A/N: Aaaaaand we're back! Hope y'all have been doing well. I'll tell you, I certainly don't mind the fast turn-around on Chibi, and I really enjoyed the opening episode! I've also started really getting into the Fate series, and isn't that a hot mess?Well, I suppose we should get on with things,. but I'd like to take the time to recommend Random O' Panda's "One New Message", which focuses on the lives of high school AU! Jaune, Weiss, and Yang. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll probably cry a bit more: fun times.

Thank you for reading, and please enjoy chapter twenty-eight!

The large complex of office buildings would work pretty well, in Jaune's opinion. The buildings were all still standing, the choke points into the courtyard were strong, the rubble on the streets would make the ramp more defensible, and the Grimm count seemed low. "Keep watch from atop the east building, make sure there's regular patrols to the highway, and have them inspect that parking garage. This should work great." His study from the third story window was broken by Nora's soft prodding, drawing him back into the moment. Ren stood by the next door, waiting for Nora and he to return to their patrol. Silently, Jaune lined up behind Nora and Ren, and signaled them to resume.

The school had been a bust: between the structural damages and the weight of the snow, most of the building had collapsed. His team had made it here without issue, and he liked the odds for this site. "I hope Pyrrha and the professor have been this lucky." He mused, eyes sweeping along their backtrail. They moved into the stairwell, cautious of the upper level despite having swept it on their way up.

"I've been thinking." Nora said, Magnhild hovering behind Ren.

"That you should get a coat?" Jaune interjected. "Seriously, how are you still in a skirt right now?"

"Pssh, I'm fine; the cold's never bothered me. I'm pretty sure it impresses Pyrrha more than my actual semblance." Nora looked back to him with a grin. "By the way, nice job on the coat for Pyrrha: she loves it."

"Thanks, I'm sure Ren could find one for you." She seemed to consider it for a moment, but Ren spoke up from the lead.

"It's no use, Jaune, she's never needed them. Also, you were trying to tell us something, Nora?" Ren opened the door to the inner courtyard, leading them into the late evening. He paused for a moment before waving them on, not seeing any Grimm.

"What I was saying is that isn't it a little weird there's no Grimm? The professor said to judge their presence, but have we seen any?" She gave them both a serious look as they entered the court, and Jaune began to really consider his luck. She was right: they hadn't seen any.

Jaune suddenly became aware of just how open they were, and began to pick up their pace. He'd just accepted the lack of Grimm as an oddity of being near that thing on the tower, but Nora was right. They moved as quickly as the icy roads and stealth would allow, Jaune eventually instructing Ren extend his semblance just to speed them along. He felt his worries about the situation retract to an enclosed portion of his mind, saw the colors dull ever so slightly.

They'd made it almost all the way back to their ramp without seeing a single Grimm, and he had begun to consider themselves in the clear, when the first gunshots sounded. He'd recognize the crack of Milo anywhere; Pyrrha was in danger, somewhere to the south of them. The three broke into a run immediately.

"Keep going up! If they aren't on the road, we'll be able to spot them!" He cried as the gap between himself and his team grew. Not for the first time, he cursed his lack of the speed his friends showed. His shout drew Nora's attention, though, and she pulled Ren to a halt. "Nora, we don't have time! Keep going!"

"Fore, Jaune! Fore!" Nora shook her hammer above her head, and Jaune suddenly had a wave of expectant fear. With a sickening feeling, Jaune caught up to her, and braced himself. "Sorry!" She said without a trace of sorrow, and crashed Magnhild into his lifted shield.

The force of the hit, and the following blast of her grenades, propelled Jaune violently into the air. Once upon a time, the action would have left him disoriented and in shock, but being sent flying had become an uncomfortable normal experience for him. He heard the second bass report of the weapon, no doubt what sent Nora and Ren moving, as he oriented himself for the landing. His momentum was still mostly forward, just enough lift to clear the top of the ramp, and he scanned the horizon as he prepared for a rolling land.

He was fairly certain the car lazily flying through the air was where he'd find their other squad. The flare was just icing.

As the apex of his fall came and went, he focused on the landing, on long hours spent jumping from high places to Pyrrha's warm encouragement. He projected his aura just so, and managed to hit the ground in a way that didn't shatter half his bones. A few rough tumbles, and he was on his feet. "Nailed it!"

Nora, one Ren held over her shoulder, sailed into view atop her hammer, and both managed a clean dismount before moving next to him.

"They're below, follow the flying buses!" He shouted, pointing his sword towards their edge of the raised route, just as a bus crested in the near distance.

"One more?!" Nora asked as they reached the nearest barrier, and Jaune grimly nodded.

"I'll need less distance this time." Nora grunted her agreement, holding her weapon at the ready. He braced himself, and looked towards his goal. "And this was your idea, for the record." She smiled in a way that made him extra nervous, and he was flying again. Expending his aura before a fight like this probably wasn't wise, but he had a lot of it, and this was an emergency. He could see Pyrrha, positioned partially up a ruin that used to be a building, while the Headmistress stood atop it. The street in front of them was filled with Grimm, stretching blocks in any direction. Goodwitch was crushing swathes of the creatures, rolling rubble and debris across the packed lane as his partner covered her from below.

"Pyrrha!" He shouted as his fall approached, and he saw red hair whip to the side as she turned. No sooner had she spotted him then he felt something take hold, his fall turning to a guided descent. Pyrrha's brief reprieve from fighting ended as a pair of Beringel pushed themselves up her rampart. The steady force guiding him didn't so much as hesitate as Milo lashed out, catching one of the tremendous Grimm in the neck. The strike left Pyrrha too exposed on the right, but he knew what was happening. When the other Beringel moved to retaliate, Pyrrha dropped him in place with his shield raised, and sword prepared to counterattack.

Were it not for the last dregs of her semblance, he'd have likely been bowled over by the hit, but he held his ground, driving the beast back with hard cuts at its arm. Milo flashed out again, and the second beast fell back into the writhing mass, already dissipating.

"You saw the flare then?" Pyrrha said, stepping up and behind him as he entered a defensive stance against the various nightmares crawling up for them.

"The car, actually." A shaking impact to his left was likely Nora and Ren touching down, and the staccato fire of Stormflower mowing down the Creeps on his left confirmed the idea. "We'll keep them below; you and Glynda do the hard work." He bashed forward with his shield, knocking a Beowolf off-balance long enough for a red and gold spear to lick over his shoulder, taking the beast in the throat.

"I love you." She called, just before a hunk of rebar and concrete the size of a horse crashed out of the ruin. Jaune watched it only long enough to judge it's threat to his balance; his team held the two easiest routes to the top. Nothing would get past him.

Pink explosions ripped across the street, rubble and abandoned trucks tumbled down the road, and blades crashed down to hammer at rising fang and claw and tail. Her head felt light and her blood pumped mercilessly in her ears, as Pyrrha ripped hole after hole into the carpet of Grimm, but they just seemed to flow back in to fill the gap.

"There has to be a limit, eventually we'll win through. We will win through." It was only a matter of time, she knew that. But the time wore at her. She had practiced moving a great many objects, or moving heavy ones, but the artillery work she and Glynda were performing pushed Pyrrha to her very limits.

Ren knocked away the diving blow of a Deathstalker, and Nora's hammer crushed into the creature mercilessly. Claw shattered, the abomination fell back, to be replaced by a small torrent of Creeps. On her other flank, she saw Jaune bat aside the strike of a climbing Beowolf. For a moment, Pyrrha allowed herself to watch Jaune at work.

He was not graceful, his arms did not move with the blurring speed of a full Huntsman, but the creatures dying before him were testament enough to her. His arm moved with strength, his shield with purpose. "His shieldwork has always been strong." The idle thought bubbled up as she flung a dumpster into a particularly large King Taijitu in the rear ranks. The snake shrugged off the strike, and she returned her attentions to the task of culling the horde.

She and the professor had scouted both locations with ease, but this mass of beasts had fallen on them as they made their exit. They had taken up their position and sent up a flare, hoping her team would see or hear. Jaune's arrival had been utterly ridiculous, but she doubted she could question the method when it had worked. "Him and his plans…", an upset portion of her mind muttered.

A surging ran through the Grimm ranks, and she briefly saw the edges of their lines for the first time. Goodwitch collapsed the small rubble pile to their east, wiping away a decent patch of darkness, and she returned to flinging the bus around. This was the truest test of her powers: there were no holds barred. Her limits against the Grimm's numbers. At the moment, the Grimm seemed to have the upper hand, but she knew it would turn.

The professor let out a cry of warning from above, and Pyrrha followed the sight of an upturned streetlight dashing into the sky. The metal pole collided with the leading elements of a flock of Nevermore, and Pyrrha turned her attention to them as well. Part of her still dragging the great mass of rubble through the swarm below, she began to launch lengths of rebar at the flying Grimm. The task proved more difficult, as the Nevermore were not restricted as their kin below were, and Pyrrha drove more of her powers into keeping the sky free. The cursed birds just wouldn't stay still!

Another cry from below once again forced her attention away, and Pyrrha felt her heart stop. The Taijitu she had been battering earlier had not been killed, making its approach under the obscuring cover of the mass. The white head had lashed out, and gotten a grip on Jaune, while the black had secured hold of Nora's hammer. Jaune had been silently dragged down off his post, while Nora dangled from her weapon, trying to free it from the creature's grasp. Ren was trying to bring it down, but the sheer mass of the horde meant he had to contend with innumerable other threats. Neither could reach Jaune.

She watched as Jaune was forced lower into the ranks of the beasts, her world growing darker even as she fired more projectiles into the masses of both snakes and birds. His legs, white jaws still clamped on them, disappeared into the writhing carpet of Grimm. A stretch of steel twice her height ruptured through the body of the Grimm, and she saw Nora drop, armed, to the edge of the mass.

Jaune swung his arm ceaselessly as the Taijitu dragged him under, but he looked back to her as the Grimm began to surround him. He didn't look fearful, merely… annoyed. As if disappearing into the horde was as inconvenient as losing his shoe, as if he would see her in just another moment.

"Because he believes in you."

She had grown somewhat accustomed to the bright crack of her charging up Nora, but what she released in that moment was no simple bolt. It was as if the heavens were torn open, and divine fury rained down. A bar of white scorched across her eyes, her ears deafened by the roar of sound, and she felt ripe to bursting from the tearing sensation in her chest. Even through her blindness and deafness, she forced herself to maintain this… this show of force.

"If I have the power, I will protect them."

When Jaune staggered to his feet, unable to hear anything beyond the ringing in his ears, his immediate instinct was to look back to the hill. Goodwitch was on her knees, but her arm still flew wildly about. Ren was similarly down, but Nora was gone. Pyrrha had collapsed, however. He bolted up the hill, uncaring for a strike that could come from behind.

"No, no, no, no, no!" He thought he spoke the words as well, but he couldn't hear of the damn ringing in his ears. He scrabbled up, sheathing Crocea Mors as he took hold of Pyr, feeling for a pulse. His breath burst free once he felt it, his fears fully set at ease by the sight of her eyes fluttering behind closed lids. The ground shook, and Jaune remembered he was still in a combat situation. It pained him, but he set Pyrrha down, turning to his chokepoint.

The street was a wasteland.

It was riddled with craters, dissipating corpses, and spidering flash burns. And Grimm. Despite whatever Pyrrha did, some Grimm still remained. Oh, it was a fraction of a fraction, but one was still enough to kill a Huntsman with his back turned. He also spied Nora; the air around her was viciously warped by bands of electricity as she fought her prey. Her hammer collided with a Beowolf, and the creature took off like a rocket from the supercharged connection. An Ursa Major had begun to mount his post, however, and Jaune drew his sword.

"I still have the high ground, and any buddies it may have can't come up with him blocking the way." It didn't seem to have much support remaining, the Grimm were mostly focusing on the redhead berserker in their shattered midst. "You aren't getting by, though." The beast took another hulking step, pulling itself forward with its trunk-like arm, but Jaune moved before it could set itself. He didn't have the speed his friends had, but he had gotten stronger. His approach provoked a clumsy swipe by the bear, and he let it slide easily off his shield, pushing at the end to force the arm farther back.

He buried his sword in its supporting paw, causing the creature to rock back, unbalanced. A better fighter would have likely dived into it, carrying the Ursa to the ground, but then no one would be holding his post. He stepped back, setting his foot and waiting for it to come back into a safe range.

Faintly, he could hear bass booms, and he saw flashes of Nora in the corners of his eye. "I'll let her have the fun, this one's all I need." The great bear approached again, but this time it flung itself upward, rather than step.

"Four hundred pounds of Grimm falling directly at me isn't what I expected this morning, but I did sign up for this life." He hopped back so as to not be crushed on the landing, this time preparing for a more aggressive approach. The Grimm landed with a crunch, but before it could rise from the crouching stance, he had driven forward. He stabbed forward, sliding past its clutching paws, and thrust into the Grimm's chest. He withdrew the blade quickly with a half step, still inside the monster's reach, and lunged up towards the jaw. The beefy arms crushed him against its chest just as his sword drove through the roof of its mouth, and it began to carry him down in its death grip.

Jaune managed to wriggle free before the dissolving corpse could carry him wholly off the cliff, but even as he resumed his guarding, it was clear the fight was over. Ren and Nora were standing in the street, checking the other for injury, with no Grimm in sight. Looking back, he saw the professor picking Pyrrha up from the ground. Jaune tried to yell for her attention, but she didn't turn. Instead, he moved up the hill, waving. The professor looked up to him in confusion, hands on Pyr's shoulders.

"I have her!" he yelled, mouthing the words slowly. "Lead on!" The professor seemed to understand, nodding curtly and beginning to head down the road. Crouching down, Jaune took hold of Pyrrha behind her shoulders and knees, lifting her up against him. His partner, armed and armored, used to be a challenge to pick up, but the action was effortless after months of training. He moved down the slope, and found Goodwitch mouthing loudly to his team, telling them to follow.

Goodwitch took point with his team forming around him, and the party headed down the road, their last flares burning out, night setting back in.

Groggily, Pyrrha opened her eyes to find herself tucked securely into a sleeping bag, a compact dust heater radiating warmth into the tent? She wormed herself free, immensely regretting the loss of heat as she drew her arms free, and began to push towards the exit. Milo and Akouo were resting at her feet, but she didn't feel compelled to grab them: camp meant safe.

The highway was dark, though the lights of the secure portions of beacon winked in the west. Three tents were gathered close by, sheltered by a pile of cars Goodwitch had stacked when they had stopped at the rendezvous. At the mouth of the encampment, she could see Nora, no doubt on watch. However, there was another person awake. Jaune's head poked from inside the opposite tent, and he was moving out of his own before she had set foot into the night. Nora pivoted at the noise, but Pyrrha could spot her brilliant smile from hear. She waved to her, and Nora waved back, but she knew her sister had a watch to keep.

Jaune slipped into the tent silently, zipping it up to preserve the warmth. "I was starting to worry you'd be out all night, Pyr." He said cheerily. The comment made Pyrrha consider Juane's watchful position at a conveniently open tent, then to study him closer.

"Jaune, you haven't been staying up on the off chance I would wake, did you?" His embarrassed grin was answer enough. She leaned forward, pulling him into a hug. "You shouldn't have, but thank you." His arms encircled her, and the faint pressure of his grip seemed to cut away the last lines of fear. Jaune was alright.

"I love you, too." He said warmly, letting go and dropping into a seated position across from her. She preferred to fall back to her sleeping bag, reclaiming the remaining warmth. "So, how are you?" He asked, once she was comfortable.

"I feel as if I just carried Beacon to Mistral, but nothing hurts. I'm just tremendously worn. What happened? I did something?" He nodded, smiling proudly at her. It was a smile she'd seen on her mother more than once; it was honest pride, unmarked by ulterior motives.

"You blew the street apart, Pyrrha. Glynda says she hasn't seen a discharge of force like that since the first time she saw a Maiden fight. We were all deaf for a few minutes, you blew out our eardrums, and Ren and Glynda were completely disoriented for the fight's end. What you didn't blast to smithereens, Nora crushed like a bug. And I got one big one, that was fun." She smiled at the playful self-jab, and gestured for him to go on.

"You were out, and I'm not surprised, so we carried you back to the rendezvous and set up camp. We'll scout the second set of sites in the morning, like planned, and extract. If you're feeling weak, then you can stay in and one team will go out, but don't worry."

"I think I'll be alright to work in the morning: I just need a good night's sleep." With how tired she was, she would enjoy it!

"I'm happy to hear that: you really had me worried, you know?" His voice was still warm, but she could see the concern in his eyes. She patted the spot next to her, and he moved closer. Once inside her range, she darted out, planting a swift kiss on his lips.

"I'm sorry to have worried you, Jaune, but I knew you were counting on me. You had me worried with your entrance, but we both came out fine." He grinned winningly, and she allowed him to dip in for a return kiss of his own.

"Well, I certainly couldn't leave you waiting, could I?" She suppressed the urge to laugh, and failed. She snorted, to her annoyance, but that only drew a quiet laughter from Jaune. She managed to get control of herself after a moment, and stared down to her feet, recalling less pleasant topics.

"Jaune, we need to discuss a few things with the professor when we get back, but you and I also have to discuss a few things as well, alright?" Looking over, he was watching her worriedly. "Nothing bad!" She said on instinct, though she still feared he would prefer to stay at Vale. "Just… it's about these missions." Jaune didn't look away, but his expression did ease to simple curiosity.

"Okay, Pyr, I'll remember. I'll leave you to get some sleep, alright?" He began to rise, but some part of Pyrrha compelled her to speak.

"You don't have to sleep over there." Jaune froze faster than if he was encased in ice.

"Oh great, you've really done it now, Nikos!" She heard a panicked voice shout in her head as she watched Jaune's back. Even she was unsure just what she was proposing, but "Pyr" had decided to raise this issue regardless! Slowly, breaking through the ice, Jaune turned back to her.

"I…" He looked to the floor, and she could see his blush even in the dark. "I really want to say yes, Pyrrha. I think Nora would understand. But I don't think the professor would be too happy about it, not after this morning." Memory of their Headmistress' critical gaze returned then, and Pyrrha felt herself flush with embarrassment.

"Maybe you're right…" She mumbled, looking back to her feet.

"But… once we're back in Vale?" She looked back up; Jaune was still a tremendous shade of pink, but he was watching her hopefully. She tried to speak, but her voice failed her then. Instead, she nodded with absolute confidence. Jaune smiled again at her, oh how she loved that smile, and he was off.

Pyrrha collapsed back to the ground, snuggling into the warmth, grinning like a madwoman.

"I can't wait to get back to Vale."