The world fell to grey and rose again in golden flowers.

"I did not, for five minutes, expect for this to be easy for you."

Ozma stood in front of them again, a mournful glower on his face, Adam and Yang at his feet, the rest pushed farther back, petals pulling the blood from their hands.

"What I did not anticipate was you turning against each other...What I did not put through my mind was the thought of you murdering each other. Shame upon you, Blake. Two wrongs do not make a right."

Blake remained in the grass, tears rolling down her face.

"You slayed them!" Weiss yelled, Ren rattling with fury. "Did you think that no one would notice ONE arrow falling where others shattered?! Do you think that Qrow is that much of a liability? Did you think nobody would turn to look!"

"When taking revenge, dear Blake, dig three graves. This infighting will kill you all. Do not mistake my mercy for complacency. You are allowed to bicker, I encourage it. But the next time I see one of you slaughter each other, both of you will fall dead, and I will rescind my powers from all of you."

"Bicker. Yell at each other. Get yourselves together. Time is as normal, Nora." She put down her hand. "If you desperately want to punch each other, go for it." Their weapons faded into petals. "Do not leave here without your affairs settled. I will not mediate or decide for you. You are all with or without each other."

Ozma disappeared.

Ruby punched Blake into next week. "YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF SHIT!" Ren and Weiss were next, and soon it was seven on one ball of violence. The older cohort watched, forming a line between them and those two lest a punch miss its mark, Raven and Tai's hands loosely intertwined, pausing their stare into the horizon to find the others were just as bad, a chain formed in seconds.

"I told you to stop. I put my money where my mouth is and begged with my own blood for you to stop!" Weiss held her bleeding knuckles, hair in her eyes. "And yet it wasn't enough!"

"I wanted Yang away from him." Blake held her bleeding mouth, her eye blackening. "I just wanted to save her. I just wanted to make it right."

"Oh, you're jealous?" Glynda huffed. "That gives you the right to further traumatize them? PERFECT!" She finished her flask. "WHAT A CONCEPT!"

"He threw me across the room. Punched the wall so that he didn't punch me. She went and..." She pulled at her hair. "Who's protecting her?"

"Who's protecting them from you? The crazy bitch that left him blind and defenseless? That left her without a partner at the hour of our deaths? Screaming in the dark after you?" Pyrrha's eyebrows were high as the clouds and so was her flask, looking behind the wall of legs, Raven and Qrow's face scrunched up. "Who's protecting us from someone that can't be trusted to do what's necessary over what they feel is right?!"

"He was..."

"He was. That's exactly the point. I can't rely on your account of events, seeing as you have proven that you cannot be trusted. I will not hear them." Ironwood crossed his arms. "The thing about the past is that you have to let it go. They're not who you remember. You went however long not knowing them. Things are different. People change." He looked over his shoulder, Adam sat up, his eyes restored, pulling Yang into his arms. Tai pulled the red bandanna off of his arm, offering it to him with a open hand. He took it.

Her ears drooped, darkness eating at the flowers at her feet, turning them into her namesakes, gilded like the rest. A growl turned Glynda's head, the bull holding his skull lest it crack open, Yang screaming in her sleep, olive green eyes returning to the panther, wide with horror.

Ruby finished her flask. "You've driven this...what is this?"

"A platoon." Ironwood offered.

"You've driven this platoon up the wall with your bullshit." Ren gritted his teeth. "Not a season later, that's a sight!" He punched Blake in the chest, her Aura flickering. He caught her neck in his hands before she could recoil. "When is it enough, Blake?" Ruby punched Blake in the other eye, knocking her out of his grip, the first already healed over. "When is it no longer about you?!"

"Now I know why she was crying for four months." Taiyang's eyes burned gold, a hand spared to pull hair out of his face. "You bite the hand that feeds, come back for seconds, and then kill her when she stops serving."

"No secrets, no bullshit." Ozpin stopped Ironwood from scratching the base of his feathers. "Does any one else have a problem with any one else here that hasn't been handled? Speak now or shut up."

Silence reigned.

"Blake, you chose to suffer with us." Qrow paused to press a hand over his mouth, Raven leaning on Tai. "Get over it. Right now. Nobody else needs to die again, at least, like this."

"The entire time I was at Beacon, I hid. My past, my present, my future. I knew what she was, and it was all to protect her from the bullshit that we...the Faunus go through. From Black Claw, which she would have joined in two seconds flat if Beacon didn't fall. And then, she shows up." Another wave of tears. "Out of the clear blue sky. With him."

"You don't get to choose for other people what they want out of life. If she joined, that's her problem. Not yours." He held a hand over the old wound, the other over his forehead, Winter pulling him to sit before he fell.

"I knew Ghira's little hellion was a problem, twice now-" Raven caught the twinge at her side, swaying at like a bridge in a earthquake, Tai laying her in the grass. "You're a liability."

Blake walked off into the bloom to sulk.

"Their migraines are stress triggered?" Winter stage whispered.

"Yeah." Tai pulled off the jacket, laying it over Raven's legs. "And this is stressful. This can't be keep happening. We're killing each other."

"Mr. Ozma!" Pyrrha yelled into the sky. "I'm sorry, can I have a drink please?" A bottle of wine showed up. "Thank you!" She wasted no time chugging it, a array of bottles appearing behind her.

"So..." Ruby tossed Oscar his favorite. "Now what?"

"We wait for little miss bitchy-" Weiss complained. "not you- to get her shit together. And, for them to get their heads together." His freckled hands held a empty bottle in seconds.

"I think there's something wrong." Glynda looked over her shoulder. "Ren, come here." He did, and she borrowed one of her hands into hers. Mauve hit Red and Yellow. Glitter and Ink recoiled, the first pair snapped out of their trance. "...okay. That...um. Yep." She got up, took a running start and hit Blake in the face, yelling about illusions. Ren finished off his rice wine and went back sitting with his team, Nora asking what happened, Pyrrha and Jaune sitting nearby.

"Her Semblance...changed." Ren muttered. "She's changed."

"Why are we here again?" Yang whispered, hands over her eyes.

Ozpin finished a bottle of mead. "Blake, by proxy, shot you down. Seeing that the job wasn't finished, she murdered Adam. Ozma got pissed. We got pissed. Still are pissed. We're waiting for her." He cracked open another. "We weren't in range...I'm sorry. Forgive us."

"You didn't do anything wrong." Adam whispered.

"Oh gods, she's everywhere. I see her everywhere." Yang wobbled to her feet, hair limp and fried, only to collapse, Adam picking her back up. "I see her everywhere. I see her everywhere..." The mantra melted into tears. Oz clenched the bottle so hard it broke.

And she marched back up the hill, face swollen. "Adam-"

"I don't care, Blake." He pulled Yang closer, she shook despite his grip, the uncovered eye staring a thousand leagues off. "I'm out there fighting for the cause and now, the world itself. When you show up, I end up getting the sharp side of the sword. This is the second time..."

"What happened the first time, so we get everything on the table now instead of a month later? Or, you know, a year later." The wine bottle cracked under Nora's fingers.

"She went with me to go steal dust from a train. She cut off the back, knowing that I couldn't see her go. It exploded."

"That was the night after you threw me into the wall." Blake shifted her weight. Ironwood pinched the bridge of his nose.

"So, both of you were mutually abusive. Great!" James finished his glass. "Can we move on? Can we start over? Can it be water under the bridge? Since we're stuck with you?!"

Blake took another step forward, Yang cowered into Adam's chest. Taiyang stood in punching range, fists sparking.

"We wouldn't be here if you just stopped and put someone else before you." Adam watched her claws glow purple, gilded petals falling out of the air, Ironwood a swing away. "Namely, the rest of Remnant. But you're selfish, even when the world is at stake."

"So you take Yang from me?"

"You left her-"

"Take Akros from me?" She marched towards him. "Take my staff!? The life I built without you?!"

Jaune caught her by the hair, throwing her right back into the center. "I'll take the world from you if it meant you wouldn't be there to drop it! Were you there when he was blind? While we were defending Argus? Why didn't you say anything at Beacon? That you would keep leaving us for dead! Or worse, kill us?"

"What..?!" She held her bleeding scalp.

"The godsdamned thing was spinning like a top and where were you? Standing there, doing nothing but looking to get even!"

"Jaune, you have no-"

"Yeah I have plenty of right, even with your shit past pushed off the bridge, I knew there was something wrong with you from the very start!" She stepped away, his claws glowing white, canines bared. "When you couldn't even be asked to speak Common, when you knew too much and said little and slid right the fuck out of the door at the dance! And here you are doing the same shit again! And they told me about how you ran when you got found out! Damned near a year and a half and you're still running!" She backpedaled. "Where are you going now?"

She turned to run. Pyrrha stood in her way, eyes glowing gold, hand wrapped around Blake's neck. The rest of the squad assembled at her side. "There's nowhere to run. Especially from me." Phantom blades swayed at her hips, the edges gilded. She threw her into the ground, boot ready to slam into her neck, stopping short. "...you're just reveling in it. Any attention is good attention, isn't it? I'll waste my breath on Grimm."

"Are we done?" Winter sat in the blooms with Qrow on her lap, mid-migraine, skin clammy. "Can we be done with this once and for all?"

"...Depends on how many more lies she plans on telling." Ironwood pulled Oz to his feet. "Whenever you're ready-"

"Whenever I'm ready." Ozma appeared, sitting on a throne, the crest at the back carved into a lion's head, emerald gems for eyes. Weiss looked away. Winter said something in Old Manti and got no reply. Ironwood recoiled. "Is that all that you wish to say at this time, Blake?"

Blake scraped herself up. "Yes."

He raised a eyebrow.

"This is all I'm going to say."

The other eyebrow went up, fingers drumming on the arm rest.

"What do you want from me?"

Weiss shuffled over to Ozma's side, earning a look from him that caused her to blush. "Milord, may I shoot her again?"

"Bold of you to assume she hasn't shot herself in the foot. Thrice now." He watched Weiss spin the bracelet on his wrist.

"I'm sorry."

"Turn around." He nudged Weiss back to the group, the bracelet going with her, the rest of the crew now standing up, Yang sobbing in between Adam and her parents, the rest of the crew standing around them. Blake, once again, wept.

"I'm sorry."

"Let's start over. For the third time. Bygones are bygones."