Ruby stood up and started pacing around the room, unable to keep herself still any longer. She had to get everything sorted in her head.

Fables. Decum Luna. Gods. All words to describe the same concepts. Weiss stared out ahead of her—Blake's sarcastic comment aside, she didn't really have a lot of ability to process it. She never could have imagined that the Grimm and her deities were connected to each other. Not only connected, but if their theory was correct, natural enemies. It was all a lot to take in.

"That would be crazy," Weiss said under her breath. "I mean, it doesn't even make a lot of sense. Nothing in Decum Luna mentions anything about Grimm."

"Okay, let's…let's just take a second to process this," Ruby said, trying to steady her breaths. "The Gods of Decum Luna. They had fought against the Grimm in the past. If Glass's words are right, then they seem almost like they are natural enemies. Angels and Demons, right?"

Blake, quickly turning serious, pursed her lips. "Wait a minute. Let's not rush to conclusions about this. There's a lot we don't understand."

Ruby shook her head. "No, no, it has to be. The Reveler called himself a Fable. Glass said she was serving an Anti-Fable. They have to be connected somehow. There's no way that they aren't."

"I don't know, though," Blake said hesitantly. "Like, yes, some of it makes sense, and trust me, anything that reinforces the fact that those Decum Luna assholes aren't gods is a theory I can get behind. But it doesn't all fit together neatly."

"How does it not?" Ruby asked, her path taking her around the coffee table and toward the television.

"It's just…something else Glass was saying was bothering me," Blake explained. "In this analogy—this weird fucking analogy we're going with—the Fables are supposed to be Angels, right? But that doesn't really make any sense. If the Angels are the archenemies of the Demons, that should be us, right? Or at least you. Humans, I mean. The Decum Luna gods are like thousands of years old, right? But the Grimm aren't natural. They're created. I saw it. Fuck, Glass talked about it. She said that she was creating Grimm."

"I don't understand how that's contradictory," Weiss stated.

"I'm not finished," Blake claimed. "When she was showing off the Grimm to us, she was explaining why they wouldn't attack Faunus. She said that Grimm were, like, specifically designed to hunt down Humans. They ignore animals, plants, Faunus; basically, anything that isn't you. If these things were made to fight Fables, or gods, or whatever—and they were absolutely made to fight whatever they are hunting—why would they ever want to target Humans?"

Ruby had no answer, though she was working on one. Truthfully, while the connection with the Grimm was helpful in understanding what they were up against, it didn't tell them the most important thing: how they were supposed to stop them. They didn't understand the Grimm's motives or their weakness, and even if they were originally created to hunt down the Gods of Decum Luna, does that inherently mean they would still do that? Glass was creating these things by some strange, cruel science that was beyond them, and there was no reason to assume that she wouldn't be able to modify the Grimm somehow from their original purpose.

Still, something caused her to doubt that. She just couldn't explain it yet.

Weiss tried to reason it out herself, struggling much the same to find answers. "Maybe it's because we tend to be followers of Decum Luna and Faunus aren't?"

"How would the Grimm even know that?" Blake asked.

"I don't know."

"They seemed to be somewhat territorial. But no, that wouldn't apply here."

"They wanted to target Decum Luna. They must have been destroyed, though. That's why they vanished."

"Actually, wait," Blake said suddenly. "That's another thing that doesn't make any sense."

"Another thing?"

"It was something else Glass said," Blake recalled. "She said that the Angels were extinct."

Ruby stopped dead in her tracks. The word ricocheted around in her mind, lighting up her thoughts like firecrackers.

That…that triggered something within her.

"Extinct?" Weiss said, perplexed. "But…they aren't."

"Yeah, I know," Blake said, annoyed. "One of them fucking stabbed me."

Ruby began pacing again. Her mind was moving too quickly for its own good. She hit a conclusion she wasn't sure she wanted to consider.

But it did make sense.

In some twisted, horrifying way, her conclusion made all the sense in the world.

"Are the Gods dead then?" Weiss asked, confused.

"Or they aren't the Angels at all. God, it's so fucking confusing. Fables. Angels. Demons. Gods. Just can't we have anything simple? Can we not come up with any consistent terms for our mythology? Seriously, it's insane. Half of the reason we're having so much trouble is that we don't fucking know what we're talking about. I swear, Glass was trying to speak in riddles. I think she enjoys it."

Ruby stopped to peer out the front window. She saw nothing that would draw any suspicion. She was hoping she would. She needed the distraction. She needed something to get her mind in order. Weiss and Blake were complaining to each other, unaware of what was unraveling inside of Ruby's mind. They might have forgotten like before. But Ruby remembered it all so clearly that it was like it was playing out in front of her eyes. She seemed clearly troubled, enough for Weiss to take notice and become concerned.

"Ruby? Have you figured something out?"

The snow had picked up again. Interesting.

"Ruby?"

"Huh?" Ruby said, snapping to attention. "Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about something."

Blake leaned toward her expectantly. "Are you going to share it with us?"

Ruby bit her bottom lip nervously. "I mean, it's probably nothing. I'm just speculating."

Weiss shrugged. "It can't hurt to tell us. We can take whatever angle we can get right now."

Ruby wasn't so sure Weiss would be saying that if she knew. Still, her friends were counting on her.

"Well," she said, starting to pace once again as she made her thoughts clear, "I've been thinking about the Reveler and why he attacked us. You remembered why he kidnapped me, right? He thought that I was his lover, or his ex-lover. But that…that's so weird, right? How would you ever confuse me for a Fable? The Fables were gigantic, multi-colored creatures. I was so clearly Human. But it was how he was talking to me. He made it almost sound like his bride, that other Fable…he made it sound like she was inside me somehow. Like we were one and the same. And that was so weird, right?"

Weiss and Blake said nothing.

"So, I got to thinking," Ruby said, her words quickening as she got into a rhythm. "Weiss said that nothing in the text of Decum Luna said anything about a bride for the Reveler, and I checked the profiles for the other Gods. None of them match the descriptions he was giving right. And, assuming the Grimm really are a part of their history, we can assume that the texts Decum Luna was based on have a lot of inaccuracies in them. There's no reason to assume any of it is true. Why would we assume that any facet of those Gods is real—even the number of them."

Blake spoke gently. "Ruby, you're getting ahead of yourself. Do you know what's happening here?"

Ruby's hands hovered by her face as she tried to find a way to focus herself. "Okay. Okay okay okay. I'm just spitballing here. Would there really be a separate entry in the book for Fables if it was really for Decum Luna?"

Blake and Weiss just stared at her. Wrong approach. Think, Ruby, think. Clarify. Get the words out reasonably.

"Okay. Let's reason this through." She was saying the word okay an awful lot despite how fast her heart was racing. "We've been operating under the assumption that being Anti-Fable means being Anti-Decum Luna, but that specifically doesn't make a lot of sense. If Glass wanted to attack the Gods, why would she attack Vale where the Faith isn't even heavily practiced? Why not attack Atlas or the Saeva family? There's something else she wants to destroy aside from them. Something vaguer, and that got me thinking. The words Glass used to describe the Grimm. Extinction. War. Those are like really big words, right? They describe these incredibly wide-scale events. But there are only ten official Gods of Decum Luna. That's a very small army to fight in a war. Yet, we know that there had to be something more, because there was the Fable that the Reveler wanted to be its bride. But I'm just thinking here…why should we assume that there were only these Fables. What if, at some point in the past, there were more of them? Way more. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. We're talking millennia ago. Maybe it's possible—and I have no proof of this—but maybe it's possible that the beings that Weiss thought were Gods…were just the last of their kind."

Weiss was the most taken aback, nearly throwing herself out of her seat. "That's impossible. I mean, they're gods."

Blake suddenly interrupted her. "But they aren't though. We've known they were false gods for a while. I mean, if they are these Fable things, and if they really are just a different species, it would make sense that there would have to be more of them."

Ruby nodded, frantically continuing as she hurried toward her conclusion. "When the Reveler was attacking me, it was talking about how that bride Fable had wronged it. It said something about how 'the world fell', and 'even in death its love was rejected'. The world fell. We are talking about beings that had incredible control over reality. Intelligent. Sophisticated. Powerful. It wouldn't just be an extinction, right? These Fables, assuming they existed in large numbers, would have had an entire civilization before us. The Fables would have functioned as an entire precursor species."

Blake sat up on the couch, catching on quick even as Weiss was coming to terms with Ruby's theory. "I mean, that makes sense, too. The Reveler called that other Fable its bride, right? That would mean they would have had to have some cultural understanding of what a marriage was."

"So, here's what happened," Ruby explained, running through her conjecture at a blistering pace. "However, many eons ago, there were these Fables: intelligent beings of immense power that served as the dominant species on the planet. They were selfish, cowardly, and violent; imagine thousands of Revelers with complexes all trying to exert their influence over each other. They made enemies amongst themselves and whatever else was living on this planet at the time. And then, something happened. They pissed off a force that devoted itself to wiping them from existence: a literal Anti-Fable. The Grimm were created as weapons to hunt down the Fables, and one by one, they started to fall. Their civilization crumbled. They tried to fight back—a literal war amongst Angels and Demons. Maybe some of them didn't want to fight. Maybe around, I don't know…" Ruby quickly glanced at Weiss. "…ten of them decided that fighting a war wasn't worth it, and they decided to flee and hide instead. The rest of them fought their battle against the Grimm, but just like Mrs. Glass said, they lost. They went extinct. A few millennia later, the survivors return to find the world populated with Humans far less powerful than them and decide to make themselves into Gods. Selfish, cowardly, and violent until the end."

While Blake and Weiss tried to parse out Ruby's fiction from what was plausible, she finished her theory uninterrupted. "But that doesn't explain why the Grimm have come back now, or why they decide to hunt Humans. Unless…unless it does."

Ruby placed her thumb to her lips, carefully considering her own conclusions. She admitted to herself that she was working off pure conjecture, and the latest of her conclusions was bordering on nonsense. Yet, with Blake and Weiss expecting the world from her, it was impossible not to share. Who knew? Maybe they'd be able to convince her otherwise.

"I-I was thinking about how the Reveler mistook me for a Fable," Ruby said slowly. "And that made me think: if it was possible for the Reveler to think I was a Fable, then maybe it would be possible for the Grimm to think that we were Fables. That makes sense, right? I mean, it's a pretty reasonable guess. That would be why they hunt Humans. They're weapons built to attack Fables and they simply can't distinguish between us. But then I got thinking again. And I had to wonder…why would a Grimm ever think that a Human being was a Fable? And that didn't really make any sense to me…until I had another thought. A really, really weird one." Ruby paused, tilting her head to the side, almost as if she was studying something. She sighed, discontented with her answer but nonetheless drawn to it. "Maybe the reason why the Grimm think that Humans and the Fables are the same things…is that maybe we are."

Silence. Deadly silence. But only for a moment.

Ruby wasn't expecting the others to react well to her theory, but she was a bit surprised by how quickly Blake scoffed and dismissed her away.

"No fucking way," she said, sitting upright and cringing at the pain caused by clenching her damaged jaw. It was only a hairline fracture in her mouth and she was flowing Aura into it regularly, but it still hurt like hell. Regardless, it wouldn't stop her from giving Ruby's reasoning the thrashing she was certain it deserved. "You are just throwing shit at the wall now."

"It makes sense," Ruby insisted. "Okay, the Reveler was insisting that I was his wife the entire time, but it seemed to notice that I looked different than a Fable. It was treating me almost like a reincarnation. Why would it think that a Fable could take a Human form unless it had seen something like that before?"

"I don't know!" Blake said, frustrated. She sounded almost upset, which Ruby thought to be completely reasonable. The things they were talking about were mind-bending. If even a fraction of what they were talking about was correct, it would reshape the history of their entire planet. Of course, Blake would fight against that—yet even Ruby noticed that the Faunus among them lacked conviction in her denial.

Ruby tried to defend herself, but Weiss took the lead, thoughtfully considering Ruby's guess. "I mean…we don't know the history of Humanity, or how we developed Auras or Semblances. A lot of the understanding of the Soul is incomplete. I guess anything is possible."

"Anything?" Blake said, trying to come up with a counterargument that could get through to them. She had no evidence, no sources or citations to prove them wrong. All she had was her gut, and her gut was telling her that what Ruby was saying was impossible and baseless. But didn't she know better than to rely on something so subjective? "Look, you do realize how crazy you sound, right? Like, how the fuck would that even work? The Fables just up and decided to give up all of their powers somehow and become normal people? If that's true, why wouldn't Grimm attack Faunus? I have an Aura and a Semblance."

"I don't know," Ruby said defensively. "I'm just guessing here. Maybe there's some other reason why Faunus aren't seen as targets. Maybe they have a different origin. I have no idea. But there has to be something that links together the Humans with the Fables. The Reveler wouldn't mistake me for another Fable unless there was something really similar about us, right? Maybe she was my ancient ancestor or something. That makes sense."

"I mean," Weiss acknowledged, "it makes about as much sense as the rest of this."

Blake squeezed her eyes tight, trying to get ahold of herself before she said something unkind. "Okay, just…let's just put this aside for the moment. Humans being reincarnations or descendants or whatever nonsense—that doesn't matter and we will never know anyway. What we should be focusing on right now is that despite all of this, that Grimm is still going to attack Vale in a few days, and we don't have any way of stopping it.

Ruby grew deadly serious, and much to Blake's surprise, she took on a focused tone and spoke with determined certainty. "But that's the thing: we do have a way to stop it."

Blake's eyes shot back open. Weiss just stared at Ruby in shock.

"Wait, we do?" she asked, genuinely intrigued.

Ruby nodded. "We should. It's just like the book said. The Grimm can only be undone by the thing that made them strong. They were designed to hunt down the Fables, and if our theories are correct—and that is a big if—then something had to fight them off before. It makes sense to me that the powers of a Fable would be enough to destroy a Grimm. And, fortunately for us…"

Ruby took a deep breath and turned to the chair next to her, where Weiss was sitting innocent and unaware of the incredible weight on her shoulders.

"We happen to have those powers with us."

Maybe Ruby didn't intend to be overly dramatic. Maybe she didn't mean to place so much focus on the woman in the chair who had already gone through hell earlier that day. Yet, when Weiss saw Ruby looking at her, not with any sense of demand or pride, but of solemn, dutiful purpose, she felt herself crumble. Despite being covered in blankets, she began to shake. With Ruby and Blake both staring at her, one with dread and the other shocked beyond belief, she felt like she could do nothing but deny the simple reality in front of her.

"That's…no, wait, me? Just wait a second. We don't know that."

"Those powers were enough to kill the Reveler," Ruby said matter-of-factly. "It was the acid from its own frog that burned its face, and we weren't able to stab it unless we were using its chains. Whatever weapons a Fable creates are strong enough to hurt it, so it stands to reason that they can hurt a Grimm as well."

"B-But…I can't use those powers even if I wanted to," Weiss said in a panic. "I can barely move right now, and even then, I've never been able to summon those things willingly."

Blake, finding herself more in line with Ruby's line of thought than before, had to step in, cutting off Weiss's doubts. "You were able to use it against me."

"Yes, but that just happened," Weiss said dismissively. "I didn't control it. I wasn't able to control it the first time either. I…I don't know how I could do it."

Ruby stood in the dead center of the room like a statue. Poor Weiss was stuck on her chair, desperately wanting to get up and just walk away from it all. Blake had gone mostly quiet, contemplating the powers in front of her. It seemed like it would work. They were the powers of a God at her disposal. If that couldn't kill a Grimm, they had no idea what would. But Weiss was also in no condition to fight. Even if they had somehow unlocked the secret to fighting the Grimm, whether or not they could do anything was yet to be determined. Still, Ruby's mind never stopped working. The floodgates were opened, and with the truth closer than ever, she found herself reaching further and further out to grasp it. Sometimes, it truly was a stretch. Yet, for other theories, the answers seemed to reveal themselves quite easily. One such answer popped into her mind after another few seconds, and sensing Weiss's doubts begin to permanently manifest, Ruby let it out as soon as she was able.

"Weiss, let me ask you something," Ruby said cautiously. "Why did Ozpin let you into Beacon?"

The ex-heiress was stunned, unsure how to even respond to such an out-of-nowhere query. She swallowed her fears and tried to answer the best she could.

"It was because…he made a deal with my father," she explained. "My dad wanted to get rid of me, and Ozpin was able to get the benefits of a Schnee at his school and a lot of Dust."

"That's the official story, true," Ruby noted, crossing her arms. "But, does that really make sense? I mean, think about it. You don't have a Semblance. You're an incredible fighter, but so are tons of people in Vale who didn't get accepted into Beacon. You're a massive risk to any team you're on. Do you really think that Ozpin would be willing to take you in all because of media clout and a discount?"

Weiss had never considered that before. She had spent so many months dealing with the angst and the worthlessness that came from her father abandoning her, yet never once did she really put any thought into their explanation. Ozpin and Goodwitch had always been somewhat cryptic with her, insisting that the less she thought about it, the less stressed she would be. But she had a lot of questions remaining about their behavior. If she was as valuable to them as they claimed, why would they throw her into the bottom team in the school? Why make her run the God's Arm? If they truly cared about her, they would have treated her like royalty. They wanted something else irrelevant to her wellbeing, and the answer was so obvious it was staring her in the face. Except…

"But I didn't have these powers back then," Weiss said, shaking her head. "They knew I was powerless when they accepted me. Why would they want me if I was useless?"

Suddenly, Blake perked up. She sat up quickly, ignoring the pain in her gut as she hurriedly spilled the answer. "Because you were powerless," she said, her eyes growing wide. "Or because everyone thought you were powerless."

Ruby nodded her head, trembling with nervous excitement. "Yes. Yes, that's right, right? Everyone thought that you wouldn't be of any use to them. That's what made you perfect."

Weiss, perhaps dulled by the medication, still wasn't catching on. "You two need to explain yourselves."

Ruby clapped her hands together, setting the stage for her grandest theory of all. "Okay, here's the timeline of events. At some point in the ancient past, the Fables rule over the world until something goes wrong. The Grimm are created to fight them, and they get in a war that kills nearly all members of both races except for a few stragglers who escape the genocide. At some point however long ago, those stragglers return and call themselves Gods. One way or another, members of the Saeva family learn how to summon these Gods and utilize their power. Now, picture that in modern times, Ozpin figures out all of this. He learns about the Grimm and the Fables, and worse, he learns that the Grimm are somehow coming back. He realizes the only way to fight the threat of the Grimm would be to use members of the Saeva family to summon the Gods' power. Obviously, he needs to entrust these people to secrecy and gain their loyalty so no one figures out the truth about any of this. The only problem is—"

Blake chimed in, her voice echoing with passion. "The problem is that the dipshits in charge of Atlas and Vale ruined the relationships between our Kingdoms, and the Saeva family is loyal to the assholes up north. He figures out that not a single one of them would ever be willing to help him, so he needs to find a way to convert one of them to his side."

"And that," Ruby said, pointing at Weiss, "is when you show up on a silver platter. A daughter of a Saeva seemingly born without any power at all. Your family wants literally nothing to do with you, but Ozpin knows that you might still have the power that he needs. He accepted you into Beacon because he knew that you had the potential to destroy the Grimm, whether anyone else was aware of it or not?"

Weiss placed her face into her hands, barely comprehending what she was being told. "But if…if that's true," she stammered, "then why did he do so much to try to kill me? If I'm so important, why risk me dying?"

Blake had an explanation, and she let it out with a frustrated huff. "Because maybe he had to. I'm just guessing here, but you know how sometimes people's Semblances lay dormant until they have, like, a breakdown? It's like a diamond. You can't get something beautiful until you expose it to a lot of pressure. I mean, Ozpin always seemed like he was going out of his way to fuck with us."

Ruby quickly agreed. "He's been trying to hurt you since day one. Those opening tests…"

"Putting you on a team full of people who hated you."

"Fighting CRDL."

"Spying on us."

"Getting lied to."

"And once he figured out that you started to get along with Ruby—"

"He made my life a living hell, too," Ruby stated. "He constantly tried to bring us all to a breaking point, hoping that the stress would reverberate and all of our misery would eventually find its way back to you."

"He was working slowly," Blake explained, "realizing that he could take his time, until Yang and I accidentally stumbled across that Grimm in Forever Fall."

Ruby nodded. "There's no way that he wasn't aware of something like that. Ozpin probably figured out that you and Blake had encountered something dangerous that pushed him ahead of schedule."

"And realizing that he was running out of time and that you hadn't made any progress," Blake said with a grimace, "he decided to put you through the God's Arm, a desperate move to see if you had any potential at all."

"And as it turns out," Ruby said firmly, "you did. Ozpin had his weapon, imperfect as it was."

"But," Blake realized, "he realized that it could be pushed further. Your powers were only partially manifested, so he knew that he would need to do something else to trigger it. In addition, he must have decided that you wouldn't exactly be loyal to him if we were all pissed off for being nearly killed from those fucking Trials. So, he decides to kill two birds with one stone—"

"And collapse our entire team," Ruby said with dawning horror. "He was afraid that we would be a weakness for you, and that if you ever had to pick between us, you would never trust him. Once I tell him that I want to know the truth about my mom, he realizes that he has his pathway to breaking us apart. He makes Goodwitch give me that video of my mom, setting off an emotional timebomb within us. He probably had no idea how it would destroy us—"

"But it did," Blake recognized. "Ruby quit Beacon, Yang's disease took over her and was forced to leave, and with our team fractured, he could easily split me and Weiss apart, isolating her further. Fuck, maybe he just wanted to leave us together just so I could piss her off even more."

"And that would have been how he left it if you never attacked Beacon," Ruby concluded. "He would have had Weiss all to himself: a lonely, traumatized weapon of incredible power to fight the army of the Grimm." Ruby paused and pursed her lips, murmuring quietly to herself. "Or, you know…something like that."

Yeah, something like that. That was all it was—a cacophony of world-shattering revelations that redefined everything Weiss knew about her school, her Gods, and the history of her entire species. Assuming that any of that was correct, that would mean that everything Ozpin had done to them, every awful, despicable act of abuse that he foisted upon them was all in service exploiting her powers. In a way, she was furious. They had known for a while that he manipulated them. He had taken advantage of their vulnerabilities to make them fight in his wars. Yet, knowing what he specifically wanted from them, knowing that his cruelty was designed specifically to make her capable of defeating such a nightmarish enemy—she honestly didn't know how to feel. He had pushed her to her an emotional edge. He had pushed Ruby past the brink. Knowing that he was doing it intentionally sickened her even further, hoping to piss her off so much. But Blake quickly stole the words out of her mouth before she could dwell on it further.

"You know something?" Blake said bitterly. "When I was attacking Beacon, I spoke to Ozpin right before he disappeared. I asked him why he was such an asshole, and you know what he said? It's better to let a few suffer to greater serve the whole. Torturing a bunch of students to kill the Grimm. I almost hate to say that I see the logic there."

Ruby personally didn't want to think about it. Her morals were too absolute to even consider something so awful. She focused instead on what was important to them now. Weiss was still shaking, overwhelmed by the responsibility that she realized she had been burdened with. She needed support, desperately and urgently. Ruby quickly walked over to the chair where Weiss was resting, and she knelt down by her arm. She gingerly placed her hand over Weiss's and all at once the young woman stilled and was tamed. She met Ruby's gaze, and while her eyes were full of fear, the simple act of having Ruby by her side comforting her seemed to be enough to restore some meager confidence.

"Weiss, look," Ruby said tenderly. "This is…this is a lot. Trust me, I…I get it. All of this is so overwhelming and scary and bizarre, and if we are right about this, then that means that you're being placed into something you don't deserve to be—"

"Ruby, please," said Weiss suddenly. "You don't have to give me a big comforting speech. I understand what's happening. It's okay."

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not sure," Weiss admitted. "The Grimm is going to attack in four days. Assuming I can even walk in four days, there's no way I'm going to be able to get control of my summons. I just…"

Her pain was so understandable that it hurt. Ruby wished that she could take some of that pain away, but that simply wasn't possible. It was almost comical; they had spent so long fighting Ozpin's plans for them only to be forced to play his games. There was no other way they could think of in the time they had. The truth was clear. In four days, Weiss would have to summon the powers of the Reveler and destroy the Glass's creation—or else thousands would die. Everything that they had ever worked for, all of their struggles and their battles, losing Yang and being forced apart, Beacon's destruction and Blake's betrayal, their reunion, and all else…it all came down to Weiss. All of it.

It was enough to drive a person mad.

But as Weiss was dealing with the gravity of her duties, Blake rolled her eyes and, against her better instincts, forced herself up to her feet. She had some difficulty walking over to Weiss's chair. She scratched at her throat, still raw and red from when those fingers were choking the life out of her. Weiss seemed stunned as Blake approached her, and even though Ruby yelled at her to sit back down, she was undeterred from placing her hand on Weiss's shoulder.

"Hey."

Hey.

That's really how she was beginning this.

"You were able to summon those things when you were kicking my ass," Blake said simply. "You can figure this out. You're Weiss Schnee. You're a badass. Relax."

Weiss stared at Blake with cold, dead eyes.

Was that…was that seriously supposed to be comforting?

Because that was so stupid.

Gods, Blake was such an idiot. So was Ruby. She was surrounded by idiots and hapless morons through and through. All dumb with…with their dumb faces and their dumb sentences and stuff. Unbelievable. How the hell did she ever degrade herself to the point where she was glad to have them with her?

Un-fucking-believable.

"Okay, then," Weiss said with a small shrug. "Let's kill a Grimm."