"Over here," Lieutenant Avery called over Penny, Ross, and Elsa as they all began to get ready to go into the warehouse to relieve a search crew inside. Outside, firefighters from all over the city were piling up on scene of what was now a 3rd Alarm fire. As the four of them took their helmets off and put their masks on in the front door of the warehouse. Their task was to search the third floor of the warehouse, using the large area search system left in place. As the four of them reached the third floor several minutes later, the smoke became thick enough where they had to clip their mask tubes into their belt-mounted regulators, breathing in air. Lieutenant Avery clipped into the large area search bag, which had a large rope bag plus three smaller rope bags for three other firefighters, and instructed his crew, "Penny, Ross, Elsa, you three are gonna search as far as you guys can go. I will stay with the large bag as we keep going in. It's tied off to a pipe in the stairwell!" Below them, on the second floor, firefighters were making another attempt at an attack on the fire. Additionally, fire had begun to travel to the third floor on the opposite side of the warehouse.

"Got it," Ross replied. The four of them then began to crawl through the warehouse's third floor, a vast and largely empty space filled with thick smoke. As they used their hand tools to sweep the floor, Ross noted to himself the fact that he could barely see the end of his own tool, the knob end of a flat head ax, out in front of him.

"Okay," Lieutenant Avery noted. "We just went past the first knot in the main rope. We'll stop here. Lieutenant Key, have you, Penny, and Elsa sweep as much as you can, Once you guys are done, crawl back to me, and we'll proceed until we hit the next knot! I'll keep scanning the room with the TIC!" Lieutenant Avery began to then methodically scan the entire floor up and down with his thermal imaging camera.

"Got it," Ross replied. "Penny, Elsa, start searching!"

Penny replied, "On it!" She then proceeded to crawl out as far as she could, running into several objects and boxes stored on the third floor. Once she reached the wall of the warehouse, she began to crawl along it, sweeping the floor as far out as she could with her tool, the pry bar end of a FUBAR tool. As she maneuvered around a high shelf, she felt something shake next to it and looked up. "Huh?" Immediately, she ducked out of the way of the high shelf just as it came crashing down, narrowly missing her but trapping her rope underneath the debris. "Shit!" She radioed Lieutenant Avery, "Firefighter Polendina to Lieutenant Avery!"

"Go ahead," he replied.

"My rope is stuck under some debris from a collapsed shelf," she radioed. "Get someone over here to either free the rope or free me from it!"

"On it," he replied before he unclipped from the main bag rope and onto Penny's rope to go get her.

Meanwhile, Elsa began to move towards Penny while Ross continued his search of the floor. Using a built-in TIC in her mask, she was able to make out Penny through the dense smoke. "Just hold on," she said to herself. "I'm coming..." As she crawled at a fast rate of travel, she breathed down her air heavier than before.

Soon after, Penny saw Elsa come to her. "Elsa!"

"Penny!" Elsa waved hi to her as she got close. "Don't worry, I'll help you get out."

They both then heard Lieutenant Avery on the other side of the debris yell out, "I'm on the other side on your line, Penny! I'm gonna try to move some debris!" As both he and Elsa began to sift through the fallen debris to get Penny's line, she looked on in anticipation. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was only about a minute, the line was freed and hoisted over the debris.

Elsa said, "You'll probably have to go around the debris! I'll meet you when the search is complete!"

"Got it," Penny replied. She then began to feel her way around the debris, eventually, finding a path that went around it while holding up her rope so it wouldn't get tangled. On the other end, Lieutenant Avery held up the rope as well.

After several minutes, all four of them met back up at the main bag with Lieutenant Avery. "Okay, let's move together again!" As the four moved forward once more, Penny breathed a sigh of relief. "We just went past the second knot. Let's start searching again!"

Elsa shouted as she split away to do her search, "Let's go!" However, soon after splitting off, another high shelf shifted next to her as she moved by it. Lieutenant Avery cursed at himself.

Penny, who was nearby, yelled out, "Elsa, what was that?!" However, her warning was too late.

The high shelf suddenly tipped over and landed right on the young 19-year-old girl as she screamed in fright, spilling its contents and burying her. As her scream was cut off by the impact, Lieutenant Avery yelled out, "Oh fuck! Elsa! Elsa!"

Ross and Penny quickly returned to Lieutenant Avery as the three of them rushed to her aid. Ross called out, "Elsa!"

Lieutenant Avery radioed frantically, "Vigilant Truck 201 Search to Incident Operations, Urgent!"

"Go ahead," replied a paid fire chief outside the building.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday," the lieutenant called out. "We have Firefighter Elsa Schnee down at this time! She got crushed by fallen debris! We are on the third floor, and we all have about 1200 to 1400 psi left in our 2200 bottles! I'm gonna set my PASS alarm off to guide RIT to us!"

"Received," Incident Operations replied. "Incident Operations to Incident Command and Vigilant Command, do you copy the 10-66?"

"Vigilant Command received," replied Captain ap Llewelyn.

"Incident Command, 10-4," replied the IC. "IC to all units operating here, clear this channel and switch to District 2, Channel 3 for ops. Keep District 2, Channel 1 clear for the mayday and switch to District 2, Channel 3. IC to RIT 1, go in and get Firefighter Schnee on the third floor. Lieutenant Avery's PASS alarm should be activated up there."

"RIT 1, 10-4," the leader of the first RIT team replied.

As Lieutenant Avery turned his PASS alarm's manual alarm on, the three of them worked frantically to free Elsa, who had been knocked out as a result of the collapse. Penny managed to free one of her legs. "I got her right leg!"

"Good," Lieutenant Avery replied. "Try to get her torso moving, and we can drag her out! We got RIT 1 coming up for us as well!" Soon enough, they were able to drag her out of the debris. As they pulled her out, they noticed that her seal on her mask was compromised, meaning she was both leaking air and letting in toxic smoke. "Oh crap!"

"We need to get her the fuck out of here fast," Ross told Penny. "Let's go!" The three of them then began to drag her to the entrance to the third floor, taking their rope bags with them. He thought to himself, "We can't move fast enough! Elsa's been breathing in all this toxic shit!"

At the hospital several hours later, Weiss visited her cousin by her bed. Her brother and sister had left a few minutes prior. She was still unconscious as a result of her injuries, and had breathed a bunch of toxic chemicals from the smoke. As she knelt beside the bed, Weiss said to herself, "Damn it, I promised your mom that I'd protect you in place of your dad." She was referring to her Uncle Alfred, Elsa's father, who had died in the August 23rd attacks. She then told Elsa, hoping she would hear her somehow, "Come on, Elsa, you're strong. You can pull through this."

Penny then walked in. "Weiss, I'm here." She then sat down and sighed. "I'm so sorry for what happened. I feel like I could have prevented it."

"It's not on you," Weiss adamantly told her. "You had no control over that shelf falling on her. Don't you dare blame yourself." She then turned back to Elsa. "If I blamed myself for every death or serious injury I've seen, I'd be dead of suicide by now from grief."

"I can't help it," Penny told her in response. "I know it's..." Penny then groaned. "Forget it, Weiss."

Weiss then sat next to Penny and addressed her face-to-face. "Penny, is everything alright?"

"No," Penny bluntly told her. "How is any of this alright? For the past 7 or so months, I've been waking up to nightmares, and not just about August 23rd. Now the ones about Beacon are coming back, too, and I'm losing sleep."

"I've lost sleep, too," Weiss replied to her. "Jaune tells me he hears me moan to myself or call out to people in my sleep." She then looked up and saw a familiar ghost in the doorway to the room.

"It sucks I can't be there for her," the ghost of Alfred himself said. Only Weiss could see or hear him. "Weiss, why?" He locked his cold dead eyes with her's.

Weiss could not come up with an answer as she continued to stare at him, fixated on something she did not know of. As she stared into what everyone else saw as empty space, she thought to herself, "Why?"

"Weiss," Penny asked her as she snapped back to reality. "Are you here with us? You've been staring into empty space."

"Oh, yeah," Weiss replied, brushing it off.

March 23, 2022

Late that night, around 11 PM, Weiss stood behind the bar in the rec room at the Vigilant Fire Company, having been the last out of several volunteers who came by to drink earlier. She had resisted drinking until they had all left, and now that they were gone, she popped open a half-empty bottle of whiskey and poured herself a glass. She also pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it up. "Fuck... I haven't done this since my third year at Beacon." The lights were all off, except for a few spotlights above the bar.

"You know," suddenly a voice rang out from the other side of the bar. "You kicked that Arma Gigas' ass. I had my doubts that you would be fit for Beacon, but you put my doubts to rest."

"Vater," Weiss asked her father's ghost in German. "Meinst du das?"

"Ja," he replied honestly. "Na sicher. Besorg mir Brumeister. Nicht diese Scheiße aus dem unteren Regal."

"Another thing to note," Winter's voice then called out as Weiss quietly poured her father a glass of Brumeister beer. "She also put any firefighter I knew to God damn shame when it came to auto extrication." She then turned to her sister. "I'll take the bottom-shelf shit. Gordon's whiskey."

"You know," Hermann told Winter. "That's one thing I never got. You always drank that. Gordon's. Brassman's. Whatever. Really?"

"I like the way it tastes," Winter told him. "Personally, I don't give a shit. It's not like I'm harming anyone with my alcohol choices."

Weiss then passed both of them their drinks before she finished her's and began to pour another glass. As she did, another voice called out, "Did you go in any other buildings beside Building 1?"

"That's new," Weiss noted as the ghost of Taiyang appeared before her. "I never thought I'd see you here."

"I didn't see you in Building 2 when it came down," Tai told her. "Where the hell were you?"

"Yeah," Winter replied in agreement. "Why did you stay out after Building 1 came down? I would have ran into the other buildings if I had lived."

"I was looking for the rest of Team RWBY and for Qrow," Weiss replied to both of them in annoyance. "Tai, your daughters deserve a team mate that will do that for them."

"They would have understood if you went into Building 2," Tai retorted.

"Yeah," Weiss replied to him. "And look how that ended up for you."

"You shut your God damn mouth," he replied as he pointed at her. "I had a job. I moved onto the next objective. Ruby and Yang would have completely understood."

"I'm not gonna argue any further," Weiss replied as she took a sip of her second drink before putting the cigarette back into her mouth.

"Oh, really? Weiss," Winter demanded of her. "You will. I think you were scared. That collapse bullshit scared you off, so you stayed at Protection's quarters, hoping you wouldn't be needed anymore. It makes sense now. It really does."

"I'm fucking warning you, Winter," Weiss told her as she got in her face, with Winter replying with a smug look. "Don't push me."

"You wanna know why you did that?" Winter then giggled. "You're a coward, Weiss. You are a fucking coward." She then flicked a lighter she grabbed out of her pockets. "All the bravado, all the knowledge, all the balls, Weiss motherfucking Schnee, the most daring fireman this side of the city, but you know what? It's all a bunch of horse shit, because the one day your company... No, your entire God damn department, needed you the most, you froze up like a God damn needle-ass little dick."

Weiss yelled at her as she chucked the contents of her glass at Winter, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" However, this caused the fire in Winter's lighter to catch er alcohol-stained clothes on fire and sending her backwards onto the floor as she screamed.

Hermann just sighed and said to herself as Weiss put Winter's ghost out with a fire extinguisher, "You damn kids..."

"Okay," Weiss said as she towered over Winter. "Anyone else wanna try that?"

"It's alright," Tai told Winter as he helped her get back up. She ignored her own burn injuries from the fire as Weiss put the extinguisher away and went to a cabinet on the server side of the bar to grab cleaning tools. "You're okay, Winter."

As Weiss began to clean her mess, she began to offer a rebuttal to Winter and Tai. "Listen, everything was fine that noon. We did our job, we rescued people, we tried to put the fires from the plane crash out, whatever. Even as Building 1 came down, it was all instinct. Thing is, it was after... We never knew what to do after..." She then looked to her father. "How about you? Me and Winter always enjoyed you and mom's stories about firefighting and EMS. We always did. But you never told any of us what to do after the bad calls. After the dismembered bodies. After the burn victims. After the abused or molested children. That's not even getting into the bullshit that went down at the SDC, especially after Grandpa died. As far as I know, what you did was keep your mouth shut and never speak up about issues or abuses by your own staff, except when it was time to pour booze in!"

Tai said to himself, "Oh no..."

"And to top it all off," Weiss finished. "You separate from our mom and have a son that we knew NOTHING about until shortly before you died! That's what I fucking knew about "after,' you God damn piece of shit! You son of a bitch! And what about mom, huh? What did she do after she witnessed much of the same trauma? Drink, fight, cheat on you! That's about all I was taught by you or her!"

Hermann was horrified by Weiss's comments. "I... I..."

"And Tai," Weiss told him as she shifted her focus. "How about you? Ruby and Yang told me all about how you shut down completely after Summer died. You have some God damn balls to rag on me for shutting down at the USC when you did it for God damn years after she died! You were barely there for either of them until Ruby was a young teenager, and ONLY then do you come out of your slump! It took you God damn long enough, huh? 9 fucking years of wallowing despite having a family to take care of? Who the fuck do you think you are for criticizing me, you hypocrite?!"

Winter began to realize that maybe she had pushed her sister too far. "Weiss, calm down."

"Calm down?! CALM DOWN?! After what you and Tai told me, I'm not gonna fucking calm down and shut up!" Weiss then took a deep breath. "Let me tell you something. I'm no God damn coward. I wasn't the Valedictorian of my class in Beacon for nothing, Winter, not to mention the medals I've gotten from hunting AND firefighting, asshole! I don't know if it proves I'm a hero, but it certainly God damn proves I'm not a coward. The world could be ending around me, and I would know just what to do. Hell, if this firehouse blew up, I would know just what to do! But... You know what scares the shit out of me? Relationships, friendships, family... I'm gonna be honest, I suck at those. Every day, it feels like I'm driving everyone I love away. Here I am, with my 'after' being booze, cigarettes, and talking to a bunch of dead assholes!" She then finished her second drink. "And that is the truth..."

Weiss then bent down to grab a towel on the floor, and when she went back up, the ghosts were gone. Their glasses were on the table, in various states of empty, full, or half-empty. Weiss took them all and drank any remaining alcohol in them before cleaning them in a sink. Once she was done, she put every glass back in their original places.

"Fucking hell," Weiss said to herself as she left the rec room to walk back to her mansion. As she walked out the front door of the firehouse and began her walk, she looked around her and saw the apartment building she had once lived in with the rest of Team RWBY after Beacon and before August 23rd. The night was cold, and the street was mostly desolate, a stark contrast to the daytime where the street was packed with cars and pedestrians.

About a block away, she crossed the street the firehouse and her mansion were on at an intersection just as she saw a decrepit-looking man with ragged clothes begin to walk towards her. Suddenly, the man bumped into her and stopped as they both looked at each other on the other side of the street.

"Be easy with me," the man told her as he pulled a knife on her. "Don't fight." His face looked sunken, much like a hard drug addict, and he had thinned brown hair.

Weiss, confused, asked him, "What the fuck do you want?"

"Any money you have on you," the man replied as he got into a fighting stance. "Don't fight. Give me the money right now. I need it." He seemed fidgety with the knife, and his eyes were dull.

"Okay, okay," Weiss replied, more annoyed than frightened as she pretended to reach for her wallet. Instead, she quickly pulled out a snubnose revolver she carried with her and shot him twice in the chest, coating the sidewalk in blood and attracting the attention of several onlookers across the street as the man fell to the ground. "Sorry for the mess..."

An onlooker ran to her as she held up a phone and asked her, "Ma'am, are you alright? I'm on the phone with the police!"

"I'm fine," she replied as she brushed herself off. "The guy who tried to rob me isn't." She then put her gun away and began to check for vitals on the man that had just tried to rob her at knife point, going from self-defense mode to EMS mode in a split second despite her intoxication. "Yeah, he's probably gonna die, but I might as well try to save his life anyway." She then held a burp in as she began to apply pressure to the gunshot wounds with her bare hands. "My hands are gonna be fucking soaked in blood when this is over..."