right back down, aiming to twist in the air to hit James with a spinning elbow strike. whether it struck or was blocked, she rebounded off the strike to land with her feet planted, both fists swinging once to eject the spent shells.

"Jimmy" She growled with an angry contempt it usually took familiarity to breed.​

Ironwood was fully risen from the half-crouch he'd hit the arena floor in by the time Yang slid in to meet him, her boxer's weave prompting a faint squint of recognition that did nothing to keep him from harassing her with munitions every step as expected. His stance wide, his feet planted, the full authoritative bearing of a man of Atlas on display, he kept the ebony pistol at his side as its ivory counterpart stayed level with his eyeline and squeezed off high-caliber bullet after bullet in her direction. None of them hit anywhere vital, but they weren't expected to; and though less of a stall to her momentum than he'd anticipated, the round in her shoulder still gave him the delay he needed to shift his left leg back in a preparatory stance, angle the smoking barrel down towards the floor, and use the remaining round in the chamber to propel both his cybernetic arm and the pistol itself back somewhere in the realm of 90 degrees, spinning it in his grasp so the butt braced against his shoulder and caught Yang's elbow in an emphatic clash of metal on metal.

The impact left both combatants' prosthetics trembling in a way they could feel all the way inside their actual bones, yet Ironwood seemed unfazed, keeping his back to her and calmly ejecting the spent magazine at his feet as Yang did the same for her ammo belts.

"Raven's bastard."

If Yang expected the general of Atlas to have any chill whatsoever in his retort there was none to be found, and when he did turn Yang had some fleeting sense of the sheer apathy and contempt this world seemed to have for her as he took her in with eyes decidedly lacking in empathy, pity, or really much of anything beyond a morbid curiosity. It wasn't surprising, and hardly unjust, but it was a strange feeling being the recipient of it rather than the one doling it out to her warped alter.

"And I suppose there's no point in pretending you're not Taiyang's anymore, either. Hmh. It might surprise you to learn I taught your father some of those moves. Competitive Atlesian boxing techniques don't typically occur naturally on backwater agrarian islands." He drew a replacement mag from his jacket holster, tone neither rising nor falling as he spoke to her, simply maintaining its same polished indifference. Then he snorted. "Gods, that team dynamic was a mess. You know I was in the next room when you were born? Your father had your entire future planned out, the three of you. I'd never seen him happier."

The magazine was slid into place with a satisfying click, the slide pulled back to lock it in place.

"He was the only one. Maybe you gathered that already. Did anyone ever tell you why?"

His features darkened, and whether this was all being spoken as part of some elaborate headgame or out of genuine desire to share the truth was as unclear as whether the tin man had any kind of heart at all.

"Because he was the only one who didn't know about Raven and Summer."

The gun came up, and this time it was joined by its twin, silver and black gunmetal gleaming in the hardlight's sterile hues.

"Like I said. A mess."

He opened fire, and this time Yang found the standard armor-piercing rounds from the black pistol being supplemented by hollow-tip explosives from the white.

​

"We're not here to fight you Winter! We're on the same-​

""...side." That glance had been less telepathic than it felt​

Blake's vantage point atop the screen didn't remain unspoiled for long, her feet only making contact for a few seconds before the blazing volley of meteorites that had been homing in on her ever since they'd been fired out of a waiting row of glyphs drilled into the projector screen with enough force to rattle it on its hinges.

When the smoke cleared Winter was already standing a few yards away, a glyph keeping her tethered as the gryphon roared where it was circling overhead.

"Forgive me for considering that something an assassin and saboteur might say?"

Despite the decidedly flat nature of the words and a combat style that was typically much more aggressive than her younger sister’s, something seemed to be staying her hand from taking the initiative, and her eyes flickered down to where Yang and Ironwood’s skirmish was raging once in uncertainty just in time to catch a glimpse of the swirling red vortex of roses about to slam into the general from behind like a missile, thrusting one rapier forward and conjuring a glyph loaded with fire dust to intercept.​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

She was more than content to let Glynda take charge here as she marshalled the students to fit according to the elevator's specifications, as her thoughts were elsewhere. Prepare to have your morning ruined, yes that was indeed simply put. Not to mention, rather cryptic. What this could possibly be about, she was not certain, but she was almost completely certain it would be quite something to hear. Her gaze flickered to Arthur and Cinder in turn, trying to discern if there was anything in their facial expressions or body language that might shed a clue on what they so apparently needed to say.



She let out an amused smile as the children made it a challenge to get into the elevator for the last pair of spots, partly because she was amused, but also to cover for the fact that her eyes were still studying the students with a certain intensity. This was not at all something she had expected this morning, and it was more than apparent that they felt they truly needed to reveal what was on their minds. That furious jamming of the door close button cemented their urgency, if it was ever in doubt. Cinder for her part could only wince at the look on Neo's face, that betrayed expression hitting her like a train. The young maiden mouthed sorry right before the doors closed, hoping that it was noticed.

The ride up was brief, the silence only broken by the elevator music up until doors slid open again, at which point Salem took the lead again, stepping into her office."Here we are--" Salem cut short midsentence as she caught sight of a most, most unexpected sight. That being Raven Branwen, curled up on the floor on the far side of her office by the window with an empty bottle by her side. A bottle she recognized as her own. And...were those tears?

She stared at Raven for a few more silent seconds before she glanced back at the others. "How did you put it? My morning would be ruined? I don't know about ruined, exactly, but some of that sentiment seems appropriate. Glynda, do you want to check up on that?" She asked, proceeding to her seat regardless and readying herself for listening intently to what the students needed to share.​

Watts was silent the entire ride upwards, the only outwards sign of his irritation the incessant tapping of one foot as he stared blankly ahead at the door, still trying to wrangle his thoughts into some sort of coherent direction for how to approach explaining themselves. He strode out of the elevator with purpose, only to narrow his eyes as he caught sight of the Branwen on the floor. The haircut, the mode of dress...

"Try to wake her up; I have a feeling she'll make this entire conversation far less confusing." he cut in. He imagined that might take some time, however, if Glynda even obliged, and he waited for Salem to take her seat before clearing her throat.

"Right. to paraphrase what I said to miss Goodwitch, we know about Ozpin, the relics, the purpose of the maidens, and most of the other related nonsense."

He let that sit in the air for a moment to gauge Salem's reaction, definitely not stalling a little bit.