"Weiss!" Pyrrha shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Blake!"

Jaune was walking between her and Ruby, looking as dejected as she'd ever seen him. He'd asked for help looking for his missing teammates, and... well, she and Ruby had both been tripping over each other to agree. Ren had decided to follow along behind them. Sky wasn't there. Their search had eventually brought them to Vale, where they'd been wandering around long enough that they were starting to get used to the weird looks.

"It's been almost a day," Jaune groaned. "What are they even doing?!"

"Maybe they're... um..." Ruby trailed off, then brightened. "Maybe they got tired of sharing a room with Cardin and decided to spend the weekend here in Vale!"

"Without telling me?" Then he frowned. "Wait, without inviting me? If that's true I'm gonna be mad." Pyrrha nodded agreement. Teammates shouldn't abandon teammates to suffer the presence of Cardin Winchester.

Taking a deep breath, Jaune tipped his head back and yelled, "Blake! Weiss! Don't you dare leave me alone with Cardin!"

"Has he even noticed they're missing?" Ren asked.

"Oh, he knows. He said, and I quote—'Good riddance, maybe now we'll get somewhere in sparring.'" Pyrrha scoffed, and Ruby stifled a groan. "I know, right? It's like he doesn't realize they've been carrying the two of us all semester."

"Cardin, definitely," Ruby said stubbornly, "but you held the whole team together. Without you, those three would just be... well, they wouldn't be anything because they would have fought to the death over leadership by now."

"Maybe." Jaune didn't seem convinced. "I just wish... I don't know. I wish I didn't feel like I was dragging the team down." He sighed. "I mean, at least I'm just useless—I never broke Weiss' Aura in the middle of a fight."

Wait, what?! Pyrrha wanted to ask for clarification—because if that hadn't happened in any of their fights in Combat Class, it must have been in initiation with the Grimm—but Ruby had focused on a different part of the sentence.

"You're not useless," she insisted, giving him a stern bop on the nose. He reared back, startled.

"What—?"

"Nora did it to Yang and then she did it to me and it just kind of happened," Ruby blurted out, flustered. "But that's not the point! The point is that you're not useless!"

"I can't fight, though." He kicked out at an empty can lying on the sidewalk and sent it skittering into the street. "Or pass tests. Or get them to stop arguing—or! And you know, this is really the best part—I can't even find them!"

"We could help you," Ruby suggested, looking at her feet. "I mean, maybe not with those last two things, but I've been teaching Sky to fight and he's been helping me with all the theory I missed. You could join if you wanted."

Pyrrha had heard from Ruby that the two of them were tutoring one another. Maybe it was ridiculous, but now she couldn't help bristling at the idea.

"You aren't angry with him?" she asked quietly.

Ruby frowned. "I mean... maybe it bothers me a little. But he was just scared, it wasn't like he did it to hurt us."

Jaune frowned. "Uh, what?"

"We fought Torchwick," Ren explained. "Sky... ran away."

"What?" Jaune looked incensed. "He just left you to fend for yourselves?"

"I doubt he would have contributed much if he'd stayed. Besides, I'd prefer knowing he's prone to things like that sooner rather than later."

"You're mad at him too?" Ruby fiddled with her cloak.

"No. I'm... disappointed."

"Is that why he's not here?" Jaune asked. Then he did a double take, as if he'd forgotten why any of them were there. "Right. Weiss! Blake!" There was, as usual, no answer.

"He's been making himself scarce," Ren said, nodding. "I think he realizes what he did was wrong."

"Guys." Ruby gave him and Pyrrha reproachful looks. "I know it wasn't a good thing for him to run, but if he hadn't gotten Oobleck then we would've died."

Pyrrha felt her shoulders tense and forced herself to relax them. "He called Professor Goodwitch on his scroll. He could have done that and then rejoined the fight."

"Yeah," Ruby admitted, "but still. He could have just run away and not said anything. Talking to Goodwitch was probably pretty scary too, and he did it to help us. Maybe it's not the best thing he could have done, but... he's said fighting isn't what he does well, and we were going up against Torchwick!"

"And if the four of us were up against something out of your league?" Pyrrha asked her. "Would you run away?"

"Of course not!" Ruby looked indignant.

"That's why I'm angry with Sky—you'd fight to protect him, even if you didn't think you could win. He didn't do the same for you."

"I guess." Ruby scuffed her boot against the street as she walked, then shouted, "Blake! Weiss! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

It was impossible not to smile. Pyrrha watched her partner as she ran ahead, still calling out for Jaune's missing teammates, then flashed back to them in a shower of red petals. Roman Torchwick had almost killed her.

She exchanged a look with Ren, wondering if he was feeling the same surge of protectiveness that she was. It was silly, in a sense—she'd sparred with Ruby and knew full well that she could handle herself. In another, well... Pyrrha wasn't used to having people this close. She'd been terrified when the two of them met in the Emerald Forest that she'd just ended up partnered with another fan, someone who would never be able to look past the image she portrayed. Then it had turned out that she really was that tongue-tied around everyone, and held more hero-worship for Miló than Pyrrha herself. It was everything she'd wanted from Beacon—for someone to be genuine with her.

Jaune grumbled something under his breath. "Weiss!" he called out, a bit half-heartedly. "Blake! Ugh."

He pulled out his scroll and selected Blake's contact. It rang for a while as they walked, a jaunty tune that seemed horribly out of place. Then, eventually, it stopped. "Shocker," he muttered, then started another call.

On the fourth ring, there was a click and a voice—a distinctly male voice—said, "Hey there!" Jaune fumbled the scroll and nearly dropped it.

"What the—who is this?!"

"Ice Queen wants you to know she's not dead."

There was a scuffle on the other end of the line, and Pyrrha could just barely hear Weiss' voice. "—that back, you insufferable ruffian!"

"Weiss?! What's happening? Are you okay?"

"You're welcome!" mystery dude shouted into the scroll. "Ow! My knee—"

"Serves you right," Weiss snapped. "Look, Jaune, I can explain later but right now—"

"What? Weiss! Who was that? Where are you?!"

"I'm fine, you don't need to worry."

"Fine is not a location, Weiss!"

"...Vale."

"Gyah!" He hefted his scroll as if he was considering throwing it, then calmed himself. "I don't—I called you six times, why weren't you answering?!"

"I... I thought you were someone else."

"What's going on?" he demanded. "Is Blake with you?"

"No. I need to go, just—"

"What?! No! Where in Vale? What are you doing? What happened?"

"I'll call again when I find her," Weiss promised, and hung up.

Jaune made a strangled noise somewhere between an enraged howl and a groan. "I can't believe them. I actually cannot believe them. Who just up and disappears for almost a day out of nowhere?! And since when does Weiss have other friends?"

"They can't have gone too far," Pyrrha offered, trying to sound confident. "And we'll stay and help you as long as you need."

Ruby patted him sympathetically on the shoulder. "We'll find them," she promised. "And then you can yell at them in person."

"I think I will," he said, looking shocked. "I'm going to yell at them. I mean, then they're going to kill me, but I am definitely going to be doing a lot of shouting."

"I'm sure it'll be cathartic," Ren said sagely.

"I don't know why you keep doing this," Russel grumbled. Dove hauled on the back of his vest, and he stumbled along behind his leader to keep from choking. "Alright, alright! I'm just saying, you can study alone."

"I can." Dove spoke calmly and evenly, almost as if he wasn't dragging one of his teammates behind him like a misbehaving dog. "But if I do, you aren't going to study."

"I'll wing it!" Russel protested. "I'm a winger, it's what I do!"

"Not when we're sharing grades, you don't."

"Ugh..." Russel squirmed a little, eventually managing to free himself. He considered bolting, but decided that it wasn't worth the effort. Dove would just catch him again. "You aren't making Yang and Nora do this."

"I don't have to make them, because they do it on their own."

Russel... found that he couldn't argue with that. "Fine," he grumbled. After a bit more swearing under his breath, he was unceremoniously shoved into a chair in one corner of the library. Dove then plopped down a textbook in front of him. It fell open to the exact right page, the beginning of the first chapter of yet another reading. Russel had decided to ignore both Oobleck and Port during classes, since the two of them seemed perfectly content to have the students do all the learning on their own. Dust Theory, though... he shuddered. You needed the readings to understand the lectures, and the readings never made any sense until you'd seen the lectures.

Before he'd managed to uncross his eyes after staring too long at a particularly convoluted diagram, he caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his vision. When he turned to look, all he could see were bookshelves. It happened again, though, the moment he bent his head to squint at his notes. He tried to act busy, while making sure to keep his head tilted so that he could see that corner...

"Yo!" he called out, when a familiar head poked around one bookshelf. "Take a picture, it lasts longer!" A few people glared at him. He resisted the urge to flip them off, mostly because Dove would nag his ears off.

Sky Lark jumped, then immediately hid behind the shelves. Russel rolled his eyes and made a beckoning motion with his hand. The other boy's eyes went wide, and for a moment it seemed like he might take off running in the opposite direction. Then he slumped, head down, and trudged over.

"What?" Russel asked.

"You had a fight with Yang," Sky said.

Russel squinted at him, then made his eyes go wide. "Wait, really? Thanks for telling me!"

"I mean... you had a fight, and then you made up. In the span of about an hour."

He grinned at Sky and shrugged. "What can I say? Perks of being able to make sweets. No one stays mad at you."

"Ignore him," Dove told Sky. "He's only saying that because the real reason Yang stopped being mad at him was that he wore Ren's apron."

Sky stared at Dove, then at him. He sighed. "Okay, fine. There might have been a pink apron involved. I think she figured I had to be serious about apologizing if I was willing to make myself look like that much of an ass."

"You know, it's actually not a bad look on you," Dove told him.

"Shut up. And anyway, why do you care? You're not on our team." Dove kicked him under the table, and Russel glared at him. "You too? Seriously?"

"I screwed up," Sky admitted. "I just want to apologize to my team, and Yang. Definitely Yang. She's, uh... made sure to tell me she's not happy with me."

Russel winced. He'd only briefly had her give him that red-eyed look, and... well, it had felt a bit like he'd just accidentally wandered between a mother bear and her cub, and was about to get mauled.

"Okay," he said, clapping Sky on the shoulder. "First thing? There's pretty much nothing you can do for her to get her to forgive you."

Sky wilted before his very eyes. "Oh. That's... oh."

"But, she'll forget all about it as long as you make it up to Ruby. At least in my experience." True, his experience was limited to exactly one fight, but hey! That was more than anyone else at the academy.

"Ruby isn't mad at me, though," Sky protested. "She's just kinda... disappointed. The whole team is." He pulled out a chair and collapsed into it, massaging his forehead. "How am I supposed to fix that?"

Dove cleared his throat. "I was asked a similar question a week or so ago, actually. You just need to show that you're serious about making up for it. Whenever they trust you with something, no matter how small, you stick with it. Build up to life-or-death stuff. Or don't, because apparently almost dying together also helps.

"That's... actually really helpful." It would maybe have been nice for Sky to conceal his surprise a little better. "Thank you."

"Thank Nora, not us," Dove told him.

Sky's hopeful grin froze on his face, and Dove rolled his eyes. "Don't panic. She know's what she's talking about, I've been told good things about the results."

"Yeah!" Russel smirked. "She and Yang aren't dumb, they're just crazy."

"Russ!"

"What? It's not like I'm throwing stones, here. I'm dumb and crazy."

"You're not dumb." Dove tapped the cover of the textbook in front of Russel, the textbook he hadn't even glanced at since Sky had shown up. "You learn well when you apply yourself."

Russel made a face. "Dumb or not, this book crap doesn't agree with me. I think I'm allergic."

"Allergic to safety regulations, more like," Dove grumbled under his breath. Russel laughed at him.

"Thanks, guys," Sky repeated. "And thank Nora for me, too." With that, he hurried off.

"Man," Russel said, leaning back in his chair. "It's nice to know I can help rash young people make better decisions and build healthy friendships."

Dove stared at him a moment. "You need to stop thinking of yourself as any kind of role model."

"Hey!"

"At least until I stop catching you looking up places to buy fireworks in the middle of class."

"...Fair."

The airfield wasn't that crowded. It wasn't empty either, and Blake had ended up sitting next to someone else while they waited for a ship. He was human, with curly copper hair and a long nose. He'd tried to talk to her once or twice, but she'd glared at him and he'd given up.

She should have left sooner. Her things had been packed since... well, since before initiation—she'd never felt comfortable enough to make herself at home. At first she'd thought that she could handle it, that a team she hated just meant she'd have to focus more on her studies. Jaune was okay, and that was enough, and then it wasn't. He was trying, she could tell, but every day was a blizzard of insults, veiled threats, not-so-veiled threats, and petty passive-aggressiveness. She hated it.

That was when she should have left. Day two. When the first night had passed with her sitting cross-legged in a dark corner of the library and reading by moonlight. That was when she should have figured out that it wasn't going to work. She'd kept going, though. Maybe it was stubbornness, or maybe just the only way to avoid having to figure out what to do next. Either way, she'd been planning to leave this weekend if things didn't improve. She'd known they wouldn't.

Then they had. Sort of. Weiss had shown up out of nowhere and given her coffee, and it had been... nice. Not the company, exactly, she was still snippy and easily angered, but the fact that she'd been able to relax. She probably should have known their truce wouldn't last, but it had been nice to pretend.

What now, though? She'd left the White Fang, and Beacon had been a last-ditch attempt to find someplace she could use her skills for something unambiguously good. Now... she could go home, but she didn't think she could face that. There were other academies—not Atlas, but perhaps Shade or Haven. She knew Shade accepted Faunus, but how was she supposed to get all the way to Vacuo with barely twenty lien?

She wondered what Jaune would do, now. Maybe Weiss and Cardin could eventually reconcile—they've got at least one thing in common, after all. They probably wouldn't. Both too stubborn. The team would be dissolved and Jaune might get kicked out, or maybe he'd just have to come back next year and redo initiation. Then he could get a better team.

Her left leg was bouncing up and down. She put her hand on it to keep it still. It was stupid to stay as long as she had. Stupid to relax around Weiss, even for a second, when she knew it was temporary. Made this harder. It had taken her a full day of wandering around Vale to get here, because she'd kept walking halfway to the airfield and then part of the way back to Beacon and then off in some third direction because she needed to think and that was easier while she was in motion. She'd walked through the night, even.

Blake stood up, then, suddenly unable to keep still. Up above, an airship dropped gently out of the sky and landed on the tarmac. She briefly wondered whether it led to Mistral or Vacuo, then dismissed either thought when she saw a familiar snowflake emblem branded on its side. Her jaw clenched, and she looked away. Not Atlas—she might go just about anywhere else, but not Atlas.

Another glance showed her that it wasn't a passenger ship anyway. From what she could see from its shape, it was a freighter. Probably full of Dust. No, not probably—she could hear one of the crew talking as he exited the cab, gesturing animatedly at the ship behind him.

"—can't just leave all this Dust here! We have a permit, we're unloading at a warehouse near the docks."

The woman in uniform he was talking to made a tut-tutting sound. "Not until you do your due diligence and sign all the paperwork, you aren't."

"I can't lose this shipment!" He dropped his voice to the point where it was inaudible even to Blake, and she started looking for excuses to wander closer. She found one when she spotted an arrivals board around twenty feet away from them.

"—don't care if you're carrying Schnee Dust or talcum powder, you sign the paperwork," the woman was saying. The man was agitated, shifting from foot to foot, but Blake made sure not to look at him too long lest she be caught staring.

"Please, Tapioca? We've had something like three shipments hit just this month. Schnee will probably fire the next person in charge of a screw-up. I just want this thing out of my custody as soon as possible."

"If you're so desperate to get this through," the woman replied tartly, "then I suggest you get started on the paperwork."

He muttered something under his breath that Blake didn't quite catch, but the woman apparently did. "Just for that, I'm giving you one of the cheap pens."

Blake was left standing off to the side, regarding the airship curiously. She only had the pilot's personal worries that it might be attacked, but... if nothing else, keeping an eye on it would give her something to do while she worked out where to go next. With that in mind she glanced around surreptitiously, walked towards the back of the airship, and slipped in amongst the cargo.

When the ship moved again, Blake woke with her legs stiff and aching. Her eyes burned and her head swam, but she stood up and walked around and stopped worrying she might pass out. It was only a few minutes after that when she felt the freighter land. She glanced around, looking for a place to hide, and slipped behind a stack of containers. The cargo doors opened, letting shafts of weak sunlight spill into the hold. When she risked a peek, she saw workmen hauling on one of the crates, bringing it out of the ship. They were silhouetted against the setting sun—she must have been inside for hours.

They were moving the cargo. Her hiding place wouldn't stay put for very long. Blake took her chance when most of the workers were busy stacking some of the crates, and ducked out from behind the remaining two. One woman turned around, but she didn't call out. Nothing to indicate she'd seen anything.

Once she was far enough away from the ship, she settled in to wait on top of a stack of crates. The Schnee emblem was everywhere, a maze of shipping containers with that hated logo stamped on either side, stacked one on top of another. It had been on the back of Weiss' coat, too. Always that reminder, every time she caught herself mid-laugh, that the person she was sitting with wasn't a friend.

Blake stretched out, lying on her stomach, and watched as the workers moved the rest of the cargo into the yard. It was late, the workers would be going home soon. That meant the Dust would stay the night there before being hauled into the warehouse, and that was probably when it would be stolen.

Waiting here was better than waiting for an airship. She wasn't thinking about where to go. Couldn't think about anything, not when she was constantly alert, listening for any sign of intruders—or the guards meant to stop intruders, since they probably wouldn't appreciate her civic-mindedness if they caught her here. There was only the prickle of doubt in the back of her mind, the lingering shadow of that moment in the library when Weiss' expression had gone from annoyance to blind panic. She buried it by focusing on the task ahead, by scouring the yard for possible entry points.

That turned out to be pointless, because they came from the sky. She heard the droning long before the airships arrived, but spent the whole time convincing herself that surely, surely, no thief out to steal Dust from the SDC would happen to have aircraft on hand. But then the proof was right in front of her, and there were Faunus sliding down ropes and into the yard—Faunus wearing Grimm Masks.

"No," she breathed. Why would they be here? Where did they get those ships?!

"Alright, you animals!" a jovial voice called out. "Let's see if you can beat the help I had last week. Trust me when I say that it's a really low bar."

Torchwick. Roman Torchwick. Blake bristled, ears flattening against her head. There was no way Adam would ever work with humans, and certainly not someone like that. This had to be a mistake. Something... something else was going on. It had to be.

She dropped down behind the stack of crates she'd been waiting on, then darted between spots of cover until she was just a few feet behind Torchwick. He was giving out orders, nearly all of them laced with animal-themed insults. She'd seen White Fang members break bones for less. Slowly, carefully, she crept up behind him and put her sword to his throat.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

Torchwick was silent for a moment. Then, "Oh, come on! Three times in a row?! This is getting ridiculous!"

The White Fang members in front of him were glaring at her, some drawing weapons. She tensed, then reached up and removed her bow.

"Why help him?" she asked the Faunus. "He's everything we've been fighting against!"

"I mean, really," Torchwick went on, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "The first time? Rotten luck, it happens sometimes. Twice? Maybe I need to spruce up my act, draw a little less attention. But three? How do you little brats keep finding me?!"

"Shut up," she hissed, drawing the blade up under his chin. "I asked you a question."

"What am I doing here?" She couldn't see his face, but everything in his voice suggested that he was smirking. "Well, I'm being a regular Robin Hood, don't you know. Stealing from the rich—" he gestured to the crates of Dust all around them, to the rows and columns of Schnee emblems— "and giving to the poor!" At that, he put a hand on his own chest.

"You—" Blake started, but he didn't let her finish. He'd been drawing his cane up, slow enough that she hadn't noticed, and before she could think to stop him he pressed a button on the handle and fired. She was weightless for a moment, and then she smashed into one of the crates and slid painfully to the ground. The White Fang members stepped forward, raising their own guns.

"Brothers and Sisters!" she cried out, reaching for them. "I'm not your enemy! He is your enemy!" One of them shot at her. She pushed herself sideways, leaving behind a clone that soon expired in a hail of bullets.

They're really working for him. Her breathing was coming hard and shallow, making low rasping noises that were sure to attract attention. She tried to slow it, but looming all around her were pristine white snowflakes, and she remembered the look on Weiss' face when she realized she was standing in front of a Faunus, a Faunus who had been in the White Fang. Betrayal. Terror. This is what we've become.

"Here, kitty kitty!" Torchwick called out, sing-song. She bared her teeth, snuck around the side of a crate, and saw him. Lunging forward, she made it halfway to him before he turned and fired again. She lurched sideways at the last second, leaving a clone to take the hit. Then she was running, ducking behind another stack of crates, feeling bullets sparking against her Aura as a few lucky White Fang members managed to graze her.

Torchwick laughed. "It's ironic, you know? Here we are playing cat and mouse, and you... well, heh, you're not exactly the cat, now are you?"

She ducked from crate to crate, then nearly ran into one of the White Fang. The man turned, startled, his fox ears perking up as he saw her. She smacked him in the side of the head with her hilt, hard. He reeled, crashed into a nearby Dust container, and landed in a heap. His shout drew more of them. Blake vanished into the maze of boxes.

The sun had set hours ago, and it was almost pitch dark outside. That didn't bother Blake, but it didn't bother the White Fang, either. All it did was hide her from Torchwick, though that felt like a minor miracle in and of itself. He was still taunting her as he wandered through the maze of crates. "This is pretty cathartic, you know. Heh, get it? Cat-thartic?"

She got behind him, lined up her gun, and shot at his back. He whirled around and returned fire. His shot must have been laced with some kind of Dust, because it ignited in a small fireball as it struck home. Blake was thrown off her feet and landed half a dozen yards from where she'd started. She cried out, reaching for her shoulder where the bullet had struck. There was a burn there, but no blood—her Aura had broken, but she wasn't badly hurt.

Torchwick walked forward until he was standing over her, and kicked her viciously in the side. "Ah," he sighed, the picture of satisfaction. "At last, an annoyance is getting dealt with." His cane slashed downward, and Blake caught it on her forearm. She bit back a scream, then struggled to her feet. Gambol Shroud was in front of her, brandished like a shield. It wasn't a shield, though—and she wasn't at all confident it would protect her from sustained gunfire.

"You're awfully stubborn," Torchwick grumbled. Then he turned and shouted, "Any of you incompetent wastes of space going to help me out here? No?" He sighed, and shot Blake a look as if to say, can you believe this? "Can't say I expected better. They are a mite less pathetic than Junior's lot, but don't tell them I said that. It'd go to their heads."

She kicked him in the shin and scrambled away from him while he was distracted, back into the maze. There were fewer White Fang members, now—they were too spread out. Her arm hurt. It was a sharp, searing pain that made her wonder if something had been broken or fractured, but she couldn't focus on it now. Her legs wobbled, and she tripped and fell. Her shoulder smashed into the side of one of the crates, and when she looked up all she could see was that stupid snowflake.

Stop it, she told herself. She was friends with Blake the human, not you. Nothing had been lost, since nothing had been gained in the first place. It didn't matter. Except that it did, because it was starting to look like she might die here and Jaune and Weiss would have no idea what had happened.

"You know," Torchwick's voice called out, "this is starting to get more annoying than entertaining, Kitty-Cat. How about you come on out and we can both get on with our day? Or, well, I'll get on with my day. I guess you won't."

Blake grit her teeth. If someone was going to kill her, she'd rather it were one of the White Fang grunts than him. Living would be better. She turned to the crate she'd been leaning on, then grimaced. A really, really stupid idea began to take shape.

"I don't have all day, Kitten." Torchwick was getting closer—had he heard her hit the crate before? It didn't matter. If he didn't know where she was now, he would in a moment. Blake leveled Gambol Shroud at the crate's lock and slashed it in two.

His footsteps sped up as she kicked open the door. Inside, boxes and boxes of Dust were piled on top of one another. Crystals, Burn, Uncut was printed across their sides in bold black lettering, along with the SDC logo. Blake backed away, behind the nearest crate, and she leveled Gambol Shroud at the volatile contents.

Stupid. She knew that, but if nothing else she'd picked one of the few crates that wasn't part of a stack. It was sitting on its own, farther from its neighbors than the others were. It wouldn't start a chain reaction. Whether or not the resulting explosion would leave her unscathed was pretty up in the air, but it would definitely make things harder for Torchwick.

"Are you trying to hide in there?" He laughed, stepping forward so that Blake could just see his arm poking out past her hiding spot. "I mean, I knew cats loved boxes, but—"

Blake fired, and the world exploded.