Ruby was exhausted. While she would normally make immediate conversation about what to do next regarding Mantle and the hunt for the Relics, everybody she brought it up to would give the same response: "It's late. You need to rest after what you've been through." Though she had only been separated from her group for two days, the sheer physical and emotional stress she went through made her appreciate the smaller things in life, like how soft the couch in the disheveled pharmacy was. Even the little spring sticking out of the side didn't bother her. She would've stayed asleep if it weren't for the urgent message from her scroll.
"This is Oscar Pine, commandeering Manta 2-9. Calling all Huntsmen and military remnants, a pack of at least fifty Grimm have appeared about eighty-five feet southeast of my position. They're moving fast! They've already reach the Sam and Weston and are coming closer by the second!"
It came right out of nowhere, and just when Ruby was about to have a good night's sleep for a change. She grimaced, silently wishing the Grimm would just go to bed like normal people, but prepared herself for the fight to come. This wasn't out of the ordinary. A Huntress should be ready to protect the people at a moment's notice, and it was for that reason that she never changed out of her outfit. She was already dressed, tattered cape and all. Getting ready was as simple as grabbing her precious Crescent Rose scythe she had just reunited with and walking out the door with her team.
"Whazzat?" Ruby asked in her groggy state. "What time is it?"
Weiss and Yang were already up; the latter sitting quietly next to Ruby while she slept. Normally, it would be very strange to have her sister practically stare at her as she slept, but her unwillingness to leave her side for a second may have been the result of nearly losing her to Salem. Blake came through the bedroom holding one of her books, but Ruby couldn't make out which one, as she had no time to adjust to waking up.
"There's one Grimm you must exercise extreme caution against," Oscar said through each scroll. "It looks just like Ruby! It's heading toward the Sam and Weston where the other Grimm are and…gods, no!"
"What?" Weiss exclaimed.
"That Grimm's doing this?" Yang added, curling her fists.
"There are civilians trapped at 39th Avenue!" Oscar exclaimed. "The Ruby Grimm is right there! It's about to—"
"That can't be!" Ruby exclaimed, suddenly becoming more aware at the mention of Grimm Ruby. "She wouldn't—"
"—protect them?" Oscar finished. The last two words were said in confusion.
"Protect them?" Blake asked.
"Well, yeah," Ruby said. "She would do that."
"But why did Oscar warn everyone to exercise extreme caution?" Weiss asked.
"I…I don't know," Ruby said hesitantly. She was sure there was a story to be found there, but that would have to wait. The other three glanced at each other, then back at Ruby. The looks on their faces made it clear that they still didn't trust Ruby's Grimm counterpart, yet nobody said it directly. Team JNR was still asleep in the bedroom; a fact that Yang would go to rectify.
"Hey, JNR! Get up! Emergency!"
The sounds of muffled groaning soon came from the bedroom. Ruby rose an eyebrow from her teammates' strange behavior. It would take a couple of minutes for everyone, save Ruby, to put on their combat gear. Nora was the first one out, though she was much less energetic than usual. She was followed by Jaune, then finally Ren. They also looked exhausted; even more than Ruby.
"Hey, uh…why are you guys so down?" Ruby asked. "Oscar said—"
"Yeah, we know," Jaune said, then yawned. "More…more Grimm."
"You look tired," Ruby said with a frown.
"You think?" Nora asked in a quiet, but clearly irritated tone. "Ever since Atlas fell on Mantle…literally, it's been hell."
"Aw, come on! It can't be that—" Ruby said, trying to cheer her team up with her usual optimism, only to stop mid-sentence when she saw the exasperated faces of everyone in the room. Team JNR, in particular, collectively have more wrinkles under their eyes than Ruby had fingers. "Oh. That bad, huh?"
Jaune and Weiss both nodded silently. Ruby watched them, followed by the rest of her team, pass her. They went out the door, one by one, and all with disheartened and exhausted demeanors. When Nora passed by her, Ruby gave her most positive smile, only for it to falter when she saw her face.
"They're bearing the worst of it," Nora said bitterly. "The people here; they lost their homes, their families. They're just barely clinging! So many of them, so few of us."
"Oh, uh…well, I'm sure it will…"
Ruby couldn't find the optimistic words to turn this situation around. At least, not right now. As she followed the rest of her team outside, one thing became perfectly clear: it was freezing. The heating grid was still offline since she was here last time. Also, she noticed some military hover bikes parked just behind the pharmacy. They looked just like the ones Yang, Ren, Jaune, and Oscar found during Salem's attack on Atlas. There were six in all; one for each of the group, save Ruby herself. She would have to sit on the back seat of one of the bikes.
"Oh! So you guys all got bikes," Ruby said out loud, hoping to get some kind of positive reaction. Nobody so much as glanced in her general direction, to her chagrin. Nearly everybody climbed in a bike. There didn't seem to be any assigned choices. Each Huntsman drove away, one by one, in the same direction; presumably toward the Sam and Weston. Weiss, however, kneeled down toward her bike.
"Hey, Weiss!" Ruby said enthusiastically. "Looks like we're partners again!"
Weiss said nothing. At first, Ruby thought she was engrossed in some kind of work in maintaining the bike, but a closer examination revealed that she wasn't actually doing anything.
"Uh, Weiss?"
"I know. I just need a minute," Weiss said solemnly, standing up. "It's never easy…having to see it."
"Weiss? Are you okay?" Ruby asked softly.
"Am I okay?" Weiss asked rhetorically. Her voice quivered from these three simple words, and her gaze turned toward the ground. "What do you think?"
"I think," Ruby said, now noticing the once floating island of Atlas now crushing part of Mantle, "you've been through a lot."
"A lot?" Weiss snapped. Her breathing was labored from her seething rage. "A lot is an understatement! Ruby, take one good look at the situation we're in! Look at what's happened! Look what's happened to Atlas!"
"U-uh…" Ruby stuttered, bearing the brunt of Weiss' outrage. "It's seen…better days."
"Better d-aaah! Our kingdom was annihilated! It's actually worse here than the Fall of Beacon! At least there, the Huntsmen did what they could to contain the tragedy. But here, the military just abandoned the people! They abandoned Mantle, all because Ironwood declared Martial Law to escape Salem, but even that failed! Look! Just…look…at…Atlas!"
"Yeah, that came out wrong. I'm sorry. I didn't think thing—"
"It's gone! The most technologically advanced kingdom in the world couldn't stop Salem! We couldn't stop her! We…" Weiss stopped to breathe, trying her best to hold back tears. She pointed at the giant hunk of land that used to be Atlas. "Ruby, that's what's left of it. That was my home. That was the place I spent my childhood. I…I know my family had their problems. I know my childhood wasn't always pleasant, but…I had happy moments there, too. Seeing my home, my legacy, my past just ruined like that…I…"
"Is…there anything I can do to help?"
Weiss climbed in the front seat of the hover bike. Her face contorted into an expression of forced calm.
"I…you know what, forget it," she said, shaking off her sorrow. "There's…nothing we can do about that now. The past is gone."
"Weiss, if you need time to—"
"We don't have time. The world doesn't just stop when you've lost something. Beacon taught us that, too. The people here need our help. If you want to pitch in, get in the back seat, so we can try and salvage what's left of this lost cause."
Those last two bitter words cut Ruby deeply. The Weiss she knew could occasionally be a bit haughty and cold, especially when the two first met at Beacon, but this went far beyond that. The way she turned away from the wreckage as she sat on the bike, the way the shadows under her eyes were more pronounced than everyone else's, and the way her shoulders slouched. Ruby didn't pick up on it until now, but her long-time partner and friend looked tired; not exhausted, but tired in the way that Ironwood was tired when the group first flew to Atlas.
Without another word, Ruby sat in the back; her face inches from the white strands in front of her. It was apparent that there was little room for a back seat passenger. The bikes were made for one person each.
"I bet it's just like riding with Yaaaaaaa—" Ruby said, screaming at the end when Weiss drove the bike at full speed right from the start. She initially grasped Weiss' waist in a desperate attempt to stay on the bike, trying her best to ignore the snow white hair smothering her face during the ride. A few futile spits and mewls later, Ruby turned her face to the right and just let Weiss' hair lean on her face. At this point, she had a clear view of the devastation around her.
The roads were cracked and disheveled, there were snapped power lines across tilted electric poles, and most of the windows were either cracked or boarded up. Mantle, as a whole, was a broken shadow of its former self. The severity of the situation finally started to sink in for Ruby. Hearing how bad things got from that pilot was one thing, but having to actually see it firsthand was something else entirely. She might have shed a tear for all the lives that were lost…if it wasn't for the way that Weiss suddenly swerved across the road.
"There's one up front!" Weiss exclaimed. Once Ruby got a moment to push Weiss' hair out of the way, she saw a single Sabyr up ahead. Just like that, the anxiety came to an abrupt halt. Ruby was typically one to live in the moment, and right now, that moment was hunting her first Grimm of the day. With Myrtenaster in her right hand and the bike's steering wheel in her left, Weiss conjured a series of glyphs that formed a curve over the side of the road, which she steered the bike into. The curve twisted into a point where she and Ruby were both speeding upside-down, above the Sabyr in question.
With a confident smirk, Ruby unsheathed her Crescent Rose and bisected the Sabyr's head from above, keeping her legs firmly wrapped around the bike. The stylish maneuver wasn't anything new. She did things like this with her Semblance on a regular basis. Now that she wielded Crescent Rose in battle once more, the familiar thrill that she'd lost had returned with it. Without so much as glancing back at the dissolving creature, the duo moved on to the next target.
Meanwhile, the other five were also on bikes, further ahead. No words needed to be said. They knew what to expect, having been Mantle's new unofficial "protectors" alongside Penny for the past couple of days now. Even Team JNR, who are still tired from their last "shift," could navigate past the tipped traffic lights and totaled automotives without any difficulty. Nora, in particular, was usually the one in front. That way, every time there was a large pile of debris blocking the team's path, a single grenade from her Magnhild could just blow a way through, even if she had to use extra effort with her arms into steady her aim on a hover bike.
One such occasion happened right now; three automotives stacked underneath a layer of brick wall that fell from a nearby building. Without bothering to wrap her mind around how such a pile would even stand so tall in the midst of such destruction, Nora fired a volley of pink grenades that exploded on contact with the debris. This created a big enough hole for even an airship to fit through. Nora and Jaune, who rode directly behind the former in another bike, spotted some of the Grimm just past the wreckage.
"Got a pack here," Jaune said through his scroll. "Two Sphinxes to the right, one more up ahead." He steered away from the oncoming fireball and spoke without missing a beat. "They're all on 41st Avenue. Execute attack plan: hole in one!"
That callout was not only meant to give an attack plan against the Sphinxes, but to alert the rest of the team of any important targets. The Sabyrs didn't require a special strategy to slay beyond "shoot, stab, smash, or punch them until they die." Their presence didn't warrant any specific command. Larger Grimm, however, usually required a team effort.
"There's more at the 39th," Oscar responded from the scroll. "It's just two miles from your current position. Penny's there right now, overseeing the Ruby Grimm. We still don't know if it's an enemy yet."
Team JNR were already in the fray by now. Attack plan "Hole-in-One" was something Jaune invented as an answer to the Grimm attacks in Mantle. The plan began as he jumped off his hover bike, showing himself right in front of one of the Sphinxes. With a sturdy shield, he stood tall, using himself as bait and blocking any fireballs shot at him. He only took his focus off the Sphinx when a Sabyr came at him from the side or behind, to which he would have to respond by swinging his sword. The move resulted in him getting bitten a few times, but his Aura could take it.
Meanwhile, Ren drove close to Nora's left and touched her back, using his Semblance to mask their presence to the Grimm. Disregarding any naughty thoughts she may have with his boyfriend so close to her, she twirled her Magnhild in her right hand and bashed a nearby Sabyr horizontally as she drove past it. The speed and trajectory of the blow was hard enough to send the Sabyr flying, directly in the Sphinx's throat. To the uninitiated, the sight of such a strategy would make them think that the team was merely treating the Grimm attack as an intense game of golf, hence the name "Hole-in-One."
In fact, it was actually a way to cease the Sphinx's fireball attacks quickly, as lodging a Sabyr in its throat prevented it from exhaling. That gave Jaune the opening he needs to skewer the Sphinx's head with his sword. Blake and Yang joined the fray from the back, turning their attention toward another Sphinx. Their own attack plan was simpler than "Hole-in-One." While in the air, Blake's Gambol Shroud was vital in allowing its wielder to swing through the air with her momentum like a grappling hook.
By throwing the weapon's sickle blade into one of the buildings and leaping off the hover bike, she got close enough to attack the flying Sphinx. The use of her Semblance was necessary to avoid the fireballs, and with a quick retraction of her sickle blade, she thrust it into the Sphinx's back and planted herself behind it. Once done, Blake needed only hack at her prey's wings enough to cause it to fall to the pavement, where Yang would them punch it at ground level over and over again without having to worry about avoiding attacks.
The remaining Sphinx, having seen the fate of the other two, created some distance between itself and the team of Huntsmen with its wings. It wasn't outright fleeing; the fact that it kept its gaze focused on its enemies and occasionally breathed fireballs upon them at random suggested it was merely changing its tactics. Blake looked back at Team JNR, who was still fighting one Sabyr after another, then glanced back at the remaining Sphinx that was slinking further and further away into the night.
"They can handle that," Blake said to Yang, as the former could tell that the latter was having second thoughts about leaving Team JNR to fight a battle to pursue a straggler. "We'll take this one."
The two got on their hover bikes. Even a single Sphinx could wreak havoc if left unopposed for very long, so the duo separated from Team JNR for now. Blake ended up taking a bit of extra time to get to hers due to having flung herself off of it…while it was still moving. Her hover bike ended up in a ditch.
"This is Yang," she said over the Scroll-radio communication as she drove. "We're breaking apart from Team JNR and pursuing another Sphinx. How's everything on your ends?"
"I suppose this is as good a time as any," Penny said. "Something is very wrong with the Ruby Grimm. At first, she spoke to me like a person did, but after we saw one of the victims, a poor young girl that did not get to live past her childhood, the Ruby Grimm…she…she just snapped."
"Penny?" Yang asked. "Wait, what do you mean 'she snapped?'"
"She barely speaks coherently to me now," Penny explained. "She mumbles things like how she wants to murder every Grimm and fights them with such cruelty. I can barely stand to even look at the things she does to them."
Meanwhile, Ruby and Weiss were having their own fight further away from the point of invasion. They hadn't caught up to the rest of the group yet, and only stopped when they did because they crossed paths with Sabyrs that were in close proximity with unarmed and defenseless survivors. During the fight, Ruby was the first to notice that something off. She didn't immediately vocalize it, but the Sabyrs didn't act like they normally did. They didn't charge at them or make swift zigzag motions to catch them off guard. Instead, they fled. They all went toward the same direction: toward 39th Avenue. Even the ones that got past Ruby and Weiss just left them without so much as a parting bite.
"Have I gone insane," Weiss asked, "or did the Grimm really just ignore us?"
Even more unusual was how the Sabyrs also ran past the survivors, leaving them unscathed.
"That's…" Ruby tried to answer. "Huh."
"Hey, everybody!" Jaune called out over his Scroll. "The remaining Sabyrs are acting really strange. They're all consolidating toward one location. They just ran past us right in the middle of our fight!"
"Yeah, it just happened to us, too," Ruby said.
"What's going on?" Weiss asked.
"What's she doing here?" one of the survivors asked. "Traitor!"
The response was so sudden that Ruby stood with a blank expression for a couple of seconds. Weiss, however, turned away with a hurt and knowing expression. She climbed back on the bike and gestured Ruby to do the same with her hand.
"Weiss?" Ruby asked. "What's going on?"
"You!" the survivor yelled. "It was all because of you Schnees!"
"Just get in," Weiss whispered. "We need to chase down the Grimm. I'll explain on the way."
Ruby did so, giving the angry survivor one last worried look in the process. As Weiss drove in pursuit of the straggling Sabyrs, the sorrowful scowl never left her face.
"It was all because of my father," she said after a moment of tense quiet. "Everything."
"Jacques Schnee," Ruby recalled.
"My own father…he…" Weiss said, visibly shaking as she drove. "He made a deal with Watts. He gave him a backdoor through Mantle's security. He's the reason that the heating grid was shut down. My father…was Salem's pawn! His actions led to hundreds, if not thousands of innocent deaths, and all just for some stupid election!"
"I know," Ruby said with equal sorrow. "We…we tried our best and—"
"And everything went to hell because of my father!" Weiss screamed with a fury Ruby had never seen before, bringing the latter's passionate words to a halt. The former seethed even after the outburst; her tears freely stained her cheeks with each syllable. "His scheme led to the election massacre! His scheme led to the Grimm invasion! His scheme led to…all of this! And my sister…she sided with Ironwood. Even after seeing the paranoid dictator that man had become, she stayed by his…up ahead! Another one up front!"
Ruby noticed another Sabyr in the streets ahead, still running toward the 39th. Being separated by some debris that went up as high as their knees, Ruby resorted to sniping her prey from the back of the hover bike. It was fairly difficult to line up her aim, partially due to trying to account for the wind resistance at such high speeds and partially due to having been without Crescent Rose for a couple of days. After a series of misses, she eventually landed a shot on the Sabyr's body, followed by another to the head.
"She stayed by his side!" Weiss continued her heartbroken rant, as if nothing had happened. "She thought she was doing what's right! And I sided with you because I thought that was right! Could you ever imagine having to fight your own sister? What if you had to fight Yang? You couldn't do it, could you? But I had to…I fought my own sister…and for what? What did we get in the end?"
"Weiss," Ruby said, putting her hand on Weiss' shoulder. "I was the one that chose to keep secrets from Ironwood. If anyone's responsible for Ironwood's mistakes, it's—"
"Don't…you…dare!" Weiss shouted, once again leaving Ruby speechless. "Don't even start taking the blame for his choices. He made his own, just like Winter and I made ours! I followed you that day. I went along with you because I agreed with you. If I didn't, I would've said something, so please…don't make me feel worse than I already do. I…I know that's not how the people of Mantle see it. They don't see Ruby Rose as the cause of their suffering."
"Then…who is?" Ruby asked, reluctant to know the answer.
"You already know," Weiss said quietly. "The people of Mantle blame the Schnees. Who else?"
"What?"
"My father's scheme went public after I personally arrested him. The people saw him for what he was, and despised him for it. My sister was among the Atlesian military who, by Ironwood's orders, sought to leave Mantle to its fate to save Atlas. She thought she was doing what was right, but the people here see her as a coward. They…they hate my family. They hate the Schnee name! And because my father and sister aren't here to suffer the slings and arrows, the people throw them all on me!"
"But it wasn't your fault! Salem was the one that attacked Atlas!"
"And? The people here need someone to blame, and it's easier to blame a family name than it is to blame some evil that's been around for thousands of years. The Schnee Dust Company is a part of human history. People can and have made their own opinions about it long before the Fall of Atlas, for better or worse, but they don't really know Salem. People can't blame what they don't know, so they blame what they do know."
"And humanity is divided for it," Ruby said, "just like Salem wants."
"Despite the fact that the truth about Salem went public, if only for a moment, my father's sins won't just be washed away. Ruby, I don't know if my family is dead or just hid themselves away on an airship to avoid the shame, but the reputation my grandfather cultivated is ruined. All I know is that I'm what's left of it…and the responsibility of restoring my family name rests on my shoulders. That's why I'm still here, in spite of everything. No matter how hopeless things get, I'll keep…"
Weiss' heartfelt declaration came to a pause when she spotted yet another Sabyr.
"Really?" she complained, brandishing her Myrtenaster. "Can't we have two minutes without these rude interruptions?"
Ruby met her opposition once more with Crescent Rose in hand. As she took aim at her prey, she couldn't help but flash a brief smile. For in that brief moment, Weiss displayed more of her usual haughtiness in that complaint than before. That let Ruby know that even being there for her friend was enough to help, if only a little bit.
Meanwhile, Blake and Yang remained in the 41st Avenue, having caught up with the Sphinx. Blake used hit and run tactics with her Semblance to distract it, while using any openings to shoot it with Gambol Shroud. Yang used more straightforward tactics, pummeling it across the skull and blocking any fireballs she couldn't avoid by crossing her arms in front of her. The effort depleted her Aura a bit with each block, as even her armored Ember Celica was no substitute for a shield. To keep her Aura from being too low, Yang resorted to firing a small sticky grenade from her gauntlet into the Sphinx's throat, causing explosive damage from the inside out.
During the fight, Grimm Ruby emerged from one of the streets, giving the two a brief glance. Its vile glare suggested hostility, but it made no move against Blake, Yang, or the Sphinx. This was in spite of Penny's initial suggestion of its intent to murder every Grimm it saw. Instead, it turned away and walked toward in the direction opposite of the invasion, for reasons unknown. With the Sphinx dazed from the sticky grenade's explosion, Yang finished it off with a single Semblance boosted punch through its skull. At the end of the fight, only then did Yang notice the Grimm counterpart of her younger sister.
"Ruby? I thought you were with Wei—" Yang exclaimed. "Oh, hang on. You're the other Ruby. The Grimm one."
Yang said those last three words with a scowl. She couldn't look at this Grimm like her real sister. Nothing could just replace Ruby, yet even Ruby herself vouched for it repeatedly. Neither she nor Blake would immediately attack despite Oscar's and Penny's warnings, but they knew to keep their distance when dealing with something capable of leaving irreparable damage by "accident."
"Is she here to help?" Blake asked.
"I don't know," Yang said, putting her fists and her guard up. "Well, are you with us or against us?"
Without a vocal response, Grimm Ruby caught a Sabyr that came out of nowhere and sank its fangs into its throat. It only had time to give a weak howl before the sentient Grimm tore its head off from the neck down with its fangs. Yang and Blake both watched with their mouths wide open when it casually tossed the Sabyr's headless remains at their feet, just a second before its body dissolved into smoke.
"Oooookaaaaay?" Yang muttered, unnerved by the ghastly sight of something resembling her sister biting a monster's head off. Neither she nor Blake had the nerve to speak before Grimm Ruby left to parts unknown without a word.
"That was a thing," Yang finally had the nerve to speak when it left. "What even was that?"
Before either of the two could continue their conversation, Blake caught a brief glimpse of a Sabyr, though it appeared to be larger than the rest, with a body encased in bone.
"Is that…" Blake started.
"I think it's a leader," Yang finished. "Seems like all we're doing is playing 'cat and mouse.'"
"Let me guess," Blake said with an amused smirk. "I'm the cat?"
"You know it," Yang said with a wink.
The two climbed on their hover bikes and pursued this new Sabyr. Their minds lingered on Grimm Ruby for a little while. They still couldn't trust it yet, but their actions focused on the Grimm that was certainly their enemy, not the sentient Grimm that only might be an enemy. Chasing the Sabyr across the streets that led away from the 39th, and by extension, the rest of the team, the two reached it standing in the middle of a dead end of a large courtyard…where many more Sabyrs stood in wait.
Once the duo realized just how many there were, they also realized that the way they drove in was now blocked off by more Sabyrs. It was clear that this was their plan from the start. The two glanced at each other, more bemused than anything else, and stepped off their bikes at the same time. Yang even withheld the urge to laugh. This kind of situation felt more like a bar fight than a Grimm hunt.
"So it's an Alpha," Yang said coolly. "That's why it's leading them."
The bony Sabyr Alpha let out a single roar, and every single Sabyr under its command went into a battle stance. From the way they spread themselves with an even distance and moved their tails like a synchronized orchestra, anyone with a trained eye could tell that their intent was to attack all at once in a joint effort. In other words, a huge bar brawl with no sense of one-on-one chivalry.
Before this massive brawl could even begin, a massive explosion suddenly occurred in the ice field outside the city. The blast was so colossal that anyone outside, both person and Grimm, could barely make out the dark flames just over the wall as they evaporated into the night sky. The Sabyr Alpha roared when it saw the explosion once more, but it lacked the same ferocity from before. Instead, there was a hint of desperation in its voice. Its limbs quaked and it turned its eyes away before sprinting from the scene on all fours, followed by the rest of its pack.
"Where are they going? They're just running away again!" Yang exclaimed, wasting no time in climbing on the back of her bike to pursue them.
"They looked terrified," Blake answered, uncertain if she was right. She, too, climbed on her bike to chase them. "I think it has something to do with that explosion, not us."
Ruby and Weiss, having been on the hover bike and picking off one Sabyr straggler after another during the other groups ordeals, saw the blast from their end.
"What is that?" Weiss exclaimed, her eyes and mouth remaining wide open.
Ruby, while surprised at first, recognized the dark flames and who they truly represented. Others may see it as a symbol of terror; a final nightmare from Salem to snuff out what's left of Mantle and its people. For Ruby, however, the flames were a symbol of hope; a sign that her Grimm self was still looking out for everyone in spite of how bad things have gotten. With a knowing nod, she smiled.