Team RSPR was ignoring the Vytal Tournament. Ren felt that was perfectly natural—they'd been eliminated, and like most of the other eliminated teams the only reason for them to return to the stands was to root for their friends. They were also ignoring the Vytal Festival. This was significantly less normal.
The fairgrounds were officially those tents and carts grouped around Beacon, and there were quite a few participants and spectators milling around there. At Pyrrha's request, they'd taken an airship to Vale and found that this was where the festival was happening for those who hadn't been able to buy tickets to the coliseum. There were vendors selling everything from food to clothing to replicas of some of the contestants' weapons—Sky bought a tiny Crescent Rose before anyone could stop him. Lanterns hung over the streets, people played instruments on almost every corner, and the air was permeated with ambient chatter and the occasional peal of laughter. It brought back fond memories of the same festival happening in Anima, with different specific traditions but the same welcoming atmosphere.
RSPR was shunning it. It was hard to do—they only really left the festivities behind when they disappeared into the industrial district near the docks, where skeletal factories and warehouses loomed over them and the air was thick with the smell of fish. Ren even thought that at one point they had passed the place where Weiss and Blake had encountered the White Fang and Torchwick for the first time. Not great memories, but Pyrrha wanted to be away from the crowds.
No one asked any questions until they stopped, partway down a dingy side-street, without a single other person in sight. "Are, um... is this okay?" Ruby gestured to their surroundings. "As a place to stop, I mean."
Pyrrha nodded. She'd shoved her hands under her arms as though she was cold, but there was sweat beading at her forehead. "This was a mistake. I can't control—"
"Careful," Ren murmured. "We don't know if we're being watched."
She looked down, flinching. "Of course."
Sky started pacing around them, scanning the street up and down. "I feel like I'd know if someone was here," he said, "but maybe it would be stupid to bet on that."
Ren though furiously, trying to come up with a solution. "Perhaps if we locked ourselves in the dorm—"
"No," Pyrrha said quickly. "No, I can't... outside is better." A cold front rippled out from her like a breath of November air. The afternoon was already crisp and Ren had to fight down a shiver.
"Is this about the match with Velvet?" Ruby asked—very tentatively, because they'd been trying to get an answer to that question since yesterday without any luck. This time, though, Pyrrha just sighed and sat down on the curb.
"Yes and no. I didn't... I don't feel like myself." She swallowed. "I'm not sure that feeling is going to go away."
Ruby was the first to sit next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Ren took her other side, letting his semblance shelter her. Sky collapsed next to him, keeping a little bit of distance from Pyrrha—he still flinched whenever he touched her by accident.
"I didn't think it would feel this wrong," Pyrrha murmured. "I knew the part that was her would, but not..." she glanced around, but they all knew that meant nothing when there was an illusionist loose.
"It wasn't meant to be split up like that, I don't think." Ruby tightened the hug, her elbow brushing against Ren's shoulder. "I don't understand how they could do that."
"Someone had to."
Ruby pulled a face. "Maybe, but... it's still wrong. If that makes sense."
Pyrrha hummed agreement. She was staring off into space, now, her arms around her knees. "It felt good. When I started using them by accident, it felt good."
"We can help you practice," Sky suggested. "Learn to control them better."
She shook her head. "I worked with Goodwitch for a while yesterday, after the match. She wants me to come back again this afternoon, but... it wasn't to see what it could do."
"What do you mean?"
"It was more about seeing how long I could go without doing anything. I made frost during the match, and... I can't do things like that. Someone will notice. So it was hours of control, of using just the tiniest bit of power, and that was almost worse than nothing at all.
"I could sense what they could do, during the match." Pyrrha's voice turned strange, almost dreamy. "They would have let me fly. I could have torn apart the stadium."
Ren felt a chill. "They're dangerous," he agreed.
"Back before the fairy tale was a fairy tale, the Maidens must have been like gods."
It was such an un-Pyrrha-like statement that Ren physically recoiled. She snapped out of her reverie and looked down at the ground with a strange mix of shame and... something else. It reminded him a little bit of Nora in certain moods—that same fierce pride in what she was doing, the love of the fight, the wildness in her eyes—but it wasn't the same. Too serious, too arrogant, too angry.
"What are you looking at?" she snapped. Then she squeezed her eyes shut. "I'm sorry..."
"It's okay." Ruby still hadn't let go of the hug. "'S not like it's your fault."
The silence began to stretch, and Sky cleared his throat. "I've been wondering... was Ozpin trying to stop your fight?" Ren and Ruby both turned to look at him, baffled. Then the pieces slid into place—the strange technical difficulties, the voice in the background...
"I think so. I shouldn't have gone."
"Probably not," Ren admitted, "but there was no harm done."
"There might have been." Pyrrha shivered. "I forgot that it was only a tournament, for a moment."
"The last thing that happened to her was being killed. That might have left an impression that was then passed on to you."
"I wasn't afraid." Pyrrha's voice had gone sharp, cold. "I just... I was frustrated, because I should have been enjoying such a close match and I couldn't focus."
She extricated herself from the group, then, and stood up so that she could pace back and forth. It reminded Ren of seeing a caged lioness at the zoo, when he and Nora were younger. Back and forth, back and forth, knowing she should be master of this domain, but having barely enough space to stretch her legs.
"It's only a game," Ruby reminded her. "You could always ask Velvet for a rematch later, when you have a better handle on this stuff."
That only seemed to make her more agitated. "And if I'm not allowed to have friendly spars in case I hurt someone?"
"We can still spar," Ruby assured her, "since we already know about the... um, the thing. And Yang and Nora are super tough, you wouldn't have to worry about being too rough by accident. So's Jaune, though he might not be able to hit back very well. 'Cause, y'know, he's getting better but it's still kind of a work in progress..."
"This really doesn't scare you?"
"Nope!" Ruby said, putting her hands on her hips. Ren just smiled, shaking his head.
Sky, though... "I'd be lying if I said it didn't," he admitted, "but I'm not going anywhere if that's what you're asking. And it's the p—um, the thing that scares me, not you. You're my friend."
The pacing stopped. She stood in the road, facing off to the left, one foot poised for another step. Then, quietly, "And when Ozpin decides I need to be hidden in some vault somewhere, to protect this half of the power?"
"We're with you, whatever happens," Ruby insisted.
"No!" Pyrrha whirled around, her hands clenching into fists. "Because I'd need to leave if that happened. I'd run away, go anywhere but here, and Brine wouldn't come with me!"
There was a moment of horrified silence. All Ren could think about was that night with Nora, talking in near-whispers so that the others wouldn't hear. Two magnets, slowly but inexorably taking on different trajectories.
Ruby was the first to find her voice. "Pyrrha, I'm sure if we asked Yang and Nora would—"
"Stop it!" She threw out a hand, and fire billowed out from her palm, swirling around her in brilliant blue-white trails. It didn't go far, didn't threaten to burn them, but Ruby had to shield her face from the brightness of it. A wave of dry heat crashed over them, and when they looked again Pyrrha's eyes were blazing with that same wild intensity, lined in beautiful golden light in the shape of butterfly wings. There were still trails of flame in the air, tracing her movements, and Ren understood all of a sudden that she'd been right—people would have revered this power, worshipped its bearers like gods, because what else could you do in the presence of something that shone so brightly even after it had been torn in two?
The moment ended with a sharp clatter when Sky's armored knees struck concrete. His face had gone blank with terror, his eyes wide with pupils contracted to mere pinpoints, his whole body shaking like a leaf. Pyrrha stepped back, the fire vanishing in a heartbeat to be replaced by a rush of freezing cold air and flurries of fine snowflakes. They settled in Ren's hair, on Ruby's shoulders, on the bits of trash littering the street.
"I—I didn't mean to—"
"It's okay!" Ruby said hurriedly, holding her hands out. "Nobody's hurt, and we know it wasn't on purpose."
"I need to go. I need to think for a minute."
"Pyrrha, don't—"
She was already running. Ren grabbed Ruby's shoulder when she tried to follow. "Don't chase her," he murmured. "Not yet. She's scared, and that's making the powers react, and that's making her more afraid. It's a vicious cycle, and I don't know if she could break out of it if she accidentally hurt one of us."
"But..."
"We'll wait for her at the airship station," he promised. "Let her calm down before we talk to her. And you can send her a message, to tell her that we aren't upset with her and that she can come back whenever she feels ready."
Ruby nodded. "Okay. Yeah, that sounds good."
With that done, he knelt in front of Sky. His partner hardly even reacted except to jump in fright when he touched his forehead. Then Ren's semblance activated, and his ragged breathing eased. He blinked, twice, then wiped at the start of tears with his sleeve.
"Oh..." He groaned. "Okay... so that's what that feels like."
"What happened?" Ruby asked. "Your semblance?"
Sky nodded. "I'm kinda glad that happened now, because if Shoulder is the one who took the other half..." he trailed off, leaving them to imagine what might have happened if he froze like that in a fight while someone that powerful was trying to kill them.
"Well." Ruby sat down heavily on the curb. "I guess we might as well talk about this, since... if anyone was following us, there's no way they didn't see that."
"Crap," agreed Sky.
"I'm not sure how much we can really do." Ren ran a hand through his hair and winced when he touched the melting snowflakes. "As much as I hate to say it, Pyrrha was right—I can't run off into the wild without Nora."
"So we bring Brine," Ruby said, sounding annoyed. "Yang and Nora, at least."
"I'm not so sure. We can't just drag everyone we're close to into this, and everyone close to them. Eventually someone will leaks our whereabouts by accident."
"I'm not saying bring everyone," Ruby insisted. "Just us, and Yang and Nora."
"Uh..." Sky raised his hand. "Alternate option, we could refuse."
Ren frowned in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"
"Well... Ozpin says 'Hey, how about we hide you in the school's basement so that no one murders you for your magic powers.'" Sky dropped his voice a little to imitate the Headmaster, and his expression showed exactly what he thought of having to utter a sentence like that in complete seriousness. "Then we all say, 'Nah, we'd rather not.' What's he going to do, kidnap a world-famous tournament champion with godlike powers? People are going to notice she's missing really quickly, and they're also definitely going to notice the giant smoking crater where there used to be a school."
Ruby giggled at that. "And we thought it was gonna be Brine that blew up Beacon."
They returned to the airship docks in much higher spirits, though Ren still felt troubled. This wasn't the moment when the two magnets would diverge. Maybe that wouldn't happen for a long time, and maybe it never would—but it could, and the possibility wasn't so easily ignored now that it had made itself known.
Just as they were about to sit down on one of the benches at the airfield, Sky stopped walking so abruptly that Ruby bumped into him. His head turned to the left, and Ren tried to see what he was looking at. Two Atlesian soldiers were heading for a nearby airship—one was probably female by their size. His partner's gaze was fixed unblinkingly on the taller one. There didn't seem to be anything strange about them, though—except, perhaps, that there was a little nick in the white plating over the smaller one's back, as though from an arrow or crossbow bolt. But that was hardly unusual for someone who wore armor.
"Are you okay?" Ruby asked, waving a hand in front of Sky's face. He turned around, his brow furrowed.
"I don't know," he said, frowning as though his mind was elsewhere. "Just... they felt dangerous."
"How dangerous?" Ruby asked, craning her neck to look. Ren scanned the crowd, too, but the two soldiers were gone.
He frowned. "It's... I'm not sure. I didn't get a good look. They were headed for the airship, though." All three of them exchanged pained looks. They could board the ship and look for the two soldiers, find out if there really was something wrong with them or if it was just that Sky's semblance was still not back to normal after the incident earlier. But, if they did that and Pyrrha came back to the airfield...
"I'm staying," Ruby decided.
Ren nodded agreement. "We can always look for them when we get back."
Sky still looked uneasy, but he didn't argue—Pyrrha was more important.
It was only after Blake had grabbed Cardin—still alive and in possession of all of his extremities—that she registered their surroundings. Wind whipped over the back of the train, tugging at her hair, her scarf, the ribbon on Gambol Shroud. Her ears pinned back against her skull, and she had to squint through the grit and dirt being kicked up by their passage.
Sun raised his hand as if they were in class. "So, uh... why is there a train on a dead-end subway?" Everyone stared at him. He scratched at the back of his neck. "I mean, is it that obvious, or..."
"No," Blake replied, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. "It's definitely not." Could the Fang know that small entrance was there? How would they open it? Perhaps that was what the explosives were for, but why? They could just as easily have gathered above ground, slipped into a base in the city and donned their masks.
"That's not our only problem," Weiss pointed out. "Just about everyone on this train probably felt that."
"Oh, sorry," Cardin sneered. "Didn't mean to inconvenience everyone."
"They would have seen us anyway, but my point is that they probably have guards."
As if on cue, there was a sharp bang and the door into the compartment they were standing on burst open. Blake leapt forward, slashing at the head that poked through.
She caught only a brief glimpse of the woman's mask, the two slight bulges in her hood. Then she shrieked, "Traitors!" and launched herself at Blake. Her balance was good, but not that good—the two of them lurched backwards towards the space between compartments, and her feet went out from under her.
Blake landed painfully on the edge of a barrier, then slid across to the next car. The woman who'd tackled her had a grip on her throat, which was irritating but not immediately life threatening. She could already tell that her opponent's aura wasn't unlocked, and gently pried her off and wrestled her down onto her knees.
"You would have died if that had worked," she said. The woman's hood had come loose, exposing her doe's ears. She didn't reply.
By then the others were coming across. Cardin snarled in the woman's face, "The hell are you doing here? Why the train?"
"If you would step back, please," Winter snapped. Then she crouched in front of their captive, her face expressionless. "You were expecting to die today."
Blake flinched, even though she had been thinking the same thing. There had been no hesitation, and she had to believe that even Adam would have paused, if only for a split-second, to wonder if his life would be better spent elsewhere. The woman, realizing that this question had already been answered, nodded once.
"She's not going to give us anything useful," Winter decided. "Besides, we don't have much time."
"So... what do we do with her?" Sun asked. He gestured around. "It's not like we can tie her up in a janitor's closet like in the movies."
Neptune put a palm over his face. "You definitely would have tried that if we weren't on a train, wouldn't you?"
"Oh, totally!"
"Enough." Winter gestured for Blake to hand the woman over. She hesitated.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to put her down," Winter said, gesturing at the tracks behind them. "It's likely to be somewhat painful, but much less than being crushed under the cars would have been. She can't run fast enough to catch up."
Blake blinked a few times, startled. When she heard put her down, she hadn't thought the explanation would end in something reasonably humane. The woman looked at the ground and said nothing. She balked a little when she was pushed towards the edge of the car, then set her jaw and leapt of her own accord. When she hit the ground she rolled, and eventually popped back to her feet looking unhurt. She was already dwindling into the distance—the train had picked up speed since Cardin had slowed it down for them to board.
"So... onward?" Jaune asked, pointing down the length of the train. Blake turned to look that way and tensed. Another of the compartments was opening, though it was nearly ten cars down. She recognized the mask that was emerging from inside.
"Oh, him again," Weiss huffed, irritated.
"What?!" Winter stared at them in disbelief. "You do realize he killed nearly fifteen people during that hijacking? Most of them trained soldiers?"
"You get used to it," Jaune said with a sigh.
Before they could elaborate—which Blake considered a good thing, especially since she didn't want the only family member Weiss seemed to actually like to decide that she was a dangerous influence—the Lieutenant stood up to his full height on the roof of the train. The tunnel roof was only barely high enough to accommodate him. He dragged something else from inside the compartment, not the chainsaw he'd been using when last they saw him. It looked more like...
"Get down!" Winter shouted, calling up a glyph in front of them as they threw themselves onto the floor of the train. The noise was deafening, and the hail of bullets tore through the barrier in less than a second.
Jaune heaved at the door into the compartment, his face reddening with exertion. "Cardin, help me!" Together they worked it open, and all seven of them threw themselves inside—though not before the Lieutenant adjusted his aim.
Then all was much quieter. The car they had hidden in was barren of furnishing, except for the ominous shape of a Dust bomb in the center. Blake stared at it suspiciously, but it wasn't active—she guessed they must be carrying them in separate cars to avoid a chain reaction if one of them should go off.
"Is everyone okay?" Jaune asked, his voice a little shaky. They could still hear occasional spurts of gunfire from above them, though it was muted now. Blake looked around, first at Weiss, then the rest of her team, Sun, and Neptune. Finally, she glanced at Winter. There was no blood, but part of her military jacket had been torn open and there was a bruise forming over her shoulder.
Weiss moved to touch it, then held back. "Are you alright?"
"Fine." Winter rolled the arm and grimaced. "It didn't break my aura."
"What was that?" Sun asked, pointing upward. "I mean, seriously!"
As if in answer, Cardin bent down and picked up what looked like a bullet. It was sizzling, partly deformed by the impact it must have had against the door to the carriage, and almost the size of his fist—more of a cannonball than anything else. Violet Dust was inlaid along it in concentric rings, along with some bizarre lines of something else Blake didn't recognize.
"That," Winter replied, "was military technology. It uses gravity Dust to accelerate projectiles to greater speeds than conventional burn Dust can manage. And, in more practical terms, it was a way to force us to move through the train instead of over it."
"I'm all for not getting shot at by that again," Sun decided.
"What I want to know is where they got it," Weiss said, though she was still staring at the bruise on her sister's shoulder. It was starting to heal even as they talked, turning a magnificent shade of purple as it did so.
"I guess we still need to get to the front of the train?" Jaune looked as if there was very little he wanted to do less.
Winter nodded. "Whatever it is they're doing, they need this thing to be moving." She approached the door. "I'll take the lead, the rest of you stay behind me. Understood?"
"But—"
"Weiss, is that understood?" Reluctantly, she nodded. And with all of them behind her, Winter slid the car door open.
There, across the space between compartments, he was standing, sword in hand. Blake stumbled back, struck at once by how familiar the image was. Him on one side, her on the other, with only the coupling of the cars connecting them. She knew he'd noticed, too—he didn't smile, but he nodded once. An acknowledgement of the irony, maybe, or a last goodbye. Then, Adam decoupled the cars.
Winter swore and tried to draw a line of glyphs, but he hadn't finished. He gestured to someone above him, and a massive SDC crate tipped off the end of the train and onto the tracks. Their car lurched as they collided with it, and all of them slammed into one another. One of Cardin's elbows landed in Blake's gut, and she cracked her head on Neptune's knee. Then, all was silent—except for a rapid, steady beeping, like a heart rate monitor going into a panic.
"The bomb!" she blurted out, struggling to her feet. Another glyph erupted into being—one that Blake only vaguely recognized from the attack on Sun. A familiar white Beowolf leapt out and threw itself against the side of the bomb, shoving it as far away from them as it would go.
"Weiss, help me." A line of glyphs appeared between them and the explosives. Weiss raised her hands, reinforcing the barrier. Jaune, apparently not knowing what else to do, held his shield up. The beeping stopped, and everything went white.
When Blake came back to herself, she was lying on her side with one arm under her, the other thrown over her head. She opened her eyes, blinking a few times to clear them of smoke and grit. The whole tunnel smelt of the unnatural tang of burn Dust, melted steel, and ash. Groggily, she got to her feet and looked around.
She found Jaune first. His shield was several feet behind him, not even dented, and he himself also seemed unharmed. He was already struggling to sit up, looking around without focusing on anything. She wondered with a pang if something had happened to his eyesight but... no. The flashlights had all gone out, of course he couldn't see. She wasn't even sure how she could until she noticed a few leftover flecks of burn Dust, giving off faint red glimmers—just enough for her to make out general outlines.
Cardin was a little ways away from his partner. She hadn't been too worried about him—he had just shown that he could jump in front of a train and get up afterwards—but the confirmation that he was alive enough to grumble curses under his breath was nice. Sun was lying across Neptune like a log, groaning and rubbing his head. He smelled like blood, but she was fairly sure that was all from a gash on his forehead that was nasty, but not life-threatening. Neptune, too, was unhurt.
Blake scanned the tunnel for a glimpse of Weiss, turning in two full circles. The longer she stood there, the more her thoughts devolved into meaningless static. Then, finally, she noticed a flash of white behind a crumpled piece of the train car and vaulted over it, scorching her hand on the hot metal. Weiss was curled up, one hand still gripping the hilt of her rapier. Blake knelt next to her and nudged her arm. She stirred, then blinked both eyes open. They matched when it was this dark—the good eye had dilated as much as the bad one.
"Who..."
"It's me."
"Oh." A pause. "Is it dark in here, or did I just lose the other eye?"
Blake choked out a startled laugh. "It's dark."
"Good."
That only left one person unaccounted for. Blake stood up, then peered over another scrap of wrecked train car. Her eyes met two bright red ones. She yelped and jerked backwards when the Grimm surged towards her on dozens of bony legs. Even as she moved, somewhere in the distance she heard the rumble of another explosion.
"Blake?" Weiss was standing, now, looking sightlessly around her. "What's going on?"
"Grimm!"
Someone swore—probably Cardin, if she were to guess.
"Where are the lights?" Jaune shouted. Then he cried out, "Not okay, not okay!"
More Grimm were emerging from what Blake now realized was an entirely different passageway that had been opened up by the explosion. Her mind flashed back to what Winter had said about the bends in the track moving around natural cave formations. She backed up to where Weiss was standing, slashed at the many-legged monster as she went.
"Blake?" Weiss held up her rapier. "I can't see the chamber, can you change it to red?"
"Not—" she grunted, catching a pair of mandibles on her sharpened sheath. "Not yet, just hang on!" She wasn't sure how much help she'd be, anyway—she could still see when it was this dark, but she couldn't make out colors.
"I got it!" Sun's voice called out. Blake spared him a glance and found that he was busy detaching a Creep that was trying unsuccessfully to chew on Jaune's foot. Did he still have aura left?
Then Winter spoke, sharp and authoritative, and Blake finally found where she had ended up. She was sitting with her back to the cave wall, one leg stretched in front of her at an awkward angle. "Find Blake or Sun. Stay close to them until we can get some light."
"Over here!" Sun shouted. "I'm right here, come one come all, eyes for the sharing and wow that's a disturbing mental image."
"Here," Blake added. "But Sun's closer to everyone except Weiss and Winter."
"Wait, where are you, Winter?" Weiss asked. She held up the blade of her rapier and infused it with Dust—it turned out to be gravity, and the dull purple glow probably barely lit up her own face, let alone her surroundings. "Drat."
"About twenty feet to your left," Winter replied, seeing the light.
There were more Grimm coming up on them now. Blake swallowed when she saw a Deathstalker skittering out into the tunnel, its many eyes drawn to the glowing blade in Weiss' hand.
"We need to go," she said. "Now."
"Yeah, uh..." Sun's voice cracked. "Definitely a good idea!"
"Wait, what?" Jaune kept looking around. "What's going on?"
Sun grabbed him and Neptune each by the wrist, guiding their hands onto his shoulders. "Cardin, just... move your hand like three feet to the left... a little more..." Cardin, groping blindly in the dark, grabbed a fistful of his tail. "Ouch, okay, not what I was aiming for but whatever."
Blake guided Weiss over to where Winter was sitting, flinching when she realized that it was going to be a lot harder to get her out of here. She was trying to stand, but the one leg wouldn't support her weight. Blake crouched down next to her and let her throw one arm around her neck.
"What's taking so long?" Weiss asked, not even bothering to hide the worry in her voice. "Winter?"
"I'm fine," she gritted out. "Sprained ankle." It definitely wasn't a sprained ankle, but now probably wasn't the time to call her out on the lie.
"Ugh, let me just..." Weiss stabbed her rapier into the ground. The concrete cracked and splintered, crushing itself into a ball. "I hardly ever need this for the blade, but the one time it's the worst thing for me to—" she cut herself off, twisting the hilt of her sword slowly and precisely, three times. This time when she pulled the trigger the blade glowed electric yellow, enough for the humans to see by.
They could pick up the pace now—or, rather, most of them could. Winter was limping badly, even with Blake supporting most of her weight, and the small group of Grimm was slowly but surely growing into a horde. A few were moving further down the tunnel, towards wherever the train had come from, but the vast majority were pouring through the subway towards Vale, and towards their little group. Deathstalkers, it turned out, were much faster than they were.
"We need to get out of this tunnel," Jaune said, glancing around as if there would be a trapdoor above their heads. Another explosion rattled the walls.
"Winter, can you summon—" Weiss started to say, but Winter shook her head. Jaune jogged over to them and put his hand on her shoulder. He glowed bright white for a few brief instants, casting searing shadows across the tunnel. Then the light cut off, and he slumped to the ground, panting.
"Get up." Cardin grabbed him by the hood and hauled him upright. He shook his head, apparently dizzy, then stumbled forward.
They kept ahead of the rest of the Grimm, though only barely. Cardin took over from Blake. He was taller than Winter which made him easier to lean on, and he was strong enough even with his aura exhausted to handle the extra weight on his shoulder. Before they could go much further, though, Sun skidded to a halt.
"Dude, what are you doing?!" Neptune demanded.
"Uh... there's more ahead of us."
He was right—most of them were moving away from them, but a few Creeps and one King Taijitu had turned and were advancing, cutting them off. There was another explosion, and as if a switch had been flipped the full extent of Adam's plan clarified itself. Bombs to blow holes in the subway walls, gather Grimm. And then... more, to open up the city of Vale? Why?
"We need to get past them," she found herself saying. "I think... I think we'll be able to get to the surface soon."
Winter stared at her. "How—" Then her eyes widened. "Ah."
"Huh?" Sun glanced around. "Am I missing something, or—"
"Run now," Weiss snapped, prodding him in the back. "Ask questions later."
When they came upon the second wave of Grimm pouring into the tunnel, Neptune and Sun took the lead—one going left, the other going right. Neptune jabbed at the Creeps with his trident, shocking them and driving them out of the way. Another of the many-legged Grimm hissed at him, trying to sink its jaws into his leg, but he just hopped backwards and zapped it just behind its head. On the other side, Sun was trying his best to deal with the King Taijitu. He couldn't force it back, so he was baiting it, letting it come within inches of sinking its fangs into him only to roll out of the way. Winter used her good leg to kick a loose stone into her hand and hurled it into the giant snake's eye.
The rest of them poured through the small gap that was left, with Blake, Jaune, and Weiss doing their best to dispatch any stray Grimm in their path before Cardin and Winter passed through. Now their lead was even narrower, with the faster Grimm snapping at their heels as they ran—but there was a glimmer of light in the distance. Sunlight.
Blake wasn't sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, they would have died if she'd been wrong about the White Fang's plan. On the other... she could already hear screams and shouts coming from above.
They barely made it to the surface ahead of the horde. Weiss conjured up a stairway of barrier glyphs, with Cardin and Winter leading the way into open air. Blake followed with Jaune, but before Sun and Neptune could make it all the way up the glyphs splintered and gave way. The pair of them and Weiss had to climb up Gambol Shroud's ribbon, with Jaune and Cardin helping Blake haul their combined weight.
The second they were all through, Blake staggered back and looked around. They were in Vale, just like she'd thought. There was chaos all around, people running and shouting, but her eyes were drawn inexorably skyward. The Amity Coliseum was there, hovering over Beacon Academy—and it was billowing thick black smoke.
It felt weird being in the singles. Not because Yang wasn't enjoying it, or because she didn't think she could win—she was going to give the competition one hell of a fight. Maybe it was her own lack of a reaction that was making it seem so surreal. She had no idea what it was, but RSPR had something big going on, something that had overshadowed the tournament entirely. If Weiss blowing off her first singles match was any indication, so did ABSW. That left BRYN as the only ones still competing, and it was just... weird.
They'd been looking forward to this all year, but it had an atmosphere, now, one she didn't like. This match was case in point. Pluto was a favorite from Vacuo, a dark-skinned, dark-haired boy with a long black tail and a single pale green eye. The barest hint of a tattoo could be seen peeking out from under his shirt, outlined in white. The other, Ellan, was from Mistral, and wasn't trying to hide her disgust. In a way it was almost more infuriating than the juvenile insults ERMN had thrown around, because she acted like she was too above-it-all to even talk to him.
Anyway. At least Pluto was winning—he had better speed and agility, and Ellan seemed to have badly underestimated him at pretty much every turn. So that was fine—but the crowd was going insane, so much so that it made her uncomfortable just being in the stands. Part of her was almost glad the others weren't here, because spectating the matches had gone from a fun day out to a grating chore almost overnight.
Things reached a boiling point when Pluto struck a final blow and drove his opponent into the red. The stands erupted—BRYN joined in the cheering, with Russel shouting so obnoxiously enthusiastically that the people nearest them leaned away from their group. Someone, she never figured out who, threw a punch, and the next thing she knew part of the stands was embroiled in a confusing brawl.
Well, calling it a brawl was a bit much. Yang had been in (and started) enough actual fights that this didn't register as much of anything. Mostly it was pairs of people screaming at each other and getting into shoving matches, which she deescalated mostly by picking up both offenders and holding them apart from one another. When it all finally died down, they were rolling the next contestants—probably in an attempt to distract the unruly crowd.
Of course, one of those two people turned out to be her. She shot a parting grin to her team—Russel offered a mocking salute, Nora an enthusiastic reminder to definitely break a leg (But not actually, sorry Dove!), and their leader a nod and a smug, confident smirk.
Then Port called out, "Velvet Scarlatina!" and Yang's face lit up. She'd been looking forward to this match since she'd seen the fight with Pyrrha. Now with more spring in her step, she jogged down to the arena and faced her opponent, who nodded politely to her.
Probably bad timing, she thought, glancing up into the stands. Then she scowled, realizing that she was probably about to get a whole lot of cheers from people she would happily push off a jetty. Partly in an attempt to alleviate a bizarre, misplaced sense of guilt, and partly to piss off any and all of those people, she set her feet a ways apart and dipped into the most formal bow she knew—one her dad had taught her when he first started sparring with her, and which she had mostly ignored since. Velvet broke into a grin and bowed back, mirroring her stance.
Just like that, it was on. Before she even had time to react, Velvet was leading with a holographic projection of Pyrrha's lance. She considered that something of a gesture of respect in and of itself—that was how you'd start a match against someone you considered a really serious opponent. Grinning, she ducked under a few swings and deflected a jab off one gauntlet.
It took a moment of that back and forth before she thought she had settled into something like a rhythm. Sparring with Pyrrha was insanely difficult, but Velvet wasn't quite at the same level of nightmarish technical skill.
Naturally, that was when Velvet started to switch things up. Her next weapon Yang didn't recognize—a pair of small sickles that she dual-wielded with almost as much finesse as she'd handled Pyrrha's lance, which was a lot. Again there was that adjustment period, where she tried to accommodate the change not just in weapon but in style. Before she could start to get comfortable with that, the sickles disappeared again.
In their place were swords—an absurd amount of swords, floating over her shoulders like the stingers of a nine-tailed Deathstalker. Yang recognized them, since Ruby had grabbed her by the arm and pointed excitedly when her friend had first appeared. That did not, as it turned out, translate to dealing with them effectively.
She dashed to the left, rolling under a wave of hard light blades, then popped to her feet and jabbed at Velvet's chin. Another sword blocked her, and three more circled around her. They split off in different directions, and before she really knew what was going on she'd taken a nick on the calf. Not serious, but geez. A flicker of heat started in her chest, and she was sure that when she blinked next her eyes had gone red.
The crowd tittered, some cheering Velvet on and others heckling the pair of them in almost equal measure. Yang spared a second to point and wink at one man in the front row, not thirty feet away, who had jumped up on his seat and gone purple with rage. Velvet was nice enough not to capitalize on that.
Yang knew riling them up was probably a bad idea, but she just couldn't help it. This whole thing was starting to feel like a complete shitshow—the angry mob masquerading as an audience had screwed up the whole tournament for ABSW, and then there was whatever the hell had happened to Pyrrha, which definitely wasn't helped by people heckling her for losing to a faunus. Was it so wrong to want to poke the bear a little, especially if it kept people's anger focused on her, and not classmates that didn't deserve it and probably didn't want to deal with it?
Not that it mattered, just now. She got back into the game, enough that she managed to roll past several of the swords and land a solid kick to the small of Velvet's back. She stumbled forward, but when Yang leapt to follow up the attack she found herself blocked by Pyrrha's shield. Then she was being shoved backwards, skidding on the arena floor, and trying to duck a pair of... shotgun nunchucks? Somebody definitely shot themselves in the foot more than once learning to use those.
They were effective, though. A glancing blow to her shoulder spun her almost halfway around, and when she looked again Velvet had a minigun braced against her hip. She rolled out of the way, ducking under a hail of bullets and then leaping to her feet in time to launch a shot that hit Velvet's upper arm. Again the cheering and jeering rose a notch, and she grimaced. She couldn't help imagining the lot of them frothing at the mouth, screaming incoherently at people just for being a little different. That wasn't fair—some of them were cheering for Velvet, or for Yang as a person, or for Beacon Academy. Still.
A glance at the screen showed her that her aura was close to the yellow, now, and Velvet's only a few slivers behind. She grinned at that—close fights were always her favorites. Yang let her semblance flow out of her just in time to land a blow to her opponent's stomach, and in turn took a nasty scratch from a small hooked knife. Judging by the way Velvet tossed it away in disgust even as it vanished from existence, it wasn't one she'd borrowed from a teammate.
The noise of the crowd rose to a fever pitch as both of their auras drew closer to the red. Yang had briefly gained the advantage when she'd her semblance fuel her, but then Velvet had pulled out a sword almost as long as she was tall, and it had been harder to get in close from then on. Now they were neck in neck, and she'd forgotten about the nastiness of the match, the jeering of people who probably didn't even know her, and was wholly focused on the fight. It was exhilarating—she'd had close calls like this before, but she hadn't gotten to fight an unfamiliar opponent this tough since she'd first sparred with Pyrrha. She let out a whoop when one sweep of the sword sent her flying head over heels, and another when she managed to turn it into a cartwheel that landed her on her feet.
Velvet smiled at that, but however amused she might have been she wasn't showing any mercy. The giant sword was swapped out for a whip mid-swing, and it caught Yang right in the gut. The wind was knocked out of her, and she heard with almost perfect clarity a scream from the crowd—"Get up and fight it!"
She stood, shaking her head, trying to get back in the zone. Then, just as she was trying to duck a swing from Cardin's mace—that thing was scary when the person holding it was faster than the average glacier—Velvet froze, ears twitching. Yang stopped, too, nonplussed.
"Uh, what—"
Then she heard it. A low rumbling, felt more in her breastbone than in her ears. Slowly but surely the noise grew louder, accompanied by a strange grinding, like two huge rocks dragging over one another.
"Okay..." Yang chuckled nervously. "That's not good."
As if in answer, the arena floor lurched so violently that she and Velvet were both thrown off their feet. There was a sickening swooping sensation in her gut as the ground listed sideways, like she was suddenly lying on a slight incline. And another feeling, familiar but horribly out of place, like when you get in an elevator and it starts to descend. One look at Velvet's expression confirmed what she already knew—they had started to fall.
