After a few hours of fitful sleep, Blake and Reese spread their belongings on the ground cloth to take stock of their supplies.

"I have four pistol magazines and a set of binoculars," Blake said. "There are some other odds and ends, but that's all I have that might be useful for a fight. What about you?"

"My hoverboard can keep going for a while," Reese said, crouching over her gear. "But I'm out of raw Dust, both powder and crystals. I've got a few different kinds of Dust ammunition, but not much of any one type. Aside from my first aid kit, that's it."

Reese frowned. "Even if we had more gear, where would we start? We can't fight people if we can't find them."

Blake stroked her chin. "That might not be a serious problem."

"Wouldn't the trail be cold by now?" Reese asked. "Either way, we'd still have to backtrack to the mill."

"Not necessarily. When we first arrived there weren't a whole lot of Grimm around. We only saw a few Beowolves on the hike to Crescent Hollow and all of them were alone. Barely any were near the village, except during the attack. Even when we went ranging with Royce, we didn't encounter any significant number all at once. Doesn't that seem odd, especially since there should have been some lingering around the other villages?"

"You seem to think so."

"Negative emotions attract Grimm, that's basic Huntsman knowledge. Not just fear like there would have been around the attacked villages, but hatred, resentment, contempt, cruelty…our friends in the splinter group have all that in spades."

Reese's face grew pale. "What are you saying?"

"It's simple," Blake said. "We follow the Grimm, and we'll find where the splinter group is hiding."

Reese stood, almost knocking her head on the ceiling. She paced back and forth in the narrow space, running her hands through her hair.

"No," she said. "No, no, no, there has got to be a better way, a—smarter way."

Blake frowned, rising to her feet. "Unless you can track them by scent, or you think you can pick up the trail from the mill, we don't have a better option."

"Looking for a band of violent fanatics isn't dangerous enough, you want to add a bunch of frenzied Grimm to the mix."

"It comes with the territory. Besides, I'm used to avoiding Grimm. If you follow my lead, they'll never notice us."

"Easy for you to say, I wasn't a guerilla before I was old enough to drive!"

Reese had never seen anger explode so silently. In the space of a breath, Blake surged across the room and seized Reese by her shirt collar, with no sound but a few light footsteps. Her shoulders heaved and her nostrils flared as she suppressed the urge to shout. When Blake spoke, she wasn't loud, but her voice shook with suppressed anger, like a volcano threatening to erupt:

"Why are you here?"

Reese glared at Blake, prying at her hands. "I don't know, because Vale wanted to avoid risking their own huntsmen? You could train another huntress to do almost everything I've done on this mission."

Blake's grip tightened and she shook Reese a little. "I know why you were invited, I want to know why you said 'Yes'. I have been patient with you far longer than Coco and Nora have because I'm dealing with my own baggage right now, and I know how much that sucks. I thought you were just a little rattled after the fight with that thing outside Razor Ridge, but you really can't handle fighting a few Grimm, our primary job responsibility. If you said 'No', or quit being a Huntress you wouldn't be in this situation, but you came anyway, so why are you here?"

"I fucked up!" Reese said, her voice cracking. She looked down and rubbed at her eyes. Her body shook as she took long shuddering breaths. When she spoke again her voice was quiet:

"I fucked up real bad. At Beacon, when we were helping people get back to the docks, I did something cocky and I almost got myself and my team leader killed. We got out, but she couldn't fight for a few weeks. She's barely talked to me since. She was never super warm and fuzzy, but she's never been this distant either.

"That wouldn't be so bad, but I only left the city once between Beacon and coming here. We were supposed to do some light training, take care of a few stray Grimm outside the walls. When we got within range, I froze again. It was a wide open field at the foot of the cliffs, plenty of room to move and not many Grimm. Perfect conditions for a skirmish and all I could do was fall to my knees and shake like a leaf."

Reese struggled to meet Blake's eyes, but couldn't will herself to do it. She settled for staring past her at one of the walls. When Blake didn't say anything else, she continued:

"I'm lost. I've never been this afraid of anything in my life, and while I've made plenty of stupid decisions, they've never hurt other people. When Vale asked me to help, I thought if I said 'Yes' I could prove that I'm not broken, that I'm not some screw-up, that I can handle being a huntress. I guess I was wrong."

Blake gave Reese an unreadable look, then set her down. She sat down, leaning against the wall, and patted the spot on the ground next to her. Reese hesitantly sat next to Blake, who just stared at the opposite wall and sipped from her canteen. After a long tense silence, she spoke:

"My best friend lost her arm that night at Beacon because of me. I got in a fight I couldn't win, she tried to save me, and we almost died. I'm not telling you this because I think we had it worse. I'm telling you because I want you to know that I understand. Guilt and fear can make you choose questionable solutions to your problems. I still think agreeing to join a covert mission so you could prove something was a very stupid decision, but chewing you out won't help anyone. And despite that stupid decision, you're not a complete screw-up. You fought well in Crescent Hollow."

Blake turned to Reese. "I won't lie, our odds aren't great. But people need us right now. We can save Coco, Nora, and everyone in the village, but I need you to hold it together. I need the Reese that pushed me to my limits in the Vytal festival, the one that decided spelunking unassisted was a sound life choice. Do you think you can manage that?"

"I kind of bit off more than I could chew both those times," Reese muttered.

Blake shrugged. "I'll take what I can get."

"You suck at giving pep talks."

"It could be worse. I could be wearing some asinine hat."

Reese laughed despite herself. The she pressed her lips together and gave Blake a slow nod. Blake gave her hand a squeeze and smiled a little when Reese returned the pressure.

Reese exhaled, letting her head roll back against the wall. "Okay," she said. "But there's another problem: How do we know which Grimm to follow? If we pick the wrong one, we could end up going the wrong way because it was stalking some random villager trying to escape from Crescent Hollow."

Blake frowned for a moment. Then she rose, walked towards her pack, and withdrew a folded map, its sections stuck together by their fall in the river. She unfolded it, taking care not to damage it as she peeled the folds apart, and spread it open on the ground cloth. She crouched over the map and traced her finger along it, searching.

"Let's think about this," Blake said. "These people might believe what they're doing is right, but they'd still be aware of their own negative emotions. They'd want to establish a base somewhere easily defensible against any Grimm that sniff them out. It would have to be somewhere they could easily hide a significant number of people, possibly with space for training."

"Don't forget that they somehow managed to leash those ugly lizard Grimm," Reese said, moving closer to examine the map. "Assuming they didn't pick them up just before the attack, they'd need a place secure enough to keep them contained. Remember what Royce told us, their venom could probably wreck any cage you put them in."

Blake nodded. "We're looking for a place that's hidden away, easy to defend, and able to withstand heavy assault, inside and out..."

Blake scanned the map. Her eyes drifted downstream from the sawmill, then south of the river, where the land rose from the valley again. As the elevation increased, the map showed the forest growing denser. Blake's eyes fell on an old trail cutting through the trees, leading out of the region. A thin line branched off from the trail, heading southwest before ending in a pair of crossed pickaxes.

The two huntresses looked up and met each other's eyes.

"It's way off the beaten path, and it would make a kickass bunker," Reese said.

"There'd be a lot of old tunnels and mine shafts to contain their pets," Blake said. She grimaced.

"What is it?" Reese asked.

"Team RWBY didn't have the greatest track record operating underground."

…

Shortly afterwards, Blake and Reese loaded their almost-dry huntress clothing and the towel into the dry pouch, and swam out onto the bank of the river. Reese had to hold the almost-dead glow stick to light her way through the short submerged tunnel, which looked like the inside of the world's most menacing wicker basket, the branches reaching out to scrape her hands or tug at her clothes. But in seconds, pale dim light illuminated the entrance from outside. She swam through it and surfaced into pre-dawn twilight.

They dried and changed under an overhang, formed where high waters had eroded much of the dirt from beneath the roots of a tree on the riverbank. Blake listened to the forest for a few minutes, her ears twitching. Birds chirped and flit about the trees, and a small animal moved through the brush somewhere nearby. The soft rumble of the river obscured anything she might have heard across the water. Unable to hear anything suspicious, she led the climb up the bank and through the foliage that lined the top.

A few minutes into the forest, they saw the aftermath of the previous night's sounds. Something had rampaged through the forest. Pale splintered wood stuck up from the stumps of fallen trees, and claw marks gouged those that remained standing. The destruction followed a winding path that expanded to small clearings in some places, and collapsed to a trail three-persons wide in others. Blake looked over her shoulder at Reese.

"Just stay close," she said, her tone neutral. "We'll be fine."

…

The ringing started an hour after Ash left and it never stopped. It had been so low Coco had mistaken it for a delayed consequence of the blows to her head. But as the hours ticked by it gradually increased in volume, eventually drawing complaints from Nora. It peaked at a volume that was disruptive, but not quite painful, then faded again. When Coco began to nod off, the volume would rise again, dragging her back to an increasingly groggy wakefulness as the level of noise ebbed and flowed. So when Ash returned to the cell, Coco wasn't sure if she was imagining the woman's presence until she raised a bottle of water to Coco's lips.

Coco jerked back, spitting out the water. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Hydrating the prisoner," Ash said, her head tilted to one side. "I can't question you if your throat is too dry to speak."

"Well aren't you altruistic?"

Ash sighed. "If I wanted to kill you I wouldn't need to poison you, and truth drugs are a myth. Stop being tiresome and drink."

Coco stared at her for a moment, trying to find a hole in Ash's logic, but had trouble finding one. Partially because she couldn't find an angle, and partially because the lack of sleep made it hard to think or care, she leaned forward and parted her lips. The water was warm and tasted of iron, but Coco had to fight to conceal how much she relished every mouthful. After Ash let Coco drink half the bottle, she capped it and stood back.

"Anything on your mind you'd like to share?" She asked.

"I'm not sure I trust a maid to get my thoughts to the front desk," Coco said, adopting a haughty mocking tone. "But so long as you're asking, room service was adequate, but noise levels from the other guests were unacceptable. I didn't sleep a wink last night."

Ash rolled her eyes. "Karah said sleep deprivation might just make you even more difficult. Just tell me why you're here."

Coco tilted her neck to one side, stretching it. "I told you the first time and you didn't believe me. You can either believe we were dispatched to thin the Grimm—you know, huntresses going to hunt things—or you can ignore the truth and I can keep giving you stupid answers that mildly amuse me. I've had all night to come up with more."

Ash gave Coco a smile that would have been friendly in a different context. Then she knelt down and placed her hands on either side of Coco's face, turning it to face Nora. She leaned in, her lips brushing Coco's ear, and whispered; "And I've had all night to think of ways to discourage that behavior."

A pang of nausea hit Coco like brick to the stomach. She coughed and retched violently, turning her throat raw again as she fought to keep from vomiting. The sensation lasted for half a minute before fading, leaving Coco gasping for breath. As she drew in air, she noticed a low hiss leaving Ash's lips, fading in sync with the nausea.

"You have so much grit," she said. When she spoke, the sickness rose again, making Coco clench her teeth. "You're used to suffering your way through challenges. I'm actually impressed. You've forced me to use my Semblance."

Ash's pitch shifted higher halfway through her last sentence. The nausea ebbed, but as it faded Coco found herself shorter and shorter of breath. She began breathing faster and deeper, but she felt smothered, like she was trying to breathe through a pillow. She tried to jerk away from Ash, but the woman held her head still. She was vaguely aware of Nora shouting at Ash, but all she could hear was the woman's whisper:

"I can manipulate sound. Usually I'm more subtle with it. I mask my movements in absolute silence, or obscure the origin and direction of sound, like I did with my voice in the village. That's all it's useful for from a distance. I can make a horribly painful screech that can shatter glass on a good day, but it's a useless trick when you focus on stealth like we do, and it's terribly rough on my vocal chords."

A pleased note entered her voice. "But up close, I can do some very interesting things. Not everyone responds to the exact same pitch the exact same way, but when I'm close enough to touch you I can hone in on the right frequency. Right now, my voice is vibrating at the resonant frequency of your lung tissue. I could do the same for your joints, your head, anywhere really. I could kill you if I decided to traumatize any vital area enough to shatter your Aura. But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to make you wish I did."

Ash's pitch shifted up again and her words trailed off into a faint whistle. Coco found she could breathe again, and for a moment, everything was okay.

Then pain exploded behind her eye, like a ball of iron spikes had burst inside her head. She cried out and coiled in on herself, trying to shrink back from the sound, but Ash simply let Coco drag her along, holding tight to Coco's head to keep her mouth planted on the huntress' ear. Coco's vision blurred, and she screwed her eyes shut, terrified they would burst if her eyelids didn't hold them in place. Pain continued for what felt like hours. Then, as suddenly as it began, it ended. A dull ache remained where the pain had been. Coco slumped against the wall, her breathing heavy and ragged, her eyes watering.

"Seven minutes without asking for me to stop," Ash said with approval. "It's a damn shame you're not a Faunus, I'd pay to have someone with half your fortitude. I'd be lucky to have someone with a quarter of it." She crouched down again and Coco froze. "Now, tell me what I want to know."

Coco opened her eyes slowly and took a long look at Ash. She licked her lips and took a slow breath.

"When I get out of here," she said. "I am going to stick my boot so far up your ass, you'll be polishing it with your tongue."

Ash made a disgusted sound and stood up. "All this chest-beating bravado, look at you! It's almost endearing in a pathetic sort of way, but all you're doing is prolonging suffering for you and your team. Cooperate and it stops."

"Yeah right."

Ash sighed. "I was hoping to eat lunch while it was hot today." She started back towards Coco. The huntress never looked away, but she pressed herself back against the wall.

"Hey, don't I get a turn?" Both women turned towards Nora, who was staring at Ash, her eyes narrowed.

"Are you afraid I might break out and kick your ass?

"Hardly," Ash said, waving a hand. "I just doubt the dumb muscle knows more than her leader. Besides, I'm supposed to save you for later. My brothers and sisters all want a piece of the huntress who burned some of us alive, and they won't like it if I rob them of their chance for reprisal."

Ash paused and slowly rose to her feet. She began to walk towards Nora. "Although, I suppose if I use my Semblance just right, they won't have any idea I've done a thing."

Nora went rigid, but never stopped scowling at Ash. Ash crouched and took hold of her face. She looked Nora up and down, then leaned in.

"I think I'll begin with your joints. That should prevent—"

A bolt slid outside the door and Ash stopped. The door opened and Clay slipped through, nearly silent as he glided across the floor. He glanced over the scene before him with impassive eyes, then turned to Ash.

"Lloyd's back," he said.

"Thank you, Clay," Ash said, suppressing the annoyance in her voice. "Where's Karah?"

"Pacifying our trackers after Lloyd's unscheduled jaunt last night. It's a miracle we only lost two when he tried to guide an entire unit by himself."

"It's a miracle that he didn't get eaten," Ash said, rounding on Clay.

Coco looked from Ash to Clay and back in disbelief. "I'm not sure what's crazier, the fact that you think you can control Grimm, or that you have enough to need pens."

"We don't control them like dogs," Clay said. "Think of it as a controlled disaster, like a prescribed burn."

"Clay!"

"My apologies, Ash," Clay said, bowing his head. "She saw the ones we had at the village, clearly it wasn't too hard a deduction from there."

Ash scowled at Clay, then assumed a more controlled expression. "Is Lloyd ready to share his results?"

"Yes."

"Very well then." Ash looked back at the two huntresses "Duty calls, but I promise I won't keep you long." She ruffled Coco's hair, then followed Clay out of the room. Coco gave her a few seconds to move away from the door, then rounded on Nora.

"Stop that."

"Excuse me?" Nora asked.

"Stop trying to help me. I can handle whatever they throw at me."

"Coco, you're tough, but no one's invincible. I couldn't let her do that again, that hurt to watch."

"Then look away!" Coco snapped. She spoke again, quieter: "This is my responsibility."

Nora shuffled, giving the chain suspending her wrists an experimental tug. "So what, you're just a lightning rod of hate?"

"That's the idea."

Nora shook her head. "How's the escape plan coming along?"

"Not that great. You have any suggestions? You've been uncharacteristically quiet."

Nora leaned back against the wall. "Ren says if I don't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything."

…

The mining camp sat in a large clearing adjacent to the face of the mountain. A chain-link fence encircled the area, which contained old mining equipment and vehicles, and a few scattered outbuildings. A building that looked like a cross between a hangar and a prison sat on the west side of the camp, nestled back against the cliff face leading up to the mountain. Half of it was only two floors tall, while the other half was tall and vaulted, with a set of large sliding doors marking one side. The entire structure was built from dark mottled concrete.

Nature had started reclaiming the area decades ago. Outside the perimeter, the tree line encroached on the fence, their branches reaching over it in places. A few trees had grown within the camp, and grass and bushes had sprung up in patches. Rust coated machines and outbuildings to varying degrees, ranging from a bulldozer with scattered patches of corrosion, to a shed that now looked like it had been constructed from scrap metal. Most of the area was cast in shadow as the sun sank below the mountain.

Reese set down the binoculars and continued to stare at the area below. She and Blake had found a place high on a ridge to the east where the vegetation was thick, perfect for observing the area in secrecy. They lay prone under some bushes, watching for activity.

"It looks like a fortress," Reese said.

"That's not a coincidence," Blake said. "Mining camps like this are a long way from help if Grimm come in force. The fence keeps out most people, and it slows down the Grimm just enough to let anyone in the yard enough take shelter in the main building. That's where the entrance to the mine should be as well."

"I don't see anyone. What about you?"

Blake took the binoculars and peered down at the site. "You see the catwalks around the outside of the buildings, just below their roofs? There should be another catwalk on the inside behind the windows, at least in the bigger building. That way they don't need to station people outside unless it's absolutely necessary. I bet there's one or two people watching through those. You probably didn't see anyone through them because of the shadows.

"Plus, if you look at those big doors, they look like they've been used regularly. The tread marks heavy equipment left in the yard are old, but those marks in the earth by the door are fresh, and there aren't any weeds or grass growing along the door's track. And our biggest clue is at the north fence:"

Two gates sat on the north side of the fence, sandwiching an empty space and forming a sally port to the wilderness outside. Beyond the outer gate, a pack of Beowolves milled about, restless. Along the northern section of fence, more Grimm roamed, singly or in pairs. Most simply paced the fence, though some occasionally prodded it with their claws. Reese felt her mouth go dry.

"Why are they just waiting?" she asked.

Blake shrugged. "Maybe our friends have demonstrated their strength enough times that they won't attack unless they leave the camp. This far from regular huntsmen patrols, there's probably more old Grimm than there would be closer to the cities. These Grimm know how to pick their battles."

Reese chewed her lip, scanning the camp again. "Hopping the fence or getting under it shouldn't be hard, but there aren't a whole lot of places to hide inside. Waiting until dark won't make that much of a difference, will it?"

"It'll help," said Blake, "But you're right, it won't tip the scales enough. What we need is an angle of attack they wouldn't expect."

"The roof?" Reese said. "It'll be a tricky climb down the cliff with the amount of rope we have, but we could do it. That ribbon on your weapon has some serious give."

Blake frowned. "If it were anyone else I'd say that's our way in. But the White Fang is used to unconventional infiltration tactics. Even if they're running on a skeleton crew, a splinter group adept in covert operations would expect that someone might try that, especially since it's their worst blind spot. I'm tempted to say we look for a back way through the mine, but they'd probably have guards stationed there."

"Would there be a lot? I could distract them and you could ninja them if it's just a couple."

"The problem there is finding it, assuming a back way even exists. It would be camouflaged to prevent Grimm and humans getting in, and probably hardened in some way. Not as much as that main building, but enough to give us trouble."

Reese puffed, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "That's all I got. We'll just to have to roll the dice and hope no one sees us jumping the fence and sneaking through the yard. Or, you know, we could just walk through the front gate. I bet they wouldn't expect that."

Blake set down the binoculars, blinking. She looked over at Reese, who raised an eyebrow at her.

"What?" Reese asked.

"Hear me out," Blake said. "Earlier, you mentioned creating a distraction…"

…

"This is a mistake," said the wolf-tailed Faunus. "We should be searching for them. We can still catch them before they get to Vale."

"No Lloyd, a mistake was trying to track the other two huntresses on your own." Ash said. "You're lucky the Komodos turned on each other when they got agitated and not on you. And for what? I saw the three you brought back. If they got that wild, they could have stampeded right past the remaining huntresses without noticing them. Honestly, losing more of our stock after that disaster at the village…"

"What's two more when we needed to replenish our stock anyway? I would have brought help, but everyone else capable of handling Grimm decided that tracking the biggest threat to our plans was not a priority."

"I told you Lloyd, they won't leave," Ash replied. "They'll look for us or they'll retreat to the village."

Lloyd scowled, leaning on the table. Back when the mining camp had housed miners, site supervisors had used the room as a hybrid office and lounge, as well as a place to discuss operations with the occasional visiting executive or auditor. Now, it was the splinter group's war room, evidenced by the diagrams on the white board, and the papers and maps spread out on the conference table.

All of them had removed their masks. Sable lounged back in a chair towards the entrance, her face pretty save for her expression of bored contempt. By contrast, Lloyd's features were so ugly his facial scars enhanced his appearance, turning his naturally unattractive face into one with the rugged appeal of a gladiator or a military veteran. Clay sat atop his own coiled tail in the back corner, behind Ash, his arms folded, looking as if he was nodding off. His face was broad, with no sharp features, neither attractive nor repulsive, as if a sculptor had begun carving his face but had not yet added any detail. Ash herself stood at the head of the table, her wings folded and raised, giving her an authoritative air.

"Huntsmen are terribly predictable in most cases," Ash said, "They'll either prioritize defending what's left of the village, or they'll attempt to rescue their teammates. Some huntsmen eventually break that mold, but the young ones almost universally have a streak of idealism."

"Even the Belladonna girl?" Lloyd asked.

"Blake Belladonna may not suffer typical young huntress delusions but she's her parents' child; emotional, and prone to guilt. Soft. I'll grant you, she's a competent fighter, and she has moments of resolve, but she's not ruthless enough to abandon imperiled teammates. She won't run back to Vale, or to the Vacuo border. As for the Mistrali huntress they brought with them, she'll stay as well. Based on what I've gathered from those of you who encountered her, she's impulsive, but not stupid. She'd be a fool to try to escape on foot without another huntress to watch her back. One way or another we'll have the whole team, and then we can figure out exactly how much Vale knows."

"Color me skeptical," Sable muttered.

Ash looked at Sable. "Excuse me?"

Sable met Ash's eyes. "When you were in the cell, I listened outside. We've had two of these supposedly green huntresses since last night, yet somehow Ashley Tadari, fearsome interrogator, hasn't produced any useful information. Instead, you play games with the prisoner and allow her to mock you, instead of knuckling down and taking what you want."

Ash's wings rustled and Sable blanched. For a moment it looked like Ash was going to swoop across the room at Sable. Instead, Ash sighed, massaging her temples.

"If I wanted to punish them, or torture them for the sake of inflicting pain, I could send anyone in there," Ash said. "As it stands, we need truthful information, not whatever they think will stop the pain. Good interrogation is about knowing a person: spend enough time with them that you find their greatest weakness, the thing they fear so much they wouldn't dare lie to you, no matter the consequences. There are three ways to crack the leader, but one takes time, one requires resources we no longer have, and none of you will let me utilize the third because you're all so focused on revenge."

"That weapon the small girl shot off killed five of us, injured seven more, and incinerated half our Komodos," Lloyd said. "I think all of us are entitled to make her regret her actions."

Ash rounded on Lloyd. "You have two options: Let me do my job, and I'll let you take out your frustrations on what's left of the brute when I'm done; or demonstrate some patience for the information we need and you can have her all to yourselves. Besides, you're forgetting the fun you can have when we capture the other two."

Sable made a scornful noise. "You can't think straight, Ash. The traitor deserves to be punished, but we'd be wasting a perfectly good bargaining chip. Think of how we could influence Menagerie."

"Respect your leader, Sable," Clay said. He stretched, cracking his neck. "Extorting Ghira Belladonna using his daughter isn't a plan. It's a joke, and the punchline is 'And then Ghira crushed their skulls.' He survived five assassination attempts that we know of before he stepped down, and he stopped at least two more intended for other targets. The man may not have the stomach for Sienna Khan's tactics, but he would absolutely not hesitate to hunt us down if we threatened his daughter."

"No matter how strong he is, he's only one man."

"One man who guides a nation of free Faunus we could potentially enlist. We don't just risk his personal wrath, we risk losing Menagerie."

"Precisely," Ash said. She spread her hands, palms up. "It would swing things out of our favor. Just think, if Blake's tragically mutilated corpse happened to turn up somewhere—for example, High Leader Khan's estate, or Adam Taurus' camp—it would shatter any goodwill they had with the world's unaffiliated Faunus. The conflict with Ghira's followers would all but guarantee a power shift in the White Fang. Such an event could force us to take charge of our brothers and sisters. I'd be reluctant to delegate execution of our own plans to the rank and file of the White Fang, but I wouldn't trust any of the other branches to command the entire organization. It would be such an unfortunate turn of events."

Sable's eyebrows rose. "Karah would like that."

"And yet, we're still waiting," Lloyd said. "We're not pursuing this opportunity."

"Because either path leads to victory," said Ash, clasping her hands behind her back. "This was an opportune surprise, but if Blake runs or escapes, she doesn't know the full scope of our projects. I doubt Vale would trust a defector with the more sensitive details of their mission, and she hasn't seen inside the building. If she somehow makes it back to Vale, she won't know anything new to tell them."

"You're delusional, arrogant—"

"Quiet," Clay said, cutting off Lloyd. Clay uncoiled, slowly stretching along the floor to his full length and pressing his body to the floor. His brow furrowed, puzzled. A moment later, animal roars and a low rumbling came from outside. Lloyd's head whipped towards the window. Sable sprung to her feet, ready to bolt. A hand radio squawked on the desk.

"Ash," Karah's voice came across the radio. "We've got activity at the fence."

Ash picked up the radio. "We'll be right there."

Clay drew up to his full height and slithered out of the room. Ash picked up her mask and met Lloyd's gaze before she put it on.

"What I am, Lloyd, is patient."

…

Reese rode along the outside of the fence, holding a heavy stick out in one hand. She let it drag along the fence, making a loud pinging sound as it bounced against the links, alerting any Grimm by the gate that hadn't heard Blake's pistol shot that prey was fleeing.

"'Start us off' she said," Reese muttered to herself. "'You can move faster than me' she said. If we survive this Belladonna, your team will never find your body!"

A Beowolf barked behind her and Reese yelped. She turned, flinging the stick sidearm, sending it spinning thirty feet through the air until it caught the Grimm in its open jaws. The hit staggered it, but several of its brethren sped past as it took a moment to recover.

Reese turned back and sped forward, jumping a fallen tree and creating a little more space between her and the pack. The forest's encroachment on the fence provided her with plenty of obstacles to slow down the Grimm, but they also threatened to incapacitate her as well. As she wove through trees and jumped small rises into debris-filled patches of ground, she forced thoughts of what would happen if she slowed too much or crashed from her mind, but they came back with equal force moments later.

"Light and easy," she said, her voice thin. "Just like that time you rode behind a train." That incident had kicked off her last year at Sanctum with a broken wrist and a set of crutches, but the fast-approaching corner provided a welcome distraction from that detail.

She crouched and leaned, cutting around the corner to ride south along the east fence. A boulder in her path forced to her turn so tight that the bottom of the board almost went perpendicular to the ground. For a moment her balance wavered, and her stomach dropped, but she carved around the corner into a relatively clear patch of earth and rose back into a stable stance.

Reese glanced back and saw the Grimm collide into each other as they tried to take the corner. A few took a wider route to avoid crashing and tumbling, but they had all fallen behind by a comfortable margin.

Good, she thought. We need the extra space. The next part was probably the most dangerous, and definitely the most ludicrous, but it fell inside Reese's comfort zone.

Up ahead, a tall tree reached a large limb over her path along the fence. Reese slowed a little to let the Grimm draw a bit closer, then sped forward again, jumping as she approached the tree. As she reached the peak of her jump, Blake swooped down on Gambol Shroud's ribbon and grabbed Reese around the waist. Reese clutched onto Blake with one arm, and hugged her board close with the other. They swung up, up towards the canopy, travelling past the tree limb and above it. When they began to slow, Blake activated her Semblance, pushing herself off Reese and her clone so she could swing forward to the next tree.

Reese and the shadow clone flew back towards the tree, landing amongst the branches as they collided with the trunk. The clone broke Reese's impact before it dissipated but the landing still knocked the air from her lungs. She took a series of deep breaths, forcing herself to stay calm and avoid attracting the Grimm.

It was a needless concern. As she caught her breath, she watched Blake swing forward to another tree, then down to the ground, sprinting ahead of the Grimm, which followed her without hesitation. She led them along, occasionally swinging back to the trees if it looked like they were getting too close. Reese peered over towards the main building. Figures in black slipped out the doors, taking the quickest, most covert routes they could toward where it looked like the Grimm were heading.

Reese rose and began to climb down the tree. As much as she had complained, Blake had the hard job. All Reese had left to do was to meet her at the gate. She leapt the last ten feet down, rolled into a crouch, and took off through the brush.

…

A few Grimm still milled about the gate, but they were spread apart and placid, unaware of any readily accessible prey. Reese was watching from a clump of bushes, assessing the Grimm and looking for any hidden guards, when Blake slid alongside her. She doubled over, trying to breathe quietly.

"Did they see you?" Reese asked.

Blake shook her head. "I think I just made my window," she said, speaking between gasps. "I ditched the Grimm right as the guards got close enough to draw their attention. We have to move though. They'll figure out we're not there soon if they haven't already, and the Grimm won't slow them down for long."

"Gotcha. You good?"

Blake rose, her breathing slowing a little. "I won't be sprinting long distances for a while, but we won't need to run as much to get by the Grimm that are left." She gave Reese a look. "Ready?"

Reese swallowed. "Let's get it over with."

Blake glanced at the path to the gate and the surrounding area. She scanned the inside of the camp one more time, then tugged Reese by the wrist through the underbrush. They slipped through the forest and stopped just short of the trail, waiting for a Boarbatusk to look the other way. A few moments passed, seeming to stretch for hours, then the beast turned to sniff at a patch of grass. They darted across the trail, and made their way towards the fence.

They reached another place where a tree limb reached over the fence, this one just to the side of the gate, in line with the small guard shack. They climbed up and did a quick sweep of the near section of the yard, then Blake crept forward along the branch and leapt, landing with lithe grace. A moment later Reese made the same leap, using her board's hover field to cushion her landing.

The two of them scurried into the shadow of the empty guard shack, taking a moment to look back. One Beowolf was pawing idly at the gate, and a medium-sized Komodo had taken notice of the Beowolf's interest, but neither was active enough to draw attention from any human or Faunus observer. Blake lowered herself to the ground, minimizing the chance of a guard recognizing a person's silhouette against the side of the building, and poked her head around the corner. A moment later, she drew her head back and sat up.

"I don't see anyone except for the guards by the east fence, but that doesn't mean there isn't anyone else around. I see a path we can take by moving through cover. Don't fall behind."

Keeping low to the ground, they moved closer to the main building, stopping behind an old bulldozer and pressing their backs against its treads. Reese scanned the area behind them while Blake peered ahead around the machine's immense blade. They continued this way, stopping behind a storage building, one of the trees that had sprouted since the original owners had abandoned the site, and a broken down generator. They finally came to a stop behind a massive dump truck, parked beneath the conveyor belt of a rock crusher the size of a building.

"Still want to try the window at the top of the fire stairs?" Reese asked.

"I don't know," Blake said. "If there are any guards posted inside, they'd see us pretty quick. We'd almost be better off posing as regular White Fang and knocking on the front door. I'm leaning towards finding an entrance on the side facing the mountain, but there might not be one."

"We could create another diversion and sneak in the door once they're out."

Blake shook her head. "The second half of that plan is risky, and they won't fall for the first half again."

At that moment they both heard the screech of metal, followed by the low rumble of something heavy moving across a set of rollers. The two huntresses went prone and peered beneath the truck, looking out the opposite side in the direction of the sound.

The massive doors in the side of the main building parted the width of a large car and stopped. Five people dressed in the splinter group's combat suits and masks emerged from the building, led by Clay. His massive tail undulated, propelling him across the yard in a slow, powerful glide. They stopped a good distance from the doors and peered around the mining camp, watching for anything unusual. Clay moved around the group in a meandering circle, as if distracted. The only sounds came from the east fence, as those who had gone to repel the pack of Grimm drove them back.

"So much for that," Reese said. "Let's try our luck with the side facing the mountain." Reese started to crawl away from the truck, stretching her foot out to shuffle back.

Clay's head snapped in their direction.

Reese felt her breath catch in her throat. The two huntresses watched as he pressed his broad muscular chest to the ground, flattening his body against the earth. His body was tense despite the splayed pose, like a sprinter waiting for the starter gun to fire. One of the men behind him took a step forward. He slapped the man back with his tail, turned back and snarled at him, then resumed his prone position. The other men all remained still.

Reese craned her neck so she could flick her eyes between the massive Faunus and Blake. Blake wore an identical expression of alarm, her ears pointed back.

"Can he hear us?" Reese mouthed, silent.

Blake gave her head a minute shake. "I don't think so," she said, her voice almost inaudible. "But judging by his behavior, I'm pretty sure he can feel anything moving across the ground."

"So if we climbed on top of something...?" Reese whispered.

"Maybe? I don't know. I don't know how sensitive he is, or if I'm even right."

Reese pursed her lips. "He didn't like it when his guy moved…" Slowly, with the delicacy of someone disarming a bomb, Reese picked up a walnut-sized rock and rolled onto her back. She drew her left arm back and chucked the rock across her body, sending it bouncing past a storage shed towards the east fence.

Clay whipped in the direction of the sound. He tilted his head that way and two of his men took off at a light jog. Clay trailed behind them, sliding prone across the ground. As the men moved, Reese and Blake stalked towards the rock crusher, hiding in the shadows of the immense machine. From their spot by the crusher, Blake looked back to see Clay stopped again. He was pointed halfway between where the rock had landed and the huntresses' new hiding place.

"Okay," Blake said. "That sort of worked, but we're going to need a lot more of them moving around to completely cover up our footsteps."

Reese looked up at the machine they were hiding under.

"I've got a better idea."

…

Clay eased his way towards the mountain. The longer he felt the ground and the farther his men spread out, the easier it was to parse the different vibrations he felt in the earth. True, one huntress could have been moving near the pair of men he sent to investigate that tremor by the shed, but there weren't many places they could hide from the two guards, at least not without alerting Clay to their movements. Shortly after they had advanced Clay felt another set of vibrations from the direction of the rock crusher, weaker than the initial ones, but persisting a bit longer. Clay grinned. They learned quickly. Catching them might actually be a challenge.

More movement came from the direction of the crusher, soft and fuzzy at first, the feel of footsteps on loose soil or gravel. Then the vibrations became harder, more staccato, better defined, but fainter than he'd expected. Someone was walking on a hard surface, but wasn't in direct contact with the ground.

Clay began moving towards the machine at a steady pace, increasing his speed as he pinpointed the source of the movements. He looked up at a maintenance catwalk on the crusher as he drew alongside the truck. He couldn't see anyone in the shadows, but he felt them moving on the upper level of the machine. He crawled forward, slithering up around the ladder without a sound onto the catwalk.

In contact with the machine, he felt more than just occasional footsteps: There was the light tap of metal on metal, a grinding sensation as a panel to something slid open, a non-metallic rustling he couldn't place. And then he heard her curse under her breath. Clay drew himself up to his full height, flexing his arms. He only used weapons when he intended to kill people larger than himself. They were excessive for anyone else.

He slid forward a few yards, then stopped when he heard a strangled shout. He whipped around, moving along the catwalk back the way he came. The two men who had remained behind to watch the yard were sprawled on the ground, unmoving. He stared, confused. He hadn't felt anything moving on the ground.

Then he felt one solid strike on the ground and turned to see a figure with dark hair gliding along the ground towards the main building on what looked like a levitating plank, one of his men's rifles slung at her hip. He bared his teeth half-amused, half-angered.

"THE DOOR!" he bellowed at the two men near the shed. He jabbed a finger towards Blake. "GET HER!"

Both men ran, weapons raised. Hearing Clay's cry, Blake slung Reese's hoverboard across her back and ran for the doors. A few seconds later, she skidded to a halt and took off for the shadows on the north wall of the building as gunfire came from inside the open door. Clay spun, surging back towards the intersection in the machine where he had heard the other huntress working, when a loud buzzer sounded. The rock crusher rumbled to life, its motors, jaws, and belts reverberating with the low pulse of industrial machinery. To most people, it was loud and oppressive.

To Clay, it was like an earthquake had drowned out every physical sensation, far louder than the pack of Grimm at the east fence had been. Reduced to relying on sight he charged forward towards an intersection in the catwalk that passed between two sections of the machine. Rounding the corner, he found a control console and an opened maintenance panel. The inside of the panel revealed a tangle of ripped wires and smashed components, preventing anyone from shutting the machine off. Clay turned to look down the catwalk and saw a flicker of movement disappear around the corner.

Clay surged along the walkway, rounding the corner to find Reese halfway up a ladder to the top of the crusher. He lunged forward, arms outstretched, ready to tear her off the ladder. With an arm's length to spare, Reese took one hand off the ladder and flung a heavy wrench into this face. Clay's aura absorbed the blow, but it staggered him a moment as he clutched his face in pain, letting out an angry roar.

Reese climbed on top of the machine, ran for the conveyor belt, and leapt onto it, slipping a little as her feet slid on the loose gravel. She scrambled up the incline and tumbled into the truck bed the belt emptied into. Climbing to her knees, she found herself wrist-deep soil, gravel—and raw dust crystals. She grabbed several handfuls, stuffing them into the pockets of her shorts and hoodie.

"Jackpot!" she said, grinning.

Behind her, Clay landed on the belt hard enough to be heard over the crusher, causing a cloud of dust to billow up from the belt. Reese let out an undignified squawk. She leapt to grab the side of the truck bed, pulled herself over, and tumbled to the ground.

Looking up, she saw Blake halfway up the fire escape, exchanging fire with four guards on the ground. She lay pressed against the metal grating, discouraging any of them from climbing after her with a shot down the staircase or over the edge of the landing, but they had formed a circle around the bottom of the fire escape, preventing her from moving without risking a direct hit. Reese's eyes flicked towards the roof itself and saw a pair of figures moving towards the top of the fire escape, positioning themselves to keep Blake from climbing up.

Reese ran towards the group at the bottom of the stairs and pulled one of the larger crystals out of her pocket. She flung it at the closest guard and it bounced off his shoulder. He turned, confused for a moment, then started firing at Reese, who dove behind a pair of metal drums. She covered her head with one arm and dug for another crystal with her free hand, pulling out a small earth dust crystal.

"Blake!" she shouted. "My board!"

Blake peeked out from the landing. She stood, making a clone to draw fire, and tossed the board out like a javelin before taking cover again. It clipped the side of the guard firing at Reese, flying past him. The hit only distracted him for a moment, but that was long enough for her to break cover, mount the board, and knock him over as she sped towards the other three.

Reese zig-zagged through the group, contorting her body and crouching to present a smaller target. She managed to dodge the gunfire from the other guards as she weaved through them, but they also kept her from getting close enough to land another strike. She looked over her shoulder as she zipped past the final two to see Clay speed through the middle of the men as all four of them fired at her.

Blake chose that moment to swing down from above, taking one man down with two boots to the head. She rolled to her feet and fired at the crystal Reese had thrown earlier. The blast sent the man next to the crystal flying into the wall of the building in a burst of flame. Clay turned at the sound of the crystal detonating and moved back towards Blake, who tossed aside the empty rifle, drew Gambol Shroud, and assumed a ready stance. The remaining two men continued pursuing Reese, firing in bursts as they did so.

Reese turned her hoverboard towards the scoop of a wheel loader the size a house and accelerated, the wind whipping her hood behind her head. She rode into the scoop, up its curve, and out the top of the scoop, traveling inverted. Time seemed to slow as the ground went by beneath her. One of the men slowed, gaping at the maneuver Reese had pulled off, while the other raised his rifle at the airborne target. Reese aimed for the second man.

Reese flicked an earth dust crystal into her board and twisted her body, righting herself, then interposing her hoverboard between herself and the gun. She felt a few shots ricochet off the board as she hurtled through the air, wincing as one clipped her arm and took out a chunk of Aura. She slammed into the man, the impact travelling up her legs to her hips, then activated the earth dust, burying the man in dirt. She shifted her weight to her forward foot and gripped her hoverboard's tail with her back hand, letting her momentum somersault her into the air towards the second guard. She brought her board up in a high arc over her head and brought it down into the guard's face as she landed.

No earth came from the board, the small crystal already depleted, so Reese swung the board at his gun, knocking it away and following up with strikes to his legs and torso. The man cursed as Reese drove him back, forcing him to block with his arms instead of his weapon as he retreated. He stepped on a length of pipe and stumbled, and Reese lunged forward, sending him flying into a pile of crates with a kick to the chest.

Reese turned around to see the man she had buried still struggling to dig himself out. The two men Blake had struck were still down, but Clay was fighting Blake with feral aggression. He had forced her back towards the truck parked by the rock crusher, and the two of them were trading blows.

Blake danced around Clay with nimble grace, striking his arms and upper body, while he just barely managed to block strikes to his head. But though Clay lacked Blake's finesse, he still possessed impressive speed, and his stamina seemed untaxed. Her dodges away from his lunges grew narrower with each evasion, and her strikes grew sloppy, the days of sparse rest and heavy activity catching up to her. She leapt back from one strike and paused for a fraction of a second before moving again, but that was all Clay needed.

He flicked his tail behind Blake swatting her toward his outstretched arms. Blake managed to activate her Semblance, sending a clone into his crushing embrace, but her momentum still carried her forward. She bounced over his shoulder and sprawled onto the ground. Blake coughed, climbing to her knees and crawling towards the fence, but she was still too winded to run. Clay turned around and hauled Blake up by her ankle with one hand, dangling her in front of his face.

Clay gave her an appraising look. "You fought well. Let that console you later."

He reached for Blake's wrist with his free arm, then recoiled back as a volley of shots struck his arm, encasing it in jagged clusters of ice. He shrunk back, presenting a smaller target to Reese as she fired. More rounds struck his trunk, prompting Clay to hold Blake in front of him as a shield. Reese stuck one revolver in her pocket and took aim with the other using both hands. Clay laughed, a mocking sound.

"You're not good enough to make that shot," he said. "You'll hit your teammate."

"That's the idea," Reese said.

Reese pulled the trigger and her gun fired with a loud 'WHUMP'. The gun's muzzle burst with white sparks and knocked Reese onto her back as a small, but intense gust of wind hit Blake and Clay. Clay slid back a dozen feet, losing his grip on Blake and landing on his side. Blake flew farther, tucking into a roll as she hit the ground. For a moment she lay still as her ears rang, fighting the urge to pass out, but she managed to force herself to stand, slowly regaining her senses.

A few yards away Clay rose, almost as disoriented as Blake. He pushed himself up with his unfrozen arm, and laughed again, sounding pleased instead of scornful.

"Oh, well done! But that trick won't work ag—" A burst of ice enveloped Clay's head, cutting him off. Reese ran past him, wedged her shoulder under Blake's arm and started shepherding Blake back towards the front gate. After a few yards Blake pulled away and began moving by herself.

"I thought," Blake said, speaking in bursts as she panted, "You didn't have any Dust left."

"I found more," Reese said. "Trouble is, I'm down to one gun and have no hoverboard."

Reese waved the broken gun, the end of its barrel shaped like a flower with jagged steel petals. She swapped it with the working one in her pocket, reloading it with a speed loader. Looking over her shoulder, she saw two of the men moving towards Clay while he clawed at his face with his free arm. From the direction of the Grimm they had baited, she saw more figures running towards them. Reese scanned the way ahead of them, her eyes falling on the parked dump truck, steadily filling with crushed stone and raw dust.

"Think you can make a tricky shot?" Reese asked.

"Not now," Blake said.

Reese ground her teeth. "Okay, run for the fence, I'll catch up."

"That's a very bad idea!"

"If we don't make them spread out, they'll catch us! I'll meet you at the place we picked earlier, go!"

Blake kept moving forward, weaving a path through buildings and obstructions to compensate for her flagging speed, while Reese split off for the truck as they ran past. She ran by the place she and Blake had hidden and scattered most of her dust crystals underneath the truck, concentrating them by the axles beneath the rock crusher's conveyor belt. She climbed back up the crusher, coming full circle to where the fight had begun, and ran to the end of the catwalk by the conveyor belt. Looking out, she saw Clay and most of the guards following Blake, nearing the front of the truck.

Reese drew an orange crystal from her pocket and tossed it onto the conveyor belt. She drew her remaining pistol, and took aim at the end of the belt, leading her target. Reese wasn't a gifted shot, but she mixed her flame dust ammunition for ignition and spread, not for penetration or velocity.

She fired, and a pale ball of flame hit the crystal, making it glow a brighter, angrier shade of orange as it tumbled into the truck bed. She leaned over the railing and emptied the cylinder, firing at the crystals she had scattered beneath the truck. More orange light shone from underneath the truck. The crystals in the truck bed began to detonate, then the ones beneath the truck followed, sending tons of steel, stone, and exploding ore tumbling end over end towards the guards.

Clay reacted just before the truck flipped, shoving two guards back out of harm's way, and scooping a third up in his arms. Explosions and rubble enveloped the rest in a cloud of light and smoke, the sound echoing through the mining camp. Reese pressed her hands over her ears and saw spots in her vision even after she turned away. She looked back after the sound had faded to occasional pops of the last few crystals and saw the aftermath:

The two guards Clay had shoved back were lying on the ground. They moved a little, but they were clearly shell-shocked, no longer threats. The rest had been thrown back and burned by the immense volume of ignited Dust, or buried beneath the spilled mound of rubble. The truck lay atop the mound, upside down. Every so often a crystal detonated beneath the truck, making a sound like a firecracker going off inside a trash can, only much louder. Towards the far end of the pile, Clay had managed to dig his head and a single arm out of the rubble before passing out. Reese couldn't see the guard he had shielded. A pang of guilt rippled through Reese for a moment, then she pushed it away. They deserved this after terrorizing the villages.

Reese's eyes flicked towards the fence. She saw Blake scale it, scrambling over the top without her usual grace. She rolled onto her back when she landed, but rose and moved a moment later, disappearing into the brush. Reese pocketed her working gun and scrambled down the rock crusher, leaping down the last six feet of the ladder. She ran for the fence, weaving through buildings in her path, clutching her side as she ran.

As Reese neared the guard shack something struck her from above and behind, ensnaring her entire body. She fell forward, unable to move her arms up, and her head struck the ground. Her head burst with pain and she cried out on impact, trying to clutch her head with one hand while she nursed her side with the other. As she slowly regained her bearings she saw diamond shapes crowding her vision. Someone had caught her in a net.

Reese pressed her hands against the net to try to disentangle herself, but the net only gave a fraction of an inch before going taut. She went to draw her gun from her pocket to cut herself loose with its short bayonet, but her hands remained stuck against the net. Something sticky coated the net's fibers, adhering it to her skin and clothing. Reese's breathing became shallow and quick, and she kicked at the net, rolling on the ground and tangling herself further.

"You're just making it worse," a woman said. "I can't say I'm surprised the only smart thing about you is your mouth."

Reese froze. She craned her head in the direction of the voice, straining to see the speaker. The six-armed woman strode into view, carrying a second net, an assortment of tools, and a long curved knife in four of her arms. She crouched next to Reese, rolling her onto her back and staring down at her. Her mask hid her expression, but Reese felt her mouth turn dry at the eager, breathless note in the sigh she released.

"I've been looking forward to this."

…

Tools? All taken. Picking a lock with a hairpin? Nora was out of reach, and from what Coco had seen of her restraints in the light, the locks were positioned so that she wouldn't be able to pick her own cuffs. Sheer brute force? Coco hunched over, braced her feet against the wall and pulled down, straining against the bolt above her, clenching her jaw as the cuffs dug into her wrists. After a few moments, she relaxed, hanging there for a moment before straightening up. Her Aura was recovering so slowly it seemed permanently reduced. The only clue it had recovered at all was the gradual fade of the ache in her jaw from Karah's punch.

"Are we free yet?" Nora asked, her voice tired.

"Nora, if I were physically able to slap you, I would."

There was a pause. "I'll take that as a 'No'," Nora eventually said.

"What is your damage, Valkyrie?"

"The same as yours. We haven't eaten since we left the village, and that last meal was pretty small. That wouldn't be so bad, but I think I've slept less than three hours since I woke up in this cell. It's not exactly a recipe for patience with your usual 'Stand aside peasants, Alpha-Huntress will single-handedly save the day!' attitude."

"And what have you done?" Coco snapped. "I haven't heard any bright ideas from you. All you've done is hang there and make sarcastic comments."

Nora snorted. "I was just following your lead."

Coco huffed and yanked at the bracket above her head again, the chain rattling in response to the angry jerks of her wrists.

"All I know is that we have a window of opportunity while they deal with those explosions outside," Coco said. "We don't know how large this place is, so we can't depend on Blake and Reese finding us before the guards come back to use us as leverage. I would like to be out of here before then."

"But you don't have a way to do that, do you?" said Nora.

Coco started to retort when the lock in the door turned. She closed her eyes to avoid being blinded by the light as it turned on, opening them when she heard footsteps stop just before her. Ash stood with her arms folded in front of her, drumming her fingers against her upper arm in agitation. Coco sneered at her.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Two huntresses were too much for your friends? How bad did they make you look?"

Ash went still for a moment, staring at Coco. Then her eyes glittered, and the corner of her mouth turned up in a smile. Coco felt dread creep into her stomach, but she maintained her poker face.

"I found something of yours," Ash said.

"Is it my hat?" Coco asked, feigning nonchalance.

"Not exactly. Sable, Lloyd, come join us."

Sable and Lloyd entered, carrying Reese between them. They had bound her with several coils of rope and lashed her hands in front of her. They dropped her on her knees a few yards behind Ash. She glanced up at Coco and her shoulders sagged, almost apologetic. Coco sobered, forcing down feelings of anger and panic, not trusting herself to speak. Ash watched her, and her smile spread.

"You left me with an interesting conflict yesterday," Ash said. "You don't care about getting hurt, so my efforts are wasted on tormenting you directly. Normally I'd try to persuade you by turning my attention to your ginger friend, but I've admitted we have plans for her, so that threat doesn't carry any weight. I had no quick way forward. As frustrating as that was, it turned out I just needed to be patient and trust my brothers to do their job. Now I have a resource that I can actually expend."

"Leave her alone," Coco said, her voice level. "She didn't do anything to you."

"Tell that to the people she buried in an avalanche of exploding dust!" Ash shouted. "Every one of them is dead or wounded. I think she's done quite a bit to us, Miss Adel. You will tell me why your team is here, or you will not like what I do to the Mistrali girl."

Coco glanced back at Reese, who was straining against her ropes. Sable reached down and picked Reese up by the shoulders, pulling her close and looking her in the eyes. Coco heard a note of pleasure in her voice.

"Ash, do you mind if I help you?" she asked. "I owe this one for how she treated me at the village."

Reese thrust her head forward, head-butting Sable in the mask where her nose should have been. Sable shouted in pain, and she dropped Reese as her hands flew to her face. Reese flinched as she landed on her side. She shook with laughter as she looked up at Sable, who reached under her mask to massage her nose. Coco felt a flicker of approval at her defiance.

Then Sable growled and kicked Reese in the ribs, cutting the laughter short. Reese let out a pained grunt and curled up, shielding her ribs and stomach with her legs against further kicks. She grit her teeth as blows landed on her shins and back. Through the pain she was vaguely aware of Coco swearing at Sable.

"It's not fun getting kicked when you're down, is it?" Sable said, as she continued to attack Reese. She raised a boot to stomp down on Reese's head.

"Sable, enough," Ash said.

Sable stopped, lowering her foot to the ground. Ash turned to back to Coco.

"Did that jar your memory at all?" Ash asked, her tone offhand.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" Coco shouted. "We were just hunting Grimm! I don't know what you want me to say. You're all so blinded by fanaticism I don't think I can convince any of you that I'm telling the truth."

Ash regarded Coco in silence. Then she shrugged and walked over to Reese. Ash crouched and pulled her into a sitting position, settling in behind her. She brushed Reese's hair back from her face and leaned in close to her.

"Where should I begin?" Ash said, speaking to Coco without taking her eyes off of Reese's ear. The pitch of her voice fluttered and Reese twitched as Ash's Semblance stirred to life.

"I could start with her stomach like I did with you, but I abhor the smell of vomit. The heart can be a promising choice, but huntresses are usually fit enough that attacking it is time-consuming. I've seen this one thrown around enough that that going for her head might not produce results..."

Ash's eyebrows rose. She let out an almost inaudible hiss and Reese jerked away in response. Ash just wrapped her arms around Reese's stomach and held her close.

"It's so obvious," she said. "The lungs are the perfect spot. I don't think she'll fare well for long based on Sable's assessment of her ribs, but that's not my problem."

Ash leaned in, making a low humming sound. Reese groaned and tried to pull away, but her struggles quickly grew weak and she began coughing like her lungs were filled with mud. Reese slumped back, her lungs burning. Through spots in her vision she saw Nora lunging at the nearest of their captors, trying to rip free of the wall. A dizzy feeling joined the burning in her lungs, but she couldn't muster the energy to do any more than weakly kick in an attempt to push herself away. She had almost blacked out when a shout cut through the haze:

"STOP! YOU WERE RIGHT!"

Reese's vision gradually cleared and she found herself able to breathe easily again. She looked up to see Ash watching Coco. Coco's shoulders heaved with exertion, her face red with shame and guilt.

"You were right," Coco repeated, quieter. "We were sent here for you. Vale didn't know for certain that it was the White Fang, but based on the nature of the disappearances and attacks they thought it was likely. The leading theory was that you were practicing for something much bigger on people the kingdom wouldn't notice missing. They wanted us to figure out your plans and stop you before you could attack a more important target."

A smile spread across Ash's face, made crooked by the scar on her cheek. "I knew you'd come around eventually," she said, mussing Coco's hair. "It's rare that we actually get to have a dialogue with someone nowadays."

"Dialogue's a two way street," Nora said.

"And humans have refused to carry their half of the conversation far too often," Ash said, not taking her eyes off of Coco. "Now, tell me: What else does Vale know about us?"

"That's all we were given," Coco said. "They kept us in the dark about a lot of things. You know everything I do, now leave my teammate alone."

Ash shook her head slowly. "Really? I'm disappointed. That can't be all you know."

"It is, I swear."

"Why do you think we're stupid or naïve enough to believe that? You weren't the only people Vale sent to spy on us. If Sable hadn't knocked the first spy down a well before he could shoot me in the back, we'd have a better idea of what they know about us."

"What?" Reese exclaimed. Nora's expression darkened. Coco gaped for a few moments like a fish out of water before mustering words:

"You're lying. They got information from a villager broadcasting reports back to Vale."

"They received some information that way," Ash said, "But nothing in those reports would have convinced Mistral to loan you a huntress."

Ash rose, studying Coco's expression. "You either have an exceptional poker face for a young huntress, or Vale is excessively judicious with their secrets. Either way, I'm done playing games." She looked over her shoulder at Sable and Lloyd. "Get rid of the Mistrali."

"I want to have fun with her first," Sable said.

"Then take her outside for target practice," Ash said, waving a hand. "You can bait the Belladonna girl in that way, kill two Nevermores with one stone."

Sable purred and grabbed Reese by her feet, dragging her from the room. Reese shouted, and thrashed against her bonds, but Sable managed to hold tight as she hauled her through the door, Lloyd walking alongside her.

"Reese!" Coco shouted. She pulled against the chain so hard she felt her weakened Aura flicker. She strained until her arms felt like they might pop from her shoulders, then rounded on Ash.

"If you hurt her, I'll kill you."

Ash surged down, slamming Coco into the wall. She cupped Coco's jaw with her hand and held her gaze.

"When we hurt her, I'm going to show you what's left of her and you'll obey. Not for your sake or that of your companions; you'll never leave this place alive. You'll obey because when we execute our plan, your cooperation will mean the difference between a quick tactical death for your friends in Vale, and a long painful one. I'm very curious to see how long it will take me to wear down Yatsuhashi."

Coco's heart stopped. Her eyes widened and her breathing grew shallow. She had fought and suffered through countless dangerous and harrowing situations since deciding to become a huntress, but the dread and horror that had lurked in the back of her mind in every close fight paled in comparison to the sheer terror coursing through her body at Ash's words. Ash bared her teeth in a sneer.

"That's right. You were so intent on following the rules of engagement for huntsmen captured while in service of the kingdom, so arrogant and sarcastic, you didn't think to give me false information. I know everything about your regular team. Where they work, where they live, who they care about. I actually hope you'll keep lying, because then I won't have to break my word when we attack Vale. I'll use my Semblance on the big one until he's clinging to life, then I'll kill him and Fox the same way Sable will kill the Mistrali girl. And I can't wait to meet Velvet. See, when it comes to Faunus who won't fight alongside us, my branch of the White Fang actually agrees with Atlesian bigots: They're filthy beasts that need to be put down. I've always wanted rabbit-skin moccasins, they look so warm."

"Please," Coco said, her voice small, "Don't."

Ash gave Coco's cheeks a squeeze. "Obey, and they die with dignity. Continue to defy me, and I might keep you alive long enough to watch. If there's enough fur on your teammate's ears, you might even get a new hat before you die."

Ash left the room, leaving them in darkness. Coco knelt frozen for a long time. Then she screamed in rage and despair until her throat went raw.

…

Stay calm, Reese thought to herself. You've been through worse—no, you had tools and a partner when you got locked in that walk-in freezer. And Arslan bailed us out. This is definitely worse than that.

She watched the ceiling go by as Sable dragged her down the hallway, the uncovered lights making spots in her vision. She glanced at Sable and Lloyd to ensure they weren't looking, then tried to loosen the rope binding her wrists. She grasped with her fingers, stretching for a knot, but it remained out of reach. Flexing against the ropes produced abrasions, and pins and needles, but it didn't create any slack. She tried bending at the waist to reach the knots with her teeth, but Sable noticed. She flipped Reese onto her side so she was dragged on her shoulder, preventing her from attempting the motion again. Reese huffed, staring daggers at the back of Sable's head.

Eventually, they passed through a door to the yard outside, walking towards the North fence. They moved closer to the mountainside and away from the gate, passing the rock crusher and the scene of destruction next to it. Sable took a path through a series of fist-sized rocks, ensuring that Reese's head and shoulder hit as many of them as possible. Reese grunted and swore, bucking against Sable's hold, but Sable grabbed her with a third hand and tightened her grip.

"God, you're like a worm on a hook," said Sable.

"Tell me Sunshine," Reese said. "Do you get a bulk discount when you get manicures?"

Sable looked at Lloyd. "Can we please gag her?"

"No," Lloyd said. "What good is a trap if you hide the bait?" Reese shivered, but said nothing.

They passed a watchtower and stopped near where the fence met the mountainside. Parked next to the fence was an old crane that looked like it hadn't moved in years. Sable dropped Reese's ankles and slipped off into the darkness. Lloyd loosened the ropes binding Reese's arms and upper body, leaving her wrists secured.

"You finally ready for a fair fight?" Reese asked.

"How is it that all of you are this irritating?" Lloyd said. "Did Vale select you for arrogance instead of fighting ability?" Lloyd produced a thick, heavy rope and tied it to Reese's wrists. Then went to the massive coil of rope it belonged to and found the opposite end. He secured a large hex nut onto the other end of the coil, stood, drew his arm back, and tossed the weighted end up into the air. Reese's brow furrowed, wary and confused. Lloyd saw her and made a smug noise.

A rustling sound came from the coil, as the far end spooled out like an uncoiling snake. Just as Reese understood what was happening, it accelerated, consuming the rest of the coil. The rope around her wrists went taut, and it yanked her into the air. She let out a surprised shout as she rose. Halfway up, she passed Sable riding down, laughing with glee. When Sable landed on her feet, Reese jerked to a halt, a foot of rope between her fingertips and the crane's hook. She squirmed, trying to take some of the load off her wrists, eventually going slack when she couldn't reduce the strain.

A screeching of metal came from the ground below. Reese looked down to see Sable and Lloyd turning the crane, pivoting it until Reese dangled over the far side of the fence. As she slowly turned on the rope, Reese saw Sable disappear back into the night, while Lloyd climbed the watchtower. When he reached the top, he produced a combat rifle, leaned onto the railing, aimed, and fired.

The round flew by Reese's leg, chipping her Aura, but not harming her. She let out an alarmed cry, and tried to swing out of the next shot, which rippled her clothes as it traveled past her ribs. A third shot whistled by her ear and upper arm, making her flinch. Reese's pulse picked up so much she felt like her heart would explode before a lethal shot hit her. She mustered a shred of bravado, letting out a high-pitched laugh:

"You missed!"

Lloyd stepped back from the railing and shrugged. "You're not the target."

Reese stared at him, confused. Something hit the ground below her, hard. She glanced down at the sound and her eyes bulged.

A pit lay directly below Reese. Shadows obscured most of the bottom, but she made out an elongated shape crawling in the dark. Two horse-sized Komodos creeping towards the pit's edge confirmed her suspicion. As they approached the edge, the Komodos looked up and tried to leap up at Reese. They managed a surprising amount of height for something so squat, but they stopped less than halfway to her feet, flopping into the pit on their bellies as they fell down.

Growls came from behind Reese, and she craned her neck to look at them. More Komodos and quite a few Beowolves slunk out of the woods, all of them looking at her. The Komodos all slipped into the hole much as the first two had. The nearest Beowolf crouched at the edge of the pit, cocking its head to one side as it looked at her. Then it sprung up, extending its arms out to swipe at her. Reese swung away, and the Beowolf came up an entire body length short and fell into the pit. A larger one attempted the same leap, only jumping marginally higher, but it swung its arm hard enough that Reese felt the air around her legs move.

Rapid footfalls came from the forest's edge and Reese's stomach turned to ice. A compact, lean looking Beowolf sped towards her on all fours. It leapt onto a larger one's back, then sprung off, soaring through the air, its arms reaching towards Reese, its jaws gaping wide. Reese tried to pull her feet up, but the Grimm's jaws were already poised around her calves, ready to snap them in half.

A rifle fired and the Beowolf burst into smoke before it could bite Reese. She squealed and flinched at the shot, growing lightheaded as she drew in panicked breaths. Over on the watchtower, Lloyd lowered his gun and raised his mask to sneer at Reese.

"My high score is thirty-two," he called out to Reese. "I think the record is forty Grimm until someone's been ripped down. But that was an exceptionally good day."

Absolute terror seized Reese, and she started thrashing against her bonds. She looked around, searching for something, anything that could help her escape. All she saw were more Grimm emerging from the forest, and tumbling into the pit. Most leapt and tumbled in, but the scarred older ones held back, assessing the area for the best way to reach Reese. And as the pit filled with Grimm, the smaller Beowolves started to climb atop the backs of the other trapped Grimm and leap up, their jaws snapping within a leg's length of her feet.

Reese began to scream.