Grist

by Auxityne

All is profit that comes to his mills, but not everyone can - or will - be ground down. A complete rebuild of Keeper and re-tooling of the world of Remnant.

15. Crash Course (Part 2)

They could hear sound beyond the jagged walls of their icy fortress – a construction built by remotely primed crystals of Dust and some swift reinforcement by Weiss' own stores of blue powder. It was universally Grimm; reptilian emissions of hate combined with scratching and clawing as the monsters tried to climb the sides and get to the fleshy containers of emotion within. But as it continued to hold, they continued to relax; the break was a necessity regardless of their unease, since the barrels of Coco's ponderous gun, as well as the edges of Penny's sword array, glowed red with the warmth generated by firing at or striking down the murderous ebony tide. The sophomore took this chance to reload her gun and pop water Dust crystals to suck the heat from its barrels. "How in the actual fuck do you throw your swords like that?" she asked Penny, who was engaged with examining the edges of her weapons. "I can't even think that fast, much less swing an arm."

"I'm cheating a little bit," she replied with a beaming smile. The worry in Ciel's eyes went ignored for now. "No, really, they're made of an alloy which is extremely responsive to my Aura charge. Physics does most of the work!" Her green eyes took in the amazement of the other eight kids, which again made her smile – even if they were in relatively bad shape besides Ciel and herself. Even Coco had suffered. The right sleeve of her flamboyant mocha sweater was gone from the elbow down, replaced by claw marks along her forearm which were currently being healed by her Aura. "See, I was being serious!"

"Penny, 'I throw swords at them until they stop moving' is a gross under-representation of what I just watched you do," Weiss stated with bewildered exasperation. She leaned awkwardly on her rapier, using it to bear some of the weight that her damaged left leg couldn't.

"Wait, gross?" Ruby – the least damaged of the nine who had suffered injuries, though still with shredded pantyhose and a slash on the back of her left hand – added a second later, unsure why that word existed in her teammate's statement when it didn't really seem to fit.

"In this context, it means large," Blake advised her, sitting cross-legged on the grass in a futile attempt to slow her racing heart. She looked up when Yang bent down to dab some crimson off of her pale forehead, despite bleeding far more heavily from her own battered knuckles. "Oh, um, thank you."

The blonde fired Blake a wink while Ruby contemplated Blake's answer. "Ohhhhh, right. I guess words mean things. I mean, they mean lots of things." She ignored snickering from her sister and looked at her Scroll. "Three hours to go! Uncle Qrow and the other teachers should be out here soon to help everybody. Aura check?" Her face screwed up when she looked at her team, then Pyrrha's. "May as well hear the bad news now..."

The redhead and her crew were seated as well – Jaune, in fact, had chosen to lie down. Pyrrha, missing some of her armor and bearing cuts all over her arms and face, also wore a frown while she fumbled for the pouch which held her Scroll. "I've got 66 percent." She looked down at her blonde teammate, nudging him with a hand. "Jaune? Are you okay down there?"

"I just need a minute," he wheezed in reply. While he lacked the same number of visible gashes as most everyone else, an accidental hammer strike from Nora had left him struggling to catch his breath. His entire torso throbbed with pain. "Is this what a nail feels like?" he joked, mostly for the benefit of the girl herself, who was knelt by his other side and holding his hand. Her expression indicated that the attempt fell flat. "I'm kidding, Nora, it's cool." Just afterward, he finally managed to produce his own Scroll and look at it. "Oh, uh, 57 percent."

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, trying not to drip blood on him from the thin strikes across her forehead and cheek. "I'm really sorry. I didn't see you. I'm really sorry." She looked back at Ren, whose hand was on her shoulder. "Hey, can you check my gauge for me?"

While he did so, Jaune forced himself to sit up and smile at her despite the considerable agony that action caused him. "Nora, listen. If anyone here knows about screwing up, it's me. It's okay. I promise."

"70 for her, 48 for me," Ren mumbled to Pyrrha after he finished.

Nora glanced over at him when he spoke and winced at the awful gouge which streaked across the back of his right thigh. Tears glittered in her bright eyes. "Yeah, but your screw-ups are funny. This wasn't funny."

Ruby walked over and stooped down to whisper to the redhead. "We can't keep this up, even with the remote priming thing. If Blake and Weiss don't calm down soon..."

"Yes, I know," Pyrrha sighed, her eyes closed with resignation.

After she fell silent, Nora went back to sniffling; when her eyes came open again, they landed on something in the night sky that grabbed her concentration. A little airship, trailing smoke and fire, cut lazily across the face of the Moon directly overhead. As she watched, it expelled a torrent of yellow flame from the rear cargo hatch. "Um, guys?" she said, pointing her free hand toward it as it flew. Their looks went skyward just in time to see a second emission of flames.

"Uhhhhh… that isn't a Bullhead, what the hell is it?" Yang asked, tracking the vessel until it went out of sight behind the forest canopy. Even the act of shielding her eyes against the harsh moonlight drew a hiss of pain. "Do airships usually, I dunno, do that?"

"It's not unheard of, no." Weiss shrugged at the looks she got from her team. "Someone on board one of our – the company's – cargo airships accidentally primed a case of fire Dust powder once. In their panic, they accidentally primed a whole lot more Dust and nearly the entire hold went up. It looked rather like that, actually." She scratched at the cuts across her right cheek with a frown just as the heavy, scraping sound of the stricken airship's impact reached their ears. The sharp cracks of trees being snapped were audible too. "That sounded close."

"Really close," Ruby agreed, looking in roughly the direction where she had heard the noise originate. "Should we go look?"

"Nobody could have survived that, forget it." Coco glanced up as the girl continued to bounce anxiously on her feet. "What?"

"Uh oh, here comes a mom moment," Yang warned her teammates quietly while eyeballing her sister.

Weiss and Pyrrha snapped their eyes over to her. "A… what?" the heiress asked.

Ruby walked toward the much taller Coco and pleaded her case. "If somebody did make it, though, um, shouldn't we help them? We're probably the closest. Hey, I'll go! I've got a ton of Aura and I'm really fast, no problem. I'll be back in a shake." She glanced over as Yang appeared by her side. "Okay, we'll go, because she's never going to take no for an answer and we don't have time to argue."

"Don't be stupid. Look at us, we're in no condition to go running off and playing hero. My job is to keep you alive, your job is stay alive. That's it." Coco, satisfied with the state of her cannon, folded the weapon back up into its case. "Besides, if someone did survive, the Grimm are gonna be on them in a second. It's already over for 'em."

The sisters were unswayed by her words and exchanged nods, gathering their courage for the battle ahead. "Then we need to hurry." Yang looked back at Weiss and Blake, then toward Pyrrha and her team, then, finally at Penny and Ciel. "You can hold it down here, right? I know we're all a little fucked up, but this ice wall should hold long enough for us to bust out and go check the crash site real quick."

"Certainly. We've got plenty of spare Dust crystals between us," the redhead assured her, forcing her smile to remain a smile and not twist into a grimace. "With Penny's and Coco's help, well… I don't think we'll have much trouble now that the Air Force seems to have killed most of the Nevermores."

"Great!" Ruby flashed everyone in sight a thumbs up. "Okay, we'll be right back!" Coco's firm hand on her shoulder stopped her from going anywhere. "Uh… what?" she asked, unwilling to test the girl's strength by trying to yank free.

Something – though she found it impossible to exactly identify what – about Ruby's attitude cracked the weathered cynicism in Coco's spirit and spurred her to take charge of the problem. "Like I said, your job is to stay alive," she said, peering down over her sunglasses. "I'll go check it out."

"I'll go with you." Ciel stepped away from Penny and walked over to the pair. "She's got the firepower, I've got the agility – and almost a hundred percent Aura." A moment went by as she snapped a fresh magazine into her silvery assault rifle. "Penny can stay here with you to guard this position."

"Affirmative!" the android chirped. "My swords have cooled down! I am fully combat ready!" Giggling from Yang caused her to smile.

"All right. We'll be right back." Coco waved her escort over toward the ice wall. "You got some fire on you?" A nod in response; the sophomore looked back at her other charges. "We're making a hole, cover us."

They breached with a primed fire Dust crystal from Ciel and were met by a couple of young Ursae that Penny shredded in a second with her whirling blades, but that was all the resistance they encountered. As the two girls emerged and entered the forest, they heard the pops of crystals behind them to restore the ice over the noise of the undergrowth that rustled around their legs. A few yards away, Coco saw a flickering light through the tree trunks and pointed. "Fire. Ten o'clock, maybe half a click."

"But no Grimm," Ciel replied quietly. The scope of the conflagration became clearer as they shuffled along; several trees had been caught on fire on the edges of a short gash caused by the impact of the airship and its slide through the forest. The wreck had come to rest in a circular clearing, where some of the grass around it was also set ablaze. Crackling of flame became the dominant noise as they closed the distance even more. Ciel used the limited optics on her rifle to scan the area. "I still don't see anything, but my scope isn't the greatest."

Coco used her Scroll flashlight to help, but its output faded against the oranges and reds of the fire. Acrid smoke stung their nostrils. "There's no way anybody made it out of this," she muttered as they fully entered the clearing. In a broken, twisted pile sat the little shuttle, nestled against the remains of a needle-leafed tree whose trunk it had broken halfway up, sputtering tongues of flame into the night air. Fuel leaked from its engine nacelles into the long grass. A cursory sweep of the scene with her flashlight drew attention to a human form resting against the trunk of another tree on the other side of the open space. "Yo, look." She approached carefully, Ciel at her side, and found a barely-conscious Indigo waiting. "Is she…?"

"Where-" Alertness found Indigo in full and in a hurry; she jumped to her feet, ignoring the pain of the myriad cuts across her arms and the rips in her long skirt, and stared at the wrecked airship – she didn't even notice her company until ten seconds later. "H-have-" she gasped, choking on her own breath, "have you seen anyone else? I w-was with a guy… a-and..." Monsters in the trees howled lowly in response to her trauma. She stumbled between Ciel and Coco, who parted to give her space, and toward the airship. "I fucking killed him. I can't believe this shit. I should have known he wouldn't let me go alone. How did… how did I live? I… I…" Her words became more like panting the longer she spoke. She grabbed the sides of her head and sucked in air rapidly despite the terrible burning its smoky composition inflicted upon her nose and throat.

"Do we knock her out?" Ciel asked lowly. More beastly howling followed her words.

"I'm not dragging around an unconscious woman for however long it takes the teachers to get out here – if they come at all. You saw the shit going on over the campus." Coco drew her sidearm and ejected its loaded magazine, yanking back the slide to dump the chambered round into her hand, which she then slipped into a pocket. A different magazine went into the pistol next. The open-mouthed awkwardness on Ciel's face caused her to smile weirdly. "Sucks, but she's gonna die anyway. Go back. You don't have to watch this."

"But..." Ciel watched Indigo sink to her knees; one sob left the woman's lungs before she fell silent, struggling visibly to regulate her breaths. Coco's waved hand in front of her face brought her back to the present. "I'll watch your six at the treeline. Do what you need to do."

"If you insist." Coco watched her go for a second before walking over to Indigo and pointing the pistol at the back of her head. "Gods have mercy on us bo-" Too late; the woman was now looking at her, eyes glassy with regret. The expression stayed her trigger finger.

The words that came from her mouth next weren't even on the same planet as Coco's expectations. "Oh, right, the protocol," she stated, her orbs sliding closed. On her knees, she shuffled in place until her pistol was aimed squarely at her forehead. "I've had this coming for a long time anyway."

"I'm still sorry." She set her heavy case aside and put both hands on the gun to steady her abruptly shaky aim.

Indigo crossed her beaten-up arms over her chest in prayer. "I just wish I could tell my family I'm sorry."

"Yeah, I know the feeling." Silence took over as Coco's brain advised her there was something on her shoulder, which she identified an instant later as a hand. Assuming it was Ciel, she said "I thought you were gonna watch my-" Those words morphed into grunts of pain when the hand spun her roughly around. "What the fuck?!"

Opher's angry fist, which he launched right into her face, contacted with a metallic clank so loud it echoed. His strike left Coco in an awkward, limp pile on the ground between himself and a startled Indigo. Her shattered sunglasses dropped onto the grass. Only now did Ciel, whose back was to them, realize the problem. "Hands up!" she ordered loudly, aiming her rifle at him as she scuttled closer. "Now!" A bolt of pinkish lightning jumped from the tips of his fingers and knocked her to the ground. Her body jerked uncontrollably with the assault – as did her Aura, which directed iron around rapidly under her skin, defending against what it thought was physical blows registered by her overloaded nervous system. Her rifle went flying as her limbs twitched viciously.

Those two issues dealt with for the moment, Opher nonchalantly kicked Coco's unconscious body aside and knelt before a terrified, slack-jawed Indigo. "Is this what going on an actual date with you would be like?" he quipped, grinning like a madman. She tackled him in a hug so forceful that even he had to grunt with the contact. "It's okay. I'm fine. You, on the other hand, don't look so good."

"Shut up for a minute," she said, patting him down in search of injuries. "How did you get out? How did I get out? What about the pilot?" When she drew back her hands and examined them in the flickering light of the fire, she found nothing. No sweat, no blood – her digits were completely dry. In fact, his red, long-sleeved shirt and tan cargo pants were also flawlessly intact. "You're—you aren't even scratched. I don't understand." With some effort, she rose to her numb feet and looked into the forest as more howling echoed through the trees – her confusion would have to take a back seat. She needed to get them out of there before the Grimm arrived. "You shouldn't have knocked them out, we're gonna need their help to make it back to Beacon." Then it hit her. "Wait. Did you—did you throw lightning from your fingers? Is that your Semblance? No, wait, you shot fire out of too… what the fuck is going on?"

"One thing at a time, Indigo." He helped her to her feet and away from the wrecked airship. "I couldn't do anything for the pilot. As for us, well..." It would have to wait; as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see Grimm at the treeline, approaching at a curious pace as they searched the area for the source of the misery their senses detected. He instantly put himself between them and her. "They're here."

Instead of staying put, however, she limped quickly over to Coco's discarded pistol and snatched it off the grass, determined to help fight the beasts. She stood side by side with him as one of the Beowolves made eye contact and roared. "Got anymore tricks up your sleeve?" she asked nervously. More monsters appeared, mostly Ursae, but a Death Stalker joined their number – which was their cue to charge. "No!" she snapped, raising the pistol and opening fire. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Opher sweep his right arm around and up; the Grimm were flung skyward like rockets, howling their rage with limbs flailing uselessly. A speechless Indigo allowed the muzzle of the pistol to drift down again while she watched them fly. A few seconds later, the horde came plummeting back down to Remnant, splattering in the tree branches or on the ground around them. Only the Death Stalker survived this trip – albeit with most of its legs shattered – but another twitch of Opher's wrist planted a spike of ice between its many eyes, removing it as a threat. While she startled reflexively with the noise each time a Grimm met its end via gravity, her eyes went up to him and never left. He wouldn't look at her. Neither could find words to break the silence.

Coco, who had returned to consciousness just in time to see the monsters fly, did it for them. "What… what happened?" she gasped, left hand over her throbbing nose. She scrambled into a seated position, then to her feet as soon as her dizzy brain allowed it. Her blurry vision landed on Ciel's limp form a few meters away. "Ciel!"

"Don't throw a fit. She's fine, I just had to knock her down for a minute to avoid anything stupid happening." Opher watched as Indigo handed Coco back her pistol. "Why were you about to shoot her?"

"The protocol." Shaky fingers ran through her messy hair – at some point she'd lost the clip tying it all together in its usual neat ponytail – and she sighed. "She might have to shoot me anyway, I don't know if I can get back to Vale." A hopeless smile went to her employee before she turned away, eyes bulged with fear for what might happen to Schwarze when this news got back to the city. "Oh no..." she whispered.

The smile he returned once she looked back up at him was much more reassuring. "It's been a while since I walked a girl home, but I don't think I'm that rusty." He placed his right hand into his pocket and stared at the unhappy student. "By the way, point that thing at her again and I'll have your head on a fucking pike."

So Coco aimed it at him instead as she stumbled unsteadily toward them. "Don't threaten me," she warned, drawing so close that the muzzle of her gun rested against his forehead. "You're already in trouble for interfering in a combat trial and for assaulting students. I wouldn't dig that hole any deeper."

"Okay, okay," Indigo said with a nervous chuckle, sliding herself between the two much taller opponents, "Let's not do this. The Grimm are gonna-"

Unmoved as the trees around him, Opher roughly snatched the pistol right out of Coco's hand and handed it to his boss. "I think I'd rather you carry this thing for now," he stated plainly, turning his back on both women.

"Holy hell, man!" she blurted out with surprise, fumbling with the weapon for a few seconds as he walked off without another word.

"You son of a bitch!" Coco snapped, grabbing her pistol right back and storming along after Opher as he moved toward Ciel. More growling from unseen Grimm leaked through the darkness.

She caught up to him just as he reached the assault rifle Ciel had lost, which he picked up, but upon straightening he found a pistol muzzle jammed into the back of his skull. Indigo darted over, wincing with the pain in her legs, desperate to defuse the situation before the monsters came again; it was too late, however, as Grimm homed in on Coco's anger and slashed out of the trees – Beowolves, Ursae, and speedy little Creeps flowed like water into the clearing. Before either woman could scream their horror or recoil from the horde, he lifted his left hand and snapped. A concentric ring of blue fire spread out from his feet along the grass – it left the blades untouched, as well as Ciel when it passed over her – before erupting into a wall of magical heat that obscured everything in sight save for a circular slice of the sky and the half-shattered Moon. Every beast that passed through it found themselves being annihilated into vapor a second or two later, tumbling across the ground as they ran and flying apart while their bodies disintegrated into nothing. The tremendous befuddlement he found on their faces after checking on Ciel forced him to laugh. "Well, so much for managing expectations. I didn't even make it three months," he murmured caustically.

"Wh-wh-wh-" was all Indigo could utter in reply. At a complete loss, she shuffled over to help him sit Ciel up as the girl squirmed where she lay en route to full consciousness.

"Where am I?" she wheezed, limbs stony with the residual effects of Opher's lightning strike. Seeing him caused her to jolt away violently, though standing up wasn't possible with her legs so unsteady and she ended up on hands and knees instead. The blue fire surrounding them all stole her attention. "Th… the forest! Coco! It's on fire!" But the longer she looked at it, the easier it became for her to notice one fact: that wall of flames wasn't moving. "We have to—leave?" she said, initial gasps of horror blending down into confusion by the end.

"I'm gonna guess you two weren't out here by yourself?" he asked Coco, giving Indigo Ciel's rifle for the moment; the gobsmacked woman had no idea what to do with it – despite her considerable training with such weapons – and stared as if looking at an artifact from a different planet. While he waited for an answer, another screeching Death Stalker melted against his magic as wax would yield to a candle flame. "You did mention the trial, after all."

"I-" Language evaded her for a moment, thanks mostly to the display and the pain caused by her Aura as it tried to stabilize and heal her likely-broken nose. The muzzle of her pistol went down again – as did the injured arm with which she held it, hanging limply at her side. "I was with Ruby Rose and Pyrrha Nikos' teams." Here she paused to to help Ciel to her feet.

"We joined up with them a little while ago," Ciel added, her inflection more appropriate for a question as she looked around at the wall of blue fire. "Would someone mind explaining to me what's going on?"

"Yeah," Indigo agreed, staring holes in Opher – but, again, he refused to meet her eyes. "That's a great fucking idea, man, would you please tell us how you did any of this shit?"

"There's this stuff called Dust? Not sure if you've heard of it," he said dryly, running a hand over his hair and frowning. "Where the hell did my hat go..." Continued gazing finally got his attention. "One thing at a time," he advised before his eyes went to Coco. "I guess we'd better find your kids before they get themselves into trouble." Another snap of his fingers deactivated the wall of fire from the base up, a process which took five or so seconds. No other Grimm arrived even after its departure; the air was filled up instead by the sounds of nocturnal birds, the insects they were hunting – and gunfire from the direction of the ice fortification Coco and Ciel had left behind. Everyone snapped their eyes toward it.

"Shit, that's where they are," Coco said, grabbing her gun case off of the ground, then sprinting unevenly toward the noise. "Come on!"

They went as a group, at varying speeds – Indigo was the slowest due to the nagging pain in her legs, so she handed Ciel back her rifle and brought up the rear of their procession. Opher hung back with her instead of trying to charge forth with Ciel and Coco, which put him in a better position to light up any Grimm that came out of the woods to harass them. Twitches of his wrists ejected lances of fire at a few persistent young Creeps that were tailing them from the crash site of the airship. Most of these shots – which exploded on contact thanks to their wind-induced volatility – were blind attacks he flung over his shoulders; distortions caused by the presence of the beasts in his vast Aura field were how he aimed them. She watched this display with gobsmacked silence.

"Okay," he finally admitted during a lull, "I may have been underselling myself a little bit." Another burst of flames went flying over his shoulder.

"No fucking shit?" was her quick reply. She rubbed the nape of her neck, still locked in a struggle with her own breathing. "I'm… sorry about all this. If I'd had my own rifle..."

"Shush. If you think I'm mad at you about anything, you must have bumped your head harder than I thought." They could see the icy fortress ahead now – and the sizable number of Creeps trying to scale its walls, claws shrieking against the ice as they scrambled for grip. Gunfire, echoed from behind that ice, indicated that some of the beasts were already inside. The two girls opened fire – Coco even threw her case at one monster which was too close to the top, knocking it off – and Opher joined their attack once he arrived. Rocky shards flew from his hands, shattering young monsters which lacked white back armor, or stunning older examples so they fell off and were easy prey for Ciel and Coco's bullets. "Should I break through this or throw you over it?" he asked once they all came back together at the base of the ice.

"Punch through it!" Coco replied while snatching her case off the ground, arriving at the wall just before Opher unleashed a column of fire from both palms, melting through the ice until a large enough passage was formed to grant them entry. She entered first, with Ciel at her back.

They found the teams closed in around Blake, Weiss and Jaune, forming a perimeter at the center of their fort while Creeps attacked from all sides. The two girls were busy helping with their own defense as best they could – Weiss launched primed crystals along her blade at the enemy, while Blake filled gaps in their line with shadowy clones mined with ready-to-pop crystals of her own. The Faunus also threw dormant stones to detonate later if necessary. All sorts of ordnance flew through the night air around them; explosions and outbursts of elemental power lit up and rocked the area as they walked closer. Due to her lack of mobility, Weiss occupied the very center of their formation with Jaune next to her, whose injuries also rendered him unable to move, though he chucked and remotely detonated Dust as fast as he could throw it. Penny twirled through them at breakneck speed, her sword array whistling like songbirds and casting a gleam whenever it caught enough light from the Moon – or emitting sparks of its own whenever it struck Grimm armor. Ruby, with Crescent Rose in its more compact rifle mode, fired from the hip to keep the beasts away from a retreating Nora and Ren, while Pyrrha, next to her, did much the same with her own weapon. Yang stood back-to-back with her sister, fists up, to provide close support so Ruby could keep her gun firing. Her gauntlets belched pellets and fire at any Creep which dared to approach.

"We're gonna run out of ammo at this rate!" Ruby yelled.

"Hold on!" Pyrrha replied, twisting her gun back into its shortsword form as the combat range began to shrink. "We just need to wait for Coco to get back!" This fraction of a lull allowed her Aura perception's shrieked message to be registered at last. "Gods… he's here..."

"Who's here?" Ruby glanced back and saw only Coco and Ciel at first, but Opher came into view a second later. "Oh!"

Keen to end the chaos before any of the Grimm noticed Indigo, he discharged a burst of wind Dust and shot into the air, cocking back his right fist at the apex of the leap, then streaking downward with another wind assist. He drove that fist into the ground on impact and injected ice Dust into the soil, which burst out as frozen lances that impaled and lifted every Grimm in sight off the ground. The students continued to move and fight for a second or two afterward until they noticed the threat had ceased; Penny stopped first and eyed the ice structures curiously, tapping her finger against the nearest example. Ren was the most startled of the other nine – since this was his first encounter with Opher's particular fighting style, he stood close to Nora with eyes wide as he looked around.

Coco, still embroiled in the process of unfurling her gun, only saw the ice after looking up to determine why the din of battle had ceased. "Did you...?" she asked Opher when he walked by.

"Take a guess," was all he said, too busy examining the bruised and injured students ahead of him. He noted Penny with a curious glance – as well as her relatively pristine condition – but said nothing until everyone gathered in the center of the icy forest he'd just planted. "Hey, you're all still alive. That's good."

"Please teach me how to punch shit like that," were the first words out of Yang's mouth. Her eyes went to Indigo when she came up to stand with Opher. "Wait, why are you out here?"

"Gun friend!" Ruby chirped, bouncing on her feet. "And, yeah? Good question."

Pyrrha displayed as much politeness as she could shove through her pain and stepped over to them with a smile. "I thought you had some sort of meeting on campus?"

"Yeah, uh, well..." Indigo rubbed her arms, hissed with the sting that caused, and snickered weakly. "My stupid ass volunteered to hop on an airship and snipe the Nevermores over campus. He came with me." She thumbed over at her employee with a weird smile. "Thank the gods he did, otherwise I'd be dead. Someone accidentally shot us down with a rocket."

"That was you we saw crash!" Weiss exclaimed. "Is everyone all right?" She got a half-shrug in response from Indigo, but Opher failed to acknowledge the question – he was busy staring in the direction of the distant magnetite ruins, although he didn't know that was why his brain was so interested in looking that way.

"Rocket?" Coco's eyes widened with surprise. "Argent? Uh..." She clammed up and looked away, pretending to fuss with her still-aching nose. "Hrm."

Opher, gathering some of his remaining earth Dust reserves to close the gap he'd made in their little fort, fully turned his back on the students and did just that with a few graceful sweeps of his arms. Once it was sealed, he finally turned to face the twelve pairs of eyes now on him. Penny, of course, waved happily when they made eye contact, which drew a snort from his lips. "I know you guys are pretty beaten up, but..." He then looked toward what he assumed was the southwest – where Beacon would be – and frowned. "I can't stay here. I need to get Indigo home."

"You need to explain what the fuck is going on," she countered, arms folded with most of her weight cocked onto the least achy hip.

"Preach, sister," Yang agreed quietly behind her with a roll of her lilac eyes.

"This really isn't the time." He waved her off and looked at the kids instead. "How was the fight going?"

"Actually?" Ruby chirped, face screwed up, her eyes toward the sky. "It looked worse than it was! Penny's awesome. And the, um, the trick you showed us seriously helped. Thanks." She squeaked when Indigo's stare landed on her too. "Look, I don't wanna get in the middle of this right now, you guys work it out. Okay? Please? It's awkward enough trying to deal with Weiss..."

"Excuse me?!" she snapped in reply – her anger mostly facetious, as evidenced by the smirk that appeared just after.

"Showed them what… gods, fuck it." Indigo, rubbing her eyes, relented with a sigh. "I don't even care. I just want to get the hell out of here." She grabbed Opher by his sleeve to get his attention. "Can someone check his Aura? If we're gonna walk back, I don't want him to run out halfway, especially when I don't have any weapons on me."

"Oh, I can!" Pyrrha – cognizant of Opher's preference to keep things quiet – walked over to him to mask the size of his field and pretended to examine it once she got close enough. The redhead even produced her Scroll to enhance the ruse, making faces at its screen as the measurement app once more threw up an error in the face of his too-powerful Aura. She hid this from Indigo with a carefully placed hand. "Seems fine to me."

"Really? After all the shit he's done?" Overwhelmed, she decided this additional confusion could go on the pile to be dealt with later; her biggest concern was her ability to get back into Vale. "Okay, I guess… fuck me. What a day." Sleeve-grabbing became a pull of Opher's left hand. "You run point, I'll do navigation?"

He shrugged at this with a smile. "If you insist." He looked back down at Ruby. "I'll fix the new hole if you guys wanna stay."

"We can do it. The teachers should be out here soon anyway." Ruby waved at her team as Opher and Indigo took their leave. "Okay! Let's get ready to really dig in! How are we doing on crystal reserves? We're gonna need more ice before our wall melts!"

"Still got half a backpack," Blake said, pointing at it as it sat by her foot on the ground. "I'll go pick up the ones I didn't set off and get a more accurate number." She looked up at Coco, who now stood next to her. "Um, what happened to your nose, by the way?" More inspection caused her brow to raise. "And your sunglasses?"

Coco, glaring at Opher's back, rubbed the half-dried blood from her face with a gloved hand. "It's not important."

---

Once they'd put some distance between themselves and the students, Indigo and Opher found a marked lack of Grimm thanks to the former's grasp on her emotions, plus the latter's utter lack of worry about their current plight. As promised, she had her Scroll out – it was in pristine condition, especially considering all it and she had just been through – to help point the way. "Straight ahead," she said quietly, eyes darting around in response to almost every sound and movement they could detect in the darkened woods. "Four clicks. There's a stream, too. Not sure how deep."

Opher was the one providing light, thanks to a yellow flame he held in his right palm. "I'll get us across." Silence caused him to glance back; he found a blank look on her face which became a weird smile when their eyes met. "Soooo… about all of this. I may not have been entirely truthful about my employment history." An awkward moment passed. "Dust surveyor was not my first line of work. Before that, I was a soldier too. Not for very long, but..."

Those four words brought Indigo to a nearly-instant halt; she stopped so fast that he didn't realize it at first and had to walk back to her once he did, confusion spread across his features. "I knew it," she breathed to herself. "In which Army?" were her next words, louder this time. "Atlas?"

Here, at last, was a new challenge: how to fit the existence of Kingdoms into his boundless ability to make shit up, since the last time this process unfolded was a few centuries before the idea of huge cities came to fruition. Opher, hand on hip, stared into the woods for a moment before urging them ahead with a wave of his other hand. For now, he'd just wing it. "Yeah. Guess what I did?"

Her eyes lit up with curiosity. "I'm all ears."

"Infantry." Now Opher came to a halt. "Something ahead." He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. "Who goes there?" Two flashlights lit up in response and bounced with the quick steps of their bearers. "Must be people, 'cause I'm pretty sure Grimm don't know how to use those."

"Gods, I hope not." They stood side by side and awaited whoever it was; thirty seconds later, silhouettes appeared, weaving around the trees, their lights slashing through the night until they landed on Indigo and her employee and stayed there. "Easy!" she complained, shielding her eyes. "We can't see anything!"

"My apologies—wait a moment, am I hearing things?" Glynda Goodwitch's voice. She came into proper view a moment later, striding forth to investigate. Surprised would be an understatement for the look she wore upon seeing Indigo. "Miss Stahl? You survived?" Opher, on the other hand, received a somewhat more uncertain gaze. "Mister… Riese, wasn't it? What are you doing out here? There's a field trial going on, the forest is strictly off-limits right now."

He replied first with a wry smirk. "I got on the airship too. She needed something to rest the rifle on to aim properly. That turned out to be me." Glances were thrown toward the other shadow as it materialized into Qrow a few seconds later.

"Well, well. How the hell did either of you make it through all of that?" he asked, balancing the spine of a thick, silvery broadsword on his left shoulder. Indigo's various cuts and her ruined skirt were to be expected, but Opher's pristine status made his brow crinkle. "And without a scratch in your case. Lucky."

Indigo nudged Opher in the ribs before crossing her arms. "I wouldn't know, I got knocked out and Opher won't tell me what happened after that. All I know is the pilot didn't make it."

"The particulars can wait until we get back home," he said, rubbing at his hair and desperately wishing he knew what happened to his precious boonie hat. Abrupt, silent awkwardness from the teachers caused him to look over. "Got awful quiet over there."

"About your re-entry..." Glynda pushed her glasses back up her nose and stepped forward to take charge of the exchange. "Vale's Interior Ministry protocol may prevent that from happening, I'm afraid, for either of you. Due to Grimm exposure. We might need to keep you at Beacon for a while."

"And how long is a while?" Opher asked, arms folded loosely. Indigo, sensing his tension, tugged at his shirt, but he paid her no mind.

Her reply was almost studious, though she avoided eye contact the whole way through it. "Until we determine that your emotional state is sound and your exposure levels are within safe limits. Unfortunately, that may take some time."

While her vagueness irritated him, it was Indigo's muttered, "Oh, fuck, they're never going to let us back in," laced with knowing resignation, that pushed him over the edge. Opher pinned the taller blonde down with a virulent glare but said nothing just yet; instead, he gently took Indigo's hand and led her past the two teachers on deliberate steps.

"I'm sorry," the tall blonde said as they walked by, "but I must ask you to remain on campus for now." A failure to reply from both parties furrowed her brow hard; she stared at their backs as they retreated into the night. "Did you hear me?"

"Eh, it's not like they've got a choice either way, the airspace is still closed to traffic and I'm pretty sure we don't have any other shuttles." Figuring the conversation had reached its end, Qrow shrugged, turned away, and started off toward the distant sounds of battle to the northeast. Glynda, however, failed to come with him. "What's the problem?" he asked after coming to a halt again.

"I would like some sort of acknowledgment," she muttered under her breath before pursuing. "Miss Stahl? Mister Riese? Did you understand me?"

Nothing the growing anger on his face, Indigo stretched up as high as she could to whisper to Opher, "Don't, man, the Grimm are going to come. Just let it go."

His reply was a statement she'd never heard anyone in her life say before. "I don't give a shit about the Grimm." He then released her hand, placed his on her shoulder, and stopped her gently from walking any further. "Sit tight for a minute."

"Wh-what are you-?" she blurted out as he turned and went back toward the unhappy Glynda. "Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa! Opher! No! Calm down!" she added while skittering around in front of him and placing herself between two opposing parties for what felt like the tenth time tonight. When that failed to stop either from striding toward each other, she grabbed him by the sleeve and walked with him instead, trying to mutter sense into his ear. "No, no, no, no, dude, no, stop, you're already on the cops' radar, you can't do this. You can't. You can still get back in, just be reasonable, okay?"

Opher and Glynda came together under a sprawling, ancient, broad-leafed tree to engage in the most uncomfortable staring contest the shorter woman had ever witnessed. While she had slightly more height than he did, they were perfectly matched for intimidation factor. Even Qrow felt the need to be peacemaker; he walked over and stood next to a shaken – and shaking – Indigo. "All right, everybody relax," he said gently. "We've got these rules for a reason. It's nothing personal."

His dull green eyes remained locked on the Assistant Headmaster. "We're going back to Beacon. Then we're going home. Considering that we just risked our lives to help you and got shot down by someone on your fucking campus for the effort, you'll all be lucky if we decide to call it even once we're back in Vale. And if you have a problem with that, I could not possibly give less of a shit. Goodbye." He turned on his heel to leave, but felt some force tugging at his body which stayed the motion. He glanced down and found a riding crop in Glynda's right hand – as well as some kind of subtle purple glow that encompassed most of her tall frame.

"I will not be threatened, Mister Riese," she warned him evenly. "Either you remain on the campus when you arrive or you can consider yourself exiled right now."

"Holy shit," a terrified Indigo gasped through her fingers.

Twisting interactions between her Aura and his told Opher that it was Glynda's Semblance which currently nailed him to the ground. How angry he decided to be would depend on the answer to the question he asked next. "Are you talking just to me, or to both of us?"

"To you," was her icy reply. By now they were face-to-face with a frantic Indigo nearby, trying to decide whether to force herself between them to break up the staring contest, or to stand aside in hopes that it would help her chances of ever seeing Vale again. "I suggest you do as I asked so we can get this sorted out properly."

"Wow. 'Oh, I heard you were in an airship crash, how are you feeling?' is something you'd normally ask after hearing someone was in an airship crash, but apparently that takes a back seat to enforcing this," he sneered. "I'm taking Indigo back to Vale. Bother us in the morning. I'm sure you've got somebody's Scroll number." With that, he concentrated his Aura forward until its charge became so dense that hers could no longer penetrate it and she lost her grip on his body. This action again excited the air molecules, but only enough to generate a shine too subtle to be noticed against the light from Qrow's Scroll. He then turned sharply on his heel and waved to Indigo. "Come on."

When Glynda tried to stop him again, she found herself unable to get a mental hold. "What-" she mumbled, face crinkled with effort. Not even directing her crop at his back to help her focus had any effect; he just kept on walking with a nervous Indigo alongside, glancing over her shoulder. "Why isn't this working?"

Noting the rather more intense purple light around her tall frame, Qrow shook his head and waved his hand in front of her face, breaking her concentration. "If it ain't working, then save your Aura and stop trying. We've got three hours of fighting out here to do, remember? Besides, they've got no choice. They either go back to campus or they die out here. We'll figure this out when we get back."

"You do have a point." Glynda ceased her mental assault – Opher was almost out of her range now anyway – and turned to the old Huntsman with a frown. "Very well, I'll call the campus and let them know to be on the lookout." When she produced her Scroll to do this, however, she found the device wouldn't stay on after she tapped the diamond-shaped power button. "Oh, of course it doesn't work."

"Yeah, mine's messed up too," Qrow confirmed, gazing with lidded eyes at his own. "Does this mean we need to head back ourselves?"

Glynda stared into the forest, her face stony, for a few seconds. "No," she finally replied, "the students take priority. We'll follow the noises for now." She set off through the undergrowth with Qrow in close pursuit.

---

So rattled was Indigo that Opher had to provide light for their walk through the woods; she was too busy trying fruitlessly to regulate her breaths while wringing her hands and planning her next move. "I should call Schwarze and let her know what's going on," leaked from between her trembling lips. "You really shouldn't have challenged Goodwitch back there. She could have kicked your-"

Could she? After all she'd witnessed, Indigo was no longer sure who would win a fight between her courier and Beacon's Assistant Headmaster – a fact which left her so baffled that it managed to ease her nerves, at least for a moment. Noting her silence, Opher glanced over and said, "Hold off calling her until we get back. No point in getting her worried for nothing."

"For nothing? We can't fucking go anywhere! Didn't you hear that other guy? The airspace is closed." The smile on his face set her off. Fists clenched, she snapped angrily at him, "What are you smirking about, you asshole?! This is serious!"

His definition of serious and hers were separated by more than a few centuries of experience, but, in deference to her agitation, he toned down the intensity of his grin. "I promised I'd walk you home, and I'm walking you home."

"We can't walk off Beacon Cliff, across the fucking lake, through the woods, and then 25 clicks across Carnforth Plain, you fucking moron!" Her breaths were gasped after this outburst, but once more he walked unfazed. "Look, I know you saved us from the crash, and killed all the Grimm, and..." The more she recalled the events of the past hour, the faster her angry momentum began to fail; that emotion was set aside for awkward curiosity. "And apparently you can jump really high. You've been holding back a lot on me, haven't you?"

At last, he reacted – with a shrug, as he pushed aside the thick branches of a leafy shrub so they could keep following the stream to their left. "Like I said, I've been trying to leave my old life behind."

Something she understood, to be sure, but the display left her interest piqued. "What rank were you? Back in the day, I mean." Her body tensed with ruefulness. "If you don't want to say, that's fine. I'm just curious."

It wasn't reluctance that stayed his tongue at first, but a long think about how he could possibly translate the title of his old commission into the modern language used by Remnant. Realizing the bigger problem at hand – his professed age – he discarded those thoughts and worked instead on reinforcing his cover story. "I barely made it out of basic. I wasn't in long enough before I… well." He looked down when she took his hand again.

"You washed out?" she asked gently. "I mean, I don't see how you could have, given all the shit I just watched you do. Pretty sure Vale's Army would make you an officer right now."

"No, it wasn't like that." His mind traveled back across gulfs and chasms of time, landing on the war before, whose replayed atrocities put a bitter tightness in his features. "I was asked to do things I refused to do."

Indigo released his hand and turned away slightly, hugging herself in the process. Regret stained her eyes. "I wish I had your spine," she whispered sadly to herself. To prevent her angst from taking root and attracting the beasts, she quickly put her focus back on their plight. "Please explain to me how we got out of the airship. Please? I need to understand."

How could he deny her when she sounded so tired? Opher's face softened. Only the truth would do. "We were going to fall into Beacon Lake until I took control of the airship. I asked the pilot to guide us out toward the forest so we wouldn't crash into campus. It was the closest option I could think of. She… the rocket explosion caught her pretty bad, so she died on the way there. I jumped out with you just before impact."

She processed this in silence for a while, determining what questions she wanted to ask first. It seemed easiest to start at the beginning, so she did, hands clasped behind her back. "What do you mean you took control of the airship? Did you fly it?"

"I used gravity Dust to keep it from crashing, then some of the fire you saw to provide thrust. The pilot flew it for as long as she could," he explained, eyes suddenly locked forward again.

"Is that how you threw the Grimm?" He nodded at her. "I don't get how you use Dust, then. And what was that blue fire? I've never seen anything like that in my life." The appearance of Beacon's campus through the trees, across the now multiple little creeks that cut wild, twisting paths through the forest toward their demise over the edge of Beacon Cliff, caught her eye and his too. They spent a few seconds looking at the CCT tower before she added an expectant, "Well?"

He emitted a sigh before motioning downstream and walking on. "Let's head toward the cliff. I don't want one of Glynda's underlings to catch us on campus. It's trouble neither of us probably feel like dealing with right now." After they emerged from the woods, they came upon the same side of the small stream network – and the same spot on Beacon Cliff – where Nebula had met her end weeks before. Flowing water drowned out everything but the closest chirping insects, including the distant sounds of the combat trial which raged on in the Emerald Forest. Upon arrival at the cliff's edge, they looked down into the shining lake until Indigo's attention landed on the sparkling city of Vale beyond and she emitted a sniffle. His hand came to rest on her head; this time, she didn't fight the contact. "I know a different way."

She shook off his hand and looked up. "A different way to what?"

"To use Dust." From the left leg pocket of his cargo pants, he pulled out a purple gravity Dust crystal, a long, faceted shape no bigger than his palm, and watched it sparkle in the moonlight as he moved it around in his hand. Indigo looked quizzically at it along with him. "This isn't just a rock that explodes if you point your Aura at it in a certain way." The crystal rose from his palm into the air, slowly, gently. "It's a gift."

"How the fuck..." she mumbled, poking it with her finger. It resisted her interference and continued to float happily.

I am going to regret this, he told himself silently, but if he was willing to share this information with eight stupid kids in a Huntsman Academy, then one of his two current actual friends deserved to hear it too. Opher chose to deliver it with a practical demonstration – flying them both home – so he waved at Vale in the pitch-black distance. "Are you afraid of heights?"

She stared at the city, blank-faced, her mind whirling as she tried to figure out why he asked. "I don't think so?" was the best she could come up with. She jumped when her perceived weight began to decrease – a few seconds later, she found herself floating just like the crystal in Opher's palm, perhaps a meter above the grassy ground, but well back from the edge of the cliff. "Wh-what the-?!"

His shoes also detached from the soil. "I'm going to fly us back to Vale." He took her by the hand, a reassuring smile on his face to counter the open-mouthed horror on hers. Subtly, to avoid startling her, he initiated a forward motion via wind Dust which was so slow, that she didn't realize they were over the lake until a few seconds had passed.

"Holy fuck!" she squealed, pulling herself along his arm like it was a horizontal rope until she came to rest with her chest pressed against his shoulders and her legs locked around his waist. "I can't do this! I can't do this! Put us down! Put us down! You're going to run out of Aura and we're going to die!"

Despite her powerful build and tremendous strength – the latter of which was also heightened by outright panic – her mighty grip caused Opher no pain at all, though it did make squirming his arms free a little difficult. He let her cling to him, since it probably made her feel a little better, and flew on with the hyperventilating woman on his back. "Nothing is going to happen to you up here," he stated calmly. "If I didn't think I could make it, I wouldn't be risking your safety. You have my word." His face screwed up at the amount of exhaled breath going past his ear. "Well, I guess I know what your mouthwash sounds like?" he quipped, tilting his head away.

"How?!" she gasped, the only question her swamped mind could grasp as the lake and the forest drifted by over five hundred meters below them. "How the fuck?!"

"Breathe, Indigo. We're fine." He crushed the purple crystal in his palm and let its powder arc around them, borne on the magnetic prominence of his powerful Aura. It surrounded them like purple rings – although he masked the size of his Aura by concentrating these closely around them – until its activation. The result buoyed them like balloons on the wind. "I can use Dust way more efficiently than most people. This single crystal is going to get us to Vale, no problem." He adjusted his angle relative toward the ground when he felt her moving to get a better hold. Now her arms were wrapped around his chest. To keep her a little calmer, he began dumping invisible expulsions of wind Dust ahead of himself to mask how fast they were now going. He also threw out a question for her to think about. "When you used Dust in the Army, did they show you how to throw it like a grenade?"

"I mean, yeah," she admitted after a few more halting breaths. Her next act was the mistake of looking down past Opher's side at the sparse trees. Her grasp on him tightened again.

"Well, I burn crystals." Noting how cool the air was getting as they subtly continued to gain height, he plucked a fire Dust crystal from another pants pocket and held it up to show her. "If I prime this, it just explodes, right?"

"Yeah, so don't do that," she agreed, staring at it as he held it between his fingers. When it began to glow, she lost every bit of her mind. "You actual fucking moron!" Yet as she watched, this stone, much like the crystal Ruby and Pyrrha had shown to Coco, burned quietly, fully controlled, like a little candle. Unlike that crystal, it fragmented into powder and arced along Indigo's Aura – which Opher found to be somewhat larger than he expected, though nowhere near as voluminous as his – and provided subtle warmth to counteract the brisk temperature at their lofty position.

When she couldn't put words to the sight or the sensation, Opher looked back over his shoulder and smiled. "I know. You have no idea what the hell just happened. I'll tell you the short version: there's a way to finely activate this stuff. It's like a prayer. You just ask for it."

"You… excuse me, did you just imply you talk to fucking rocks?"

"No, I don't. I speak with Remnant." He loosed a little grunt when she whacked him on the back of the head. "I'm doing the same damn thing right now to keep us airborne, so maybe just hear me out?" No further punches came, so he continued. "I'll prove it to you when we land, but anyone can do it. You only need to ask the right question and Remnant will answer."

"Gods help me, this day and everything in it is kicking my ass..." Indigo ducked her head as they passed into, then out of, a fat little cloud. "Are we gaining altitude?"

"Yeah, I wanna keep us above the airship lanes." More speed was applied to aid this effort; by now they found themselves over the vast plains upon which Vale sat. He softly gripped Indigo by both of her forearms – this was the most comfortable place to put his hands at the moment. She didn't rebuke him, so there they stayed. "Damn, you really are a brick," he commented upon feeling her muscles, mostly to lighten the mood. "My arms are like gelatin compared to yours."

She had to admit this was a total lie, at least so far as her current grasp on him could determine. "Shut up." Her face felt a little hotter for reasons not related to fire Dust. "But, uh, thanks."

"Mhm. By the way, how did the meeting go?"

"What?" She had to dig for that mundane information for several seconds. "I mean, I set us up for a lot of courier work since we don't have much storage space, but I don't think that shit matters now since we're-" It was that moment when the full implications of their current journey hit her. "Holy fuck, we're breaking into Vale! They're going to shoot us on sight!"

Her terrified squirming made controlled flight a little bit harder, so he tapped her gently on the forearm to get her to stay still. "Easy, we've got a long way to go and nobody is going to see us, not the way we're going in." Once she calmed down, he asked her something out of left field to get her mind off of her fear – after all, he could see dark shapes lingering in the air some distance away, and a fight with those, if they were Grimm, would attract far too much unwanted attention. "How did you even meet Schwarze? You two aren't anything alike."

"Why does it matter?" she snapped back, subconsciously realizing his aims but being much too frazzled to accept the distraction. A moment of thought, and some apologetic grumbling, later, she added, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

He looked back at her over his right shoulder. "Indigo, I know how to fly. Try me."

"I—fuck off." A shake of her head moved some bluish hair from her eyes – no way in hell she'd release any part of her hold to do it manually – as she screwed up her gumption to answer. "We met in the Army."

"Excuse me?" he replied loudly, for once genuinely surprised. Safe navigation around a cargo airship took priority for a moment, after which he picked up the chat with a disbelieving, "Are you telling me she was a soldier too, or was it a civilian thing just related to the service?"

"Oh, no, she was a soldier too. We first saw each other in recruit training. Gods… feels like forever ago, but it's only been nine years." She couldn't help but watch the airship they'd just passed fly away, clueless about its unusual company in the sky. "She was just as bubbly then as she is now. Everyone liked her. She wouldn't stop pestering my ass until I liked her too, so we kinda ended up stuck together."

"Well, you two do make a cute couple." He busted out laughing when she smacked him on the chest with a hand. "Am I wrong?"

"We're friends! Close friends. Very close friends. Very close." Indigo tracked another airship, which trundled by below them, before finally admitting the truth. "You're right. We did date for a while."

"That's the least shocking thing I've heard all night." He mentally checked his internal stores of gravity Dust and found nothing alarming, but chose to add a little more forward speed just to get them there in a reasonable amount of time anyway. "I'm picking up the pace, you might want to look away from our direction of travel. It may get windy." He blinked when he felt her put her face into the side of his neck. "Not exactly what I meant, but okay."

"Listen, this is the easiest place to put it!" she complained into his skin. "Anyway, yeah. We're both reservists, but I'm the only one still in ready reserve."

Most of his attention was now on managing their approach to Vale, which drew ever closer on the plains far below them. "I never would have guessed she had military experience. She's so… cheerful. I take it she wasn't a sniper like you?" A subtle change in her death grip around his torso caused him to frown. "Am I assuming wrong? You seemed to know how to handle that girl's rifle pretty well."

"No, I just—we started training as aircrew until my Semblance manifested. Turns out I can electromagnetically alter the path of objects in flight… including bullets. The Army thought being an airship pilot would be a waste of my talents, so I was moved to a different unit just a few months after I graduated from training. I probably could have flown the shuttle if I hadn't gotten knocked out. I was a pretty good cockpit jockey." Unbeknownst to him, the chat was now treading on extremely uncomfortable ground for her, but she held her courage and waited to answer whatever question he had next, grabbing him even tighter than before. To their right and somewhat behind them, a distant air battle raged – she could see tracer fire from military vessels against dark shapes that she could only assume were more Nevermores, but didn't know for sure. "Shit, there's a fight over there..."

"They'll never see us, we're fine." Opher only glanced at the fight before looking forward again. "When you transferred, I assume you parted ways with Schwarze for a while?"

Her face shifted just enough so she could lock her eyes on the broken Moon instead of the fighting. "She came with me. My new unit wanted her Semblance too. The rest of it is something I'd rather let her tell you, if she wants."

"That's the same thing she said about you. I guess all three of us are a little skittish about the good old days." Opher looked down and brought himself to a gentle stop; they hung directly above the city now, well out of sight of the searchlights on the wall – many of which were lit up and scouring the barren plains around the Kingdom in search of Grimm, or refugees, or some combination of the two. He'd flown them over the shop's district, mostly because he knew the neighborhood containing it and the inn wasn't so well lit. It'd be easier to drop in here than attempt direct insertion toward Indigo's fancy apartment block, whose residential surroundings gleamed like a star. To be fair, he wasn't sure he could place her safely on its curved roof anyway. Their descent began. "Just keep quiet, we'll be down in a second."

"Gods above who part the stars..." As Vale crept toward them, she found herself getting lost in the skyline, especially the sight of the huge palace whose golden dome dominated the Government District. "I've only ever seen this through an airship window before now. It's a lot prettier in, uh, person, I guess?"

"Well, if you want another flight, just ask. Hey, I'll even give Schwarze a lift, although I'm not sure how well she'll be able to grab me from behind with that chest of hers." Another smack on the arm was his reward; he snickered lowly and concentrated on their descent for a few seconds. They alighted like dew on the roof of the inn next to the Atlesian's dormant pub, silent and unseen despite the modest crowd of people still out on the streets who were enjoying the first night of the weekend. He stood still until Indigo detached herself, watching carefully as she stood on her own two feet again. "All good?"

"I'm still hurting a little, but, uh, yeah." She lightly kicked her feet in turn before wiping at the sweat on her forehead and arms. "I might have left a sweaty me-print on your back, uh… yeah." Staring at her destroyed skirt caused a groan. "Man, I really liked this th—hey, wait! How come your clothes aren't all fucked up but mine are?"

"Well, when we bailed out, it was kind of into a tree, so..." He smiled a little as she placed her hands on her hips. "Look, it was either that or a fiery death. Also, I activated my Semblance so I could soak up whatever impact there might have been instead of you."

"And that covers your clothes too?" she asked, stretching some feeling back into her aching limbs as she walked slowly around him.

"It-" Opher paused – it had been so long since his Semblance resembled anything like the ones present-day people would be familiar with that he forgot its exact details for a moment. Once they arrived, which only happened after Indigo pinned him down with a suspicious look, he continued. "I can drain my own Aura and convert it into a field which makes me invulnerable for a few seconds. I tried to get as much of you in it as I could, but I was more worried about you hurting your head or chest. That's probably why everywhere else on you got scratched up. Sorry about your skirt."

"Oh. Well, you did save my life and bring me back to Vale, so I guess we can call it even." They shared wry smirks until Indigo's visage became rather more grateful. "Shit, man, you can make yourself invincible and you can fly. I feel like I'm in a comic book right now." A glance at her Scroll brought even more surprises: the time, much earlier than she thought it would be. "And you were hauling ass, gods help me, how did we get back so quick?"

He shrugged at her with a light smirk. "I may have been hiding our speed from you so you wouldn't flail and fall off."

She shook her head at this in disbelief. "Right. Thanks." Her next thought was too heavy for her to move her head and look toward him when she spoke it. "For… everything."

"Eh. I'd be a pretty terrible minion if I let you die." Arms stretched over his head, a grinning Opher chose to withhold any remarks about how adorable she looked when she got this awkward and instead replied with, "Well, let's get down from here so I can walk you back."

She waved him off and walked away to look down into the alley between the inn and the pub. "I can make it, man. You must be exhausted, anyway. It's fine." Her eyes went to him when he arrived to stand with her.

"I said I would," he replied simply. "And I am, so don't argue." Once more, he took her by the hand and issued another silent rebuke of the planet's gravity with his internal Dust stores before gently pulling her off the roof with him. They landed on their feet in the alley seconds later, so gently that Indigo didn't even have to bend her knees upon arrival. "There we go."

Amazement gave her something besides a nagging feeling of imminent doom in the morning – for both of them – to think on; at this latest exploit she smiled broadly. "Gods help me. Any chance I can learn how to do this? I can think of a bunch of ways it'd help around the shop already."

"I'm afraid a lot of what I can do isn't something I can really pass on," he admitted as they moved toward the sidewalk. "Long story. There are other things I can teach you, though." Once they reached the sidewalk, however, Indigo came to a stop behind him. "What?"

"I'm just thinking. If you're gonna go all the way to my district, you, uh, maybe wanna spend the night?" she asked, playing frantically with her loose hair. "I mean, you're about to move in anyway. May as well let us show you how the building works while you're there. Besides, you've got to be tired by now. No point in making this trip twice, right? Ahaha..."

Opher snorted at her fidgety demeanor. While he had some pretty serious reservations – after all, it had been a long time since he'd really needed to fake being asleep with anyone else nearby – he also wanted to be near Indigo and Schwarze in case repercussions arrived in the morning. The latter concern won out. "Ah, why not. Let me go get my bag out of my room first so I can have a hat. I feel so naked."

Indigo nodded with a toothy smile. "Cool. When we get there, I'll show you how the elevator works. You'll love it. It's so fancy."

"The one in the lobby?" She nodded again. "That's probably a good idea, because I never would have gotten up to your floor if that other woman hadn't—you know what, never mind. I think I've made myself look pretty good tonight and I don't want to ruin that image," he said, walking with her to the door of the inn. Her giggles made him smirk. "Too late, huh."

She kept on snorting. "A little bit. I'll let Schwarze know we're on our way. And to get her stash of booze ready. I feel like we're going to need it."

---

Were it her style, Glynda would have allowed herself a smile at the amount of shock on her students' faces – but her professional nature wouldn't permit such an expression when danger was still present. She whacked aside another charging Beowolf with a sweep of her crop and the power of her angry mind. It went flying with a howl into the trees nearby, then landed with a solid crash. While a part of her reminded herself to be a little more judicious with her Aura, the rest wanted to be sure her students got back to Beacon by whatever means necessary, especially considering the amount of punishment they had already taken.

And, after all, this was the first time she'd been allowed to help any of them. "Your idea to create a defensive emplacement wasn't a terrible one," she said once certain their latest opponent had expired, "although its location wasn't exactly your best option. You'll get better at such things with experience. I might also suggest curving the upper part of the walls out to prevent Grimm from crawling in so easily."

Ruby entertained other problems, hands on her head, whining, "Why is everyone so much stronger than meeeee..."

"Don't be too discouraged, Miss Rose," Glynda said as she smiled faintly down at her. "I might be relatively new to Beacon, but before my arrival I was a Huntress for many years. The longer you survive, the stronger you'll get. As for more immediate improvement, I suggest exercise and reflection. Mostly exercise at first, I think, just to make sure you have strong Aura reserves."

"We need to hit the gym this weekend," Blake mumbled to Weiss.

"You're telling me," she whispered back. "Assuming my leg actually still works." Hisses came out next as she tried to put weight on it. "Agh."

"As usual," Yang chimed in, showing off her mighty biceps, "I was right. Score one for these guns!"

"Oh, look at me, I'm Yang, I can bench-press a cargo airship with my thighs and all the boys love me, ha ha ha. I swear, one day, I'll start growing again, then we'll see who's-" Ruby blinked as one of her pockets began to ring – her Scroll's timer alarm, not its low Aura alert, which told her that six hours had now officially passed and the trial was over. "Hey! We're done!"

Yang examined her knuckles in the light of her own Scroll. "Huh. Wonder how Uncle Qrow is holding up."

"I don't hear an old man swearing in the distance, so maybe it's all good?" Ruby glanced over when Nora snickered at her assessment. "Between him and Penny and Ciel, I don't think we really need to worry."

Coco, after the exhalation of a long, low sigh, rested Gianduja's case on her right shoulder and looked up toward the Moon. "Velvet's going to kick my ass when I come back looking like this."

"So long as we come back in the first place, that's a win in my book." Pyrrha jumped in place a few times to chase out the stiffness in her powerful legs, then nodded at her team. "I think we all did very well!" Jaune received a particularly happy smile.

Nora, confident that her lanky teammate was no longer suffering from her accidental attack, once again reclaimed her usual cheer and twirled her hammer over her head. "So, how are we getting back? Do we just wait here for a ride or what? I don't hear any airships around."

"About that..." Glynda looked at her Scroll in search of answers and found little good news to pass on. "I'm afraid the military still has the airspace closed due to operations on the east end of the plains. We might have to walk."

"What? Fuck, that's like another hour of hoofing it from here," Yang complained with one hand on her hip. "We're almost out of supplies, too. If we get into a fight now-" A raised hand from the tall teacher cut her short.

"First, mind your tongue. One Coco Adel is enough." She smirked lightly when the girl in question stuck out her tongue. "Second, Professor Ozpin has dispatched some of Beacon's attached Hunters to cover our return trip." After a bit of calculation, Glynda pointed her riding crop in a seemingly-random direction and began to walk. "This way. Across Brantwell Creek and straight on. One of the Hunters will probably meet us in the middle."

"Neat." Ruby and the whole squad fell in behind her as they walked through the quiet forest. "Whew. I need a shower bad, I can smell myself over Yang."

Her sister instantly fired back. "That's funny, I can smell you over me too."

"Um..." a spent Blake interjected weakly. She shrank a little when her whole team, plus Coco, looked at her. "I'm just wondering when our next trial is?"

Glynda's eyes became hard with disgust, though none of them could see that gaze. She began to toe the Academy line. "Not for some time. We schedule a series in quick succession to give you an idea of what to expect once you've graduated and you're on your own. I know this method sometimes claims a high price, but… it is what it is." Having compressed her real lack of authority on the matter into those final five words, a solemn Glynda proceeded onward in silence.

Coco picked up some of her slack. "Now that you know what to work on, you've got time to work on it. I know it doesn't seem like it now, but things do get a little easier. A little easier." Another thought made her grin. "Actually, once you guys show everyone else what you showed me, I think your whole class is gonna make it four years. Assuming nothing bad happened tonight, I mean."

That brought Glynda to an immediate stop; she turned on Coco and gazed so intensely that the sophomore thought she'd done something wrong. "Showed you what, Miss Adel?"

Coco tapped the camera on her shoulder, which still remained despite the amount of punishment she'd endured over the course of the evening – from Grimm and unhappy couriers alike. "You wanna see it now or wait and watch the whole thing?"

"What?" Pyrrha asked first. "You've been recording us?"

Glynda nodded at her. "At my request, yes. I wanted her to be able to catch the white flash if it happened again so we could have something more concrete to examine." Her eyes went to Coco again. "Show me now. I'm curious."

"All right." She looked around for some help. "Anyone got a red crystal?" The redhead handed her one from a pouch. "Thanks. Okay, now watch this shit." On a tripod of her thumb, middle, and index fingers, she held the small crystal, then closed her eyes to issue the silent invocation. Seconds later, as she expected, the little stone lit up and burned gently instead of exploding.

With a surprised, though hushed, gasp, Glynda walked over and watched the crystal give off little crackling flames – she even removed her glasses to stare at it in case the lenses were somehow feeding her eyes false information. "How?" she said at last, watching spent Ash float away in the humid breeze.

Coco dropped the stone once it became too dangerous to hold and crushed it out under her boot like a cigarette. "It's some kinda new priming state. You can do it at long range, too, I've been watching these guys do it all night. Hell, it's how they even made that ice ring in the first place."

She looked toward the younger students, all of whom waved or smiled awkwardly in some fashion except the unflappable Ren. "Who?" was the only word she uttered at first, followed by, "Who taught you this? I've never in my life… I had no idea such a thing was possible!"

"Wait, really?" Ruby scratched her head and blinked. She looked over at Yang, her silver eyes thoughtful, in search of advice. "Should we?"

"Worth a shot," she replied quietly. "We've got enough experience now. I think the whole class should hear it, don't you?"

Pyrrha nodded her agreement. "Perhaps this is a good way to bring him here on a more regular basis in the bargain?"

"Maybe..." Ruby's thin brows furrowed hard, though only briefly, before she cast her eyes up toward Glynda. "His name's Opher. He works for gun friend, I mean Miss Indigo, uh… Stahl? I think that's her last name. Their shop is called-"

"Diamond Dust..." Seized by queasiness, a wide-eyed Glynda turned away with a hand on her forehead. "And I almost..." But she hadn't. Surely they were waiting for her back on Beacon's campus, where the whole thing could be easily cleared up. Her calm returned. "Pardon me for a moment, please. I need to make a call."

She put a few meters of space between herself and her students, just far enough for privacy while still being in easy reach if the Grimm came looking for food. Once under the rustling protection of a large tree, she began a Scroll call – to the Headmaster himself. "Sir, this is Goodwitch."

"Ah, Glynda. Nothing untoward happening in your neck of the woods, I hope?" he replied, voice measured and professional as usual.

She donned her glasses again before inhaling a small breath. "No, sir. Might I ask a favor of you?"

"Of course."

"There were survivors from the crashed airship earlier and I sent them back. I would like to know if they made it. Would you please check the automatic scanner logs?" she asked, glancing back over her shoulder at the sound of muffled conversation between her charges.

"Someone survived that mess? Incredible. Just a moment, let's see what we've got." Silence. Long, awkward, and heavier the longer it lasted. Bad news followed. "The latest scans I see here are from the teachers leaving for the trial. What names am I looking for, exactly?"

"Indigo Stahl and Opher Riese." Subtle unease sent her to pacing slowly in front of the tree trunk.

More silence, until, a full minute later, "I see their entry for the meeting, then their departure to assist with containing the Nevermores – how did he end up going? I thought Miss Stahl volunteered to go by herself." Whatever emotions he felt about this revelation were masked perfectly by his easy tone.

"I'm not sure, sir," she replied fast, in order to urge the conversation along, "But nothing after that?"

"I'm afraid not. It's possible their IDs were damaged in the crash. I'll dispatch someone to look for them here."

"Thank you, sir. Call me if you hear anything." She hung up and returned to her gaggle.

Pyrrha immediately saw the unease in her eyes, ended her chat with the rest of her friends, and turned to face Glynda as she arrived. "Ma'am?" she said politely. "Is everything all right?"

She doffed her glasses again to rub at her eyes. "I ran into Miss Stahl and Mister Riese earlier on my way out here. I told them to wait for me back on campus, but… apparently they never made it back or the entry scan system didn't detect their arrival for some reason." The marked lack of concern on their faces struck her, but she kept it to herself. "I do hope they're all right."

"Guess we won't know until we get there." Yang, anxious to get Ruby back before something else stupid happened, was already walking away from the group in what she assumed was the general direction of Beacon. "Let's go-"

Subtle noise from ahead of her, somewhere beyond the thin trunks of taproot trees and out of her sight, shut her up. She came to a halt, dropped quickly into her ready stance, and raised her fists in preparation wordlessly; the rest of them followed her lead, including Glynda, who retrieved her crop and darted ahead to intercept the source of the sound before it could get to any of her students. "Be ready," she told them as the noise got louder.

"Sounds big," Weiss murmured, hardly able to maintain her fencer's pose with such pain shooting through her left leg. Sweat beaded on her pale forehead as she strained to hear more detail.

"I see something," Pyrrha muttered next, sword and shield in hand. What she spotted was merely a shadow, indistinct but large, and highly obscured by the multitude of trees between it and herself. Beside her, Jaune chose to use his Scroll light to try and add some clarity. "Careful, we don't know what this is."

"It's cool, you guys can beat it up when it comes after me," he said through a grin. He noted just after that his light was glinting off something metallic. "Hold on, is that armor?"

"Damn right it is," replied a gruff female voice, apparently belonging to the shadow. Seconds later, she emerged into view – Olivine Duprix, her monumental crimson blade on one shoulder and clad in her full armored battle dress. She grinned madly at their unease. "Didn't mean to spook you," she added, though her tone was less than convincing.

"Whoa," Nora said, in awe of the imposing frame this woman possessed; she wasn't much taller than Glynda, but dwarfed her physically regardless. "I thought Pyrrha was built. You're a literal house!"

"Thanks, shorty." Her stainless steel eyes went to the teacher. "Head on back. I cut my way through here. Should be clear, but I don't know for how long."

"Very well," she replied, putting her crop away. "Did you happen to see anyone else en route?"

"Huh?" Olivine tossed her burnished green locks back over her shoulder and blinked. "Nah. Why?"

"Oh… it's nothing. I'll handle it later." Glynda nodded to the students. "All right, come along. I'm sure we're all tired."

"You ain't kiddin'," Coco affirmed as she snatched her case from the ground and set off.

They all filtered past the mountainous woman in loose order, mumbling among themselves about the trial finally being over, or other drivel Olivine couldn't be bothered to care about. Pyrrha received a much longer look than the others for reasons she couldn't place, but she said nothing.

One of the kids hesitated to leave at all: Ruby, who was fascinated by the warrior's giant blade and couldn't help but linger to examine it. "Wow, that's so cool," she praised nasally, admiring its bloody gleam in the cold moonlight. Its square, compound edge design also drew a joyful smile. "It looks like those big Vacuoan swords! Ahhhh, man, what do you call 'em..." While thinking, she made accidental eye contact with the giant. Her pure silver orbs and Olivine's faintly bronze-tinted ones locked on and stuck for a few seconds; the look on her face slowly froze Ruby's blood to ice despite it being blank. Perhaps it was a product of their considerable size difference, she decided, apologizing with a Pyrrha-like dip of her head. "My bad. Sometimes I get a little too excited when I see cool weapons. You know, like this!"

Muteness was her response, blank and cold and unmovable. Olivine stared at Summer Rose's daughter, focusing all of her mental strength on preventing herself from splitting the girl in twain right here and now. At last, she growled, "You're in my way," to get the annoyance to move.

"I'm-" Ruby looked down – she was indeed standing in front of Olivine by now – and gasped. "Sorry! Crap! My bad! Um… nice to meet you and your sword! Bye!" She ran off to catch up with her team just as Yang yelled to hurry her along. "I'm coming!"

Olivine tracked her departure, turning slightly to do so, watching her go over the edge of her enormous blade. Repressed hatred bloomed with a smile. "Spunky. I bet she's a screamer, too. Perfect."

Whether or not this was true would be found out in due time. For now, she continued to shove her way effortlessly through the undergrowth, headed toward the crash site of the airship which continued to belch smoke into the night air ahead. Tracking the acrid column through the thick canopy of the forest wasn't easy, but dealing with Grimm as they attempted to fall upon her proved even less of a challenge than the brambles and vines at her feet. They arrived piecemeal, one at a time, led by fast Creeps who charged at her recklessly – only to be crushed by her heavy iron boots like meaningless insects. An Ursa appeared, not a Major, but still a full-sized adult which towered over her as it came around a tree trunk, then got even taller when it noticed her and reared up on its hind legs, roaring angrily. Her crimson blade, launched by gravity magic, flashed right off her shoulder and buried itself in the beast's throat so fast it didn't even get a chance to return its front limbs to the ground before dying. She yanked it free by physical strength alone, then pressed onward, only to be confronted by the leader of this particular pack of beasts: an elder Death Stalker, so thickly decorated with white carapace spikes that it seemed to be more porcupine than eldritch scorpion. She rested her mighty blade point-forward on her shoulder as it attacked, skittering forth with claws and mouth open to feast on her flesh.

It tasted only the cold alloy of her weapon, which she again launched with magic right into its open maw. This sent it crashing to the ground, knocking down a few of the trees in the bargain, long before it got close to her. For good measure, she dashed forward and kicked her sword even farther into its mouth, then grabbed the handle with both hands and ripped it out vertically through the underside of its thick skin. Black viscera clung to it for a few seconds before the sublimation process began; soon her blade was as spotless as when it had started.

"Little bastards," she mumbled. A fire in the distance caught her eye. Seized by impatience, and noting the thin taproot trees between herself and her destination, Olivine held her blade horizontally out in front of her with both hands and charged through their trunks, snapping them like kindling as she made a beeline toward the flames. In short order, she reached the crashed airship, slid to a stop in the clearing nearby, and stooped slightly to catch her breath.

When she felt it, her sword went crashing to the ground. Though visually long gone, the color of his expression of the true art was still azure blue to the part of her soul that could detect it – and it was everywhere. Far more intense than Ruby's discharge of her holy power, its volcanic remains overwhelmed her senses and she dropped to one knee. The intensity alone wasn't enough to stagger her; it was the ancient memory of the Maiden locked within her heart, which spoke in words beyond her power to fully comprehend, that kept her grounded and motionless, eyes bulging with horror.