Chapter Forty-Two
Emergence
The ringing in her ears didn't stop and she feared Mercy would tear into her for finally succumbing to tinnitus of all things. First, the Primordials with their terrible screeching threatened to poke open memories best left repressed for her therapist to rip apart in a controlled environment specifically built to handle her rather explosive release, and now the light show from Weiss brought back their destruction of Vacuo with effervescent clarity. Those painfully bright glyphs, just moments before detonation, almost had her racing away from the stadium in a pitiful attempt to escape their devastating power.
A Blake clone stopped her clambering up the flying machine to reach the level Weiss floated at, yanking her back to prevent her leap of faith. She gave a choked cry of pain as Blake clotheslined her, keeping her on the landing platform to the amazement of the civilians waiting on their next transport. A flurry of passing Hunters recorded the moment before another Blake clone could steal the footage from them for her use, disappearing into the air to ride a Grimm elsewhere.
Yang took the chance to watch an Atlesian Airship slowly careen from the sky, embers and wreckage burning from its dying corpse. Her throat didn't take the aggressive hit from her partner well, Blake abusing her secondary Aura to cancel out her shielding and strike directly. Maybe it wasn't the brightest idea to give the infiltrator, the one Hunter that frequently disappeared alone deep into the backline either through reinvention or played a ghost stepping through their ranks, the ability to impersonate or subjugate the other top three Hunters on Remnant with barely a twitch of her finger. If, not when, she ever turned traitor to them, on Ruby's orders or because they did something abhorrent, they'd be sitting ducks. She groaned pitifully and accepted the condescending pets to her hair while she recovered.
She wiped the blood coalescing on her tongue with the back of her wrist, staring in confusion when she found nothing but traces of saliva. Blake shook her head when she looked up and accepted her offer of help to get her back up to a stand. The darkness of the falling sunset slowly reverted, the taste of copper in the air rising again as the superheated energy tunnel rent the air apart and oxidized it. Two lances of white connected across two glyphs, rapidly growing in size until they dwarfed the small platform Weiss stood on.
An enormous swathe of shadows detonated across the south-east when Weiss finished the acceleration cycle and the beam slammed into the remaining two Primordials. She couldn't help but join the rising cheers from the elated population around them, even the hardened Hunters taking the moment to breathe. With the greatest danger averted to the populace, the Airships stopped their perimeter patrols and focused their attention on the smaller strike craft, their flack batteries churning out destruction and catching the reeling Fang and Grimm invasion force off guard. Beacon's own two Airships didn't move to engage the retreat, continuing their role in ferrying passengers down into the military base, a few minor scars picked up from when a diving Fang craft attempted to take off a turbine or wing.
The creeping barrage from the Airships pounded at the ground and decimated the surrounding landscape. A couple of additional explosives resounded when a stray APC or tank got caught in the barrage. Yang almost couldn't believe the efficiency the Atlesian military worked at, Ironwood ordering them into perfect unison, and she silently thanked the stubborn Qrow and Ruby for keeping Vale locked down with just their might on the field alone. The Vale military, a mostly ground force with a smattering of air support and naval ships, could never hope to compare against a military force that never needed to land troops conventionally and had droids to drop-pod down instead. Their might came with control of the skies, not with manpower on the field.
Manpower that Ruby could fell with the blink of an eye or Qrow with a step.
Mantle's naval invasion on the western coast of Vale only failed because Winter refused to meet her sister on the field, the future Angel of Vacuo cutting the encroaching ships in twain and sending them to the ocean floor below. The near century of paranoia from the top brass came in handy with the cutting edge anti-air defenses that no Airship dared fly close to, and they were the only reason neither country had massacred each other before the Hunter Commanders could impose their lockdown. Vale didn't dare poke Ruby anymore than they already did, not with them having to already explain the death of nearly 2,000 of their soldiers and Mantle couldn't move with Ironwood executing the treasonous lesser Generals that tried to subvert his control.
Ruby's tendency to refer to the northernmost state as Mantle rather than Atlas irritated the more historically inclined of her Hunters but below the surface of democracy and unfettered capitalism lay a military-industrial complex controlled by an oligarchy that could flip to Ironwood's hands at a mere command. Yang didn't like it, Tai teaching them that countries could only ever truly be free if their people were free, reaching back centuries of history to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and comparing free democracies to the current representative republic of Vale. The Hunters within each faction worked on a similar principle, technically democratic with an elected leader, but the reality gave one person unparalleled control over them. Ruby was kind enough to leave the veneer of civility up, finding no need to tear it down to expose the inner workings of the organization to the younger years. She alone held power over every single Hunter and pushed them along to fit in her plans and she never let those closest near her forget that they were hers and hers alone.
Benevolent shackles was what Yang coined the feeling and, much like Ruby never let them forget what Atlas was underneath the thin facade they showed the rest of the world, she never refused the title of Commander no matter how much her words reflected otherwise. That monster was always there, waiting under the mask of Ruby to remind the world that her silence didn't mean her absence. She realized that made her a massive hypocrite with her acceptance of Ruby's status but her hypocrisy came in handy when it helped prevent a whole bunch of senseless deaths just 'cause the Vale Council thought that Qrow's death left a vacuum in the power structure.
Little did they realize that Qrow was protecting them from a far less lenient Commander.
That Commander brought about this endgame of a war that hadn't even started, trading her life away for the betterment of her people. That was what Tai and Qrow had first taught Ruby, and this was what they taught Mask after suppressing Summer to prune her more… vicious tendencies. Summer would've gone out and massacred the four militaries without the restraint they placed on her. Granted, it probably would've averted spawning nests with how quickly she'd do it, yet that massive loss of life, mostly innocents condemned to their fate by old codgers that never served, wasn't taken lightly.
Even this relatively quick invasion would haunt Glenn for the foreseeable future. The disintegrated carcasses of the Primordials weren't going to fade away anytime soon and the base would've to monitor for any nests forming from it. The landscape below them positively pulsed with dark energy that drifted down from the heavens above, corrupt growth marks stretched along the grass and strangling the trees. With how restless Beacon's Hunters were going to be after this, it'd serve as a good stomping ground for them to work off the adrenaline.
She guessed they were her Hunters now, sharing them with Qrow, and assuming the Blake army could successfully hold Beacon against whatever secondary assault Adam threw at them, Glenn would return to an outpost and launch point for missions into the Vacuoan desert. She hadn't yet received any chatter across the comms about anything involving the Academy and she couldn't settle on that being a good or bad thing. Blake never operated alone, not with a near 95% of her clones moved to defend, and at least one of them should've messaged something across the short-ranged network, even if the main CCTS Tower fell to an assault.
At least Amity would survive the invasion, Weiss's glyphs still holding strong after she jacked control of them from the paralyzed Hunter. It ended up being an extremely necessary measure with Weiss tearing the Primordials from their thrones with everything she had and couldn't have even thought about that if she hadn't taken on that responsibility. Ruby smote one with a god given gift and lost her vision to boot for it, and wherever Blake took Weiss after that light show, she was sure she was recuperating from the technique. Once she found her again then she could infuse her right back to a healthy state. She hadn't had to use much Aura other than keeping the occasional Primordial off the stadium. With each of those impacts she greedily took the energy and cycled it right back to keep her reserves topped off in the event she could ever actually descend to the field rather than bark orders and help evacuate the civilians.
"Blake, get me transport to Beacon at Landing Pad 2," She asked the omniscient swarm and received the expected response. She pushed past the crowd, wishing Weiss could simply spawn them a path overhead, and moved to the closest bay. The people milling about sported looks of uncertainty and elation the longer the battle progressed, the Grimm hordes threatening them thinning and Tai releasing the remainder of the bullheads from Glenn to assist in purging the threat from the skies and finishing the evacuation. The Hunters among them noticeably relaxed as the Atlesian Airships slowly peeled off on their perimeter screens and started moving back to Beacon to chase the retreating army.
With the main threat of the Primordials blasted to smithereens, Pyrrha slowed her target practice against the Grimm, relishing each shot rather than instinctively shooting at any black blur that dared streak across her vision. Her reserves finally leveled out at around a fourth after emptying the rest into three clips of augmented ammunition and a healthy smattering of Griffons littered the ground below. She was fairly sure she also clipped a Nevermore but she never saw it go down. Those were almost impossible to hit in any meaningful way with their evasive maneuvers and thick skin. The stray bullhead she sniped down with a shot to its engines proved less troublesome than most Grimm, the pilots greener than Jaune in his day at Beacon. A spare thought drifted off to worry about her team, wondering how Nora and Jaune were dealing with corralling the evacuation and how Ren dealt with fighting down near Glenn after seeing him disappear over the edge.
He took the orders given to the A-ranks a little more literally than she did and eagerly slammed into the incoming frontline of surprised White Fang besieging a military fortification rather than the relatively defenseless Academy. The Fang was forced to leave Beacon alone, much like the Fourth Commander predicted, to go after Amity and found themselves up against not only the best of Beacon's Hunter thrown at them but also the military might of Mantle to back them up. The lower ranks manned the bastion below with the daredevils, a term she didn't think Ren had at all in him, engaged with the droid army. She was going to have a stern conversation with him if he was using the experimental technique with his Semblance.
She did her best to ignore the death wails of those below her, some of them surely caused by her friend.
It wasn't like she didn't know what the A-ranks orders were before this and Yang had given any one of them the chance to back out. Human combat wasn't the purvey of their corps and those that had dared bloodied their blades were few and far between, weapons kept chained in fear the greater public would discover them. They lauded them as heroes with supernatural powers one moment and then turned about to rightfully condemn them for their abilities. Semblance Theoretics remained a graduation class for a reason and Ruby, as always, ignored that restriction and gave Team JNPR a journal chock full of notes on their specific Semblances.
She just didn't think she could ever willingly use her notes on another human being. The metal filings in the pouch taunted her with the knowledge that she could debilitate or kill with just a touch. She could prevent the loss of life for those that couldn't bear the weight of taking one to protect themselves. A hand on her shoulder turned her attention away from completing her freefall and she found herself facing her Headmaster.
Yang noted the combat heels on the taller woman and vowed to raid her closet on the nearest occasion and replace her shoes with smaller heeled boots. No way was Pyrrha taking the title of the tallest from her, not without her at least attempting to rectify her cheating. Sure she had the small genetic advantage of a few centimeters but it wasn't anything anyone took notice of that tiny discrepancy when they both already towered over almost everyone else.
She wasn't here to cater to the fragile male ego. Just her own.
"Commander Qrow, I'm headed back to Beacon to assess the damages." She spoke into her comms. Pyrrha borrowed one of Blake's quirks and cocked her head to the side, indicating her nonverbal question to the second part of her statement. Great, she'd already picked up that mannerism and only time would tell how many the affection starved women would copy from their wayward teammate.
Waywards only because the real one existed on the same plane as Summer's mercy.
"Not one Blake has reported on the success or failure of their defense of Beacon and that's highly unusual when the watchers themselves have watchers." A bullhead appeared from below the landing pad and settled to a hover, its doors opening a second after. She barely gave it a thought, stepping into the fuselage and beckoning her friend to follow. Another Blake must've taken the Ruby and was strafing the battlefield with its more powerful armaments. She couldn't hear the terrifying wail of the main cannon but it couldn't shoot forever. The thing's recoil would eventually prevent forward flight.
The Blake clone piloting the craft acknowledged their entrance to the cockpit with a flick of her ears before diving down and forcing them to grab hold of anything to keep them upright. The following roll sent them careening away from the path of a Nevermore, further jostling the occupants in Blake's particular flying style. Yang staggered to the other seat after getting her wits about her, shooting her partner a glare. "Why do you fly worse than Ruby can see?"
Blake took her eyes off her flight path for just a moment, a blinding flash of bright purple overtaking the windshield off their starboard side. The clone paled entirely, matching Weiss on that rare day she was sick. She rolled the craft just as the shockwave passed them, slamming into the top of the ship into a controlled stall. The engines reacted much slower on account of the g-forces straining them, Blake fighting against the shock to her system to keep the other occupants from spiraling to a fiery death.
Yang would survive but Pyrrha didn't have the godly ability to power an everlasting and self-regenerating shield to take the impact of that freefall.
The bullhead's thrusters righted them right above the treeline and she pressed them forward to escape the climbing fireball. She wiped the growing tears away, the liquid crumbling into water Dust. The Aura keeping her together would last for another day or so, long enough to get Yang to Beacon and for Weiss to take over handling the emotional mess they'd both be after the invasion ended. She counted the blessing that kept her together instead of disintegrating into Dust the moment her connection to her real copy ended.
"What was that?" Pyrrha rubbed the stars from her eyes and leaned over Blake's seat. The ears she usually happily played with on their downtime lay plastered dejectedly to her hair. She turned her head to look at Yang and found the armrests screeching in protest under her grip. Her usually bright and gleaming blonde hair paled to an unhealthy sheen and those odd red eyes of her dimmed down to dying embers. "Guys?"
"That-" Yang choked on her words, a gasp of air leaving and taking her hopes with her. Pyrrha looked between the two of them as they sped back to Beacon, the rising feeling of something gone terribly wrong eating at her. "That was a minor version of my Supernova."
Blake tightened her hands on the control sticks, refusing to meet Yang or Pyrrha's gaze. She needed to cut off the festering wound she and her clones created with their temporary existence keeping the memory of the original alive. Better to disappear into nonexistence once they landed. The other clones would know what that explosion was, the instinctive purple beaming their death for a quarter of Vale to see.
"And that's bad?" Pyrrha swallowed thickly from the heavy cloud growing above Yang's head. She didn't get a response from the comatose Hunter, Blake flicking a button on her plugged-in scroll. A small text display of their Hunter profiles popped up and she gestured for Pyrrha to peruse to her liking, returning to piloting. The redhead glanced hesitantly between the pair and leaned forward to access the center console. She flicked over to Yang's profile, finding the link to her Aura and reading over the general description. Ruby theorized about many different Semblances in her journal, remarking on the finer details that made up Weiss' glyphs and her fractals, or Blake's second skin.
A few of her theories on many of her Hunters' abilities she marked as inherently or apocalyptically dangerous and Yang's profile had so many of them littered across it that she might as well have been the asterisk. Everything from how absorbing kinetic energy could rupture inwards and obliterate cells to how the conversion could corrupt and create tumors of inaccessible energy. Something Yang's body handled naturally from her birth and something the other three needed to train slowly.
The last entry however wasn't an entry but a link to a restricted page Blake's identification automatically redirected to a proper description. Despair mounted deep inside her with each line she read, a hand subconsciously covering her mouth in horror. The Blake clone didn't respond to her prodding and neither did Yang after she poked her. One was reeling from the shock of one of their own using a skill their leader had locked away for exceptional circumstances and the other, a living shadow of the deceased.
"She's dead," Blake nodded at her short assessment. The cores the clones had weren't anywhere suitable, impermeable constructs with artificial latticeworks holding together a framework of an imprint, Dust, and Aura. Only the original, the progenitor, with its larger pools and access to Yang's fragment. The clone's mental gymnastics and dilemma didn't stray beyond the thought that what Blake ran into must've necessitated the extreme of a Supernova detonation.
Only a few situations could ever warrant Blake tapping into that fragment in its entirety. Yang's rational mind, suppressed underneath the loss of another of her partners, mirrored the clone's thoughts. Her defense of 117M was the only time she ever considered activating a smaller version of her suicide technique. The Grimm horde had broken through the perimeter wall and countless Hunters and soldiers had already fallen, leaving their forces down to the A and S-ranks already on site.
Ruby was already close to death from Aura exhaustion, Weiss keeping her restrained for fear she'd insist on going back out, and hundreds of Blake clones had perished from the quantity of Grimm storming through the breach. An extended perimeter of glyphs separated the unlucky district from the rest of Vale, towering just high enough to prevent the agile Beowolves from leaping over. The Hunters outside dealt with any aerial attackers but with each minute came the slightly lessened glow of the barrier as Weiss ran out of Aura.
She still wasn't sure how they escaped, or how they prevented the veritable flood from rampaging across Vale. Brief flashes of blood and shadows with extremely high levels of adrenaline and endorphins flashed in her memories, a dim haze in the prolonged siege defense.
For Blake to willingly activate that when not even the defense of 117M could warrant it, when not even the fall of Remnant moved Ruby to activate it. She must've been in either extreme danger to her person, injured and captured by the White Fang, or she lost to Adam Taurus, and rather than let him live, she took them both down. The revenge and redemption she sought for him dug them both graves, in the end. She was a terrible cliche.
Pyrrha collapsed to her knees, her strength abandoning her. Her weapon clattered to the floor, slipping away uselessly. She rested her head against the console, taking a smidgen of relief from the cool metal pressing against her forehead. Blake had given her two weeks of a whirlwind adventure filled with affection and sex and what she wanted to label as romance but hesitated at the timeframe. She liked the older, war weary, and confident woman that strung her along. The fear of her just being a rebound kept creeping up on her when she crashed on their bed, Yang or Weiss sandwiching her.
Their marriage or partnership wasn't anything like the fairytales of old or those bodice-rippers Ren liked to read and hide under his bed when he thought he could get away with it. They didn't have the honeymoon moments or vapid hearts in their eyes or bouncing around their head. Their bonds came from strife and were tempered by war, where the warm body cuddled up to you one night could be gone the next. Where fleeting touches between bouts of combat spoke more than vows during their weddings.
Was it the love she craved after so long with all those stories of destiny and romance from Mistral? No, not really. But it didn't diminish that that's what this broken team defined it as. The warm bodies, the obligatory banter that resembled arguing siblings (a moment of clarity reminding her that Yang and Ruby were actually raised as sisters and there would be bleed between them all in the team), the blatant insubordination (to those looking for it), and the dozen suicide attempts disguised as martyrdom and duty in a race to see which of them could die first so the others could live on, strung together a unique portrait of love.
Beacon needed to double whatever it paid their therapists in Monty Memorial.
She wiped the errant tears streaking down her cheeks, using the seats to her sides to shakily stand. Blake ignored many of the guidelines for flight and sped along the treetop until they fell behind to reveal the urban blocks of their Academy. The expected attacking fleet of strike craft and Grimm didn't hang silently in the sky and neither did any of Atlesian or Valian craft, the school left looking entirely defenseless at a first glance.
It was only in the dimming sunset that she could make out the bullheads and decaying Grimm corpses littering the grass and clearings surrounding the Academy. The anti-air artillery Yang fitted to the rooftops months ago still rotated along slowly, coming into focus as Blake patrolled the perimeter and landed on the cliff landing pads. Other than a couple of brand new scars on the administrative buildings and a crater near the dorms, no one could tell what assaulted them.
As the one Hunter with functioning legs and clear mind, she rolled the doors open and peeked her head out. She half expected a literal mountain of Blake clone corpses or Dust piles with the silence they kept to drive Yang from helping manage the stadium defense. That call to action demanded more than the barely damaged hedges and cobblestone. Whatever Blake took temporary control over the clones wanted Yang here for a reason, keeping a firm hold on them until she could get a message across.
On her return to the cockpit, Blake did her level best to avoid touching or even interacting with her, keeping her gaze averted. She let it slide, for now, grabbing Yang's shoulder and shaking her lightly and then vigorously when she got no response the first time. Those dead eyes haunted her when she hazarded a look and pried her eyelids open from their lidded half state. She snorted and threw her arm around her shoulder and lifted her to a stand. Her teammates were a good head shorter than her with much less packed muscle so she staggered under the weight of the comatose woman.
"Blake," She called out to the cargo hold, receiving absolutely zilch in response. A curse left her lips in annoyance and she dragged her friend out of the cockpit. Her dead girlfriend sat on the ledge of the craft and swayed her legs back and forth, evidently waiting for them. She reeled from the slap upside her head and rather than a glare, she stared stoically towards their school. "Listen up. I get you're dead and all and you're trying to lessen the impact of your death but Yang is not an easy person to carry so grab an arm or her legs or I will stab you again and I'll have to find another clone to help me."
The clone wasn't sure how to properly respond to her aggression, her lizard hindbrain demanding she pick her up and disappear for a few hours in blissful solitude, and the other wanted to run from the vengeful goddess, a fiery halo enshrouding her brilliant hair and eyes glowing with cursed fire. The professionally spoken Hunter disappeared, and out came crawling the Pyrrha she and her original spent the last couple weeks exploring and teasing free.
Pyrrha stopped her speaking by grabbing her hands roughly. "I was happy with you for our short relationship so don't cut yourself off from us just yet. You at least get a chance to say goodbye." She pushed Yang into her and the pair went tumbling onto the landing pad in a mess of limbs. A burst of chuckles clawed through her aggression. Those stages of grief needed a rewrite for Hunters, shock and somber mingling together in the cockpit, anger reaching forward for a moment, and bargaining and testing finding a partner with the clone to close off the cycle. "You wouldn't have used a Supernova if it wasn't absolutely necessary." She dropped to meet them below. "You died to protect us, and by extension, me, and that's what matters."
She reached out and hoisted the stunned clone to a stand. An odd smile graced her face, tainted with sorrow and surprise and shock. They lifted Yang between them and staggered onwards to the center courtyard. The strong face she put up for the clone wouldn't last longer than it took to find Weiss and dump Yang into her lap. She'd take what remained of Blake and cuddle with it for however long time she had before her Aura reserves ran out. Yang would join them for her own goodbye, as much as that selfish part of her wanted to keep her to herself.
Flashes and blurs of black danced around her vision, dozens of clones peeking out from the colonnades and rooftops surrounding the central courtyard. Dozens of familiar Faunus shifted to stand at attention with their right fists clenched over their hearts. One clone, however, rested against the Memorial Stone, the flag of Vale and Beacon already lowered to commemorate the Hunters they lost. Her breath hitched when she noticed one of the weapons laid across her lap and she truly hated Blake for a few seconds. The silver rapier, bereft of its owner and in the hands of another, would break Yang entirely.
That clone stood up, gently set her three weapons aside, and strode up to them. A brief moment of pity appeared when she looked at Yang and then disappeared just as quickly, her attention shifting to the clone. She traded places with it, lifting the comatose Yang on her shoulders with ease and held out her other hand, an unspoken command and hand-sign disintegrating the first clone until only Gambol Shroud lay on the flagstone.
Rising heat from the slumbering dragon sent Pyrrha dashing away. Blake's eyes narrowed as Yang's desolate crimson sparked with a vivid purple. The scent of burning plasma, the same she smelled during Weiss' last stand moved her into action, a virulent yellow Aura wrapping around her hand. She slammed the pulse in Yang's chest, disrupting the coalescing turbulence building inside and hailing the start of the disintegration cycle. The pain of her dissolving flesh didn't matter to her, just the cold, gnawing ball digging deeper into her and chilling her soul.
Yang's eye lit back up with life, disbelief displayed openly and chasing away the deathly broken visage occupying her form. Yeah, it definitely wasn't the brightest idea to give the one Hunter that specialized and knew of all their weaknesses the ability to interrupt not only their shields but their Semblances as well. Blake's disappointment in her hit about as hard as Ruby's, hands flashing through symbols.
She still had people to live for and she needed that reminder in this dark storm rolling through her mind. A blonde with a scruffy beard in charge of Mt. Glenn crouched down in front of her, ruffled her hair, and told her a good job after she first accessed her Semblance. Her favorite alcoholic emerged from the shadows and taught her how to throw a punch without dislocating her wrist. The phantoms of Ruby blew apart in a whirlwind of roses, the form of Weiss shattered apart into fractured glyphs, and the legion of Blakes drifted off into Dust. From them stepped a bright form wreathed in green fire, a circlet on her head and crimson hair framing her face. Purple shades with the royal crest of Menagerie emblazoned on their clothes came next, standing proudly with soft expressions of love, arms open and waiting for her. Even Weiss' older copy appeared from a flurry of snowflakes, a Knight at her side, keeping her resolve steady.
A mass of faceless Hunters congregated around her, all of them ready with the same willingness to die for their people that Ruby extolled. The same grudging willingness to push themselves beyond. That bright eyed eagerness vexed the Commander, her death marked with a battle against herself to the very end. They were green, greener than the spring grass and more innocent than a baby fawn. They needed guidance for the turmoil waiting for them once the invasion died down with the government incinerated from Blake's firebomb and the military ready to impose their version of martial law. A reminder that Beacon, with its hundred or so students that could tear them apart with little issue, would keep them in check, the eight decades of inactivity driving the top brass a smidge stir-crazy.
She wiped her face clean and swept her hair back, the fires of Annihilation burning back down and her new crimson bleeding on through. Pyrrha helped her up to a stand, the last connection Team RWBY made in the mortal plane before fading away into simple obscurity. She found Weiss and Blake's name as the last two carved on the Memorial Stone, the clone shrugging nonchalantly. Yang flicked her for her cheek and picked up the Dust replica of Gambol Shroud. The Supernova annihilated the real version, and anything in twenty meters, so this would have to do.
Blake already lowered two of the flags to half mast, Remnant's still flying high in the air. She turned back to Blake, got a nod, and planted it deep into the grass next to the Stone. Neo's umbrella shattered into mirrors when she tried to pick it up and left the dark silver rapier with its unusual black ripples. Next to Weiss's rapier, Neo's weapon gleamed with stories of untold bloodshed and attempted to disappear into obscurity. She planted those two weapons next to Gambol Shroud, creating an entwined sculpture in their memory. Shroud would disappear in time, leaving the real weapons to weather time and memory immortal.
"Are you sticking around?" Yang shook off her caretakers, taking note of the hundreds of other Blakes surrounding their position. Blake nodded and then gestured to the other clones, all of them painfully aware their presence was fleeting with every passing moment. "We have the Dust to permanently prolong existence. I'm sure we can find an administrative role somewhere." She bantered so familiarly but didn't move to touch her shoulder in camaraderie or embrace her solidly, her carefree smile never extending to her eyes. Pyrrha slugged her heavily and cleared her throat aggressively but any communication between them got lost in the scant time they shared.
"Your humor sucks." She remarked before addressing Blake directly. "One night." She held up a finger. "The Fourth Commander expected you to handle everyone's affairs if everyone died. That's expected. But I'm ordering you as your friend and girlfriend to dissolve after tonight." Yang looked at her with betrayal, unable to believe she'd said something so evil, but Blake nodded again and accepted it. "I will help Yang handle it, but I don't need you prolonging the mourning."
She faced Yang this time, wrapping her arms around her neck and holding tight, talking in a whisper. "You've lost and loved but remember that that doesn't go away. They'll always be with you… here." She poked her chest gently. "They died for you and us and that's how I think they wanted to go. Okay?" She pulled away lightly, brushing away her tears. "Remember the memorial words and keep on hunting."
Yang hated that she was right, echoing the same words they spoke when they honored Ruby at the stone and flags those many months ago. Blake, Weiss, and Ruby's hunt was over, sacrifices in the field so that others could live on, but her hunt was still ongoing. She shrugged off Pyrrha's hug but kept one of her hands intertwined together, getting a reassuring squeeze in response. "Okay." She took a shuddering breath and smiled sadly. "What's gonna happen to the rest of the clone?"
Blake smiled unnervingly as if expecting the question and snapped her fingers. Pair by pair, the clones vaulted into the sky with the help of their copies and, at their zenith, exploded into the colorful elements of bright yellows, blinding whites, muted red, and royal purple. They made no sound, each of them activating their cores of Dust with Aura and burning through them, the natural elemental reaction tainted by whatever core fragment the clone was created with. Pyrrha and Yang stood at the center of it all, awash in the explosions chasing away the nighttime sky, silent awe and appreciation for the send-off Blake was giving them. The lonesome Blake sidled up to them, the last copy with a death sentence in the morning.
It was her celebration for everything they struggled to get through, most of their direct enemies falling, defeated, at their feet. Qrow would mop up the government angle in a couple of weeks, holding firm to Ruby's last order to give the Faunus their long-denied rights. What was left of the White Fang would kneel to Sienna Khan and the surviving Belladonnas, Adam removed from the Vale faction's leadership. Cinder was stripped of her ability to mold Aura and left to fend for herself during the invasion, but could never harm another again in her zealous quest for power. Ozpin was gone, ending several decades of stagnant leadership, and giving it to a younger and more brash Yang to lead into the future. And Salem, the soft thorn in their sides Ruby respected, went with him.
The gods of Remnant were dead.
Their enemies scattered.
They had succeeded.
Their world was safe.
Qrow envied the silence around Beacon, his Airship the only thing rustling the air around it. A dozen bullheads followed in his wake, roaring across the skies to secure the area in the event the remnants of the Fang skulked about to ambush them. Of the Hunter Command structure, Ironwood, Schnee, and their fleet stayed behind to secure the Colosseum. That mechanical wonder would return to Mantle until the next Vytal Festival, this year's event coming to a harsh and brutal end.
The other four S-ranks, along with the Menagerie Royals, were inbound with him, enough firepower to overwhelm the military fledglings plotting to take the country for themselves with the government gone. As jumpy as they were to get involved with conflicts, the different branch leaders needed only a quick reaffirmation that their loyalties were to the citizens of Vale first, and not the country's name. The weary Team RWBY might've expected the military coup but it didn't mean it was even close to happening, those die-hard nationalists with boners for a populist fascist being the loudest idiots making waves in their information network.
The wreckage of battle lay strewn about but the anti-artillery remained to show Yang's preparations didn't go to waste. She went back to Beacon before he could officially call the invasion over and he couldn't fault her. He wanted her to take his responsibility for overseeing all the Hunters with this martial law fiasco coming to bite him with Ruby not there to take the heat. Not to mention he still didn't know what Weiss did with her laser light show that felled those Primordials that frightened him and every other S-rank. And that purple explosion that nearly knocked out two of their Airships still evaded him, obliterating part of the retreating Fang forces they were chasing. They got extremely lucky only the shockwave slammed into them and not the sequential firestorm that came with it.
They landed in the hangars, swiftly disembarking with a platoon of Hunters spreading about to comb over the area for any stragglers. Athena, Emily, and their prodigies followed along and inspected the desolate school. They could deal with the silence around them but not lack of students or Hunters milling about and doing something, anything. Those Hunters that came with ignored that as well as they could and ran about checking everything, panicked in their fear that their stronghold might be infiltrated.
Yang was nowhere to be seen oddly enough and he suspected she was sequestered up in her office and getting a headstart on their paperwork. No one as young as her deserved to go through the hell that was administrative duties. They moved along, all of them bouncing on their feet and fidgety, aware of even the slightest movement. The hundreds of Blake clones that were supposed to be defending the Academy were nowhere, disappearing in the ether their master called home. He tried pinging Yang on her scroll and got a response after a few long seconds, the dots of a typed response taking much longer to bear a full message.
She wanted him to visit the Memorial Stone before coming to his office. He rolled his eyes at the cryptic task instead of just telling him what was happening but he followed her suggestion and beckon this group to follow. The lowered two flags didn't surprise him, Tai in charge of collecting a death count and forwarding him a copy to assess the damages to their ranks and how they could rebuild in the coming years. A glint of silver stabbed next to the Stone caught his eye and he understood why Yang wasn't anywhere in a public setting.
"Oh fuck," His quiet curse caught the attention of his party and they followed his sightline. Blake's parents found the embedded Gambol Shroud next to Myrtenaster and Ghira broke free from them and ran up to the Stone, Kali remaining behind with a hand covering her silent gasp. He fell to his knees slowly, hand reaching out to softly touch his daughter's weapon. The silver one the Fourth Commander held tightly when they had visited the first time told him of another loss to the family and his heartbreaking wail echoed to the godless skies above. Qrow nudged the Menagerie matriarch to go and mourn with him for the time being, and then join the rest of them up in the Tower.
He thanked his lucky stars that Yang survived this, Ruby's loss almost sending him into another alcoholic binge to rival the one he took after Summer's death. A shudder ripped through him at the memory of that dark time and he thanked Ozpin for saving him from himself and giving him a chance. Sure the bastard manipulated him to take his position and exploited him in a troubled time to further the Hunter cause, and it sounded a hell of a lot worse than it turned out, but he couldn't imagine himself anywhere else. Those shackles the Headmasters and Commanders kept them trapped with were better than the alternatives of their factions stagnating.
The loss of three S-ranks, and probably a fourth one once Raven came to her senses and realized there wasn't anyone left to overpower and control her since he doubted she came back except for under extreme duress, would cripple the forces they could throw at any large Grimm offensive. With him in charge of Beacon, the glaring holes in their defensive fronts stood out like sore thumbs. He never noticed it, assuming Ozpin had everything in hand and didn't bother having informants to watch what happened among their own. Blake didn't either as she trusted Ruby to manage when and where Hunters were assigned. He didn't have that level of trust with Ozpin anymore.
May he rest in limbo.
Yang, with her losses and mourning period, couldn't be relied on for anything and he half expected her office to be in shambles with the bar emptied, a few walls or windows shattered, and enough tears to drown a small Grimm, but he instead got the same image of subtle power Ozpin radiated with his tired niece sat behind the touchscreen desk. The lines streaking down her cheeks made her look far older, carved in from her heartbreak's manifestation. She lost almost everything and he had to admire her drive, even if it would kill her.
Her dead eyes flickered with hints of life, smoldering embers floating and ready to ignite at the slightest provocation. He couldn't lie to himself but he missed the violet eyes she grew up with, so filled with childish mirth and glowing from learning to handle her Semblance. Now they matched his own, following along with his cursed bloodline and darkening to the haunting crimson they shared with the creatures of darkness.
A little black ball of shadows sat perched on the corner of the desk and wagged its tail incessantly, tongue hanging out in pleasure while a dead woman scratched its ears. He set aside their sworn enemy and reactively shot with Harbinger, a spray of pellets blocked by a series of yellow glyphs. Another woman guarded the other side of the room and matched her mother to a tee, decked out in slate grey armor outlined and decorated with gold. Nikos waved to her offspring. He didn't really question her presence but that nagging thought Yang had no guy friends refused to leave him. Seriously, she gathered attractive women faster than he could blink.
"This is a sick joke, Blake." He ignored the glyph shield and moved over to the open bar Ozpin kept perpetually stocked, only to find it shockingly devoid of anything, every bottle of liquor removed and replaced with a thin layer of dust. "Your parents are down there right now, mourning your death." He moved over to the couches and flipped their cushions in search of the flasks he hid long ago, finding none of them, including the one he hid inside the springs just yesterday. "And you're here." He ransacked the drawers next to them, Nikos and Kaldwin standing back amused at his antics. "Acting like everything's okay." He threw his hands in the air in exasperation. "And there's no alcohol anywhere! You!" He pointed a finger at Pyrrha. "Find me something to drink."
"No, Commander." Her stolid expression turned to bemusement, Yang staring up at her and showing her silent support in her decision. Qrow couldn't find it in himself to be angry at her refusal, Yang keeping her close when the invasion ended with a pyrrhic victory, for her at least. "Blake is dead."
"This is her last clone." Yang signed off on another piece of digitalwork, authorizing the use of the remainder of the emergency funds they got from selling off Ozpin's cocoa stash. "Don't bother her and don't shoot her again or I will throw you into the lake below and watch as you struggle to swim after I stun your ability to mold Aura and tie your hands and legs together to a cinder block, all the while throwing bait to see if I can't convince the Kraken Grimm to eat you and watching with glee as you struggle and drown." Her bizarrely specific threat chilled him down to the bone when she leveled her gaze on him, Blake miming a whistle and twirling her ribbons about, and Pyrrha pulling a cinderblock from somewhere. The other two Commanders approved of her vivid imagination.
The irony he did the same with crowbars didn't escape him.
"She disappears forever tomorrow." He caught the hiccup in her voice when she said that. "So make your goodbyes and -." She slumped forward with a dark cloud forming over her head and casting a shadow. He stepped around the desk and wrapped her in a hug, shushing to quell the despair and petting her head like when she was little. The Blake clone gave him a look of pity enough to fill the open quarries of the SDC and he would smack that look away if the tall redhead wasn't smiling at him genuinely.
"It's okay to cry." Yang choked for a bit and started laughing through her sobs, wiping the mess of tears staining her face. She pushed him away with a final chuckle. "Pyrrha already gave me that talk and I'm trying to come to terms with it. I don't need a repeat performance. How are the civilians? The Hunters? The Arena?" He straightened up noticeably, cursing mentally at the years of ingrained propriety when he was her superior. Again… after she'd technically eclipsed him on rank and Ruby's position alone.
"There wasn't a single civilian casualty which the Council would be happy about… if we had a Council." Nikos stilled and warily eyed the assassin capable of pulling that off, fidgeting in place. Kaldwin didn't blink an eye, reclining on the couch and amused herself with a floating tendril of her Semblance she manipulated into different shapes. Qrow flipped Blake the finger, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Thanks for that by the way. Putting me in charge of a country when I didn't even want to lead the Hunters. Nice touch with the FERB. Cleaned out your enemies and got what the Faunus always wanted in one fell swoop."
Not going to discipline me or yell at me for killing civilians? She replied, arching an eyebrow. It was all too easy to forget the real Blake was gone, burned, disintegrated, or otherwise destroyed in the typical manner all high level operatives were.
"You're already dead." He shrugged and she visibly relaxed. Her habit of never trusting anyone other than her team came to bite her and it was sad, the Faunus leading a lonely life. "Nothing I can say or do will change what you're done and any punishment will literally be temporary. You made your own punishment with your death. Though what takes out an S-rank like you?" This clone was her testament to her avoidance of death in the first place, an extension of her life. Her real body never needed to be in danger.
"That large explosion that probably almost took the stadium, Adam Taurus, and whatever forces he retreated with?" Yang asked, focusing her attention on the monotonous work keeping her leashed to this desk. She finally understood what Ruby so enjoyed in the administrative lifestyle when not fighting tooth and nail on the frontline. Ruby, like the other Hunter Commanders, didn't dread coming back to the office after fighting with adrenaline coursing through them, no. To them, it was a solid and reliable escape to the struggle and uncertainty of the Grimm plaguing their borders, a cry of relief to finally drop the burden resting on their shoulders. "That was her body undergoing a Supernova. This clone can't tell what happened but we know enough to know her real body was in extreme danger."
"That was her?" Blake nodded when he glanced over at her. "You took out an Atlesian Airship from the shockwave alone and wrecked the shield generators on the Arena to the point that Ironwood thought the Fang had somehow managed to build a nuclear warhead. Not to mention disrupting the flight corridor while we tried to figure out what happened." She grinned unabashedly at her accomplishments rather than apologize for causing them.
"Again, Blake decided she couldn't avoid using it and that's that. The technique is restricted to the Commanders and other S-ranks for a reason, not because Ruby was paranoid of our secret but because at full power, I can crack this planet into pieces." Kaldwin stopped zoning out and started paying attention to the walking nuke sitting in the office with her. He decided to shelf that discussion for now, more than aware of the redacted Chimera Project and its effects on the team. No one person should ever hold that amount of power in their body, but evolution and chance made for strange bedfellows. It was worth more than the collective Remnant Dust reserves and with it split between the four of them, it became the ultimate tool for erasure.
He could guess at how much their Aura, Semblance, and blood could fetch for their enemies, let alone how vaunted Blake's status as Princess of Menagerie made her. Her body was a treasure for those with good and ill will towards it.
"And Weiss Schnee? She was another Hunter that was rarely in the direct line of danger. How did she die?" He spoke softly, watching carefully for any signs Yang might break at her memory. She hesitated, hand raised to analyze another document in her inbox. Blake started signing until she remembered Pyrrha wasn't up to the same level as the rest of them. She took over the desk touchscreen and pulled up the holographic display, typing at speed so everyone could follow without the suspense.
The Railgun technique Ruby left her burnt through her network and destroyed her body. I hypothesize that she had the Aura reserves to power the three separate instances that smote the Primordials, but her body couldn't handle the throughput that came with accelerating the Aura without causing immense damage. Her first use of it burned and scarred her arms to the point she chose to use two at once, to avoid crippling her body, instead of just one and leaving a Primordial still flying. She swiped this summary to Yang and she got the message, attaching it to Weiss' official post-mortem paperwork. Other than updating the cause of death, most of her file was redacted, entire parts of her professional file permanently sealed and the data scrubbed to prevent any information on her leaking out. Athena embraced her daughter much to the latter's chagrin and consoled her for the loss of a friend. Her tight grip belied her stature and Pyrrha resorted to wiggling with all her might to escape, pushing against her mother with all of her enhanced strength, and failing to dislodge the S-rank.
"And that leaves you as the last." Qrow summarized bluntly. The tank and juggernaut always on the frontlines and always in the most danger on the field, the Hunter designated to die in the event they needed the rest of the team to escape, outlasted them all.
The elevator dinged and they all turned to the ashen faced and tear stricken Menagerie royalty stepping off. Kali found the Blake clone immediately but didn't make a move or react to it, observing it like a predator watching her prey. Ghira wore his emotions on his sleeve and barreled over the furniture to wrap her in a tight hug. A barrel of purple glyphs protected her from his grief stricken hold, shielding her temporary construct from his strength. Through his babbling, they could make out his mistaken assumption of her dying for a dark mission and how happy he was to know the truth about her.
Kali delicately wrapped a hand on his shoulder and then threw him viciously onto the couch. She didn't bother checking on him, walking around her daughter and inspecting the Semblance creation. She touched her and pulsed an Aura charge through it, finding the artificial core held within, too rigid to resemble a natural one. To think that their Semblance could outlive even their mortal forms.
What a humbling thought.
"Goodbye." She wrapped her in a long hug much less filled with desperation and let her go, giving her a sad and wry smile that stretched those age lines around her eyes. Yang would never see Blake gain them, her choice locking the memory of her forever in the prime of her youth. Kali knelt by her and hugged her. "You'll always have a home on our island."
"And you have one here." She extended the offer of hospitality and asylum in turn, pulling up her late wife's bequests and blew up the portions about them onto the floating screen. "And you have ones in every Kingdom now: a vacation home in Mistral, a penthouse in a casino in Vacuo, a cabin in Patch, and a castle in Atlas." Images of those properties came up to join the relevant sections she could isolate on the screen. Of all of them, she had absolute novels dictating the distribution of her wealth and assets, the Schnee Dust Corporation holding billions of Lien across the planet. Ruby's will was one page as she didn't technically own anything aside from her go-bag and Crescent Rose, the rest of her file box holding documents about the future operations of Beacon and authorizations for their preparations for the invasion.
"I don't understand." She touched the image of the castle, recognizing it as the family home of the Schnees, nestled high in the mountains. Tall towers surrounded the peak and smooth stone walls encircled all of it, creating a haven against the biting cold and tearing winds. "This is Castle Schnee."
"Yes. And Weiss had a bleeding heart and decided to give almost everything she owned to you and Ghira. Almost everything as there's still a disinherited elder Schnee sister alive and she set up a trust for her, but yes, everything beyond that including the entirety of the Schnee Dust Corporation and their seat on the Atlesian Council, is now yours." Kali reeled mentally at that, more than aware of how obscenely wealthy the family her organization hunted for decades was. She looked over to Blake and found her already shaking her head. "Blake, even as the official crowned Princess of Menagerie, never owned anything beyond her personal effects that I will keep. As for what Weiss left you, she quite literally has a platoon of lawyers she handpicked to handle this transfer, all of who couldn't give a single fuck about who you are or what pretty ears you have on your head as long as they get paid which, has already been handled."
"She didn't leave you anything?" Kali asked after a long minute of solemn contemplation.
"I'm a Hunter." She replied simply. "I could never handle that level of wealth and it'll get put to much better use in your hands than mine. Besides, Beacon and the other factions take what is offered but never more than we need. With Vale under martial law for the foreseeable future, the Faunus will enjoy the rights the Council denied them for so long. After that, well, I'm sure the lobbying might of the former SDC can persuade them to keep to the status quote."
Kali tried to deny the gift but Yang grabbed her hands and held them tight. "No, don't. I already knew the contents of her will when I undersigned as her witness. This is what she wanted and I'm not going to take her last wishes from her." She squeezed her hands and tried to instill some measure of confidence that everything would be alright. If only she could get herself to believe that.
She let her go to console the stunned Ghira, explaining to the best of her abilities how Blake was here along with the enormous boon they, and in turn, Menagerie received from a lost girl they welcomed into their home and gave a modicum of familial love. Kaldwin and Qrow returned to their brooding, two kindred souls with chaotic Semblances weighed down by their responsibilities to their countries, commiserating about the coming political conflict set to besiege all the Councils with Vale's adoption of the Faunus Equal Rights Bill. Athena, bless her heart, yammered to Pyrrha about something or another with the younger redhead glancing fervently at her or Blake to rescue her from the situation.
A smile still broke across her face and she let loose a sigh, a sigh she'd unknowingly kept inside since her inception into this dimension. Blake sat at her side, swinging her legs back and forth with her ears following suit. She grasped the clone's hand for a shred of stability in these turbulent times and got the same wry smile she got from her mother, a sad recognition of her struggle with a glimmer of hope. "Everything's going to be okay, isn't it?" She pressed a kiss to her hand. Blake nodded, satisfied with her question but offering no response. She tabbed over to Yang's profile, accessing the dozens of files Ruby created and associated with her, switching over to the administrative tabs kept hidden from view.
Yang suddenly found the option to delete her profile blinking in front of her, asking for her confirmation to remove herself from the system. It took her a few moments to realize what Blake wanted from her when she looked over the occupants of her office again.
It was time to forget about fighting in a war.
It was time to Hunt once again.
FIN
AN: It's been a hell of a wild journey with you all and I want to give my heart-felt thanks for sticking around until the end of this story. It's the ending that made sense in the end to me and while some of you expected it, it's not going to make all of you happy. I'm sure you all have questions and rabid plot-holes burning in your minds and feel free to drop a review and DM me. I'm taking the next few months off to work on the next series of stories to keep my mind from wasting away and keep it occupied when I'm not working. To date, it's been three years (minus three days) since I first published this story, and it's both a relief and a sorrow to see it close.