The Liar's Breath

by The Snow Mage

After the Fall of Beacon, lives were lost and relationships fractured. Lilac lost two of the only people in the world she cared about, so now she's trying to find the third. After tracking Rosalie to a White Fang settlement on one of Sanus's islands, she dives headlong into the challenge of liberating her from her kidnappers. One-shot, OCs only.

I was bored and didn't want to work on my other things. So, I made this. Enjoy.

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"I thought you said she'd been kidnapped by bandits," Lilac said, voice devoid of emotion. Her grip on the back of the man's neck tightened as she watched the figures – some adorned with red robes, but most wearing black and white uniforms and bearing mass-produced rifles – go about their business from the top of a nearby cliff. Rage filled her at the sight of them; the events of the fall of Beacon had happened too recently for her to forget their part in it. She and her guide, a man who'd claimed to have helped build the town-sized structure before her, stood beneath the shadows of the forest atop the ridge, masking themselves from what little star- and moonlight could have revealed them.

"Said that, yes," the man said, his accent odd to her. Foreign. It made sense, she supposed; she'd never been in this part of the world before and this wasn't his native tongue. She focused on it, trying to ignore her anger for at least a little while, as he added, "Is not what they are?"

"How have you not heard of the White Fang?" Lilac asked, half-mumbling and half-growling, making him flinch. With a sigh, she shook her head and said, "No, it doesn't matter. Where would they hold a prisoner?"

"Prisoner?" the man asked, his wrinkles deepening as he frowned. "Why would bandits take prisoner?"

Lilac just stared at him, her normally soft pink eyes hardening as she refused to answer the question. It was an old habit, one that persisted despite Rosalie having grown more open about her distant relation to the Schnee family. But, Lilac assumed, she'd go back to keeping it secret again after this.

Eventually, the man swallowed and said, "There is room at end of long hallway. Small window, bars, big door. Underground, two… what is word? Floors? Company made us made it said 'laboratory', no further questions. Not knowing it for prisoners."

"Anything else?"

"You do this by self?"

Lilac snorted, let him go, and drew out a small revolver from its holster at her hip. She pulled a long, slender bullet from the breast pocket of her vest – she'd traded in her favorite bright green one for a darker one splotched with brown and grey after the fall of Beacon; there was too much of her Ariel's blood left in the old one for her to want to wear it – and held it in one hand, beneath her pistol.

"That not is right bullets," the man said, his tone making it obvious he was scared and didn't know what she was doing.

"Go back," Lilac said, turning her eyes back to the White Fang's hideout. "If I'm not back in eight hours… Well, if that happens, I'd probably be dead," she said, snorting again.

"What?!"

"Go, now," Lilac commanded. As he stared at her, she checked to see if her knife was loose in its sheath – as threateningly as possible. She snorted again as he turned and ran back the way they'd come, heading back to his hometown as quickly as his legs would take him.

Alone, Lilac surveyed the area beneath her once more, this time doing her best to ignore the various uniformed faunus as they went about their tasks or milled about aimlessly. It was hard; every time she saw their insignia, she remembered their faces.

Ariel, terrified, blonde hair stained with the blood of a civilian she'd tried to save, a Griffin swooping down and striking through both him and what was left of her Aura.

Iara, pissed off, screaming her lungs out as she was gunned down by a dozen Atlas machines.

Lilac took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing herself to focus on the sights and scents and sounds of the world surrounding her. That usually worked to distract her, but this time it was harder – her pain, her anger, were so much more vivid than the bleak emptiness she was used to fighting against. "But she was always there to help you, Lie," Lilac mumbled to herself, her eyes finally focusing on the White Fang facility beneath her.

She scanned what was visible to her from her vantage point and tried to figure out what she could hit to cause a disturbance – preferably one that would mask the gunshot she'd be using to make it. "Water tower?" she mumbled, only to shake her head – more in confusion than disagreement, though. "Who has a water tower? Why don't they have a well instead?" she asked, letting herself bask in the bafflement to distract her from her emotions.

They'd only attract the Grimm.

"There, that'll work," she murmured after a few moments, crouching down and spinning the bullet in her fingers. She let out a breath, and light – the soft purple of her namesake – spilled from her lips, swelling around her revolver and forming the shape of a much larger, albeit transparent, weapon. With a barrel nearly a foot and a half long, with a boxy stock that butted into her shoulders, and with her revolver still plainly visible within it, the rifle her Semblance had created only lacked a single thing; with a few practiced motions, she opened a chamber in the rifle's side and loaded the bullet into it, then cocked back the short lever on the side. She took another breath as she sighted down her weapon, then let it out as she pulled her revolver's trigger.

The revolver didn't fire, but the rifle did, sending a harsh crack through the air as it launched its payload at the airship Lilac had spotted, an older model that relied heavily on fire-based Dust for its propulsion. The sound of a firearm being discharged was unmistakable in the late evening stillness.

But so was the airship exploding.

Lilac rose back up onto her feet as the heat of the fireball washed over her, even from more than a hundred feet away. She swallowed, then hissed as her long black hair swayed in front of her eyes, pushed by the air displaced by the explosion; she holstered her revolver again, then pulled a pair of elastic bands from the pocket of her cargo pants – bright green; they'd matched her old vest – and tied her hair up in a ponytail. "Should've done that from the start," she mumbled.

Then, drawing her knife instead of her gun, she jumped from the side of the cliff. She let out another breath as she fell and raised her knife above her head; her Semblance turned it into a particularly wide umbrella, slowing her fall enough that her Aura could withstand her impact with the ground.

She sheathed her knife and took off at a run, forcing a look of fear through the cold fury smoldering within her and onto her face as she dashed among and through the panicked crowd. Though she was a faunus – as the pair of thin fangs she had instead of incisors would attest, if she cared to show them – she was hoping to keep out of sight if she could; fortunately for her, the chaos and confusion inflicted by the airship's destruction was enough to let her slip by unnoticed.

Less than a minute after Lilac had fired a shot, she was inside. Beyond the guard posts outside, there was little security; no turrets, no armed guards, not even a single camera. Oddly, she found the metal and concrete walls surrounding her reminded her of home.

It was a strange sensation, being somewhere so alien, yet reminded of a home she no longer remembered.

"Later, Lie," Lilac whispered to herself as she jogged through the hallway, trying to act like she was in a rush while still conserving as much energy as possible. "Right now, make a plan." Right as she said that, she noticed a small sign mounted above a doorway. Barracks, it proclaimed – likely in three different languages; she only knew the one, but she guessed the other two words were the same. "Right, good plan," she whispered, adopting a stiff, practiced stride as she walked through the door and made her way to the barracks.

After another hundred feet or so, she found herself at an intersection, with one sign pointing towards the officers' quarters and the other towards the soldiers'. After a few moments spent thinking hard about whose uniform she'd want to steal more, she took the path to the officers' quarters. Doors lined the hallway that followed, and she picked the first one that bore a woman's name – Guadalupe Navarro – opening the door and shutting it behind her with a murmured prayer of thanks that she hadn't seen anyone since stepping inside.

Only to stop and stare at the woman she met inside. Roughly the same height – which marked her as short, since Lilac could only pass five feet by putting her hair up – and with the same slender build, that was where the similarities ended; with white hair bound back in a tidy chignon, bright blue eyes that seemed to exude maternal kindness, and skin a soft brown and wrinkled by her years, Navarro wore a red robe with gold patterns, marking her as one of the pseudo-religious figures in the White Fang.

"Hello?" the woman asked, tilting her head to the side. The motion caused her hood to fall, revealing a pair of white-furred canine ears.

"Oh, uh, sorry," Lilac mumbled, her mind racing. She did her best to shrink down and look frightened, swallowed as harshly as she knew how, and bowed her head deeply to her. "It's just, well… He's at it again," Lilac said in a conspiratorial whisper, wincing when she realized just how bad of a lie it was. She didn't even know if there were issues with sexual harassment in the White Fang, and here she was relying on it to –

"That Branwen tribe boy again?" Navarro asked, her voice somehow managing to be sympathetic, enraged, and amused all at once. Lilac bit her lip – purposely revealing her long fangs in the process – and nodded, prompting a sigh from the faunus. "I swear, the day we took in a bandit refugee, of all things…" she mumbled, walking over to the door – not noticing Lilac's flinch when she did – and opened it to poke her head outside. She glanced around, then turned back to Lilac with a smile – only to get a bat made of hard purple light to the face for her trouble.

Lilac winced as the older woman slumped to the floor, unconscious, then shut the door and dragged her further into the room. "You know, sometimes I realize just how bad the things I do would look out of context," she mumbled to herself as she got the elderly faunus woman she'd bludgeoned unconscious onto her bed. "And other times I talk to myself. Get it together, Lie," she forced herself to add.

After rooting around in the room, Lilac found a clean robe in one of the wooden trunks pushed erratically into the corner – but only after she'd found a few crystals of Dust. "Score," she'd mumbled emotionlessly as she took count of them: two fire, one electric, and one ice. Then, she tucked the four finger-sized crystals into one of her vest's pockets and slung the robe on over it, pulling up the hood both to hide her features and blend in better; she'd never seen a robed member of the White Fang without their hood up, after all.

Before she left, though, she found her gaze settling on Navarro again. For a few long moments, Lilac stared at the older woman; then, with a heavy sigh, she made her way to the small refrigerator she'd noticed during her search of the room. It had a variety of drinks and snacks in it – most of seemed to be marketed to children, a fact that only served to make her uncomfortable. She pulled a bottle of water from the mini-fridge, froze it with the ice Dust she'd looted, and wrapped it in a T-shirt she pulled from one of the room's many boxes before settling it beneath Navarro's cheek, hoping to preemptively counter any swelling.

"The White Fang used to be a gentler organization," Lilac forcibly reminded herself, the words old, familiar, and exact. "They sought equal rights between faunus and human, not extinction of a whole species. There are those who still act like it was before; there are those who haven't seen the darkness in the Fang; there is still good in the organization."

Sparing one last glance back at Navarro, Lilac left the room, eyes hardening as she pulled the hood further over her features. She made her way back to the entrance, then turned around and headed further in, following signs posted along the walls until she made her way to the only place she could think of that could show her the way to the prison.

The security room.

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Malak sighed as he watched the screens in front of him. Monitoring the surveillance cameras had never been his favorite job; he'd always preferred something more active, even if the "activity" was guard duty. At least standing would burn off some of the nervous energy bubbling within him.

He sighed again, got up from his seat and stretched his arms over his head. He paced restlessly for a few moments, keeping his dark grey eyes trained on the screens even as his bat-like ears tracked the patterns of sound outside the door and within the walls themselves.

Once again, he sighed, slumping back down into his seat and drumming his fingers against his desk. "State of emergency, and I'm stuck in here," he mumbled, running a hand through his hair – light brown, a match for the fur on his inhuman ears – as he tried to figure out a way to blow off some steam without compromising his job.

When the door opened, he all but jumped out of his seat, eyes going wide and his hand flying to the weapon he wore on his back, only to relax and sigh yet again when he saw the robed figure enter the security center. 'Great, one of those creepazoids,' he thought as he watched her walk into the room, only to tense again when he saw her looking curiously at the walls and setup.

"Who are you?" he asked, hand going for his weapon again. He paused when she glanced at him, eyebrow raised, and then added, "What are you doing here?"

"Relax, child," the woman said, wearing the lukewarm half-preachy tone typical of the zealous. "My name is Lilac. I've come from Menagerie for an inspection."

"I'd believe that if not for the airship blowing up outside," Malak said, prompting a faint, almost vapid giggle from her. 'Gods, I hate these freaks.'

"Perhaps you shouldn't relax, then. I'm sure our Leader would be disturbed to know what has happened since I've been here," Lilac said, brushing a finger along one of the desks. She examined the digit critically before she nodded, saying, "But at least some things seem to have gone right. You're holding to the standards of cleanliness, it seems."

"Great."

"In this area, anyway. I need to perform a more thorough inspection, of course. Oh, and interrogate the prisoner," she added, smiling sweetly.

Malak blinked, then frowned at her. "What prisoner?"

"In the underground facility, child."

"Would you stop calling me that? I turned eighteen a few months ago."

"Congratulations, then. Now, child, would you kindly show me the way to the prison?"

"I'm telling you, we don't have a prison here," Malak insisted, shaking his head as he turned back to the monitors. Gesturing, he said, "Here, I'll prove it to you."

He sat down, then – slowly, over the course of several minutes – showed her what every last camera could see. Every hallway, the crowd of people in the mess hall, and what few detention centers housed miscreants who needed to cool their heads after having a bit too much to drink.

"Wait, scroll back," Lilac said, leaning in further as Malak switched the feed from one camera to another. He blinked, glanced at her, then did as she asked, only to narrow his eyes and frown when he saw the flicker. He switched the feed between the two cameras a few more times, slowly piecing together the image he'd seen.

Bars.

A cell.

A woman.

"What the…?" he mumbled, pulling over a keyboard. After a few keystrokes, he said, "Camera eighty-six? We only have seventy-five…"

"Take me to her," she said, her voice lacking the zealous tone she'd used earlier.

"I… I didn't even know where that is, much less… What is going on?!" he demanded of her, turning to level a firm glare at her. "Who is that woman, and why do you need to interrogate her?"

Lilac leveled her gaze to his dark grey eyes, and the edge behind those soft pools of purple made him flinch. "That isn't for you to know," she growled, parting her lips and showing a pair of long, slender fangs.

"What… Who are you?" he asked, rising to his feet with enough force to knock his chair to the ground. He reached behind him for his weapon, grimacing when Lilac drew a slender, foot-long knife from her hip faster than he could pull the bulky battleaxe from his back.

When she lunged for him, his weapon was still bound to his back, so, acting on instinct, he swung out with a foot and kicked the chair up between them, blocking her precise thrust with the mass-produced plastic seat. With a haphazard kick, he threw the chair at her, distracting her just long enough to finish drawing his axe.

"Someone's compensating," Lilac said, barely loud enough for Malak to hear – even with his advanced hearing – as she looked at it, eyes tracing over the four-foot haft and foot-wide steel blades, as well as the pair of crystal-sheathed wires connected to a boxy chunk of metal on it back.

"Why are you here?" Malak demanded, holding his weapon in a single hand. He kept an eye on her knife, but a few half-remembered tips made him try to keep his other eye on her feet and shoulders, too. Lilac's eyes flicked over to the screen briefly, but it was more than enough to let him figure it out. "Who is she?"

Lilac's lips pulled back as she let out an angry hiss, making the avian-faunus flinch. "Mine," she said in a low, hateful tone. "And she's coming with me."

"Who. Are. You?" Malak asked slowly, grimacing as he looked at the computer again. After a several long seconds of silence, he let out an aggravated sigh and lowered his axe, saying, "Look, this is stupid. You want a prisoner who shouldn't exist, who's in a place I've never seen – which I only learned about because of a weird camera glitch that you had to point out to me. What's going on? Who are you?"

Lilac stared at him a moment longer, eyes narrowed, only to loosen her stance and lower her knife in return. "She's my friend, my teammate," she murmured, glancing away as pain flitted across her features. "I need her back. I need to… to tell her what happened at Beacon."

Malak flinched at that, which only served to stoke Lilac's anger further. "You were… You were there?"

"Yes."

"Then… Is… Is it true? Was the White Fang there?" he asked, making her snarl at him.

"They airdropped Grimm into the city around it," Lilac hissed, fangs bared.

"What in the gods' holy names…?" Malak mumbled, shaking his head. After a moment, he looked at her, sighed, and put his weapon back on his back. "I won't stop you, just… just give me a minute, okay?"

Lilac stilled, head slowly tilting to the side as she watched him pick his chair back up and sit down in it, then start typing away on the keyboard. "What are you doing?" she asked, sheathing her knife as she cautiously stood beside him.

"Pulling up a map," he said, moving his hand over to the mouse to select a few options from a drop-down menu before returning it to his keyboard. "Okay, and… There," he said, sliding his chair a foot to the side to give her a better view. "That's it, the entirety of Little Serra."

Lilac felt her heart skip a beat as she stared at the map, and even took a step closer – only to back a few feet away, eyes wide as she stared at him. "Why?" she asked as he blinked at her.

"Because I'm a believer in what the White Fang stood for back when Belladonna was our leader," Malak said, hands fisting in his lap. "Khan, and Taurus… They're going to ruin us, aren't they? Make humans fear us, drive even more of a wedge between us?"

"I wouldn't know about that," Lilac said, shaking her head as she quickly cleared the space between them and started studying the map. "But humans kill what they fear."

"Yeah, that's… kind of why I don't like what our leaders are doing, you know? Not a good long-term strategy. Speaking of long-term strategies, though, my name's Malak," he said, introducing himself in a way that made her eye him suspiciously.

"What?"

"In the long term, it's good to tell a pretty woman your name," he said, unable to stop a smile. "I'm… pretty sure I'm not your type, but, well, still. What's your name?"

"Lilac."

"You gave me your real name earlier?"

"It's the one she gave me. I'll never use another."

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Fifteen minutes of piecing together fragments of pre-loaded data later, Lilac left the security room with long, purposeful strides. It was all she could do to keep herself from breaking into a dead sprint as she followed the route she and Malak had figured out – she had to look natural, but she was so close! Only another few minutes spent making her way through the labyrinthine network of hallways, she spotted a quartet of armed guards jogging down one and pressed herself against a wall, her impatience and frustration warring with her desire to get Rosalie out as quickly and safely as possible.

Unfortunately for her, she wasn't as stealthy as she thought.

"Hey, you!" The voice seemed to crack the air with its authority, making the guards flinch and causing one of them to stumble, but all Lilac did was turn to face its owner. Tall and with a pair of thick leather gloves covering her obviously claw-tipped fingers, she was an impressive sight in a worn leather jacket and trousers; they'd been colored much like Lilac's, meant to help her hide in a forest, which meant they made her stand out in the steel and concrete hallways off the White Fang's facility. She brushed a lock of straw-blonde hair out of the way of her dark brown eyes as she narrowed them at Lilac, saying, "I don't recognize you. Who are you?"

Lilac laughed, forcing herself to smile despite her frustration. "Call me a random inspector from the homeland, child," she said, pasting the zealous tone back over her voice and tucking her hands into her pilfered robe's sleeves. "I'm here to make sure everything is going well. Oh, and I'd like to interrogate the prisoner, if I have time."

"The prisoner, you say?" the apparent commander asked, a small smile lighting on her lips as well. "My, that would be a boon, wouldn't it? Except, I never told our Leader about her, you know?"

"I didn't say she was the one who sent me, now did I?" Lilac asked in a conspiratorial whisper, smile widening as she leaned towards her – and away from the soldiers who stood mere feet behind her. It was a risk – quite possibly the biggest one Lilac had taken since she'd started this whole venture.

And it didn't pay off.

"Guards, capture her," the woman said, snapping her fingers at them.

Lilac's instincts started screaming at her, so she jerked herself forward – taking advantage of the way she'd awkward leaned towards the other woman – and fell to the floor in a roll, rising back up onto her feet and drawing her knife and pistol both as she stopped a single foot away from their commander. Thumbing back the hammer, bracing her gun-hand with her knife-hand, Lilac gave a devilish, fang-bearing smirk to the woman and said, "Take me to her."

Another gamble, this time banking on the newcomer not having an unlocked Aura.

Lilac new it was a failure when the woman reached down to grab the revolver's barrel with a hand, so she fired it twice in as many seconds, the adrenaline coursing through her slowing her perception of time just enough to let her see the rounds flatten and deflect on impact with her skin. She lunged forward as the woman reeled from the twin impacts, knocking her to the ground as she dashed past her.

"Go get her!"

Lilac snorted as she rounded the corner, amazed that the commander had managed to bark that order so quickly. Still, a pit of worry built in her stomach; short as she was, her strides weren't long enough to outpace anyone with even a modicum of Aura-based training for very long. Sprinting down the hallway, she did her best to remember the way to the secret prison as she racked her brain for a way to stop the guards chasing her.

As her lungs began to burn, Lilac grit her teeth and committed to the first workable plan that came to mind. She spun on her heel, facing the soldiers of the White Fang – nearly a dozen, which surprised her; she hadn't noticed more joining the chase – as she flung her knife to the ground with an exhale. Her Semblance took hold, shaping a "weapon" from the soft purple light of her Aura.

The circular shield stuck into the ground by the knife's point, its six-foot width forming an effective stumbling block as the first guard slammed into it face-first. Lilac fought the urge to go back and retrieve the blade as she let her spin carry her the rest of the way around, ignoring the pang in her chest as she started running again.

"Why are you giving me this?"

"Doctor Caesium said it was one of the only things you had when you were brought in. They wanted to see if it would help you regain your memories."

"… Nope, nothing. Sorry, Ro."

"Dang. Oh, well."

"But… why'd you bring it? Shouldn't Cae have?"

"I asked if I could. I told you I wanted to be a Huntress, right? Well, they've got all sorts of super-cool weapons and stuff, so I've been getting my brother to teach me a bit! I was thinking I could show you some moves and stuff, you know? You've already got your Aura unlocked, too, so I was… kind of hoping that, maybe…"

"Ro, I… I appreciate it, really, I do, but I nearly pass out just walking to the bathroom. I don't know if I can live that life."

"You won't know unless you try, right? Come on, just give it a shot! Please?"

"… Okay. Okay, I'll try."

"Damn it," Lilac cursed under her breath, fists tightening until her knuckles were white; still, she didn't slow her stride for a second. "It's just a knife. You can replace it; you can't replace her."

She took another turn, her resolve strengthening when she saw the recessed doorway leading to the secret staircase she and Malak had found – only for a fist to meet her jaw and send her falling to the floor. Momentarily stunned – from surprise, mostly; her Aura had taken the worst of the hit – Lilac looked up to see the White Fang commander from earlier standing before her.

"How?" Lilac asked, scrambling to her feet as the woman cracked her knuckles and grinned at her.

"Why should I tell you that?" she asked, laughing as Lilac leveled her gun at her.

"Common courtesy?" Lilac asked, pulling a large bullet from her vest pocket. She let out a breath, coating her revolver in the rifle she'd used earlier and loading the round in while the commander stared at it, surprised. "Bye-bye," she mumbled, firing.

Only for her eyes to widen as the commander turned translucent, the bullet passing through her like she didn't exist.

"Okay," Lilac said, letting her Semblance fall from her revolver as she stared at the laughing faunus. "I understand how you caught up to me."

Despite how calm and collected she acted, Lilac was freaking out – her opponent could go intangible, meaning she was all but immune to physical harm. How could she fight someone like that?

Lilac didn't get a chance to answer that, unfortunately. Before she could say another word or take a single step, something hit the back of her head and sent her plummeting into unconsciousness. The last thing she thought before she lost consciousness, staring up at the masked soldier who'd clocked her with the butt of his rifle, was that the backup plan still had a chance to go right.

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Malak grimaced as he "watched" Lilac be taken away, relying on his echolocation to track the outsider and his fellow members of the White Fang. He stood three hallways away, his back against a wall, a standard-issue rifle in his hands, and a standard-issue mask covering his face – to anyone else, he was a standard-issue soldier standing guard in one of the hallways leading to the command center in this time of crisis.

'Always knew those random placements would come back to bite us,' he thought idly as he listened to the soldier and his commander – Salil Vesta and Sergeant Hailey Yarrow, respectively – pick Lilac up and carry her away. 'Just didn't think I'd be the one biting.' With a deep breath, he shifted almost robotically, following the drills he'd been put through hundreds of times during his training as he marched to their location.

"Good, another one," the Sergeant said, dropping Lilac's legs unceremoniously. "Carry her and follow me."

"Yes, sir!" Malak said instantly, slinging his rifle over his back and fixing it to the magnetic clip there. Then, he followed her orders, helping Salil heave the unconscious interloper along after her.

Hallway after hallway they went, following a winding path that Malak did his best to memorize. Eventually, they went through a door and down a staircase he hadn't known existed – he realized that he and Lilac had gotten the map's patterns wrong and winced beneath his mask – then walked through yet another hallway, this one a straight shot to still another hallway bearing more than a dozen barred doors.

"Disarm her, get that robe off her, then toss her in cell three," the Sergeant commanded, pulling a ring of keys from one of her pockets as Malak and Salil hurried about their tasks. As Malak was in charge of her robe, he was able to feign that there was nothing in it, despite the Dust he could easily feel within its pockets; he couldn't stop Salil from tossing her gun and vest to the side, or from being thorough while checking her for weapons. More than two dozen different bullets – of varying size and potency, including two shotgun shells – ended up tossed onto her vest as he emptied them from her pockets and from a tightly wound sash she wore beneath her tank top.

Picking her up again, the two faunus soldiers followed their commander to the cell she'd opened and set Lilac down – gently, Malak noted with some relief. The Sergeant locked the cell once they were out, then said, "Stay here and stand guard. I don't want any other intruders coming after the prisoners. Do you understand me?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" both Malak and Salil said instantly, straightening and giving her a salute. She left – taking the keys with her, Malak noted with a sinking feeling – drawing a sigh of relief from Salil.

"Finally," he said softly, slipping his mask from his face, revealing a pair of stark grey eyes and a tattoo of a butterfly on his left cheek. "I hate that witch."

"You sure you want to say that?" Malak asked, raising an eyebrow beneath his mask. Salil looked younger than he remembered; he was likely maybe a year or two younger than him. "She might still be in earshot."

"Eh, I've done it before," Salil said, giving him a broad grin. "Got a slap on the wrist – literally."

"Seriously? The last time I did that, I was stuck cleaning latrines for a week!"

"Must be my good looks, then. If I had a jaw like yours, I'm sure I'd be punished like that, too," Salil said, laughing as he trailed a finger over his softly curving chin.

Malak snorted out a laugh and said, "Or maybe they just think your looks are punishment enough, kid."

"You're not much older than me, you know."

"Meaning you really are a kid; I only turned eighteen a few months back."

Salil laughed again, but a pained groan coming from one of the cells brought a frown to his face. He shuffled anxiously on his feet, glanced over at the barred door leading into it, then quietly asked, "Did you know any of this was down here?"

"No. Not until a few minutes ago, I mean."

"Yeah. This is… heavy, I guess. I just…" Salil sighed, clenching his rifle tightly, and took a moment to gather his thoughts. "I just think that this isn't what the White Fang should be doing, you know? Keeping secret prisoners in Little Sera? This is supposed to be an attempt to expand Menagerie, not do… the sorts of things that happen in secret prisons that make prisoners hurt like that," he said, shrinking as another groan came from one of the cells – a different one than the first, Malak noticed.

"Yeah…" Malak trailed off with a sigh of his own.

Silence followed that, weighing down on them for untold minutes as they stood watch, guarding the prisoners that the rest of the faunus above them didn't know existed in a secret facility designed to keep them away from everyone else. Malak started pacing, his footsteps silent from years of practice; from one end of the cell block to the other, he walked without making a sound, an act that only served to unnerve Salil.

Eventually, though, that silence was broken.

A groan split the air, making Salil flinch and stumble – despite having been standing still beforehand – and causing Malak to look at the freshly inhabited cell. "She's waking up," he told the younger guard, who winced and took a few steps closer.

"Hey, uh, lady," Salil said awkwardly as Lilac opened her eyes and hauled herself upright, lips clenched tightly over the wave of nausea that raced through her at the motion. "I'm, uh… I'm sorry I hit you so hard, okay? Just, uh… Just doing my job, is all."

Lilac parted her lips and hissed at him, showing him her fangs – coated with saliva as they were, they looked to be drooling venom, making Salil flinch and back a step away. "What's… What's going on?" she asked, trying to rise to her feet and falling onto her side.

"You're in the prison, cell number three," Malak explained tersely. "You feeling okay?"

"I might need… a few minutes before I can get anything down, but I'll be fine," Lilac said, half-mumbling as she braced herself against a wall and got her feet beneath her. "Everything okay?"

"Not far from it," Malak replied, drawing a sigh from her – one that was obviously relieved, even as she tried to mask it with irritability. "Your things are right over there, in case you're wondering," he continued, doing his best to make it seem like he was forcing himself to taunt her; from the way Salil raised an eyebrow at him, and from the groan that provoked from Lilac, he didn't think he'd done all that well.

"Great," Lilac said, clenching her fist and taking control of her breathing. "That's just… great."

"Wow, you two are really obvious about this, aren't you?" Salil asked, rolling his eyes when Malak jumped and eyed him warily.

"Blame him. He's new at this," Lilac said, drawing a chuckle from Salil. "You in or out, kid?"

"Don't know what you're doing, so I can't say yet."

"Jailbreak, then getting as far away from here as possible."

"Hmm… Someone needs to stay to cover for you guys. I can bow out later if things get too hot for me here," Salil pointed out, making Malak look back and forth between the two of them.

"Speaking of hot: fire Dust?" Lilac asked, turning her gaze to Malak, who still seemed startled. "Well, Malak? Is there still fire Dust among my things, or was that confiscated, too?"

"N-no, it's…" Malak began, only to trail off when Salil started laughing at him. Letting out a huff and folding his arms over his chest, he asked, "What do you need it for, anyway?"

"You'll see in a minute. For now, I need to get these doors open, so I need to know if I can just pry them open with a crowbar or if I'll need to this the old-fashioned way," Lilac said demandingly.

"Where would you get a crowbar?" Salil asked, only to back up a few steps when Lilac let out a breath and coated her hand in purple light. "W-what the…?"

"My Semblance lets me turn any weapon into any bigger weapon," Lilac explained as the light congealed into a translucent mimicry of a crowbar. "I've learned to fight with some weird stuff to make it work for me."

"Judging from the acoustics, I'd say that's a bad idea," Malak said, only to cock his head to the side and frown a moment later. "Wait, what's the old-fashioned way?"

"Picking the lock," Lilac said, letting the manifestation of her Semblance dissipate.

"How is that old-fashioned compared to a crowbar?"

"Because I learned to do it first. Since that's what we're doing, then, hand me a couple of those Dust crystals. It doesn't matter which ones. Oh, and just in case you're wondering, I've put out a Grimm's eye with a lockpick and a rock before. Fun day."

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

"There we go," Lilac said, breath quickening as she undid the lock to cell two. She carelessly tossed one of the crystals of Dust over her shoulder – where Malak caught it, then pocketed it – and dashed in, falling to her knees as she inspected the human before her.

Rosalie had seen better days. Her pink hair had grown long and shaggy, both states she hated; her skin had paled considerably, turning a milky brown; and her eyes, usually such a bright orange that Lilac could only be reminded of warmth, were cold and brittle. She'd been abducted in her hunting garb, and it hadn't fared much better – the cloth of her tunic had been worn white and was littered with tears, and she was missing her skirt and boots, exposing her shorts-like underwear and a pair of socks that had been caked in grime.

"Ro," Lilac mumbled, grasping her chin with a shaky hand and tilting her head to meet her eyes. "Ro, it's me. Rosalie. Rosalie, please, wake up… Am I going to have to do that again?... Okay, I will," she said – acting like she'd actually gotten an answer, which worried Malak and Salil.

Then Lilac stuffed the sliver of Dust she held into her mouth and started chewing.

"Lilac!" Malak exclaimed, eyes going wide as he watched her wince and whimper from the pain.

"Her Semblance," Lilac said around a mouthful of Dust and blood; the words were intelligible to the two men, albeit barely. "Fire Dust."

Malak and Salil shared a glance, worry and disgust plain in each of their eyes. By the time they turned back to Lilac, though, she'd already locked her lips to the insensate woman's and stuffed her tongue into her mouth, prompting a whimpering gasp from the younger man.

Before Malak could walk over and drag her away, though, flames sparked to life around them – literally; in shifting flickers of red and pink and gold and violet, the two women were hidden behind a haze of heat, smoke, and colored light. Rosalie gasped, eyes rolling up into her head for a moment before they returned, clear and shining bright with intelligence in the firelight. She swallowed as Lilac pulled away, locking eyes with her.

"Lilac," Rosalie murmured, tears falling down her cheeks as she wrapped her in a hug. Lilac laughed, ecstatic that it had worked, only for it to turn into sobbing as she returned the hug and started crying herself. "I… Your mouth!" she exclaimed, pulling away to meet her eyes again only to immediately notice the blood trailing from her partner's lips.

"I know, you told me to never do this again, Ro, but, well…" Lilac mumbled, trailing off under the heat of Rosalie's stare.

"Lilac," Rosalie said, drawing her teammate's watery eyes back to her own. "Thank you."

"Okay, I'm sorry to break this up – like, really sorry," Salil said with a grin as he watched the two women, "but we need to get you up and out of here before anyone comes to check on you. You good to move?"

Lilac snorted out a laugh and hauled herself to her feet, then extended a hand down to help Rosalie. Accepting the offer, Rosalie clasped her hand and said, "Yeah, maybe. Is there any more Dust?"

"Right here," Lilac said, pulling the other crystal from her pocket and offering it to her. Rosalie nodded her thanks as she took it from her and took a bite out of it.

"Didn't you just…?" Malak asked, bewildered, as he watched her chew.

"I can recover from any sort of injury by eating fire Dust," Rosalie explained once she'd swallowed, "physical and mental alike. What, you think this is the first time Lilac's gotten me out of a catatonic state by kissing me?"

"Well, thank you for that lovely little sentence," Salil said, grinning again. "It'll make this next step a bit easier on me."

"How so?" Malak asked, turning to look at him.

"It'll give me something pleasant to think about once Lilac's knocked me out."

"What?" Rosalie asked with a frown. "Wait, sorry: who are you?"

"You sure you still want this, Salil?" Lilac asked, clenching her hand into a fist and stepping closer to him.

"Yeah, sure. It'll help you guys escape without putting me on the chopping block," Salil said.

"You sure?" Lilac repeated, letting her breath spill out with the words and coat her fist in a thick, ham-sized gauntlet. Salil stared at it for a moment, lips pursing and skin paling, but then he nodded. "Okay, then. Make sure you've got your Aura up; the last thing I want to do here is break your jaw."

"Not fracture my skull?"

"Eh."

Salil laughed, then set his jaw and nodded. He flinched as Lilac swung, slamming a heavy punch into the man's tattooed cheek hard enough to break his Aura in a single blow and knock him to the ground.

"Ow," Salil said, flexing his jaw and wincing. "That hurt a bunch more than I thought it would."

"Sorry," Lilac said. "You want me to try again?"

"Nah, I'll just stumble around if someone shows. If no one does, I'll sound the alarm in a few; call it twenty minutes?" he offered.

"That'll have to do," Malak said, grabbing Salil's rifle and handing it to Rosalie. "Here. Hopefully, we'll get out without a hitch, but if push comes to shove, well… Just try not to kill anyone, okay?"

"Sure," Rosalie said, awkwardly accepting the weapon – only to eject the magazine and start pulling the rounds out of it, the rifle itself tossed to the side.

"She's a Dust-user," Lilac said, smiling at the look on Malak's face as Rosalie bit into one of the bullets and tore off the rim and primer with her teeth.

"Not what I was thinking, really," Malak said, still staring as Rosalie dumped the Dust-based propellant within the round into one of the pockets of the pilfered robe. "You're not a faunus, are you? Alligator, maybe?"

"Nope. Human," Rosalie said before she bit into another bullet. Pouring the Dust within into the robe's pocket, she added, "When you learn how to fight with something as expensive as Dust can be, though, you learn to salvage it when you can." She opened another bullet, then swallowed the contents to the best of her ability; grimacing, she mumbled, "Wish I had some water, though."

"Doesn't that hurt?" Salil asked.

"Most bullets use fire Dust as their primary component, so not really, no. This tastes like it's mostly air-based, though, so I should get some good use out of it."

"Speaking of Dust, though," Lilac said, smiling as she presented her partner with the other two crystals she'd stolen from Navarro earlier.

"Ooh, elec and ice, nice," Rosalie cooed as she swiped them from Lilac's hand, eyeing them hungrily. "Thank you, Lilac," she added, making her smile widen into a grin.

"I-It was nothing," Lilac stammered out bashfully, cheeks turning pink as Rosalie rolled her eyes.

"I thought we got you to stop doing that," the pink-haired Huntress mused aloud, making Lilac's blush deepen.

"Can we get this party moving, please?" Malak asked with a sigh. "And you should probably put that robe on before long, ma'am. It isn't exactly warm outside."

"Sure, sure," Rosalie said, setting down the still mostly-full magazine and putting on the garment. "Where are Ariel and Iara? Outside?"

Lilac flinched and looked away, mumbling, "No. They… There's a lot I need to tell you, Ro."

"Lilac?"

"They… They're dead," Lilac said, wrapping her arms around herself and fighting the timid urge to bite her lip as Rosalie gasped. "They died when the Grimm swarmed Beacon, when Atlas's robots started killing everyone. When the White Fang attacked."

"Not all of us," Malak said, turning his head aside when Rosalie turned a harsh glare his way. "Most of us don't know anything about what happened that day. It's driving the Grimm to attack us here, too, because everyone's getting so tense; hearing that people are blaming the White Fang, without hearing any reasons why, is making the faunus here a bit… testy, for the most part."

"Just be glad Malak and I have too much energy to be put down by some bad press," Salil chimed in, still sprawled on the floor where Lilac had left him. "We're not gonna let any old folk tell us how to feel!"

"I… We need to leave, now," Rosalie said, fiercely shaking her head. "I'll… Tell me everything, every last detail, once we're out of here, Lilac," she added, drawing a nod from her partner.

"I promise: I won't leave anything out, no matter how much it hurts."

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

"You know, I should've seen this coming."

Lilac froze mid-step as the words crackled through the hallway, her head jerking as she looked around for the speakers that they'd come through. Her heart seemed to sink in her chest when she saw the camera mounted at the corner they'd been running towards.

"Your timing was too perfect, Malak. You were too helpful, too agreeable, despite having never been briefed on the situation beforehand."

"You should've spoken to Vipin, then. He'd have told you where my work duty was," Malak said, raising his voice as he continued walking. At his gesture – and the sight of Rosalie continuing unheeded – Lilac started moving again, jogging for a brief moment to catch back up to them. Then, turning his head away from the camera and lowering his voice, he asked, "Neither of you have pacemakers or anything, right? Nothing electronic in your bodies?"

"No…?" Rosalie asked, still eyeing the camera warily.

Lilac just shook her head, not trusting her voice right then; recovering her partner, the person she loved most in the world, and being forced to recall the memories of her teammates being killed to tell her that they were dead had taken their toll on her.

"Good," Malak said, drawing his axe from his back. He flicked his thumb along the boxy panel on its side, producing an audible whine as the crystal-encased bulbs started emitting a faint white light – one that started brightening as they continued along.

"Ha. Using that weapon of yours, are you? You know, I've always wanted to ask: why did you put a flashlight on an EMP?"

"In case I have company," Malak said, flicking a switch on the axe's haft and turning off the lights on his weapon.

As well as every electronic device within a hundred feet.

Lilac jumped, startled, but before her feet could hit the ground again the lights came back on Malak's axe, casting two beams of incandescent white down the hallway.

"What, exactly, was the point of that?" Lilac asked a moment later, her eye twitching as she scowled at him.

"Cameras," Rosalie answered in his stead. "If she can track us, she'll know where to put all her soldiers to intercept us. Of course, that's mostly moot considering they'll be able to track us just fine by the trail of cameras going out."

Malak looked at her for a moment, then, chuckling sheepishly, said, "Huh. Didn't think of that."

"Great," Lilac mumbled. "Can we go get my knife, then?"

"Your… You lost your knife?" Rosalie asked, her eyes going wide.

"Yeah," Lilac said, clearly uncomfortable. "Where would it be, Malak?"

"Assuming no one's taken it for themselves, it'd be in the armory," he said. After a moment, he frowned, then shook his head. "But that's a bad idea. There'll be extra guards posted around it by now, so we'd have to fight through at least half a dozen trained soldiers to get to it."

"Just tell me where it is, and I'll meet up with you by the entrance once I'm done," Lilac said.

"You think you can take six soldiers all by yourself?"

"I still have some tricks up my sleeves."

"What about the lights?" Malak called after her as she started walking away, only to sigh when she spun around and smiled wide enough to show her fangs.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

Lilac whistled a tune as she approached the outpost in front of the armory, her revolver holstered at her hip and her hands placed behind her head. Two of the guards immediately pointed their weapons at her, a third yelling, "Halt! This is a state of emergency! No one unauthorized is allowed in the armory!"

"Oh, don't worry," Lilac said, stifled laughter making her lips turn and her eyes shimmer. "I'm authorized."

"On whose orders?"

"Mine," Lilac said, pulling her hands out from behind her head and letting out a pair of quick breaths, turning the length of electric Dust she'd broken into two pieces into a pair of glowing grenades. "Catch!" she shouted, throwing the pair of Semblance-made bombs at the outpost.

Before any of them could recover from the surprise, the grenades crashed through the outpost's glass window, one of them smacking one of the guards right in the forehead and making her stumble back a step. "Everyone down!" the apparent leader of the group yelled, grabbing one of his fellows and pulling him out and to the ground. Three seconds later, however, when they'd gotten their wits back, he asked, "Why haven't they…?"

Lilac couldn't make explosive substances with her Semblance, after all – but using it in this way did allow her to keep the lengths of Dust within her Aura, even at a distance.

"Sorry about this," Lilac mumbled, eyes wrenched shut as she focused. She wished she'd had the sheer practice that Rosalie did, but she pushed that thought aside as the distraction that it was.

Another second later, electricity sparked to life within the grenades to explosive effect, zapping two of the guards and sending them to the ground, unconscious and Auras broken.

Lilac drew her revolver and fired two shots in quick succession, knocking aside the rifle of one of the soldiers who'd been aiming at her and outright disarming another of theirs. She ducked beneath the swing of a sword, exhaling as she swung her free hand at the guard who'd closed the distance; his eyes widened beneath his mask as a hammerhead of purple light collided with his chest, knocking him hard into the wall behind him. Lilac aimed and fired again, breaking the Aura – and the mask – of another guard, before she took two long steps and jumped through the window her not-quite-explosive first strike had broken.

She landed on her back amid the shattered glass, her Aura keeping the shards from slicing into her as she rolled to her feet and fired a fourth time; the bullet took one of the guards in the shoulder as he tried to level a rifle at her, spinning him around and causing his pair of shots to melt part of the concrete outpost into slag.

"Geez. Overkill, much?" Lilac mumbled, stepping over to him and kicking the weapon from his hand, then following it with a hard elbow to his skull and knocking him out. She took another shot at the sword-wielding guard who tried to follow her, wincing as her bullet smacked into the side of his head and broke his Aura in a flash of bright blue light. Blood splashed on the floor as he fell into the outpost, but he was groaning, making Lilac sigh in relief that he was still alive.

Reacting on instinct despite her distraction, Lilac ducked beneath the powerful blast of an energy rifle, turning to see that it was the apparent leader who'd pulled his comrade away from her "grenades" earlier. His comrade stood beside him, her head tilted down to point her horns at Lilac. "Who are you?" he asked in a throaty growl, his orange-with-black-stripes tail swishing violently behind him.

"Just a woman trying to get her knife back," Lilac said with a sigh, firing the last round in her gun at the rifle – and feeling her heart skip a beat as the bullet slipped cleanly into the rifle's larger barrel.

The man cursed under his breath as the weapon was jerked from his grip and damaged beyond functionality. Lilac backed up, feeling a familiar, almost dance-like rhythm in her legs as she avoided the reindeer-faunus's lunge for her; exhaling as she ducked beneath a wild punch from the uniformed White Fang member, she drove a Semblance-gauntleted uppercut into the woman's midriff, driving the breath from her lungs and a spray of saliva from her mouth. With a kick, Lilac forced her away, and with another drove her into unconsciousness.

The man cursed again as he watched Lilac draw a speed loader from her vest and refill her revolver's cylinder in a single, obviously well-practiced motion. He glanced around at his disabled allies, then sighed and dropped to his knees, folding his hands behind his head. "I yield," he said bitterly. "Just don't hurt them anymore."

"Got it," Lilac said dismissively, already walking past the outpost and into the armory proper. Less than a minute later, she emerged, whistling a happy tune and contentedly spinning her knife in her off-hand.

"That's what you did this for?!" he asked incredulously.

"Yup."

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

Lilac regrouped with her allies easily enough; all she had to do was make her way to the entrance. There, she found Rosalie and Malak pressed against the wall next to the open doorway, and – not being an idiot – she did the same on her side of the hallway, hissing, "What's going on?" as she slinked over to them.

"Mech-suit," Rosalie explained, glancing pointedly at the doorway. "Atlesian, but old-school."

"Archer, Lancer, or Saber?" Lilac asked, making Malak blink at her.

"Archer," Rosalie said, making Malak blink at her. "Chamber's in the bicep, but it's retrofitted with a few tricks in its left."

"Any plan?"

"I was thinking Solar Press, but now that you're here…"

"Ladies' Night?"

"Bingo."

"Uh," Malak cut in, drawing a giggle from the Dust-mage and a few chuckles from her pink-eyed teammate. "What?"

"Don't worry about it," Lilac said with a grin. "Oh, by the way," she added, fishing a fist-sized clump of red crystal from her vest pocket, "present for you, Ro."

"Aw, you always buy me the sweetest things," Rosalie said dryly. Both women dropped to their knees, Lilac sliding the Dust across the concrete floor rather than tossing it to her partner and having it be shot out of the air by any aimbots the mech-suit might have. As they rose, Rosalie took a bite out of the crystal, grinding it into powder with her teeth before she swallowed it. "Thought 'sweet' might not be the right word," she added before taking another bite.

"Hey, save some of that for later," Lilac said with a smile, pulling another giggle from her. "We've got a mech to fight, after all."

"You two are weird," Malak said, only to flinch when Lilac suddenly scowled at him. "Okay, fine. Just you," he said pointedly, making Lilac nod.

"That's better," the serpent-faunus said, letting her lips part as she smiled at him. "Now, let's get this done. I don't know about you two, but I think I'm getting sick of this place."

"Boo-yah," Rosalie said, stepping out from behind her cover as the Dust in her hand started glowing brightly. Drawing its energy into her other hand, she conjured a massive orb of flame and flung it at the mech as Lilac peeked out from her cover to watch.

The flames splashed over the angular canopy and lit the painted white metal in stark relief, momentarily obscuring the pilot's vision and giving Lilac the chance she needed to get outside. She examined it further as she went, looking for any obvious weaknesses in its bipedal structure; other than the bulkiness of its right bicep, which apparently housed the likely explosive Dust-based ammunition that the minigun its arm ended in instead of a hand would use, it didn't seem to have any. If anything, the ten-foot-wide shield it held in its hand – on its left arm – was enough to make up for most of the defects that she'd usually exploit.

Still, Lilac knew the plan: she leveled her revolver at it and started fanning the hammer as she fired, emptying all six shots at it in two seconds. Only one of those shots got past the shield, hitting a bit of metal plating near the knee-joint of its left leg, but it was enough to make the suit flash a warning to its occupant.

"Oh, so it's you," came the all-too-familiar voice out through speakers that Lilac couldn't see as she kept running. The mech turned, its minigun already starting to spin as the pilot – Sergeant Hailey Yarrow – called out, "Even your Aura can't hold out against this, girl!"

'What is that supposed to mean?' Lilac thought; it was so distracting that she nearly fumbled her speed loader, but she managed to slip in the rounds just in time to hear the mech's gun start firing. Bullets whizzed just behind her as she ran in a wide circle around the Sergeant, tearing up the concrete and then the dirt when she moved onto the unpaved ground.

Yarrow's yowl of annoyance at the explosive fireball that slammed into her suit's back was clearly audible, thanks to her mech's speaker system. She swiveled her shield to be between her and the door to the facility without slowing her chasing onslaught against Lilac, an impressive feat of maneuvering given the mech's age; then, making her foes' eyes widen, she engaged the wheels embedded into her mech's feet and slammed it backward, smashing her shield through the doorframe and making chunks of concrete rain down on Rosalie and Malak.

"No!" Lilac yelled, unloading her gun at the mech's right bicep. Each shot dented the metal, but not a single one pierced it, not even with the sheer Aura Lilac had imbued them with – they left streaks in the air like tracer rounds. "Ro!" she screamed, abandoning the plan for the moment to duck underneath the hail of bullets still streaming towards her and run towards the shattered opening.

Fire roared up from beneath the mech's shield, upsetting its balance and forcing it away from the facility. Rosalie stood beneath it, her jaw set with determination as the clump of Dust in her hand slowly broke apart and scattered beneath the sheer amount of power she was pulling from it. "Make. It. Count!" she shouted, drawing on the wind-based Dust in her pockets and adding it to the tremendous gout of flame.

Together, it was enough to knock the mech over, making Lilac let out a yelp as she dodged the still spinning minigun as it crashed into the ground where she'd been standing.

"You've got it, Ro!" Lilac called back once she'd recovered her foot, shooting her partner a grin as she let out a breath and pulled a round from her vest pocket. As her Semblance congealed around her revolver, she flipped the round into the air, letting it slide into the chamber in a flashy display as the grenade launcher fully solidified. "Here comes the boom!" she yelled, firing at the mech's ammunition cache.

Thanks to the Aura-charged bullets she'd sent its way earlier, the forty-millimeter grenade round's explosion was enough to punch through the armored plating surrounding the bicep and ignite several of the rounds within, triggering a chain reaction that ended in a much larger explosion, one that shattered the mech into more than a dozen smoking pieces and knocked Lilac from her feet. She tucked and rolled with the momentum as her Aura took the hit for her, coming to a stop more than twenty feet from the blast's epicenter.

Lilac felt like laughing – she'd come to free her best friend and partner, after all, and had just about managed it – until she saw the figure rising from the wreckage. With a heavy sigh, she hauled herself to her feet as well, then set about reloading her gun as she locked eyes with her.

"Do you have any idea how much this cost?" Sergeant Hailey Yarrow of the White Fang growled out, her jaw clenched tightly shut and her tail thrashing about irritably behind her.

"I can only imagine," Lilac replied, snapping the revolver's chamber back into place. "Now, are you going to let me and Rosalie leave – with Malak, I guess – or do we still have a problem?"

Yarrow laughed, a rumbling sound not unlike a cat's purr. "You think you have any chance of leaving here alive?" she asked as she drew the weapon she wore at her hip. It looked to be little more than a slender, curved sword with an ornate guard, but the blade was a dark purple – evidence of the gravity-Dust etched into it.

"Are you kidding me? You're a freaking poltergeist?" Lilac mumbled, gripping her weapon tighter. "Oh, boy; this'll be fun," she grumbled.

Almost as if on cue, a howl rose up from the woods covering the cliff above the compound. Both Lilac and Yarrow looked up to see more than a dozen Beowolves – all in advanced states of Grimm evolution, with rib-like armor plating on their chests and claws nearly a foot long – staring hungrily down at them. And, creeping up behind them, was a larger figure: a scorpion-like Death Stalker – at least, that's how it seemed at first; when it unfurled a pair of wings that looked like they'd been ripped straight off a Nevermore, nobody knew what to make of it.

"What in the… Oi, Sarge!" Malak called out, stepping out from behind Rosalie with his axe in hand. "Temporary truce while we deal with them?" he asked, pointing at the Grimm making their way down the cliffside.

Yarrow grit her teeth, but nodded. "Fine. Just until we're done with the adds," she said, turning and holding her sword in a ready position, tip pointed at the wave of Grimm.

"Goody," Lilac groused. Loudly. "I love working with people who kidnap my friends and torture them repeatedly."

"Just shut up and get to work," Yarrow growled at her, making Lilac grin and show her fangs to the feline faunus.

"Where do you want me, Ro?" Lilac asked, making the Dust-mage sigh.

"Can you put your differences with her aside for a minute?" Rosalie asked.

"For you, yes," Lilac said, giving her a close-lipped smile.

Rosalie sighed, then nodded. "Good. Take down that Death Stalker, or whatever it is. Sergeant, help her out."

"I won't take orders from a Schnee," Yarrow spat at her, only to flinch as Lilac hissed at her.

"Oh, please. I'm so distantly related to them that I wouldn't be able to take their name if I tried," Rosalie said, rolling her eyes.

"Uh, ladies? They're almost here!" Malak reminded them, his free hand shaking despite the steadiness of his axe-hand.

"Fine!" Yarrow growled, turning her eyes back to the Grimm – most of which had reached the ground and started charging at them. "Just keep the fodder off us!"

"Can do!" Rosalie said, lifting her hands and pointing two fingers of each at a pair of Beowolves. Drawing on the Dust still in her pockets, she made a soft "pa-kow" sound as she launched a pair of icicles from the tips of her fingers, smirking as they struck the Grimm – one in the head, felling it instantly and sending it tumbling to the ground, where it took long enough to dissolve that another tripped over it.

Malak charged in to meet the horde, axe whirling in his hand as he struck the Beowolf Rosalie had injured, cleaving through its arm as it lashed out at him with a claw. He followed it up with a hard kick, sending it flying back into one of its brethren, and turned to slash at the jaw of another that got too close to him. As his axe tore off its lower jaw, a distortion on the wind rammed into its side and sent it flying up into the air; Rosalie tossed another bubble of compressed air after it to slam it back down, keeping it and another pair of Beowolves from reaching Malak as he whirled and beheaded one of the Grimm.

Yarrow, meanwhile, was busy channeling Aura through the Dust lining her sword, sending its power into a steadily growing orb of deep purple light in her hand. All the while, her eyes were on the mutated Death Stalker as it slowly approached, its wings beating hard to keep its mass in the air and making it bob and sway so much that Lilac couldn't reliably hit it from a distance.

With a wordless shout, Yarrow tossed the ball of gravitic force at the winged arachnid, increasing the weight of its already heavy body and sending it crashing to the ground. With another shout, she charged, the Dust along her sword still glowing as she used it to decrease her weight – even as she wore her Semblance and faded through the mass of Grimm between her and it.

"Show-off," Lilac mumbled, sighting down the iron-sights of her Semblance-made rifle. Already loaded with a few finger-length rounds, she'd just needed to wait for the Death Stalker to stop moving around so much before she fired. Light flashed at the end of her rifle's muzzle, the oversized round passing through Yarrow's insubstantial body and slipping into one of the holes in the scorpion-like Grimm's mask-like plating to hit one of its eyes. She chuckled, then mumbled, "Hypocrite," to herself as she repeated the feat on another of its eyes, though – much to her displeasure – she didn't shoot it through the White Fang Sergeant this time.

As the Death Stalker loosed an ear-piercing scream of pain and anger, Yarrow phased back into corporeality and leaped over the massive Grimm, swinging her saber with all her might as she sailed past its tail. Her sword bit into its thick carapace and tore out through the other side, slowing her fall in the process; that hit combined with her ceasing to channel her gravity-based Dust meant she was soon on the ground once more, and she spun on her heel to try to finish the job – only to find one of the creature's pincers slamming into her and knocking her off her feet.

Lilac grit her teeth, having watched the arachnid spin around blurringly quick, and fired a pair of shots at the injury Yarrow had put into its tail. Growling wordlessly when the bullets bounced off its armor-like chitin – due to her Aura trailing off of them in midflight – she exhaled and added a grenade launcher attachment beneath the barrel. On a mundane weapon, the additional weight of such an attachment would throw off a markswoman's aim, but her Semblance was nearly weightless.

Clenching her jaw – both to withstand the feeling of helplessness that came over her as she watched Yarrow take another blow from the Grimm during a failed attempt to attack it, and to withstand the fact that she was feeling such a thing for someone who'd kidnapped and tortured her closest friend – Lilac reloaded and fired, sending an extra-special grenade round at the winged scorpion.

By the time the grenade hit, the Death Stalker had already moved to pursue its chosen prey – but that didn't matter with the Two-Step round. Purple light emerged in a bubble where the grenade struck the ground, catching half of the Grimm's mass within it and drawing it into a gravity well with enough force that even its eight legs scraping at the ground and its wings beating at the air couldn't so much as slow it down. Then, after five seconds exactly, the bubble turned white – and turned into a solid hemisphere of ice.

Only its head and the end of one of its pincers remained outside the dome, something the battered Yarrow took advantage of. She lunged in and, before it could leverage what little room it had to maneuver, stabbed her saber through its face with all the force she could muster. She withdrew it, then stabbed again, then again, then again, until the Death Stalker dissolved into black particles and drifted away on the wind.

Panting from both pain and the brief exertion, the Sergeant turned to face her human and faunus foes – who'd since handily dispatched the rest of the Grimm; one last Beowolf remained mostly intact, but it was both on fire and missing one of its hindlegs, courtesy of Malak and Rosalie's combined efforts. Yarrow, sporting a bruise on her cheek despite her still-active Aura, strode toward them and said, "Our truce has ended. Prepare yourself."

"At least you're polite about it," Lilac snarked, turning her rifle on the White Fang Sergeant and firing off a shot. She sighed when it passed right through her, then let her Semblance dissolve around her revolver as she straightened. "Yeah, I figured as much," she mumbled as she drew her knife and started walking towards her.

"Uh… Should we help?" Malak asked Rosalie, who scoffed at him. "What?"

"I'm nearly out of usable Dust and still recovering from the last month," she pointed out, making him wince. "And you've never fought with Lilac before, so odds are you'd just get in her way."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. Now, hush. I'll only get one shot," Rosalie mumbled, pulling out her last intact sliver of Dust.

"You're planning on…" he began, only to immediately shut up when Rosalie tossed a glare at him.

"She might have a tail, but we can't assume she doesn't have good ears, too," Rosalie said softly, watching Yarrow intently as she and Lilac closed the distance between them.

Yarrow swiped at Lilac with her sword, which the snake-faunus easily twisted away from. She fired off a shot in return, thumbing back the hammer of her revolver as the bullet passed through the momentarily intangible Sergeant. Yarrow phased back into corporeality and lashed out at Lilac again, only for her to meet it with her knife and send the blow sideways.

Another shot, another slash, another series of dodged, parried, and otherwise avoided attacks followed, frustrating both women as each failed at landed even a single blow on the other. The two broke apart, Lilac's latest show of flexibility making her flip several feet away from Yarrow, who didn't pursue her immediately.

Instead, the Sergeant sent a rush of Aura through her sword, kindling the Dust etched into it and sending a burst of bubble-like wells of gravity at the snake-faunus. Lilac dashed to the side to avoid the projectiles, running in a short circle around her foe as she let out a breath and coated her knife in her Semblance.

And then another, changing her revolver as well.

She tossed her newly-made cutlass into the air and fished a fistful of extra-wide rounds out of her vest pocket, flinging them into the air just in time to catch her sword. She cracked open her Semblance-forged shotgun and caught the shells with it, loading it's eight-chamber revolving cylinder in a single sweeping motion. With another flick of her wrist, she snapped the loaded chamber of her firearm back into place – and leveled it at Yarrow.

All within the span of two seconds.

The feline-faunus scoffed, readying her own Semblance as she said, "Cute. You practice that a lot?"

"Oh, yeah," Lilac said with a grin, baring her fangs at her. "My Semblance relies on that sort of thing, you know."

Yarrow grunted, then launched herself at Lilac in a single leaping stride that left a trail of dust behind her. Her sword clashed against her foe's, driving up sparks of multi-colored light as their Auras warred for dominance; before either could prove superior, Yarrow was forced to turn intangible as Lilac fired her shotgun at her, only to be momentarily blinded by the brilliant blast of ice and lightning.

Without giving the incorporeal woman a chance to recover, Lilac used her Aura and a subtle motion of her wrist to switch to another chamber in her shotgun, then fired that at her as well. Twin bubbles of dark purple emerged from the barrel and streaked into Yarrow, making her cry out in pain as the gravity-based Dust threw her back.

"She was holding out on me," Rosalie mumbled, smiling at the sight of one of her tormentors skidding to a stop on the cold, hard ground.

"Still don't feel like letting us leave?" Lilac asked loudly, spinning her shotgun's revolving cylinder. "Or do I have to give you another taste of Vindication?"

Yarrow scoffed at her and straightened, an eager grin stretching her lips and taking Lilac by surprise. "Like I'd be outdone by a low-tier Huntress like you," she said, rolling her shoulders and tensing up to lunge at her again.

She dashed at Lilac, her sword lighting up as she funneled Aura into it, and leaped into the air as the snake-faunus fired a blast of wind from her shotgun. With an egregious midair twirl, Yarrow swept her saber at the Huntress, sending a crescent-shaped swell of mixed purple and yellow light at her. Lilac darted to the side, narrowly avoiding the crashing line of power, only to feel her feet be dragged out from under her as it hit the ground.

Lilac shouted wordlessly, eyes going wide at the fist-sized pocket of distorted air that seemed to be pulling her towards it. Thinking fast, she spun her sword in her hand and stabbed it as far into the ground as she could, narrowly stopping herself from being sucked any closer to the gravity well. Then, turning her eyes upward, she saw a grinning Yarrow descending towards her sword-first.

Gritting her teeth with the effort, Lilac made use of her serpent-faunus-granted flexibility and twisted her body, pointing her shotgun up at the falling Sergeant and spinning its cylinder. With another shout, she pulled the trigger, sending out a pulsing blast made from a hundred balls of light. Yarrow phased out and passed right through them, her grin widening as she got within striking distance of her foe – only for it to fall from her face when she saw the smirk Lilac was wearing.

With another pull of the trigger, a pressurized blast of water thicker than a body-builder's bicep shot from the end of the firearm, slamming into Yarrow's face and knocking her up and away. With the Sergeant's concentration broken, the well of gravity dissolved, making Lilac fall to the ground with a grunt.

Yarrow landed in a heap, her Aura breaking on impact. She groaned, one hand searching the ground for the saber she'd dropped as she tried to wipe away the water blurring her vision with the other, only for her to freeze a moment later – literally.

Rosalie sighed, relieved and annoyed, as the sliver of crystalline Dust turned into powder and floated away on the wind. She smiled as Lilac hauled herself to her feet, freeing her revolver and knife from her Semblance and holstering the both of them. "Let's go before anything else can go wrong," she said, making her partner chuckle.

"Sure thing, Ro. Hope you're ready to sleep in a bag again," Lilac said, chuckling again at Rosalie's annoyed groan.

XxxXxxXxxXxxXxxX

"I'm still surprised you cut in at the end back there," Malak said, eyeing Rosalie suspiciously from across the campfire. They hadn't stopped to make camp until they were more than a dozen miles from the White Fang stronghold, which Lilac had managed to plan for; a large pile of dry wood sat beside a small pit ringed with stones, and the snake-faunus had left a pack full of rations and water in a hollow tree nearby.

"Well, you know what they say: 'teamwork makes the dream work,'" Lilac said, clinging tightly to her partner's arm.

"Ugh, Lie, why?" Rosalie grumbled, making Lilac chuckle.

"That right there," she said around a giggle, making her partner grumble wordlessly. She let out a contented sigh and rested her head on Rosalie's shoulder. "And it's not like it was a formal duel or anything, Malak. Fighting like it was would have risked everything, and for what? Pride? Screw that," she said derisively. "Getting even one person out alive is worth sacrificing my pride for, especially if it's Rosalie."

"Hey," Rosalie said, nudging her partner with her elbow. "We've talked about this, Lie. Your life is worth just as much as mine, if not more."

"Not to me."

"Okay, I know we agreed not to set up a tent, but if you two are gonna get like that in front of me, we need a tent," Malak said in a deadpan, making Rosalie giggle and Lilac blush, much to his surprise. "I also wasn't really sure you two were, well, you know…" he added, trailing off and glancing away as he scratched his chin sheepishly.

"In this kind of relationship?" Rosalie asked, drawing a nod from the teenaged White Fang deserter. "Yeah, somehow it just keeps surprising people. I guess they watch too many cartoons about girls who act like Lilac having unrequited crushes on other women."

"To be fair, that's how it was until four years ago," Lilac said. "Nearly five years ago, now."

"Thanks for reminding me, Lie. I'll have to come up with something extra-special this year," Rosalie said, leaning in and kissing the tip of her nose.

"Please: not in front of the teenage boy," Malak said in a monotone, rolling his eyes as they laughed at him.

"So, not to change the subject, but… What are you planning on doing now, Malak?" Lilac asked, making the younger faunus grimace.

"I don't know. The White Fang was my life for a long time, but… after seeing what it did to you, Rosalie, I don't think I'll ever want to go back. Maybe to change its path, make them go back to helping people instead of hurting them, but… I'm not the sort of person who can do that," he said with a sigh and a shake of his head. "Maybe I should just try out for a Huntsmen academy, somewhere. I know what happened to Beacon, but…" he trailed off, sighing again.

"You won't be able to get into Atlas right now, either," Lilac said, a melancholy frown marring her features as Rosalie glanced at her. "The kingdom closed its borders after their mechs started killing people during the… during the fall."

"Then that leaves Haven and Shade," Malak said with another sigh, leaning back to stare up at the stars.

"Well, if you decide to go to Shade, my father used to work there. I could get you a recommendation," Rosalie offered, making him look at her and blink.

"You're serious?"

"Yep. Especially once I tell them how well you held off a dozen Beowolves while dodging artillery strikes."

"That's… Thank you," Malak said, smiling awkwardly at her.

"Of course, you'd be welcome to tag along with us on the trip there," Rosalie offered, making Lilac sigh softly. "Don't be like that, Lie," Rosalie murmured.

"I just wanted some time alone with you, Ro," Lilac mumbled, wearing a sad frown – and, much to her partner's surprise, lacking the blush she usually wore when propositioning her.

"Lie?" Rosalie asked in a whisper, making her shake her head.

"It's… about our team," Lilac mumbled back, making Rosalie grimace. "I… I need to tell you what happened to them."

"Uh," Malak said, drawing an annoyed scowl from the snake-faunus. "You know, these ears aren't entirely for show," he pointed out, gesturing at the bat-like ears atop his head.

"You heard all of that, huh?" Lilac asked him, a thin layer of sarcasm pasted over her frustration.

"Pretty much, yeah. Sorry."

Lilac bared her teeth at him, then let out an annoyed sigh. "Fine. Apology accepted."

"So!" Rosalie exclaimed brightly, deliberately trying to get them talking about something less emotional. "Malak, that's a pretty nifty axe you've got. Did you make it yourself?"

"Huh? Uh, yeah. Most of it, anyway," he said, surprised by the question. "I couldn't get the EMP to work repeatedly at first, so I asked a friend of mine for some help with it, but other than that, yeah. I even forged the blade myself. Are we just talking about our weapons now? Is that what's happening here?"

"If it needs to," Rosalie said, making it clear to them why she'd changed the topic. "Whatever happened to my Snapdragon, anyway?" she asked Lilac, who smiled brightly at her.

"I've got it in a storage locker in Verdesa."

"Aha! Thank you, Lie," Rosalie said happily, kissing her partner's nose again.

"I heard you mention Vindication, I think, during the fight with the Sergeant?" Malak asked Lilac, who eyed him for a moment before sighing.

"Yeah. That was the name of my weapon back when I was a student at Beacon," Lilac admitted, her cheeks warming as she drew her knife. Pointing its hilt at him, she continued, saying, "You see the little hollow in the bottom, here? That's where I'd screwed it onto Vindication as a sort of combination bayonet-slash-grappling-hook. My Aura kept it safe enough, but I've sharpened it more times than I can count."

"Why'd you stop using it?" he asked.

"Well, it broke, for one thing. Eaten by a Sea Feilong; I'd have joined it if Ariel hadn't managed to save me. For the other, my Semblance basically makes me want to wield weapons that are as small as possible."

"Why? What does your Semblance do, exactly?" Malak asked, raising an eyebrow at the way she snorted out a laugh and clung tighter to her partner.

"Didn't I explain this to you already?"

"Not very well."

"Well, some people lie with every breath they take," Lilac said, grinning as Rosalie groaned.

"She exhales some Aura onto a weapon and can make it into a replica of any other weapon she's got some experience with," Rosalie explained, making her partner pout at her. "Guns need ammo, but other than that they're good to go."

"It means I can be whatever I need to be, whatever I want to be – or whatever she wants me to be," Lilac said, nuzzling against Rosalie's arm.

"Okay. I'll just try not to think about what that means," Malak said, raising an eyebrow at how Rosalie blushed vividly at Lilac's statement. "You sure you two don't want a tent? Preferably a soundproofed one?"

"I'll see if I can find one while we're in town," Lilac said with a grin, making Rosalie scoff at her.

"Like we'd end up using it after that. Meanie," Rosalie murmured, making Lilac giggle again.

"How'd you figure out how your Semblance worked in the first place, Lilac?" Malak asked, trying to hold back a chuckle and not quite succeeding.

"I sneezed on my knife and turned it into a copy of Vindication," Lilac said, hesitantly letting go of her partner's arm at her whispered plea. She watched Rosalie walk just past the edge of their small camp and step behind a tree, blocking her line of sight as the sound of a zipper sliding down met her ears. "Just took some trial and error to figure things out from there."

"Huh," Malak said, reaching up and flattening his ears with a hand to block the sound of Rosalie relieving herself. "I wonder what mine would be?" he asked, looking up at the stars again.

"Eh. Odds are it'll be something that complements your personality in some way. I mean, look at me: my Semblance basically just shows off how easily I can wear another personality," Lilac said, shrugging a shoulder.

"I've been told I don't have much of one of those," Malak said in a deadpan, drawing a chuckle from the older faunus. "Are you sure you're not just secretly insecure about your height?" he asked, making her stiffen and scowl at him. "I mean, by your own admission, you turn small things into bigger things."

"Oh, if that's the case, then maybe you'll just get a copy of my Semblance," Lilac said, making his eyes narrow at her. "I've yet to meet a guy who talks about my height who isn't insecure about his own 'height,'" she explained with a smirk and a pair of air-quotes, making Malak laugh.

By the time Rosalie finished up and returned, the two of them were flinging halfhearted insults at each other and attempting to disguise their grins as cocky smirks. She just sighed and sat back down, looting around in Lilac's pack for the bottle of hand sanitizer.

"This'll be a long trip to Vacuo, won't it?"