In the Coliseum's antechamber, Jaune watched as his scorecard took its place in the top half of contestants. He stood a little straighter and nodded to himself. He wasn't the best yet, but he'd bested a lot of professionals. It was a strange cup the locals were hosting in Pyrrha's honor: a time trial to smash a bunch of barrels. But it was athletic.

Aqua's score, at the top of the chart, made him stop nodding.

He found her in the courtyard, leaning against her glider and staring across the valley, down at Thebes.

Jaune stopped before her and folded his arms. "How'd you break all those barrels in ten seconds?"

Aqua smiled, a serenity of competence mellowing out her expression so she looked like a noble in a painting. He'd only seen her frown before, and only now realized that she was beautiful.

Her dimple tucked up smugly, and she asked, "What was your time, Jaune?"

Jaune scratched the back of his head. This conversation was too embarrassing to continue. "We ready to head back, Aqua?"

She stood. "Yeah. Uh…"

Her casual confidence evaporated, and with awkward hand motions, she corrected herself. "Actually..."

Jaune raised an eyebrow at this turn of body language.

Aqua struggled, "There's, uh, one more place your friends may have landed. It's another world on the way back. I think we should check it out."

Aqua was good at a lot of things. But not lying.

Jaune scratched the back of his head again. Aqua probably had her own friends to check on, and Jaune was willing to return her favors. But this felt like getting a party invite from Team RWBY: There was always an adventure attached.

He mumbled, "Alright. Let's check it out."

"Great." She gave two thumbs up, shoulders tight, forced smile. "It's uh… It's called Radiant Gardens."

The name had changed since her last visit. A lot had changed. When they broke into the atmosphere and cleared the cloud layer, Jaune saw a city that had once surpassed all others in glory. Gripping Aqua's waist, he felt her reaction: Horror at what it had become.

There were no gardens. It was not radiant. It sprawled like an industrial site, pipelines and conveyor busses outlining its network across the grand circle of the world. Beyond those boundaries, the city descended into oceans and obscurity. Its arteries centered on a tower that pierced the sky.

Unfit for habitation, let alone human eyes, it had once been beautiful. But industry had crept up its form and overcome it like poison through veins. In their twining, the pipes formed the emblem of a heart on the tower's face. And to hold them in place, great chains had bound that heart. It was unmistakably a mark of evil. It was the emblem on the Grimm Aqua had asked him about.

Jaune traced his eyes higher and higher, trying to spot some untouched proof that this place had once been good. The tower ascended into the heavens.

"That's…. That's a space elevator," Jaune breathed.

Aqua didn't answer. They were descending into an industrial park. As the distance closed, Jaune realized what he was looking at. These had once been houses, with brick walls and tiled roofs. Windows spilled light into kitchens and living rooms. The web of pipes and wires had spun violently throughout these structures.

They touched down in the center of a courtyard. Flagstone tiles were still visible here, proof that this place was built for the tread of happy people. The landscaper's soil had turned to rust.

Aqua stood here for a very long while.

Jaune tried not to think of Vale. The thoughts came anyway. Someday, some rich jerks from other cities would bid on who got to tear apart the ruins and industrialize the recovery. They wouldn't care what belonged to whom for how many generations. Humanity desperately needed those resources, and whoever scavenged them would get paid.

In the architecture, in the city planning, in the names "Lea" and "Isa" forever immortalized on a patch of cement, he could feel the aura imbued by human work. That investment of hope that the Grimm despised.

Someone, many millions of people, had loved this place and called it home. They had imagined their children inheriting these houses and improving them across generations.

Aqua heaved a breath, exhaled raggedly, and told him, "This was the City of Light."

They walked towards the tower.

Listless winds followed them as they navigated Hollow Bastion's deserted urbs, climbing and crawling through industrial interruptions. Jaune kept his distance from Aqua. He noted her focus on the tower, and knew she'd forgotten his presence. An awful awe had overtaken her.

Seeing this place's effect on her, Jaune realized how numb he'd become. Nothing about the destruction of this city would bother him tomorrow. Neither would the destruction of all Remnant. Jaune's hope had gone months ago. Maybe there was a place beyond life more deserving of Pyrrha's goodness.

He'd gone through his grief; Aqua's was just beginning.

He wondered how many worlds were like this. Maybe all the good was already gone from them, and only the bad was left.

What remained for the living was a universe of Cities and Cinders.

Aqua stopped and looked across the water runoff beside them. Jaune was trusting her navigational skill here, but frowned at this turn. That was a pretty big long-jump.

She leaped with preternatural grace, not bothering with a running start. Jaune was startled by the explosion of force in her maneuver, but at the apex of her arc, he saw that she was falling short.

He cringed in anticipation of the splash, and then Aqua did something truly spooky. She jumped again, mid-flight, her feet finding purchase in the air and launching her further.

Jaune blinked. Right. Her Magic. She really was a wizard.

He shook his head, channeled his aura, got a running start, and soared across the water to join her.

She'd found a mural. Across a mess of machinery, someone had devoted precious hours to paint the city in its prime. In the image's center, a giant suit of armor menaced houses. Three armored knights with billowing capes harried it from below.

Jaune glanced at Aqua, then at her shoes, then back to the knights: same sense of style. On second look, he noticed the signet securing their capes. Aqua wore the same signet over her chest and on her fingerless gloves.

She was too lost in the painting to notice his observations.

Jaune cleared his throat.

She turned his way, and her eyes glimmered with incurable sorrow.

He didn't know her thoughts, but empathy connected them both clearly. He felt her pain distantly, and he kept it distant for his own sake. "Aqua," he murmured.

Her eyes focused on him. She swayed on her heels and swallowed. He didn't want to be trapped on a strange, lifeless world with a despairing teammate. He needed her to be operational.

"Aqua, I can't say anything to make you feel better. But… If you want to talk… Well… It's better for words to hurt on your tongue than on your heart, you know?" He shrugged sympathetically.

Aqua nodded. "You're kind, Jaune. That's probably why she liked you."

Jaune blinked, stunned by such intimate contact. Empathy worked both ways.

Aqua blinked her eyes clear and gestured to the painting. "A long time ago, three knights of Scala ad Caelum came to Radiant Gardens. They banished monsters called The Unversed, and saved the city."

She put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes danced over the artwork, and she whispered, "These pipes are built through the housing. This mural must have been painted after the fall."

She sniffled back tears. "They thought we would return to save them."

Jaune offered, "It wasn't your-"

"Because we swore to, Jaune."

She regained her composure over the course of their walk. The tower wasn't easy to get into. Archways and entrances were clogged by machinery. In the end, they'd squeezed themselves through a rusted gap in the pipes, arriving finally in a room from the old world.

There'd been a battle in here. Blast marks scorched the walls.

Aqua pointed to one. "That's a fire spell." She indicated another. "Blizzara. That one happened recently."

Jaune drew his sword and raised an eyebrow.

"Not that recently," Aqua corrected. "Maybe a week ago."

Jaune sheathed Crocea Mors.

The interior of the tower was unlit. With the sun setting, darkness crept up the walls. Jaune's scroll wouldn't turn on, and his pocket torch was likewise non-functioning. Right, because Dust doesn't work when you leave Remnant. He shook his head.

"Kinda dark," he complained.

Aqua conjured a ball of light in her hand. "Sorry. I'd gotten so used to it."

She gestured onwards, to blast marks further down the hallway, and Jaune followed. His wonder grew at the scope of this running battle. He asked, "Any chance you know this wizard?"

"No."

They progressed, and the evidence of battle intensified: Claw marks gouged through stone, impact craters, constellations of fire scoring.

"Must've been a big battle," Jaune guessed.

Aqua turned and pointed her light the way they'd come. "The impacts are only in one direction. I think a mage and two melee fighters were in a hurry to ascend."

Jaune followed her light, and saw that the wall behind them was unmarked. "Huh."

Aqua continued, taking the light with her.

Jaune caught up and asked, "How do you know they were in a hurry?"

She swept the light over two giant urns, both smashed. "Because none of them stopped to aim."

When they arrived at the light rail station, Jaune's patience wore thin. He didn't like the creepy look of these giant bird cages, nor the dull-blue glow emitted by the beam that carried them.

Aqua was following the beams with her eyes, trying to trace a path up the network. Watching her eyes flick over their options, Jaune understood that their path mattered. Which meant that Aqua had a goal in mind.

"Hey, Aqua?"

"Yeah?"

"What are we really looking for?"

Her eyes stopped. She pursed her lips. "I'm sorry I lied, Jaune."

"It's fine. We're looking for your friend, right? Terra?"

She looked at him. "How… ?"

"Phil mentioned him."

She turned back to the beams, her eyes flicking over routes. She found what she was looking for. But instead of answering his question, she changed the subject, as always. "We're almost there."

They rode a bird cage. It exited the building a kilometer above the ground. The platform followed the tower's circumference for a while. Then the rise began, and the sprawl fanned out over the globe. Sunset's rays cast sinister shadows across Hollow Bastion. Twilight's orange glow immolated the horizon, like a wall of fire cleansing the world. That glow bronzed Aqua's face, and flickered in her eyes.

"I hope you're not afraid of heights," she hummed.

The higher they went, the sharper the sound of wind became. It was frigid, and stank of machinery. The gusts whipped at Jaune's face, a sensation like dragging a blade over his skin. Aqua mumbled, "Aero," and the wind abated around their vessel.

Her hair settled, and she noticed Jaune watching her. She forced a very slight smile, to show that she was okay, despite the view.

They passed through a library. Aqua's drive seemed to waver here, her feet moving with less purpose, and her gaze lingering on every cover. So she was a book nerd, like Blake. Jaune smirked at the thought, the two of them quietly reading near each other and never sharing a word.

Aqua stopped in the reading area: Rocking chair by the window, a knight in stained glass. Aqua lifted her light, and Jaune realized that the knight in the glass was another image of her.

"You're pretty popular," he quipped.

She lowered the light again, to the table. There lay a drawing, crayon on paper, of Aqua and a young girl holding hands. She lifted it from the table, and her eyes wetted in wonder.

Jaune tensed, worried for his guide. How much of this could she take in one day?

Aqua smiled.

Jaune exhaled his relief.

Aqua folded the picture and flicked her fingers so that it disappeared, spirited away to some pocket dimension.

Jaune envied the trick, but focused on the person. "You feeling better?"

"My friend Terra was here." She looked him in the eyes. Her smile mellowed out to an accepting midway point. "He destroyed Radiant Gardens."

She swallowed. Her breathing was heavier, but she balanced it against whatever good feelings this picture had given her.

Jaune didn't want to react too hastily. This was the first time Aqua had spoken openly and honestly to him. He asked, "Are we here to fight him?"

"He's already gone." Her eyes drifted to the library's second floor, and she pointed. "Let's keep following that battle. I want to see where it leads."

Their route passed along the tower's exterior again, past a sign that warned "O2 required."

Aqua conjured a bubble of air for them. They crossed a catwalk. The pipes beside them formed a colossal, chained heart. Jaune's leg's wobbled from vertigo, so he gripped the railing, closed his eyes, and forced himself forward. There was no longer room for weakness in his life. He could not yield to fear.

Aqua hummed, "There are fewer stars in the sky."

Jaune's feet found stone, and he opened his eyes as they passed inside again. "Probably pollution," he shuddered.

"Not at this altitude," Aqua corrected. "The stars are gone."

The battle ended in a great, circular atrium the width of the tower. Aqua stood in the room's center, casting orbs of light around and following the patterns of destruction: Burst pipes, melted metals, cracked stones.

A pool of green flames slowly crackled by a breach in the wall, preserved and whipped up by gusts from the exterior.

Aqua's gaze lingered there, watching the flames swirl and coil in malachite hues.

Jaune asked, "If this fight was a week ago… How is that still burning?"

Aqua nodded. "That's dragon fire."

She stared at it for a while. The wind whistled, and the structure creaked. Maybe it was Jaune's imagination, but the ground seemed to sway up here.

Aqua concluded, "This was her lair."

Jaune noted the gender. He raised both eyebrows.

Aqua yawned. "It's getting late. We should go."

On the way home, in the lanes between, Jaune wondered if his friends were really going to end up in the Coliseum. He wondered what their scores would be. How long would the list of contestants get, and would they see his name in the rankings?

Aqua interrupted his thoughts with her own. "Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito."

Jaune whispered back, "Gesundheit."

On second thought, he asked, "Wait, did your translation spell stop working?"

Aqua continued, "I met someone once… Someone really evil… Someone repulsive that I felt obligated to destroy."

He understood her, which answered his question. She was trying to relate to him with this story. She knew what his hatred for Cinder Fall felt like.

"But I couldn't stop her," Aqua continued, "And I felt like it was a moral failing. I should have been more violent… More brutal. I encountered evil, and I let it continue."

"Yeah," Jaune agreed. "That's exactly how it feels."

"I'm sorry I lied to you," Aqua repeated.

"It's alright. You were looking for your friend Terra, right?"

"No. I knew he'd already be gone."

"So what were you looking for?"

"Maybe… Closure."

"Did you find it?"

"No. But I found my next clue."