Note: No, you aren't seeing things. It's another chapter. We actually already had this one half-written from a chunk of a previous chapter, so that's why it came out so fast. Still, we thought it would be fun to give you a double dose of LUBYP this week. Hope you are enjoying the finale. The next part begins now...

Adam swerved out of control, but it was Blake who received the worst of the damage.

He slammed into the back of a car parked in front of him, and the momentum from the crash sent Blake flying from the roof. She flew into the back windshield of the other car, causing it to crack upon impact but otherwise catch her. Its two passengers screamed in panic and immediately fled, looking back at her with confused, panicked gazes. Blake groaned as she tried to regain a sense of her surroundings. She saw the two ladies running away and almost tried to quip out a halfhearted apology before the pain in her ribs silenced her. All around her, there were people on the sidewalks and in their cars watching her, recording her on their Scrolls. No cops around, not yet. No Huntsmen either. They must have been overwhelmed not to show up to such a mess. She glanced back at Adam's van. Her weapon was still embedded into the roof, and she could see Adam's sneer as he toggled the van into reverse and backed away from her—and then slammed on the gas and charged full speed ahead.

He collided again with the bumper, and the shockwave sent Blake first rolling up and the back windshield and then down onto the hood of Adam's stolen van. She rested there only a moment before tumbling off onto the hard street, and Adam backed up once again, gaining distance to run her over for good. He had been generous with her up until that point, but a combination of the increased blood loss from his shoulder, and the witnesses recording his face, and the fact that she just wouldn't leave him alone, all pooled together and generated just enough rage that he was willing to turn her into roadkill. Blake struggled to get up to her feet. It didn't matter how much Aura she was covering herself with. Getting hit by a car twice hurt. It hurt a lot. She barely had anything left to fight with, and as she saw Adam shift his van back into drive, she wondered if there was anything she could do to escape.

Fighting Adam on her own was a stupid idea. A really fucking stupid idea. She didn't have to do it, either. She could have just let him escape and no one would have ever known. But no, she had to grow a fucking conscience, and now she was going to get run over like any other animal.

Adam prepared to hit her—and then he heard a loud pounding on his door.

Four people were pulling at the door to his random. Four people neither Blake nor Adam had ever seen before. Four completely random civilians who just happened to be nearby watching this Faunus steer his way through traffic and try to run over a young teenager. There had to be close to sixty people watching them. Most of them had the decent sense to not get involved, so why the hell were these four getting in the way? Blake's vision was hazy; she couldn't see anything unique about them. No unifying age, gender, class, species. Maybe they were just four good people who saw an injustice occurring and were trying to stop it.

Or hell, Adam was a Faunus and she looked Human—maybe they were just racist.

In any case, their interference distracted Adam long enough for Blake to get her second wind. The other people managed to pull his unlocked car door open, and one of them reached inside in order to grab at him. Adam growled, frustrated, and before the poor man knew what was coming, he received a hard boot to the gut and was sent tumbling backward. Adam grabbed his sword and stepped out of the car, ready to fight off the rest of them himself if he had to. Before he could, Blake rose back to her feet and dashed toward him. Her weapon was still in his roof. Too far. Not worth it. He drew his blade and the people cowered. She had no time. Before he could strike them down, she hit him with a shoulder tackle, knocking him to the floor. The recoiling crowd briefly jumped back before she screamed at them.

"Get out of here!" she cried. "This is Huntress business! Get somewhere—"

Adam cut her off, grabbing her by the waist and tackling her against the van. The simple mention of the word Huntress and the imminent threat of death was enough to send the good people scampering away like mice from a sinking ship. The two former lovers wrestled each other for control, ending when Blake kicked Adam in the midsection and warded him off. Her attention went to the roof of the van, and she reached up to grab her sword. Yet, before she could reach it, Adam grabbed her and threw her into the open street. He took Gambol Shroud for himself and examined it in his palm.

"Didn't I teach you how to use this?" Adam remarked. "When you came to me, you and Ilia were still using little pocket knives. I taught you how to shoot, and now you're using it against me."

Blake shook out her nerves and stood back up. She unhooked her heavy sheathe from her back and held it with both hands out in front of her. "You know, I never realized just how much you want to take credit for things I already knew how to do."

Adam clicked the small trigger located beneath the sword's grip, and as if the sword was his own, he transformed it and threw the grappling hook toward Blake's head. She blocked it with her sheathe and grabbed onto the cord, wrapping it around her wrist to tie herself to Adam. She pulled on the cord but Adam wouldn't budge. He pulled back, and she stumbled toward him. He swung his own sword at her when she got near, but she blocked it again with the sheathe and tried to maneuver around him. The cord around her wrist was her guide, and when he tried to attack her again, she used the cord to parry him, wrapping up his elbow and tying it up against his back.

She could beat him. It would be tough, but she could beat him. She was sure of that much. She just had to avoid making any stupid mistakes.

Like breathing, as it turned out—because when she took a sharp breath to recover her energy, all of the pain from the car crash hit her like a bullet. She felt the wound in her hip stretch. Her stomach cramped and twisted into harsh knots that actually knocked her over, and it was that little mistake that allowed Adam to regain the upper hand. He yanked up on the cord, dragging her toward him, and when she was within range, he delivered a backhanded slap directly across her cheek.

"Okay," he grumbled. "Let's try this again."

He pulled the cord loose and collapsed her weapon, but he kept his focus on her arm. It dangled loosely as he grabbed it, holding it up while Blake lay prone on the ground. He sheathed his own sword, opting to use her own. It would be more personal that way. That was a lesson he learned a long time ago. Violence went hand-in-hand with cruelty, but the latter was far more essential than the former. He placed the edge of her sword to the inside of her elbow, ready to slice clean through it, but at the last moment, he changed his mind. She tried kicking out his legs in desperation, though he wasn't fazed by her weak blows.

"I thought you understood what I had gone through, but I guess I was wrong," he stated grimly. "You never really gave a shit about any of it."

"You crazy jackass," Blake spat at him. His grip traveled up her forearm before settling on her fingers, holding her digits straight out in the open. "I gave everything to you. I sacrificed my life because I believed in you. I was maybe the only person in the world who genuinely believed in you."

"Sacrificed?" Adam said doubtingly. "Please. What have you ever sacrificed?"

As if she couldn't fill an ocean with all of her regrets.

"I have a permanent reminder of my sacrifice plastered on my head," Adam continued, glancing up at his destroyed horns. "You never lost anything you didn't want to. Fuck, you gave up your ears willingly. Maybe you need to actually lose something before you get it through your skull."

Adam placed the edge of the sword in-between her ring and middle fingers. The sharp metal cut in the pockets of her flesh. She kicked him harder, battered him with her sheathe, clawed at him, but no matter he cringed or cowered, he didn't let go of her.

Blake realized that she had claws before she realized that others didn't. Her Faunus features were more limited than some others, and she was fortunate enough that most of them never got in the way of her everyday life. She never had trouble walking or eating, no migraines or sleeping issues either. Her Faunus characteristics were mostly passive, but the one she considered an active benefit were those claws kept retracted within her fingers. She always thought they were symbolic in a way; the same hand that she used to connect with others could just as easily slice them apart. They would remain out of sight until they were ready to attack, perfectly invisible yet enormously deadly. When they removed her other traits, she asked to keep her claws. She couldn't imagine life without them, and Adam knew it. He knew the insult. She instinctively closed her eyes and braced herself.

He showed only a hint of remorse when he pressed the blade deeper to slice through her fingers.

Only the sword didn't manage to cut even a centimeter before Blake suddenly flew backward to the other side of the street, forcefully pulled out of Adam's grasp. He almost fell over from the force and looked down at his empty hand in surprise. Blake herself didn't even realize what had happened. She only felt something pushing her, gliding her far away from him and bringing her to a sudden stop away from danger. When she opened her eyes, she still didn't realize what was happening. She only saw Adam's confused face twenty feet away from her—oh, and the black, rotating glyph directly underneath her.

Adam heard something rushing to his right, but before he could turn to see what it was, a massive wall of ice collided with him. He went soaring down the street, tumbling into other parked cars on the side of the road. Gambol Shroud flew out of his hand and up into the air. Blake's eyes traced its path as it arced up into the sky and slowly back to the ground, directly into the waiting, pale hand of a young woman as she skated to a stop in the middle of the pavement. She glided delicately across the ground, and even with her brutal methods, she had a certain level of grace as she caught the sword that was unbecoming of such violent circumstances. Blake didn't really pay much mind to that. Instead, she thought back to their encounter near Ruby's house, and how she had also managed to save Ruby's life without a second to spare, shooting out of nowhere like a guardian angel. Honestly, it made Blake kind of furious. Was that bitch practicing her timing?

Weiss noticed Blake's bitter glare, but she shrugged it off and glided over to her teammate. She came to a gentle stop in front of Blake, silhouetted perfectly against the baby blue sky. She turned the sword around and held it out in solidarity.

"I think you dropped this," she commented plainly. Blake could have said something nice to her, but she was bleeding from the hip and had just been hit with a car twice. Being nice would have been out of character.

"You could have shown up a little sooner, you know," Blake said, rolling her eyes. She reclaimed her weapon and Weiss helped her up to her feet.

"I came as soon as I got your message. Glyphs can only move so fast. Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Fucking peachy," Blake winced. "But hey, isn't there a Grimm you're supposed to be murdering?"

Weiss maintained a decent level of composure, but that comment made her waver. "There's…been a change of plans. I've been busy evacuating people out of the square instead."

Using her Weiss-translator, Blake quickly realized that all of their plans had gone horribly wrong. The chosen one couldn't fulfill her duties. Ruby was on her own against an invincible monster. In all likelihood, they were all going to die. Their entire mission had been for nothing. Still, there was no time for feeling down about it. Any more drops in that ocean of regret would cause it to overflow. So, Blake just nodded her head understandingly.

"Well…I'm sure we'll figure something out," she said tepidly.

Weiss carefully bowed her head. "Yeah. I hope so." Her guilt was quickly supplanted by the sounds of Adam's groans of pain. The ice wall dissipated, and he slowly pushed himself off the ground, wobbling as he tried to shake free the cobwebs. Weiss narrowed her gaze at him. "In the meantime, it looks like you have some loose ends to tie up."

Adam used his sword as a guide, hoisting himself up on it and focusing on the new threat that emerged. He didn't recognize her face, but he could recognize the white hair and the elitist clothes. Blake had mentioned her enough for his hatred to develop all on its own.

"You…you're the Schnee," he shouted with disdain.

"And he is?" Weiss asked Blake. Blake sighed, almost ashamed to admit the truth.

"That's Adam," she muttered. "My boyfriend."

Weiss glanced back and forth between the two bloody Faunus, taking it all in. "Huh. Always thought he'd be taller."

"Funny," Blake noted. "I always thought he'd never try to murder me. You think you know a guy."

The sheer sight of seeing Blake conversing with the Atlasian sent Adam over the edge. She stumbled forward, unsheathing his weapon and swinging it drunkenly through the air. "I'm…I'm going to slice your head off, you racist…Atlasian cunt…"

Weiss couldn't help but snicker. She had always wondered where Blake got her foul language from. She took a casual step toward Adam unafraid, staring him down from afar. "Listen, Adam, you can think whatever you want about me, but you're not going to hurt anyone. The only person allowed to make Blake's life miserable is me. Got it?"

Adam screamed in rage and charged forward, dashing as fast as he could down the street. Blake stepped forward to move beside Weiss.

"I don't think he got it."

"No kidding."

"Also, can you try to keep him alive?" Blake added quickly. "He's an asshole, but I still don't want him.

Weiss held up Myrtenaster, getting ready for a fight. "I swear, Blake, if I die fighting your ex-boyfriend, I am going to lose my mind."

"Well then," Blake said. She snapped her arm down, straightening out her sword as Adam approached. The shadow of a grin appeared on her face. "I guess you better keep up."

When Adam arrived, they were ready for him. He slashed across them, but Blake vanished in an afterimage and jumped back, while Weiss used a glyph to propel herself up and over Adam's head. She summoned another glyph in midair and bounced off it, directing herself toward Adam's back. She led with her sword, and Adam blocked her attack with his own. Blake came from his other side, and he pushed Weiss off of him to defend against his former lover. But Weiss attacked again, and Blake followed suit, and within seconds, he was bouncing back and forth between them, trying to keep up as they worked simultaneously to break through his defenses.

They had never practiced together as much as they should have. Their training had always descended into bickering and one-upmanship. Maybe talking was always the problem. Now, silent, they worked together perfectly. When Weiss attacked high, Blake went low. When Blake deflected Adam's sword out of the way, Weiss stabbed at his vulnerable flesh. Together, they started working through him.

First, it was a cut to the leg.

Then another to his arm.

Blake landed a kick to his back, and Weiss followed up close behind with a slash to his thigh.

Adam was tough. His Faunus features gave him skin so thick it was closer to a hide. But slowly, surely, the two of them broke him down. Adam threw a punch which Blake caught between her weapons, and Weiss swooped in to stab Adam in the elbow. He would grab at Weiss's face, but Blake would pull him off from behind. One blow after another, they drew his blood and brought him to his knees.

Their final combo struck him out of nowhere. Blake stretched out her grappling hook and pulled the cord around Adam's throat from behind. She arched his back and Weiss charged in. She could have killed him easily, but if Blake wanted him alive, she'd play along. So, instead of cutting out his heart, she spun her sword around to expose her knuckles and delivered a rapid series of punches to his gut. The metal in her hands tenderized the soft fur of his stomach, and even while she was punching away at him, she couldn't help but think about what absolutely awful taste in romantic partners Blake had. She gave one final uppercut to Adam's chin, and Blake followed that with a knee to his spine. They took turns with their blows. Weiss punched him in the face. Blake stomped on the back of his leg. Weiss jammed his chest with the hilt of her sword. Blake elbowed him in the side of the head. Each blow wore him down more and more until he was on his hands and knees, gasping for breath with his face swollen up. Weiss pulled back her fist, but before she finished him off, she checked one final time with Blake to see if it was okay. It was her boyfriend, after all. She was just a Schnee. She had no business in any of this.

Blake only cast her a simple glance. It was enough for Weiss to go forward with it.

It was also enough time for Adam to recover—not much, but just enough to matter. When Weiss threw her fist, Adam ducked the blow, and Weiss's hand accidentally collided with Blake's nose. Blake stumbled off Adam's back, and Adam charged forward, tackling Weiss to the ground. He wrestled her down with his superior strength, trying to get into a position where he could thrust his sword into her. Blake tried to wrangle him off but only succeeded in turning his wild fury onto her. He clobbered her instead, overpowering her. She may have had the upper hand, but the battle had taken its toll on her. She was still too tired to defeat him all on her own. Adam swatted Blake away and tried to shoot his pistol at her, but a spinning glyph appeared between them, reflecting away his shots. Weiss, in desperation, pushed Adam far away with a glyph, giving Blake some breathing room, and for extra cover, she launched a flurry of energy beams down the road. He deflected them away with his sword, but it gave the teammates time to recover and think of something new.

"Catch!" Blake shouted, tossing the end of her grappling hook to the ex-heiress. Weiss nodded and gripped the cord tightly.

"Hang on." She placed a gravity glyph between Blake's feet, and on the assassin's command, Weiss whipped around and slingshot Blake across the street. Blake flew toward Adam with her feet outstretched as if to kick him in the face, but when he expected her to strike and blocked, Blake slammed her feet into the pavement and came to a sudden stop. She pulled on the cord, and from behind her, Weiss was yanked forward, pulled along the cord like being flung from a rubber band. Weiss swooped in at a sharp angle to Adam's left, catching him by surprise and delivering a robotic knee right to his face.

His weapon flew out of his hand, and Blake made a mad dash toward it. She rolled through it and picked it up before Adam could reach it, looking around her surroundings for a place to dispose of it. They were surrounded by buildings on all sides. No good ideas came to mind. She could have attacked Adam with it, but her conscience still prevented her from ending his life, no matter how else she felt about him. Then, it hit her. If there was nowhere else to put the weapon, she would have to make one of her own.

"Weiss! Heads up!"

Blake suddenly threw Adam's sword as high into the air as she could, and Weiss responded with lightning-fast wit. She plunged Myrtenaster into the pavement below, and from its tip, a large pillar of ice erupted from the earth. It spiraled into the sky, swallowing the sword whole. Adam looked up and yelled out in anger as his sword vanished into the opaque ice.

"No!" He gritted his teeth and turned toward Weiss a few feet away from him. True to his namesake, he bowed his head low to the ground and made a beeline toward her. She had taken his primary weapon away, but he wasn't defenseless. Weiss held up her sword to block him, but leading with his broken horns, he charged straight through her. The blow from his head into her chest sent her flying straight to the ground.

"Weiss!" Blake cried. Adam turned his fury to her, snarling and spitting blood. He pushed himself off on all fours, aiming straight for her fearful gaze. She aimed for his head. His stupid, beautiful head. His face was such an easy target. She could probably hit it no problem.

Of course, she didn't fire. She couldn't. Adam headbutted her, dead center in her skull, and Blake toppled over. She collapsed against the hot pavement, blinded by the morning sun.

"Stay down."

It was a warning, but naturally, she didn't listen. Blake tried to stand back up, but Adam kicked her down. She reached for her sword, but he gingerly placed his foot on it and kicked it long out of her reach. They were each vastly more tired and injured, and they had gotten closer to the city, but in the end, they were exactly where they were five minutes earlier. Blake knew where that left her. Weiss was still down from Adam's charge. She wouldn't have any more Huntresses flying in to make the save. She needed a new strategy. Quickly.

She had one idea.

"I really wanted to avoid killing you."

He kicked her down again.

"I hoped you would change your mind."

He kicked her again—and when he wasn't looking, she reached down and pulled her heated knife out from the back of her boot.

"But you would never listen to me." Adam scoffed. "You sold me out to work with her? A fucking Schnee? Seriously?" He grabbed the back of her hair and pulled her up. "If only you ever learned to just shut the fuck up—"

There, right at that moment, he was distracted. He wouldn't see it coming, and frankly, she couldn't even bear to look. Adam pulled her up, but Blake suddenly clamored up to her knees as fast she could—and plunged her knife directly into Adam's groin.

He froze for one moment. All of time did. He stared at her hand with wide, disbelieving eyes, not even really reacting to his wound. Blake buried her fingers against his groin, gripping the knife so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Adam didn't seem to feel any pain until Blake twisted the blade further—and then he felt it. A lot.

Adam shrieked in agony, stumbling back into the van. He quickly lost his footing, tripping and falling onto his back. The knife remained inside of him, but he couldn't even pull it out. His hands just hovered over his crotch, trembling as the blood started to pool in his trousers. The fabric was dyed the same color as his fur, and his cruel insults broke down into poor, high-pitched whimpers. Blake collapsed and caught her breath, crawling over to the van's other tire and leaning against it. She was still too tired to move, and he was in too much pain to retaliate. Blake instead focused on the last of the civilians fleeing the area, the distant sounds of sirens undoubtedly heading toward the Atlasian Embassy, or maybe the battle between Neo and Mrs. Glass, or Weiss lying on the floor just over yonder. She hoped they had managed not to die, though her concerns for them were short-lived. No, she had tried to avoid it, but she couldn't. She had to focus on the obvious.

She totally just stabbed her boyfriend in the dick.

"Why…" he whispered, halfway between a groan and a sob. "Why would you…"

"Hey, you always liked fighting dirty," Blake shrugged. "Like this…this is right out of your playbook, isn't it?"

"You fucking bitch…" Adam whimpered. "You fucking bitch."

"Oh, come on," Blake noted. "It's still attached. I'm sure it'll heal in no time."

Blake gasped in pain, clutching the stab wound on her hip. She tried to relax and breathe slowly. It was funny in a way. Almost all of the anger she had toward Adam was gone. There was still bitterness there. Disappointment. And of course: regret. But she figured that she was done hurting him. They had done enough damage to each other. Now, she just wanted to sit there next to him, taking in what may have been the last few moments they would ever spend together. She was sure he didn't feel the same way. He would never feel any love toward her again. He would likely spend the rest of his days in a cell somewhere, thinking of various ways to get revenge on her. She hoped that wherever he ended up, he would be treated better than he had been elsewhere. Ironically, despite just inflicting the worst pain on him she could imagine, she didn't want him to suffer anymore.

Then again, suffering was just a part of who they were.

Weiss recovered and made her way over to the van, holding her chest with her one good arm. "So…is it done?"

"Yeah," Blake moaned. "I think so."

Adam groaned loudly, kicking the air like a child. "I'll kill both of you. I swear…"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Yeah, shut it, you genocidal maniac. That's what you get for hurting my friend."

Blake squinted at her. Enough of her animosity had drained away that she could afford to smile fully again. "Friend?" she asked cheekily. "I'm sorry…when the hell did we upgrade to being friends?"

"You're right," Weiss acknowledged, crossing her arms. "I meant to say that we are super besties, as Ruby would call it. Better?"

Blake rested her head back against the tire, sighing contently. "Sure, bitch. Whatever you say."

Their reprieve from the fight would be a brief one. Having its silence gone unnoticed, the screams from the Grimm resumed in the distance. The horizon, mostly hidden behind skyscrapers, lit up with hazy red light. Weiss and Blake looked at each other dejectedly. Whatever Ruby was doing over there, it sure didn't sound like it was going well.