Fandom Shattered Hourglass [IC] [CLOSED]

[Indolent]

Had Ren held even one iota further of the huntsman's attention where he lay, half-buried under rubble at the furthest corner of the corridor from Gretchen's room, Hazel may have been given cause to wonder why he, despite his aches and pains, was still smiling that same godforsaken smile.

"A task accomplished. The score rests at one apiece. 'Til our next meeting."

He was long gone by the time the goliath returned.

Meanwhile, within the room:

Hazel found three absolutely terrified younger students trying vainly to stack their beds, desks, and bookshelves up against the frame to block his entry, only to scatter like mice and screech to the high heavens as he finally forced his way in, bringing their weapons to bear. He also spied Gretchen herself, still sequestered comfortably in her bunk, and in absolute fairness to Lie Ren—she was sleeping very soundly.

"GRETCHENNNNNN!"
"gREEEEEEETCH!"
"HOLY SHIT YOU LETHARGIC FUCKIN COW HOW ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING YOUR THIRTY FOOT TALL HEADCASE BROTHER IS GONNA KILL USSSSSS!"​

There was genuine surprise on Hazel's face, very much at odds with the act of having bulldozed through the door and the obstructions his sister's teammates threw up. Stupefied because he'd assumed the worst and found out that he'd been wrong for it. Nobody in their right mind with what he knew and the strange circumstances from waking up and the two entities in Ozpin's employ could have blamed Hazel. Except that was what was going to happen, later.

"Sorry, Thackeray, this really is urgen--"

"YE NO SHIT OBVIOUSLY WHY ELSE WOULD YOU STAMPEDE ACROSS HALF THE CAMPUS, YOU HIPPOPOTAMUS"

"Get his ass, Thack."

Hazel's expression shifted to one of contrition, a somber sigh as the three teammates whipped themselves into a hollering frenzy, ranging from demands of an explanation to cries for getting the hell out, threats underpinning every other outcry therein, and something somewhere in there was a mix of shots at Hazel's weight that paled compared to the quality Mercury and Emerald delivered effortlessly.

With the tinge of urgency of before, Hazel strolled to the top bed of the rightmost bunk and saw for himself that Gretchen truly was asleep still, buried within the layers of thick comforters and too many pillows. Even with the screaming. The joke was that it must've been a secret attribute to her semblance atop of what it did. He could never figure it out. Without any concern for rudely waking his sibling he reached out to do just that.

A tiny thing of brown and white exploded from from underneath the covers and clamped itself onto his face, over one eye.



"Hi, Brosel." The greeting was made to the stoat in an even tone without missing a beat, as if he'd experienced his shenanigans time and time again.

"How are you used to that, he terrorizes us for fun."

The stoat, seemingly intuiting the situation, leveraged itself onto the older Rainart's shoulder with a quizzical expression to his tiny face, as Hazel actually woke Gretchen, gingerly.

A string of grumbling emerged from the bedding before a figure manifested from within sitting halfway up, Gretchen's disheveled hair of light brown emerging first followed by a freckled face that was somehow still exhausted after a long deep sleep. Hazel eyes that were tinted a more golden color against Hazel's greener ones blinked away the sleep and an annoyed yawn followed before Gretchen took the time to take stock of the situation.

A small smile was proffered to her brother before she glanced around, noticed the state of the door, almost the entirety of the room's furniture that looked to have been blocked against it blown back across the room, and her three teammates staring daggers into both Rainart siblings.

"... Iiiiiiiiiiiiis this a prank of some kind that Mercury and Emerald put you up to, today of all day, on the day of the Finals? I'm surpris--"

"No jokes, Gretchen, please. We have to go, something's happening. Now."

Gretchen blinked in tandem with Brosel as the two locked eyes, noting Hazel's tone that brooked no pushback of any kind, and it was before long that the two siblings stepped back out the dormitory room with Gretchen adorning her usual outfit and large shillelagh in hand, with the ruined door somehow slamming behind them.

Spoiler: The usual outfit

It was very much clear who it was that stood over Hazel, her scarf of mustard, brown beige, and olive patterning wrapped seemingly dozens of time around the neck that was too exceedingly long for practical use, trailing in the mountainside's gusts. The scarf rested atop a worn traveler's jack set a drab green, with brown combat leggings set with soft-hard cases clearly designated for storing her ranged implements. Her brown hair was kept short, explained by her frequent complaints of how it interfered with her aim, and her eyes were a vibrant amber that stared down with her mouth a fixed smirk that seemed a tad bit too elated given the circumstances. Or was it this circumstance in particular.

"You gonna tell me what's going on or is this still a prank?"

"I think I've been played, we need to get back to the others."

"... Oh."

And so it was on the way that Hazel had to trust that his sister would believe him and everything he was about to say while still being under the impression this was a shitty prank of some kind masterminded by her friends. Brosel, however, seemed enraptured.

 

[Gus Gungus]

Yang threw her head back in frustration with a groan. "Ugh, no you goof, I'm not fishing for information, these are things we already know! But the rest of what we know is gonna sound like nonsense if you're not far enough down this rabbit ho-"

"Borous Carnelian is dead"

Blake's words cut through Yang's complaints with the sort of severity Winter probably expected more of during this conversation, but if she turned back towards the faunus it wasn't some furious revolutionary she found herself looking at, not a pair of fiery, hateful eyes that seemed designed to burn through the icy armor Schnees put around their heart for the sole purpose of ripping them out; Perhaps some part of Winter felt some sort of satisfaction; her soul got to witness what she or Weiss or anyone never managed to drag out of Blake, the Hand

What she saw was a terrified young woman. She knew what the start of a panic attack looked like because she worked with distorted Harriet.

Blake was courageous; She knew what she stood for. She didn't give up on people. Even Adam got her pleas for a better path, right up until the end. She knew Winter thought she was doing the right thing, and she knew the stakes; she was never going to be frightened of her.

That was not what what Carnelian was.

"Borous Carnelian was executed twenty years ago after the faunus rebellion for heinous war crimes, ones not even your own military could overlook." She managed to get out, voice hoarse after her declaration. The history books accounts of him were vile; they were also sanitized. She'd heard herself from elders on Menagerie how bad it had actually been. It was stories like that, along with the state of the world, that had pushed Blake to stay with the White Fang in the first place, even after her parents were pushed out. To keep someone like Carnelian from ever getting power again. He wasn't a person. He was an inhuman butcher. She might've first assumed it was someone else who had the name, but the coincidence of the semblance was too much to ignore

"I don't care how messed up this world is supposed to be. there is no way he still alive, let alone-"

"He is"

At some point Yang had stood up, and Blake found a pair of gentle, sad eyes staring back at her as Yang pressed her hand up against the hardlight again, her voice soft but firm. "I fought him myself a few times, the first go around." She said a generous interpretation admittedly. Blake didn't take the offer this time, instead glancing over to Ruby for a third, needless confirmation, before she paced to the back of her own cell with her fists pressed against her forehead and trying to stop herself from spiralling any farther. Yang gave her a mournful glance before she turned back to Winter, her tone still soft.​

There was a step or two following Blake's initial interjection where she just kept going; determined not to let Belladonna faze her again, to repeat the humiliation of having her authority wrested from her by what was by all accounts a timid young woman in a hardlight cell.

Yet as the last of her echo died off in the spacious metal chamber and Ruby returned Blake's nod mournfully, unsure if there was anything she could really do or say to cushion the absolute kidney punch that news must've been, Winter stopped, listened to the slight quaver the faunus's voice trailed off in, contemplated. Then she did turn.

If the intent of her initial response was to placate Blake in any way, there was a chance her initial words may have been... poorly selected.

"Borous Carnelian was called before a tribunal of military and judiciary delegates in Mantle no less than two days after the ceasefire agreement was drafted and signed. His actions, the ones that could be verified among the systematic campaign of harassment and efforts to tarnish his reputation being perpetrated by certain anti-treaty rogue elements, were nevertheless deemed to have fallen within acceptable bounds of a dedicated soldier carrying out his duty to his—"

She was just about able to mask a wince as that was bulldozed for the pre-typed press release from several decades ago it was, and attempted to pivot more towards the defense she herself had rationalised whenever her thoughts started drifting towards the subject.

"Wartime breeds sensationalism. On every side, regardless of... who had the right of things. You think I wasn't reared on stories of Talons stealing away children in the night? There's no basis for—"

This time whatever creative means they found to tell her to shut up just had her fall silent, and a different sort of remembrance set in over her face than anything Yang or Blake had been able to elicit thus far.

Not a feeling, or some intangible pang of something she didn't know quite how to acknowledge, much less describe.

An actual, honest-to-god memory.

​

"—As I said, it was my pleasure. I was always a great admirer of Nicholas, you know. Men like him are what raised Atlas from the mud into the proud and noble empire it is today."

"Be that as it may, brigadier, you can't fathom the debt my family owes you. That masked, brutish barbarian was running roughshod over our supply lines for years, practically uncontested! Every single one of our ten best-earning security staff per annum were left snoring in the snow at some point or another, and that was if they were fortunate. However did you manage it?"

"...Heh. Do you really wanna know?"

Winter kept her posture low and her gaze rooted firmly to the floor as she stepped as softly as she could past the door to father's study, satchel draped over one shoulder. The door was slightly ajar, the roaring fireplace within bathing the normally-tepid corridor of Schnee Manor at night in an unnerving amber glow, and she hoped the sound of shifting briquettes and crackling wood would prove enough to mask what faint sound her footsteps emitted on the carpeted floor as she—

creak

A miscalculation on her part gave her away, her bookbag affecting the weight differential in a manner she didn't expect. She cursed herself internally, head drooping as her shoulders slouched, already anticipating what came next. Her father's shadow shifted where it was cast against the wall of the study visible through the door by the firelight, craning its neck towards the hallway; a marked contrast to the shadow opposite, which sat perfectly, eerily still.

"You know all too well I do, old friend, but perhaps it's a story best saved for a later hour. Weiss! Is that you out there? Come in out of the cold, girl!"

Winter couldn't help but scoff to herself in these last few moments of agency she had, dutifully turning back to trudge towards the door. Of course he would hope for Weiss. With mother away to care for the new baby he had been calling on her more and more, summoning her at all hours to sing and entertain his guests, showing her off like a prize poodle at the fair for the benefit of their drunken amusement.

She might have been too young to articulate why it made her sick, but it did. She was trying to discourage it, but to her frustration Weiss actually seemed to be taking to it, and Winter... couldn't say she cared for the effect it was having on her personality. They had always been so close, the eldest Schnee child having done everything in her power to protect her, but now... their bond still held true, but it was as if Weiss was taking a certain sense of enjoyment from winning the approval of their father that Winter herself had never particularly been bothered with. All the things the patriarch of the family had wanted for her when she was young, the music, the academic prowess, the interest in their family name and business... it all seemed to come so naturally to Weiss, where Winter had lacked either the interest or aptitude for almost all of it. She would never go so far as to say she was envious, or anything of that sort; not of Weiss, who had been so dear to her from the moment she was born, and never for that man.

She just... was afraid. Afraid all the praise Jacques had been lavishing on her would give her a false sense of things. That she'd come to see her elder sister, whose status as heir to the family fortune was looking more and more tenuous with each passing year, as a prime example of what not to do. That her sister was going to be pitted against her for an inheritance which, quite frankly, Winter had never even particularly cared about.

She would've traded all those billions and billions for one person to tell her she was doing a good job, that she had a place in this world she had earned for herself, and mean it.

She gave herself a brief once-over in the hallway mirror, a token effort made at fixing her dress and smoothing out her bangs before she leaned carefully around the door. She took a moment to let her eyes adjust, managing to muster up the will for a small, soft smile offered to Jacques and his guest in turn. "It's only me, father. Hello. Sorry, I..."

"Pah!" Jacques, his upper lip free of any adornments and with hair only partially graying, flapped a hand at her in momentary disdain before promptly dismissing her entirely, turning back to the figure in the opposite chair. "'Only me', she says. Yes, indeed. Only Winter. I'll be perfectly honest with you, brigadier, I think this one's a bit simple. Off to bed with you, girl, and send Weiss down if she's awake."

He drained the last of his coffee, which from the odour Winter was detecting was spiked with a bit more besides. She waited patiently for him to get through whatever he needed to get through and let her leave.

"You've met my younger daughter, haven't you? Now there's one who carries the true wit and mettle of a Schnee! I've always been of the opinion she takes after me, personally, as well as our dearly departed Nicholas. This one... a bit more in common with the mother, if I'm being honest with you. And you know how she spends most her days."

"Nonsense," came the return voice, every bit as polite and encouraging as it was booming and firm. Jacques fell silent immediately, instantly ceding to the more authoritative gentleman's curiosity with a harrumph. "I don't believe I've met your oldest. Madame Winter, was it? Come. Let me get a look at you."

Slightly puzzled, she stepped in more fully, giving herself a better view of the man in turn. He was broad and strong where her father was wiry and toneless, and though the lines of age had set in over his face he wore it far better and more confidently than her father's more decadent lifestyle had led him to, regardless of the botox injections he payed inordinate amounts of money for. Though vaguely, she recognised his high-collared uniform bathed in rich whites and blues as their kingdom's military officer dress, and one eye inspected her with keen attention as the other lay hidden behind a patch, though for some reason Winter had the distinct impression he was regarding her more fully than anyone had in some time. She unconsciously straightened her back and squared her shoulders, standing at her full height, something which (to her mortification) the man appeared to notice as the corner of his mouth quirked upward with a hum.

Jacques, for his part, looked to be on the verge of his usual histrionics, shifting sides in his chair and kneading his brow as though already thoroughly humiliated. "For Remnant's sake, girl, don't just stand there. Refill our cups."

She politely did as instructed, removing the pot from the stove and content with doing whatever enabled her to be on her way quicker. She and Jacques exchanged neither a word nor eye contact as she hastily and sloppily poured fresh coffee into his mug, drawing a sharp hiss and a dagger-filled glare that promised reprisal later as a fair amount splashed onto his hands. "Idiot girl."

Her filling of his friend's mug, on the other hand, was a swift, smooth affair, something the officer seemed to take note of in turn as he offered a knowing smile she found herself returning. "And how old are you, Winter?"

"Twelve, sir."

"Twelve!" He echoed with astoundment, issuing a hearty, approving chuckle as he swapped his gaze back to Jacques with an arched brow. "Simple, I believe you said, Jacques, was it? Hogwash. Most twelve-year-olds I'm aware of can't keep themselves from fidgeting longer than three seconds. This is quite the mature, insightful young woman you're rearing here. You should take pride."

Winter blinked a few times in rapid succession, entirely unused to being spoken of in such a positive light. Said unfamiliarity left her uncertain how to respond, so she defaulted to instinct and did her best to conceal a small blush. "...Thank you, sir."

He simply offered a nod and that same cordial smile in reply, and though it was plain from the way he cleared his throat that Jacques very much wanted to sputter at that he managed to compose himself on the verge, instead limiting himself to muted disagreement. "Insightful?! Why, she hasn't said two words since coming in here! How could you possibly..."

"Call it a gut feeling."

He threw Winter a wink too quick for Jacques to catch at that, busying himself topping up his and the officer's mug both with the something extra Winter had detected earlier from the rim of an engraved flask. Finally the executive sighed, relenting. "Well, I suppose everyone has their upside. Though I must admit, it gets harder and harder to see the girl's the older she gets without showing so much as a glimmer of interest in the workings of her family business. She's supposed to be my heir."

The brigadier flapped a hand in dismissal, bringing the cup to his mouth and taking a long, deep sip, seemingly uncaring of the scalding temperature. "I respect the commerce trade, Jacques, make no mistake. But some are cut out for it, some aren't. Could never make heads or tails of it overmuch myself. No, some of us are born to speak a simpler, more elegant language."

Winter admitted to finding herself drawn in by the man, and didn't take her eyes away from him as she stepped back over to the stove and put the coffee back on. "And what would that be, sir?"

"Tell me, Winter. Have you ever given any thought to the life of a soldier?"

Her eyes went wide, her mouth fell ajar, and she had to scramble to keep her composure before her father noticed as her mind raced to figure out just how he had pegged her so easily. His genial smile only seemed to grow wider as if in response, but thankfully Jacques was in his own world per usual, and could mask his incredulity no longer as he threw his head back with a sharp, shrill laugh.

"Glad to see the whiskey is doing its work, brigadier! That'll be enough from you, girl. Get to bed before you're given an inflated sense of your abilities by my friend's good manners."

Winter nodded, stiffly turning in place to make her way out. She paused by the door, hand on the frame, and sheepishly cleared her throat before stepping back out into the cold hallway. "Goodnight, father... sir."

"And send Weiss down if she's awake, will you?!"

The officer watched her go, simply raising his mug to her in salute as she slipped back out into the night.

"Now where were we, brigadier? Ah, yes. As I was saying, my family from top to bottom appreciates you, shall we say, looking after our interests during your length of service. I've reviewed these trumped-up charges that young upstart Ironwood is trying to sink you on, and I must say, I think it's an outrage. To persecute a man for little more than defending his kingdom against a hostile species! Well, I've spoken to some of the boys down at the club, and we're all of a mind to—"

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It was some time later that Winter found herself startled as the door to her room cracked open, whirling in place in a desperate attempt to conceal the tool she was conducting her drills with behind her back. "F-father, I wasn't—"

Considering the tool in question was a yardstick that now extended comically from the center of her crown, she knew it was a fruitless endeavor. She sighed and tensed up, eyes screwing shut as she prepared to take her punishment—

"—Winter?"

—Only to freeze, eyelids flitting open again in surprise as eyes of cerulean blue much closer to the ground than her own blinked at her across the dimly-lit span of her room, peeking around the crack in the door. "Weiss? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—Did I wake you?"

"Yes, but it's alright. Are you practicing fighting again?" The smaller girl opened the door more fully, yawning as she used her nightie's sleeve to rub sleep out of her eyes. "I'm going to tell."

The future specialist felt her shoulders unwind like coils as she let the yardstick drop to her side with a restrained sigh, offering her much smaller sibling a fond smile. "Yes, I was. And no, you won't."

"I will if you aren't nice to me."

"Aren't I always nice to you?"

"Hmmmph." Weiss Schnee in her tadpole stage had yet to develop the vocabulary to argue her way around Winter's logical circles just yet, so she merely pouted. "I heard you talking to father a while ago. Is he still awake? Did he ask for me?"

The smell she'd detected on their father's breath briefly crossed Winter's mind before she answered, not missing a beat. "He didn't."

Weiss's eyes narrowed. "You're lying. I know you're jealous of my singing, you know. He told me. Take me to his study now."

She scoffed, the sting of that initial part somewhat lessened when she recalled Weiss was too scared to venture farther than the next bedroom over at night by herself. Winter wore a gentle smile as she approached, taking a knee once in reach of the tinier sibling and licking her thumb to fuss over a few strands of errant hair. "I'll do you one better. Why don't you get your coat and I'll show you the new koi fish Klein brought for the gardens?"

Weiss's eyes actually narrowed further, somehow, as if her first instinct was that Winter was tricking her. "...Now? But... we have curfew."

"I suppose I'll just have to show you my secret magical way, won't I?"

The younger sibling couldn't help but let her eyes go round at that, casting furtive glances both ways up the hall before leaning forward to whisper in conspiratorial tones. "...Magic is real?"

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

All told, between leading Weiss out through the garden maze, showing her the ponds containing the new fish and making sure she was properly tucked in, Winter couldn't have been gone more than a half hour. Which was why what she found when she returned was so perplexing, yet all the more thrilling.

A simple, ornate dueling saber lay across the breadth of her bed, its pommel catching her attention immediately when she shut the door behind her as it caught the light of the shattered moon. Less obvious at first was the small, tidy post-it note, which she noticed only when picking up the weapon to admire it.

Thursday, 05:00 hours, maze
Basics of form.
Don't be late.
—Borous Carnelian​

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​

"Look, Winter. I know we've been burying the lead here, but its only because what we're going through sounds insane even to us. But we're on the same side. Those nightmares aren't from a semblance; I think we both know how insanely powerful one would have to be to affect your whole army. Its something worse. Something that's gotten you killed before. All we want is to stop whatever's coming. We are cooperating. I want to help you, and Weiss."

Her voice got some of its edge back as she frowned.

"But if you try and put that guy in the same room as Blake, you're gonna see what me not cooperating looks like."​

It couldn't have been very reassuring when, about halfway through Yang's own first fully earnest appeal, Winter simply turned and strode away from her without so much as a word of explanation; and this time she really did go all the way through to the bridge, letting the doors clamp shut emphatically behind her.

Ruby couldn't resist the opportunity to lean as close to Yang's ear as was physically possible for her, which meant she sorta just ended up squishing up against the hardlight to offer up a coy grin and minor tease. "Winter just has zero time for you, does she?"

About a moment later it became apparent she had spoken too soon. The doors slid open again, and this time Winter entered brandishing a folding chair, which she set up in front of the cell and promptly sat down on with a deep exhale.

"Carnelian left Atlas aboard a Manta just under an hour ago. That gives you approximately eleven hours to kill before he arrives."

If they expected her to go on, she didn't; just switched her gaze between Ruby, Yang, and Blake dependent on whoever seemed the most likely to speak first.

"I suggest starting from the beginning."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

"...You've lost your mind, James."

He instinctively glanced back down to Salem's fallen form, then to Cinder, before finally falling back on Ironwood.

"...Do you actually expect us to take anything at your word? After that?" He asked, a bit of the steel coming back in. "You think that even if we had the time for a trial before everything goes to shit, we could expect a fair one after that?"​

"You just had Salem gunned down, and you think you can demand calm?!" Cinder spat in disgust. "You?! A murderer?!" The fire pouring from her eyes got larger with every word. "You want an idea of how this is going do down? You wanna see how this ends?" She leaned forward, as if she were about to fly straight at him any second now.​

-like her brain stopped working. Like too many memories tried to come up her throat at once, making it hard to breath. Her eyes lolled over to Roman, a glassy sheen to them as she instinctively checked if he was okay, but whatever anger she was feeling about Mercury and Roman's treatment was suddenly muffled over the sounds of things that happened too long ago​

"Lost my mind. A murderer. Right."

For however much it was worth, a factor which was admittedly limited with Salem's cranium still spilling out a few feet from where he stood, Ironwood actually did seem somewhat bothered by the various reactions levied his way, despite the ruthlessness of his conduct. He ran a hand down his face from the bridge of his nose, taking a deep, prosthetics-assisted breath in a bid to maintain his composure.

"Don't think I don't regret what you all just had to see, but let's rein ourselves in a bit. Salem will get up and walk away from this with nary a consequence once there isn't an investigation for her to obstruct anymore, just the same as she always has. With time, I hope she and Glynda will even... understand."

There was a momentary hang in the sentence as the look Goodwitch had affixed him with flashed through his mind, illuminating with perfect clarity just how unlikely that eventuality was. But he huffed, steeling his resolve.

"...It's just going to take a little bit longer than usual."

He let that speak for Salem's regeneration and the prospect of forgiveness both. That dark, metallic look in his eye returned, whatever momentary pain or indecision his features had been wracked with disappearing back behind the mask of resolve.

"None of you understand how close we are. How the course of human history has the potential to go one of two ways after tonight; we either rally and push back, as we always have. Or... or it all goes tumbling into the abyss. Mankind reduced to just another series of crumbling ruins someone will find some day and wonder what happened. Another lost civilization. Ask yourself, how many has she already walked away from?"

He tried to keep the scorn out of his tone as he glanced back down at Salem, and didn't quite manage it.

"...I didn't lose my mind, Arthur."

One had to wonder whose benefit he was repeating himself for, or to whose benefit arguing with a group of teenagers served to begin with. Either way, by the time he met Watts' gaze again there was no trace of that doubt left in sight; there couldn't be.

Not if he wanted to do his job.

"The world lost its mind while I was on duty."

​

Her eyes flared instead, and a hurricane gust of wind tore through the room, intent on knocking everyone around...and then she flew forward, but not at him. Rather, at Mercury and Neo, intending to take this chance to get those cuffs off of them.​

Ironwood and Penny were exceptionally hard to move when they dug their heels in, and Elm was downright unaffected, the rest of the Ace Ops and more generic soldiers gritting their teeth and doing their best to maintain position as the howling winds buffeted them. Ironwood gave a short, hopefully reassuring nod to Penny, a wordless instruction to follow her mandate of sticking to the maiden like glue, not giving her a moment to breathe.

"STAY!"

Cinder unfortunately didn't even make it past the two of them, Ironwood's other trump card making itself known for the second time in quick succession as the howling winds were overshadowed by a pair of Manta rising to a par with the office window, various others starting to split off from the prodigious Atlesian fleet and make their way towards the tower in the distance.

They were all reminded of just how annoying Marrow's semblance actually was when not only Cinder, but Watts, Roman, and Tyrian too all found themselves immobilized, the youngest Ace Op having lined them up in his sight like James instructed.

"Got 'em, sir. Let's keep this under control and try to avoid—"

Marrow's pointer fingers were knocked off-course so fast, so unexpectedly and with so much torque the young soldier honestly didn't even know what happened to make him lose his balance, since there was quite simply no way anyone on the caliber of a first-year Beacon student could've gotten the drop on him like that. It was a full three seconds later that the guard who'd clocked Neo finally processed the grey blur he'd seen out of the corner of his eye, turning to meet a full tilt 'bro' look that was as pitying as it was vainglorious.

Mercury shrugged. "Cuffed the wrong body parts, dipshit."



Suddenly, that didn't seem to matter so much anymore as the other party lying in wait finally made their move in response to the cue (having thankfully surmised that Torchwick's office desk wormhole wasn't it), and MTEN's leader and Neo both felt their cuffs slip loose and clatter to the floor in the same instant Mercury exploded off his back heels in a veritable tornado of motion; drilling Marrow with a kick to the solar plexus that drove all the air from his lungs and sent him crashing back into the elevator with an ungodly metallic clang. For whatever reason every single button on the panel had already been pushed, and as he became cognizant of that fact the faunus let out a panicky "—crapcrapcrapCRAP!—" just as the doors slid shut in his face with a ding and sent him to a similar sort of hell to the one Merc and Neo themselves had recently found themselves in.

His other leg shot out in reverse, pinging the overly physical goon with a badge next to him all the way across to the other side of the office, but it meant Mercury himself was vulnerable when he touched down, in good position for Elm to nip this in the bud with an almighty roar as she loomed over him and swung her weapon's head down—

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH-"

—Only to blink, stunned, as her elephantine hammer appeared to stop and get caught by... nothing.

Nothing that left two huge dents in the ground where its heels were.

Nothing that, all of a sudden, was replaced by something as the even bigger, angrier form of Hazel Reinhart shimmered into existence right in front of her, as did two smaller figures on either side of Neo, one of them rubbing her hands together with glee as she reared back, spun her weapons around in her grip, and let loose with the sick line she'd been cooking up this entire time.

"Hazel—"

"—SMASH."

Ehhhh, instant misfire. Sounded better in her head. She turned to the other girl, simultaneously warning her with squinted eyes not to repeat what she'd just heard and feeling semi obliged to give her something to springboard off of too.

"Gretchen, I dunno, do Gretchen stuff? I never really got to know you that well."​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"Borous Carnelian was called before a tribunal of military and judiciary delegates in Mantle no less than two days after the ceasefire agreement was drafted and signed. His actions, the ones that could be verified among the systematic campaign of harassment and efforts to tarnish his reputation being perpetrated by certain anti-treaty rogue elements, were nevertheless deemed to have fallen within acceptable bounds of a dedicated soldier carrying out his duty to his—"

"-Dude, dude. No." Yang interjected as she knocked against the hardlight a few times for emphasis. at the same time Blake whirled with a angry glare, shoulders hunched and hands hugged against her chest "You are not gonna just hit us with a bogus propaganda presser. Like I was trying to say, I've met-"

"Wartime breeds sensationalism. On every side, regardless of... who had the right of things. You think I wasn't reared on stories of Talons stealing away children in the night? There's no basis for—"

"No basis?!" Blake snapped, her voice cracking. "I've met the people he led his forces against. Talked to them, seen how he left them. Some of them were the ones who were lucky to survive. One of them a genuine hero. But some..." She clasped her arm at the elbow with one hand as she looked off to the side, a sort of anger Yang hadn't heard from her in a long while creeping into her tone.

"...some of them just got his special attention. The sort he left on them as a warning to others, to see trying to make their way through life after he was through with them."

The state of the faunus hadn't been Blake's focus, especially not after they'd left Haven. There was too much at stake, and things were getting better, at least in their world. But that didn't mean that she wasn't still a Belladonna. And it definitely didn't mean she'd forgotten what had started her on the path as a huntress in the first place.

"..."

Yang's attempted levity deflated some. Not just because of seeing Blake this out of sorts, but because this was the closest she'd ever seen her to...

"-Did Ozpin do any better in your world? Are the faunus free? Can your Blake walk through the streets of Atlas without being sneered at or derided?”

...yea.

Not that Yang was like, going down some dumb thought line where she was worried Blake (baddie) had really been more like Blake (just bad) than she thought this whole time or was gonna get corrupted by the timeline or something stupid. She knew her way too well for that. It was more the other way around; a worry that if she'd tried harder, if she'd reached out more to Blake's double, then maybe things might've been different. Maybe... not just Blake's.

Maybe this time would be different. And she was gonna start right now, as she turned to winter and said her piece

It couldn't have been very reassuring when, about halfway through Yang's own first fully earnest appeal, Winter simply turned and strode away from her without so much as a word of explanation; and this time she really did go all the way through to the bridge, letting the doors clamp shut emphatically behind her.

Ruby couldn't resist the opportunity to lean as close to Yang's ear as was physically possible for her, which meant she sorta just ended up squishing up against the hardlight to offer up a coy grin and minor tease. "Winter just has zero time for you, does she?"

"Allllrighty then, great talk!"

She rolled her eyes when Ruby spoke up, unable to keep a smirk off her face as she leaned against the same cell wall

"I am aware of the affect I have on Schnee wome"

About a moment later it became apparent she had spoken too soon. The doors slid open again, and this time Winter entered brandishing a folding chair, which she set up in front of the cell and promptly sat down on with a deep exhale.

"Carnelian left Atlas aboard a Manta just under an hour ago. That gives you approximately eleven hours to kill before he arrives."

If they expected her to go on, she didn't; just switched her gaze between Ruby, Yang, and Blake dependent on whoever seemed the most likely to speak first.

"I suggest starting from the beginning."

"-en" she finished, sounding so, so much more smug than she started that sentence.

As Winter dropped her ultimatum, She glanced over to Blake, but she hadn't moved back from where she was huddled in the corner of her own cell. She was staring at Winter with a wounded wariness she hadn't when this conversation started, or even back at the arena, the mention of Carnelian and his existing position in the Atlesian forces doing more damage to Blake's view of this Winter on a personal level than even Yang had clocked. She huffed and glanced over to Ruby instead.

"From the beginning, huh? You think we start with this Remnant's beginning? Or ours?"

She cleared her throat, having apparently come to a decision on that by the time she'd finished voicing the thought.

"...Seventeen years ago, the most special, cutest, MOST adorable future hero was born, I've got pictures on my scroll if you wa-"

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

*Perhaps about a minute of sibling antagonizement warfare later*

Yang cleared her throat again and looked to the side.

"...Okay. So if you're gonna take the time to sit there, and you're saying from the beginning, then we're just gonna do the cold open. Try to just keep to a disdainful sneer or two while you listen instead of just writing us off and walking out from the word go, okay?" She asked, a earnestness to her voice despite the phrasing. "We're... not from this Remnant, but we're still from a Remnant. You're looking at three quarters of Beacon Academy's one and only team RWBY."

And she told it. From the beginning, her and Ruby together if her sister was willing. Who Blake was before Beacon, how weiss was on their team. Meeting Penny, stopping Torchwick, the way too eventful field mission to Mt. Glenn. The attack on the CCT Tower, and how the Vytal festival started. How the tournament ended for her.

How it ended for everyone else.

"...So... you can see why we've been so worried." She said, whatever lightness had been in her tone for most of the telling gone in these last few minutes of retelling, not able to catch herself from grabbing at what was left of her arm. "Because while you're gonna have to give us a minute to get there, this isn't our first time going through this Remnant, and the attack on Beacon still happens. And its her shiny eyeballs over there that help make the difference"


Nonetheless, she continued.


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


"...You don't have to sugarcoat it Yang. I left." Blake cut in a short time after that, as Yang started to describe what happened to them all after Beacon. Her first time speaking since this retelling began, huddled against the wall separating her from yang with her head resting against her knees.

"You left to do something, Blake. You didn't just run." Yang replied, soft, this discussion one they'd had a few times already

"I could've handled it better."

"We all coulda handled a lotta things better." Yang said, unable to keep a smirk at herself off her face "I sat around and watched TV for six months while you and Ruby were out there trying not to die. Not to mention Weiss stuck with her dad, which from the sound of it was probably worse"

"...You needed the rest. A chance to find yourself again." she said, still not meeting any of the other three's gaze

"Sure did! But you guys needed me too. Well. Ruby and Weiss did anyways; sounded like you handled things just fine by yourself. Do you... wanna tell that? Your part? about Menagerie and the Fang?" Yang asked, hopeful. Blake glanced past her knees for Winter; her eyes still wary. But eventually she started talking, and laying out her own side of the tale.

"...You already said that you know who my parents are. I was seeking them out not just because I missed them, but because..."

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

"-of the CCT towers was very purposeful. Salem's entire goal is spreading as much discord as possible, to keep the kingdoms from presenting any sort of united threat."

"Its also where we really learned about the relics for the first time, and how the vaults worked. And how much my mom sucked. Oh, and weiss got stabbed-"

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

"-So Ruby called an audible and just used one of the lamps questions, right there on the side of the tracks. Thats when we learned just how much Ozpin had been keeping from us-"

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

"-was the last thing standing between us and Atlas. I wish we could've handled it better. Not just with Cordovin, but with... with Adam." Blake said, a quiet shame in her voice as she glanced over to Ruby. She didn't think she knew about this part yet.

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

"-which was where we met you for the first time, along with the new and seriously improved hairstyle Penny, serious props to pietro for getting it right on the word go in this timeline."

"...Its also where we first saw the state Atlas was in. How... General Ironwood was using his power. Both for and against the people he was supposed to be protecting."

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


"...And thats.... everything." Yang said with a heaved out breath, exhausted as she flopped onto her back to stare at the ceiling. Blake herself was pensive, still seated where she was, but having lost some of her anxious anger towards Winter after she'd listened for what had to of at least been an hour. It... really was something. Hearing it all laid out like that. End to end, just how much they'd been through. How much of the world they'd seen, how many of its secrets they'd had forced upon them or sought out.

All to just have one relic back home, and Atlas

Then Yang stuck her arm straight up from the floor, with one finger aloft on her hand.

"EVERYTHING... from the other remant. Gods, we still gotta do this one" She groaned as she swung herself back up to sitting, took a deep breath, and took it from the top, one last time.

"SO. I still don't get how this part happened, really, except that the Brothers, WHO I'M SURE ARE LISTENING RIGHT NOW-" She said with a vague glare into empty space "-had something to do with it. But... Ruby, my uncle Qrow, myself, and a few others who we'll get to in a bit, all woke up scattered around Beacon..."

This time Blake was silent for a completely different reason, everything that had happened past this point as much a mystery to her as it was to the specialist


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

"-and like, in my defense, I can't stress enough how much Neopolitan sucks in our world. Just like, the capital W Worst. So I kinda maybe assumed it was her fault and put her through a wall-"


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

"-Had to be at least as big as the giant weird squid thing my sister stoned at Argus, but me and Eve-"

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

"...I didn't expect Jaune to help her though. Not with all that culty 'oooh the strong survive alone'" she said, waving her hands next to her face in a mocking tone "-BS. She put me down, and then she... put her fist through the chest of one of the kids."

She didn't continue immediately after that

"...That wasn't your fault Yang" Blake eventually said over the silence. "It sounds like half of Remnant was on that academy floor. The Fang, all of Ozpin's enforcers-"

"Yea, well, You weren't there, and Uncle Qrow and Ruby were already down. So it was up to me." Yang said, her hand gripping into a fist. "And even if it wasn't, it was the other me that-"

"The other yang. Not you." Blake chided softly. "All of us know thats not you."

"Yea... well..." She glanced sideways with a surly frown, before she huffed.

"...Anyway, this part I got from Ilia after, but they were going for the CCT Tower in Haven too, and this time it worked-"

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

"...Which is where I first met your sister. This one, anyways. Oh, and Big Bad Boris too." She added with a snort.

"...With your hair?"

"Look! She was drunk! And Ruby was still all out of wack stuck on the wrong side of a portal with a murder man! I was kinda panicking and it almost worked! ANYWAY-"

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

There was a good deal in Atlas that Yang just wasn't privy to, and hopefully Ruby was able to fill in those parts. But she didn't hold back her own piece. Being stuck in that mansion for a month. Weiss holding her aura hostage. Trying to get through to her that entire time, seeing something in there she hadn't seen in the other doubles.

The eventual 'escape'. What happened to Raven.

The tournament. The other her. Weiss' rescue

And what came after

Every bit farther into this part of the story, more of the mirth left Yang's storytelling, her shoulders looking heavier. She trailed off around the point that she woke up in the same Cell as Winter.

This was the piece of it she was dreading getting to. A small part of her had hoped that Winter would've gotten fed up by this point and just stormed off, just because of how... wrong this entire thing spun out. How it would affect Winter, and Blake. How much she wondered if it was her fault. If she could've said something else to Blake, or Winter herself, or the tiny psychotic ice cream freak who couldn't keep herself from hitting a button. If she could've done something more in the brawl that broke out afterwards.

"...You're scared of Blake." She eventually led off with. "Nothing to be ashamed of-" she continued with a wan smile, the words quieter than they should've been "-my partner's feisty. But its a weird thing for you to show, Winter. I've known two of you, and both of you aren't exactly cowards." The smile faded, and she traced some of the tiling on the cell floor with her finger.

"...But I think this is why. Not just why you're scared of Blake, but why you and all these other Atlas soldiers, who were probably at Beacon the first time when it all went south, are having those nightmares. Your brain doesn't remember, but your soul does. It remembers what The Hand did to you."

And then she told it.

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

The rest was a bit... scattered. The closer they got to the end, the less of it Yang had been a direct witness to. The brawl in the office ("So you can see why I was so pissed to see Jimmy down in the arena" She drawled, some of the bite back in her voice), the escape to vacuo, the sudden onset of maiden powers, and the frankly insane plan the followed, that.... somehow worked. All the way up to waking up in front of a litebrite deer who got interrupted by a way-bigger-than-a-little-sun dragon, and finally waking up facefirst on Amity Arena's floor.

Blake looked... harrowed, two fingers pressed against her temple as she stared at the floor, trying to process... well... all of that, While Yang let out a long, relieved sigh that they were finally through it and gave Winter a level stare.

"So. You can see why we were so cagey from the word go. 'dimension travelling but this time; there's time travel' sounds like a dumb sci fi movie instead of the dumb sci fi real life that we're currently stuck living. Sitting on about five to ten odds that you're just gonna have that guy shoot me to shut me up" she finished with a thumb over to her favorite Atlesian guard

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"None of you understand how close we are. How the course of human history has the potential to go one of two ways after tonight; we either rally and push back, as we always have. Or... or it all goes tumbling into the abyss. Mankind reduced to just another series of crumbling ruins someone will find some day and wonder what happened. Another lost civilization. Ask yourself, how many has she already walked away from?"

He tried to keep the scorn out of his tone as he glanced back down at Salem, and didn't quite manage it.

"...I didn't lose my mind, Arthur."

One had to wonder whose benefit he was repeating himself for, or to whose benefit arguing with a group of teenagers served to begin with. Either way, by the time he met Watts' gaze again there was no trace of that doubt left in sight; there couldn't be.

Not if he wanted to do his job.

"The world lost its mind while I was on duty."

"Thats just it James. We do understand. Better than you could possibly know."

Watts had seen the look in Ironwood's eyes. He felt reasonably assured that this wasn't what it was last time; that Ironwood hadn't sided against all other kingdoms in favor of his own.

He was also reasonably assured that going quietly was only going to end in disaster.

"Thats why you should've listened to us, instead of jumping this far into the easiest conclusion. Especially because this won't go your way. I may be a huntsman of Beacon."

His arm flicked up, far more ready than a certain young man had been in another time, as Ironwood's bullet richocet'd off a hardlight shield that sprung into existence on his arm to bury itself in the ceiling.

"But I was your student first" He continued with a grim smile. "And if I recall, one of your favorite lessons-"

Ironwood and Penny were exceptionally hard to move when they dug their heels in, and Elm was downright unaffected, the rest of the Ace Ops and more generic soldiers gritting their teeth and doing their best to maintain position as the howling winds buffeted them. Ironwood gave a short, hopefully reassuring nod to Penny, a wordless instruction to follow her mandate of sticking to the maiden like glue, not giving her a moment to breathe.

"STAY!"

Cinder unfortunately didn't even make it past the two of them, Ironwood's other trump card making itself known for the second time in quick succession as the howling winds were overshadowed by a pair of Manta rising to a par with the office window, various others starting to split off from the prodigious Atlesian fleet and make their way towards the tower in the distance.

They were all reminded of just how annoying Marrow's semblance actually was when not only Cinder, but Watts, Roman, and Tyrian too all found themselves immobilized, the youngest Ace Op having lined them up in his sight like James instructed.

"Got 'em, sir. Let's keep this under control and try to avoid—"

Marrow's pointer fingers were knocked off-course so fast, so unexpectedly and with so much torque the young soldier honestly didn't even know what happened to make him lose his balance, since there was quite simply no way anyone on the caliber of a first-year Beacon student could've gotten the drop on him like that. It was a full three seconds later that the guard who'd clocked Neo finally processed the grey blur he'd seen out of the corner of his eye, turning to meet a full tilt 'bro' look that was as pitying as it was vainglorious.

Mercury shrugged. "Cuffed the wrong body parts, dipshit."



Suddenly, that didn't seem to matter so much anymore as the other party lying in wait finally made their move in response to the cue (having thankfully surmised that Torchwick's office desk wormhole wasn't it), and MTEN's leader and Neo both felt their cuffs slip loose and clatter to the floor in the same instant Mercury exploded off his back heels in a veritable tornado of motion; drilling Marrow with a kick to the solar plexus that drove all the air from his lungs and sent him crashing back into the elevator with an ungodly metallic clang. For whatever reason every single button on the panel had already been pushed, and as he became cognizant of that fact the faunus let out a panicky "—crapcrapcrapCRAP!—" just as the doors slid shut in his face with a ding and sent him to a similar sort of hell to the one Merc and Neo themselves had recently found themselves in.

His other leg shot out in reverse, pinging the overly physical goon with a badge next to him all the way across to the other side of the office, but it meant Mercury himself was vulnerable when he touched down, in good position for Elm to nip this in the bud with an almighty roar as she loomed over him and swung her weapon's head down—

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH-"

—Only to blink, stunned, as her elephantine hammer appeared to stop and get caught by... nothing.

Nothing that left two huge dents in the ground where its heels were.

Nothing that, all of a sudden, was replaced by something as the even bigger, angrier form of Hazel Reinhart shimmered into existence right in front of her, as did two smaller figures on either side of Neo, one of them rubbing her hands together with glee as she reared back, spun her weapons around in her grip, and let loose with the sick line she'd been cooking up this entire time.

"Hazel—"

"—SMASH."

Ehhhh, instant misfire. Sounded better in her head. She turned to the other girl, simultaneously warning her with squinted eyes not to repeat what she'd just heard and feeling semi obliged to give her something to springboard off of too.

"Gretchen, I dunno, do Gretchen stuff? I never really got to know you that well."

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by Marrow's intervention.

the gusts, for a brief moment, started to push Penny backwards, her teeth grit with determination as she shielded herself from the wind with two crossed arms while two of her swords dug into the floor as anchors.

The moment Cinder was caught, and the wind stopped, she angled herself forward as all of thrusters kicked into high gear, the briefest nod returned to the general before she turned into a rocket



She hit Cinder like a freight train just in time for Marrow's semblance to be interrupted, and both of them went careening out the shattered window into the open sky outside Salem's tower. Penny pushed Cinder off of her with a determined frown then splayed her fingers to either side, before she swung them back together like a conductor, aiming all eight of her swords into an arrayed slash from both sides while Cinder was hopefully still getting her bearings.

The faster Cinder went down, the faster Penny could apologize. For all of this.


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

"Was that if an enemy's taking the time to talk, they're usually waiting for something." Watts finished as he suddenly regained his faculties, making it looked like this had all been planned from the start.

It hadn't, but it wasn't like anyone was going to take the time to correct him. It was his own machinations he'd been delaying for.

His time in Atlas, as a member of the SDC's research team, had given him an in depth understanding of Atlesian technology, far beyond what he had as a student. He'd been cherry picking left and right from the best it had to offer for Phylactery's construction, to the point that he'd been somewhat surprised he'd been getting away with it. He knew now that he hadn't, really; that Weiss and most likely Ironwood were both in the know of how much he'd been doing, and why.

But the benefit of no one remembering anything you wanted them to was that no one remembered anything you didn't want them to; neither what you knew, or tricks you'd already pulled.

He crouched down as low as he could go while he swung his other hand out from behind his back finally, actually needing to see what he was doing for these last few inputs. A lot of rote memorization, but certain codes and inputs weren't designed that way. as ridiculous as it was, he honestly appreciated Roman's brief foray into Acme Brand combat as a distraction, as he pressed the final few characters into the screen and hopefully sent the command before Ironwood managed to stop him.

If it did, all of the rank and file soldier's felt their helmets tighten as the safety locks kicked in; designed to keep the helmet in place in case of long falls or high winds, or manually activated if you were afraid of a foe trying to remove it.

Then their helmets, and any unfortunate aceops or generals who were unfortunate enough to have strode in with an ear piece, blasted a sound so loud and high it was only going to last a minute before it fried the electronics and speakers in their helmets, along with any eardrums if they couldn't remove it in time.

Watts rose from his feet and drew Last Resort in the same motion, spinning both cylinders with his thumb as he levelled it at Jame's metallic shoulder then let loose a double barreled lightning dust blast

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

It took new a few moments to recover from the spiral she was going down when everything started to happen.

Thankfully, everyone bought her those few moments. She looked down in shock as the cuffs disappeared off her hands, then up to Emerald with her eyes practically shining, apparently unable to help herself as she leaped into a hug slash strangle around her neck.

There wasn't any danger of that; the hug was weightless, literally. She just hoped Em knew the emotion behind it was sincere; there was just other stuff that needed to be done.

Wherever Harriet was a few moments later, whichever way she was trying to sprint, something caught her ankle out of nowhere and sent her facefirst into the floor with all of her own momentum. Neo's semblance flaked off her at the same time the clone hugging Emerald disappeared, and Neo used the grip Hush's handle already had to flip the aceop over head, flipped Hush free and around, and jammed its point straight into Harriet's gut before the Umbrella opened, flinging her straight for Roman.

If she never touched the ground, she couldn't use her semblance, right?

 

[MyrtenRose]

"Don't think I don't regret what you all just had to see, but let's rein ourselves in a bit. Salem will get up and walk away from this with nary a consequence once there isn't an investigation for her to obstruct anymore, just the same as she always has. With time, I hope she and Glynda will even... understand."

There was a momentary hang in the sentence as the look Goodwitch had affixed him with flashed through his mind, illuminating with perfect clarity just how unlikely that eventuality was. But he huffed, steeling his resolve.

Not enough regret to not do it in the first place, asshole. She didn't care that it was temporary, it was still a killshot, just because their headmistress dared to stand up for them against these ridiculous charges. There was no amount of "she'll be back" that would justify blowing half her head off in the middle of her sanctum. Not as far as she was concerned.​

"STAY!"

Cinder unfortunately didn't even make it past the two of them, Ironwood's other trump card making itself known for the second time in quick succession as the howling winds were overshadowed by a pair of Manta rising to a par with the office window, various others starting to split off from the prodigious Atlesian fleet and make their way towards the tower in the distance.

They were all reminded of just how annoying Marrow's semblance actually was when not only Cinder, but Watts, Roman, and Tyrian too all found themselves immobilized, the youngest Ace Op having lined them up in his sight like James instructed.

She may have been stuck, paralyzed to this spot, but that didn't prevent her from glaring in frustration and annoyance at Marrow. It struck her then that her father would have been overjoyed to have a semblance like that one. Just one more tool of control. The thought made her sick. But this wasn't her father, this was just Marrow. She may have been unable to move, but if she could just mentally call down one well placed lightning bolt, she reasoned that would have been enough to free herself and the others too. Fortunately, there was no need.​

Suddenly, that didn't seem to matter so much anymore as the other party lying in wait finally made their move in response to the cue (having thankfully surmised that Torchwick's office desk wormhole wasn't it), and MTEN's leader and Neo both felt their cuffs slip loose and clatter to the floor in the same instant Mercury exploded off his back heels in a veritable tornado of motion; drilling Marrow with a kick to the solar plexus that drove all the air from his lungs and sent him crashing back into the elevator with an ungodly metallic clang. For whatever reason every single button on the panel had already been pushed, and as he became cognizant of that fact the faunus let out a panicky "—crapcrapcrapCRAP!—" just as the doors slid shut in his face with a ding and sent him to a similar sort of hell to the one Merc and Neo themselves had recently found themselves in.

Mercury pulled through! His skilled moves carried style even at the worst of times, but right now she would have sworn up and down that she had never seen anything as awesomely beautiful as Marrow getting kicked into that elevator. Drop dead gorgeous! Were they not all in this horrendously messy situation, she might have even kissed him. On the cheek. She wasn't into him like that. He was more like a sometimes-douchey big brother. And as it turns out, Mercury's super-fantastic-kick was not an isolated incident of awesome, but rather the start of a one-two punch! Emerald, Hazel, his sister, they were all present here too! That was a huge relief, in her head the odds had just gone way up for them managing to successfully resist arrest.

Cinder felt the pressure of Marrow's semblance beginning to fade away--
​

The moment Cinder was caught, and the wind stopped, she angled herself forward as all of thrusters kicked into high gear, the briefest nod returned to the general before she turned into a rocket

She hit Cinder like a freight train just in time for Marrow's semblance to be interrupted, and both of them went careening out the shattered window into the open sky outside Salem's tower. Penny pushed Cinder off of her with a determined frown then splayed her fingers to either side, before she swung them back together like a conductor, aiming all eight of her swords into an arrayed slash from both sides while Cinder was hopefully still getting her bearings.

The faster Cinder went down, the faster Penny could apologize. For all of this.

She'd had the thought of getting out of there, that office was far too cramped to have a prolonged fight with all those people inside, but that proved to be an unnecessary thought. Penny cosplaying an Atlesian train saw to it herself, sending them both into the sky outside. Cinder would be lying if she said it didn't hurt, but she recovered relatively swiftly, more experienced with fighting aerial battles now than she had been during the Vytal festival the first time around. Eight blades of her own materialized in the open air to block the slashes from either side, but regardless of whether or not they were successful, she blasted herself back with her fire jets to get more room.

Much as she wished this fight didn't need to happen, she would fight if she had to...and better her than anybody else since she was pretty sure the two of them were the most powerful on either side.

She recreated the bow from earlier, but no arrows yet. She brought herself into a sudden stop in mid-air, looking towards her friend. "So tell me Penny-" Cinder began to yell. "-does this really feel like justice to you?"
​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

She'd had the thought of getting out of there, that office was far too cramped to have a prolonged fight with all those people inside, but that proved to be an unnecessary thought. Penny cosplaying an Atlesian train saw to it herself, sending them both into the sky outside. Cinder would be lying if she said it didn't hurt, but she recovered relatively swiftly, more experienced with fighting aerial battles now than she had been during the Vytal festival the first time around. Eight blades of her own materialized in the open air to block the slashes from either side, but regardless of whether or not they were successful, she blasted herself back with her fire jets to get more room.

Much as she wished this fight didn't need to happen, she would fight if she had to...and better her than anybody else since she was pretty sure the two of them were the most powerful on either side.

She recreated the bow from earlier, but no arrows yet. She brought herself into a sudden stop in mid-air, looking towards her friend. "So tell me Penny-" Cinder began to yell. "-does this really feel like justice to you?"

Penny swords clashed against Cinder's, before they flipped backwards into a rapid spin in front of her to disperse the flames away from her form. When Cinder opted to pause for now, Penny... let her. She figured as long as she wasn't helping the other students, then it was close enough to what Ironwood intended.

The question made her want to glance away, but she refrained, for now simply lifting her hands up into a ready stance as she answered the question with a morose timber.

"It... feels awful, Cinder."

Her swords started to spin in the other direction.

"We are all meant to be on the same side. But Ironwood was certain Salem wasn't going to take what you've all done seriously enough, and he was right. She... she will be fine, but you need help, Cinder. Before you all bring on something so terrible that I'll lose all of you."

The faint green glow at the center of her blades lit her face from below, showing just how taut her face was with worry and guilt.

"And I will not let that happen"

 

[MyrtenRose]

Penny swords clashed against Cinder's, before they flipped backwards into a rapid spin in front of her to disperse the flames away from her form. When Cinder opted to pause for now, Penny... let her. She figured as long as she wasn't helping the other students, then it was close enough to what Ironwood intended.

The question made her want to glance away, but she refrained, for now simply lifting her hands up into a ready stance as she answered the question with a morose timber.

"It... feels awful, Cinder."

Her swords started to spin in the other direction.

"We are all meant to be on the same side. But Ironwood was certain Salem wasn't going to take what you've all done seriously enough, and he was right. She... she will be fine, but you need help, Cinder. Before you all bring on something so terrible that I'll lose all of you."

The faint green glow at the center of her blades lit her face from below, showing just how taut her face was with worry and guilt.

"And I will not let that happen"

View attachment 1097689​

“Help?” She questioned, incredulously staring at Penny as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard come out of that mouth. “I don’t know what Ironwood told you to sell you on the idea we did something bad enough to deserve all this, but it’s a bunch of crap, Penny! You wanna know what isn’t crap, though? With help like that from our supposed friends-“ Cinder pointed back in the direction of the tower. “-we don’t need enemies!”

She shook her head but it was a brief gesture as she recognized what was coming with that green glow and she took off racing through the sky again, swerving back and forth to stay out of the path of her blast. Cinder adjusted in mid-air so she was facing Penny even as she soared backwards, and finally created arrows to go along with that bow.

Explosive arrows that she immediately released in great number, a barrage meant to try and keep Penny on the defensive while the weather began to abruptly change around them.​

 

[MidwayLives]

"Lost my mind. A murderer. Right."

For however much it was worth, a factor which was admittedly limited with Salem's cranium still spilling out a few feet from where he stood, Ironwood actually did seem somewhat bothered by the various reactions levied his way, despite the ruthlessness of his conduct. He ran a hand down his face from the bridge of his nose, taking a deep, prosthetics-assisted breath in a bid to maintain his composure.

"Don't think I don't regret what you all just had to see, but let's rein ourselves in a bit. Salem will get up and walk away from this with nary a consequence once there isn't an investigation for her to obstruct anymore, just the same as she always has. With time, I hope she and Glynda will even... understand."

There was a momentary hang in the sentence as the look Goodwitch had affixed him with flashed through his mind, illuminating with perfect clarity just how unlikely that eventuality was. But he huffed, steeling his resolve.

"...It's just going to take a little bit longer than usual."

He let that speak for Salem's regeneration and the prospect of forgiveness both. That dark, metallic look in his eye returned, whatever momentary pain or indecision his features had been wracked with disappearing back behind the mask of resolve.

"None of you understand how close we are. How the course of human history has the potential to go one of two ways after tonight; we either rally and push back, as we always have. Or... or it all goes tumbling into the abyss. Mankind reduced to just another series of crumbling ruins someone will find some day and wonder what happened. Another lost civilization. Ask yourself, how many has she already walked away from?"

He tried to keep the scorn out of his tone as he glanced back down at Salem, and didn't quite manage it.

"...I didn't lose my mind, Arthur."

One had to wonder whose benefit he was repeating himself for, or to whose benefit arguing with a group of teenagers served to begin with. Either way, by the time he met Watts' gaze again there was no trace of that doubt left in sight; there couldn't be.

Not if he wanted to do his job.

"The world lost its mind while I was on duty."

Tyrian wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

He had more mental and emotional baggage than a cargo hold.

Maybe it was because he'd lied over and over to his parents about what he got up to. How he managed to help them pay the bills and keep the lights on.

How broken they seemed when they discovered the truth. On that fateful day, when the shareholders of Ichabod's 'club' went behind the veteran's back and threatened Trifa in order to get Tyrian to throw the match to a human opponent. One that he could have easily beaten otherwise. Just to teach both Ichabod and Tyrian a lesson: no matter how dressed up an animal was, how much you praised it or showered it with compliments or riches. They were still just that: an animal, a lesser being. When his parents forced their way into the building and saw how brutally their beloved son was being beaten, a riot nearly kicked off with the absolute storm they wrecked in their furious grief. It was only through the intervention of local authorities and huntsmen that the situation didn't spiral out of control. Tyrian's opponent was arrested, something to give the faunus community to chew on and be satisfied with. The shareholders would never be touched and despite his savory words of praise and encouragment, Ichabod wasn't much better. Pulling Tyrian's parents aside and convincing them that he'd disallow Tyrian from participating anymore.

It broke Tyrian's heart. For many years, fighting was all he had. He'd made friends, he even got fan mail! Well, most of it were just insulting letters or papers tossed at him when he walked up to the ring but occasionally, he'd get gifts and such. He never partook in drinking unless he got socially pressured into it to keep up appearances for Ichabod's sake. The man, although crippled and having to rely on a cane to limp around, had trained Tyrian in just about everything he knew about fighting. It pained Tyrian to admit it as his parents weren't distant by choice, having to work multiple jobs most of them terrible and grueling, to try and put food on the table for their son, Ichabod was often the only adult figure he was around enough to form a bond with and what he thought was a friendship. So after a stint in the hospital, Tyrian attempted to return to the ring only to be denied. He'd never forget Ichabod's words, the former soldier's southern twang running across every word, despite the protests of the other fighters that Tyrian had managed to befriend.

"What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men."

Fighting had been all Tyrian ever had. It was his comfort, his joy, his friend. Yet, on the whims of just one man, one that Tyrian had always believed who'd do right by him, it was ripped away in an instant. It was only after Ichabod, with extreme reluctance, threatened to call the authorities that Tyrian finally left, warm tears streaming down his face. The news was muted, mostly to try and keep anti-faunus politicians and critics from getting a soapbox, but not long after the club was raided and completely destroyed. The shareholders that rigged Tyrian's last match were murdered and Ichabod, although his body was never found, was also presumed among the dead.

He got himself in trouble for weeks after, his parents didn't know WHAT to do with him. At the rate he was going, he'd either end up dead or behind bars. It was when they started looking towards Beacon Academy that their only avenue to try and save their son became clear. It wasn't perfect and it had the potential to be just as dangerous as the nightmare they'd pulled him out of, a old bastard making money over hand off their son's blood, sweat and tears.

Salem took a chance on him.

The faunus hated it at first. School had never been something he'd been overly interested in. Hitting stuff, kicking it, that's where his love lay. But, if it'd make his parents happy then he'd do it.

Plus, if another adult believed in whatever kind of potential he had?

He'd respect that to the end.

Which is why as Ironwood continued to rattle on, Tyrian's arms shook and he looked down at the floor, his eyes glowing a dark shade of purple.

He'd get them for this. Whether he was shot, stabbed, or cuffed.

They'd pay.

Ironwood and Penny were exceptionally hard to move when they dug their heels in, and Elm was downright unaffected, the rest of the Ace Ops and more generic soldiers gritting their teeth and doing their best to maintain position as the howling winds buffeted them. Ironwood gave a short, hopefully reassuring nod to Penny, a wordless instruction to follow her mandate of sticking to the maiden like glue, not giving her a moment to breathe.

"STAY!"

Cinder unfortunately didn't even make it past the two of them, Ironwood's other trump card making itself known for the second time in quick succession as the howling winds were overshadowed by a pair of Manta rising to a par with the office window, various others starting to split off from the prodigious Atlesian fleet and make their way towards the tower in the distance.

They were all reminded of just how annoying Marrow's semblance actually was when not only Cinder, but Watts, Roman, and Tyrian too all found themselves immobilized, the youngest Ace Op having lined them up in his sight like James instructed.

Tyrian glared daggers at the fellow faunus.

He'd told Roman that he'd stick by his side.

The same went for everyone else he cared about.

The piercing gaze didn't stop even as he was frozen in place.

They were all reminded of just how annoying Marrow's semblance actually was when not only Cinder, but Watts, Roman, and Tyrian too all found themselves immobilized, the youngest Ace Op having lined them up in his sight like James instructed.

"Got 'em, sir. Let's keep this under control and try to avoid—"

Marrow's pointer fingers were knocked off-course so fast, so unexpectedly and with so much torque the young soldier honestly didn't even know what happened to make him lose his balance, since there was quite simply no way anyone on the caliber of a first-year Beacon student could've gotten the drop on him like that. It was a full three seconds later that the guard who'd clocked Neo finally processed the grey blur he'd seen out of the corner of his eye, turning to meet a full tilt 'bro' look that was as pitying as it was vainglorious.

Mercury shrugged. "Cuffed the wrong body parts, dipshit."

"Heh."

Okay, okay, that WAS pretty cool.

As cool as him discovering and unlocking his friggin semblance?

Or then using it to half-effectively drop a table on a bunch of guys?

....Yeah, it was.

"What do you say we teach these guys a lesson, Tyri-"

Roman was nearly bowled over as the faunus RUSHED past him. "WHOA!" Slamming the bottom of Melodic Cudgel on the ground to steady himself, Roman cleared his throat and tried to regain some level of cool and composed composure. "Yeah! Go get em....man that was a little scary..." He muttered, making sure it was under his breath so Tyrian didn't hear it. Now the time for goofing around was over. It was time to get serious and-



Kick some authority figures's asses!

W-With assistance of course!

It took new a few moments to recover from the spiral she was going down when everything started to happen.

Thankfully, everyone bought her those few moments. She looked down in shock as the cuffs disappeared off her hands, then up to Emerald with her eyes practically shining, apparently unable to help herself as she leaped into a hug slash strangle around her neck.

There wasn't any danger of that; the hug was weightless, literally. She just hoped Em knew the emotion behind it was sincere; there was just other stuff that needed to be done.

Wherever Harriet was a few moments later, whichever way she was trying to sprint, something caught her ankle out of nowhere and sent her facefirst into the floor with all of her own momentum. Neo's semblance flaked off her at the same time the clone hugging Emerald disappeared, and Neo used the grip Hush's handle already had to flip the aceop over head, flipped Hush free and around, and jammed its point straight into Harriet's gut before the Umbrella opened, flinging her straight for Roman.

If she never touched the ground, she couldn't use her semblance, right?

Ah, it was always a treat to see Neo work. Hell, if circumstances weren't so effed up, he'd say it'd have been a treat to see ALL his teammates here and getting ready to kick ass and take names.

It was like poetry in motion, too beautiful to be described adequately by a schmuck like him.

She'd also always be much more of a skilled fighter than him, but that was okay.

Watching as Harriet came flying in, Roman tapped the underside of his chin.

How many times had she slammed him down?

He SLAMMED the bottom of Melodic Cudgel down and the weapon went flying off, slamming right into Harriet's chest and bouncing back to Roman's waiting grasp.

"One..."

Then he did it again.

"Two...? No, no..."

Once more, from the top.

"Three...four..."

Right as she was about to close the distance and slam into him, he twirled Melodic Cudgel around and aimed it's barrel straight at the airborne Ace Ops.

"Five."

The blast went off sending it's lucky recipient on a round trip back to Neo.

—Only to blink, stunned, as her elephantine hammer appeared to stop and get caught by... nothing.

Nothing that left two huge dents in the ground where its heels were.

Nothing that, all of a sudden, was replaced by something as the even bigger, angrier form of Hazel Reinhart shimmered into existence right in front of her, as did two smaller figures on either side of Neo, one of them rubbing her hands together with glee as she reared back, spun her weapons around in her grip, and let loose with the sick line she'd been cooking up this entire time.

"Hazel—"

"—SMASH."

Ehhhh, instant misfire. Sounded better in her head. She turned to the other girl, simultaneously warning her with squinted eyes not to repeat what she'd just heard and feeling semi obliged to give her something to springboard off of too.

"Gretchen, I dunno, do Gretchen stuff? I never really got to know you that well."

While Roman and Neo had a good symmetry in their battling style, Tyrian's?

Well, it was better to be witnessed than explained.

Bursting forward from where he'd previously been crouched down, poised like a predator ready to rip and tear.

The sudden display of Hazel was a welcome one. One that the faunus very much used to his advantage. Getting by Elm, through jumping off her head for good measure, Tyrian's blades snapped into active play, and he POUNCED for Vine, his hands all aglow with his semblance as he lashed out with the blunt side of his tail, swinging it around as though it were a wrecking ball attached to his body, his arms up to swipe away at Vine and disrupt his aura. As furious as he was, as feral as he was feeling, the man he was currently setting himself upon like a wild animal wasn't the one who temporarily took out Salem.

But it wasn't going to save him from a mauling.

"GRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!!"

Spoiler: something like this!

"GOODWITCH ISN'T GONNA SAVE YOU THIIIISSSSS TIIIIIIIMEEEEEEEEE!!"

 

[Gus Gungus]

Something became readily apparent to Ironwood in those few moments. Something that, had he known, would have changed his entire mode of engagement coming into this arrest.

These weren’t the same group of talented schoolchildren they’d been watching compete over these last few days.

Of course. How could he have been so blind?

He’d actually let his judgment soften over the course of this conversation. Allowed their genuine apparent delusions and Penny’s appraisal of their character to convince him they were victims in all this, too, to a degree; fallen prey to some outside influence. More pawns in Ozpin’s great game. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself ignore what all the evidence was screaming at him, the belief he’d initially walked into this room espousing.

They were instigators.

Because no student of Beacon, no matter how prodigal, could have run through even the least experienced Ace Op so cleanly. None of Salem’s students could hope to enter a true contest of strength with Elm. Not even someone of Watts’ intelligence could do what he was doing sans months of preparation, of breaking down the latest in Atlas tech runtimes and algorithms. Nothing in their preliminary round showings against the likes of teams NEON and BRNZ had indicated anything like this. Obviously there was a whole other side to these eight (nine?) than he’d seen. They weren’t victims, they were handpicked warriors of the dark; and like any good agent of darkness, they had been concealing their true ability.

The reality, of course, was far from as simple, even if it was one he’d already seen, heard and rejected.

The world at large might have forgotten the adventures of team WTCH and team MTEN. The gods themselves might have seen fit to strike them from the annals of history.

But they still happened. The hardships they’d endured, the terrifying enemies they’d faced, the inner and outer strength that had uncovered… despite Ironwood’s stubborn refusal to engage with the thought, despite how utterly unbelievable it all was, it had all still happened.

And moreso than any others, their souls were never going to forget.

Mercury and Emerald’s play hardly even seemed to register as he watched the final few strokes of Watts’ fingers, and the alarmed comprehension dawning over his face must have been incredibly satisfying to Arthur as a lesson he’d imparted no less than an hour ago was turned against him.

“…Helmets off. NOW—“

​

Tyrian glared daggers at the fellow faunus​

“Oh, for goodness' sake. This one is actually crying,” Vine would later recall saying, somewhat reticent throughout all this since I can’t actually remember much of his personality.
​

Roman was nearly bowled over as the faunus RUSHED past him. "WHOA!" Slamming the bottom of Melodic Cudgel on the ground to steady himself, Roman cleared his throat and tried to regain some level of cool and composed composure. "Yeah! Go get em....man that was a little scary..." He muttered, making sure it was under his breath so Tyrian didn't hear it. Now the time for goofing around was over. It was time to get serious and-



Kick some authority figures's asses!​

Harriet didn't much like to think of herself an 'authority figure'; indeed, if anyone present had happened to encounter her in a different context on shore leave, been forced to listen to her go off on one of her tangents about the benefits of CBD oil or how she 'didn't feel a need to drink anymore', they might have found it exceptionally difficult to consider her one too.

Truth was, as someone who identified most strongly with libertarian values but tried not to get hung up on politics, this was really just a job for her. She wanted to make as much money as she could to fund the lifestyle she wanted to have. She had no ambitions to climb the ladder or anything like that—that kind of thinking was liable to invite the negative energy gremlins slash sleep paralysis demons back into her life, and that was just no good. In short—

"Y'know—"

—she—
​

"—it's—"

—was—
​

"—never—"​

—really—
​

"—too—"

—just—
​

"—late—"​

—here—
​

"—to—"

—to—
​

"—change—"​

—vibe.

"—careers?"

And vibin she appeared to be. She was here because she happened to love running, happened to have the most developed speed semblance in Remnant, and those two things in conjunction with the lightning-infused knuckledusters on her wrists happened to make her possibly the most well-rounded and dangerous fighter the Ace Ops had, arguably. She stuck to the last order she was given with a dogmatic rigidity, and Roman was finding out just how annoying it felt to be that last order as he caught hands from all sides, from different trajectories, Harriet scrawling lightning tracks round and round the circumference of the room and still landing past his guard.
​

Wherever Harriet was a few moments later, whichever way she was trying to sprint, something caught her ankle out of nowhere and sent her facefirst into the floor with all of her own momentum. Neo's semblance flaked off her at the same time the clone hugging Emerald disappeared, and Neo used the grip Hush's handle already had to flip the aceop over head, flipped Hush free and around, and jammed its point straight into Harriet's gut before the Umbrella opened, flinging her straight for Roman.

If she never touched the ground, she couldn't use her semblance, right?​

The thing about a stoner running around and around in a bunch of circles over and over was that it got pretty easy to predict pretty fast, but she didn't look to be taking any accountability for that as in the last second before Hush's handle opened Neo could've sworn she saw the very much inverted Harriet shake her head at her with judgmental overtones, albeit lacking in any true anger. "Bitch."
​

He SLAMMED the bottom of Melodic Cudgel down and the weapon went flying off, slamming right into Harriet's chest and bouncing back to Roman's waiting grasp.

"One..."​

​

Then he did it again.

"Two...? No, no..."​

​

Once more, from the top.

"Three...four..."​

​

Right as she was about to close the distance and slam into him, he twirled Melodic Cudgel around and aimed it's barrel straight at the airborne Ace Ops.

"Five."​

Okay, that proved it. This Vacuan herb was definitely way too strong for her.

Detriments to her reaction time aside, she was at least able to level off from that frankly insane wailing she just took and keep a (somewhat) clear head, finally orienting herself properly to ram her fists into the ground and interrupt the sudden game of table tennis before it could go any further, immediately bursting off her back heel to stay out of reach. "Okay, okay. You kids got a lil two-step number. Cute! Wanna see mine?"

And thus did Roman find himself bodily picked up and thrown out the window. Boom, problem solved. Now she could deal with the actually dangerous one.
​

While Roman and Neo had a good symmetry in their battling style, Tyrian's?

Well, it was better to be witnessed than explained.

Bursting forward from where he'd previously been crouched down, poised like a predator ready to rip and tear.

The sudden display of Hazel was a welcome one. One that the faunus very much used to his advantage. Getting by Elm, through jumping off her head for good measure, Tyrian's blades snapped into active play, and he POUNCED for Vine, his hands all aglow with his semblance as he lashed out with the blunt side of his tail, swinging it around as though it were a wrecking ball attached to his body, his arms up to swipe away at Vine and disrupt his aura. As furious as he was, as feral as he was feeling, the man he was currently setting himself upon like a wild animal wasn't the one who temporarily took out Salem.

But it wasn't going to save him from a mauling.

"GRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!!"

Spoiler: something like this!

"GOODWITCH ISN'T GONNA SAVE YOU THIIIISSSSS TIIIIIIIMEEEEEEEEE!!"​

Oh he didn't like that.

Tyrian Callows was a lost soul. That much was becoming almost as apparent in this Remnant as it had in another, where a Tyrian whose shadow had thankfully never darkened this world's doorstep was a fixture in the nightmares of all who crossed his path. There he was the wicked Salem's equivalent of Ozpin's Dragon, the ferocious, vile, utterly deranged attack dog, a problem nobody seemed to have a lasting solution for.

Here, that fate belonged to another. Here, Tyrian had been fortunate enough (in one flavor or another) to have had at least some form of a support network throughout a majority of his life, friends who genuinely cared for him despite his quirks. It had been good for him, for his prospects.

It also meant that he was resisting his soul's true calling.

When Mercury had decimated him back in Vacuo, that had been the key differentiator; Mercury had stopped seeing Tyrian as a friend in that moment, and started seeing him as his target. Tyrian may have been slipping, may have been the one escalating things to start with, but he was also still coming at it from the angle of teaching his buddy a lesson, and had not been met with that same grace in turn.

He harbored no such sentiment for Vine. And whatever feeling he felt bubbling up from the depths inside him...

He didn't need to fight it.

The operative had been repositioning himself to behind Hazel, preparing to snatch at the man mountain's ankles and yank his balance out from under him like a tablecloth even as Elm rooted her own in place, their standard tactic to tip the balance when the Ace Ops' heavy hitter came up against a foe of similar power. He was quick to react when Tyrian came bounding across the skull of his comrade, the multi-edged throwing star called Thorn whirling off his back to parry the opening volley from Tyrian's blades, but it was clear he was on the back foot under the sheer savagery the teen was bringing to bear from the moment the tail entered the fray, barely able to duck and swerve around it while preserving his balance as his expression gradually became more and more beleaguered, their duel having neared the shattered window by the time he decided something needed to be done.

He suddenly tossed his weapon for the ceiling and thrust both palms out, Tyrian finding himself blown back and then mercilessly clapped between two enormous aura projections intended to take away any leverage his arms had and keep him pinned in place, neutralizing him.

"Are you absolutely certain you aren't on drugs? Think about it."
​

If it did, all of the rank and file soldier's felt their helmets tighten as the safety locks kicked in; designed to keep the helmet in place in case of long falls or high winds, or manually activated if you were afraid of a foe trying to remove it.

Then their helmets, and any unfortunate aceops or generals who were unfortunate enough to have strode in with an ear piece, blasted a sound so loud and high it was only going to last a minute before it fried the electronics and speakers in their helmets, along with any eardrums if they couldn't remove it in time.

Watts rose from his feet and drew Last Resort in the same motion, spinning both cylinders with his thumb as he levelled it at Jame's metallic shoulder then let loose a double barreled lightning dust blast​

Though it would never stop him from trying, James Ironwood knew in his heart of hearts that he could only ever be so effective as a preventative measure.

Loathe as he was to frame it this way, someone like Carnelian and his twisted methods would always be better at that. Predicting the trouble before it came, hacking and slicing away at any possible cause of the problem until nothing remained to create a problem.

Ironwood liked to think he had chosen a different way. A more enlightened one. Shocking and visceral though it may have been, he had come down on Salem like the steel fist of judgment after she became a problem, not before. His job wasn’t to predict when lightning would strike; it was to stand fast and weather the storm when it finally did.

Case in point, only about a third of the soldiers in the office were able to heed his warning in time, their helmets clattering to the floor even as their comrades cried out and recoiled around them. James himself and the Ace Ops found themselves fortunate in that their troubles were much more easily resolved, a momentary hiss of pain and aggressive removal of their earpiece the universal reaction to the sudden dose of tinnitus, not enough to disrupt their present movements.



For James, that took the form of a gunshot-propelled trajectory directly through Watts’ suppressive fire, the electricity diffusing across his aura but not quite having the effect on his prosthetics the student might’ve hoped as his elbow collided thunderously with his former pupil’s temple.

As mentioned, he couldn’t predict the lightning. Only endure it as best he could.

A swift kick to the gut followed while Arthur was reeling, and though he had often speculated there was no way to truly fathom what a hard right cross to the jaw from Ironwood’s steel knuckles felt like until you had experienced it multiple time. His opposite brandished the ivory pistol, already whirling up with military precision to—

—Get immediately kicked wide by Mercury, the kind of wide James was entirely unused to having his touted stance of iron subjected to and yet was now on the receiving end of for the second time that morning. A boot to the jaw as hard and metallic as any part of the general’s body followed, Mercury letting off a shot in midair to redirect his momentum into a backflip and land at Watts’ side as Ironwood skidded back a short distance with a snarl.



“Quick, Arturo! Do your killer robot magical girl transformation!”

…

“…Oh, riiight. You don’t have that little cheat code anymore. That must suck for you.“

Merc’s own tone made it apparent he wasn’t gonna lose any sleep over it, but he took up a stance at his fellow team leader’s flank regardless while he got his footing back, staring Ironwood down. Breaking down a room and triaging the situation was one of the things he was best at, not that it took an assassin-born combat genius to figure out that any kind of a direct confrontation between Ironwood and his former pupil was gonna lead to Watts getting bullied; being honest, he didn’t know if he liked his odds in that particular best-of-ten himself.

But together was a totally different story, and being honest he and Watts were way past due some kind of fleeting moment of solidarity.

Even if he did also just kinda like the idea of dropping in on his ol buddy's whole big nemesis showdown thing. Far be it from him to pass up an opportunity to steal team WTCH's thunder.

“So, you had a whole big sudden tactical play you were settin up the entire time too, huh? Just sayin, not that we're comparing, but if we were pretty sure getting rid of that guy with the affirmative action semblance trumps briefly disabling some goons. Just sayin—“

That was when the same hyperaccelerated plasma beam they had just seen eviscerate Salem collided with his chest.

Their brains were that little bit more ready to perceive it this time, more clearly able to pinpoint its origin as one of the warships among the looming fleet starting to converge around the tower; that didn’t mean any of them were anywhere close to being able to dodge it though, the kind of speed a superheated state of matter needed to be spat from the chamber of a gun at to be effective at that distance beyond even any of them. The unnerving thing was that the beam didn’t carry any sound, nothing that would’ve enabled them to even predict its arrival, and Mercury served as the first and only warning of what failing to take their present predicament seriously would bring as he was bowled clean off his feet with a surprised “uuuugh”.

It preceded the light in his eyes growing dim at an alarming rate as his features went slack, and for one, godawful moment that seemed to suspend itself over an eternity it wasn’t actually clear whether his aura had managed to hold up or not, Emerald’s features contorting with horror when she realised what had happened. “MERCURY!”

He crashed heavily onto his back and didn’t stir, eyes wide open but staring blankly up at the ceiling as his hand clutched at his chest and he tried desperately to wheeze breaths in and out that weren’t coming out nearly as deep as he wanted. His aura, which made a solid case for being the strongest out of any of them, shattered from the single bolt, but of at least some reassurance was the fact that the smoking black patch on his chest didn’t appear to have broken skin.

Much less reassuring was the loud, sickening crack that emanated from the region of his sternum.



Ironwood just watched from his position, a dark glare the tone of which was very much ‘are you proud of yourself?’ affixed to Watts as he started pressuring him with further gunshots from one hand while speaking into a personal comms device in his wrist with the other.

“Go dark. Starting with squads Alpha, Echo and Foxtrot, sever everyone’s equipment from the grid.”

“Everyone? Sir, it’ll be impossible to communicate with the rest of the—“

“Then I guess you’d better just send them all here, hadn’t you?” He growled, cutting off the control room line in annoyance and switching to another. “Clover, radio silence from here on, but keep laying down fire.”

He paused, gave Mercury a once-over, then added:

“And start aiming for their heads.”
​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

Okay, that proved it. This Vacuan herb was definitely way too strong for her.

Detriments to her reaction time aside, she was at least able to level off from that frankly insane wailing she just took and keep a (somewhat) clear head, finally orienting herself properly to ram her fists into the ground and interrupt the sudden game of table tennis before it could go any further, immediately bursting off her back heel to stay out of reach. "Okay, okay. You kids got a lil two-step number. Cute! Wanna see mine?"

And thus did Roman find himself bodily picked up and thrown out the window. Boom, problem solved. Now she could deal with the actually dangerous one.

There was a soundless gasp across Neo's features as Roman was suddenly grappled and tossed, one hand shooting up to cover her mouth while the other hand shot out towards the window, tears glistening in her eyes as she seemed rooted to the spot- Before she stuck out her tongue and pulled one eyelid down at the same time Roman came crashing back through the window it seemed, the plane reshattering and revealing Neo and her partner.

She knew Roman wasn't as good at fighting as the others. It was why she saw herself as his protector more than his partner.

But he was still a hunter, and they were still partners, dear friends, or whatever you wanted to call it; a bond that started back when he first took that small girl's hand in that blood splattered room.

Melodic Cudgel's curved hook was caught on Hush's own handle, its grappling hook's line speeding him back up to the roof and adding its own momentum to Neo's cross overhand swing, joining the long and storied tradition of Beacon huntresses using their partners like a sentient blunt object to absolutely blast unsuspecting fools as Torchwick turned with the apex of the swing to land a high speed kick straight across the temple.

The momentum was carried through one more full spin before Neo twisted so that Roman could land on his feet, and despite everything else she couldn't help but shoot him a warm and genuine smile as she slipped her own weapon free.

No matter what else was roiling beneath the surface, or how dangerous this situation was; for right now they were together again.

And it really did feel like a step towards feeling right again.

Then she turned on her heel with a leap and tried to brain Vine across the back of the head with a full on baseball slugger's swing of Hush while Tyrian had his full focus.

Though it would never stop him from trying, James Ironwood knew in his heart of hearts that he could only ever be so effective as a preventative measure.

Loathe as he was to frame it this way, someone like Carnelian and his twisted methods would always be better at that. Predicting the trouble before it came, hacking and slicing away at any possible cause of the problem until nothing remained to create a problem.

Ironwood liked to think he had chosen a different way. A more enlightened one. Shocking and visceral though it may have been, he had come down on Salem like the steel fist of judgment after she became a problem, not before. His job wasn’t to predict when lightning would strike; it was to stand fast and weather the storm when it finally did.

Case in point, only about a third of the soldiers in the office were able to heed his warning in time, their helmets clattering to the floor even as their comrades cried out and recoiled around them. James himself and the Ace Ops found themselves fortunate in that their troubles were much more easily resolved, a momentary hiss of pain and aggressive removal of their earpiece the universal reaction to the sudden dose of tinnitus, not enough to disrupt their present movements.

For James, that took the form of a gunshot-propelled trajectory directly through Watts’ suppressive fire, the electricity diffusing across his aura but not quite having the effect on his prosthetics the student might’ve hoped as his elbow collided thunderously with his former pupil’s temple.

As mentioned, he couldn’t predict the lightning. Only endure it as best he could.

A swift kick to the gut followed while Arthur was reeling, and though he had often speculated there was no way to truly fathom what a hard right cross to the jaw from Ironwood’s steel knuckles felt like until you had experienced it multiple time. His opposite brandished the ivory pistol, already whirling up with military precision to—

That went about as expected.

Or about as much as he could've expected anyways. He might've been relegated to more of a support role without Phylactery's power, but he'd found himself on the receiving end of a few hits regardless, even from the likes of the other Cinder, in all her rage fueled glory.

Yet that there was something about the sheer, simple, practical brutality about catching a hunk of iron against his head that all that magical fire and knives hadn't quite captured.

he rolled as best he could with the kick, his shield haphazardly raised in Ironwood's direction at the same time he tried to level Last Resort-

—Get immediately kicked wide by Mercury, the kind of wide James was entirely unused to having his touted stance of iron subjected to and yet was now on the receiving end of for the second time that morning. A boot to the jaw as hard and metallic as any part of the general’s body followed, Mercury letting off a shot in midair to redirect his momentum into a backflip and land at Watts’ side as Ironwood skidded back a short distance with a snarl.

“Quick, Arturo! Do your killer robot magical girl transformation!”

…

“…Oh, riiight. You don’t have that little cheat code anymore. That must suck for you.“

He was slower to his feet than he would've liked, all things considered, gripping at his side where the kick had landed as he grunted back, his eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out his next best angle to usefulness.

"Careful Mercury. You almost sound like you were impressed by it"

“So, you had a whole big sudden tactical play you were settin up the entire time too, huh? Just sayin, not that we're comparing, but if we were pretty sure getting rid of that guy with the affirmative action semblance trumps briefly disabling some goons. Just sayin—“

That was when the same hyperaccelerated plasma beam they had just seen eviscerate Salem collided with his chest.

Their brains were that little bit more ready to perceive it this time, more clearly able to pinpoint its origin as one of the warships among the looming fleet starting to converge around the tower; that didn’t mean any of them were anywhere close to being able to dodge it though, the kind of speed a superheated state of matter needed to be spat from the chamber of a gun at to be effective at that distance beyond even any of them. The unnerving thing was that the beam didn’t carry any sound, nothing that would’ve enabled them to even predict its arrival, and Mercury served as the first and only warning of what failing to take their present predicament seriously would bring as he was bowled clean off his feet with a surprised “uuuugh”.

It preceded the light in his eyes growing dim at an alarming rate as his features went slack, and for one, godawful moment that seemed to suspend itself over an eternity it wasn’t actually clear whether his aura had managed to hold up or not, Emerald’s features contorting with horror when she realised what had happened. “MERCURY!”

He crashed heavily onto his back and didn’t stir, eyes wide open but staring blankly up at the ceiling as his hand clutched at his chest and he tried desperately to wheeze breaths in and out that weren’t coming out nearly as deep as he wanted. His aura, which made a solid case for being the strongest out of any of them, shattered from the single bolt, but of at least some reassurance was the fact that the smoking black patch on his chest didn’t appear to have broken skin.

Much less reassuring was the loud, sickening crack that emanated from the region of his sternum.

Ironwood just watched from his position, a dark glare the tone of which was very much ‘are you proud of yourself?’ affixed to Watts as he started pressuring him with further gunshots from one hand while speaking into a personal comms device in his wrist with the other.

“Go dark. Starting with squads Alpha, Echo and Foxtrot, sever everyone’s equipment from the grid.”

“Everyone? Sir, it’ll be impossible to communicate with the rest of the—“

“Then I guess you’d better just send them all here, hadn’t you?” He growled, cutting off the control room line in annoyance and switching to another. “Clover, radio silence from here on, but keep laying down fire.”

He paused, gave Mercury a once-over, then added:

“And start aiming for their heads.”

whatever incredibly witty and scathing retort Watts had died on his lips as Mercury was all but obliterated by the same round that he'd just watched go through the head of one of Remnant's most powerful beings. For a moment, he didn't do anything at all, just stared at where Mercury had landed with a look of shock, before he snarled and flicked his revolver up again to squeeze of a cluster of shots... At the window. Ice dust rounds scattered all around the window in a growing clump, though it was far from enough to cover the window, making it a seemingly pointless endeavor till WTCH's team leader barked out a single name in lieu of an order while his feet were sliding back against the floor with every shot, his hardlight shield beginning to flicker between received shots now

"HAZEL!"

If that went as intended, he snarled as he turned back towards Ironwood, still wincing in pain from his own beating as he nonetheless raised his revolver with a snarl. "We're upgrading from arrests to executions James? Do you even know what you think we are anymore? Or-"

He lost track of his sentence as Neo appeared in mid air a few inches from Ironwood, Hush's blade extended as she went for a falling slash across his neck.



She hadn't even been there last time. Roman wasn't alive when she found him so much as clinging to borrowed time to see her one last time

This time the shine of tears unshed in her eyes weren't a trick of her semblance, as the umbrella snapped open to catch any followup shot along its dust-infused surface, her eyes peeking over the rim. She slid to the side in a fluid motion that was mirrored by a second her, both doubles seeming to move forward into a strike before they twisted out of it, splitting again to go opposite directions and end up on cardinal sides as a foursome kaleidoscope of impending violence

She wasn't sure if she could call it resolve so much as desperation

The umbrellas snapped shut at the same time they drew Hush's blade in the same motion that became a slash, three of them shattering on contact, while the real Neo re-sheathed hush and ducked into a roll, the umbrella snapping open as she came up in a crouch so it could catch a hail of gunfire from soldiers that had managed to get their helmets off, their attention pulled towards their general's new aggressor. sparks showered against it, catching her face in shadows and how it was curled into tear streaked anger.

But no one on MTEN was dying before she did. No matter what that meant

Watts was starting to wonder if he just didn't have the proper motivational investment for a good rivalry or what. This didn't seem to happen to anyone else.

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

“Help?” She questioned, incredulously staring at Penny as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard come out of that mouth. “I don’t know what Ironwood told you to sell you on the idea we did something bad enough to deserve all this, but it’s a bunch of crap, Penny! You wanna know what isn’t crap, though? With help like that from our supposed friends-“ Cinder pointed back in the direction of the tower. “-we don’t need enemies!”

She shook her head but it was a brief gesture as she recognized what was coming with that green glow and she took off racing through the sky again, swerving back and forth to stay out of the path of her blast. Cinder adjusted in mid-air so she was facing Penny even as she soared backwards, and finally created arrows to go along with that bow.

Explosive arrows that she immediately released in great number, a barrage meant to try and keep Penny on the defensive while the weather began to abruptly change around them.

Whatever affect those words hand on Penny didn't show, her face already distraught as she tracked Cinder through the sky, the maiden's aura flaring as the beam just skimmed her before it flickered out. Penny's eyes widened from their distraught determination as Cinder levelled that barrage at her, though perhaps not for the reason Cinder initially thought, caught up in the fight.

They were still right above the school.

Ironwood had set up a perimeter, but not a large one for fear of giving their arrival away too early once they'd tracked down where the students had gone. There were still people down there, let alone civilians just here for the festival.

What should've been an already difficult task of merely dodging the arrows became an impossible one, Penny conducting her blades like a woman possessed to function like an anti missile system, slicing arrow after arrow out of the air, till one slipped through and her choices were to take the hit or let it go who knew where below.

She was sent flying backwards, her aura shining for a moment as she righted herself in the air and gave Cinder a deeper frown. That settled it; at least in her mind, still not fully grasping just how much Cinder had been through between their perceived partings. If Cinder was acting this erratic, along with how powerful she was (she distinctly remembered her being very disappointed she couldn't fly yet) then it really must've been Entropy at work. Ironwood was right-

That was when the same hyperaccelerated plasma beam they had just seen eviscerate Salem collided with his chest.

Their brains were that little bit more ready to perceive it this time, more clearly able to pinpoint its origin as one of the warships among the looming fleet starting to converge around the tower; that didn’t mean any of them were anywhere close to being able to dodge it though, the kind of speed a superheated state of matter needed to be spat from the chamber of a gun at to be effective at that distance beyond even any of them. The unnerving thing was that the beam didn’t carry any sound, nothing that would’ve enabled them to even predict its arrival, and Mercury served as the first and only warning of what failing to take their present predicament seriously would bring as he was bowled clean off his feet with a surprised “uuuugh”.

It preceded the light in his eyes growing dim at an alarming rate as his features went slack, and for one, godawful moment that seemed to suspend itself over an eternity it wasn’t actually clear whether his aura had managed to hold up or not, Emerald’s features contorting with horror when she realised what had happened. “MERCURY!”

He crashed heavily onto his back and didn’t stir, eyes wide open but staring blankly up at the ceiling as his hand clutched at his chest and he tried desperately to wheeze breaths in and out that weren’t coming out nearly as deep as he wanted. His aura, which made a solid case for being the strongest out of any of them, shattered from the single bolt, but of at least some reassurance was the fact that the smoking black patch on his chest didn’t appear to have broken skin.

The beam was easy to track for the maiden and the mechanical girl meant to be her replacement. Penny didn't understand at first; Salem was the entire reason they brought that device into play. Cinder found her opening if she took it, as Penny turned towards the school as her own eyes glowed, in a different fashion than Cinder's

She took a quick count of the occupants, who was where, and it wasn't hard to pinpoint who had taken the blast.

Mercury. Who was still breathing.

She also clocked Neo's sudden change of direction, and she started to open the comms again to warn Ironwood-

He paused, gave Mercury a once-over, then added:

“And start aiming for their heads.”

That.... wasn't right. This entire endeavor had been meant to save her friends from themselves.

Cinder by that point had either taken the opening that was a mile wide by now, or had a chance to do something else as Penny clasped at her wrist, unsurety taking over her

 

[MyrtenRose]

What should've been an already difficult task of merely dodging the arrows became an impossible one, Penny conducting her blades like a woman possessed to function like an anti missile system, slicing arrow after arrow out of the air, till one slipped through and her choices were to take the hit or let it go who knew where below.

She was sent flying backwards, her aura shining for a moment as she righted herself in the air and gave Cinder a deeper frown. That settled it; at least in her mind, still not fully grasping just how much Cinder had been through between their perceived partings. If Cinder was acting this erratic, along with how powerful she was (she distinctly remembered her being very disappointed she couldn't fly yet) then it really must've been Entropy at work. Ironwood was right-

Cinder breathed a sigh of relief as the tactic proved as effective as she hoped, though she still followed that with a unhappy whisper of "Sorry, Penny." Her friend had strength, power, speed, and a lot more, but it was her robotic eyes that Cinder was most concerned with. She wasn't sure how many ways Penny could perceive things, how many types of vision Atlas had seen fit to give to their star program...hell for all she knew, Penny could have X-ray vision capability in there. It was that capability that worried her above all else, able to track her no matter what. Something proven as despite her best efforts to avoid it, the beam still managed to skim her.

Penny had a good heart. If Cinder had to compare, it was honestly probably the most good heart of anyone she'd ever met. The young maiden's own heart...not nearly as good as Penny's, in her own opinion. Not just for a secret she had never revealed to anyone, not even Salem, the woman who had found her and gave her a home, a real home, but for taking advantage of her friend's good nature. Using it against her felt like something that....that her own older counterpart would have gleefully done. She could practically see it in her mind, those burning eyes, that horrid arm, the smug smirk on her monstrous face...the thought of them going for the same tactic shouldn't have unnerved her, they were literally both Cinder Fall, after all. But it did.

She hoped being sorry for it made it better. Even if just a little bit.

Penny took her bait, as she didn't simply dodge the arrows Cinder loosed, but took it upon herself to become the school's anti-air system. Every arrow intercepted and cut through before they could descend down into the school below...until one finally cracked through her defense, exploding right on top of her and sending her flying. That gave Cinder the chance, and she started to surge forward after--​

That was when the same hyperaccelerated plasma beam they had just seen eviscerate Salem collided with his chest.

Their brains were that little bit more ready to perceive it this time, more clearly able to pinpoint its origin as one of the warships among the looming fleet starting to converge around the tower; that didn’t mean any of them were anywhere close to being able to dodge it though, the kind of speed a superheated state of matter needed to be spat from the chamber of a gun at to be effective at that distance beyond even any of them. The unnerving thing was that the beam didn’t carry any sound, nothing that would’ve enabled them to even predict its arrival, and Mercury served as the first and only warning of what failing to take their present predicament seriously would bring as he was bowled clean off his feet with a surprised “uuuugh”.

That was the weapon that took Salem's head off. Her forward charging flight faltered and sputtered out as she came to an abrupt halt, watching as that beam pierced into the tower again, with her eyes widened with fear. She didn't know who, if anybody, had been hit. She didn't manage to hear the comms shared by the Atlesian soldiers, but she did know the power of that weapon...and now where it was being fired from. Fear gave way to rage as she turned to face in that direction. The weather shifted again under her influence, the lightning she had intended to bring down on Penny if she had to was abandoned, as instead she coalesced the clouds into a thick, heavy fog that hung over the tower, and all its occupants.

Cinder hoped that lack of visibility helped, but she didn't stop there.​

That.... wasn't right. This entire endeavor had been meant to save her friends from themselves.

Cinder by that point had either taken the opening that was a mile wide by now, or had a chance to do something else as Penny clasped at her wrist, unsurety taking over her

Penny hesitated. Cinder did not.

She took off as fast as she could, the fire exploding out of her boots as she went right for the ship where that shot originated from. Her eyes narrowed as she got closer, scrutinizing for where exactly on the ship it had--​

Outside, somewhere far, far away, the one Ace Op conspicuous in his absence whistled a jaunty tune to himself as he stood on one of the low external decks of the Atlesian warship he was stationed on, about a klick and a half from his target give or take. He could see the room plain as day, though; the obscene magnification factor on his weapon's scope made sure of it, cutting edge and fresh from the requisitions lab back in Atlas.

There!

Her hand outstretched as she flew ever closer, and this time she did call upon the lightning. A single bolt of blue pierced through the sky ahead of her, aimed specifically for the weapon she intended to completely fry before it could be used to harm anyone else.​

 

[MidwayLives]

Okay, that proved it. This Vacuan herb was definitely way too strong for her.

Detriments to her reaction time aside, she was at least able to level off from that frankly insane wailing she just took and keep a (somewhat) clear head, finally orienting herself properly to ram her fists into the ground and interrupt the sudden game of table tennis before it could go any further, immediately bursting off her back heel to stay out of reach. "Okay, okay. You kids got a lil two-step number. Cute! Wanna see mine?"

And thus did Roman find himself bodily picked up and thrown out the window. Boom, problem solved. Now she could deal with the actually dangerous one.

"...Huh. Was kinda hoping that would have put you down for the-"

*CRASH*

"....count!"

Melodic Cudgel's curved hook was caught on Hush's own handle, its grappling hook's line speeding him back up to the roof and adding its own momentum to Neo's cross overhand swing, joining the long and storied tradition of Beacon huntresses using their partners like a sentient blunt object to absolutely blast unsuspecting fools as Torchwick turned with the apex of the swing to land a high speed kick straight across the temple.

The momentum was carried through one more full spin before Neo twisted so that Roman could land on his feet, and despite everything else she couldn't help but shoot him a warm and genuine smile as she slipped her own weapon free.

No matter what else was roiling beneath the surface, or how dangerous this situation was; for right now they were together again.

And it really did feel like a step towards feeling right again.

He'd done some thinking while sailing through the air and speeding towards what likely would have been a very painful end. If all it did was shatter his aura then he'd be grateful. But given his apparent track record, it would have been naive to think that.

So, it was with a little bit of shakiness in his legs that Roman tried to stand tall after the fact.

It wasn't easy given how pale he was and how unsteady his knees were.

But, what good was he if he needed Neo's help to win any kind of encounter or fight he found himself in? May as well have written him off as an invalid or given him a binky and bib. He had a friend, a best friend that he'd go to the end and back for, but that's all. He had to be able to stand up on his own two feet, he had to! What was it that Tyrian did when he got ready for a fight? The guy always seemed to lose his shirt. Whether it was torn off in battle or the faunus did it himself. Maybe that'd get his heart to stop racing so he could focus. Letting his jacket hang loosely on his shoulders, Roman shook it off and onto the floor. Reaching into his pocket, he lit a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. Did it give any more credence to Ironwood's batfuck crazy theory that they were all a bunch of tweakers?

Probably.

He wasn't even GOOD at it and he was sure when all the dust settled, he'd end up having a coughing fit. But it did it's purpose which was to calm him down and give him a second or two to realize what he was going to have to do. He'd have to take this fight on himself and do his damndest to avoid getting his ass kicked or killed. It wasn't going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination and his semblance wasn't much use/added with a lack of confidence after the desk drop didn't go as he'd hoped.

He still had to try.

He took aim with Melodic Cudgel and fired in Harriet's direction. If he couldn't take her down, he'd at least do his best to keep her occupied through SHEER ANNOYANCE.

Oh he didn't like that.

Tyrian Callows was a lost soul. That much was becoming almost as apparent in this Remnant as it had in another, where a Tyrian whose shadow had thankfully never darkened this world's doorstep was a fixture in the nightmares of all who crossed his path. There he was the wicked Salem's equivalent of Ozpin's Dragon, the ferocious, vile, utterly deranged attack dog, a problem nobody seemed to have a lasting solution for.

Here, that fate belonged to another. Here, Tyrian had been fortunate enough (in one flavor or another) to have had at least some form of a support network throughout a majority of his life, friends who genuinely cared for him despite his quirks. It had been good for him, for his prospects.

It also meant that he was resisting his soul's true calling.

When Mercury had decimated him back in Vacuo, that had been the key differentiator; Mercury had stopped seeing Tyrian as a friend in that moment, and started seeing him as his target. Tyrian may have been slipping, may have been the one escalating things to start with, but he was also still coming at it from the angle of teaching his buddy a lesson, and had not been met with that same grace in turn.

He harbored no such sentiment for Vine. And whatever feeling he felt bubbling up from the depths inside him...

He didn't need to fight it.

The operative had been repositioning himself to behind Hazel, preparing to snatch at the man mountain's ankles and yank his balance out from under him like a tablecloth even as Elm rooted her own in place, their standard tactic to tip the balance when the Ace Ops' heavy hitter came up against a foe of similar power. He was quick to react when Tyrian came bounding across the skull of his comrade, the multi-edged throwing star called Thorn whirling off his back to parry the opening volley from Tyrian's blades, but it was clear he was on the back foot under the sheer savagery the teen was bringing to bear from the moment the tail entered the fray, barely able to duck and swerve around it while preserving his balance as his expression gradually became more and more beleaguered, their duel having neared the shattered window by the time he decided something needed to be done.

Many thought it derogatory to refer to faunus as 'animals'. It stripped their sense of self and helped to further push the agenda that they were little more than freaks. Something that shouldn't be allowed or accepted in polite society. Tyrian had never really given it much thought personally. When the people at the club were rude to him, he took it on the chin and just accepted that not everyone was gonna like him. It being BECAUSE of his very nature as a faunus had never even really crossed his mind. In fact, he'd never really given the whole human/faunus debacle a fig of attention until Ichabod pulled him aside and asked him a very pointed question.

'You wouldn't join the White Fang, would you, my boy?"

The White Fang would come, they'd hurt all the men and women who worked here. They'd kill every single one of them. Ichabod left the silent implication that included him as well. All he wanted to know was if Tyrian would ever take up their banner as well. A question of loyalty phrased as well-meaning concern. Tyrian of course denied the very idea of joining an organization like that. He was happy with his lot in life. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but then what was? He got beat up but he'd always get better and he always had money to bring home. It wasn't worth killing anybody over.

But, then, he hadn't known Ichabod's past as 'The Burning', one of Carnelian's peers. Trifa had and had sworn not to reveal it to the faunus. Lest his heart be crushed by the truth about the man he idolized. If he had maybe things would have been different. Nobody knows for sure.

One thing is for certain, that despite having trained the boy himself, Ichabod did NOT want Tyrian as his enemy.

"GRRRRAAAAAAAGH!!"

Tyrian missed a swipe as Vine continued to back up and deflect. The resounding punch left a fist sized hole in the chunk of wall that happened to eat the punch instead. "You're not walkin out of here in one piece! You're gonna pay for what you did! All of you!" He snarled as he lunged!

"That's it, Tyrian! Like a duck to water..." The appetite for violence was just in his blood.

He suddenly tossed his weapon for the ceiling and thrust both palms out, Tyrian finding himself blown back and then mercilessly clapped between two enormous aura projections intended to take away any leverage his arms had and keep him pinned in place, neutralizing him.

"Are you absolutely certain you aren't on drugs? Think about it."

"You think this is gonna hold me.....Stop me...?! Think AGAIN!!!!"

Tyrian grit his teeth and let out grunts of exertion as sweat rolled down his scarred up bod. He struggled against the projections, huffing and puffing as he did so, his tail swinging around and smashing glass, floor tiles, whatever was in it's way. He didn't HAVE to muscle his way out of here. Just make his opponent uneasy enough at even just the implication that he could. All it'd take was one slip up, one mistake, and he'd destroy these constructs with his own semblance and then he'd TEAR THIS GUY APART!!

"Grrrr....aaaaaghhhhhhhh!!!!"

Then she turned on her heel with a leap and tried to brain Vine across the back of the head with a full on baseball slugger's swing of Hush while Tyrian had his full focus.

Just what he needed.

"GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! AAAAAAAAGGGGAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!"

Vine only HAD two arms and unless it was a really tweaked semblance, it wasn't going to afford him new limbs with which to defend himself. Letting his semblance flow through his hands pressed to his side as they were by the projections. He'd see them fading away as his semblance worked to disrupt them. He didn't have to destroy them completely. Just get enough wriggle room and...

"YOU'RE DOOOOOOOOONE!!!"

Barreling forward on all fours like a feral beast, Tyrian sought to thrust his left hand forward and right against Vine's chest to try and disrupt a good chunk of his aura. Then he really let him have it.

 

[Indolent]

Suddenly, that didn't seem to matter so much anymore as the other party lying in wait finally made their move in response to the cue (having thankfully surmised that Torchwick's office desk wormhole wasn't it), and MTEN's leader and Neo both felt their cuffs slip loose and clatter to the floor in the same instant Mercury exploded off his back heels in a veritable tornado of motion; drilling Marrow with a kick to the solar plexus that drove all the air from his lungs and sent him crashing back into the elevator with an ungodly metallic clang. For whatever reason every single button on the panel had already been pushed, and as he became cognizant of that fact the faunus let out a panicky "—crapcrapcrapCRAP!—" just as the doors slid shut in his face with a ding and sent him to a similar sort of hell to the one Merc and Neo themselves had recently found themselves in.

His other leg shot out in reverse, pinging the overly physical goon with a badge next to him all the way across to the other side of the office, but it meant Mercury himself was vulnerable when he touched down, in good position for Elm to nip this in the bud with an almighty roar as she loomed over him and swung her weapon's head down—

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH-"

—Only to blink, stunned, as her elephantine hammer appeared to stop and get caught by... nothing.

Nothing that left two huge dents in the ground where its heels were.

Nothing that, all of a sudden, was replaced by something as the even bigger, angrier form of Hazel Reinhart shimmered into existence right in front of her, as did two smaller figures on either side of Neo, one of them rubbing her hands together with glee as she reared back, spun her weapons around in her grip, and let loose with the sick line she'd been cooking up this entire time.

"Hazel—"

"—SMASH."

Ehhhh, instant misfire. Sounded better in her head. She turned to the other girl, simultaneously warning her with squinted eyes not to repeat what she'd just heard and feeling semi obliged to give her something to springboard off of too.

"Gretchen, I dunno, do Gretchen stuff? I never really got to know you that well."

"Not your best."

Hazel managed to fit in between wrestling for Elm's hammer and pushing the Ace Operative back, his stance solid and rooted. The question was, which was the sturdier of the two, the hazel or the elm?

Tree analogies aside, it was going to be made apparent one way or another as the elder Rainart gave a forceful shove through the hammer to unsettle Elm before yanking back into a headbutt to the face to discombobulate her. Combined with...

The sudden display of Hazel was a welcome one. One that the faunus very much used to his advantage. Getting by Elm, through jumping off her head for good measure, Tyrian's blades snapped into active play, and he POUNCED for Vine, his hands all aglow with his semblance as he lashed out with the blunt side of his tail, swinging it around as though it were a wrecking ball attached to his body, his arms up to swipe away at Vine and disrupt his aura. As furious as he was, as feral as he was feeling, the man he was currently setting himself upon like a wild animal wasn't the one who temporarily took out Salem.

But it wasn't going to save him from a mauling.

"GRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!!"

Gave an opening which Hazel took, moving to disarm by stepping into Elm's immediate proximity with his right foot and pivoting, hooking her left arm with his right while taking advantage of the spontaneous torque in the turn to rip the blunt implement away from Elm with his own left. While the hammer flung wherever, Hazel capitalized on it immediately by forcing Elm to her knees, wresting her into a contorted position that robbed her of most leverage to resist with both his weight and strength bearing above.

Hazel then delivered a pair of savage straight punches that collided with the floor, her skull acting as the connecting medium.

Spoiler: Allegra Clark sends her regards

As for Gretchen, she gestured with her right hand conveying her brushing off Emerald's statement, before spinning Dearth within her palm in spite of its heft.

"All good, I'm just known as Hazy's annoying hanger-on little sister~"

That was all she said, before sliding off to the side in a smooth movement with alacrity greatly contrasting her brother's long and striding movements, her tri-colored scarf trailing after her, moving for these guys:

Case in point, only about a third of the soldiers in the office were able to heed his warning in time, their helmets clattering to the floor even as their comrades cried out and recoiled around them. James himself and the Ace Ops found themselves fortunate in that their troubles were much more easily resolved, a momentary hiss of pain and aggressive removal of their earpiece the universal reaction to the sudden dose of tinnitus, not enough to disrupt their present movements.

The lucky few soldiers were beset upon with Gretchen replacing the tinnitus with migraines and concussions in its stead with the weighted knob end of Dearth, as she had absolutely no qualms incapacitating her opponents in much the same fashion as her brother. One in particular was unfortunately accosted by Brosel, tormenting him by having gotten inside his armor and it seemed difficult to determine whether it was the soldier's physical response that was so animated stemmed from him or the stoat.

That was when the same hyperaccelerated plasma beam they had just seen eviscerate Salem collided with his chest.

Their brains were that little bit more ready to perceive it this time, more clearly able to pinpoint its origin as one of the warships among the looming fleet starting to converge around the tower; that didn’t mean any of them were anywhere close to being able to dodge it though, the kind of speed a superheated state of matter needed to be spat from the chamber of a gun at to be effective at that distance beyond even any of them. The unnerving thing was that the beam didn’t carry any sound, nothing that would’ve enabled them to even predict its arrival, and Mercury served as the first and only warning of what failing to take their present predicament seriously would bring as he was bowled clean off his feet with a surprised “uuuugh”.

It preceded the light in his eyes growing dim at an alarming rate as his features went slack, and for one, godawful moment that seemed to suspend itself over an eternity it wasn’t actually clear whether his aura had managed to hold up or not, Emerald’s features contorting with horror when she realised what had happened. “MERCURY!”

whatever incredibly witty and scathing retort Watts had died on his lips as Mercury was all but obliterated by the same round that he'd just watched go through the head of one of Remnant's most powerful beings. For a moment, he didn't do anything at all, just stared at where Mercury had landed with a look of shock, before he snarled and flicked his revolver up again to squeeze of a cluster of shots... At the window. Ice dust rounds scattered all around the window in a growing clump, though it was far from enough to cover the window, making it a seemingly pointless endeavor till WTCH's team leader barked out a single name in lieu of an order while his feet were sliding back against the floor with every shot, his hardlight shield beginning to flicker between received shots now

"HAZEL!"

If that went as intended, he snarled as he turned back towards Ironwood, still wincing in pain from his own beating as he nonetheless raised his revolver with a snarl. "We're upgrading from arrests to executions James? Do you even know what you think we are anymore? Or-"

Whatever the outcome with Elm, that entire sequence forced him to a pause, his movements frozen for the narrowest fraction of a second that rendered him akin to a mountain in the literal sense as Hazel recalled an instance. One that hadn't happened yet here but in another lifetime, another timeline that never was, his soul flush anew with the pangs of loss and more eminently regret. It was the memory of Roman's death and a foundational basis which compelled him to strive to be better in protecting his companions. While Neo took it harder with several orders of magnitude in severity, it was this that was the reason he'd gone to Argus to help Cinder. To save her from herself and the decision she'd made likely for the same reasons, that atop of everything else saw WTCH sundered apart.

"Not again, not... like... this."

Gretchen from the other side of the room smothered a gasp, resolving to remove at least one more soldier from play before moving for her brother, seeing the state he was in, and nearing closer to Mercury, the idiot with the gift of the caustic gab and frankly a badass that was also an ass. He didn't deserve that.

It was a spontaneous overflow of rage and frustration stemming from both Mercury's incapacitation and the memory that brought Hazel back to reality, surging forward in retaliatory fashion and it was only Watt's assertive command that ripped Hazel from his course of brutalizing Ironwood as all of this stemmed from him ultimately.

"Fire." Hazel called out, his baritone reverberating throughout the room in a way it was only obvious who it was intended for in the next instance. A pair of medium-sized bolts embedded themselves into both of Hazel's shoulders, their shafts plated with tempered glass containing the glowing hue of crimson red. Fire dust. A mechanical groan rumbled from Gretchen's Dearth as the massive crossbow's drawstring reset, internal chambers clicking with a fresh bolts sliding into place, as she stared down the sights with a solemn expression.

The potent dust, distilled and processed as they were in Gretchen's bolts, acted immediately and with potency, Hazel's iconic scars running the length of his shoulders and down his upper forearms blazing an orange-red akin to the flowing lava rivers of a recently erupted volcano. Except the volcano hadn't quite finished erupting just yet.

A cry followed with a massive blast of flames surging for the window swathed in ice, Hazel recognizing Watts' intended gambit, the heat and cold intermixing to a spontaneous effect of mist to blanket the vicinity in a smokescreen to tamp down any further shots from the sniper that'd murdered Headmistress Salem and disabled Mercury.

It was then Hazel moved to resume his previous course with support headed Neo's way-- not that she likely needed it-- with Gretchen slipping in and out around with the literal hunter's keen eye to find an opportunity to move Mercury out of the harm's way, fully trusting Emerald to do something to that effect too.

 

[Gus Gungus]

"...Seventeen years ago, the most special, cutest, MOST adorable future hero was born, I've got pictures on my scroll if you wa-"​

It actually took her a second to realize the special, cute, adorable future hero Yang opened the book by referring to was not, in fact, herself, Blake, or Weiss; which immediately brought about a second, equally startling adjacent realization-slash-crisis that those guys weren't seventeen anymore, she was. Which was something she kinda just... hadn't ever really thought about, what with the one long perma adrenaline rush her life had become.

"Yaaang, are you talking about me?! I'M NOT THAT BIG A DEAL SERIOUSLY YOU BIG, DUMMY WHY WOULD THAT BE WHAT SHE MEANT BY 'START AT THE BEGINNING'— nononono waitcomebaaaaaaack!"

She went from pounding her fists against the hardlight between her and Yang's cell to doing more or less the same thing—in significantly more desperate and significantly less 'I'm gonna smother you in your sleep (affectionate)' fashion, admittedly—against the main field into the hallway as Winter curtly stood up, folded the chair back in half and started walking away with it under her arm, having apparently decided this wasn't worth her time.

​

*Perhaps about a minute of sibling antagonizement warfare later*​

Most of that minute was instead spent trying to get Winter to sit back down and convince her there'd be no more wacky volume 1 shenanigans, something she eventually relented to with an irritated huff. "Proceed. And keep it relevant."

​

Yang cleared her throat again and looked to the side.

"...Okay. So if you're gonna take the time to sit there, and you're saying from the beginning, then we're just gonna do the cold open. Try to just keep to a disdainful sneer or two while you listen instead of just writing us off and walking out from the word go, okay?" She asked, a earnestness to her voice despite the phrasing. "We're... not from this Remnant, but we're still from a Remnant. You're looking at three quarters of Beacon Academy's one and only team RWBY."

And she told it. From the beginning, her and Ruby together if her sister was willing. Who Blake was before Beacon, how weiss was on their team. Meeting Penny, stopping Torchwick, the way too eventful field mission to Mt. Glenn. The attack on the CCT Tower, and how the Vytal festival started. How the tournament ended for her.

How it ended for everyone else.

"...So... you can see why we've been so worried." She said, whatever lightness had been in her tone for most of the telling gone in these last few minutes of retelling, not able to catch herself from grabbing at what was left of her arm. "Because while you're gonna have to give us a minute to get there, this isn't our first time going through this Remnant, and the attack on Beacon still happens. And its her shiny eyeballs over there that help make the difference"​

"Hold on." The specialist's incisive tones cut in right away, one hand raising in interjection, apparently willing to indulge the premise of there being another Remnant more than she was the following as she glanced over at the younger of the sisters. "Your team name was 'team Ruby'? So it was literally just your name?"

"Uhhh."

"That feels uninspired. Not to mention patronizing to the rest of you."

The eponymous huntress blanched, everyone having been so polite about that the first time she kind of just... never even registered how weird it was. "Uhhhhhh, w-well, see it really wasn't so much my idea per se it just kinda worked out like that and what you don't get is Yang glossed over this part but there was this giant nevermore we all fought and I ended up killing it in this really cool way that—"

"Seems a bit conceited, frankly."

"...But W-Winter, you don't understand... I'm nowhere near as important in the second half..."

Fancy military title or no, and even with less experience, her team and Winter were more or less on the same tier of huntressing at this point. Why was this like trying to talk to Weiss way back on that first day at Beacon times like, a billion? How had Weiss ended up with a big sister so much cooler than hers?

Even after she recovered, those first few minutes were rough. From Ruby's perspective felt kinda like watching your wonderful, excitable big sis try explain to someone a buncha stuff that was definitely legit and super important to her, but that the other person lacked any kind of context for and just... didn't get, at all. Probably because that was exactly what it was.

Which was to say, Ruby cringed. She cringed a lot.

She helped out with a few frantic illustrations where she could, but the altitude of Winter's brows was very much humoring for those first fifteen minutes or so, and her glances towards the clock were becoming more and more frequent by the time something suddenly occurred to her and she butted back in with a sudden tone of urgency that demonstrated just how hard this was to follow from her perspective.

"Wait, wha—you're talking about Weiss as in my Weiss?" Perhaps that wasn't really an accurate descriptor anymore. "Weiss Schnee? You mean to tell me that in order for any of this to make a lick of sense I just have to accept that you served as part of a team of huntresses with my sister, a twenty-five year old executive and sitting member of the Atlas city council, at Beacon Academy?"

"That... is..."

She drew in a sharp, mortified breath, steepled the fingers on both hands in front of her face, and the next words out of her mouth were all but guaranteed to cement she had finally realised just how much she was jeopardizing her career and all she'd done to get it to where it was by giving these three a platform to spew their nonsense at her and planned on pulling the cord early.

"...something I always felt she would've enjoyed."

Except then, in nothing short of a miraculous turn, she let her gaze sink down to the floor instead, and it rested somewhere firmly between the territories of melancholy and pensive as she bit her lip.

"She used to talk about it from time to time, but our father was never overly enthused. Ultimately, she didn't..." Her mouth seemingly warred with the words her brain wanted it to speak for a few moments until she eventually worked out some sort of a compromise, recementing her bearing with a small sniff.

"I don't think she ever knew any huntresses that led her to believe that life was worthy of aspiring to. At least, to the same degree our fortune was."

Veiled as that statement may have been, the uncomfortable silence that reigned for a few seconds in its aftermath was very much loaded on Ruby's side, at the very least; whether Yang took it as a quiet concession to her suspicions as to how the Schnee dynamics had played out in this world was up to her.

Regardless, she didn't leave, and there was a different sort of squint to her eyes from that point onward as she listened, her frequent interruptions more to ask questions or clarify something or other.

All things considered, if nothing else she did a fine job of not betraying just how much of a headspin this conversation was putting her in.

​

"...You don't have to sugarcoat it Yang. I left." Blake cut in a short time after that, as Yang started to describe what happened to them all after Beacon. Her first time speaking since this retelling began, huddled against the wall separating her from yang with her head resting against her knees.

"You left to do something, Blake. You didn't just run." Yang replied, soft, this discussion one they'd had a few times already

"I could've handled it better."

"We all coulda handled a lotta things better." Yang said, unable to keep a smirk at herself off her face "I sat around and watched TV for six months while you and Ruby were out there trying not to die. Not to mention Weiss stuck with her dad, which from the sound of it was probably worse"

"...You needed the rest. A chance to find yourself again." she said, still not meeting any of the other three's gaze

"Sure did! But you guys needed me too. Well. Ruby and Weiss did anyways; sounded like you handled things just fine by yourself. Do you... wanna tell that? Your part? about Menagerie and the Fang?" Yang asked, hopeful. Blake glanced past her knees for Winter; her eyes still wary. But eventually she started talking, and laying out her own side of the tale.​

“Ah,” Winter offered mildly to that whole exchange, swapping a meaningful glance between Yang and Blake and fairly certain she understood all she was ever going to need to know about that particular dynamic. “Yes, let’s move on.”

“Tell me about it.”

​

"-of the CCT towers was very purposeful. Salem's entire goal is spreading as much discord as possible, to keep the kingdoms from presenting any sort of united threat."

"Its also where we really learned about the relics for the first time, and how the vaults worked. And how much my mom sucked. Oh, and weiss got stabbed-"​

​

"-which was where we met you for the first time, along with the new and seriously improved hairstyle Penny, serious props to pietro for getting it right on the word go in this timeline."

"...Its also where we first saw the state Atlas was in. How... General Ironwood was using his power. Both for and against the people he was supposed to be protecting."​

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The specialist pulled no punches as she switched her gaze back in its entirety to the faunus for the first time since their contentious exchange earlier, and it was plain to see either that or something else still weighed heavily on her mind as she narrowed her eyes at her with enough frost to turn blood to ice in her veins.

“Though between your assessments of general Ironwood and this supposed ‘Adam’ figure, I’m beginning to get a sense of how you rate as a judge of character.”

“Okay.” Ruby cut in with narrowed eyes and an edge to her voice, no amount of cool Schnee aloofness enough to keep her from intruding on Blake’s behalf on that one. “Maybe you haven’t seen that side of Ironwood yet, but trust us. It’s there.”

​

"...You're scared of Blake." She eventually led off with. "Nothing to be ashamed of-" she continued with a wan smile, the words quieter than they should've been "-my partner's feisty. But its a weird thing for you to show, Winter. I've known two of you, and both of you aren't exactly cowards." The smile faded, and she traced some of the tiling on the cell floor with her finger.

"...But I think this is why. Not just why you're scared of Blake, but why you and all these other Atlas soldiers, who were probably at Beacon the first time when it all went south, are having those nightmares. Your brain doesn't remember, but your soul does. It remembers what The Hand did to you."

And then she told it.​

“…”

Winter’s interjections had been mostly of the clarifying sort for a good while after Yang reached the parallel Remnant portion of her tale, but this was the first time any of them could recall her going truly, completely silent. Nor did she look up at any of them; just kept her eyes fixed firmly on her notebook, though they could all see the pen resting motionlessly on the page.

Ruby hadn’t actually known the particulars of this, and even she just kind of tapped out for a while after it was revealed, retreating to the corner of her cell and pulling her hood down over her eyes.

Eventually, after an excruciatingly long pause, the soldier did speak.

“Go on.”

​

The rest was a bit... scattered. The closer they got to the end, the less of it Yang had been a direct witness to. The brawl in the office ("So you can see why I was so pissed to see Jimmy down in the arena" She drawled, some of the bite back in her voice), the escape to vacuo, the sudden onset of maiden powers, and the frankly insane plan the followed, that.... somehow worked. All the way up to waking up in front of a litebrite deer who got interrupted by a way-bigger-than-a-little-sun dragon, and finally waking up facefirst on Amity Arena's floor.

Blake looked... harrowed, two fingers pressed against her temple as she stared at the floor, trying to process... well... all of that, While Yang let out a long, relieved sigh that they were finally through it and gave Winter a level stare.

"So. You can see why we were so cagey from the word go. 'dimension travelling but this time; there's time travel' sounds like a dumb sci fi movie instead of the dumb sci fi real life that we're currently stuck living. Sitting on about five to ten odds that you're just gonna have that guy shoot me to shut me up" she finished with a thumb over to her favorite Atlesian guard​

Between her numerous questions, interruptions, and the sort of spiralling back and forths to be expected from such a ludicrously detailed account, the sun was low in the sky by the time it was all over, and if nothing else Winter’s notebook was extremely full.

“Astonishing. Simply astonishing,” she finally murmured, tilting back in her chair to give her attention to the ceiling and ponder all she’d just heard.



“You must think I was born yesterday.”

She stood up then, prim and proper as the minute she first sat down, and when she returned her look to the cells it was with a mix of pity for them and frustration towards herself for having actually taken the hours to hear all that.

“This is either the most pointlessly complex smokescreen ever devised or you’re all seriously mentally ill. Personally, I’m leaning toward the latter.”

She eyeballed the notebook in her hands as though briefly contemplating burning it, but ultimately opted against it. She gave them a flat, unwavering stare, the majority of which seemed to— once again—fall on Blake.

“Either way, I’ll do what I can for you. Because that’s my job.”

A peremptory nod was the only further thing she offered them before she turned on heel and walked out, frankly unsure if she was meant to feel more clueless now or less.

Ruby watched her go with a small frown of thought, similarly unsure of what to make of… everything, now that it was all laid out in perspective like that.

“Our life’s a mess, huh?”​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

"Wait, wha—you're talking about Weiss as in my Weiss?" Perhaps that wasn't really an accurate descriptor anymore. "Weiss Schnee? You mean to tell me that in order for any of this to make a lick of sense I just have to accept that you served as part of a team of huntresses with my sister, a twenty-five year old executive and sitting member of the Atlas city council, at Beacon Academy?"

"What? No, she was seventeen back then, same as us. I think all of us are younger than the other usses walking around. Like the inverse of how CInder's a burnt out twenty something back home" Yang clarified with an eyeroll.

"That... is..."

She drew in a sharp, mortified breath, steepled the fingers on both hands in front of her face, and the next words out of her mouth were all but guaranteed to cement she had finally realised just how much she was jeopardizing her career and all she'd done to get it to where it was by giving these three a platform to spew their nonsense at her and planned on pulling the cord early.

"...something I always felt she would've enjoyed."

Except then, in nothing short of a miraculous turn, she let her gaze sink down to the floor instead, and it rested somewhere firmly between the territories of melancholy and pensive as she bit her lip.

"She used to talk about it from time to time, but our father was never overly enthused. Ultimately, she didn't..." Her mouth seemingly warred with the words her brain wanted it to speak for a few moments until she eventually worked out some sort of a compromise, recementing her bearing with a small sniff.

"I don't think she ever knew any huntresses that led her to believe that life was worthy of aspiring to. At least, to the same degree our fortune was."

If the others were worried that this was going to derail them all the way off this train (and Blake was, even if she wasn't speaking herself yet), it didn't look like Yang was. As Winter's gaze turned downwards, Yang's own softened. She had thought that, yea. It wasn't really gratifying to be proven right though. Despite how much it had gotten under her skin, back then...

"She's so used to people not being there for her-" There was a bit of a sharp cut to her words as her eyes glanced over both the General and Winter

"EXCUSE ME?! I'm sorry, did things in your head play out a certain way where I'd simply let that slide? Who the hell do you even think you ARE?! What makes you think you have the right to hold that sort of opinion against me, much less voice it aloud?! Do you have ANY IDEA what it was like for the two of us growing up?! WE WERE THE ONLY ONES WHO WERE THERE FOR EACH OTHER! Do you honestly think Weiss wouldn't have taken the first opportunity to leave that home once she was legally entitled to, had she been the elder?! You think YOU wouldn't have?! What was YOUR home life like?! AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT AN EMOTIONALLY WEAK FATHER, OR A MOTHER WHO RAN OUT ON YOU, I'M ASKING DID THE FAMILY YOU DID END UP WITH TREAT YOU WITH THE RESPECT THEY OWED YOU GROWING UP?! DID THEY MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU DESERVED TO BE ALIVE?! WEISS AND I DIDN'T HAVE THAT! NOR DID OUR BROTHER! YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, NO RIGHT TO MAKE ANY SORT OF PRESUMPTIONS BASED OFF THINGS YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T HAVE THE SLIGHTEST NOTION OF, YOU INFANTILE MORON, AND YOU HAVE EVEN LESS OF A RIGHT TO PLAY THE BIG SISTER TO-"

...she knew better than anyone how hard this older sister thing was. Especially when it was for Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee, girls who showed up hunters double their age, and who both seemed doggedly determined to take as much of the world's weight on their shoulders as they possibly could. besides-

Had she been a lesser woman her gaze might've dropped then, shoulders might've shuddered, or a faint quaver might even have entered her voice. But she wasn't.

She was Winter Schnee, and her stare only hardened, shoulders only squared, voice only projected even more commandingly in the pursuit of her duty as she finished.

"...And whatever happens between now and then... happens. I'm through running from my family name."

-She... figured it out, in the end, kinda. Yang just hoped it happened faster this time.

“Ah,” Winter offered mildly to that whole exchange, swapping a meaningful glance between Yang and Blake and fairly certain she understood all she was ever going to need to know about that particular dynamic. “Yes, let’s move on.”

“Tell me about it.”

That pair of reactions got a stutter stop out of Blake's initial start for a few moments, the faunus clearing her throat and closing her eyes to keep composure as she started talking, while Yang again gave Ruby a level stare that this time was actually just hiding how much she was cringing on the inside.

'Is... it that obvious to everyone else how I feel? So then why hasn't she.../It'd be REALLY COOL if my sister didn't keep trying to out how I FELT ABOUT MY PARTNER TO HER-'

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The specialist pulled no punches as she switched her gaze back in its entirety to the faunus for the first time since their contentious exchange earlier, and it was plain to see either that or something else still weighed heavily on her mind as she narrowed her eyes at her with enough frost to turn blood to ice in her veins.

“Though between your assessments of general Ironwood and this supposed ‘Adam’ figure, I’m beginning to get a sense of how you rate as a judge of character.”

“Okay.” Ruby cut in with narrowed eyes and an edge to her voice, no amount of cool Schnee aloofness enough to keep her from intruding on Blake’s behalf on that one. “Maybe you haven’t seen that side of Ironwood yet, but trust us. It’s there.”

Blake's ears pinned back with an angry frown at that, Winter practically able to see the faunus' hackles raised at the comparison of Adam and Ironwood.

Ruby cut in before she needed to, and her team leader got a small, grateful nod in return, even if any shot of Blake smiling wasn't coming out of that exchange as she instead continued to tell that part

Between her numerous questions, interruptions, and the sort of spiralling back and forths to be expected from such a ludicrously detailed account, the sun was low in the sky by the time it was all over, and if nothing else Winter’s notebook was extremely full.

“Astonishing. Simply astonishing,” she finally murmured, tilting back in her chair to give her attention to the ceiling and ponder all she’d just heard.

“You must think I was born yesterday.”

She stood up then, prim and proper as the minute she first sat down, and when she returned her look to the cells it was with a mix of pity for them and frustration towards herself for having actually taken the hours to hear all that.

“This is either the most pointlessly complex smokescreen ever devised or you’re all seriously mentally ill. Personally, I’m leaning toward the latter.”

She eyeballed the notebook in her hands as though briefly contemplating burning it, but ultimately opted against it. She gave them a flat, unwavering stare, the majority of which seemed to— once again—fall on Blake.

“Either way, I’ll do what I can for you. Because that’s my job.”

A peremptory nod was the only further thing she offered them before she turned on heel and walked out, frankly unsure if she was meant to feel more clueless now or less.

Mutual blindess on specific vectors aside, Yang and Blake came out of that retelling in very different states, the faunus seemingly lost to the world for now as she bit the edge of her thumb, eyes squeezed shut as she tried to really parse just how... different everything sounded here.

How awful a lot of it sound.

Yang however, looked genuinely relieved, even with Winter's total no-sell outward reaction. It was... kinda nice, having it all laid out in front of her. A relief to finally just share a bunch of that stuff out loud to anyone, no matter how inopportune a time this was for impromptu therapy sessions. She took a deep breath as Winter started to leave, before her smile faded for something more determined as she called out.

"Winter."

If she turned, Yang gave her last piece.

"Honestly, not asking asking you to just believe us right off the rip. Besides, stuff here's changed some already. Maybe today's not even the day stuff goes down anymore. But at least look into it. And maybe call your sister."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Also, I wasn't kidding. If Carny shows up in that door y'all are gonna find out just how much of a pain in the ass I'm keeping myself from being, caged or n-"

"It's fine, Yang."

Yang blinked and glanced over to Blake, who had at least opened her own eyes to follow winter's exit with a studious frown. She didn't elaborate unless prompted, and Yang wasn't sure where to pick up the ball from there until Winter exited the room.

A peremptory nod was the only further thing she offered them before she turned on heel and walked out, frankly unsure if she was meant to feel more clueless now or less.

Ruby watched her go with a small frown of thought, similarly unsure of what to make of… everything, now that it was all laid out in perspective like that.

“Our life’s a mess, huh?”

That got a tired smirk out of Yang, as she leaned backwards to and balanced her weight on her palm from where she'd been sitting.

"Yyyyep. But I mean, hey, is any of this really any weirder than the first time all the big secrets of the world got dropped on us?"

"Yes."

"okay but what if we pretended it wasn't"

 

[Gus Gungus]

It might've seemed an ironic point to make, considering; and perhaps it didn't always seem that way to those who found themselves on the wrong side of his rigid, practically inexorable vision of justice. But every so often a man in Ironwood's position found it of extraordinary benefit to stop. Breathe. Focus.

And let everything slow down.

His semblance, unknowing a curse as it may have proven to him at times, truly was tailored for a man whose life's calling was to sit at the head of a society like Atlas. Moreso than one of war, what he wanted was for it to be remembered as a kingdom of progress; of thinkers, of scholars and visionaries. Mettle was the spirit of those men made manifest, the gift of clarity and conviction, two tools that had—amid cycles of magic, dust, technology and souls—always been humanity's true weapons against the final end that so terrified him. It allowed him to see all angles, analyze all the vectors, determine the best path forward for his people and follow it with unyielding compromise; in a world where mankind had always had to feel their way forward in the dark, he could be the one at the head of the pack, wielding a torch against the unforgiving void blinking and baring its fangs back at them.

At a time like this, it simply allowed him to take stock of the situation. To read the room and determine, with icewater in his veins, the way the tide was turning.

This room was proving exceptionally difficult to read.

His eyes were nearly as black as night as they roved over the various skirmishes taking place, able to determine at a glance which way they were likely to go. Harriet had been forced to retreat from the tandem offense of Neopolitan and Torchwick, a level of camaraderie existing between two Mountain Glenn survivors that she had simply never brought enough of herself to her job to develop with any of her comrades that could've helped her, bar maybe Tortuga. He made a mental note to stop delaying the inevitable and finally have that talk with her about her habits ever since the tortoise faunus's death. How she didn't take pride in her work anymore; How she just didn't appear to care.

The contest between Hazel and Elm held no clear advantage on either side prior to Tyrian's most marginal of interventions, that thimble on the scales seeming to be all that was necessary to tip the balance as Reinhart showed a surprising degree of technical prowess even Ironwood couldn't take issue with. Elm got her bell rung, but was far from done, spitting out blood and stomping the floor to send her hammer spinning back into her grip as her eyes searched out Hazel with a snarl that was much more personal.

Callows and Vine... he didn't even know what was going on there other than that Vine appeared to be getting the worst of it, to such an extent that Ironwood felt compelled to squeeze off the rest of his magazine from his ebony piece into the faunus' upper back and skull just to get the Ace Op out from under him. The more cowardly of the fugitive group's two illusionists, from what he could surmise, had disappeared with her wounded partner into the shroud of fog and mist that enveloped the room from the joint efforts of Hazel, Arthur, and the Fall Maiden, and Watts himself...

Well, he knew how to handle Arthur Watts. He always had.

You just had to put him in the sort of box where he could realize all the angles and vectors were inescapable.

These 'students', if indeed they were planning on sticking to that act, had proven more game than even the most talented huntsmen in Atlas could anticipate. Things in the room weren't going their way, to be frank. That was fine; they never really needed to.

They just needed to go according to plan.

"Ace Ops! Regroup on my position—"

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

From what the general had clued him in on, Cinder Fall was a girl with a complex destiny whose motives were, by contrast, entirely uncomplicated.

She was sweet. She cared. She loved her friends. Of the eight, she was the one Ironwood was most certain was having her strings pulled by some as-yet unknown puppetmaster. She was the youngest, the one with an extraordinary power there was simply no way she could handle the responsibility of, the one who had fallen in with what—in all honesty, most watching the tournament from Atlas would agree—seemed like a bad crowd.

That made what he had to do all the more difficult.

It made his true purpose here, posted up a downright absurd distance from the scene of the arrest with the kind of weapon so experimental they didn't even have a name for it yet, that much heavier of a burden to carry.

Because the fact was, Clover trusted Ironwood. If he said the headmistress of Beacon couldn't die, he believed him. If he told him that he had reason to believe her judgment would be clouded by her sentimentality towards these kids, that she might need to be dealt with to prevent something terrible from befalling the entire kingdom later that night, he was willing to go along with that. He'd been having the dreams too; more vividly than most, same as Winter. Dreams of a blade jutting through his chest. Dreams of the life draining from his body, not even knowing what brought him down.

Did he trust James Ironwood? Hell yes.

Did he think he was beyond the scope of miscalculations, of his timing being off by a margin of seconds, of making mistakes? With the way Remnant seemed to be going, that question was getting more and more difficult for him to answer.

The one thing he had stressed about Cinder Fall: she wasn't complicated. She was a simple soul.

A straight line.
​

She took off as fast as she could, the fire exploding out of her boots as she went right for the ship where that shot originated from. Her eyes narrowed as she got closer, scrutinizing for where exactly on the ship it had--

There!

Her hand outstretched as she flew ever closer, and this time she did call upon the lightning. A single bolt of blue pierced through the sky ahead of her, aimed specifically for the weapon she intended to completely fry before it could be used to harm anyone else.​

"C'mon, kid. At least make it difficult for me," the sniper murmured to himself, twisting the crank in his rifle that had formerly been the fishing reel to activate the scope's guided aim assist functionality, the lengthy barrel mapped onto Cinder's flight trajectory before she'd even made it halfway to his perch.

He sucked a breath in and braced, letting the reticule drift towards her shoulder. He wasn't even gonna have to be lucky for this one. That was probably good, all things considered.

He didn't feel it.

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

This time the shine of tears unshed in her eyes weren't a trick of her semblance, as the umbrella snapped open to catch any followup shot along its dust-infused surface, her eyes peeking over the rim. She slid to the side in a fluid motion that was mirrored by a second her, both doubles seeming to move forward into a strike before they twisted out of it, splitting again to go opposite directions and end up on cardinal sides as a foursome kaleidoscope of impending violence​

The general's eyes were slightly wider and his slide more frantic than he may have wanted by the time he dropped back to occupy the centermost position of Atlas' elite huntsmen forming up around him, the various foot soldiers still standing in the room taking up strategic positions around them in turn as the students presumably did similarly across the office. The immediate airspace around the tower was swarming with Mantas they could just about see silhouetted through the mist by now, one of them briefly swerving erratically on its course if any of them were paying particular attention before righting itself.

Ironwood went to straighten his tie, apparently unbothered when it fell neatly in two pieces from Neo's slash.

"To answer your question, Arthur—"
​

"We're upgrading from arrests to executions James? Do you even know what you think we are anymore?​

"—if he wings one of you at this distance it might be survivable. It might not be. Frankly, the tech's too new to say. Which is to say, the only person who can guarantee the continued safety of you and your friends is yourselves."

His wrist comm started beeping, the precise tone one Watts recognised as a much more analog piece of tech than anything he could hack into resembling a pager; most often used by Atlesian operatives throughout their history's various wars to communicate simple messages at long range; most commonly, 'it's done'.

"Which you're going to, right now, by tossing your weapons and getting down on your knees. Otherwise—"

He silenced the monotonous chime with the flick of a button, before bringing up a more modern interface and swiping down on a bar until it was lowered to about half.

"—your partner is going to hit the ground in about thirty seconds. And I'm not going to let Penny catch her."

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

Wherever Penny was by the time she witnessed Cinder get clipped straight out of her maiden state, aura, and flight path, and whatever her immediate reaction to that was, she came to an immediate, horrifying realization.

Her thrusters were only operating at about 50%.​

 

[MyrtenRose]

The one thing he had stressed about Cinder Fall: she wasn't complicated. She was a simple soul.

A straight line.

"C'mon, kid. At least make it difficult for me," the sniper murmured to himself, twisting the crank in his rifle that had formerly been the fishing reel to activate the scope's guided aim assist functionality, the lengthy barrel mapped onto Cinder's flight trajectory before she'd even made it halfway to his perch.

He sucked a breath in and braced, letting the reticule drift towards her shoulder. He wasn't even gonna have to be lucky for this one. That was probably good, all things considered.

He didn't feel it.​

It was only as she was practically staring down the barrel of the weapon, the beam lighting her face up, that she recognized her rather egregious mistake. In her blinding anger at that weapon being used on somebody else on the tower, and the imagined effect it would have had given what it had done to Salem...the thought of it being used on her didn't even register among the need to get there IMMEDIATELY and take it out. She hadn't even tried to swerve around as she done with Penny's own attack, too focused on simply getting there to acknowledge the obvious until it was far too late.

"Oh."

That one whispered word wasn't enough to convey all that she was thinking and feeling, the way she was mentally kicking herself for not even thinking about that, the fear that she might not even survive it given that it had taken even Salem's head off at a much more distant range...and the idea that even if she lived, she would never be living this down, at least from Arthur. Idiot! Dumbass! Was your brain on autopilot?! Remnant to Cinder's single brain cell, are you there?? Man, she can just picture it all. That and more, that single word failed to express it all, but it was all she had time to say before the beam struck her in the shoulder.

It hit about as hard as she expected. Even with how fast she had been going, the force behind the shot completely reversed her momentum, sending her flying back the other way in an almost cartoonish spin, except there was nothing funny about it. Her aura went from near full to flat out gone in an instant, the crimson color shattering all around her as she plummeted. She caught sight of the ground way beneath her but rapidly nearing, though it was only a brief glimpse before she shut her eyes completely. She didn't want to see it coming.

It was only with her eyes shut tight, her face twisted up in a scared wince even now, fearing the sound she'd make when she hit the ground and how long the pain would last, that the bitter irony occurred to her. One of the near last things she had done before ending up back here in this divine reset was...was saving Neo from just about the same thing. Different details with the how and the why and everything, but still. Ironic.

As the wind raced by her, the sound of it becoming something closer to thunder in intensity as she fell faster and faster, it seemed there was only one thing left to do. To not screw it up. Her thoughts alternated as fast as she could get them to.

Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo Emerald Neo​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

It might've seemed an ironic point to make, considering; and perhaps it didn't always seem that way to those who found themselves on the wrong side of his rigid, practically inexorable vision of justice. But every so often a man in Ironwood's position found it of extraordinary benefit to stop. Breathe. Focus.

And let everything slow down.

His semblance, unknowing a curse as it may have proven to him at times, truly was tailored for a man whose life's calling was to sit at the head of a society like Atlas. Moreso than one of war, what he wanted was for it to be remembered as a kingdom of progress; of thinkers, of scholars and visionaries. Mettle was the spirit of those men made manifest, the gift of clarity and conviction, two tools that had—amid cycles of magic, dust, technology and souls—always been humanity's true weapons against the final end that so terrified him. It allowed him to see all angles, analyze all the vectors, determine the best path forward for his people and follow it with unyielding compromise; in a world where mankind had always had to feel their way forward in the dark, he could be the one at the head of the pack, wielding a torch against the unforgiving void blinking and baring its fangs back at them.

At a time like this, it simply allowed him to take stock of the situation. To read the room and determine, with icewater in his veins, the way the tide was turning.

This room was proving exceptionally difficult to read.

His eyes were nearly as black as night as they roved over the various skirmishes taking place, able to determine at a glance which way they were likely to go. Harriet had been forced to retreat from the tandem offense of Neopolitan and Torchwick, a level of camaraderie existing between two Mountain Glenn survivors that she had simply never brought enough of herself to her job to develop with any of her comrades that could've helped her, bar maybe Tortuga. He made a mental note to stop delaying the inevitable and finally have that talk with her about her habits ever since the tortoise faunus's death. How she didn't take pride in her work anymore; How she just didn't appear to care.

The contest between Hazel and Elm held no clear advantage on either side prior to Tyrian's most marginal of interventions, that thimble on the scales seeming to be all that was necessary to tip the balance as Reinhart showed a surprising degree of technical prowess even Ironwood couldn't take issue with. Elm got her bell rung, but was far from done, spitting out blood and stomping the floor to send her hammer spinning back into her grip as her eyes searched out Hazel with a snarl that was much more personal.

Callows and Vine... he didn't even know what was going on there other than that Vine appeared to be getting the worst of it, to such an extent that Ironwood felt compelled to squeeze off the rest of his magazine from his ebony piece into the faunus' upper back and skull just to get the Ace Op out from under him. The more cowardly of the fugitive group's two illusionists, from what he could surmise, had disappeared with her wounded partner into the shroud of fog and mist that enveloped the room from the joint efforts of Hazel, Arthur, and the Fall Maiden, and Watts himself...

Well, he knew how to handle Arthur Watts. He always had.

You just had to put him in the sort of box where he could realize all the angles and vectors were inescapable.

These 'students', if indeed they were planning on sticking to that act, had proven more game than even the most talented huntsmen in Atlas could anticipate. Things in the room weren't going their way, to be frank. That was fine; they never really needed to.

They just needed to go according to plan.

"Ace Ops! Regroup on my position—"

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

From what the general had clued him in on, Cinder Fall was a girl with a complex destiny whose motives were, by contrast, entirely uncomplicated.

She was sweet. She cared. She loved her friends. Of the eight, she was the one Ironwood was most certain was having her strings pulled by some as-yet unknown puppetmaster. She was the youngest, the one with an extraordinary power there was simply no way she could handle the responsibility of, the one who had fallen in with what—in all honesty, most watching the tournament from Atlas would agree—seemed like a bad crowd.

That made what he had to do all the more difficult.

It made his true purpose here, posted up a downright absurd distance from the scene of the arrest with the kind of weapon so experimental they didn't even have a name for it yet, that much heavier of a burden to carry.

Because the fact was, Clover trusted Ironwood. If he said the headmistress of Beacon couldn't die, he believed him. If he told him that he had reason to believe her judgment would be clouded by her sentimentality towards these kids, that she might need to be dealt with to prevent something terrible from befalling the entire kingdom later that night, he was willing to go along with that. He'd been having the dreams too; more vividly than most, same as Winter. Dreams of a blade jutting through his chest. Dreams of the life draining from his body, not even knowing what brought him down.

Did he trust James Ironwood? Hell yes.

Did he think he was beyond the scope of miscalculations, of his timing being off by a margin of seconds, of making mistakes? With the way Remnant seemed to be going, that question was getting more and more difficult for him to answer.

The one thing he had stressed about Cinder Fall: she wasn't complicated. She was a simple soul.

A straight line.

"C'mon, kid. At least make it difficult for me," the sniper murmured to himself, twisting the crank in his rifle that had formerly been the fishing reel to activate the scope's guided aim assist functionality, the lengthy barrel mapped onto Cinder's flight trajectory before she'd even made it halfway to his perch.

He sucked a breath in and braced, letting the reticule drift towards her shoulder. He wasn't even gonna have to be lucky for this one. That was probably good, all things considered.

He didn't feel it.

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



The general's eyes were slightly wider and his slide more frantic than he may have wanted by the time he dropped back to occupy the centermost position of Atlas' elite huntsmen forming up around him, the various foot soldiers still standing in the room taking up strategic positions around them in turn as the students presumably did similarly across the office. The immediate airspace around the tower was swarming with Mantas they could just about see silhouetted through the mist by now, one of them briefly swerving erratically on its course if any of them were paying particular attention before righting itself.

Ironwood went to straighten his tie, apparently unbothered when it fell neatly in two pieces from Neo's slash.

"To answer your question, Arthur—"
​

The moment Mercury disappeared, Neo did as well, her form suddenly shattering under the hail of fire instead of assailing Hush's defense. A few seconds later, Roman did as well, a hand over his mouth to cover whatever (extremely manly she'd assure him later) yelps of surprise that brought on, leaving team WTGH alone in the office against the arrayed might of Atlas' best.

Watts didn't have a semblance. Some aura users were late bloomers, but others simply never gained one. There were various theories on why that were, that rang the gamut of scientific to pure superstition. Genetic disposition. Reincarnation of certain souls. psychological impairments. A boring personality. His Atlesian classmates had been a fan of that one.

What Watts could say for sure was that it was not a lack of resolve on his part. If anything, the deficit drove him, made him push himself that much harder. He was never going to be the combat savants the likes of Tyrian or Mercury were, a simple lack of natural talent that practice alone was never going to overcome. Likewise, Neo and Emerald's powerful semblances put them on a scale he was never going to compete with, to say nothing of Hazel's massive physique. All of those paled to his partner though; a genuine remnant of the gods he was beginning to dislike. Ancient magic given shape and will by her hand. Heights of power he'd never even scrape in his wildest dreams.

But he was her partner. And he'd been determined from day one to be as much an equal on that front as he could. First out of competitiveness and spite, but eventually because of the bond that was forming between them, one that, for all its other faults, Beacon had always proved uniquely capable of fostering. Cinder brought the firepower; Arthur brought direction. His own purported smarts were only ever going to get him so far in a fight on his own. But while he lacked Ironwood's supernatural focus, or Mercury's ability to tear apart a weakness himself the moment his eyes saw it, his own razor sharp gaze and mind for detail could rival both of them on their best days. He didn't need a semblance to bring his own weight to bear. He read the same state Ironwood did, even if Watts himself was worse for wear than the iron general, came to the conclusion a little slower with the weight of pain and frazzled nerves under pressure.

They were winning. Despite whatever hellshow of a weapon they had outside, they were winning, and if they could just hold out long enough, he could do what his team counted on him to do and figure out-

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


Penny had been in pursuit.

No matter how distressed she was, how confused, it was still apparent that the longer this conflict went on, the more likely all sides were to get hurt. A bit of an obvious statement, but Mercury's state and Vine's rapidly decreasing aura levels had drove it home a harrowing degree. As much as she loathed to admit it, and as much as her father had told her she was more than that, she was a weapon. A violent world was the crucible of her creation. So she would keep fighting, even if it was against.... against the same friends who told her the same thing her father did. That she was more than that. That she could even be less than that, if she wanted.

That she was just penny.

...

James Ironwood's pager beeped with a different light, a different signal, a simple enough for that had been one of the earliest signals; a request for communication-

It was only as she was practically staring down the barrel of the weapon, the beam lighting her face up, that she recognized her rather egregious mistake. In her blinding anger at that weapon being used on somebody else on the tower, and the imagined effect it would have had given what it had done to Salem...the thought of it being used on her didn't even register among the need to get there IMMEDIATELY and take it out. She hadn't even tried to swerve around as she done with Penny's own attack, too focused on simply getting there to acknowledge the obvious until it was far too late.

"Oh."

That one whispered word wasn't enough to convey all that she was thinking and feeling, the way she was mentally kicking herself for not even thinking about that, the fear that she might not even survive it given that it had taken even Salem's head off at a much more distant range...and the idea that even if she lived, she would never be living this down, at least from Arthur. Idiot! Dumbass! Was your brain on autopilot?! Remnant to Cinder's single brain cell, are you there?? Man, she can just picture it all. That and more, that single word failed to express it all, but it was all she had time to say before the beam struck her in the shoulder.

It hit about as hard as she expected. Even with how fast she had been going, the force behind the shot completely reversed her momentum, sending her flying back the other way in an almost cartoonish spin, except there was nothing funny about it. Her aura went from near full to flat out gone in an instant, the crimson color shattering all around her as she plummeted. She caught sight of the ground way beneath her but rapidly nearing, though it was only a brief glimpse before she shut her eyes completely. She didn't want to see it coming.

"NO!"

The fight immediately left Penny's mind, as Cinder's tiny form off in the distance was sent spiralling backwards and through the air, all of her newfound control over the skies lost. None of this mattered if she hit the ground, the entire reason she was- the only reason she had stood across from her was to-

She wasn't going fast enough.

She looked down in shock as her boosters suddenly began to decrease, and her requests for communications became brute force efforts to make them open, to both Ironwood's personal communications and Clover's own, electronic signals forwarded with her voice in simul

"General, my systems are malfunctioning!, Ci- the Maiden is going to, w-we have no confirmation of current thoughts-//Specialist Clover DO NOT ENGAGE FURTHER, IMMEDIATE RESCUE EFFORTS CINDER FALL'S SAFETY IS MEANT TO BE A PRIORITY-"

No one was answering her fast enough, she still wasn't going fast enough. Her blades went out before her, skewering buildings and trees and yanking her forward as impromptu grapples, but it still wasn't enough-

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

"—if he wings one of you at this distance it might be survivable. It might not be. Frankly, the tech's too new to say. Which is to say, the only person who can guarantee the continued safety of you and your friends is yourselves."

His wrist comm started beeping, the precise tone one Watts recognised as a much more analog piece of tech than anything he could hack into resembling a pager; most often used by Atlesian operatives throughout their history's various wars to communicate simple messages at long range; most commonly, 'it's done'.

"Which you're going to, right now, by tossing your weapons and getting down on your knees. Otherwise—"

He silenced the monotonous chime with the flick of a button, before bringing up a more modern interface and swiping down on a bar until it was lowered to about half.

"—your partner is going to hit the ground in about thirty seconds. And I'm not going to let Penny catch her."

That same sharp sight, that same quick mind, put together what was happening all too fast as Watts stared wide eyed at Ironwood.

"Does she even know?" he asked, dangerously quiet as he looked at the device

Only a few seconds to make a call. His partner needed him to make the right one, or she died.

Except his whole team needed him to make the right call. The entire reason he was always up Tyrian's ass about his dangerous antics, Why he hadn't at all begrudged Hazel and Gretchen deciding to exit the fight when they did the first go around; He was their team leader, and thus it was his duty to keep them all alive, and Ironwood done just about everything he could in five minutes time to shred whatever capacity for trust in him Arthur had to bits. Including whatever the hell he was doing to one of the young women Watts held the deepest respect for. He snarled

"Why would she? She's not a person to you James, just like everyone else. She's just a piece on the god damn board"

"Cover."

The order was monotone for how furious and scared he felt, as he spun behind Hazel back to back and brought up his rings, trusting his teammates (guest starring Gretchen) to do everything they could while his mind raced. No chance of hacking the device; it went directly through to Penny he imagined, and for all of Arthur's own genius, Pietro Polendina was in a league of his own. Even with the pieces of her schematics that had been the basis for phylactery, there was absolutely no chance of him getting through her system in a day, let alone the ten seconds it'd have to be to matter at all. There was genuinely no way for him to save Cinder by himself.

Unless he didn't have to

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

Penny couldn't cry. Not that she couldn't feel sadness, but there was no biological functions to accompany it. She sometimes wondered if it would feel better if she could; her newfound friends always seemed to feel better after the release.

She wasn't going to be able to partake, no matter how deep this pit of dread in in her core grew, how hopeless every vector and calculation was, how much it became clear that unless something changed in the next few seconds, the closest she would get would only let her eyes see the result.

Then a message flickered onto her screen, her security systems flagging it as a warning given the sender, but showcasing its simple words regardless.

'Let me in. For her.'

Arthur Watts had been kind to her. He seemed standoffish at first, and they had not bonded as she and Cinder had. But he also knew what Atlas was like, and what the General was like, or at least what they both thought he had been like, and a simple enjoyment in discussions of technical properties and such that went over the others heads. He treated her as a friend. As a person

He was also dangerous. Specifically for her. Even before all of this, when he was merely seen as an exile turned student by the general, he'd warned her away from him. Whatever Ironwood thought of Arthur's past mistakes and where he'd been on the road to making up for them in his eyes, he would always have a thirst for knowledge, to poke at things he shouldn't, and Penny was too fascinating a prize in that regard. With all that had been said on the leadup to the raid, it sounded like much of this was on him; purposeful sabatoge whereas others were simply being looped in, holes bored into network security that were the work of months.

and.... and nothing made sense, from anyone right now. And Cinder was falling.

and something inside her was saying... that this wasn't the last time she wanted to cry

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

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

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

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

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

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

She accepted the link

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

The moment it went through, Watts worked overtime, tearing through his own memories and pure honest to goodness puzzle solving and programming where that failed him to access Penny's systems, even as he raised his shield to cover Hazel's back from fire that came from soldier or manta. And if it all went to chalk, Ironwood saw his meter's light moving up independent of the switch, and far off in the distance Penny's boots flared bright as she tore through the sky like a falling star for Cinder's path.

 

[Gus Gungus]

"Does she even know?" he asked, dangerously quiet as he looked at the device​

"General, my systems are malfunctioning!, Ci- the Maiden is going to, w-we have no confirmation of current thoughts-//Specialist Clover DO NOT ENGAGE FURTHER, IMMEDIATE RESCUE EFFORTS CINDER FALL'S SAFETY IS MEANT TO BE A PRIORITY-"

That was as far as the panicked, desperation-wracked voice crackling through Ironwood's wrist got before he silenced it via the only avenue remaining to him; crushing the speaker in its entirety.

"Does that answer your question?"

By contrast, the response that finally issued forth from the general's mouth was as soft and muted in tone as they came. A quiet utterance, yet one cast in a steel mold, preventing any of the storm roiling within from poking through. Ironwood had been general a long time, now; he'd been a public speaker even longer than that. In times that called for a strong, stoic leader, the kind of leader Remnant needed to stave off the dark, he knew how to keep destabilizing influences like emotion well clear of his voice. His thinking, his mind, remained uncompromised.

In the end, as it had always been, it was the tin man's body that betrayed him.

More specifically, it was his heart.
​

It didn't feel like so terribly long ago that Ironwood himself had issued forth a challenge to the greatest minds of the kingdom, one born of a sense of frustration with the growing stagnation he felt in the direction of Atlas's technological advancement. A yearning for a new direction, one that embodied true progress. The Penny Project patented by one Pietro Polendina had stood head and shoulders above the rest. An opportunity to entrust the safety of Atlas's future not to the endless, faceless legions of automatons that had come to define it, straining relations with the other kingdoms and giving a city that once embodied the virtues of hope and progress the image of an inhumanly mechanised autocracy; but to people, no different to them, albeit ones of their own design. The finished prototype had put any lingering doubts he may have harbored to rest. She was everything Professor Polendina had promised and more. The true legacy of his time as general. She was the future of Atlas.​

In just about every conceivable respect in his task as defender of Atlas, as the one to usher in its future, he had failed. All except one. As soon as he met this alternative version of Penny, in her fully realized, fully deployed state, he knew. He hadn't been wrong about one thing. She was the future.

She was the one major success he could claim came from his time at the forefront of his kingdom.

He stepped forward.

"Penny..."

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

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

Try as he might to be better than what had come before him, Ironwood was no fool. In his heart, his soul, he knew. Men like him were the past. They were forged by war, and war was a part of the legacy his vision for Atlas yearned to leave behind.

Three generations from slavery. Two from genocide.

He could use everything he'd seen and learned to safeguard Atlas from those who sought to keep it rooted to that troubling history, most certainly. He could try his best to right the course. To protect what parts needed protecting and shear away the ones that were no longer functional, much the same as he had his own body over the years, piece by piece. Leave Atlas closer to the utopia he knew it could be.

But he could never be a part of it. That world wasn't one he was building for people like him.

​

Pietro was Penny's father. There was absolutely no doubt in that. She was his design, the fruits of his labor, and she quite literally carried a part of his soul inside of her. To say that she adored the man was an understatement of the most egregious degree! If anyone else had told her that Weiss Schnee of all people served Ozpin, she would have found the whole situation very suspicious indeed, but there wasn't a world that Penny could imagine where her father would lie to her. and she was told she had a very good imagination.

Ironwood was something different, however. Pietro was her creator, her father, her daddy [word quarantined from vocabulary upon construction, maturity level 4 required to access]. He was who made her, but Ironwood was the reason she was made. Pietro Polendina's dreams of using science to create what nature could not give him would've remained just a dream had it not been for the general deciding it was a dream worth pursuing. It was his approval, funding, and dedication to the project that had allowed the creation of the shell Pietro breathed life into. He was very forthcoming about the reason as well, telling Penny even before she went to beacon; She was meant to save the world.

It was a devastatingly heavy duty to put on the shoulders of such a young soul, and yet it was one she strove to carry all the same. Pietro had always treated her like the daughter she was, and she responded in kind, with a devotion born of warmth and love, well earned in his own actions. The Ironwood of her world, however, had treated her like the hope for the future he saw in her, and she did her best to respond in kind a well; to not fail at the tasks she was given, to reach the heights that he pushed her towards. Yet even up to the point that she had awoken in Pietro's office in Remnant two, she had never fully understood where she stood in his eyes; success or failure, trusted subordinate, friend, or tool. His words often skirted the borders of all them. Her anxiousness at failing this task hadn't been born of fear. Neither of the Ironwoods she'd known had never gotten truly furious with her, or heaven forbid lay a hand on her in anger. It was just the idea that she hadn't met his standards that rankled her. That she wasn't living up to the dream he saw in her.

That she wasn't proving herself to be more than just a machine. One that hadn't met his standards at that.

That was why she shirked back slightly as Ironwood stepped forward, the salute wavering in apprehension at the coming scolding and disappointment that she held no doubts was on its way. And why such a normally affectionate girl was so rigid when she got a hug instead. Her mouth wavered slightly as her arms hesitated at her sides much like Qrow in that gif, before she gave a sharp nod of her head and the hug went on a few seconds longer than Ironwood probably intended as she latched on right back with a prodigous squeeze that she knew his cybernetics could handle, her eyes shut tight

"Thank you sir! I promise, I will do better next time!"

She stepped back when she released, her posture as prim as ever with her hands clasped behind her back but her smile wholly relieved as she watched the rest of the proceedings.​

It was for the ones like her.

Like Winter, who had longed so desperately for a role model of some sort to look up to when she was younger, only to be worn down and made jaded by disappointment after disappointment.

In his soul, that much he knew. And as the likes of Winter and Clover were discovering from entirely separate angles, knowledge that embedded itself in the soul was different to the sort stored in the brain. That was a form of data, ultimately, free to be written and rewritten as Remnant's makers intended. A soul was something else. Something as old, as pure and as powerful as they were, in a way; something that couldn't be made and unmade, wiped and reprogrammed with anywhere near the same efficiency.

In his soul, he knew that Penny Polendina was the future. Even at this relatively early stage in proceedings, he knew that she had always given him nothing but earnest, unwavering loyalty, in times when it seemed everyone he thought he could count on was turning toward their own agendas. He knew she was deserving of it in turn.

He knew that he had let her down, if not outright betrayed her. And he knew... gods forgive him, he didn't know how, or why, or what it meant, but somehow he knew...

​

“...What?”

A hand had curled up slowly in front of Penny’s mouth, her eyes wide with horrified shock.

Winter? She was… she was gone?

When she’d first been reactivated, she’d been miserable. Ciel had been discharged from her position on the grounds of abject failure, and Ruby was gone, her letters arriving to a slightly confused Taiyang Xiao Long. She still had questions about her own existence, but one thing she’d determined with some certainty was that… she enjoyed having friends, very much so! Yet there was no room for that in Atlas; there was too much work to be done, preparations to make, an entire city that it was put on her shoulders to protect.

But working with Winter… it had been nice. Her pride, her skill, her professional tier sarcasm, it had made the job easier. Maybe friends was too strong a word that Penny would definitely still use but was perhaps a one sided affair, but she was still important to Penny.

And now she was gone. Maybe not the exact one she knew, and one who it seemed had never gotten such a relationship with this world’s penny, but one very close to that person.

And she was gone because...because why?

“...Sir” Penny began, a waver to her voice as she lowered her hands. “I think I am unclear on how this came about. I… if we had worked together from the beginning, If… if we had simply trusted each other, if… if you had trusted us….”​

Ironwood said nothing.

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

In his mind it was worth any price.





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

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

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

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

BANG

View attachment 816492

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

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

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

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

"The relics."

The hammer was thumbed back.

"Or the next one goes in her head."

Spoiler

View attachment 816506

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

View attachment 816511

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

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

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

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

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

"...Am I that bad?"

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

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

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

"Even tin ones! Pahahahahaha!~"​

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

"So has the general"

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


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

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

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

"..."

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

*Sniff*

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

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

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

...he knew it wasn't the first time.

It was only for a second. It was nigh impossible to catch in the sheer chaos that had engulfed the second academic office in as many timelines at James Ironwood's misguided, though well-intentioned, hands. But a group of huntsmen as perceptive as the Ace Ops, who were honestly starting to lose track of just what the hell it was they were trying to achieve here right around the point Salem's brains started painting the walls, weren't going to miss such a key, demoralizing sight. It was Elm who stood at eye level with him, and thus Elm who was first to cop the gleam in her peripheral vision, something trailing down the general's face that simply didn't make sense.

"...Sir, you're..."

"It's the steam."
​

She accepted the link

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

The moment it went through, Watts worked overtime, tearing through his own memories and pure honest to goodness puzzle solving and programming where that failed him to access Penny's systems, even as he raised his shield to cover Hazel's back from fire that came from soldier or manta. And if it all went to chalk, Ironwood saw his meter's light moving up independent of the switch, and far off in the distance Penny's boots flared bright as she tore through the sky like a falling star for Cinder's path.​

"What?!"

Whatever reaction that garnered—or didn't—from those present was lost in the ensuing confusion as Ironwood's eyes flared in bewildered anger, taking Watts' seeming ability to hack even his own private systems as further validation of their guilt. The knot forming in his gut found a somewhat more practical emotion adjacent that it could jump to, and the general let out a harsh growl as he clicked his fingers at one of the nearby soldiers, gloved hand motioning impatiently. The man went stiff, nodded, and handed over what some may have recognized as Due Process's cannon attachment, itself built on similar power cells to Clover's rifle with some tweaks to make it more suited towards crowd control—

The door to the emergency staircase slammed open right as he slid the second handgun in with a click, and a Marrow who was gasping for breath nevertheless found a way to fill his lungs with enough of it to say what he needed to say.

They could probably make an educated guess as to what that was.

"STAY!!!!!!!"

He thrust his fingers towards them, and his tail admittedly twitched a couple of times at the prevention of further escalation of the violence as the group of Beacon students stood ramrod still in the middle of the room. He lacked the energy to say anything further after all those flights of stairs, and merely hoped the exhausted thumbs up he flicked with his free hand appropriately conveyed his apology.

Ironwood's posture finally relaxed, and he lowered the cannon with a weary expression as he gave a once-over to the room to finally stop and actually survey the mess he'd made. Salem was still headless, Glynda had yet to move, and it... was just something he was going to have to worry about later, making apprehension of the fugitives his main priority again as he nodded to the soldiers closest to him.

"Get them in cuffs. One of you, flag a manta down for transport—where's Raven?"

His whole demeanor changed with that simple realization, tension flooding his stance again as he realized Salem's huntress was no longer curled up in a fetal position in the corner.

"Where the hell is the Branwen?!"

Then one of the soldiers went to grab Watts' wrist, and the entire group shattered into pieces.

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"...Seriously... cannot believe... you grabbed the drunk homeless lady... of all people..." croaked a raspy, guttural horror of a voice that had until recently been recognizable as belonging to Mercury Black, its owner unsteadily guiding the controls of the manta they'd hijacked with one hand where he was slumped in the pilot seat, pale as a ghost. "...Salem, you bitch... glaaaarbgh... we need... Salem..."

"EAT MY ENTIRE ASS, MERCURY!" Emerald screeched back where she was standing by the vehicle's open hatch, both hands extended and beads of actual perspiration rolling down her face as her semblance worked on overtime to make them look like nothing more than another Atlesian hornet buzzing around the sky in the eyes of Ironwood, his soldiers, and every other pilot of every other aircraft in the immediate vicinity. Which was getting to be... a lot. "I couldn't get to Goodwitch or Salem, they were like, completely surrounded by guys! Now seriously, you sound like Granny Marlboro's throat cancer; stop talking before you die!"

"...Ribs're poking into windpipe, thass all... s'not that bad, pretty... sure..."

"Ohhhh, okay then, allow me to amend that statement. SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE I KILL YOU!"

"Hey man, it still could be bad. I might still die. You dunno."

She just ignored him from then on, giving Raven's prone form a kick to send it tumbling further into the manta instead of out the other way. She gripped the handhold above the exit, planting her foot against the metal wall for balance and sending a brief glance Roman and Neo's way as they used her kusarigama to pull the last of the students they'd initially left behind aboard. Hazel's fat fucking ass took a little longer, obviously.

That glance proved costly as Ironwood immediately noticed a flicker in the corner of his eye, and her own pupils dilated as she saw him turn and start striding for the office windows through the dissipating fog. "Shit. Merc, let's jet! Watts, call Cinder and figure out where we're picking her up!"

It was probably a good thing for her concentration that she hadn't been around to witness that whole crisis go down, all things considered. She kept her focus on the illusion as Mercury banked the manta hard to the left, leaned forward on the throttle with a horrifying gurgle that was probably supposed to be some cool line or other, and tore off across the sky.

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

That one. He was sure it was that one.

He used the window parting as a brace, eyes roughly the color and sheen of obsidian as his semblance pumped endorphins through his bloodstream, slowed his breathing, kept his grip sure and calm. He was positive. It had to be that one.

"Sir, if you're wrong-!" Marrow tried to interject, looking around pleadingly at his squadmates for someone to step up and join him as the voice of reason. There were so many of their guys already in the sky, if the general missed or had the wrong impression...

"I AM NOT WRONG!"

Ironwood didn't turn, didn't lower his weapon, but instead sent a brief look of pure, unfiltered rage over his shoulder in Marrow's direction that left him frozen in place for once, an explosive snarl that practically dared anyone left in the room to question his judgment again.

"Has a single one of you been listening to me?! REMNANT IS CRUMBLING! It's practically GONE already! Our entire civilization hinges on tonight! The future—"

Something seemed to occur to him with that word, one that had been echoing around in his skull ever since the early hours of the morning; a thought that now found itself joined by the cold, harsh clarity of response to a question he'd been asking himself ever since Watts overrode his access to Penny's systems. How could it have happened? How could he have broken through her firewalls? Short of having a personal hand in her creation, it shouldn't have been possible.

Simple question, simple answer. He hadn't.

He blanched, strained muscles on his face going slack, and the weapon in his hands hit the floor with a resounding clank as he turned and strode from the window, jamming a replacement earpiece in and hooking it into his comms.

"Penny? Penny, report. My bluffs, they—it didn't work. What's the status of the Fall Maiden? Is she... regroup on my position."

He cleared his throat, trying to bring a more authoritative ring back to his voice, finding that difficult to reconcile with precisely how shaky his next words sounded as his eyes reverted to their standard consistency.

"Penny, I need you to come back now."​

 

[Schnee Corp Lawyer]

He blanched, strained muscles on his face going slack, and the weapon in his hands hit the floor with a resounding clank as he turned and strode from the window, jamming a replacement earpiece in and hooking it into his comms.

"Penny? Penny, report. My bluffs, they—it didn't work. What's the status of the Fall Maiden? Is she... regroup on my position."

He cleared his throat, trying to bring a more authoritative ring back to his voice, finding that difficult to reconcile with precisely how shaky his next words sounded as his eyes reverted to their standard consistency.

"Penny, I need you to come back now."

There was no immediate response to Ironwood, because Penny could not find it in herself to speak.

She laid on her back against a tree in the Emerald forest, its trunk shattered and the remnants of their fall burrowed clean into the earth leading up to it. She had caught up to Cinder much too late to avoid a fall entirely, and instead had curled the the other girl against her chest and angled their final descent as best they could. It was a grip she still held onto for dear life, Cinder pressed against her so it was easier for Penny's sensors to monitor breaths and heartbeats; the rhythms of life.

She had made it.

It was not a clean impact by any means. There was a tear in her dress down one side, carrying all the way down her leg to where part of the layer of faux skin had been scraped down to the metal beneath, something that would have left her deeply self conscious at any other time. Cinder herself may have avoided death, but Penny was far from the softest landing point herself, and she hung limply in Penny's grip for now. Penny simply stayed there clutching her for a good minute, staring off into space as she counted each heartbeat. She had made it.

So why did she not feel happy?



All of this was wrong. She had been proud to serve under the general. He had been part and partial to her genesis. He had taken a vested interest from the start that Penny did not just grow to be strong, but grow to be good. Someone that Atlas, that her father, that he could be proud of. A symbol of a bright future to come. A future that, more than anyone she knew, even Salem, and at this point even Cinder herself, he was working towards, rather than merely waiting for in hope. Instead of merely waiting for evil to strike first.

That trust was why she was here. Why her determination held true in the initial throes of this fight, no matter how much it broke her heart.

That trust was what almost killed Cinder. Who had earned her own trust. Trust that Penny in turn had broken. She felt so light in her hands, none of the weight of the Fall Mantle on her shoulders in this moment

She held on a little tighter, and wished once again she could cry.

In lieu of the ability to do so, she stood up. She cradled Cinder gently in her arms and took a deep breath. A wholly unnecessary action for her body, but someone had shown her that no matter how much of them was, they could still be human. when her eyes reopened, her voice followed, heard only by the trees and a general in a tower.

"...General. You taught me to do what is right. Even when it is hard. Even... even if someone dear to you tells you that it is not."

She wished the words sounded as strong as she wanted them to be, but even faking that would've been too much of a lie for Penny, and this was hardly the time for hiccups. So she instead tried to make it as true as she could for this last sentence as she looked down to the friend they had attacked taking the time to listen to first.

"...I do not think 'right' is what we are doing. Goodbye, General. Please do not harm my father for this"

That was the last he heard before the line cut. her thrusters kicked back in, slowly pushing her off the ground as she turned slightly, still below the treeline as her eyes flashed green, scanning for a particular and critical piece of machinery for keeping Mantas afloat. One last thing, at least one set of eyes that could still absolutely be an immediate danger to Cinder if she took off. She tapped into an Atlesian military channel, the last time for who knew how long, and her voice was much more firm as she furrowed her brow while her swords began to spin.

"Specialist Clover. Please locate the nearest emergency air safety gear for all crew aboard Manta 2217"

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It had been a hectic few minutes for everyone to get situated after the Manta flew off from the tower. Neo had spent it tearing apart the inside of the ship to find its medical supplies, and was now giving Mercury the hoverhand treatment as she tried to coax him out of the pilot seat without actually touching him, as if she was afraid he was going to pull an illusionary her and shatter on touch. She'd towed Torchwick behind her the entire time, intending for him to take the wheel when Mercury finally relinquished it. Watts had asked Tyrian and Hazel to find something to tie up whatever crew this manta had that Emerald had dispatched, slumped in a corner, and followed through with Emerald's request, not bothering to inform anyone he was essentially doing it by proxy as he took the time to ensure there was no chance of some Atlesian snoop catching the very brief back and forth between him and Penny before he forwarded any coordinates. And there he stayed while everyone else had something to keep them busy, hopefully. Stewing in his thoughts. In his own mistakes.

It was only for a second. It was nigh impossible to catch in the sheer chaos that had engulfed the second academic office in as many timelines at James Ironwood's misguided, though well-intentioned, hands. But a group of huntsmen as perceptive as the Ace Ops, who were honestly starting to lose track of just what the hell it was they were trying to achieve here right around the point Salem's brains started painting the walls, weren't going to miss such a key, demoralizing sight. It was Elm who stood at eye level with him, and thus Elm who was first to cop the gleam in her peripheral vision, something trailing down the general's face that simply didn't make sense.

"...Sir, you're..."

"It's the steam."

In what he saw.

Eventually, his scroll beeped as something whizzed up to their radar and right up to their back shortly after. He stood up and called to whoever had the wheel at this point to slow down, then walked to the back and activated the ramp.

Cinder did enter the manta, but she did it still in Penny's careful arms instead of her own power. The maiden was probably conscious by now, windblasted as they both were en route, but Penny was initially silent to her as she didn't meet anyone's eyes as she instead stared down with a look of deep shame. She hovered in to land and gingerly handed Cinder over to Watts who definitely didn't stumble at first because he didn't lift but definitely did just sort of stand there awkwardly and hoped Cinder was ready to stand sooner rather than later before she took a step back and clasped her hands in front of her.

"...I would understand if you all would like me to leave now."

 

[MyrtenRose]

With the wind ringing in her ears so intensely, she had been unable to make out the sound of Penny's approach in mid-air...but she had felt it when arms closed in around her. It broke her focus on her thoughts, the names interrupted as she re-opened her eyes and saw a familiar sight. "P-Penny!" She let out in a surprised, relieved, fearful and choked-up half scream. Cinder didn't care that they had just been in a forced fight, or that after everything it seemed that she would be ending up arrested by Ironwood after all...the maiden's arms wrapped around Penny so tightly that if her friend were organic, she'd have probably squeezed all the breath and life itself outta her. She had resigned herself to it mere moments before, not seeing a way out from this, had been mentally preparing for it, but now...wretched sobs escaped her, the tears flowing freely and getting lost to the fierce winds of freefall. And between all of it, the terrified admittance : "Penny I...I d-don't want to die...not yet..."

That was the last thing she was aware of before they hit the ground and she lost consciousness in the remarkably less than pretty landing.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up again, still in Penny's arms. For a few seconds, she imagined that they hadn't hit the ground after all, but it all came rushing back. The cries, the wind against her ears, that....that horrible sounding noise as they impacted before it all went black. Cinder was just as silent, because honestly she didn't know what to say or how to say it right then. She could only stare into those bright green eyes, broken only by a glance around as they approached a Manta transport in the air, and she swallowed nervously to the seemingly inevitable arrest awaiting her.

To her shocked surprise, it was not a crew of Atlesian troops inside but rather her team, and her friends.

She got softly handed over to Arthur, but luckily for his arms she didn't stay there too long.​

"...I would understand if you all would like me to leave now."

"Wait!" In fact she got out of them in a hurried rush nearly immediately, and just as quickly fell over, still too out of it to stand totally stable on her own. Yet she was determined and she rushed to scramble back up to her feet as best she could and lunge at Penny in a fierce hug. "Don't go." Her eyes shut again, but this time it wasn't out of a desire to not see something but rather something she didn't want anyone else to see...namely the tears building in her eyes now. "Thank you Penny. I owe you...everything."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

It had been a hectic few minutes for everyone to get situated after the Manta flew off from the tower. Neo had spent it tearing apart the inside of the ship to find its medical supplies, and was now giving Mercury the hoverhand treatment as she tried to coax him out of the pilot seat without actually touching him, as if she was afraid he was going to pull an illusionary her and shatter on touch. She'd towed Torchwick behind her the entire time, intending for him to take the wheel when Mercury finally relinquished it.​

Neo found her humanitarian relief mission made all the more awkward when, upon finally managing to pester Mercury enough that he stood up, elbowed past her and staggered towards the back of the aircraft—a motion that briefly saw the manta dip dangerously and the entire cabin erupt in undiluted distress before Roman managed to grab the stick—the borderline demented team leader rummaged around in the cargo hold a bit before returning brandishing, of all things, a pair of fucking nunchucks.

Apparently one of the dudes trussed up in the corner was one of those Mistrali culture fetishists. Leeaboos, he was pretty sure they called 'em. Definitely tracked with the kinda person enlisting in the military today, if you asked him, but he wasn't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth on this one.

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

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

"Glaaark, ghluhgonna fuck you all up."
​

Eventually, his scroll beeped as something whizzed up to their radar and right up to their back shortly after. He stood up and called to whoever had the wheel at this point to slow down, then walked to the back and activated the ramp.

Cinder did enter the manta, but she did it still in Penny's careful arms instead of her own power. The maiden was probably conscious by now, windblasted as they both were en route, but Penny was initially silent to her as she didn't meet anyone's eyes as she instead stared down with a look of deep shame. She hovered in to land and gingerly handed Cinder over to Watts who definitely didn't stumble at first because he didn't lift but definitely did just sort of stand there awkwardly and hoped Cinder was ready to stand sooner rather than later before she took a step back and clasped her hands in front of her.

"...I would understand if you all would like me to leave now."​

"Kay bye!" Emerald butted her way into the proceedings by force, quite simply muscling Cinder out of Watts' grip with arms that, though wiry, were actually pretty frickin dope and she almost never got a chance to show off. She gave the android an extremely sour look, and while she'd never exactly been as tolerant of Penny's so-called endearing quirkiness as the others to start with there was definitely an entirely different level to the distaste she angled towards her now as she moved to turn for the medical gurney that had been intended for Mercury... right up until she found out what happened to Cinder.

"Told you guys adding freaking RoboCop to this dynamic was never gonna work out—" She began towards Watts—
​

"Wait!" In fact she got out of them in a hurried rush nearly immediately, and just as quickly fell over, still too out of it to stand totally stable on her own. Yet she was determined and she rushed to scramble back up to her feet as best she could and lunge at Penny in a fierce hug. "Don't go." Her eyes shut again, but this time it wasn't out of a desire to not see something but rather something she didn't want anyone else to see...namely the tears building in her eyes now. "Thank you Penny. I owe you...everything."​

She would've liked to think everyone appreciated just how hard she had to fight against her natural impulses to choke herself to death on her own finger just then, but she knew better. "Weeeeaaak."​

 

[Gus Gungus]

There was no immediate response to Ironwood, because Penny could not find it in herself to speak. In lieu of the ability to do so, she stood up. She cradled Cinder gently in her arms and took a deep breath. A wholly unnecessary action for her body, but someone had shown her that no matter how much of them was, they could still be human. when her eyes reopened, her voice followed, heard only by the trees and a general in a tower.

"...General. You taught me to do what is right. Even when it is hard. Even... even if someone dear to you tells you that it is not."

She wished the words sounded as strong as she wanted them to be, but even faking that would've been too much of a lie for Penny, and this was hardly the time for hiccups. So she instead tried to make it as true as she could for this last sentence as she looked down to the friend they had attacked taking the time to listen to first.

"...I do not think 'right' is what we are doing. Goodbye, General. Please do not harm my father for this"​

With the general's loudspeaker destroyed and Penny's end of the line routed back into his earpiece alone, the Ace Ops were left to swap uneven glances as the man who'd always held their unconditional trust and allegiance paced fretfully from one side of the office to the other, already taking the initial silence as a sign of the worst. He was gripping the wall by the opposite side of the window from where he'd started to steady himself when the responding voice finally chimed in, something that initially had him heaving a sigh of relief.

It did not last long.

"...Why would I..."

Insubordination wasn't something General Ironwood was terribly used to having to deal with, but he knew how to when the situation called for it. On the unfortunate occasion it did become necessary, he was, all things being equal, unlikely to deploy a soft touch.

Penny Polendina, as much as she had been given a team and place in the academy for the purposes of entering the Vytal stage, held no rank within the Atlesian military; Pietro had made it very clear to him that for as much as she would follow orders, provided those orders aligned with his intentions to protect and serve the kingdom with pure heart and sound judgment, she would never be a soldier under his command, and he had accepted it. So 'insubordination' wasn't quite the word for what this felt like.

It felt more like the future he'd envisioned slipping away.

"Penny, I was bluffing. Things got out of hand, I'll admit, but it never would've gotten to that point if... why would someone with nothing to hide gamble with the life of their friend like that?! Look, whatever you've done, I forgive you, but think this through before it's—Penny, the world needs to see you compete tonight! They NEED to know we can protect them!"

Harriet, Marrow, Vine and Elm all seemed to know he was talking to a dead line before he did, and the sheer level of uncomfortable it made them to witness had them turn their attention to other matters; Elm and Vine hovering around Salem's fallen form with frowns of concern that quickly turned to surprised grimaces at what they saw.

The headmistress's splattered skull was about halfway through the process of reconstituting itself, albeit very, very slowly, blood, bone and sinew inching its way across the floor in a horrific patchwork that would've made less hardened stomachs empty their contents immediately. As it was they just recoiled slightly, and there was a note of mild relief in the way they looked at one another, thankful for the confirmation they hadn't just played a part in the outright murder of an important Vale official.

The question still lingered, though.

What had they just been a part of?

"...The peanut gallery's getting restless, sir." Harriet commented, keeping a hand up to stay the wailing winds as she stood by the shattered window herself, squinting down at the distant crowd forming below as more and more students and faculty started pressuring the soldiers and specialists keeping the perimeter secure. "How should we... that is to say, what can we do to keep this from getting any uglier?"

Ironwood didn't answer. He didn't do much of anything, really; from the moment he'd realized the comms line was dead the general had gone very, very still, fist tensed against the wall as he stared out at the horizon in front of him with an expression that seemed almost... absent.

"Sir?"

"Why would she cover for them?"

It was a quiet, ponderous utterance that finally broke his silence, Ironwood lifting his head and re-squaring his shoulders from where they had sank considerably in his stance.

"I come here in an official capacity, on behalf of a duly elected parliament, and Salem, what... thinks she can slap me on the wrist and tell me 'no'? Send me on my way with head hung like one of her schoolchildren? Today, of all days? It doesn't make any sense. Unless..."

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes darker than any under his command could recall seeing them, and while he didn't finish the thought neither did he really need to.

Unless whatever dark influence had compromised teams WTCH and MTEN went further than any of them could've anticipated.

"...Load her into one of the shuttles. Glynda, as well. Send them to the prison ship with the others. We'll prepare a statement in the meantime."

He gave a weary sigh, letting his hands clasp behind his back as he strode to the edge overlooking the campus again.

This was supposed to be a celebration of peace.

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If Yang, Ruby and Blake thought their morning was going weird so far, or that it was shocking when the unconscious form of Glynda Goodwitch was dragged in and tossed in one of the adjacent cells, it was nothing compared to what came next.

"...Is that... Salemsheeee DOESN'T HAVE A FACE!"​