The time was 1:55 P.M. It had been 12 minutes since Building 1 collapsed, and 202 minutes since the attack had begun.

Yang and George were walking along the dust-covered streets of downtown Vale near the USC, trying to find their friends and their fire companies. As Yang coughed, she wiped her forehead and said, "Georgie... I... I still can't believe it..."

"Tell me about it," George replied. By now, the full gravity of the situation had set in.

As they stared into the distance, they saw a convoy of fire trucks from a fire company out in the "new areas" heading down to the disaster site. Yang flagged them down before they passed by. The driver of the company's engine, a beat up and used pumper bought from another company in the city made in 1993 and serving on its third career, stopped it and asked them, "Are you two alright?"

"I think so," Yang replied. "Can we hitch a ride? I'm with the Vigilant Fire Company and my boyfriend here is with the Goodwill Hose Company."

"Hop in," the driver replied. A firefighter sitting in the back of the 8-man cab opened the left hand passenger door and waved them in.

As Yang and George got on, the officer on the engine, a young lieutenant sitting up front, said to them, "Just hold onto something. All the seats are full."

A junior firefighter sitting in a flip down seat, looking to be no more than 14 years old, said to Yang, "Wow, your gear is completely covered."

"That's saying the least of it," Yang replied to the kid. "I assume you guys are out in the new areas of the city?"

"Yup," said an older firefighter sitting in an SCBA seat. "We're from the Lee Fire Company, Station 167, of District 13. You're riding in Engine 1302, which we bought from the Scarlet Brandy Fire Company out in District 7 this year, which they bought from the Drexel Hill Fire Company in District 4 back in 2007."

"Oh," George replied. "I bet this rig has seen its fair share of fires."

"You bet," another firefighter replied. "But I bet it hasn't seen anything like this."

The time was 2:04 P.M.

By now, Weiss, Ruby, Ren, Penny and Qrow had all met up in a pizza shop located near the collapse zone. As Qrow drank a bottle of water, Ruby dialed Yang's phone number. Finally, after 2 earlier attempts, Yang finally answered. Yang said to her sister, "Hello? Ruby?"

Ruby immediately asked, "Yang, where are you?"

"I'm at Building 3's lobby with a fire company from the new areas," Yang replied. "Any idea where Dad, Blake, Weiss, and Ren are?"

"Weiss and Ren are with me, Penny, and Qrow," Ruby replied as she sighed. "Dad and Blake, though... I have no idea..."

"Oh no," Yang replied in worry. "This isn't good..."

Suddenly, in the background of Yang, Ruby heard the ground rumble. She shouted in horror, "Yang, what the hell is that?!"

Qrow ran outside to see what was going on as Yang replied frantically, "Building 2 is coming down! It's coming down! I gotta go!" She then hung up as a stunned Ruby stared into the wall in shock.

Qrow ran back in and shouted to the gang, "Building 2 just came down! The dust cloud is coming back!"

Penny said to herself in fear, "No... No way... This is just like Beacon..." Then, as the entire gang plus the pizza shop's employees stared out the front windows, they saw the dust cloud once again turn the sky outside into pitch black, as if night had descended upon Vale, reinvigorated by the collapse of Building 2, which killed even more first responders and civilians.

Weiss thought to herself, "Never did I expect to see something as terrible as this. This... This is something else... I thought I had seen the worst in the fire service, but this... This day tops them all..."

March 1, 2019

Weiss was giving a presentation to a Public Speaking class Team RWBY had all taken together in their senior year at Beacon. Problem was, Weiss had procrastinated and did not get the project done. The project involved a presentation about experiences in your life.

"Miss Schnee," said the teacher of the class, Professor Peach. "You are up."

Ruby patted a worried Weiss on the back, saying, "You're great at coming up with stuff on the fly, Weiss. You got this."

Weiss replied, "Thanks." She then got up and walked to the front of the classroom to face the class.

Professor Peach said to her, "Well, go on."

"Thank you," Weiss replied. She then said, "So, today I'm here to talk about experiences in my life. Well, I decided to talk about my second passion in this world, apart from hunting Grimm." She then wrote "FIREFIGHTING" on the chalkboard behind her. "If you do not know already, I am a volunteer firefighter. My whole family, alongside being businesspeople, are volunteer firefighters. We all belong to the Vigilant Fire Company, which is the Vale City Fire Department's Station 5."

Ruby thought to herself, "There you go, Weiss! I knew you could do it!"

"We are not paid a single sublien for our services to the City of Vale," Weiss continued. "And we would gladly prefer it to stay that way. We spend 12 to 24 hours a month at the firehouse, and all other times, we are summoned to calls by pagers, and if it is a fire call, by sirens. Beacon Academy has its own fire company as well, which is composed of students and staff. I've run calls with them a few times at large fires in the past." She then cleared her throat. "Anyways, you all notice the scar on my face, right?" She then pointed to it. "I got it from fighting a robot knight and stuff, yeah. However, that is not the only physical scar I have."

Yang thought to herself, "Hmmm... She's never told us where the other scars came from..."

Weiss then pulled up the right sleeve of her shirt, revealing a long scar running down her forearm. "See this? I got this 7 stories up in an apartment last summer during break. I was pulling an old faunus lady out and I lost my Halligan tool, so I had to punch a window with my right hand to break it. I did not account for my coat sleeve getting pulled up by the glass and cutting me, barely missing several major blood vessels in my wrist. I also did not account for the old lady dying in the hospital of smoke inhalation an hour later."

Several students were a little uneasy from the story, but many were interested. Weiss continued by revealing a scar on her right side and saying, "See this? This was from my third fire as an interior firefighter. This drunk guy had accidentally started the fire when he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Me and my father were getting him out and were bringing him down the stairs when they gave way. We fell half a story and landed on metal spikes. Long story short, the guy we pulled out lived. 5 kids and their mom died."

Blake was horrified by the stories being told, thinking to herself, "Oh my God... Weiss, you've never told us this..."

"Then there's this," She then pulled down her stockings to reveal a horizontal scar on her lower right leg. "Remember how a lot of firefighters wear those rubber thigh-high boots and those long coats? Well, I got this one at a car accident, not a fire. We were cutting a student in my grade out of a car during the summer break after my first year at Beacon. His girlfriend was going to be a freshman at Beacon once the summer was over. They both were drunk. As I was using a set of spreaders, a piece of metal cut through my right boot and slashed my leg up. Obviously, we threw the boot right out afterwards. The whole time we were doing this, the girl was unconscious and the guy was wide awake and saying, 'Please, Weiss, save my girlfriend, save my girlfriend! I love her too much to see her die!' Long story short, his girlfriend lived, though she never walked again. The guy we cut out of the car died of crush syndrome an hour later at the hospital, and he died because we were unable to see that one of his fingers was badly pinned. A finger! They call it the "smiling death" because one minute you're all happy that you've been freed from being crushed, and then suddenly you go into cardiac arrest because all of those dead cells in the crushed area go to your heart." The whole time, Weiss was expressionless and just told her stories.

Weiss then wrote on the chalkboard "MENTAL SCARS" before saying, "Not every scar is one you can see, though. I've had nightmares about calls before. The Battle of Beacon was not the only traumatic event I've been through." She then paused. "One time... It was a week before I went to Beacon for my first year. Me and my sister pulled a little girl out of a flophouse. One bedroom, 15 people living in it. As we're going down the stairs, I decide to take my mask off so I can rotate it between me and her. The little girl is holding her cat. The whole time, she's screaming, 'Please, Mrs Fireman, save my cat.' So I start rotating the mask between me, her, and the cat. The cat lived. The girl died."

She then paused more before her next story. "Then, there's a fire I had during winter break of this year. First time I had a fatal fire since last summer with the old lady. Me and a guy from my company pulled this little dog faunus boy out of a closet. He was like 10. He was badly burnt. His dog ears were black with burns and his tail was all skin with no fur. He was wearing nothing but underwear. His skin was peeling off, so he was slipping and sliding in my arms. He falls out of my arms onto the floor. I pick him up, bring him outside, and a month later, he died at a burn center."

Professor Peach was visibly shaken by Weiss's stories. Weiss continued, "Now, not every call is like this. For every call where someone dies, there's always one where someone lives. I've delivered 5 babies, and all have lived. I've saved a 28-year-old man coming home from work that got hit by a stray bullet from a gangbanger drive-by in the head. I've pulled a couple people out of burning buildings ranging from the ages of 5 months to 104 years that all lived. Me and my uncle helped talk down a suicidal 15 year old that had slit her wrists up with a knife when I myself was only 14. Of course, then there are the mundane ones. The fire alarms that go off because of dust in the sensors or because some idiot that thought they knew how to cook really didn't. The guy or girl that calls 911 5+ times a month to go to the hospital for the stupidest... The stupidest stuff." Weiss caught herself from swearing. "The cellar pump out because a pipe burst in the dead of winter below freezing in the basement of an office building or apartment building. The car accident where the only injuries are someone's pride and some leaking gasoline on the ground. The mundane ones are the most common." She then paused.

Weiss concluded with, "After all that, you may wonder why I still subject myself to this seemingly mind-boggling torture for absolutely no monetary compensation. Well, I do it because I cannot imagine myself not doing it. Due to some issues with my own blood family in the past, even with the whole family tradition thing, the firehouse was often the only place where I could interact with people who weren't upper class. I broke free of my bubble everytime I went there. My family expected this to happen, but they were not expecting how much it would really open me. Really, before I went to Beacon and became a member of Team RWBY, the other volunteers were the only people I truly opened up to. Hell, they even kept secrets from my father, who was the Captain of the company for a while, at my request. Even at Beacon, I never fully opened up, even to my own team, until around the Battle of Beacon. The sense of belonging, plus the emotional benefit of knowing that you can make a difference in someone's day, are not only why I am a huntress, but why I am a volunteer firefighter, and I would not want it any other way."

August 23, 2021

The time was now 2:15 P.M.

At the Semzona Central Terminal, the crisis had lasted for 30 minutes after the first 15 minutes of bloodshed. All 10 terrorists holed up inside the ticket booth were still alive and active. They now had taken 25 civilians and 7 disarmed police officers hostage. Their kill count was at 34 civilians and 8 police officers.

The Chief of the Semzona Metropolitan Police Service, a veteran of the Vale City Police Department until he emigrated to Menagerie and became a police officer there in 1996 for a total of 38 years of experience named Joseph Vaugeois, said to the terrorists in Valeanian over a cellphone from outside the train station, "This is the Chief of Police. I am here to inform you that we have you completely surrounded. We urge you to release the hostages and surrender peacefully to us."

"Never," replied the leader of the terrorists. "I'll never surrender to a fake regime like you. Your regime fornicates with humanity and must be destroyed by all means necessary at all costs."

"At all costs? You murder other faunus like it's nothing." Chief Vaugeois had many years of hostage negotiation experience in both Vale and Menagerie. "Now, look, I understand you are upset at racism against our kind. I am, too. But as I have said before, this is not the way to go."

"Don't give me your petty talk, race traitor!" The leader of the terrorists was still uncompromisingly hard to work with. "You work with public safety, the enemy of faunus! We just killed a bunch of firefighters in Vale when those buildings went down, after all. Goodbye, and may you burn in Hell." The leader then coldly hung up.

"I got nothing else," said Chief Vaugeois in Fanusian to an assistant. "We need to kill them somehow."

Back in Vale, Qrow, Ruby, Weiss, Penny, and Ren decided to walk towards the USC again to find Yang and George, as well as the now relocated command post. A text had been sent out on the cellphones of all firefighters in Vale urging them to report to the new command post at Protection Fire and Engine Company 1's fire station as soon as possible for personnel accountability.

Within a few minutes, they arrived at the station. It was covered in a thick layer of dust from the collapse, and several backup generators were running to maintain electricity to the station. In the empty apparatus bays, a bunch of desks had been set up, three for each district in the city. Trucks coming into the disaster site would make a stop there, have the highest-ranking person on the truck give the personnel accountability nametags of all the firefighters on board to a desk, and then drive away.

Weiss walked up to a desk for District 2 and said to them, "Me and my crew here are from the Vigilant Fire Company." Qrow had gone off to a desk for District 20, the newly-created district for Patch Island. "I am Weiss Schnee." She then pointed to the rest of the group in order. "That is Ruby Rose, that is Lie Ren, and that is Penny Polendina."

The firefighter manning the desk said after writing the names down, "Alright. Say, are there any captains from your company that you saw wandering around here? We only have three lieutenants that have made their way here from Vigilant Fire. They are Dafydd ap Llewelyn, Ling Hua Qiao, and Ross Key."

Weiss paused as she realized where Arthur, Winter, and Julian were when Building 1 came down. "Oh my God... They were all up on the 99th floor of Building 1 with the other lieutenants. We left Dafydd, Qiao, and Ross down below." She then buried her face into her hands. "Oh my God, no..." She then sighed. "Give me a piece of paper and a roll of duct tape. I know what I need to do."

"Okay," said the firefighter at the desk, confused as he gave her what she needed. He then handed her a black marker. Weiss grabbed it and wrote down "ACTING 1ST CAPTAIN" on the paper before taking her helmet off and taping it to her shield.

"Effective immediately, I am the 1st Captain of the Vigilant Fire Company," Weiss said. She then left the desk to send a text to the surviving officers of the company. "Effective immediately, Dafydd ap Llewelyn is the 2nd Captain, Ling Hua Qiao is the 3rd Captain, and Ross Key is the 1st Lieutenant. I will fill all other positions as needed when we report back to the firehouse. -1st Captain Weiss Schnee."

Ruby said to Weiss as she saw the paper, "Are you sure you want to take on that responsibility, Weiss, after all this?"

"Ruby," Weiss replied, holding back tears. "Somebody needs to do it, even if... Even if most of my family just died..." She then hugged Ruby, Penny, and Ren as she broke down and cried. "Oh my God... I'm orphaned... My father, my uncle, my sister, maybe some of my cousins... They're gone..."