A/N: This story will be the retelling and reinterpretation of Volume 3's finale. It is the sequel to my previous RWBY story, 'The Breach of Vale', but can be read on its own.

I'd also like to preface this by making it clear that I know very little about anything that happens in RWBY after Volume 4. This may make this story undesirable to you, and if that's the case I completely understand, but hope you will nevertheless give it a chance.

Invasion I

Specialist Owen Rockwell

2nd Squad, 1st Platoon, A Company
2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment
15th Infantry Brigade Combat Team
4th Infantry Division

1922 Hours

Owen suppressed a yawn as the monotonous thuds of his boots on the concrete footpath threatened to put his drowsy mind to sleep. He shifted his grip on his M29 LMG (Light Machine Gun) and checked that the safety was still on. A weak breeze was hitting him through the exposed lower part of his helmet. He considered reaching for the switch that would activate the mouth guard, or 'muffler' as it was referred to, but decided against it, as the slight chill was one of the only things keeping him lucid.

In front of him were his squadmate, Martin, and fireteam leader, Sergeant Hitoshi Tsumura. Like him, they were silent, heads swivelling left and right in a detached effort to at least make it look like they were alert and on duty. On his left was Annette, who was sporadically glancing back at Trevor and Grant, a pair of troopers from 1st Platoon's Weapons Squad, as they talked about something he'd been too busy being on autopilot to pay attention to. The HUD (Heads Up Display) in his helmet had a thin blue line around their outlines, making for a quick and sure fire method of identification if the need arose.

Even (or perhaps especially) in these closing hours, downtown Vale felt so alive. Neon lights and luminescent signs flashed everywhere he turned, their catchy phrases and simple shapes designed to attract the outgoing and impressionable. Even through the sound dampeners in his helmet, his ears were filled with thumping music and buzzing voices. There were countless people on the sidewalks, their numbers fluctuating as they flitted in and out of bars, casinos and other establishments. Some were clearly intoxicated, their wobbly steps and spontaneous shouting being a source of amusement for onlookers. Others appeared more drunk on the atmosphere than anything else, congregating in groups with their sloppy grins and loose arms that made them stand apart from the more composed. The drone of vehicles, impatiently waiting for the lights at various intersections, was constant and escalated into an ongoing roar when they were finally given the signal to start moving again. On the whole, everything looked normal and bright as ever. And, if Owen tried, he could almost convinced himself that it had always been that way.

Scarcely a month had passed since the Breach. Owen still remembered the screeching klaxons that had jerked him out of his bunk. 1st Battalion had barely had time to form up in their companies and platoons before being shoved into the nearest transports and practically ejected out of the troopship. On the way to the surface, they'd been shown a quick, barebones briefing: Vale had suffered a breach, and they were going to seal it.

With barely any opportunity to process the gravitas of the situation, they'd been spat out onto the streets and told to form a battle line with the rest of the 15th IBCT (Infantry Brigade Combat Team). They'd been forced to sit at their initial perimeter, waiting for the other Army troops and the 5th Marine Expeditionary Unit to similarly deploy. It had been baffling, and infuriating, that they'd had to stand by for the response force to organise itself while just a few hundred metres away, they could hear the crack of gunfire and snarling Grimm, and the screams of the desperate people who they'd been told needed their help. But then the order had come, and they'd started their slow and careful push towards the Breach.

Owen had lost count of how many rounds he'd fired that day. As the automatic rifleman of his fireteam, his M29 had been crucial in keeping up a steady stream of fire, especially against tightly packed groups of Grimm, to let the others single out more dangerous targets with their more powerful, but slower-firing, M90 Rifles and grenades. His fireteam had been able to scrounge together about eight hundred rounds for the LMG before setting out. He'd blown through it all in less than fifteen minutes. Fortunately, resupply airships had constantly been moving back and forth to restock their frontline units and evacuate casualties. If not for them, their squad would have been one of many to crash against the monstrous horde, only to collapse and perish in the wake of depleted munitions.

They'd fought through the streets, with their urge to just press forward and get to the damn Breach being held in check by the threat of being surrounded and overrun if they broke rank with the units on their flanks. 2nd Squad had been lucky that day. They had kept a tight line with the rest of 1st Platoon and made steady progress against the Grimm. When they'd broken through to the subway entrance, they'd set up a final perimeter with the Marines and Vale's own arriving troops to let the local Huntsmen make the last push and force the creatures back towards Mountain Glenn. It had been bloody and messy, but they'd won…at a terrible price.

Out of all the species on Remnant, humanity and the Faunus had been one of the very few to evolve themselves beyond that of primal intelligence. And they were most certainly the only ones that had developed to the point where they could take advantage of that intelligence to surpass so many others who were physically superior. Through countless millennia, they had chosen to outsmart their adversaries, be it through weapons, infrastructure, or collaboration. With their deft hands and comparatively malleable minds, they were poised to live and flourish in a world hellbent on ensuring otherwise. But all too often, they either forgot or were unwilling to ask, 'what happens when all our tech – all our guns and ships and robots – just isn't enough?'

No one liked urban warfare; at least, none that had experienced it firsthand. There were too many blind spots to get hit in the back or sides from. Vehicles had trouble manoeuvring through anything smaller and curvier than a highway and could indefinitely stall a column's advance if they were rendered immobile from hostile fire or malfunctions. One could spend hours trying to navigate the concrete jungles of buildings and alleyways, desperately trying not to take a wrong turn and frantically glancing about every few seconds just to make sure their buddies were still next to them. And if there were any non-combatants in the area, they'd have to tighten up their trigger discipline even further than usual. Innocent casualties were an ugly inevitability that all but the most idealistic of soldiers were prepared to accept. But that didn't mean they could just let loose a barrage of fire at the first thing that moved. All in all, it was hell, something that the Breach had reinforced most assiduously, with the added handicap that they couldn't use any of their mortars, artillery, or motorised elements, for fear of exceeding what the upper echelon were prepared to acknowledge as the minimal threshold for collateral damage.

And so, they had been left to take back the Residential District, block by block, street by street, road by road, the old-fashioned way: with lead and grit. The roads made for perfect firing lanes, but they also corralled the Grimm into incredibly dense waves. The less ammo a soldier had, the more valuable it became. And when squads or platoons couldn't be cycled out or resupplied fast enough, all they could do was brace themselves for melee.

Atlas trained their regular soldiers in swordsmanship, as well as hand-to-hand combat, but it was always meant to be as a final resort. At their core, they were only human, and without the relentless, borderline fatal, training regime of more specialised units to prepare them, close quarters was the last place they wanted to be in. Yes, they were more intelligent than the Grimm. But when the Grimm broke through all their constructs and deterrents, they were vulnerable. And they died.

A Company had lost two men from 2nd Platoon during the Breach. Owen and the rest of 1st Platoon had been stunned when their names had come up on the list of fatalities. With all the hubris and chest-pounding that came with being in the infantry, it had been easy for them to build up a sense of invincibility. They were part of the most powerful military force in the history of Remnant. They were meant to be unbeatable, untouchable, unkillable. But they weren't. None of them were. And so, with the mortality of their brethren (and more pressingly, themselves) hammered into their minds, they'd been left to stumble off the battlefield of a city while the Valean reinforcements conducted the unenviable task of sorting through the bodies and debris.

Speaking of the Valeans, Owen was aware of the gazes that lingered on his fireteam. Civilians usually gave police and military a wide berth when they saw them in their everyday lives. But every now and then, he felt the subtle glare of one or more looks directed at his back, as well as the not-as-subtle fingers and sneers pointing at his uniform. Not too long ago, someone had taken to throwing a can of beer at his patrol. As the can's emptiness could attest to, they'd been intoxicated enough that their aim was off the mark, but the jeers that had followed were indication enough it hadn't been an accident.

Despite their dogged attempts to close the Breach in Vale, Atlas simply hadn't had enough troops. To ensure their concentrated push wouldn't devolve into a mess of isolated, overrun units, they'd had to move slow – make sure every road, every building, every rooftop and gutter, was clear before advancing. And in doing so, they'd given the Grimm time to swell in number, to the point where any further advance was deemed untenable. Valean forces recalled to the city would have arrived to support the counterattack, but in the urban sprawl they'd found themselves in, they too would have become similarly bogged down.

Therefore, the Atlas Navy's 7th Aerial Fleet had made the choice, with the Vale Council's authorisation and approval, to bombard the city. Of course, as a mere grunt at the bottom of the chain of command, Owen hadn't been informed of such a monumental decision. But he'd seen the ships manoeuvring into position. He'd seen the laser batteries aim. He'd seen them fire. He'd felt the heat, even though he'd been over a kilometre from the blasted area. He'd stood with his mouth agape and eyes fixed on the crimson beams of death as his squad leader frantically tried to contact their platoon leader and ask him what the hell was going on – why was the Navy shooting the city?

The days immediately following the Breach had been difficult for the Atlesians. For every news broadcast that showcased the aftermath of the bombardment, Owen had felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Knowing that it had been his people, his Kingdom, who'd clawed such a vicious wound into their allies, even if the tactical reasoning for it had been sound, was nauseating. But for the people of Vale – for those who'd lost friends and family to the 7th's strike – no amount of logic could overcome the shock that slowly gave way to grief and rage.

Perhaps recognising the unrest brewing in their constituents, the Vale Council had issued a public statement claiming joint responsibility with the Atlas Navy for the bombardment. Owen personally didn't think it did much to assuage the public outrage, but he could at least appreciate the token gesture of support, whereas lesser leaders would have instead just piled the blame on the Atlesians to preserve their own cowardly political hides.

Two weeks ago, Atlas had dispatched a second armada of over forty ships from the 3rd Aerial Fleet to reinforce the 7th Aerial Fleet, which had been escorting Atlas Academy's students to the Vytal Festival. They had brought with them the rest of the 4th Infantry Division, as well as the 4th HBCT (Heavy Brigade Combat Team), which was tasked by the Vale Council to assume complete security for the Vytal Festival, as well as fill in for the VPD's (Vale Police Department's – which had suffered heavy losses during the Breach) duties.

And such was the reason for Owen's current state – shuffling his way through a bunch of noisy, flashy streets, weighed down by around forty kilograms of kit and gear, acting as an overequipped cop for a city he'd risked life and limb for, whose inhabitants would see him lynched because of something his superiors had ordered the people in an entirely separate service branch of his military to do.

Life was fucking awesome, sometimes.

He was brought out of his acerbic introspection when he felt Annette bump his side with her elbow.

"What about you, Owen?"

Owen blinked and glanced at her. "About what?"

"The tournament," said Grant from behind. "We're betting on the finals."

For many, the Academy Tournament was one of the Festival's greatest highlights. Operating on a two-stage system, it would first group eight teams from Remnant's various Academies selected at random into a bracket, and pit them against each other in quad-, doubles-, and eventually singles-rounds. The winner of the singles rounds would then face the winners of the other similarly formed brackets in a final series of matches to determine the champion student, team, Academy, and Kingdom.

Tonight, the Tournament would wrap up its first stage, resolving who would emerge victorious out of the initial brackets. Owen personally wasn't very invested in the matches. He could appreciate a good fight as much as the next guy, but after his enlistment, after boot camp, after so many desperate firefights and grinding engagements, after the mutilation and death he'd seen during and after the Breach…he just didn't have it in him to be excited about the tournament.

Of course, that didn't mean the others weren't enthusiastic. Maybe after the crushing loss and destruction over the past month, they just needed an outlet. Or maybe Owen really was just a wet blanket who needed to have the fun knocked into him. Either way, Remnant was eager for the fights to come. There wasn't a screen, from the largest digital billboards to the smallest scrolls, that wasn't streaming the singles-rounds. Almost everywhere he looked, he saw the same pair of students, two girls – one with flowing red hair, a spear and shield, and one in a green-white blouse with a stack of floating, glowing swords – currently duking it out.

He shrugged. As much as he didn't want to be a killjoy, he didn't have a horse to root for in this particular race.

"Dunno. They seem pretty even."

"Hey!" said Annette, giving him another elbow, this time with a bit more force. "No sitting on the fence. Pick one. Nikos or Polendina?"

Nikos…oh. Pyrrha Nikos. Owen thought the red-haired student had looked familiar. He'd seen her face pop up on a couple of articles. According to the media, she was a prodigy, unrivalled in combat by her classmates (and many of her seniors too). It was shallow, but he didn't have a clue who the girl with the knives, Polendina, was. If only to get his squadmates off his back, he'd pick–

"Alright, alright. Nikos, then."

He heard Grant groan in frustration.

"See? That's the thing with casual viewers. They don't even think about who'll win. Just follow the popularity contest and blah!"

Owen didn't look back, but he imagined Grant making a funny face and sticking out his tongue to punctuate his exclamation.

"Hey. You guys wanted an answer, so I gave one."

"I mean," started Annette, "Grant's not wrong, but I'd still pick Nikos."

"No, no, no. Hear me out," said Grant. "Did you see how Polendina just carried her partner through the doubles-round? It was fucking insane!"

"He wants to see the newcomer underdog win," said Trevor, who'd been wordlessly walking alongside Grant since Annette had prompted Owen back to reality. "Or maybe he just doesn't like ponytails."

Owen and Annette snickered, even as Grant's protests rang loud and clear. Apparently, their little ribbing was enough to earn their Sergeant's attention, as exemplified when Hitoshi twisted around and said, "Hey. Knock it off. Keep your heads up. We're on patrol."

"Roger, Sergeant," said Owen. Annette, Grant, and Trevor gave similar affirmatives, and they fell back into a lull.

He was just about ready to return to his comfortable 'sleepwalk' when Hitoshi added, "Put me down for Nikos, too."

"Oh, come on!"

The snickers came back.

"Either way, it won't matter," said Martin, their fireteam's grenadier, who'd been keeping pace with Hitoshi at the front. "We haven't put anything up for grabs."

"Can't put a price on vindication, man," said Grant. "Just you wait and see. Polendina's gonna tear up…the…"

Owen looked back at Grant, only to find he wasn't there. Jerking his head around, he found the trooper a few paces behind their group. He was about to call out to him and ask him why he'd stopped, when he took note of his body language. He'd let go of the under-barrel of his M90, and his right hand barely hung onto the grip. His form was limp and sagging to the left. His head was tilted up and to the right, and his jaw was slack. Owen couldn't see his eyes because of the helmet, but he could tell where they were pointed. He twisted about, his gaze travelling up a nearby hotel, which had a big communal screen displaying the fight between Nikos and–

Owen's mind went blank.

For how long, he didn't know – it could have been five seconds or five minutes. But for whatever it had been, he'd ceased to be capable of doing anything except just breathe in and out. When he came too, he saw the cause of his temporary blackout.

On the floor of Amity Colosseum, scythed from the waist up, and with her left arm cut at the bicep, was Polendina. The girl's head was turned left, her irises lining up directly with the chosen camera perspective. She was dead. There was no way she wasn't.

Around him, Owen heard gasps and cries of horror. Everyone had just born witness to a…murder? Or was it an accident? In the ten seconds he'd kept his eyes off the fight, something terrible had happened. Had Nikos done it? Some were pointing at either the closest or biggest screens, while others were actively trying to look away. He saw the rest of his fireteam similarly stunned by the horrific display. Annette mumbled something, but it was too quiet for him to hear.

"What?" he asked her.

"Something's not right," she repeated.

"No shit, this ain't right," snapped Trevor. "That girl just got hacked to pieces on international–"

"No. Not that," said Annette. "Look at the cuts."

As painful as it was to do so, Owen obliged her and found…sparks? Metal? Wiring?

"What the fuck?" he muttered.

"She's not human," said Grant, who'd stumbled his way back to their group. "The hell is she, then? Some kind of android?"

Any response they might have had for him was cut off, as a shrill squeal filled their heads. Through his yelp of surprised pain, Owen realised it was coming from his helmet's internal speakers. He slapped the side of it with his palm, hoping it would make the sound stop. To his relief, after the fifth slap, it disappeared, leaving him with ringing ears and a sour grimace.

He looked up and saw Martin taking a knee, one hand against his own helmet in a vain attempt to massage the aftermath of the screech away, and the other sweeping the ground in front of him to reach for his dropped M90. Only then did Owen realise he'd done the opposite and was clutching his M29 with the hand that hadn't been trying to give himself a concussion.

"The fuck was that?" said Grant. Owen imagined he was speaking a little louder than normal, but the bells bouncing between his temples made it sound barely louder than a whisper. He shrugged in response, but wasn't sure Grant saw it – not that it would have helped much if he did.

He felt a hand on his back and realised Hitoshi had come next to him.

"You good, Owen?" his Sergeant asked.

"I'm fine," he said, giving a thumbs up, and Hitoshi moved to check on the others.

"Annette. You okay?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Weapons team! You alright?"

Before Grant and Trevor could say yes or no, their ears were filled with more noise. This time, a voice.

"This is not a tragedy. This was not an accident–"

His HUD flickered for a few seconds. His ammo counter and the blue outlines around his squad disappeared, only to be replaced by a crimson rectangle with a black queen chess piece. Owen didn't pay much attention to the speaker, too busy trying to just get rid of the sound and display. This time, instead of a second bout of percussive maintenance, he reached for the cover on the left side of his helmet that shielded the various miniature buttons, dials, and switches he could use to operate the very expensive, yet also right now very compromised piece of equipment.

"What need would Atlas have for a soldier disguised as an innocent little girl? I don't think the Grimm can tell the difference."

"Who the fuck is that?" said Martin.

"Probably just some bitch who didn't get enough attention in high school," snarked Trevor. "Anyone know how to shut this thing off?"

"You could always just toss it," Owen said. He tried to restart his helmet's CCTS-RaR (Cross-Continental Transit System Relay and Receiver) but had no luck. Next, he tried switching to his radio, only to find a similar message hollering at him at every frequency.

"Oh, yeah, sure. Just give me a head start for Jaws."

Trevor was referring to one Sergeant Major Henrith Orca, 2nd Battalion's CSM (Command Sergeant Major); a man with a penchant for squeezing every last bit of use and efficiency out of their equipment (which apparently also included the soldiers using said equipment). Out of the over four hundred soldiers under his jurisdiction, if any one of them so much as dropped a pencil or left a crumb on their mess trays, he'd be there to fling spit and grind their elbow joints to dust with pushups.

"Huntsmen and Huntresses should carry themselves with honour and mercy, yet I have witnessed neither."

"It's not just us," said Hitoshi. "The whole's city's getting this."

Owen looked back to the hotel screen and saw the same black chess piece and red backdrop.

"Perhaps Ozpin felt as though defeating Atlas in the tournament would help people forget his colossal failure to protect Vale when the Grimm invaded its streets. Or perhaps this was his message to the tyrannical dictator that has occupied an unsuspecting kingdom with armed forces."

"That's some bullshit," muttered Grant. But Owen heard something in his voice. Doubt, perhaps? Refusal, maybe. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't similarly conflicted. Not that he had any say in when and where he was getting deployed, but if the 15th IBCT hadn't been in Vale with the 7th Fleet, there wouldn't be a Vale in the present day – at least not one that wouldn't be a mass grave for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. Yet, the price they'd paid for that victory, the unholy fire their Navy had rained down on the terrified citizens, had just been too much for some. He couldn't begrudge that. And he couldn't begrudge their trepidation when, instead of sending away the Atlesians, the Valean government had instead requested for more troops to guard the Vytal Festival.

He tried to return his focus on getting the broadcast to stop playing in his helmet, but the words had already cut into his conscience.

"–I know that the existence of peace is fragile, and the leaders of our kingdoms conduct their business with iron gloves…Our kingdoms are at the brink of war. Yet we, the citizens, are left in the dark. So, I ask you, when the first shots are fired, who do you think you can trust?"

Apparently satisfied with their little tirade, whoever was controlling the feed finally allowed the red to disappear from his HUD. The chess piece lingered, if only for a second longer, before too fading away. All around him, the city's screens had gone black. Slowly, Owen lowered his hand from his helmet's control pad, as if his cautious movements would placate whoever had made the broadcast. He could see the Valeans. Some were eyeing him and his fireteam. There was fear, accusation, uncertainty, a month of emotions held back by a dam of governmental decrees for order and the belief, genuine or otherwise, that the Atlesians were here because they'd been right – the bombardment had been right. Now, the dam had been cracked. But would it break? Were they now about to face an angry mob? Would their guns be enough of a deterrent, or would they be swarmed? Would they have to shoot these civilians and kickstart a proper war between Atlas and Vale? In that moment, Owen hoped against hope for something else to happen, something that would delay them from having to make that choice.

It turned out he should have been more careful with what he wished for.

In retrospect, it might as well have been inevitable. After weeks of trying to process or repress the pain of the Breach, the people of Vale had just witnessed a student get eviscerated – be it on screen or in person. And then some wannabe revolutionary had somehow hacked their entire CCT (Cross-Continental Tower) Network to say exactly what the people wanted to hear: Atlas cannot be trusted.

So many negative emotions, all swirling around in its own little cocktail within the city's walls, was the perfect attraction, the perfect beacon.

Alarms began blaring. In a wailing cry of distress, it provided the final straw to break the camel's back. There were screams as people devolved into a panicked frenzy, finally giving in to the hysteria that had been building in the backs of their minds. Owen himself fought the inclination to join them. If it was possible, he gripped his M29 even tighter. He gripped it so hard that his hands began shaking.

"No…"

From the chaos that reigned, a single word made itself heard. It had been Annette. What little of her face was visible was pale. She was losing herself to denial.

"No…"

Not again…Please…Not again…

The Grimm were back.