One hour later - Mistral Swamplands – Ruins of Mistral Trade Route City – Week 19, The Vytal Festival begins in 14 days

The loud, staccato reportof Crescent Rose startled me enough to stop me in my tracks. Clumsily, my feet slammed down on the cracked pavement and arrested my forward momentum; the abrupt stop nearly put me on my back when the soles of my boots found some loose rubble on the ground.

Annoying, but in the darkness of the night, I could not see well enough to avoid that rubble. Remnant's moon was far too dim for that and the abandoned city's street lights had long since gone out.

Next to me, I heard Yang stop just as suddenly and loudly as I did. Weiss continued on for another few strides but, once the girl realized neither myself nor our blonde teammate were at her side, halted her momentum with one, single graceful twirl.

What I could see of her expression told me that the white haired girl did not recognize the sound of the gun. Her tired eyes were warily glancing toward the darkened ruins that surrounded us and her slumped shoulders struggled to lift themselves under their own weight.

A frown touched my face. Team RWEBY needed to find sanctuary, whether in these ruins or elsewhere.

And fast.

We desperately needed a place where we could let down our guard. Where we could relax and recuperate. Where we did not need to worry about every single shadow in every single doorway or window that we passed. Where we did not need to keep a wary eye out for any Grimm that snarled or howled or roared during the night. We needed peace of mind, and badly.

Yang releasing a quiet breath at my side drew me from my thoughts and I turned to give her my full attention.

"Did you hear what I heard?" She asked, her eyes wider than normal. The blonde was bouncing from foot to foot and her hair shook vigorously with the movement.

"Gunfire," Weiss agreed, her tone flat. "We do not know who-"

"Of course we do!"

"Don't start," I snapped, eyeing my teammates. Weiss' eyes had narrowed and Yang's lips were turned down into a frown. "We're all tired. We all need food. We all need a peaceful night's sleep. Don't start this now."

They turned away from each other-

Boom!

Weiss jumped, her expression loosening for the briefest of moments into one of intense fear, before she managed to reign herself in. The public face reformed, slower and less complete than it normally was – I could make out her widened eyes even in the shadowy illumination – but it reformed nonetheless.

'She'll be alright,' I decided. 'Still, we need to rest. And soon.'

I tossed a glance at Yang, finding the blonde girl staring back at me.

"We need to go," she insisted, glancing in the direction of the gunfire.

I nodded, once, wondering for a moment when Weiss and Yang had decided to begin deferring to me. Around the time of their fight, perhaps?

No matter. There were bigger – and louder – things to worry about now. My teammates' disagreements could be dealt with at a later time, once we figured out why my leader's weapon was in Liar's Landing.

And it was in Liar's Landing.

Crescent Rose was loud. It was bold. And I recognized its thundering report easily.

"Watch this!" Ruby crowed, heaving the bulky sniper rifle up onto her shoulder. The gun looked even larger against her stick-thin body than it did on the workbench. She was barely thirteen years old and I sincerely doubted she could withstand that gigantic weapon's recoil.

And she wanted to add a scythe to the thing? Perhaps Beacon Academy favored students with overly large, obnoxious weapons?

A scoff very nearly escaped me – just another reason to avoid the place.

"Be careful," I said at length instead, leaning against a tree outside Signal Academy's campus. I adjusted Aegis' bracer with my free hand – it was digging into the skin around my elbow again. "Brace yourself against-"

"Psh," Yang scoffed, crossing her arms under her burgeoning chest. On her wrists, tiny yellow bands rested. "She'll be fine!"

I frowned. "That's a big-"

Boom!

I jumped and Yang twitched even as we both heard Ruby hit the dirt. Hard. The blonde immediately rushed by me to go to her sister but, unlike the blonde, I was unlucky enough to be within ten feet of the weapon when it fired.

My ears were ringing and my heart was pounding and my breath came to me in short gasps.

"That was…," I started, swallowing as my ears popped. I looked down at Ruby and Yang. I sought out the younger girl's eyes and found the grey pupils easily. "That is a sound I will never forget."

And the girl grinned. "Good! A hero needs a weapon that everyone recognizes! And everyone will remember-"

"Crescent Rose," Yang stated with a certainty that I felt myself. "That was Crescent Rose. We- It's here!"

My mind began to spin even as my surprise faded. I knew my leader's weapon just as well as her own sister did and that was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, Crescent Rose's report.

But that begged the question: why was it here? And just how did it get to Liar's Landing?

'The airship,' my mind realized. 'A trap- No.'

Before that airship arrived, Crescent Rose could not have been here. It was at Beacon with the rest of our weapons when we left for the Schnee Gala and, barring any sort of impossible, precognitive event, no one could have known that Team RWEBY would end up in Liar's Landing before we actually did.

'And despite what Yang has fervently tried to convince Sjev, fortune tellers do not have any sort of precognitive ability.' A pause. 'Nor do they care where we land.'

The only other explanation, then, was the airship.

'The only other explanation that you know of,' my mind needled. But I pushed those thoughts from my head – worrying about unknown variables was an exercise in futility.

Instead, I focused upon what I did know:

'That airship came from, or at least visited, Beacon Academy.'

My eyes narrowed even as Yang turned to assure Weiss that it was, in fact, Crescent Rose and not just some other 'obnoxiously loud rifle' we had just heard.

The blonde's voice was a tad bit condescending – something I was certain that Weiss would pick up on – and hearing Yang speak in such a way startled me. For as long as I had known her, she was all sunshine and smiles. She had her moments of frustration, of anger, and I myself had managed to cause my own fair share of those moments… but they always passed quickly. She always returned to her previous, almost bubbly self within a few short hours.

But this was different.

Gone was the girl that I remembered from our martial arts classes, the one that would sit with me every session with a conversation on her mind and words on her lips despite all of my protests. Gone was the girl that I could poke fun at without worrying about hurting her feelings.

She was not here and I did not like that. I did not like that one, single bit.

Were I honest with myself, I blamed Weiss more than I did Yang for the fight simply because of how much the blonde's behavior was affected. On the flip side, the white haired girl's demeanor was left largely unchanged.

'The airship,' I reminded myself, only then realizing the scowl on my face for what it was. 'Bigger problems. Worry over Yang later.'

Anyone who hunted Team RWEBY for a bounty would not have a reason to bring our weapons to us, and that was assuming they could get permission from Ozpin to remove them from Beacon in the first place. They would not know that Yang and I could recognize Crescent Rose by her very sound alone. They would not know they could use that as bait for us. They would not know that firing that weapon into the air would draw Team RWEBY to them like moths to a flame.

No, these were no bounty hunters. Too many coincidences, too much airship did not carry people who wished to lure us into a trap. It did not carry people of whom Headmaster Ozpin did not approve. The only way they could have gotten Crescent Rose was by receiving that man's approval and unless the man had decided to betray us, he would only give his approval to those willing to help us.

"They're friends," I said abruptly, silencing Yang in the middle of her sentence. Both she and Weiss turned to look at me but it was the latter that spoke.

"How can you know that?" The white haired girl asked, a biting edge to her voice that I recognized as her frustration. "I may not be able to place the sound, but I think it reasonable to assume that Ruby would know what her weapon sounds like. If she is using it on the people in the airship…"

An uneasy grumble escaped my throat. She brought up a valid point but one that I already considered – anyone on that airship would have to go through Ozpin to get those weapons and Beacon Academy's headmaster would not let hostiles come after us.

An explanation would take time, though. Time that we might not have.

After all, I was absolutely certain that Crescent Rose was brought in on that airship by a friendly party. A friendly party that – like those theoretical hostiles – could not know how three-fifths of team RWEBY could place Crescent Rose's sound instinctively. It followed then that Ruby would have been the one to fire it.

Because she did know that Yang and I would recognize it.

…Or because she needed to use it. To fight off the Grimm that were likely drawn by the noise of the airship.

'They are being attacked.'

"Trust me," I pleaded. "I do not know who brought Crescent Rose here, but I know that they are friendly."

The girl hesitated for a brief moment but in the face of both my own and Yang's insistence, she relented.

"Very well," she said after a long pause. "If the two of you are certain that a single gunshot means Crescent Rose is in the city… Let us go and see these friends."

Yang launched herself down the nearest abandoned street without any hesitation, toward the direction we heard Crescent Rose. She was never one to think through her actions, not where her sister or her friends were concerned. That she would lead the charge was expected.

Welcomed, even.

Aside from myself, Yang was easily the most durable member of Team RWEBY. In fact, without Ultimatum to protect myself, she could probably give me a run for my money, perhaps even outlast me. She had more raw Aura than I did and even though mine was generally more resilient, I was not quite certain who would take more punishment before keeling over. Add to that the fact that her Semblance made her incredibly dangerous the more at a disadvantage she was and she might just be able to take more damage than I could.

Of course, that was not counting my blood Aura.

The purple energy was ludicrously strong and capable of things that I never could have even imagined in my wildest dreams. Containing this wrech, for one. I was eager to test it out, to see just how much force it could withstand compared to my normal, blue Aura, but that could wait.

For now, we needed to figure out who brought Crescent Rose into the ruins of Mistral Trade Route City. Into Liar's Landing.

And, if my hunch was correct, how Ruby came to possess her weapon again.

I turned to follow Yang even as Weiss moved to do the same thing beside me. My blonde partner was almost too far ahead of us to see, now, due to the lack of street lights to illuminate the ruined streets. The all-encompassing darkness caught me off guard when I first experienced it, back in our first day in the ruins, when Qrow kept us in that safe house. It was completely and utterly opaque. Solid in a way that I did not know darkness could be.

Ruined buildings flashed by, each of them filled with darkened alcoves and long shadows. The husks of vehicles jumped out at me from beyond my vision's limits as I came upon them, each one serving as a new hiding place for enemies to rest. Even new streets surprised me – I could not see intersections until I actually entered them.

Boom!

Gooseflesh immediately ran up my arms and I pushed my thoughts from my mind, focusing instead on the situation at hand. The lack of light at night would have to be the very first thing we attacked once Team RWEBY had a base but for now there were more important things for me to worry over.

Like who, exactly, was on that airship.

'Taiyang?' I wondered. 'It can't be Qrow, he's already here. A team from Beacon? CFVY? No. No… Adel hates my guts far too much to stick her neck out for Team RWEBY.'

Buildings rushed by us in a blur. Yang was still pumping her legs hard in front of Weiss and I but with my Aura-enhanced leaps and the former heiress' glyphs, we were both gaining on her easily.

'Ironwood? He and Ozpin appeared to be allies… But Schnee may as well control Atlas entirely and thereby might just control Ironwood. Or at least be able to exert enough influence to shoehorn the man into doing what he wants. He would not allow our weapons to be delivered to us.'

A glyph appeared under Yang's feet and a momentary feeling of relief flooded me at the sight. I knew Weiss and the blonde were still at odds after their fight but at the very least, they were able to cooperate when it mattered. That was all I could ask of them for the time being.

'It couldn't have been Ozpin or Goodwitch or any one of the other professors. Their absence would not have gone unnoticed and pissing Schnee off before the tournament would not be wise… It must have been a team then.'

But who? The only teams I could think of that would be willing to aid us were Teams JYDE and perhaps Team CRDL. Though that last one was a stretch… I was, at best, a useful acquaintance to the mean-spirited leader. Quite frankly, that was the way I preferred it.

'Unless Sjev and UHNS… No. She doesn't lead her team and Kristall has no drive whatsoever. He wouldn't have cared one whit if we disappeared.'

It was possible that Ozpin might have assigned an unknown team to a mission here… But how would he explain wanting them to take the weapons of a shamed team with them? What reason could he give them? And even further, how would he even begin to convince said theoretical team to hand those weapons over to us?

We were, after all, guilty of attempted mass murder as far as the world was concerned.

"It's Team JYDE," I said aloud. "The airship came from Beacon. Ozpin needed a team willing to aid us. Team JYDE is in the ruins!"

Yang scoffed even as she kept up sprinting headlong down the abandoned street, dodging collapsed walls and ruined vehicles as she did so. As she vaulted over one van in particular that looked as though it had its entire front end torn off, she glanced back at me. "Looks like your gambit paid off then, huh?"

"Indeed," I muttered, recalling the conversation I had with the very same team. The one wherein I offered them joint training sessions. It had been a spur of the moment decision, one that carried with it little risk for Team RWEBY and a great potential for reward. "It looks like it has."

They received training with the best first year team at Beacon Academy. In return, we received an ally.

An ally willing to shirk the law for us.

"Indeed it has."


Five minutes later - Mistral Swamplands – Ruins of Mistral Trade Route City – Week 19, The Vytal Festival begins in 14 days

Weiss stopped abruptly in front of me.

I grunted, surprised, and slammed my feet down onto the darkened pavement. A shriek of metal reached my ears then and I suddenly found myself on my back, the street sign I landed on flying further down the road and clanging metallically off a ruined building somewhere in the darkness ahead. My elbows hit the cracked, ruined pavement first and the shock of the fall reverberated powerfully up my spine, leaving me dazed and on my back.

A face appeared over me. The fact that I could actually see the face – Weiss' – and recognize her features led me to realize that there was light nearby.

"Sorry," the white haired girl said shortly, offering me her hand. I accepted the gesture and came back to my feet even as Yang took off down the street the former heiress had stopped at.

"No worries," I responded just as shortly, eyeing her face for a moment. Her eyes were just a little wider than normal so I offered her a grin. "My wounds are all healed up – no more burns to worry about, the Grimm like that, yanno?"

She quirked her lips upward at that and nodded her head, once. "Come," she said, glancing toward the end of the street. "I can see light ahead."

Indeed, there was light over a pile of rubble at the end of the street. What once was the façade of a large building blocked my view of an open-aired courtyard beyond it. Shouts echoed up the street and reached my ears from behind the barrier. Yelling. Roaring. Growling.

Boom!

And Crescent Rose.

Weiss took off down the street, gliding forward in that graceful manner of hers. The glyphs she used to power the motion invisible to the naked eye due to the familiarity in which she moved.

She quickly outpaced me.

The rubble blocking my view of the courtyard was perhaps three blocks ahead of me and Yang was just reaching it now. The sounds of fighting that echoed from beyond it were loud. Compared to the utter silence that suffocated the rest of Liar's Landing, the sounds of battle were jarring in their dissimilarities.

Weiss hopped into the air and landed upon another glyph just in front of the rubble. Her entire body coiled, folding in on itself in a way that reminded me just how petite she was, and she launched herself a good distance into the clearing beyond. It would have to be a large expanse if an airship landed-

A growl burst from the confines of a dilapidated storefront to my right.

The hair on the back of my neck rose and muscles coiled. My feet arrested my momentum immediately and I twisted reflexively to face the shop, my arms up in front of my torso.

The entire motion took me only a split second to execute, powered by battle-learned habit as it was.

But there was nothing there.

I saw a brick façade with shattered windows. The sidewalk in front of it was pocked and cracked and ruined and a sign advertising the sale of dust hung limply above the empty doorway. Beyond that doorway lay only shadowy darkness, too obscuring for me to make out even the shapes of counters and shelves.

A snort escaped me and I turned back to the clearing, only then noticing that Weiss and Yang were nowhere to be-

My eyes widened and I whipped back around to the storefront just in time to see something big move inside of it.

'Ambush!' my mind howled.

I sucked in a breath to yell, to alert my team, to try and shout over the sounds of battle a mere block away.

The darkness moved, yielding to the form of a Beowolf. The shadows slid away from its white-armored bulk and its red markings were revealed one by one as it slunk out from behind what must have been a counter of some kind.

My mouth opened and I yelled wordlessly at the very same moment the damnable Beowolf, my very own watcher-Grimm, howled.

My voice – so much smaller, so very insignificant in the face of this monster's own – was drowned out effortlessly.

Instead, the night only heard the blood-curdling howl of a twelve foot abomination.

And then, it reached me.

Its paw came swinging at my head and I ducked under the telegraphed move easily. Battle-honed reflexes allowed me a quick step forward and suddenly, I was inches from its torso. Without any hesitation, I drove my shoulder into its midsection, Aura powering my charge.

It snarled when it was forced backward and its paws grasped at me, missing my skin by mere inches and tearing into my shirt instead. The garment was torn to ribbons as I retreated. The beast wasted no time in flinging the useless piece of clothing away and with another snarl, it lunged at me-

I rolled away from the reckless attack, farther down the street, and returned to my feet a brief moment later. The Watcher was between me and the clearing now.

'Smart bastard,' I admitted, bringing my arms up again even as a scowl took its place on my lips.

It howled again and the bloodcurdling sound, ear-ringing loud as it was, was still hard to hear amidst the cacophony behind it.

I tensed when it lunged again, my foot finding a piece of rubble the size of my head on the ground. I launched it forward and sent the piece of stone flying at the beast. My makeshift projectile hit with enough force to knock the thing off balance.

A wide grin on my lips now, I threw myself forward with an Aura-enhanced leap, passed the Grimm's flailing claws and snarling teeth and-

The Grimm haphazardly tossed its body at me as I was about to clear it and all of its weight impacted my side. My breath was forced from my lungs and I was sent sprawling toward the side of the street. My shoulder broke my fall and a hiss escaped me when the bare skin there met pavement with enough force to render even my Aura useless.

Still, I pushed myself to my feet just as the Beowolf regained its own.

A Beowolf smart enough to utilize non-lethal attacks to simply keep its prey contained, no less. Never before had I seen a Grimm able to strategize at this level.

"I haven't given you enough credit, Watcher," I muttered, eyeing the beast as it carefully found its footing a little farther down the street. Still, it was careful to place itself between me and the clearing beyond it.

It had little patience for words – or my attempts to stall – for it lunged at me, again.

And this time, it held its claws closer to its body, instead of splaying them out at its sides.

That meant no more kicking rocks.

A short bark of laughter escaped me even as I yielded to the bigger creature, hopping backward when it landed on all fours in front of me. Aura exploded from my legs shortly thereafter and I propelled myself up to the second story of the building at our sides.

Fighting the Watcher without Ultimatum was an uphill battle, after all.

And time was most assuredly on my side.

I landed in a hallway through a half collapsed wall, shards of glass and ruined stone crunching under my boots. Without pause, Iturned to my right, toward the clearing. Toward the light and my team and Ultimatum.

My legs pounded on the floor and adrenaline flooded me as I flew forward down the darkened hallway. A small window – worryingly small, in fact - passed by on my right and I heard the Beowolf down in the street snarling still. A darkened doorway flew by on my left and a staircase leading upward was nothing but a blur-

Out of the darkness came a wall ahead of me. Solid-looking and largely undamaged.

I skidded to a half in front of it with a spat curse even as I heard, more than saw, the Watcher shoulder through a window to my right. All twelve feet of its bulk forced its way through the protesting frame scarcely large enough to fit even me and wood cracked when it finally succeeded in entering-

More Aura exploded from my feet and I turned on my heel, returning to the staircase I saw.

I reached it easily and hesitated for a brief moment at the emptiness in front of me. I had absolutely no way of knowing if it was whole or if half of it was just missing. I could very well launch myself up and find nothing but empty air under my feet when I did so.

A snarl, deep and throaty, echoed down the hall behind me and I saw the Watcher barrel out of the darkness in the corner of my eye.

A frown touched my lips. The windows were too small for me to fit through easily – the damnable thing would catch me before I could escape to the streets. Going back down the hallway was out of the question, too. In such an enclosed space, I was fairly certain that this Beowolf could out-pace me.

Never mind the fact that going back down the hallway led me away from my team.

'Staircase it is, then.'

I flew up the steps easily, hearing the Watcher behind me as it collided into a wall when the stairs made a one-hundred and eighty degree turn. The pounding of its feet easily reverberated through the floorboards and up to me. Wood creaked horribly even as gunfire and roars snaked into the building from the streets outside.

The stairs ended abruptly in front of me and the third floor of the building greeted me with a hallway. I could see up and down its length, made possible by the light illuminating the tiny windows along its length. Light that was being produced by the airship, no doubt.

I released a blast of Aura from my right hand without hesitation. It impacted the window in front of me with a force strong enough that dust and debris was made to fall from the ceiling.

But the opening – and the wall around it - held.

Another curse left my lips and I turned right just as the Watcher burst onto the third floor of the building. It stumbled with its momentum but I ignored the creature's struggles, focusing instead on sprinting down the hallway. My legs pumped and my heart pounded with adrenaline. Shadowed doorways flew by me on my right and windows passed by me on my left. To my dismay, I saw no more collapsed walls leading outside. Growling soon followed close behind me and-

A wall jumped out at me and I turned right, the only direction I could see, deeper into the building and away from the irritably small windows.

'Never would've jumped in this stupid place if I knew it was a damn prison!'

This was quickly turning into a bad idea. The section of wall I tried to break down was too strong. The windows were too small to vault out of in one smooth motion.

And to make matters worse, the Grimm was closing in on me again. I could hear its enraged snarls and its ground-shaking footfalls and its claws scraping the walls.

Another wall flew at me out of the darkness and I slammed my feet down-

Something shifted under my right foot and my eyes widened even as I fell on my side-

'Up. Up! UP!' My mind chanted even as I threw myself down this new hallway. In the darkness, I quickly lost track of what direction I was running. All I knew was that I could still hear my teammates fighting. I could still hear the Grimm outside roaring.

The light from the clearing, unfortunately, was absent now.

Behind me, the Watcher impacted the wall I fell in front of heavily and with an enraged howl on its lips. The beast was finding it just as hard to see as I was, apparently.

A small silver lining.

My eyes narrowed and I turned forward again just in time to spot a wall- No! A door in front of me, swinging idly on its hinges-

I covered my face with an arm and powered through the wooden barrier, shattering it and barreling headlong into the darkness in front of me.

And then, I was falling.

My eyes widened when my feet met nothing but air and I instinctively began to curl myself up. The wind howled about my ears and a weightless feeling took hold of me. My mind registered the sounds of fighting once more and they were much, much louder now. Shadowed facades of buildings flashed in front of my eyes and I realized with a start that I was outside again!

'The night sky,' I realized numbly.

That meant I had three stories to fall.

Child's play.

My lips formed a thin line and I threw my feet out the second I saw the ground appear before me. It welcomed me readily and I impacted it heavily, throwing myself into a roll to finish the fall.

Wood cracked and I threw my vision upward, toward the shattered doorway I flew out of not seconds before.

Nothing.

My eyes narrowed – the building was still cloaked in darkness and flooded with shadows and dark corners, but I expected to see the Watcher following me. Looking down at me. Something!

Wood cracked again and a chill ran up my spine when I realized it was the ground that was making that sound, not the doorway.

My breath froze in my lungs and I stood from my crouch slowly, my hands thrown out at my sides. My eyes found the ground easily enough and, sure enough, a messy assortment of wooden boards were supporting me.

Not the ground. Not dirt or cement or pavement.

Wood.

Badly decaying, rotten wood, no less.

Boom!

I swallowed heavily and shifted one of my feet forward, a growl inadvertently escaping me when the wood underneath my other foot sagged forebodingly. I finished the motion, though, and my luck – just like the wood – held.

"Okay," I muttered, still distinctly aware of the fact that the Watcher was nowhere to be seen. That unnerved me more than the fact that I was standing on rotten wood, quite frankly. The Grimm's intelligence made it far, far more dangerous than some shaky repair job.

'Where's Weiss' when you need her,' I lamented even as I shuffled farther toward the street. The wood wavered dangerously underneath me but I needed to get back to that clearing as quickly as I could, long before that damnable Beowolf decided to show its face again.

If only I could risk using my Aura-empowered leaps here.

But if this wood threatened to give out when I shifted my weight to one foot then there was absolutely no way it could stand one of my-

A growl somewhere above me attracted my attention.

My eyes narrowed, trying in vain to focus upon the doorway from which I – inadvertently – jumped.

"What's up, Watcher?" I muttered, easily finding the angry, red lines of the beast's armored form. Unconsciously, I crouched lower to the ground. "Where've you been, bud?"

It snarled again, leaning forward on its haunches and eyeing me from its position. It was a frightening sight, leaning out of the darkness like that. All wicked claws and sharp fangs and glowing eyes.

"I don't think you wanna do that, bud," I called up to it, a little louder as I shuffled closer to the building again. The wood underneath me wavered again – literally wavered underneath me - threateningly but, thankfully, it held. "I've been eating too much lately. Dunno if this wood can stand both of us…"

It roared and coiled its muscles visibly. It reared back-

A screech pierced the night, loud and close and suddenly a dark shape passed over me. It was big. Very, very big and loud and I heard wings flapping for a brief instant before the shape – 'Nevermore,' my mind noted – passed over the Watcher and I completely. It disappeared over the edge of the Grimm's building, toward the clearing where my team was fighting, and I thought I heard frantic shouting answer its arrival.

But yelling was not the only thing that answered the massive avian's entrance into the fight.

A purple crescent of energy lanced out of the darkness and I saw it only for a brief instant before it impacted the side of the building I was just running through. The structure grumbled threateningly and I heard small bits of rubble shake loose from its form, landing about me on the wood.

'Shit!'

The wood cracked and complained under the debris and-

Another flash of purple. Another crescent, courtesy of Blake Belladonna, impacted the building. The Watcher-Grimm was gone now and the decrepit structure as a whole was groaning-

'Stupid Nevermore! Stupid Blake!' I ranted even as I pushed off the ground amidst the shaking of the building in front of me.

Wood cracked and creaked. Aura left my feet.

And my leg sank through the rotten boards.

"Fuck!" I swore, twisting around to yank the limb free. It came away from its prison easily, weak as the wood was, and I jumped to my feet again, ignoring the protesting ground underneath-

Another purple crescent of energy impacted the building and, this time, it was enough to bring down the structure completely. With a series of loud snaps and groans, the entire thing wobbled and began to fall.

Toward me.

Because even in almost-complete darkness, I could tell that the damnable thing was about to fall right on top of my head.

Intimately aware that I had mere seconds to move, I pumped Aura into my legs again. Either the wood would hold or it would break. I had no choice, not now. I was out of time and out of options.

In the end, the wood broke.

It crumbled under me as soon as I released the Aura from my feet and a weightless feeling immediately took hold of me even as I saw the starry sky begin to grow farther and farther away from me. Darkness swallowed me up and the building soon loomed over my hole, blocking out my view of the sky in its collapse. Broken wooden boards rained down around me and bits of stone soon joined them.

Down, I fell. Farther and farther into the ground. Farther and farther away from the light.

Until my back hit something solid and my vision faded.


An unknown amount of time later - Mistral Swamplands – Ruins of Mistral Trade Route City – Week 19, The Vytal Festival begins in 14 days

It was a struggle to regain my rational mind as I lay there in the darkness.

My team had been put through test after test, trial after trial the likes of which not even professional huntresses or hunters could stand, this I knew. Beacon Academy regaled us with stories of those teams that broke or splintered or fell apart because of infighting or exceptional danger. We were told of the dangers lurking in the outside world. Of the threats that lay in wait beyond Vale's walls. We were warned how we might be tested like those who came before us.

These stories were lessons and warnings in equal measure.

They instilled in Beacon students a sense of the absolute worst they might face out in the big, bad world. They laid bare the importance of your team and hammered home the concept of teamwork above all else time after time after time again.

We heard of teams that broke down after one of their members died. Team JNPR looked uneasy after a story was shared of a team that fell apart after one of their number was captured and used against them. Ruby took the tale of a team that faltered and withered due to bad leadership particularly hard.

But not one of those stories or accounts ever described a team blamed for mass murder.

Never before had a team run to a dead city for refuge. Never had huntresses and hunters run away from civilized society and into the oh-so-welcoming arms of the Grimm for their own thrice damned safety.

Just Team RWEBY.

The stress of our situation showed in all of us. In the fight between Weiss and Yang. In Blake's breakdown against the glowing Grimm. In my absentmindedness and Ruby's shortened temper.

We were tired. Not just physically, but mentally as well.

'But we'll pull through. We'll always pull through.'

And then, those stories that were told to wide-eyed Beacon Academy students would be about us.

We would be the standard to which they lived up to. Ours would be the long shadows that they struggled to step out of. We would be the paragons. The champions. The absolute best of the best.

The strongest of the strong. Unbroken. Unbending and unyielding!

'This will not break us!'

My eyes opened. The darkness around me did not know it yet, but it was simply the next obstacle that I would break down and surpass.

Team RWEBY would survive.


A/N: I'll admit, the building scene was shaky for me. I wanted to use it to display just how dark and hard to navigate Liar's Landing is for Team RWEBY. I can't quite place what I don't like about it but Enten acted in character and it even delivered him into the sewers!

So it served its purpose in the end.

My second note is something that I hope all of you will enjoy: I'll be answering reviews within my chapters again. I miss the interaction with my readers too much to go without it and I've found that it actually helps me collect my thoughts. Responding to your questions/comments gives me another chance to rationalize my thought processes with regard to the story's plot. Mutually beneficial for all of us!

Azrael-Von-Gruber: Romance is being done on a go-with-the-flow basis right now. Nothing is certain but I've written myself toward either Yang or Weiss so far... We'll see! And your French is far, far better than mine. Thanks for your interest!

Grabblers: Your review made me laugh – thanks for leaving it!

Infadinityfollower: Downplaying Enten is something I struggle to find a nice balance with. I don't want to fall into the trope of making the overpowered OC that essentially makes the rest of the team useless. But I also don't want to make him a Jaune-level liability. If you feel he's underpowered though, I hope you stick around for the next two-three chapters. I have plans for his blood Aura… great plans… Thanks for your interest!

Hi im John: That little W-Y spat was a mixture of irritability, strung-out nerves and feelings boiling over. I suppose you could say that RWEBY is at their worst right now – something that will hopefully be turning around soon! Thanks for your review!

RandomGuy: I thought Shrek was love and life?

Some Random Guy: Do you know the above reviewer? To your point of Yang's feelings coming out of left field – remember that the PoV character in this story has more insight into Weiss' character than he does Yang's. Much, much more insight. Yang has always been a mystery to him, on another level of social butterfly-ness entirely, whereas Weiss is someone that he understands very well. He helped her work through her personal demons, he knows what makes her tick and even manages to see through her public façade at some point. If Enten could read Yang that well then her involvement in that spat might not have been so surprising – even in this chapter, he remains unsettled by it. We'll have to see how that'll affect the Yang-Enten dynamic in future chapters…

As for the Grimm flying west out over the swamp – Beacon Academy is technically west of Liar's Landing. Hint-hint-nudge-nudge-wink-wink. Thanks for your review – wall of text or not!

Riero: I may have taken Weiss' tendency for more eloquent speech too far in that argument between her and Yang. I'll have to go back and read over it when I find the time…

Welp, that about it does it for me today! I'll see you guys next time.

-Phailen