Hey, guys! Got a new chapter here! Just saw Age of Ultron yesterday and it was absolutely terrific. Second best movie of the year, after Kingsman: Secret Service, in my opinion. Anyway, here's a new chapter for you guys to enjoy!

Fifteen minutes earlier...

The two bikes roared as they cut through the darkness, their headlights lancing through the shadows of the mountain forest.

Yang had awoken to find Blake slumped on her bed, as if she had been knocked out, and that was precisely the case. Blake had then strung together her most colorful sentence ever, told her and Weiss to get ready, and they went to their motorbikes to find that Blake's had been stolen.

Blake hadn't bothered explaining much, just that Ruby had come back to the room and then proceeded to knock her out. Blake wasn't angry, just worried, especially after that tender little moment they'd had after the Colossus crashed. Betrayed, maybe.

Blake slowed the engine on Weiss's bike—she had ridden Weiss's, while the president herself rode with Yang—and Yang followed suit, then trailed Blake as she turned the bike into a small grove.

"There's the Shadow!" Weiss exclaimed without shouting, pointing to the black motorcycle ahead. It was indeed the Shadow, Blake's bike, and when they stopped beside it and Yang hopped off of the Bumblebee to examine it, it was still warm.

"I'd say probably half an hour it's been here," Yang reported, "Still warm. I'll drag her back kicking and screaming if I have to."

"She came to get someone named Peridot. She's gonna get out if she can," Blake reported this as she walked over to a nearby row of bushes. She peeked through, then pulled her head out. "They've got some heavy guns at the front. They're new; I don't recognize them."

Yang chuckled. "Just another thing to blow up."

"They must have gotten them when they stole the Colossus and those Paladins and such, which was after you left. It doesn't surprise me that you don't recognize them," Weiss said, walking over to join Yang and Blake. "No telling what's ins—"

Suddenly, Blake spun around and shoved her friends back and dashed backward herself to avoid the machine gun fire from the heavy guns.

As Blake ran to avoid the hellstorm of lead and steel, Yang leapt out of the bushes and saw the guns. And the men guarding them, raising submachine guns and pointing them straight at her. They opened fire as a glowing yellow glyph etched its spinning form into the dirt beneath her feet, filling her with energy. The bullets slammed into her, and she covered her face with her arms and allowed the bullets to hit her so she could absorb their kinetic energy.

She slowly lowered her arms to reveal her red eyes when the mens' guns began to click in their hands. She grinned, the glyph changed design and turned red. She laughed and punched the ground, dispersing every little bit of energy into the earth below her. The ground quaked and began to fissure, creating a spider-web of cracks in the worn ground that expanded outward and weakened the foundations of the heavy guns' towers. They collapsed, further shaking the ground, and a pair of watchtowers also crumbled and caved on themselves. The fence and gates, now bent and broken, no longer served their purpose as Yang stood up and marched menacingly onto the grounds of the WF HQ.

While Yang cleaned shop, Blake ran forward and drew the Gambol Shroud, taking cover behind a ruined ATV. Weiss ran up and joined her from her spot in the bushes, her eyes shielded from the harsh light of the arc lights mounted to the roof of the hangar ahead.

"You been working on moving glyphs, Weiss?" Blake asked the president.

"Yeah! Works for Yang, doesn't it!" She shouted over the deafening gunfire. She stood up and drew Kaltenklinge, swiping it as she would any other rapier, and sent three tongues of flame arcing at a group of men hidden behind another ATV. It exploded as the fire ignited the fuel in the tank, ridding them of yet another problem that Yang was simply walking through.

The gunfire stopped.

VRROOOM!

Keyword: was.

Yang was sent flying backward, bouncing on the beaten dirt as she rocketed away. A very large man bounded past, going after her, and Balke recognized him as the lieutenant who had bested Weiss on the train a year and a half ago. And, as before, he wielded a chainsaw as his weapon of choice.

"As if we needed an insult added to an injury!"

Blake glanced around the end of the ATV and spotted the immaculate white coat, gray ascot and black bowler of Roman Torchwick. The crime lord was walking as he always seemed to: arrogantly and dripping with infuriating pride.

"You already broke our toy! You don't need to kick sand in our faces, you pricks!"

"Shut it, Torchwick. Focus on fighting instead of bravado for once."

Roman was enough to catch Blake's attention. The man walking beside him, hand on his sword's hilt, was the one who kept her attention.

"Adam?"

Adam Taurus stopped, standing parallel to Blake, Torchwick just behind him, as was Weiss to Blake. He scowled.

"Oh. It's you."

"You know him, Blake?" Weiss asked, raising Kaltenklinge into stance.

"No, I don't know—"

"Oh, she knows me," Adam interrupted Blake, "She used to help me raid Schnee Dust cargo trains for the White Fang. And we were effective."

Blake felt Weiss's glare focus on her back, but she remained in a solid stance, weapons still drawn. She did not want to have this conversation right now.

"Blake? Is this true?"

Blake hesitated. "I thought I was doing the right thing." She heard the president's rapier whispering as it sliced through the air and pointed toward her back.

"Weiss, can we save this for later? We currently have other problems."

She heard Weiss's thumb pulling back the hammer on her rapier. "Fine. But I'm going to reprimand you so hard it's going to scar."

Blake relaxed a little when Kaltenklinge was no longer lined up with her back. They returned their attention to the two masterminds in front of them and prepared for a fight.

Roman lifted his cane and pointed it toward them, firing an explosive shot from the end of it and straight toward the two girls. They both dodged out of the way and scrambled to their feet. Blake fired her pistol in Roman's direction. The crime lord parried the rounds with his cane and fired another couple of explosives at her. She rolled forward, beneath the explosives, and to her feet once again, drawing her scabbard to use in her off hand, and she ran toward the crime boss.

"She's mine," Adam said calmly to Roman, who mocked a bow and a flourish of his hat. Adam stepped in front of Roman and braced for Blake, who was coming at him fast. Meanwhile, Roman began to focus on Weiss.

"Traitor." Adam said as he pulled the trigger on his scabbard and sent his blade flying to his hand. He parried Blake's attempt to cleave a hole in him and drove a shoulder into her chest. She staggered and snarled, then charged him again. He parried another hit, but she dodged around him acrobatically and slashed at him again, but was once more met with a parry.

"I don't hurt people anymore, Adam!" Blake threw herself at him again, tilting her body so she was parallel to the ground, and twirled herself into a living buzzsaw. He lashed out with an empty fist, catching her shoulder as she spun toward the ground. She landed on her back, winded.

"You never were good at your job, pussy cat." Adam said, putting a foot on Blake's heaving chest. He propped his elbow on his knee and leaned over her. "You still aren't."

She closed her hands around his calf, trying to force his foot off, but was unsuccessful. He dug his heel into her sternum and heard a crack, and the cat Faunus winced, her strength faltering.

"Do you ever regret leaving, Blake? Leaving your brethren behind? Your friends and family?"

Blake felt her ribs straining against the lethal force of Adam's leg as she desperately made feeble attempts to dislodge his foot from her torso.

"There's been a price on your head for a while. I considered sending our assassin after you, but I would much rather have the pleasure of ending you myself."

Blake screamed in agony as her ribs cracked.

"I'm sure your "friends" will provide plenty for us to use, and then perhaps they would serve as effective assassins. I wonder, what would the world think of a Schnee providing revenue to the White Fang?"

"Nickelle!"

Blake didn't look away from Adam, but Adam glanced up and swung his sword. It parried a bladed ring—a chakram—away, then stepped back. He walked around Blake to face his new assailant.

"Hold him off, Nicky! I need to get her and Peridot out of here!"

Adam disappeared from her sight.

Ruby's silver eyes and businesslike face entered Blake's tunneling vision, and she gasped in discomfort as her hands slid beneath her back and legs. She was lifted off the ground and carried away somewhere, her version rapidly diminishing until she could only see a light, and she felt her back lain across the back seat of an intact ATV.

"Stay with her, knife-ear," a voice said, and she felt a presence beside her, "Please, so you don't get hurt. I'll be back in a little bit."

Departing footsteps, and her darkened vision brightened. There was a little girl beside her, concerned for the Faunus on the seat.

To distract herself from the agony, Blake analyzed the girl's features. She was the most unique little creature: long, jet black hair, intense magenta-violet eyes with matching tattoos on her cheekbones, and a pair of strange, elongated ears that tapered into points at the tips, and her big eyes tilted upwards at the ends. She looked like a little elf.

Was she in so much pain that she was hallucinating?

"What's your name?" The elf asked, her voice tiny and frail.

Blake couldn't answer without causing searing agony to jolt her body, her lungs shifting a broken bone every time they expanded. The elf probed her wounds with a hand, her eyes and tattoo emanating a strange glow. Or the colors were blurring because she couldn't see straight.

"My Mommy was a nurse once," the elf said, "She made my Daddy feel all better after the big men came. After the monsters came. He got all hurt and Mommy made him all better. Mommy said I can do it, too!"

The girl seemed oblivious to the explosions around them, or maybe she was used to them.

She put her hands on Blake's shattered ribs, igniting fury in the injured Faunus's pulverized bones. Blake winced and didn't bother holding back her whine as she pushed harder. Then, out of nowhere, her caved, misshapen chest pushed back against the elf's hands, much to the little one's delight. Blake's chest continued to expand and solidify until it was completely repaired and almost painless. As her sternum snapped back into place, stronger than ever, Blake sat up and felt her torso, pushing against it to see if it was real. It was. She looked at the little elf, who was giggling giddily and smiling brightly.

"It...it worked," Blake said in disbelief, finding it unbelievable that this six-year-old elf girl had just singlehandedly repaired bones that Adam had just ground into dust, "It worked!" She gathered the little one up into her arms and hugged her gratefully.

She turned around and glanced out the back window of the ATV after setting the elf down. There she was; Ruby's graceful, deadly beautiful form leaping to and fro, her scythe drawn and prepared to cleave Adam in two. Blake wondered if it was for her or for herself. And beside her, a familiar girl stood prepared dish out as much punishment as she could take.

Blake resolved to stay out of the fight. If this little elf was so important to Ruby, then she would protect her. For Ruby.

Because she loved Ruby and would protect everything she held dear.

So she stayed in the ATV, watching as Ruby and the false servant girl fought against Blake's former master, watching vigilantly over the elf like a cat would its young.