World of Bloody Evolution

by Stormshroud

The Grimm have been the predators of Humankind and Faunus since the dawn of time. The Dust has only halted the tide, but has not pushed it back. Jaune Arc discovers his Semblance in his hour of need, and the Grimm will learn to fear their new predator. Yet, he must overcome the madness within his Semblance, lest he become one of those he hunts... AU. Jxmultiple. Cover by Aedevel

37. City of Glenn part 1

"Hurgh!"

"So… I spy with my little eye… V."

"Vomit."

"You got it, Weiss!"

"Hm."

"Can't ye kids just help the bloke out?"

"Nah, you're doing just fine uncle Qrow."

"Bhuuuurrgh!"

"...Anyone? Ice princess?"

"…Unfortunately it appears that I have chipped a nail, my condolences. However I appreciate what you are doing, mr. Branwen."

"...Kitty?"

"I am busy studying necessary material for the mission ahead. I would advise not calling me that again, professor."

"Et tu, Cindy?"

"...No. While I fear I might sound like miss Belladonna, I must insist that you'll stop calling me that, professor."

'Oh no, no no no…' Jaune thought as the rattling and shaking of the aircraft they were embarked in did a number on the contents of his stomach, most of which was by now in the bucket that Qrow kept in front of his face while he tried to keep himself stable enough to land all of the disgusting liquid in the container. 'I mean, it's not as bad as it was on the Bullhead, but the travel time to Mountain Glenn is far longer…'

They were embarked on a Bowhead-class aerial assault transport, which compared to Bullhead was far larger, equipped with four engines instead of two, and sported two gimbal-mounted sponson autocannons as opposed to the one typically mounted underneath the cockpit in a Bullhead. Not to mention a added howitzer that poked its barrel out of the craft's spine to help clear big air threats like overgrown Nevermores and equivalent airborne Grimm.

While the heavier airframe and the additional engines made the travel slightly steadier, it also made the craft slower and less maneuverable.

The abandoned city of Glenn, named so after the mountain it was built next to, wasn't too far away from Vale but the slower speed of their transport meant that the travel was hell for Jaune who was really starting to feel the rocking and shaking of the aircraft as time went on.

"Ghaa… Why couldn't we just take a Bullhead?" Jaune whimpered as he cleaned his face with a wet wipe Qrow handed to him.

"Because the mountains can attract big airborne Grimm such as giant Nevermores, Griffins and other large threats, and any of them can easily dispatch relatively weakly armored aircraft like Bullheads should they spot one." Cinder told them while reading something from her Scroll. "The overrun city of Glenn has no doubt become a breeding ground for such creatures, so even if we don't fly close the mountain itself, it is very likely that any Bullhead trying to land within the city would get swarmed by flying Grimm fairly quickly."

"Then why haven't we seen any of those big Grimm?" Ruby asked suspiciously as she looked out of the small observation port on the side of the aircraft. Grey, abandoned buildings met her view, telling them that they were flying above the outskirts of the abandoned City. "I mean, shouldn't we be under attack right now it that was the case?"

"Oddly enough the Grimm don't seem all that interested in us. Perhaps someone has cleared them out?" Cinder shrugged nonchalantly. "It would make our job easier."

"Any ideas? Weiss? Blake? Jaune?" Ruby turned to address the other team members.

Blake didn't comment beside shrugging slightly as she read her book, once again displaying her skill to not get airsick or get a headache while reading in unsteady and dimly-lit place. The way her now ribbon-free ears were rigidly upwards however betrayed her emotions underneath the calm surface, and Jaune could tell even without his Semblance that Blake was both excited and nervous about the mission.

Weiss seemed equally baffled by the lack of Grimm, so she chose to shrug as well before turning towards Jaune and lifting her eyebrow. "Can you feel them?"

"I can't sense those. Grimm, I mean." Jaune answered as he focused his ability outwards, feeling for the bitter, violent emotions the Grimm usually gave off. "There's something in Glenn which gives me a bad feeling, but… there aren't all that many Grimm in there."

"Huh." Qrow looked at him suspiciously while Cinder seemed somewhat surprised by Jaune's statement. "You can sense Grimm?"

"Sorta."

The enigmatic teached just huffed and sat back down on his seat and returned to typing something on his Scroll as Jaune's stomach seemed to calm down somewhat after it had been completely emptied while Cinder just looked at him curiously.

"Couldn't we get someone else to observe our mission?" Weiss whispered to Cinder, causing Ruby to huff and Jaune to shrug.

Cinder didn't respond, but she looked thoughtful while rubbing her neck and adjusting her blood-red choker.

While the other team members wore their usual combat clothes, Cinder had left her red silk dress behind and instead wore a brown sleeveless jacket, black leather-reinforced pants and gray knee-high boots. She had also attempted to make a top-lookalike from bandages, for some reason, but Weiss had caught wind of that before their departure and had demanded Cinder to unwrap the bandages and wear a proper shirt. Cinder had obliged after Jaune had also asked about the odd choice of clothing, and she had opted for a gold-decorated long-sleeved shirt in similar style to her regular red dress (which made the shirt look incredibly out-of-place in the otherwise muted colours of her other clothing). She also wore red choker, which also looked slightly odd on her but Jaune didn't comment as it appeared that Cinder wasn't exactly the best person to ask about proper combat clothing etiquette- a feature that she seemed to share with Jaune, to his hidden delight.

Not that it helped the exasperated looks Weiss had sent him when Jaune had don his usual jeans and hoodie as clothes for the mission.

"Nah. Originally this was Oobleck's mission, but Oz caught up to your shenanigans with Cindy's leader pass." Qrow growled, causing Weiss to jump slightly as she likely hadn't expected to be overheard by their observer while Cinder just lifted her eyebrow at Qrow. "Oz made me swap places with Oobs so you'd have more combat-experienced teach to hold your hand. No offense to Oobs, but he's not exactly what I'd call a combat-focused prof."

"...If us taking the mission was an issue, why didn't Ozpin just reassign us?" Jaune asked, feeling suspicious as he felt that Qrow was hiding something.

"He didn't feel like it or something. Or I guess he felt like you could still do this as long as you had a different teach." Qrow shrugged, and Jaune squinted his eyes suspiciously at the man.

"Anyway, enough chit-chat. The LZ is pretty close." The professor told them as Jaune was about to comment. "Look alive people, we're dropping."

"Dropping?" Jaune asked warily as the other team members stashed their items and grabbed their backpacks.

"Yeah, we can't land while we don't know what's down there. This craft is sturdy it but won't last long if we land in a square and something jumps on top of it from one of the high rises nearby- the anti-flyer cannon isn't there for knife fighting with Beowolf or something."

"Uh…" Jaune was feeling more and more apprehensive by the passing second. "Do you happen to have parachutes?"

"You're a shapeshifter. Can't you like, transform some wings or something?" Qrow shot back.

"I mean… I still weight around three hundred pounds. Wings aren't exactly made for heavy weight lifting" Jaune said, which caused the man to rear back in surprise- even if he got a distinct impression that Qrow's surprise wasn't genuine.

"Well, I guess you'll need big wings then. How'd you land safely back in yer Initiation test?"

"I didn't." Jaune sighed as the memory popped up. "Somehow I get the feeling you know that already."

"What, me? Nooo way…"

"LZ in minute. Get ready to drop. Altitude stable at two hundred feet, wait for green light." the pilot's voice came through the air-transport's intercom and Qrow slammed his fist twice against the door that separated the pilot from the crew to let him know that the message had been received. Weiss sighed as she looked at the interaction and she leaned to confirm the message verbally through the intercom.

Oddly enough Jaune felt like the pilot was extremely relieved to have them off his ship- which, considering one of the craft's engines had mysteriously caught fire during the travel and almost caused them to crash, not to mention how Jaune had starting to puke all over the craft few minutes after their departure, the pilot's eagerness to drop them off wasn't all that unreasonable.

"Can't you carry Jaune, Uncle?" Ruby asked while smiling cutely and grabbing the older man's hand. "And help him land safely?"

"Yeah, no."

"But it'd be sad if Jaune got hurt…" Ruby looked at the man with wide innocent eyes. As Jaune watched he saw small tears forming in the corners of her eyes, and Qrow began to shuffle uncomfortably- although it might have been because of the incredibly disgusted look Weiss sent at Qrow.

"Nice try pipsqueak."

"B-but I've always thought you as the bestest uncle who's stronger than anyone, so surely you could help him get down safely?"

"Gh- Argh, fine."

"Thanks!" the tears disappeared instantly and Ruby hugged Qrow briefly before shooting off to hug Jaune as well.

Before Qrow could regret his decision the plane began to decelerate until it started to hover, and the red light near the back ramp of the aircraft turned green.

The ramp opened, giving them a view of ruined gray buildings below stretching almost as far as they could see.

"Green, go go go! We can't stay still for long!" the intercom buzzed, causing the team to burst into motion.

"See you on the ground!" Ruby clapped her hands before hopping down the ramp, followed by Weiss and Blake.

"Right, kid… Don't try anything funny." Qrow grumbled as he reached down to grab Jaune by his knees and by his shoulder.

He really wished that Ruby didn't have her camera ready and pointed upwards at the aircraft when Qrow jumped off the ramp with Jaune in princess carry- the former looking like his back would break from exertion and the latter screaming in terror and holding to the older man's neck for his dear life.

'I bet RYNN doesn't have to deal with this…'

---

"So you're Weiss's big sis then." Yang stated as she leaned against her palm while sitting on a couch that was placed in front of a small four-person table of team RYNN's somewhat sizeable airship cabin.

"Yes." Winter sighed as she sat on a couch opposite to Yang, although she sat in a calm, disciplined manner with both of her hands on the table while looking out of the cabin's window at the changing scenery far below them.

"You know, you look a lot more calm and collected now, as opposed to when you are teaching a class." the brawler noted as the ride went on in infuriating serenity. While it was irritating, the calmness and quiet was still better than the 'Are we there yet?' chanting that had come from Nora after the first few minutes of their flight.

Luckily Ren had managed to calm Nora down, and the bubbly girl was currently sleeping with her head on Ren's lap on a seperate couch near Yang, Pyrrha and their observing teacher, Winter.

It was early morning, and the team had departed before the other teams due to the airship leaving Vale before the break of dawn.

The airship would arrive to Vacuo in two days, land in its capital city to deliver the passengers and trade goods, refuel, perform basic maintenance for any issues that might appear during the flight, load new passengers and cargo, and then head back to Vale.

That made team RYNN's mission a fairly simple one- make sure that both flights would arrive safely.

Fortunately that had net them a VIP class cabin, which was extremely luxurious as far as intercontinential flights went- it even had a private shower and a small bathtub.

Pyrrha was sitting next to Yang, but she wasn't much of a conversation partner as the redhead was as still as a statue with her usual fixed smile plastered on her face, but with the exception that her eyes had glassed over and Yang could swear that the redhead snored from time to time. Yang wouldn't have minded if Pyrrha had just flopped over like Nora and went to sleep (even if that would mean her sleeping on Yang's lap), but she guessed that the Mistralian champion was feeling somewhat uncomfortable in the teacher's presence and had chosen to act like a 'proper lady', whatever that meant.

"What are you implying?" Winter narrowed her eyes at Yang as she got up, walked to a beverage machine set up on a desk and pulled two cups of tea.

"I mean, whenever we see you with Uncle you two are almost instantly fighting each other." Yang said as she offered one of the mugs to Winter and sat back down.

"I'm not normally like that. However, whenever he approaches me despite my attempts to convey that I am not interested… something happens." Winter sighed while sipping her tea in very calm and refined fashion.

It was difficult for Yang to believe that the woman in front of her was the very same woman who had been pulling Qrow's hair and kicking him in the crotch mere two days before in front of the entire first year class.

She blinked and shook her head as she realized she was going off-track "Something happens?"

"Something happens- Either nothing goes as I planned, something ends up breaking, or suddenly I am either fighting Qrow or I get drunk, or he gets drunk, or something even more disgusting happens between us." Winter growled while cradling her drink.

"That's… unfortunate." Yang blinked as she registered her own words. "Is it because of his Semblance?"

"His… Semblance?"

"Yeah, Misfortune." Yang lifted her eyebrow. "It makes everything unlucky around him. Enemies, allies, people, Grimm, animals, inanimate objects… I saw a bird fly into a window, break through, get sucked into a ceiling fan and then cause both of them to crash down on top of Qrow and spill his drink all over his date in a bar. I think it has something to do with his mood but I'm not sure."

"So that's why…" Winter fought visibly against a urge to groan.

"So uh, since I thought you two are... uh, were a item or something I figured that I'd tell you about uncle during this 'mission', you know, help a girl out?" Yang offered, although she could by now guess what the answer for that would be.

"Please, no more…" Winter half-whimpered and her eyes gained a look not unlike that of a shell-shocked war veteran.

"O-okay, sorry." Yang waved her hands to signal her surrender. "I didn't know it was that bad."

"It is that bad."

"Uh…" Yang felt as a idea popped up inside her head. She wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but she went along with it nevertheless. 'I mean, in the best case scenario that might even work out…' "You know I'm Qrow's niece, right?"

"That is correct." Winter's refined behaviour seemed to return slowly.

"So want me to help you get rid of Qrow or make him less, I don't know, disgusting?"

"The former, please." Winter shivered visibly. "Violently, if possible."

"So how about a deal, I help you do that, and in return, you see if you can find anything worthwhile in him?"

Winter lifted her eyebrow at Yang.

"I mean, unc- Qrow flaunts about being a hot batchelor but he's not really one." Yang explained. "He's putting on the show and act but his Semblance always gets in the way of… well… everything. So I was just wondering if we could attempt to get a proper human being out of him since you two seem to be able to at least interact, which is hell of a lot more than what has been in the past."

"So you're telling me to become his psychiatrists?" Winter didn't seem convinced. "Frankly I feel like I'm the one who might need to go visit one in near future if the... harassment... keeps up."

"Just think of it like trying to make him into something worthwhile and getting him off your skin at the same time? I mean, if he becomes a 'decent human being' and hitches up with some woman then he'd be off your hair." Yang offered and Winter seemed to mull on it for a while.

"Fine, I am willing to give your suggestion a chance, seeing that I will be his co-teacher for a while anyway." Winter told her, and Yang sighed in relief. "In return, I expect you to actively persuade Qrow to cease his harassment- and I expect results."

'Heh, and perhaps I can get you two to hitch up properly…' Yang grinned as she offered her hand to Winter, who took it while glaring at her suspiciously. 'Still, he's not that bad, is he?'

"You can start by persuading Qrow not to kidnap me, forcibly get me drunk, tie himself into a rack and then have me whip him." Winter told her.

Yang stared at Winter as the two froze mid-handshake.

Winter blushed slightly. "...Pretend you didn't hear that, please."

Pyrrha let out a quiet snore beside Yang and slumped on the table.

---

"So… This place is a bit of a ghost town, then." Ruby commented idly as the group walked on what had been once a bustling main street of the city of Glenn. The ruined highrises all around them, once colourful but now grey after years of corrosion, seemed like bones of a skeleton rising from a asphalt-covered grave.

The colorful imaginary was a direct result of the eerie quiet and lack of life in the gray city- not even plants lived in Glenn anymore.

"The mission was to recon Grimm presence in Glenn, exterminate any leadership-type Grimm like Alphas, and after exterminating the Grimm presence, or after finding that it is too much for us, find a way to clear a LZ either inside the city or outside it so the Bowhead can land and pick us up after we send it a signal." Weiss reminded them. "It doesn't necessarily mean that the city is choke-full of Grimm. We're here to do a force recon role, and only that."

"It is very strange that the city is so empty though, you'd think that at least few Grimm would have settled in." Blake commented as she scanned the buildings, her amber eyes sharp. "Jaune? Can you use your radar to tell if there's anything near us."

"...I'm using it. I can't find any Grimm nearby, but… something is off." Jaune said half-heartedly while holding to his twin blades. He had transformed his forearms and created his usual blood-red bone-made blades.

He had noticed that he could grow them out of the bone of his forearm instead of thumb, and that meant that the 'vein' which connected his wrist to the blade would stay intact, enabling the blade's vampiric effect (even if that meant he couldn't let go of or sheathe his weapons as they would just dangle off his forearm).

'...I guess that effect has always been 'on', but I always made the blade out of wrong bone and broke the connection prematurely, which I guess explains why I had to manually feed the blades.' Jaune sighed as he carefully felt around the empty buildings using his sort-of sixth sense while he gripped his weapon's now-smooth and barbless handle, ignoring the rashy, rubbing feeling originating from within the flesh of his forearm and back of his head.

He didn't really want to think about his 'projectile weapon' more than what was necessary in fear of what he might find, so he chose to just 'go with it' and hope it would work out in the end- although oddly enough the bone-darts inside his skin felt oddly lively- something that had started after the encounter he had with Cinder. 'I wonder if her attempt to heal me caused those… darts… to become self-aware or something? I really hope that isn't the case… I'm already too occupied fighting one inner daemon without needing it to reproduce...'

"Ehm… Mr. Arc's radar?" Cinder asked curiously which caused Weiss to sigh. "I meant to ask about it on the airship, but…"

"I seem to have forgotten to tell about it. Mr. Arc can sense the emotions of living things around him. Grimm, humans… I believe that he can also detect specific emotions such as distress of happiness, and he can tell when someone is lying." Weiss explained after Jaune nodded to her, signalling that he was fine with Cinder knowing about it.

"The ability is like that of a Grimm, except upgraded as he can sense both positive and negative emotions." Weiss added as Cinder lifted her eyebrow at Jaune.

"You appear to be full of surprises, mr. Arc." Cinder said, and for some reason Jaune got a feeling that Cinder started to behave differently after learning of that part of his ability. "It seems that you have caught a very useful Grimm, miss Schnee."

"Ah, yes, caught him…" Weiss mumbled. "Yes, I can control Grimm, that's right…"

'Oh yeah, Cinder still doesn't know that Weiss doesn't actually have ability to control Grimm.' Jaune sighed internally. 'I think we should just tell Cinder about my ability. Weiss wanted to keep it secret so if Cinder was with Emerald's gang then my ability wouldn't come to light, but we can't keep the secret for long as we are in the same team- plus, if the truth comes out at wrong time...'

The buildings around them were empty of life, but for some reason he felt increasingly nervous and apprehensive as they moved towards the center of the city, which Qrow had explained to be a entryway to Glenn's underground housing and train network. 'There's something in here. Foreign. Alien. But oddly familiar… I can't put my finger on it, but I don't think we're alone.'

"Stay on your guard. There's something here… Not here-here!" Jaune quickly corrected himself as the team went on full alert after hearing his words. He guessed that they were on edge as well. "Something feels wrong, I don't think we're alone. There's something in somewhere in Glenn, but whatever it is, I can't pinpoint it."

"Well that's helpful." Weiss commented dryly as she flexed her cramping shoulders. "Miss Fall, do you have any ideas?"

"No. Outside the usual suspects, Grimm, natural predators or perhaps people from nearby settlements who might have come to claim parts of the city- which would make them bandits for us." the red-clad woman said perhaps a bit too easily, but Jaune didn't want to lapse his long-range 'radar' to feel if the woman was truthful or not.

'I mean, she's in this with us, so she has no reason to lie…' Jaune shook his head to focus himself. He couldn't afford to get distracted when he was probably the first line of defense for the team- if there was something living near them, he'd be the first one to know.

"Professor Branwen? Do you hav…"

"Sorry kids, I'm here just to observe and help you in combat if you need it." Qrow grumbled. His demeanor seemed confident and careless, but if the way his eyes moved and the way he rested his hand on his weapon was any indication the unnatural calm of the city was affecting him as well. "Ya'll got to make your own decisions. I just hop in and stop you if you're about to get yerselves killed because of them."

"I see, thank you for your helpful input." Weiss sighed in exasperation, and mumbled something along the lines of 'wish', 'here' and 'Winter'.

"Don't want to make this too easy fer you all." Qrow shrugged playfully at Ruby, but for once her mood wasn't very cheerful and the man quickly gave up.

Jaune sniffed the air as he smelled a oddly sweet, disgustingly musky smell, and he waved for the team to stop, and then waved at the direction of the smell.

Weiss lifted her eyebrow at him before waving for the team to follow her, and they all lifted their weapons and started to observe their surroundings far more carefully as they entered what Ruby had dubbed as 'sneaking mode' during their team trainings..

Jaune felt the disgusted emotions coming from the team as they too smelled the odd scent while they moved soundlessly towards it, and the team soon arrived to a crossroad where the smell seemed to be coming from.

"Is that…" Ruby asked quietly as they approached a form that was not much larger than a human yet it bore black skin and patches of white bone, and it was partially covered by building rubble.

Jaune approached the form first and flipped few rocks covering the form to reveal a very small, mauled and rotting Grimm Beowolf.

"Wha… But Grimm deteriorate and vanish!" Weiss's voice was muffled by a piece of cloth she had tied over her nose and mouth to dampen the smell. "What happened?"

"It must have come from the sewers." Blake pointed out as she traced dragging signs that came from a nearby manhole- the trail of blood and ichor was hard to miss. "But what killed it?"

Jaune crouched next to the dead creature and turned it over with his sword.

The Beowolf was shriveled almost as if it had been malnourished, and it was covered in wounds ranging from bites to deep gashes that looked like claws marks. "Did it get attacked by other Beowolves?"

"...Sure looks like it." Qrow mumbled as he knelt beside him and took a picture of the dead carcass. "It would explain why Glenn is so empty if the Grimm had some sort of civil war. But Grimm don't eat or hunt each other."

"Or rot."

"Something is wrong." Cinder said as a visible shiver went through her and she stared at the dead Beowolf. "This… This shouldn't happen."

"Well, less Grimm for us to deal with. Let's just take a sample of it and get going. Let the science-types figure this one out." Qrow shrugged. "Didn't take you for scaredy-cat, Cindy."

"..." Cinder just glared at the man and turned around to walk after Blake who had gone to secure a perimeter.

Qrow caught a empty Dust vial just in time to stop it from shattering against the street and turned to glare at the white-haired girl who had thrown it.

"Taking samples was your idea, so would you please do the honors? We'll check the perimeter." Weiss told him with overly sweet tone, and Ruby just shrugged as Qrow sent the red-hooded girl a pleading look.

Jaune suppressed a snicker, and paid for it as Qrow pushed the vial against his chest.

"You heard the lady, get on it."

"I…"

"Observer only."

"...Fine."

The rest of their first day in Mountain Glenn was spent in haunting silence.

.

..

…

"Is it time, then?" Jaune asked as Cinder woke him up for his turn in´the guard-slash-firekeep duty in the middle of the night.

"Yes… Are you feeling alright?" Cinder asked somewhat warily and she took a calculating look at him.

"Yeah, why?"

"You were turning and muttering a lot in your sleep… were you having a nightmare?"

"Uh… yeah. I guess it's the atmosphere here." Jaune said while rubbing the back of his neck sheepily. "This place is pretty haunting with the empty buildings and everything."

"...I see. Try to keep yourself together." Cinder gave him a undecipherable look before crawling over to her sleeping spot, lying down and pulling her blanket over her.

Jaune blinked the sleepiness away as he focused on his surroundings.

The team had picked a somewhat intact-looking highrise to be their temporary base. It give them some elevation which meant they could see Grimm from further away, and it would restrict the possible angles of attack to stairs or windows, both of which were fairly defensible.

Qrow had pointed out that if the Grimm swarm was too strong for them then the team would be trapped as they were on the fourth floor, but Weiss had just waved her hand and told him that the team could just jump down or use one of her Glyphs to propel themselves out of the small ruined apartment and into one of the near-identical buildings around them- that way they could use the height of their camp as an advantage to disengage.

In the end they had settled down and cooked a small meal from their rations (Ruby had given some of her extras to Jaune after she had heard his stomach growl) and set up a guard duty chain for the night.

Qrow had picked the last shift, which would be at sunrise. It was likely that the team would wake up and pack up before Qrow's shift came, however, and the decision had thus earned Qrow few glares from Weiss but the man hadn't been too affected by it. After all it gave him full night's worth of uninterrupted sleep. Qrow had then argued for Ruby to take the first shift since she would likely be their scout for when they enter the metro station the next day, and the red-clad girl would be the second person to get a full night's sleep.

Ruby had argued for Weiss to take the first shift since she was the leader, and needed more sleep. Weiss had agreed but only if Ruby's shift would be just before Qrow's, giving her the second best shift. And after few rounds of 'pick the shortest stick' it was decided that Weiss would take the first turn, followed by Blake, then Cinder, then Jaune and finally Ruby and Qrow.

'Haah… For some reason I thought that this mission would be a bit more action packed.' Jaune sighed as he poked the fire that was burning inside a large cast iron pan held above the floor with some steel bars, warming the room and giving them light.

Granted, he didn't really want them to be drowning in Grimm or something, but the eerie calm around them was stretching his nerves, and if he was guessing right, it was also affecting Cinder and rest of the team. However he had become used to the hustle and bustle of Beacon, and sudden lack of any emotions around him beside those of his team made him feel incredibly isolated.

He looked out of the broken window to make sure that their surroundings were clear, just in case his internal radar was somehow malfunctioning. The streets outside were empty of life, and nothing moved in the perimeter, meaning that he could just sit down on a stool and add few pieces of broken wooden furniture to the pot that made their fireplace.

Minutes passed in silence as he poked the fire to adjust the room temperature and Jaune glanced at Cinder's blanket-covered form as he felt that she wasn't sleeping.

"Cinder?" he asked quietly after making sure that the fire was burning properly and keeping the room's occupants warm. "Are you awake?"

The woman froze still in the slightly out-of-the-way spot she had picked to be her sleeping spot. "...Yes."

"...Is it because of the odd feeling this mission gives off?"

"Uh… yes."

"...Cinder, I can tell when people lie." Jaune felt slightly suspicious as he focused his attention on Cinder. Their surroundings had been clear for a long time so he felt around for her emotional state. "What's wrong?"

"Ah… It's nothing."

"Maybe I can help?" Jaune asked as he walked to where she was lying and sat down next to her bed. "Blake can testimony that I'm good at talking girls until they pass out."

"That's… a colourful way to put it." Cinder turned to give him a very sceptical look before she sighed. "Fine, but you must promise me something- don't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. That includes your... our team."

"Cinder…"

"I'm serious."

"Fine, I'll promise." Jaune sighed while looking over his shoulder and momentarily focusing on his ability to make sure everyone else were still sleeping. "What is it?"

"I'm just going through some data I… uh... acquired recently." Cinder said after a considerable break while looking at him with calculating expression. "There was some distressing material within."

"Did something happen?"

"Well…" Cinder glanced at Qrow's sleeping form. The teacher was lying slack on top of a table which he had picked as his sleeping spot. "...Kni- I mean, mr. Arc. How much do you trust Qrow? And Ozpin?"

"Huh?" Jaune was taken back by the question somewhat. "What do you mean?"

"There's something that Ozpin is hiding." Cinder said conspiratorially while her eyes passed by Weiss's sleeping form. "...I don't know if I should tell you about it though."

"…What do you mean?" Jaune asked, feeling a bit suspicious.

"Ozpin isn't the saint he pretends to be." Cinder said quietly while pulling her Scroll from under the blanket she had covered herself with. Jaune looked at the Scroll which showed a tanned girl leaning on a staff. The picture had a text under it saying 'Amber Fall'.

"Amber… Fall? Who is she?"

"Shh! Not so loudly!"

"Sorry." Jaune said sheepishly. "But... who is she? Someone you knew?"

"She is someone very important to me." Cinder said quietly before blinking as she seemed to realize something, and afterwards her face paled. "Why am I... Forget I told anything."

'She's telling the truth…' Jaune blinked as he was using his Semblance discreetly to gauge her emotional state- he wanted to be able to help her afterall, so he allowed himself to cheat a bit. Cinder looked like she needed help as she looked at him oddly- It was almost as if she was considering setting him on fire or something. "What happened?"

"...We were together a few months ago, but our… uh… interaction… was interrupted as Qrow came and fought me. He didn't recognize me, but he captured Amber, and I suspect that Ozpin is holding to her. Qrow didn't see my face, so I decided to inf- transfer to Beacon in order to get Amber back." Cinder said as she seemed to come to a decision. Jaune guessed that she hadn't planned to tell him about the other woman, but it had likely just slipped. "I want to to get her back. She... I feel like she won't last long wherever Ozpin is holding her. I need her."

'Truth again… odd. I didn't think Ozpin was the kind person who would order a kidnapping. Hold on, Amber Fall? Cinder Fall?' Jaune felt bad for Cinder. "Ozpin is holding to her?"

"I am certain of that." Cinder said with a tone of finality. "Against her will if I'm correct. You must not tell anyone about that, or... or I fear Ozpin might attempt to capture me as well."

'Why'd Ozpin want to capture either of them? Also...' "...Was she your sister? Your surnames match."

"N-no…"

"Ah." Jaune blushed as he realized what the shared surname could then mean. "I'm… I'm sorry. No-one should be separated from their uh… loved one in such a way."

Cinder blinked once, twice, and thrice before groaning theatherically and burying her face in her hands. "You will tell no-one about what you just heard."

"You got it… just, why do you think Ozpin is holding her against her will? Why did he even want to capture her?" Jaune asked. "I mean, it's pretty hefty accusation."

"Amber, she... she has a certain power. Think of it like a Semblance, but not quite- something outside that." the woman told him. "Ozpin, he wants that power, and will resort to just about anything to get it. We... Amber and I shared a part of that power, and I fear that Ozpin would capture me and try to forcibly extract the power from me if she found out. He might have done that to Amber already."

'Truth... odd. Is she perhaps like me? My Semblance isn't exactly ordinary either...' Jaune thought. The more he heard about Cinder's plight, the more apprehensive he felt about Ozpin. 'I didn't take him for someone who'd go so far as kidnap someone innocent just to gain their power. Come to think of it...' "...But how did you find out where Amber was? That Ozpin has her?"

"I… I might have slipped few knockout drops to Qrow's food when I helped catgir- Blake prepare it." Cinder confessed extremely quietly. "I went through his Scroll when it was my turn to watch over the fire. If he had any information about her… it'd be there. A small autocracker helped to get me through his Scroll's defence, and I got full access to his files."

"...And did you find anything?" Jaune asked carefully while he tried to keep straight face. 'I mean...Qrow's Ruby's and Yang's uncle, and he has his network searching for my sisters… However if what Cinder is saying is true, then Qrow is practically a kidnapper. But knockout drops?'

"I did. I found more than that in Qrow's Scroll however. Something concerning you." Cinder bit her lip while giving him a very calculating look. "I… didn't know that you had missing sisters though. My condolences."

"Wait, what?" Jaune went instantly on full alert and the thought of Cinder's lost lover flew right out of the window alongside any concern he might have had to the woman's information gathering techniques.

Cinder hesitated for a moment before she handed him a pair of headphones. "There was a recording in Qrow's Scroll, and I think it concerns you. It is dated a month or so ago."

Jaune put the headphones on and leaned closed as Cinder started the recording.

"Raven. Please." Qrow's voice rang in his hears.

"No." A female voice answered coldly.

Jaune froze still. He felt light-headed as the speaker's female voice was something he could never forget, even if he had only heard it very faintly. 'Raven… Branwen. But Ozpin said that Qrow hadn't met her yet- that he was still searching!'

"We need him. The Arc kid." Qrow's voice said. "He might hold a key to ending the Grimm... Please. Give his family back to him."

"And you'd think that I'd just hand over something you could use to control him?" the hated female voice asked.

"We just want to return them to Vale. To make the Arc family whole again- or as whole as it can be after what you did…" Qrow's voice whispered loudly. "For Nicholas, for all those you've killed…"

"Guilt-tripping won't work on me. If you want them back, then take them from me- but until then, I'm keeping the family." Raven drawled. "If he wants to join them, then tell him that he's free to seek me out and ask to join the tribe. He sounds strong enough…"

'She's talking about me... As if I'd join her... ' Jaune felt his blood boiling. He ignored how Cinder gave him a wary look as he kept listening. 'Raven killed dad, and mom is dead because of her!'

"You'd try to recruit him?" Qrow's voice asked, clearly sceptical. "You'd keeping him from focusing on the real threat… Are you working with the Grimm?"

"Yes, I'd take him in if he was as strong as you claimed he was." Raven's voice was accompanied by a faint sound of sipping, making Jaune almost think that the two of them were conversing over a drink in a bar. The slurs the pair had in their speech certainly matched the observation. "As for the Grimm… I didn't take you for a deluded drunkard. Have the years done a number on you, brother?"

"If you weren't working with the Grimm, you'd give the Arcs you hold hostage to us…" Qrow drawled. "Are they even alive?"

"I am not working with the Grimm… I'm merely using them when it suits me." Raven slurred, and Jaune knew his earlier guess to be true as he heard the chatter from the background of the recording.

'Qrow never needed to use his 'network' to find out where she is… he's just drinking merrily with that… that bandit in some bar….' he felt as his teeth gnashed. 'Did he just call his 'sister', decide to stop by on some bar and have a drink while mentioning that I had survived and I wanted my family back? Some 'network' he has...'

"As for the Arc kids, they are... a part of our happy family." the hated woman added almost jokingly.

'Joke some more, bandit… I will tear your head from your shoulders… and e͏a͏͠͝t҉̴ ̛͘y͠҉̸o͝u͏͡r͟͠ ҉̷t̨r͜͞ib͟e̕͡…' Cinder backed away from him slowly, her startled face lit in the red glow coming from his eyes...

"You told your men to torture and rape them, didn't you?" Qrow growled accusingly, and Jaune heard as something slammed hard against some wooden surface.

For a moment it seemed that everything would grind to a halt as the voices in the recording paused.

"Yes" Raven's voice sounded disinterested, almost as if the question wasn't worth her time. "They obey me. My word is law, and they know better than to defy me. Those that try to do so end up dead."

The recording finished with a click, as did his patience and dubious calm.

A odd shattering sound rang in the small room that somehow felt far more cramped than it had before, and before he realized it, he had fallen out of the window in a shower of concrete while taking bit part of the wall with him, followed by an impact he barely registered as his legs crashed against the asphalt road, creating cracks in the armor that now covered his legs as he let out a furious howl that echoed in the abandoned streets.

A part of him realized that he had thrown himself off the building in attempt to get away from his team as the Shadow raged for control inside his head, but his rage overpowered it's by a wide margin. He knew that he must have transformed during the recording, but he couldn't care less about his torn clothes or how it must have frightened Cinder, or how it must have woken up the rest of his team.

A second furious howl escaped into the night as he looked for something, anything to vent his anger, frustration and fury on as he ran and slithered on the cracked asphalt, carving his way through the broken buildings towards the nearest source of life- yet he was still coherent enough not to break his rage against the nearest possible target, his own team.

However as his thoughts turned to keeping himself from hurting his team the rage that was him was soon overtaken by rage of the creature within- and it was accompanied by a bitter thought as he realized that the entire thing was his own mistake.

'I… I failed... ' the furious howl was followed by a more sorrowful one as he instinctively locked on to nearest sign of life after bursting through a weakened concrete wall of what might have once been a cafe and into the street- and the creature within him noticed that the faint echo of life came faintly from directly below him. 'I trusted Qrow, and Ozpin… I thought they would help me... We̸͜҉ m̵̡u͝st҉ ҉̨͢d̷es͝t̸r̷o̸y̷ ̨t͘͞h̢͘͏e̴m̨͏.. that I could focus on my own recovery and leave my sisters to 'real' huntsmen… I shouldn't have trusted them, I should have just... Cha̶͘͡r̴̡g̨e̢̛͠ ̷̀a̕͜͢nd̶͟ ̛d̸èştr͝o̷y̴̡̧..̛͏̵.̨ ̨͠h̷̵̷u̷҉nt҉ ̴͠a͞l̶̷l̡͢ ͢l͝͠if̴e͜.̷̧̀.̀̕.̨ gone straight from Beacon to Mistral, and search for my sisters by myself...'

The ground cracked as he searched, his mind having already forgotten what he was searching and what he was going to do as he found it, and he felt as the asphalt gave under his feet and claw.

He fell and the rocks and pieces of asphalt fell around him, crashing against him and crushing parts of his bone-made armor, yet he flung the masonry aside with the appendages that had grown from his spine and he began burrowing his way out from underneath the rocks as the tumbling and crashing came to a halt.

His claws hit something soft, and he burrowed straight through it, ignoring the blood, steam and flesh that flooded over and into him as he burst out of a Beowolf's chest that had been trapped by the landfall and he turned to lunge at what he recognized to be another werewolf-like Grimm, likely disoriented from the landfall that had crashed on top of it.

The beast gave a snarl-like voice which turned to a whimper as his twin blades pierced its chest. Before it fell a pair of spike-tipped, barbed tentacles wrapped themselves around the creature's arms and tore chunks of flesh from the dying creature in a spray of oily dark-red blood. He barely registered that his tentacles had grown savage-looking teeth and scales, making them able to rend flesh with frightening efficiency.

He felt as his white bone-mask opened unnaturally wide as the Shadow began to feed- and the act was enough broke through his despair as the rage within turned to fear, and confusion as he realized what was happening around him. 'Foolish… Foolish… Fo̵oli͏s͟h... I forgot I can't get distracted or the Shadow takes over...'

Jaune felt like throwing up as the all-too familiar taste of bitter, oily flesh invaded his mouth and stomach as one of his own tentacles pushed the meat inside his waiting mouth. He spluttered and the half-chewed piece of black meat fell off his mouth, and the creature in control of his body paid for his interference as a faintly Beowolf-shaped creature charged him and shoulder-slammed him off the dead and slowly vaporizing body off its kin.

A hiss escaped his bloodied mask, letting out a gout of steam which soon mixed with the cold underground air, and he prepared to attack the new prey… only to see that the Beowolf-like Grimm which had rammed him had begun to tear into the carcass of its dead kin, pulling off pieces of black meat and stuffing them into its mouth in fever-like state.

He felt as he paused for a moment since something seemed wrong about the situation, but the rising hunger inside him broke his hesitation and he felt as he charged.

The distracted creature was swiftly decapitated while the swarm of of brutal tentacles pierced its body, and immediately begun to tear flesh off its corpse and drink its blood to feed his armored form further.

A faint ray of moonlight lit his surroundings, making him aware that he must have fallen through the surface of Glenn and into the underground portion of the city.

The Grimm had not abandoned Glenn- they had moved underneath it, much like its previous owners.

He looked around to see red eyes swarming all around him, and his internal radar, now overcharged by the Shadow's influence, 'saw' hundreds of Grimm approaching towards him through the darkness that covered the underground city.

Oddly enough there were some Grimm amongst the mass that felt… odd. Altered, much like the one that had started to eat it's fallen kin.

However he couldn't care less about the curious feeling the Grimm gave him as he felt his earlier rage returning now that he had a target for it to vent.

In fact he was grateful for the Grimm.

They stood against him.

They would try to kill and eat him.

That was fine.

'Yes… this is more like it.' He felt as his breath came out in gout of blood-hot steam from underneath the featureless white mask he bore. 'This is what I am...W̢e̛̕ ̡҉a̵̕̕ŗ̀e̵̛... for…'

Thoughts of his team above, of his family kidnapped, of the mission he was supposed to be on were soon lost as the black form of a Grimm charged at him, and he responded in kind, stepping under its arms and taking off its leg while one of the tentacles pierced through its chest, coiled around its back and tossed the creature off to hinder the advance of other Beowolves that begun to swarm through the darkness and rubble at him.

He saw as the werewolf-like creatures were joined by snake-like ones, and even few massive scorpion-like Grimm began to scuttle towards the battle.

It wouldn't matter. He would grow- and even as he dodged one of the larger Beowolves he felt as his back lengthened, and he balanced himself on his new bone-spiked tail.

The mask shaped itself anew to better fit his face as it grew in size as his four eyes opened to gaze into the inferior mass, and his jaw extended, his teeth lengthened and his maw closed around his still-living kill.

'Yess̶̛s͠s̴͜͞ss̶̕͠…'

…

"W-what happened?" Weiss let out a shriek as she woke to the rumble and crash as one of the old and worn walls of the building they had picked as camp site gave way and crumbled to the ground.

"Is the building crashing down?" Blake asked loudly as she reached to grab her weapon from under her pillow made of spare clothes, and she looked ready to jump off if the ruin even when she was still blinking sleep off her eyes.

Ruby turned around in her bedroll and gave a loud yawn before shaking her head. "Whu… Whut's going oOo- ohn?

"Ah… I think the K- mr. Arc has gone berserk!" Cinder waved them off before the girls could do anything too hasty. 'Dammit, he just... He just shapeshifted and jumped down after hearing that recording...'

"Berserk?" Weiss blinked in confusion.

"Yes, can you… urgh, 'calm' him down? Preferrably from a distance?" Cinder asked, fighting back the annoyed twitch of her eyebrow when she realized how Weiss would calm the creature down. "He jumped off the building."

"Why did he go berserk?" Weiss asked as she turned to pull her equipment belt from beside her bedroll and tie it on her waist while the other team members were getting up and readying themselves for combat. "What happened?"

"I don't know. I had trouble falling asleep so we talked…" Cinder explained as she tried to come up with a good excuse. "We talked about mr. Arc's sisters, and he went berserk during that speech!"

"Oh come on…" Weiss groaned. "Fine, let's go and fetch him. Which way did he go?"

"Uh… I think we can just follow the holes on the ground. And in the buildings" Ruby said while munching energy chocolate as she leaned over the destroyed wall to trace the trail Jaune had left. "He wasn't subtle."

"You seem awfully calm about this?" Cinder asked as the three girls were getting ready to chase their teammate while Cinder packed her things and got her combat equipment ready. 'Huh... Is him snapping off the Schnee's control a regular occurance?'

"Eh, this isn't the first time this has happened." Weiss sighed in annoyance. "Mr. Branwen? Wake up, please."

'Hm… I might be able to use this chance to get 'lost' and head towards the White Fang camp in Glenn's metro station where Torchwick has stored the stolen Dust… ' Cinder thought as Weiss started to shake their unconscious Professor. She wasn't too worried about the man as he wouldn't wake up for few hours, and the knockout drops would give him so massive headache that he'd probably think it was just hangover. She had sloshed some of the contents of his flask down the man's throat to reinforce the image and then poured the rest off the balcony to make it seem like he had drank it all. 'And I can use this chance to see just how the Schnee girl is controlling the Knight...'

"Seriously! Wake… Up!" Weiss shook Qrow by his chest, and Cinder started to wonder if she should have bothered camouflaging her traces after cracking Qrow's Scroll since it looked like that the white-haired girl would likely end up snapping the man's neck by shaking him, or by slapping him across the cheeks in way too spirited manner when it seemed that he wouldn't respond.

"Is Uncle drunk again?" Ruby sighed.

Weiss sniffed the man and dropped him instantly, and he slumped lifelessly on the floor while giving a loud snore.

"Yes, yes he is…" Weiss's eyebrow seemed to have a life of its own as it twitched in annoyance. "What a great teacher… I bet this wouldn't have happened if Winter was overseeing us."

"Yeah, but she isn't." Blake said while writing something on the wall. Cinder glanced up and saw that Blake was writing a message for the huntsman detailing what they were about to do. "I'll leave a message here, just in case if we have to go underground since our Scrolls might lose connection with those above ground- the concrete and steel layer between upper and lower parts of the city is going to be thick, and CCT likely had signal reinforcers going through the layer back when Glenn was still operational."

"Good thinking. Ruby?" Weiss turned to the red-clad girl. "Can you scout for us and try to find where Jaune has disappeared to?"

"Sure…"

"You aren't worried that he might turn on you?" Cinder asked warily. "He's gone feral. Or is he still under your control? Can't you just… use whatever you use to control him and have him come back?"

'...Come to think of it, I wonder if I could somehow get the cargirl to leave as well, so that way I'd be alone with Weiss… I could overpower her and take her with me after I wrestle the control of the Knight away from her' Cinder thought as Weiss mulled over her answer. 'While it would not be good idea to get her in contact with mother, I'm confident that Mother could pump the little princess's secrets out of her indirectly.'

"No, unfortunately not. It requires something of a… well, close proximity to work." Weiss told her. "I'd also prefer if you didn't observe the uh… 'ritual of control' or… er that thing which makes him obey me. Just for security's sake. Ozpin's orders."

"Very well, if that makes you happy." Cinder rolled her eyes while scoffing internally. 'Of course I am going to watch… even if I don't particularly want to see him getting taken advantage of, again.'

"Right, I'm off, see you soon!" Ruby waved her hand and hopped down the crumbled side of the building and begun to run downwards on top of a intact steel beam that held the building together, before she made a sharp turn and begun tracing the path of ruin that the Knight had left behind it.

"Alright. Follow me. If we're fast, we'll catch him, get him back to his senses and figure out what happened before sunrise." Weiss sighed as she prepared a glyph that would lower the rest of the team down to the ground level like a makeshift floating elevator. "I'm certain that Qrow, since he is a professional Huntsman, can keep himself safe until we return."

'We'll see.'

.

..

…

"I guess Jaune fell down there." Ruby said as she leaned over the edge of a sizeable hole in the street. She made sure to maintain at least somewhat ready pose so she could sprint off the edge if it made any indications to crumbling off and falling while the rest of the team waited a dozen feet away from the hole.

"Can you see him?" Weiss asked.

"There's some sounds coming from there but I don't think I could shout loud enough to get through. The fall must be hundred feet or so, and I don't see him anywhere near the bottom..."

"Hundred feet?" Blake asked suspiciously. "That's a tall underground system…"

"The caves were naturally huge and were only expanded after the buildings above Glenn's ground became too dangerous to inhabit due to constant Grimm attacks and security breaches." Cinder reminded them. "If what I've see- read is correct, then the underground area was sizeable enough to house up to seven or six floors tall complexes in some spots. It might as well be a second city within a city."

"I see. Do you think we could attach some ropes or something like that on the edge of the collapse so we could climb up afterwards? I don't think I can cast a glyph that could propel us upwards so accurately that we'd actually hit our entry hole." Weiss asked as she pondered the situation. "Dammit, why did Jaune have to fall through the street…"

"Well, we won't catch up to him if we just stand and ponder." Blake said. "I already left a message for Qrow, so we can hop down and then after we recover Jaune, head towards the metro station which has the exit from the underground complex. That was our original goal anyway, so we're just approaching it from a different angle."

"Sounds reasonable. It would also complete our mission, assuming we don't run into Grimm, and we could focus on finding a landing zone for the Bowhead after that and getting out." Weiss nodded. "This is going to be a fairly quick mission. I'm honestly surprised."

"Yeah, I thought this was going to be like, hard, if it was a second-year mission." Ruby agreed.

"...We still need to catch up to Jaune." Blake reminded them. "I can see well in the dark, I'll go first."

"Wait, Bla…" Weiss started, but Blake had hopped down the hole before she had finished her sentence. "Grrhh… Fine. Follow me!"

Cinder sighed as Weiss jumped down as well, and she lifted her eyebrow at Ruby who was still on the edge of the hole.

"So... after you?" Ruby said as neither of them moved.

"I was planning on using a rope, thank you very much…"

"You don't have any…" Ruby squinted her eyes at Cinder. "Are you afraid of heights?"

"No. Well, go ahead. I'll come after you."

"Let's jump together."

"Certainly. Three… Two… One… Jump?"

"..."

"..."

"You didn't jump."

"Neither did you."

"...Stop arguing and get down here or I'll fire a ice lance at the hole and collapse you two down!" a echoing voice that most definitely belonged to Weiss shook the pair out of their argument. "Sheesh. This place smells like sewer, a really bloody sewer, and if I have to smell this, so will you!"

While Weiss's words were not exactly convincing, Ruby ran next to Cinder in a red flash and took her hand reassuringly.

"We'll jump together!" Ruby said, and before Cinder had managed to recover from her sudden dizziness that was suddenly caused by the silver-eyed girl's close proximity and gaze, the girl had also taken her by the waist and jumped the pair of over the edge.

'Damn! Damn! That was my best chance…' Cinder cursed as she twisted in the smaller girl's grip and prepared to land while contemplating on just setting the red-hooded girl on fire and being done with it, but before she could do either Ruby had unfolded her scythe and had started to fire downwards to halt their momentum and the pair landed on the now-cratered pile of rubble with a thump.

Their surroundings were mostly covered in complete darkness, but a weak moonlight coming from the hole far above them gave their immediate surroundings a faint shimmer and allowed them to see at least each other's forms.

"Right, we're down. Weiss? Where are you?" Ruby told her while detaching from Cinder, leaving the older woman to wonder just what had caused her earlier dizziness.

'Gah, this place smells horrid… did something die and rot in here?' Cinder thought as she leaned on what she believed to be a collapsed rock, but she pulled back as the rock let out a squishing sound and her hand got covered in some sticky liquid that caused it to start itching almost instantly. 'W-what was that? Urgh… my head…'

She was still suffering from the lack of focus that had started prior to the dance, which had also made her slip and tell the Knight about the Fall Maiden, but the lack of focus had suddenly spiked as the smaller girl had come close to her and looked directly at her with her… '...Silver eyes. Wait, is it because of the earlier parasite? Could there be something still burrowed within me?'

Cinder masked her sudden paling and near hyperventilation by pretending to be recovering from the fall while Ruby was getting tongue-lashing from Weiss, who had apparently shoved Blake aside before taking cover when she had realized just how Ruby was planning to land, and that Weiss and Blake had been quite literally just below Ruby's high caliber rifle-scythe.

'The Silver Eyed warriors… The remnant bloodline of yore. The delivers of soulfrost, the Wild Hunt. Their eyes give them sight that lets them invade the very essence of things not from this world, freezing them with soul-frost in their passing.' Cinder braced herself as she recalled what her mother had told her, and her heartbeat grew wilder while her eyes seemed to lose focus. 'It shouldn't affect regular living beings, so the only way it could affect me is if I had something Grimm-like within me. I was never close enough for her eyes to affect me back when I still had the Gift… However if the earlier parasitic... thing's parts are still inside me somehow... Dammit, it grew so big in just a day… But where is the new one? and how big is it already? ...Wait, I haven't noticed a loss in my Aura ever since cutting the old parasite off, so it couldn't have grown too big yet, there might still be a chance...'

"Cinder? Are you alright?" Ruby asked nervously, and Cinder noticed to her shock that the girl had walked within touching distance of her while she had been lost in thought.

"Ah… I'm… I'll be alright. Give me a moment." Cinder breathed out as she felt odd coldness in her spine after meeting the girl's eyes. 'Dammit, that proves it. There's something in me. Did that jump just now trigger the thing's growing in me?!' "Th- that jump took more out of me than I realized."

"Ah… sorry…" Ruby shuffled her feet guiltily. "I thought you had a fear of heights so I figured I'd help you get over it, kinda like how mom helped Yang get over her fear of dancing…"

"Yang had a fear of dancing?" Blake's voice sounded amused through the cloth she had likely tied over her mouth and nose to block out the smell. While their surroundings were dark, the faunus girl was likely able to see through it fairly well which she demonstrated by walking closer to the pair. "That sounds like something I want to hear."

"Er… Nevermind. You didn't hear that from me." Ruby shuffled nervously.

"Oh, I won't tell anyone." Blake didn't sound like it, and Ruby leaned suspiciously towards the black-haired girl. "I swear."

"I'm not sure I wanna trust that, since I can't see if you have your fingers crossed or not..."

'Hrgh…' Cinder withdrew a bit further from the group as the two girls derailed from the earlier conversation. She was grateful for that as it gave her a moment to gather her wits- or what was left of them. 'Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! This isn't happening. This can't be happening…'

The fear that she might not be in a state to make any kind of report when she would return to her mother suddenly became a lot more real than it had been a day before, and the written report she had made the day before and recorded in a microfilm hidden inside her choker made the piece of fabric feel like it was quite literally choking her.

The thought about crawling back to her mother as some drooling lobotomite, a horrid shadow of her previous self, only to deposit the microfilm detailing her failure and then perish afterwards made her stomach cramp...

"Right. Cinder? Can you make a light?" Weiss's voice broke her out of her thoughts before she could go too deep into them, which was for the best.

If Cinder was being completely honest with herself, the darkness and the nauseating smell around them didn't exactly help with the way her thoughts were going, so she lifted her hand and called to her Semblance.

A bonfire-like flame burst out of her hand, illuminating the dark… and the light flickered almost instantly as her heart was filled with terror.

Dead Grimm.

The ground, the ruins, all of them were littered with broken, gnawed and mutilated forms of dead Grimm, covering the floor with their blood.

Cinder lifted her hand and saw that the form she had leaned against earlier was a rotting Beowolf, and her hand was covered in its dark-red blood.

Her breathing became far more labored as she recalled a startlingly similar scene that she had witnessed mere days ago. 'It's… It's like when.. that 'thing' ate the Gift… in the vision...'

Her plight went unseen as the other members of the team turned to look at the scene before them, Weiss masking a gag, Ruby shivering and Blake just reaching to tie the cloth covering her mouth tighter.

"I… I'm really glad that Jaune came before us, you know." Blake told them quietly. "If these had been waiting for us…"

"We'd have walked right into a ambush, and died." Weiss finished her teammate's thoughts. The girl was as pale as Cinder was as she realized how deadly their decision to jump down could have been. "R-right, we can worry about that later. We need to find Jaune, and see if he's alright- although I imagine that if he's not amongs the dead in here, then he's going to be big. Really big."

"Like that huge thing from before?" Ruby asked, clearly distressed. "I… didn't like that, but if that means he's okay…"

"It's going to be fine. Just… let's do that thing from before, it helped to get it… uh, taken care of." Weiss glanced at Cinder as she spoke, with Ruby and Blake nodding as they received their orders.

Cinder didn't like the implications of Weiss's speech, but she could only allocate a portion of her mind to feeling disgusted at the thought.

There was something moving- no, slithering within the mass of the dead, and Cinder shivered as her Semblance flickered once more and failed alongside her resolve- like it had failed her once before. 'No, no, no no nonono…'

"Ah. that makes it easy. He's coming to us. Makes sense, he must be able to feel our emotions really well right now." Weiss's voice was calm as she lifted her rapier, but the shaking of the weapon's narrow tip betrayed her inner feelings.

A blood-covered, nightmarish form burst through the rubble and corpses while tearing what looked like a massive scorpion-like Grimm Deathstalker in two.

The creature, far larger than anything with such infernal features should be, looked down upon them with its four red-glowing eyes, lighting the corpses around it with eerie crimson glow.

The bone-white, stained inhuman mask bore a blade-like upwards protruding horn, and the four eyes focused on the group as the creature's butchered kill fell on the pile of its dead kin.

Cinder's vision swam.

"W̸̢͘̕͝R̷̶E͏̢̛͟Į̵́͟I͜͢͡S̡͢͟S̵̶̡S̴̢̡͜͟S̸͏̨͏S̸̢̛͞s̛͡s̵̕͝͠͞s̷̴҉̛s̵̷̕…" A mouth full of forearm-length blood-soaked teeth opened wider than any maw should, and the creature lunged at the group- at Cinder.

Her feet gave and the world went black as her spine felt like it had caught fire, spreading pain through her body like if someone had poured molten metal down her back.

The last thing she heard was her own mouth screaming incoherently at the approaching void.

.

..

…

'It hurts.

It hurts. It hurts. Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Stop. Stop.

The medicine. It didn't help.

It hurt. It hurt.

He ate everything he saw. The food. It helped a little.

It didn't help for long. They stopped him.

His leg hurt.

The medicine was running out, but he ate it, hoping.

It didn't help.

His leg burned. It burneditburneditburned…

They cut it off. It burneditburneditburned…

The burn spread.

It hurt. His back hurt. His stomach hurt.

IT was so hungry. He needed to eat.

One of them tried to stop him. So he ate.

He didn't know what happened.

His leg was back.

He was happy, but it hurt.

It burned. It hurt.

He wanted to keep it.

They cut it off. It was beautiful.

Bone and black flesh.

Black blood and goo.

They cut him. Poked him with tiny bits. It hurt. It made him angry.

He cut them in return. It was only right.

He wasn't hungry anymore. Red blood was sweeter.

It didn't hurt anymore.

The cutters were afraid. He could feel it. THEY could feel it.

The black blood came and rend and tore.

They ate the pieces. He ate the bitter black blood, he had grown hungry again.

He could grow back what he lost. They could not.

They grew ill as they ate. He grew stronger as he ate.

They grew weak. He grew stronger.

They grew hungry as he grew stronger.

T̛́h̢͝e̛̕Y ̛͡W͝e͘R͘͠e̷ h͢Un͡͝͠g͝R͜Y̕ ͟҉̶T̀ò͡ó̴̴o̸̸҉.҉͠.̸.́͢

.

..

...

Cinder woke up with a gasp.

"Ow…" her attempt to get up came to a stop as her spine felt like it had been dipped in molten lead, and left to stir.

She opened her eyes and realized that she couldn't see and couldn't get up as her muscles didn't respond to her will.

The immobility caused a surge of panic to flood her mind as she remembered the moments leading to her loss of consciousness, and she began to spasm and twist instinctively in an attempt to get up and run away from the uncomfortably hard and cold surface she lied on.

Away from the monster in the dark.

"Ah… You're awake. Thank goodness…" a familiar voice came from nearby before a pair of strong hands caught her shoulders and held her still until her uncontrollable spasms went away, leaving just the painful, scorching feeling in her spine. "Cinder? Are you… well, awake?"

"Agh…" her throat felt hoarse from screaming, and a flask of water was brought to her lips.

"Drink, it's just water but…"

"I can take it from here if you want to." a quiet female voice came from nearby.

"Don't worry, I got this." the male voice spoke again. "This… this is my fault, so I should be the one to make it right."

"...Don't hold it against yourself too harshly." the female voice said again, sounding sadder. "We knew that this might happen, but… I don't think Cinder did."

"Yeah, I think it's time to stop with the deceptions. Weiss?"

"...Fine."

'Deceptions?' Cinder thought through the haze of pain and ache. Having something else than the pain to focus on helped her think, helped her focus.

A pair of hands touched her head, and she realized that she had been blindfolded.

"Oww…" the light stung her eyes as she regained her vision with the removal of the cloth.

"Cinder?"

She focused her eyes on Jaune Arc- no, the Knight in his human form, who was leaning over her with a concerned and guilty look in his eyes.

She was too tired and too hurt to stay courteous, and her throat felt like it had been torn from her, smeared in acid and then stuffed back in her. "...Ghr… What."

"Ha…" Jaune shook his head in relief. "At least you're, well, you."

"...What ...do you ...mean?" Cinder ground out. She noticed Weiss looking at her from a bit further away, and the white-haired girl looked a bit worse for wear and her clothes were far dirtier than they had been before Cinder's loss of consciousness, which meant that they had managed to kill the Grimm that had attacked the group, found the Knight and had bent it to the girl's will again.

"W-well… A thing happened." Jaune told Cinder, breaking her from her thoughts.

"...A ...thing." She hissed as speaking hurt. Everything hurt, but she had to focus on something that wasn't the pain. Her Aura was empty again, and her stomach growled, making her feel weak and vulnerable.

She didn't like that.

Jaune hesitated for a while before pointing at her waist.

She followed his eyes… and saw a pair of black-feathered wings folded neatly over her stomach, with the wings apparently coming out of her lower back- out of her spine.

The soaring heat in her spine intensified as she looked at the small wings with wide open eyes.

She felt something twitch in her spine and one of the wings twitched in response.

Cinder let out a sound that was something between a shriek and gasp before falling unconscious from the pain and the shock.

…

"Uh… I think I should have kept the blindfold on." Jaune said as he fiddled with the piece of cloth nervously in front of the unconscious woman.

"You don't say." Weiss sighed. "Dammit… why did that happen? Just how?"

"I don't know…" Jaune said somewhat unconvincingly, and flinched as Blake glared at him from the side. 'Oh. Oops, I did it again.' "I mean, I have an idea but nothing concrete."

"And that is?"

"I… I can't tell. It was something I promised to Cinder." Jaune said, flinching again as Weiss glared at him in turn. "I mean, it's not my secret to keep, its hers."

"Is she similar to you?" Weiss asked as Ruby walked close to Cinder who had started to twitch and shiver again as her consciousness had fled her, and helped Jaune to wipe her sweating face and neck with a somewhat clean piece of cloth.

"I don't think so, even if it would explain why she feels so… familiar. But something must have happened that made her this way." Jaune told them honestly. "And… I'm sorry that I went berserk."

"It's alright. Like Blake said, I doubt it was because you wanted to go berserk." Weiss shrugged her shoulders. She looked incredibly annoyed, but oddly enough she didn't seem angry at him. If he guessed her mood right, the anger was directed at someone else entirely but he couldn't tell who had irked her so.

Well, he didn't envy whoever it was.

Jaune looked at their surroundings and sighed. 'Well, I guess we were heading here anyway but… Not exactly like this'

The team's three conscious members had once again subdued his berserk form, with Ruby using her eyes to hold him still while Blake and Weiss quite literally slapped some sense back to him.

It seemed that the larger he grew, the stronger Ruby's eyes effect was on him, effectively nullifying the Shadow's power and also making him incredibly uncomfortable in her presence while the inner devil was retreating to its lair in his head, oddly enough seeming somewhat content after its rampage and Jaune could swear it had been almost docile for few hours afterwards before its whispers returned, stronger than they had been for months.

The time after the 'battle' had been spent trying to look for a temporary shelter while the Glenn's Grimm population was still recovering from its encounter with Jaune's altered form- although luckily the travel hadn't been too difficult since Jaune had been used as sort-of pack mule, a massive, now almost twelve-feet tall, monstrous, and heavily armored pack mule as the girls had mounted on his back and helped him tie Cinder to him with few thick tentacles that had grown from underneath the chitin-like bone plates on his hunched back. The fact that the woman had been screaming ever since the moment the 'fight' against his team had started and had continued as a horrible gurgle after the woman's voice had given had not helped the travel, so the girls had gagged the woman with a piece of cloth both to protect her, and to keep them from causing more ruckus than they were already causing in the silent city.

He had done his best to move and remain conscious while Ruby had been literally sitting on top of his elongated head and looking down at his eyes to keep him under control during their travel to find a temporary shelter.

The girl had hopped to his back after he had accidentally crashed to few buildings both because he hadn't been able to see past her and because of the fight against the odd freezing sensation had taken his concentration away from where they had been going.

Eventually they had spotted a relatively intact-looking housing unit comfortably far away from the earlier battlefield, and the girls had unloaded Cinder from him while removing her gag.

As Jaune had 'disembarked' from his other form few blocks away and the left the large shell of his Grimm form to sizzle and rot, the girls had discovered that Cinder's clothes were bulging oddly and they had found that her lower back had started to grow extremely odd stumps.

She had been stripped by the girls (but not before herding Jaune into a closet to preserve Cinder's modesty) and her clothes had been modified so they allowed the stumps to grow out. Ruby had wondered if they should try to cut them off or do something to them, but Weiss and Jaune had overruled her as attempting bootleg surgery with the items and knowledge available to them would likely end up doing more harm than good.

During the next few hours those stumps had grown into a pair of small wings that came from her lower back, each as long as her arm and covered in black feathers not unlike those on a crow-like Nevermore. Ruby had poked at them with her finger and pulled one of the feathers, which had detached and shown to have quite hard, sharp and hollow core, again much like how Nevermore's wings operated as both as means of flight and ranged attack.

Since they were somewhat rooted in place waiting for Cinder to stabilize and regain consciousness, they had started to loot the houses nearby for usable items to improve their shelter. Blake had found few dining chairs while Jaune had torn apart some of the broken wooden furniture so they could start a fire and light their surroundings. The cloth on most of the furniture, curtains and closets had been largely eaten away by bugs, and after Ruby had discovered a hand-sized spider in the stuffings of a what had once been a comfy leather chair, the simple wooden chairs or the flood had become the preferred mean of resting one's legs.

The ominous feeling Jaune had felt above the ground was ever stronger, and it seemed that the Shadow was feeling it too as its attention started to gradually shift outwards rather than into making him do something he didn't want.

"Well… Cinder's unconscious again so should we uh… wait for Qrow here or try to do something?" Jaune asked as the silence stretched in the small abandoned house. Blake had apparently prepared ahead as she still had her book handy and had been forced to shoo Ruby off whenever the smaller girl had started to peek over the black-haired girl's shoulder to read as well.

Weiss was walking in circles in the middle of the room, and Jaune could swear that she'd dig a trench on the floor with her heels if her strut was any indication. It seemed that she was deep in thought and wasn't really registering what she was doing, which was likely also the reason for her odd walking style. It made Jaune feel slightly bad for the girl since he could guess what kind of life Weiss would have lived before Beacon if strut had become unconscious walking style- extremely controlled one.

He broke off his thoughts as he realized that he had been staring at her when Weiss lifted an eyebrow at him. "S-sorry."

The girl huffed and resumed her walk.

'Well… we're stuck.' Jaune thought as he turned to clean sweat off Cinder's temple with his cloth wipe, ignoring the fever-like mumbling that escaped her mouth as a result. He heard one of the words that came out of her mouth, and it made him instantly more depressed than before. 'Cinder's muttering about her mother… Gah, I can't get depressed now or I'll go on another rampage. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts...'

It seemed that his inner plight was answered as Ruby flopped on his lap and looked up at him. "Booooreeeeed."

"Heh… thanks, Ruby." Jaune reached to stroke the girl's hair. "I needed that."

"What, me saying I'm bored?" Ruby blinked. "Wait, oh. You were talking about my eyes, right?"

"Y-yeah, but this is nice too." Jaune tried to salvage the situation as he pat her stomach, causing the girl to squirm a little. 'I mean, it'd sound bad if I just told that I wanted her to... g̨o͢ ͘awa̧ý̀... look at me… It'd make it sound like I was just keeping her around for her eyes...'

"I-is… well, you know, it, fighting against you?" Ruby focused her attention solely on his eyes, but she didn't seem offended by his choice of words.

"Yeah… The Shadow's kind of… well, erratic would be the closest thing to say." Jaune sighed. '...Haah… it's nice to be a bit more free with my words. I suspect Blake would have taken offense already.'

He paused to blink off the mental image. 'Blake isn't like that though, not really. Or not entirely. Is the Shadow making me more negative as well? That isn't good...' "It wasn't this bad back in Beacon. The Shadow, I mean."

"Huh." Ruby tilted her head. "What changed?"

"Well, the atmosphere is pretty oppressive here, for some reason, and Cinder's feeling really bad at the moment, which doesn't help, and… I'm not sure what else is there." Jaune shrugged.

"Could it be because of what happened just now? You know, you running off and all? You ate a lot of Grimm flesh." Ruby asked curiously and it seemed that Blake was listening to the conversation as well since one of her cat-ears had turned to their direction. "Also, we didn't ask earlier since we didn't really get a chance, but what happened that caused you to go berserk?"

"I can't believe I forgot to ask about that." Weiss said as she stopped as well and turned towards Jaune. "I was too busy trying to murder our observer with my thoughts, so it slipped my mind. What happened earlier?"

"Uh, why were you trying to murder uncle Qrow with your thoughts?"

"Ruby, he got so drunk he literally wouldn't wake up after I shook him around and slapped his cheek lightly."

"Weiss, you almost broke his neck like, six times…" Ruby complained.

"Lightly, I said."

"Right…" Ruby pouted at Weiss before blinking as she seemed to recover from her momentary loss of focus. "Anyway, Cinder said earlier that your berserk streak was because of something relating to your uh, lost sisters?"

Jaune felt his blood starting to boil again as the bandit queen's hateful words returned to his head, but this time he took hold of Ruby's cheek and turned her to look at him. It seemed that Ruby got the clue and focused her attention to him fully, allowing him to remain in control while he processed what he'd learned.

"I… I got some information about my sister's condition- those that were captured during the raid on Shion. They are alive." Jaune told them quietly.

"They're alive? That's wonderful!" Ruby cheered and Blake smiled slightly while Weiss just nodded, urging him to go on- as Weiss no doubt realizing that the story wasn't over yet.

"Raven Branwen had them raped and tortured, and then bent to her will." he ground out as he got himself under control again.

The cheerful mood Ruby and Blake had gained disappeared with a 'thud' Jaune could not hear, but feel in his very soul as the negative emotions brought forward by the news caused his ability to sense emotions to go haywire.

It seemed that the news affected Ruby the hardest as she paled so much her face resembled the colour of Weiss's hair and she began to shake while tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

Blake just tightened her hold on her book while her expression hardened, but the sudden surge of hatred from the girl took Jaune by a surprise in its intensity.

Weiss's face twisted, and she turned away from the group to mask her reaction from them- but if the emotions from her were any indication, the girl was both extremely disgusted and appalled.

'Wait, come to think of it, have I told Weiss about my lost sisters?' Jaune blinked "Uh, Weiss, there's something I need to tell you…"

"Uh… I told her about them… Your lost family and sisters." Blake said quietly while hiding herself behind her book. "I'm sorry…"

"Ah, good." Jaune sighed, causing Blake to relax. "I'm sorry I didn't tell about that to you in person, but two years go during raid on Shion, I was separated from three of my sisters, Sapphire, Coral and Jade, who were caught…"

"...By the bandits that attacked your village." Weiss finished his speech. "I understand if you didn't feel like telling me that in person. We all have our own private…"

"No, it's alright. Besides, Blake told you anyway so it doesn't matter." Jaune waved her concerns off. "I don't mind. You didn't do it out of malice either, right Blake?"

"I… wanted to see if Weiss had ideas to help you with it…" Blake muttered quietly. "I haven't told anyone else."

"Anyway, Cinder found out… uh, through her methods what Raven Branwen did to my sisters, and told me what she found." Jaune said while stroking Ruby's cheek as she seemed to be on the verge of crying. 'I… I don't think I should tell them just where Cinder found that info in, though. Not before I ask her about it. I'm not sure if Ruby could keep the secret either- that Cinder had broken into Qrow's Scroll, or that Qrow was withholding information he promised to obtain. The worst case scenario would be Ruby confronting Qrow and him figuring out that Cinder had accessed his Scroll, and then she'd be arrested… or worse, if Cinder's story about her lost loved one is any indication.'

"...What are you planning on doing with that information?" Weiss asked carefully.

"I don't know where exactly Raven is in Mistral." Jaune confessed. "I planned to ask for Cinder if she had any leads, but… well. This thing happened." He waved at the shivering and sweating unconscious woman.

"And if you found where this Raven is?"

"I'd… What I would want to say is go out and save my sisters, but I'm not sure if I'm strong enough. I told Ozpin of my plans, and he said that Raven is far stronger than me and me attempting to confront her would lead to my death." Jaune sighed. He wanted to howl his sorrow out, and the feeling of powerlessness turned to foreign rage in an instant as the Shadow realized his mood, realized that it had a chance to contest his control again.

Ruby reached to turn his face towards her, and the rage froze in his mind as her eyes met his. He felt as a tear fell down his cheek and onto Ruby's face. "I just… I just don't know what to do to get them back."

"And the headmaster? Can't he help?" Weiss asked quietly as Blake put her book aside and came to rest her hand on his shoulder.

"I promised that I'd stay in Beacon and train to become a hunter, and he promised that he'd find what happened to my sisters. He sent Qrow to search for them. But... " Jaune paused. 'I can't tell about Qrow's Scroll yet… I'm sorry… "I… I don't think he held onto that promise as much as he told me he would. Qrow is Raven's brother..."

"How did Cinder find out about the sisters then?" Weiss tapped her feet. "Surely if Raven is so well hidden then Cinder couldn't have just… I don't know, stumbled upon them?"

"That's not my secret to keep. I'll have to ask Cinder if she's willing to talk about that, but let's say that Ozpin… he isn't as honorable and trustworthy as I thought." Jaune said, ignoring the look Ruby sent him.

"But… Dad says Ozpin is practically the leader of the Hunters, you know, the good side. Uncle Qrow believes in Ozpin too…"

"I…"

"You should make your own decisions, Ruby." Weiss crossed her arms and sent Ruby a scolding look. "I believe we've talked about this before."

"Right… I'm sure this is just be a misunderstanding though." Ruby said, clearly not as convinced as she could be.

"Regardless, we'll have more time to talk about this, and I want us to talk about this in full with miss Fall present and conscious once we return to Beacon." Weiss clapped her hands together. "I know that the situation of your sisters is tragic, but we need to focus on completing the mission at hand first before we focus on our future actions."

"So what should we do?" Jaune asked as he realized that Weiss was right, and he pushed the painful memories to the background of his head. 'It's coward's way out, but not thinking about it helps with the sadness and hurt, even if for a moment… But Weiss is right, we have to get out of here first.'

"If miss Fall won't wake up soon, we might have to repeat what happened earlier and have Jaune transport us towards the metro station while scouting the area. We'll use the metro's connection with the surface to get up, and afterwards we'll meet up with Qrow, if he has woken up, and see if we can secure a ride out of Glenn." Weiss told them while pacing back and forth. "I think Jaune took out a sizeable part of the Grimm population nearby, so I believe our mission has been completed successfully anyway."

"Alright… I'll see if there's anything nearby" Jaune nodded and he stood up. He reached to the presence in his head, and brought forth the heat of his Semblance to focus his radar outwards.

The surroundings were quiet, almost serene if not for the odd, violent and painful emotions coming from the direction of the metro station "It's odd… Huh."

A small hand was shaking his shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see Ruby shaking his hand. "J-Jaune?"

He blinked before realizing that his nose had started to bleed profusely. "Oh."

"What happened?" Weiss asked as Blake tore a strip from a pile of old cloth they had gathered as firestarter and wiping cloth for cinder, and the black-haired girl offered the cloth to Jaune so he could wipe his face after his Semblance recovered and fixed the bleeding.

"There's something… odd in the direction of the metro. Do you remember when I told that something was off in here, back when we were still on the surface?" Jaune said as he wiped his face, feeling somehow light-headed.

Weiss nodded, and Jaune continued. "It's coming from the metro station. I haven't felt anything like that before- I don't think it's human, or Grimm."

"We'll have to tread carefully then." Weiss nodded. "We'll move in a hour."

"...By the way, Weiss?" Blake seemed to notice something.

"Yeah?" The white-haired girl turned towards her.

"Did Cinder just repeat what you did when you met with Jaune's tyrant form the first time?"

"What, scream and pass out?" Jaune asked, before realizing his mistake as Weiss turned bright red and started to glare daggers at him.

---

"So. Are you ready?" A white-clad man asked while taking off his hat and letting his bright orange hair spring free. "It's showtime soon."

He was sitting on a luxurious, soft leather chair while a short woman was sitting on his chair's armrest and eating her newest favorite dessert from a ice cream bowl.

Neo nodded to Roman while placing the bowl on top of his head and picking up her Scroll to show a picture she'd taken. The picture showed what looked like the interior of a metro compartment, with a mirror hung on a wall and windows polished to a mirror-like cleanliness. "..."

"You have a entry point. Good." Roman nodded while checking his own Scroll. Neo picked up the bowl that Roman had been balancing on his head, and continued eating the ice-cream- which to her horror had started to melt from the heat of the man's forehead.

"The orders from Cinder haven't changed, except that she sent me a message that she'd be in Glenn during the operation. The White Fang in Glenn is supposed to send a metro towards Vale, blow the seal holding the metro tunnel between Glenn and Vale closed, and have the Grimm come flooding into the city. I am supposed to stand against the Grimm tide with few White Fang supporters, beat few of the Grimm back… and then get arrested by Ironwood, making the entirety of Remnant think of Atlas as the villains who would let Grimm run rampant in a city and arrest her defenders."

"..." Neo lifted her eyebrow at him as she tried to salvage her poor ice cream.

"Cinder has been suffering from poor health recently, if my 'contacts' amongst the students of Beacon are to be trusted, and Cinder has departed to a 'mission' in Glenn, which I guess is her checking up on the two other brats and the White Fang before the metro-bomb leaves." Roman continued, reaching to pat Neo's thigh. "This is where you come in. You can teleport to place where a mirror that has reflected you as long as that reflection is in place, so you can enter the metro since you have been in that base once before during a Dust haul… and you know how to start and stop the metro."

Neo nodded while looking bored, as he had gone through the plan three times already."I'll hazard a guess that Cinder, being the control freak she is, is going to want to check up on the bombs while she's there… that's your chance to start the metro and set it to stop before it hits the Glenn-Vale barrier."

Neo nodded.

"Now, once that woman is aboard the metro, I want you to use the metro's controls to set the carriages under lockdown, and send the metro on its way- that means by the time Cinder and co. break out of the carriage, the metro is already half-way to Vale, chased by an army of Grimm, and the carriage is set to blow since the final explosives will trigger once the metro comes to a halt." Roman finished. "She's trapped with no way out. What a shame if our one-sidedly profitable relationship with her ended so abruptly."

Neo smiled vindictively, and Roman reached to pull a cigar from his pocket. "And if that fails to kill her, then she will blame White Fang for the betrayal, since you'll leave no evidence of your interference and the Fang were responsible for setting the whole thing up in the first place- win-win for us."

"...?" Neo thought about something for a while, before reaching to make a bun-lookalike on top of her head and lifting four fingers up.

"Cindy's new team? Don't care. Either they miss the tram or die alongside her in it." Roman shrugged. "If I guess correctly they aren't on Cinder's little plot yet, so chances are that Cindy will try to sneak away from the team alone and meet up with the emo brat and the sycophant girl anyway. Assuming the emo brat is still alive." he added after Neo pat her shin and then made cuttion motion over her throat.

She shrugged once more before seeming to realize something and she lifted her hair in a bun once again, and pointed her other hand in commanding way.

"The Schnee brat. Good thinking. If she's in the metro when it leaves then she will be able to take command of the Grimm that'd push Cinder into a corner." Roman nodded. "Do you think you can ambush and kill or at least severely wound the Schnee girl? If you disguise yourself as one of the White Fang then even if Cinder notices you do it, she won't know it was you who did it."

Neo thought for a while before nodded in a somewhat reserved manner, which told him that she'd keep an eye out for the chance but won't commit if there's a chance she'd get revealed.

"...Come to think of it, what did you give to the emo kid as anti-infection medicine?" Roman added after a while, and Neo showed her Scroll to him. "Pain-inducing tablets as inflammation meds and coloured salt water as disinfectant? You really are a sadist…"

Neo smiled and pat his head cheerfully before picking up a White Fang mask from Roman's desk and putting it on.

Before long the woman, now looking like a fox-eared girl with deep brunette hair and fairly modest profile, left the room.

'Thought you could control me and turn me into some sort of boy scout mascot, did you Cindy…' Roman smirked. 'We'll see. Oh, we'll see.'

Next chapter: Soon-ish(tm)

Review-a-day keeps the doctor away.

No but seriously, I like to read outside thoughts as well, since mine might not always work as well as they should.

Split chapter once again since the Glenn is going to be around 40k words, which is a bit steep for one chapter.

I recently read through the last few chapters again and noticed that the 'sorta-nothing-except-Weiss-angst' got stretched too long and repeated itself too much, which was a result of me practically ctrl+c ctrl+v'ing the 'Roman and paladin' part to just before Glenn, which was originally planned to happen after Glenn, and it caused a lot of material which was supposed to be only used once to repeat itself multiple times. I might look into editing and cutting those chapters a bit in the future, since I'm going to have more time to dedicate to the story as the summer is over, and I go back to ~8 hour workdays.