Jaune held the flashlight closer to his face. "And then they found the hook under their Dad's bunk..."
"And then?!" Ruby excitedly inquired. Ren and Nora exchanged glances, for they knew Jaune was about to dash the poor girl's hopes.
"And then..." Jaune adopted a sinister grin. "...the butler did it!"
Ruby's expression changed from eager anticipation to naked confusion. "The... the butler? But... this family... wait, this family had a butler?"
Nora reached in to take hold of the flashlight and save Ruby from the disjointed mess of continuity errors that formed Jaune's allegedly spooky story. Jaune whined for a moment, but relented and let Nora take the reins. Ruby seemed much more interested now, and she had good reason to be... Nora was well known for making stories riddled with continuity errors engaging, at the very least.
"It all began, as these things tend to, with a bunch of idiot teenagers in a forest..."
There were four of them, on a night just like this one. They were on a journey together, to fight against some great evil.
They gathered around a campfire to rest. They'd walked long and hard through the day, through swaths of untamed wilderness and abandoned or destroyed settlements free of life.
They'd lost their home and... and many of their friends, and wanted to stop those responsible, so no one else would ever suffer those losses again.
The youngest among them had lost a friend precious to her. Their most inexperienced fighter had lost his inspiration to the scourge. The remaining two had lost their only refuge after being orphaned at a young age. Their friends had scattered, and many they thought brave warriors had fled when the danger seemed overwhelming.
But the enemies they fought weren't just mindless monsters like the Grimm. They promised things. Bad things. But bad things weak people wanted.
More than once they'd believed the strange visitors from foreign kingdoms had been their friends. They'd allowed themselves to be deceived. They'd been cut far worse than they thought possible, because they were betrayed by humans and Faunus like themselves. Monsters wearing the faces of people.
But they still had Grimm. There were always Grimm.
They descended from the darkness, as they always did. A cloud of black where light disappeared.
And the four were the only ones still fighting. They were making the sacrifice so no one else had to.
Sometimes they wished someone would fight in their stead. But this was the life they chose, to always resist against the darkness of the world and struggle.
Their leader rallied them as she could...
She finally stood up and told the others they had to keep going. She appealed to their old friendship, to the bond they had with each other, if no one else.
...but out of the woods they came. Too many to count. Too many to fight.
They drew their weapons. The red eyes surrounded them, as monsters born of a nightmare began to emerge one after another, surrounding their campfire. Blade and scythe and fist reared back.
And still they fought.
Outnumbered, tired, cold, and hungry, they fought the darkness.
They fought bravely.
Again and again the Grimm emerged in an endless swarm. They ran out of ammo. They fell back into a tight circle, fighting around their dying fire.
But no one can fight the dark forever.
The inexperienced fighter was first. But he would not give up, taking on as many as he could. The orphaned children followed, charging out into the horde to draw attention from their leader in one final act of sacrifice.
They knew it was the end.
Just as it had been before, when their home seemed lost, when they were abandoned by their would-be allies and still mourning their lost friends...
Just when all hope seemed lost...
But miracles happen too.
Their leader would not lose anyone else. She certainly wouldn't lose her friends. She loved each of them. And she'd suffered enough death already.
No more.
She closed her eyes and wished for a different outcome.
When she opened them, she made one.
The Grimm never knew fear until that day. Until they looked in her eye.
Energy poured out from either of her eyes and enveloped the horde.
The Grimm were frozen in place if they were lucky. If they were unlucky the power of the light released from within her destroyed them completely.
Sometimes faith is rewarded. Sometimes hope is real.
Her friends looked on, stunned, as what had seemed certain doom...
As a single flame remained against the dark.
"That wasn't very scary, Nora," Jaune whined.
"Entertaining though," Ren assured her.
"Where did you hear that?" Ruby wondered.
"At Beacon!" Nora replied. "It was some weird hand-written story crammed into a library book. Apparently Beacon came under attack in the past too."
"No way," Ruby interjected. "My parents would've told me about it; they all went to Beacon before we did."
"Maybe it was supposed to be a secret, if it were hidden away like that," Ren speculated.
"But why? It sounds like an inspiring story," Jaune noted. "But it it was hand-written, maybe it was just someone making stuff up."
"Interesting though," Ren again added.
"But not scary," Ruby whined.
"Yeah, I guess not," Nora conceded. "But I've got more."
The Past
"What... happened?" Tai asked, lifting himself off the ground.
"I don't know," Summer admitted, unsteady on her feet. Qrow rushed over to help support her, and she put her weight on him, barely able to stay upright even leaned against him. "I don't know how I did that."
Raven poked one of the frozen, silver-colored Grimm. "We need to get back to Beacon. Maybe this... whatever this is can help relieve the siege."
"Summer's exhausted," Qrow argued. "We should give her a chance to rest."
"No, Raven's right," Summer argued, forcing herself to stand unsupported. "We've already lost friends. Whoever's left, whoever we can still save- they're counting on us now."
She glanced out from the forest back to the tower. "We have to go back and save whoever we can."
Her team was exhausted and didn't have enough ammo to mount an offensive. But they followed her. They believed in her.
They had reason to hope again.