WARNING: Chapter contains fight scenes, plus a fanfic author's attempt at creating original Grimm. Things will get weird.

Time was an illusion. Blake couldn't tell whether they had been down here for an hour, a day, a month, or a thousand years. She still retained faint memories of a life on the surface world, and a fiery orb known as 'the sun', but was starting to question if they had ever existed. Nothing seemed real anymore except for dark tunnels and crumbling buildings, copy-pasted over and over like the set of a low-budget movie. The rest of the team moved silently along, her companions in this green-tinted purgatory. She had these stupid night-vision goggles to thank for the weird coloration. Of course her cat eyes could see just fine in the dark, but it would've been suspicious for a human girl to have natural night vision...so here she was, sporting four eyes to go with her four ears, and feeling distinctly silly.

Something growled off to the side. A dark shape on two legs scuttled out from a crack in the wall, razor-sharp teeth snapping at thin air. The five of them regarded the bloodthirsty eldritch abomination with total indifference. "Another Creep. Great." Sable said in a bored tone. "Blake, it's your turn."

"Right..." Blake wearily unsheathed Gambol Shroud. Her katana cleaved through flesh and bone, ending the Grimm's miserable existence. Probably for the best. Being a Creep must be really sad, she thought dully—being a soulless creature of destruction sounded bad enough, but the poor things didn't even have arms.

Yang yawned. "Geez. If this place is just going to throw Grimm at us, might as well make them interesting ones."

"Stop talking before you jinx us, Yang." From the front of the party, Qrow looked back over his shoulder at them. "Here's a life lesson. When you last as long as I have, you learn to appreciate boring. Good Huntsmen spend lots of time planning, observing, waiting for the payoff—sometimes there isn't one, but that's life. It's not always bam-bam-bam like you see on TV. If your missions are exciting all the time, well, something's gone horribly wrong."

Jaune nodded in agreement. "Yeah! Come on, Yang, look on the bright side. I mean, sure, we haven't found the White Fang base, and this place is super depressing, but, um..." he scratched his head, trying to think of a silver lining. "...we're all still alive? Okay, forget that." Undeterred, Jaune produced a foil-wrapped packet and waved it in their faces. "Hey, you know what might make us feel better? Some food! Don't know about you guys, but I'm hungry." He ripped the field ration open, dug out an unidentified morsel of mystery meat, and popped it into his mouth. "Yum."

Yang wrinkled her nose. "No, I'll just starve, thanks. If I have to eat that shit it'll probably bring down a Wyvern on us, or something."

"Dunno what you're talking about." Jaune shrugged. "This stuff's actually pretty good, look, they've even got dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets!"

"What the hell does that matter, Jaune?" Sable snapped. "How does cutting your processed meat slurry into different shapes make it any better?"

"It just does, okay?" Jaune said with his mouth full. "It's—HRK!" In his haste, a nugget went down the wrong hatch. Yang pounded him on the back, and he hacked up a slimy lump of homogeneous flesh. Not for the first time, Sable looked immensely disappointed in his partner. "Sweet Brothers, chew before you talk!" he scolded. "I don't want to have to tell Ozpin my idiot partner was killed by a piece of chicken."

Jaune coughed a few more times. "Right...sorry. But I'm telling you, food just tastes better when it's shaped like extinct prehistoric lizards. That's a fact!"

"Umm..." Blake began. "Jaune, you do realize dinosaurs are fictional, right?"

Jaune's face turned pale. "Wait, what?" he stammered. "Didn't they live millions of years ago, until a meteor hit Remnant and wiped them out? It says so on every box of Pumpkin Pete's Dino Buddies! Pumpkin Pete wouldn't lie to me, right? Right?"

Sable frowned. "Wasn't that from a movie?"

Yang snapped her fingers. "Yeah, Vytallic Park! That's the one." The book had come first, and was better (in Blake's opinion), but she kept the thought to herself. "Sorry, dude. Dinosaurs are as fake as the Tooth Fairy. "

"The Tooth Fairy?"

"Say sike right now..."

"I'm not sure Remnant has even existed for millions of years." Blake said. For everyone's sake, she was going to assume Jaune's Tooth Fairy comment had been a joke.

Sable gave her a sharp look. "Really, Blake? Don't tell me you're one of those Young Remnant creationists. I thought you were the smart one on the team!"

"Well, the archeological record only goes back ten thousand years—" Blake argued.

"There are explanations for that!" her team leader fired back. "A lot of places are too Grimm-infested to dig, and the Great War destroyed a lot of stuff. It doesn't prove that that the Brothers Gods pulled this world out of their rear ends! Or any of those other ridiculous conspiracy theories!"

"I'm not saying it does, just that we should keep an open mind. I mean, there's a lot of ridiculous stuff about the world, when you think about it." Arguably, she was one herself. The origins of the faunus were a mystery with many myths and few hard answers. At the very least, she refused to believe the more...lewd explanations for their existence. The idea of her distant ancestor screwing a cat was disturbing, not to mention biologically impossible. "So maybe you shouldn't be so quick to judge?" she added pointedly.

"Sure." Sable scoffed. If he felt any shame over his close-minded ways, he didn't show it. No more than she'd expected, really, but it still left her feeling oddly dejected. "You keep your mind open. You start just asking questions. Then one thing leads to another and you end up believing in nonsense like the Infinite Man and the Maidens and silver-eyed warriors."

"Um, Ruby has silver eyes." Jaune pointed out.

"Yes, but that's not what the fairy tale's about." Sable said dismissively. "It goes on and on about how special they are and how they can kill Grimm with one look—I'll bet you anything the person who wrote it had silver eyes themselves—"

Blake swore she saw Qrow smirking at that, but the moment passed quickly. The Huntsman motioned for quiet. "Pipe down, kids. I think Zwei smells something up ahead." The infernal little beast crawled out from his bag, sniffing intently. Blake narrowed her eyes. So help her, if it went after her bow one more time, they would be having dog nuggets for dinner. But with nary a look back, it headed further up the tunnel. Ahead, the inhabitants of Mountain Glenn had excavated a subway station into a tall, broad cavern, housing even more ruined buildings. Zwei entered the abandoned village and sat down. The rest of them followed behind on tiptoes, scarcely daring to breathe. The dog was staring at a large metal door, ears flat and hackles raised; Qrow pressed his ear against it (the door, not the dog). "Hm. Quiet. You kids hear anything?" he whispered with a knowing wink at Blake. The faunus strained her ears (all four), but there was nothing but dead silence. She shook her head no.

Qrow nodded. "Okay. I'm going to open the door now. Brace yourselves." He put a hand on the worn-down handle. "Three...two...one." He yanked the door open, long-unused hinges groaning. Team SJBY rushed into the building, weapons drawn, to see...an empty hallway. How anticlimactic. The hall was lined on both sides with darkened doorways, which they peered into suspiciously, but not even a mouse stirred within. There was a strong scent of decay in the air. At the end of the hall was a staircase leading to the second floor, with a skeleton sprawled at the bottom...a skeleton?!

Blake jumped six feet back on sheer instinct. Jaune screamed in terror, making her cat ears hurt; he fell backwards on his butt, dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets scattering on the ground. Sable clapped a hand over his mouth, blue eyes wide. "Holy shit!" Yang shouted. "What is this?!"

Qrow shrugged as he came up behind them. "A skeleton, what else? Mountain Glenn's the largest mass grave on Remnant, you know. Odds are we'd bump into a stiff or two." So it was. Two arms, two legs, a spine, a rib cage and a skull...a skull with two extra holes on top. It had been a faunus with animal ears, Blake realized with a shiver, someone like her. Zwei circled the late faunus, snarling, and began chewing on its foot with an unpleasant grinding noise. Disgusting. Qrow sighed. "Well, guess it wasn't the Fang he smelled. If they were really here, Screams McGee would've woken them all." He jabbed his thumb at Jaune, who was still on the ground making faint retching sounds. Blake put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. If you need to throw up, just do it, no one's going to judge. I think everyone freaks out when they see a dead body, at first."

Jaune slowly got back up. "I can hold it. Puking now...it'd be sort of disrespectful to the dead, wouldn't it?" Fair enough. Blake wasn't very superstitious, but vomiting on someone's grave probably entailed nothing good. "Wait, so have you seen a lot of dead bodies before?" She pretended not to hear his question.

"Wow. This got real dark all of a sudden." Yang said shakily. "Damn near scared us right out of our skins, eh? Eh?" she added with forced cheer.

"No. Just no." Sable was glaring at a random spot on the floor, his usual sullen expression back in place. He seemed slightly ashamed at his brief moment of weakness. "Let's leave, Qrow, this was a waste of time—"

"Give me a minute, there's something interesting here." Qrow stepped over the skeleton, went up a few steps, and ran his hand over the wall. "You see this? Looks like someone left a message behind." Sure enough, there were faint marks on the wall, where some doomed soul had carved at it with a knife or a sharp rock. "No one really knows what happened in Mountain Glenn, after the tunnels were sealed. If we can find even a bit..." Qrow turned on his Scroll's flashlight. "They have sealed the Vale tunnel." he began reading. The air seemed to chill as the dead person's words echoed in the room. "East Line and central station overrun. We have barricaded the west side but cannot hold them long. The ground shakes. Growls in the deep." Blake felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. For a moment she really thought she heard a faint growl, one that didn't sound like Zwei, but then it was gone. "We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They are coming. Gods." Qrow unscrewed the top of his flask, and ceremoniously poured a measure of liquor out onto the ground. "Wait, there's more. 'Hey, if you're from Vale and you're reading this you can suck my...'" he abruptly stopped. "Okay, I know he was dying, but that's just rude."

Blake's general unease only grew. "Does anyone else..." she started, without much idea of how to finish. She was spared the need to when Zwei started barking madly. The ceiling rumbled above them; Qrow leapt back off the stairs, a second before a chunk of concrete dropped where he'd been standing. What looked like a cloud of black smoke shot down through the hole, and descended on the faunus skeleton. Its empty eye sockets began glowing with unnatural light. Jaune screamed again, even louder than before. Not to be outdone, the pseudo-zombie unhinged its jaw and let out an eerie, high-pitched wail. With surprising speed, it lurched upright and lunged at the ones who'd disturbed its tomb—

"Die! Die again!" Sable's sword swept its head from its shoulders. The disembodied skull rolled on the floor, still shrieking like an overactive alarm clock, before Yang fired a round from her gauntlet and blasted it apart. "Gods, shut up! You're annoying!" she bellowed.

To their dismay, answering wails arose from seemingly every direction. The ceiling above their heads shook under the stomping of many feet. "Out! Get out!" Qrow commanded. As she raced down the hall, Blake chanced a look back. More skeletons were running down the stairs, all of them wreathed in that strange dark smoke. They fled the haunted house, and with an ominous rattling of bones, the dead of Mountain Glenn followed after.

Meanwhile, a pack of Ursa (or Ursas, Ursai, Ursae...whatever the plural was) prowled through the tunnels, blissfully ignorant of the six grayed-out figures beside them. "Okay, Ren, release." Ruby ordered once they were gone. "Wow, your Semblance is really coming in handy today."

"Yeah, it sure is." Nora grumbled. "For some reason, I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of broken bones." Everyone shrugged off her latest bizarre comment, as one did with Nora. Professor Port, her fellow violence enthusiast, walked behind the group, greatly subdued. He might have been sleepwalking, though it was hard to tell seeing as his eyes were always closed.

"Give yourself some credit, Ruby. You were the one who thought of using it." Ren said modestly.

Pyrrha gave the younger girl a friendly pat on the back. "Yes, you're doing great! Honestly, this has gone so much smoother than I thought it would, considering, well...us."

"To be fair, Team SJBY's the one that tends to get us into trouble, and they're off on their own this time." Weiss pointed out. She stopped in her tracks as the implications sank in. "...I have a bad feeling about this."

"Psh, they've got Uncle Qrow with them." Ruby said confidently. "They'll be fine!"

Qrow and his charges burst back out into the open, only to find even more skeletons flooding out of every building in the makeshift village and blocking their exit routes. Sighing, he flicked the switch in Harbinger's hilt to unfold it into its full scythe form. A saying about frying pans and fires came to mind. Honestly, he wasn't sure how much was his fault—even for his Semblance, spontaneously spawning hundreds of possessed skeletons seemed a bit much—but that was the thing about Misfortune, you could never be sure.

This was turning out to be one hell of a first mission, though, that was for sure. "What the fuck is happening?!" Jaune Arc shrieked. "Why did this turn into a zombie apocalypse?" A bag of bones charged at him, arms flailing; the blond sidestepped and hacked off its right arm, then its left. The disarmed skeleton resorted to headbutting his shield, and got its legs chopped off for its trouble. Even then it kept trying to bite his ankles, until the sharp point of the shield came down on its skull, finally re-killing it. "I'm sorry! Rest in peace! Rest in peace!"

"Not zombies! Geists!" Qrow called out. "Possession-type Grimm. They live in the head, so destroy that or they'll put themselves back together!" Harbinger sliced through the air, reaping a (figuratively) bloody toll. It would've looked cool on the cover of a heavy metal album, he thought. One of the skeletons had been a bit taller than the rest, and its severed head rolled on the ground, hissing and snapping; Zwei silenced it with a powerful bite. Good boy. "They don't normally possess bones, but it happens. Was more common back in the War." The unburied corpses lying on the battlefield, plus the residue of the fear and pain they'd felt in their final moments, were practically catnip for Grimm. Probably the same could be said of Mountain Glenn.

"Lucky us, huh?" Yang said sarcastically. She uppercutted a Geist's head into oblivion, and the body collapsed with a shrill death scream. "Geez, these bastards don't stop!" Skeletons kept pouring out like water from a broken faucet, replacing the ones they killed and then some. Good gods, had the entire population decided to die in this village?

"We need to break out!" Sable shouted. "Blake, Combination Attack Eleven!"

Blake gave him a blank look. "What? How is me running away really fast going to help?"

"No! Not that one, you idiot! The one with the massive explosion!"

"Most of your attack ideas are massive explosions!"

"Use the codename!" Yang roared in frustration.

"Ugh! Fiery Night!" A large black snowflake formed mid-air, above the reach of the Grimm, which Blake and Sable leapt onto. A second Blake appeared in a puff of smoke; Sable emptied a full vial of Burn Dust over the clone, and it started to glow—a dull red at first, rapidly turning to brilliant yellow (it all looked green through the goggles, but whatever). The grayscale duo hopped off, and the glyph pulsed, launching their improvised suicide bomber. It sailed overhead, trailing particles of excess Dust, and landed in the midst of the horde at the far end of the village.

KABOOM.

A miniature sun briefly lit up the cavern. The skeletons at the center of the blast were reduced to giblets; those further out were merely dismembered by the shock wave. Burning pieces of bone shot out in all directions. Half of someone's pelvis bounced off the top of Jaune's head. "Ow!"

"Go, go, go!" The team charged through the newly formed gap, cutting down the dazed survivors in their way. Not a bad move, Qrow had to admit, though the name could use some work. Fiery Night, really? Then again, Blake's secrecy mooted the better names he had in mind (Cat-astrophe? Exploding Kittens?). Undaunted by their comrades' explosive demise, the Geists chased after them, out of the village and into the narrower tunnel ahead. Apparently, they were dead set on adding five more skeletons (six if Zwei counted) to their collection. "Still not great. We need to get some distance!" Qrow shouted. He turned to Sable. "Hey, you think your summons could hold them off for a bit?"

The Schnee boy's pale features took on a noticeable blush. "Um..."

"You know what I'm talking about, right?" Qrow pressed him. "That thing Winter does where a bunch of spooky white Grimm show up?"

"Seriously? You never told us you could do that!" Yang punched her team leader on the arm. "What, were you waiting for some super dramatic moment to bust it out?"

"I wasn't! You really think I'd hold back on you like that?" Sable sounded genuinely offended at the suggestion. "I mean, it's something my Semblance can theoretically do, but I, uh...it's a work in progress! I think I'm mostly there. Like, eighty percent there. But this isn't really a good environment to—"

Qrow grunted. "Right. That's a lot of words just to say you can't."

"SHUT UP!" It was quite remarkable how someone with a snowflake motif could have no chill whatsoever. "Glyphs are complicated, okay? It takes years to figure out all the aspects, and I'm—you can't—hey, I don't see your Semblance helping out at all!"

Oof, point to the kid. Qrow, of all people, was not in a position to mock anyone for having a poor grasp on their Semblance. He threw up his hands. "Forget it! Keep running!" They'd simply have to lose this bunch the old-fashioned way.

"Hold on, I think there's light up ahead." Ren pulled his goggles off his eyes. "Yeah, definitely." The glow shining around the next curve was very faint, but in the pitch-black tunnel it might as well have been a lighthouse. They carefully crept around the bend, taking cover behind a conveniently-placed stack of crates. Light streamed from a small opening at the end of the tunnel. In front of it, they saw the silhouettes of a dusty ticket booth, a few rusty turnstiles...and more relevantly, two figures wearing white masks. "Whoa." Ruby whispered. "Any idea where we are?"

Weiss squinted at their map. "We should be near the entrance to Glenn Central Station, the coordinates on my Scroll line up...oh, and that sign says so." She helpfully pointed to a large pair of arrows painted on the wall; 'East Line' and 'Glenn Central' pointed backwards and forwards, respectively. "It does seem like the obvious spot to put a large secret base, come to think."

Port roused from his stupor. "Hm. Maybe we should have checked this place first? Well, no use crying over spilled milk, I say." He tugged his mustache philosophically. "So, Miss Rose. As our leader, what do you propose to do?"

Ruby chewed her lip in thought. "I say we take out those guards." Nora fist-pumped, but the other students seemed skeptical. "Look, we're going to have to get past them anyways to check out the base. If we wait for backup, that gives them more time to figure out what's up. And, well, the other team can be a bit...not-stealthy." That got her a few nods of agreement. "Plus Weiss's bet was about who'd find the base first, and technically we don't know it's through that hole—"

"Miss Rose." Port said sternly. "Are you really proposing a high-risk plan that could endanger the entire mission, just to win some money?" Ruby looked away in shame. "Because, let me tell you, I am entirely for it. So long as your favorite professor gets a cut."

"Eh..." Ruby sweatdropped, wondering how much of a bribe to offer their teacher. Port winked. "That's a joke, dear, a joke. Flew right by you." He gleefully rubbed his hands together. "Knock 'em dead, children."

Jaune had no idea where they were, whether it was day or night, or how long and far they had run. All he could tell was that they were coming up on another ramshackle village, this one thankfully devoid of the living dead. The (for lack of a better description) skeleton noises had faded away ten minutes ago (or maybe five, or thirty, or an hour—time was slippery down here). "Think we lost them?" he asked, slowing to a jog. Despite their indeterminate-but-presumably-lengthy run, he didn't feel all that tired. Quite a difference from the first time he'd tried fleeing from a massive number of Grimm. Aura, he thought for approximately the billionth time, really was something.

Qrow shook his head. "Keep moving. For all we know, there's more nasty surprises in these buildings—" A loud thump suddenly reverberated through the cavern, not from the buildings, but from the tunnel wall itself, on the other side of the village. Another thump, and the wall cracked from top to bottom, sending loose stones raining down. The Huntsman sighed, tugging on a lock of messy black hair. "Oh, good grief."

"Come on! Give us a break!" Sable raged. To Jaune's shock, a giant skeletal fist, almost as wide as he was tall, punched through the wall. He watched in sick fascination as the hand reached out, revealing itself to be attached to a proportionally long arm. Two forearm bones came into view, then an elbow, then the upper arm bone—the humerus, he remembered; he'd always found that vaguely amusing, though right now he felt more like wetting his pants. "What? How?" he whimpered. This turn of events seemed downright implausible, as if the universe was bending the rules of reality solely to screw with them. "Like, was there a giant living in Mountain Glenn? And why is it in the wall? It doesn't make any sense!"

"Oh, yes, that'll show him." Sable said, slightly hysterically. He pointed accusingly at the emerging skeleton. "You're impossible! Go away!" A leg smashed through the wall some distance below the arm. "Oh, look, it didn't work!" Fibula, tibia, patella, femur...that's the longest bone in the body. Jaune mouthed irrelevant skeleton facts, trying valiantly to keep his cool. It was sort of impressive, actually, how much he'd retained from those elementary school biology classes.

"Gashadokuro..." Qrow said softly.

"The shadow-what?!" Yang shouted.

"An old Mistralian legend. The starving skeleton." Qrow explained. "The stronger a Geist gets, the more matter it can possess, until it mashes a bunch of bones together to make that thing. Even I've never seen one before—it must've detected the other Geists waking up somehow—"

Yang laughed bitterly. "Wow! Really hitting the jackpot today, aren't we?" Qrow looked away from her, tugging at the cross-shaped pendant around his neck. The wall fully gave way to reveal the Gashadokuro in all its horrid glory. It must've been close to sixty feet tall, towering over the surrounding buildings; the top of its skull nearly scraped the roof. A mouthful of jagged yellow teeth leered down at them. Above, two points of light glowed in its gaping sockets. "Gods, it's ugly." Yang muttered.

"Um, we should probably do something!" Blake said urgently. The giant skeleton slowly advanced on them, each footfall setting off a miniature earthquake. Its death rictus promised bad times ahead should it get its oversized hands on them. "We could double back, find a side tunnel to go down—"

"Fuck that! We're Huntsmen!" Defiantly, Sable leveled his sword at the colossal Grimm. It clacked its teeth in reply, releasing a loud hiss that sounded almost like laughter. "Let's kill this thing!"

Qrow raised an eyebrow. "Think you can?"

"Watch us." Sable growled. "Okay, team! I know it looks all enormous and terrifying, but it's still four on one. Remember the Death Stalker from initiation?"

"That looks nothing like a Death Stalker!" Yang objected.

Sable waved off her complaint. "Same principle! Spread out and go for the weak spots, it can't stop all of us! In other words..." he sighed. "...break its legs. I can't believe I said that."

"Oh, Nora's gonna be pissed." Yang chuckled. The Gashadokuro howled a ghostly challenge in answer to their charge. Surprisingly loud, considering the thing had no vocal cords; Jaune decided not to overthink it. Sable fired a blast of well, fire, at its kneecap. With much more agility than he would have expected from something with no muscles or nerves, the giant Grimm took a running jump, passed over the fireball, and hurtled towards them at alarming speed. Instinctively, Jaune raised his shield arm. "Incoming!" Blake rolled aside right before a massive heel stomped down where she'd been. Its other leg swept out with the grace of a breakdancer. The top of its foot crashed into Yang and sent the team powerhouse flying away like a blonde soccer ball. "Damn it!" Sable cursed. "We need to—AAH!" A bony hand reached down and, almost contemptuously, slapped him into the distance.

Jaune himself could barely react before something squeezed his torso in an iron grip, lifting him into the air. Looking down, he saw four fingers (phalanges, he corrected himself), each the size of a human arm, wrapped around him. His ribs creaked under the strain, with only Aura stopping his innards from exploding out of his mouth like toothpaste from a tube. Not good! Luckily, his left arm was still free, thanks to its upraised position. Jaune reluctantly let his shield drop, and transferred the sword half of Crocea Mors into his off hand. Reaching across his body, he landed a blow on the joint where the index finger connected to the hand. Metal bit into bone with a satisfying crunch, and the index finger fell limply to the ground. The pressure on him lessened immediately, but he didn't get a chance to amputate any more body parts. Shrieking in anger, the Gashadokuro lifted Jaune high over its head, then rapidly brought him down. As the roof of a building approached his face, he had only one coherent thought: oh, this is gonna suck.

Pain. Lots of pain. Blackness...then he opened his eyes again. He was lying on a dusty concrete floor. He saw a series of Jaune-shaped holes leading from the roof, through every floor of the building, down to where he'd ended up. Sitting up, he found to his amazement that nothing seemed broken. Aura, he thought for the billionth-and-first time, absentmindedly wiping a trickle of blood from his nose, really was something! In the dark, he missed seeing the strange white glow that was fading from his body.

"You all right, Jaune?" Qrow called from outside. "Talk to me!"

"Yeah, peachy!" he called back. "No idea how! I, uh, I guess just have a lot of Aura?"

Two White Fang grunts stood in front of the east entrance to their base, bored out of their minds. "Psst, smell any humans?" one of them asked for the 27th time that hour. A fluffy black-and-white tail sprouted from his bottom, giving off a strong odor of rotten eggs. Needless to say, there was an obvious reason his comrades had given him the 'important task' of guard duty.

"All I smell is you." his partner moaned. A black dog nose stuck out from under her mask, incessantly dripping snot. Pairing a bloodhound faunus with a skunk was a special kind of sadism, and she silently wished a thousand painful deaths upon Roman Torchwick and his ice cream midget. She was out here thanks to a joke about the human thief's hairstyle, which had unfortunately gotten back to him. It was still a mystery how that mute bitch had ratted her out.

"Phooey." the skunk guard sulked. "Anyways...I spy, with my little eye, something gray—" A metallic clang from up ahead interrupted his tiresome game. "Hey, you hear that? Maybe it's a Huntsman!" He skipped off to investigate. "Ooh, I'll get so many White Fang Points for this!"

"Stay in sight!" The dog faunus barked. For both their sakes, she really hoped it wasn't. That night in the industrial district still gave her nightmares. No Grimm or Atlesian robot had filled her with as much fear and helplessness as those monsters, and they were only students! It didn't help when Torchwick had bailed on them in the giant robot—sorry, heroically distracted the bloodthirsty faunus killers to cover their escape, or so went the official narrative. Utter bull, but the new meat like Stinky over there lapped it right up. They were young and dumb and had yet to learn that humans were never your friends. Honestly, she missed how things had used to be in the Fang. Adam had been a respectable anti-human activist back in the day, none of this ends-justifies-the-means nonsense about helping some humans so they could kill more humans in the long run. Also, White Fang Points, what the hell? Damn kids and their need for participation trophies. She sighed and drew in a deep breath of skunk-free air. Wait, why did she smell roses—bonk!

With his back to the entrance, the skunk faunus stared hopefully at a pile of faintly clanking scrap metal, as if someone might be hidden under it. "Come out, come out, wherever you are—" He never noticed when the wooden crate next to him suddenly sprouted a spear. The next moment, Ruby and Pyrrha stood over their fallen foes, beckoning the rest of the group out of hiding. The six of them jumped the turnstiles, with apologies to the long-defunct Mountain Glenn MTA. Beyond was a small antechamber overlooking the main station, with a broken escalator leading down. "Wow." Ruby said softly. Glenn Central sprawled out below them, illuminated by floodlights. The place was huge, long and wide enough to contain a city block or two, and so high they could barely make out the ceiling. A set of train tracks snaked between buildings. Masked men and women milled about them like ants, and an actual train, painted all in black, sat atop. It stretched across the station and vanished into a smaller tunnel. As they watched, four Atlesian Paladins lined up in orderly fashion, and loaded themselves into a boxcar one by one.

"More of those?" Weiss said in consternation.

"Ooh, more of those." Nora said in excitement. A person walked out from behind the caboose, shouting orders. His signature hat was missing, but the orange hair, white coat, and cane were a dead giveaway. "Torchwick." Pyrrha whispered. "So he survived last time..."

"Well, duh." Nora rolled her eyes. "They wouldn't kill him off-screen, Pyrrha. If you don't see a body, they're not dead."

"I don't think it works like that." Ruby said with a hint of melancholy.

Port dug a walkie-talkie out of his pack. "Children, as much as I'd love to, we can discuss how to confirm your kills later. We need to alert the others." He put the device to his ear. "Qrow, come in. Over." He quirked a bushy eyebrow as he listened to Qrow's reply. "Ah, bad time? I can call back—say, what just exploded? Over."

"What is happening over there?" Weiss demanded.

"They're having fun without us, that's what." Nora folded her arms, pouting. "Gods, I wish that were me."

"Ow ow ow ow ow!" Yang tumbled across the ground head over heels, finally skidding to a stop at Qrow's feet. Damn bag of bones could kick! Who would've guessed that skeletons never skipped leg day? Before she could get up, Sable landed right on top of her. "Ow. Hey, Icy-Hot, guess it could stop all of us! Got a Plan B?" Zwei trotted up and began happily licking Sable's face; he pushed the dog away with an annoyed groan.

"Need a hand?" Qrow said casually. Her uncle watched the battle, munching on a protein bar.

"No." Sable scrambled back to his feet. "We can still do this! Just have to—" A high-pitched shriek echoed from where the Gashadokuro was. Yang looked over just in time to see Jaune get slam dunked by a giant skeleton. Ooh, that looked like it hurt! Sable winced. "Oh gods. Qrow, go—" Qrow was already in motion, rushing towards the building Jaune had crashed into. "Like I said." Sable continued. "We just have to make some adjustments. This thing's fast, and it hits hard, but it doesn't seem that tough. Those bones must've been rotting here for years. Look, Jaune was able to hurt it!" He pointed at the skeleton's hand, which currently sported only four fingers. A strange glowing symbol formed over the stump, and the detached bone floated back into place. "Not like it's possessing, say, a bunch of metal."

Yang gave him a strange look. "Dude, when have you ever seen a metal Geist?"

"It's a long story—"

"HELLO?! You two done talking?" Blake yelled, irritated. Their teammate was still running back and forth in a serpentine pattern, dodging stomps from the skeleton in a high-stakes game of Whack-a-Mole. "Could use some help here!"

"Working on it! Hang in there!" Sable yelled back. He paced around Yang in a tight circle, muttering furiously under his breath. Behind blue eyes, team_ worked overtime to come up with a plan. "Okay, Yang, set up for Combination Attack Fourteen and—"

"Codename, dammit!"

"Yellowjacket! Happy?!" Yes, yes she was. This was easily one of the more exciting attacks they'd come up with, and she was quite proud of the name she'd given it too. Yang smashed her gauntlets into the ground repeatedly, shattering it into smaller chunks of stone. Sable waved his sword and constructed three black glyphs—one big one, and two smaller ones behind it. The rocks levitated, attracted by the Gravity Dust in the large glyph, and stuck firmly in place. Next, he pressed a vial of Ice Dust into her hand. "Get this to Blake!"

Yang wound her arm back. "Look alive, Blake! One fastball, coming up!" The vial left her hand at velocity that would've put a baseball pitcher to shame. Blake tracked down the line drive and ran in for a barehanded catch. Strike! Or was that 'out'? Whatever, she didn't watch baseball. Yang and Sable scrambled onto the smaller pair of glyphs. "Frostbait!" he ordered, then facepalmed. "Gods, I hate that name!" No, Yang thought, the name was perfectly fine; he just had no appreciation for wordplay.

Blake abruptly dove to the ground, clutching her leg, and proceeded to flop around like a dying fish. Her partner's acting left a lot to be desired, but it did the trick. The foot of stomping came down again, only for Blake to swap with a ice blue clone at the last moment. The skeleton hissed in surprise when its left foot and ankle were encased in ice. The trap wouldn't hold for long—already, cracks were appearing as the Grimm tugged at its leg—but it would have to be enough. "Blitzkrieg! Break its everything!" Sable screamed in her ear. Yang heard the faint sound of a clock ticking, then everything slowed, as if someone had set the world to play at one-quarter speed. Her body glowed under the effect of the time dilation glyph, then double glowed when her own Semblance kicked in. The Gravity glyphs flipped from pull to push. The big one fired off first, followed by Yang's. In front her, dozens of stones and one Zwei homed in on the skeleton like angry wasps—wait, Zwei?!

One second passed. The old rhyme about sticks and stones (well, just stones) breaking bones proved itself true. With its foot pinned, the skeleton twisted awkwardly sideways to protect its spine, sacrificing several ribs and a few chunks of its left arm to the barrage. Zwei curled up and headbutted a particularly large boulder right into the elbow joint, leaving the arm dangling by a thread. Good boy.

Two seconds had passed. At this point, the Gashadokuro noticed Yang making a beeline for its face. Its good arm swiped at her; unfortunately for it, she was currently hopped up on the Semblance equivalent of a bucket of horse steroids. Her first hit punched right through the palm of its hand, and the second broke its wrist. Three seconds had passed. Using Ember Celica's recoil to launch herself further up the arm, Yang landed a flurry of blows between the elbow and shoulder, tearing the entire limb off and sending it spinning away. Ouch. Her own arm bones tingled in sympathy.

The attack had taken her off her original course, but there was no need to worry. Sable rocketed past her, straight at the now unprotected head. Red glyphs sprouted all over the face like pimples. Four seconds had passed. "Die!" He crashed into the skull blade-first, sword jamming itself up the creature's nose hole. "Die!" He squeezed the trigger in the hilt, and the inside of the skeleton's cranium was bathed in fire. It let out a final howl of agony, gouts of flame erupting from both eye sockets, before the explosive glyphs went off with a boom.

Five seconds had passed. Yang's hair faded back to its normal color. She and Sable landed on the ground and admired their work. For a moment the giant corpse remained standing upright, the stump of its neck still burning, then it fell apart at the seams. A tidal wave of skulls and limbs and rib cages washed through the village, making eerie noises as they clattered on the ground. Zwei rolled around amid the bones, chewing on a femur in doggy ecstasy. Blake and Jaune came over to join them, the latter looking surprisingly unscathed save for some scratches on his face. "Oh, you're alive." Sable said to his partner. He leaned on his sword, wiping some sweat from his brow. "Are you all ri—are you still combat ready?"

"I'm fine, thanks for asking." Jaune flashed a thumbs-up. Not long ago he'd freaked out at the sight of one skeleton, but now he regarded an entire pile of them without flinching. "Wow! That's...it's something, all right." Yang wondered how many people had been mixed up into that thing; the question bothered her less than she'd thought it might. Was it bad how fast they were getting desensitized? Eh...that question didn't bother her much either. It was just one of those days. "Thank gods that's over. I never want to see a skeleton again."

"I hate to break it to you, Jaune..." Blake said in a deadpan tone. "...but there's a skeleton inside you right now."

Nobody laughed. "No. Just no. That joke is dead." Yang said bluntly. "Like the skeleton!" she added. In unison, the other three turned their backs and starting walking away. "Screw you guys! That was funny!"

"Hey, cut the chit-chat. I got big news." Qrow interrupted, clutching a walkie-talkie. "Pete just called, Team RRWN's located the base—"

"What?! We lost?" Sable lifted his foot, as if preparing to kick something in frustration, but there was nothing around but bones. He awkwardly put it back down; apparently, he drew the line at desecrating someone's corpse in a temper tantrum. "Damn, if only—" Yang's uncle roughly shoved a hand in his face, cutting the rant short. "Shut it, you. Be thankful someone stuck to the actual mission." said Qrow. "Anyways, the Fang's down in Glenn Central Station. They've got an actual train parked on the old Vale line—don't ask. No clue how they got that in there either. Loads of spanking new Atlas mechs too. Jimmy needs to quit misplacing his toys." Qrow's scowl made his opinion of Atlesian robotics abundantly clear. "Most likely, they're planning to ram it through the barrier and hit Vale." At their shocked looks, he shrugged and took a sip from his flask. "Yeah, I know. Pretty fucked up."

"Gods, they've lost their minds..." Blake looked downright sick, hopefully from moral outrage and not from a relapse of her fish hangover.

"Scum." Sable agreed, literally spitting in disgust. For some reason, Blake looked even sicker. "Qrow, how far are we from them?"

Qrow checked his Scroll and his map. "Pretty close, actually." He looked around the battle-scarred village, then coughed nervously. "Maybe a little too close."

Two very unfortunate developments proceeded to unfold in quick succession. First, pinpricks of light began glowing in the tunnel they'd come from, and a familiar rattling sound grew louder and louder. "Are you serious?!" Jaune yelled. "Why do they want us so bad?" The first horde of skeletons, not quite as lost as they'd hoped, had caught up. The ones in front entered the village, caught sight of their giant counterpart's broken remains, and started making angry skeleton noises.

"I'm starting to think they might not be after us!" Qrow said. With a strong sense of déjà vu, they ran for the exit. "If we can find a place to shelter then maybe—" That was when the second unfortunate thing happened. With no warning, an unmarked door next to the exit tunnel swung open, revealing a cluster of people all wearing featureless white masks. For a beat, the Huntsmen and the White Fang stared at each other, taken aback by the sheer absurdity of the situation. Jaune waved hesitantly at them. "Um...hi! How do you do, fellow faunus?"

"INTRUDERS!" the White Fang member in front bellowed. "Attack—" Four people immediately opened fire, dropping him like a sack of burning, bullet-riddled potatoes. In a flash, Qrow was upon the terrorists like a wolf upon sheep, sending three more sprawling with one swing of Harbinger. Screaming in panic, the survivors fled back into the passageways from whence they'd come, chased by the team, who were chased in turn by the Grimm. "Get them! No witnesses!" Sable shouted.

"Gods damn it!" Qrow cursed. Sighing, he lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth. "Pete, we, uh, might be coming in hot. Over."

"AAAHHH!" Everyone in the secret base stared at the White Fang member who had just run in, screaming his head off. "ZOMBIES! We're gonna die!" Rolling his eyes, Roman Torchwick went to see what had gotten the animal all spooked.

"Hey, you!" What was his name again? It was that one nerd who wore glasses over his mask...aha! "Four Eyes! What the hell?" Roman demanded. "You're supposed to be on guard duty!"

"My name is Perry, not Four Eyes!" the faunus insisted, then went back to freaking out. "Sweet God of Animals! So much bad stuff! Murder cults! Living skeletons! Dead skeletons!"

Roman gave the animal the back of his hand. Perry staggered under the blow, glasses falling to the ground and breaking. He reminded himself to burn that glove afterwards. "Get it together, man! What happened? Start from the beginning!"

"Ah..." Perry rubbed his cheekbone. "Well, I heard some weird noises, out by the west entrance, so ten of us went down the service tunnel to investigate, and...it was horrible..." he seemed about to break down again. Roman raised his hand in warning; the faunus flinched and composed himself. "There was a giant pile of bones, and a bunch of people just standing in the middle of it, I-I don't even know how many they must've killed, and there were more skeletons walking behind them...so I, uh, ran away." he concluded meekly. "D-don't judge me, okay! Fighting them was obviously suicide! If I hadn't run, there wouldn't be anyone to warn you, right? Right? And I mean, I'm a hare faunus, it's kind of what I'm good at—"

Roman slapped Perry again. He didn't blame the guy for trying to survive—far from it—but his ramblings were getting annoying. "Who were these people? What did they look like?" Roman questioned, giving him a little kick for good measure. "Answer me!"

"Well, there was a girl in a bow, a tall girl in black...no wait, maybe that was a guy...a person." Perry frowned. "Two blondes and another guy with a big-ass scythe—"

The color drained from Roman's face. He recognized those descriptions instantly, as much as he wished otherwise. "Fuck me sideways!" Considering precedent, he had no doubt Little Red and her team were lurking around as well. And there was only one male Huntsman he knew of who used a scythe...these assignments just got better and better, didn't they? "Enemies incoming! Not a drill! I repeat, not a drill!" He sprinted down the length of the train, towards the locomotive. "Operation No Brakes is a go! Everyone aboard! You lot, prepare to repel!" He pointed randomly at several groups of White Fang soldiers; they drew their weapons and prepared to buy time with their lives, like the good little lemmings they were. "Come on, let's get this party on the road!"

Neo fell into step beside him, her eyes nervously flashing between brown and pink. She handed him the last important item he needed. Roman ruffled her hair affectionately. "Cheers, Neo. See you on the other side." As he ran, he still took the time to unwrap and savor the ice cream sandwich, trying to etch the taste of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry into his memory. It would be his last for a while. No matter how well or badly things ended up going, he had at least a few weeks of prison food to look forward to.

"Oh, it's all kicking off!" Ruby exclaimed. She didn't bother keeping her voice down, but considering the pandemonium on the station floor, it didn't seem to matter anymore. "Uh...something tells me they're onto us."

Weiss had her head in her hands. "But we were doing so well!" she whimpered. "Damn it, Sable, what did you do?!" In the heat of the moment, no one called her out on her use of a tier-three swear word. It was just that kind of day.

"Never mind that!" Pyrrha shouted, sounding panicked. "What do we do? This wasn't the plan!"

Ruby marched towards the escalator, mouth set in a determined line and Crescent Rose gleaming in her hand. "We stop them, that's what. If we don't, they'll drive that train right into Vale. And if I wanna call myself a Huntress, a hero, there's no way I can l let that happen!"

"Bravo, my dear girl!" Professor Port applauded, then kissed the blade of his axe as if it were a lover. "It's happening, darling, it's happening!" For the first time any of them could remember, the Grimm Studies teacher opened his eyes. The crazed, feral gleam in those brown irises made them all shudder. Faster than they had ever seen him move, Port threw himself down the broken escalator three stairs at a time, laughing all the way. "As I believe you kids say, COWABUNGA IT IS!"

On Remnant, if your tombstone doesn't say 'rest in peace', you are actually drafted into the skeleton war! The Gashadokuro is a Japanese (sorry, Mistralian) legend, a giant skeleton made from the amalgamated bones of those who died without proper burial. Tell me that doesn't fit in Mountain Glenn. In the legend they can't be destroyed, which, uh, I kind of ignored here. *whistles* Oh, look, we got more combination attack names! Everyone loves combination attacks, right? See the Comprehensive Guide to Yellow Stripey Things for the difference between a bumblebee and a yellowjacket.

Don't ask me where the dinosaur convo at the beginning came from, I have no idea. Considering Remnant's screwed-up history, I really wonder what the local geologists make of it all.

Side note, the reviews comparing our boi to various other characters have been interesting to see. I will say that there's one particular non-RWBY character Sable was inspired by.