The Third Crusade


"Faunus! Comrades! Allies to the cause!"

In the darkness of one of the countless train cars, the White Fang huddled and prepared. Some were wounded, bleeding and groaning still from their crash. Others were all the more empowered by it. Chiffon stood firmly in the middle: untouched, yet no more prepared for what was to occur. She was lucky to be from Beacon.

"We are about to embark on the Third Crusade! The eyes of Vale will be upon us all, no longer able to ignore our message!" their officer shouted from the door. Even with their enhanced hearing, his voice barely carried over the gunfire and roar of battle outside. To hear them outside the heavily-armored walls of the train car would be impossible. Already, attempts had been made to check inside, but locked doors and more pressing, dangerous matters kept the attention of the humans on the Grimm.

"Already, our other cells lay siege to the human authorities! Already, our loyal faunus have begun their assault! Now, our chance to dismantle this corrupt kingdom has come!"

Her eyes traced across the others in the room. Some were enraptured by the speech of their commanding officer. Some focused on the door that would soon open to the war. Others, even through the slits in their masks, met her gaze. She turned away from them.

"Make no mistake, White Fang: this shall be a great struggle. Many will die. But know that for each of you who shall perish, we shall have claimed five humans in our revenge!" Excited murmurs rippled through the crowd. She stayed silent. She hoped none saw her spotted ears laying flat against her head. A loud klaxon cut the officer's speech short.

"It's time." She could hear the vicious grin in his words. "Aura users, I want you up front!" She dragged her feet moving towards the door. "Remember, all of you. Remember why we fight. Remember what they've done."

She remembered her family. She remembered how they'd died. How she couldn't do anything. Her anger was like a lit match to keep her warm in a frozen night, but it had to do. Her breath steadied, and she raised her rifle.

"Remember to show them no mercy!" the commander roared. He raised his hand high, a simple trigger in his hands. He pressed it.

Small Dust charges burst ahead, hurling the metal doors off into Vale. For the briefest moment, the streets were silent. She froze.

A line of police cars half-torn and riddled with razor-sharp feathers and claw marks were the only things holding back what looked like a river of ink. Grimm were dissipating in the streets, already being replaced by more of their own kind, weak against a defensible position, perhaps, but their numbers filled the street as far as she could see, crawling atop cars and buildings alike. The roads were dark like that of Mountain Glenn's, sun obscured by the smoke and ash. Police gaped in shock at the legion of soldiers in the train cart. Even the Grimm, for that moment burned into her mind, stared at them in curiosity.

But what caught her eye most were the civilians. There were so many. Watching. Running. Helping the best they could. They too, turned back to look.

She wished they hadn't.

"Open fire!"

The roar of the assault rifles beside them silenced the screams of the crowd before they could even begin. Her own was silent, trembling in her hands. The match burned out, and her attempts to bring up her rage slipped through her fingers like sand. She didn't understand. There were faunus in the crowds. She thought they were capturing military targets: bases, police stations, armories. She didn't think they'd be targeting civilians. She didn't even think this many Grimm existed between Mountain Glenn and Vale.

As the shouts and cries fell silent, she realized she heard nothing to her right. She looked over to find another soldier, clad in the same uniform as her, the same black band marking him as a defector from Beacon on his arm. He, too, hadn't fired. She realized, as he stared back at her, that many more had not, as well.

But as she was shoved forward by the wave of men and women moving out from the train car, she knew they were outnumbered by their more bloodthirsty allies. The Grimm stormed passed them without so much as an errant tail slapped in their direction. A young Beowolf even smashed right into her in its haste, bowling the two of them over and knocking the rifle from her grip. Her hand scrambled for her pistol, only for her to realize the Grimm did not even swipe at her. It only cocked its head to one side as it rose, nodded towards the road ahead, and raced off. Like it was asking her to follow.

Like she was one of them.

And follow, her comrades did, one by one, rushing forward into the madness leaving only stragglers behind. She couldn't. Her feet only brought her backwards. Her hands only tore the mask from her face. Her eyes only traced along those left further back as well. Her mind only noticed that they were staring right back at her.

Chiffon dropped her pistol and ran.

She didn't notice that the soldiers sprinting behind her wore the same black armbands as she.

Nor did she notice the broken, white masks left behind them.


Ruby had to keep going. She slid under a pouncing Beowolf and brought her scythe up to cleave it in half as she passed by. It was just one of many on this street. She could hear gunfire and shouts further back, but they were all in the distance, now. This area was fully ruled by Grimm, and she was here to kill their queen. Even as she cleaved through the creatures of darkness, Ruby could see the sea-green eyes of the serpent peering down from blocks ahead. It knew she was coming for it. By all means, she should've known it would mean she was headed towards a trap.

Right now, however, Ruby was laser-focused on only one thing: saving the day.

A blast from her rifle sent her flying up onto the roof of a nearby building. Pillars of smoke had started mixing together in the skies to form a shroud that blocked out the sun. Atlas' warships hung as silhouettes in the sky, cannons rarely lighting up in great flashes, but each blast sent streaks of light far behind her to support the soldiers and police. They'd written this place off completely. It all reminded her a little too much of Mountain Glenn.

All the more reason to not screw this one up.

Ruby was checking her ammunition—only a little more than one magazine—when she heard a blast of gunfire directly behind her. Fearing the worst, she spun and aimed her rifle at the potential new foe.

"What do you think you're doing?" Yang asked with frightful calmness, her hands on her hips and bright-red eyes boring into Ruby's.

Ruby flinched and lowered Crescent Rose when she realized just who she was pointing her gun at. Red eyes and no rage never boded well. Ruby had really hoped she'd never be on the receiving end of that combination.

"I-I, um..." All of Ruby's bravado and determination slipped away from her.

Yang's eyes passed her over, then widened when she saw the coiling serpent watching them from afar; the very same she'd seen chasing them in the tunnels.

Her eyes flared. "You were chasing after that, weren't you? Without telling any of us? Your own team?"

Ruby struggled to find an answer.

"What were you thinking!"

"I..." Ruby mumbled under her breath too quietly to hear.

"What?"

She squeezed Crescent Rose. "I can beat it! I'm the only one quick enough to get to it, and I've got enough ammo, and if I conserve my aura enough I know I can take it down and if I do then maybe..." Ruby took a breath to slow her rambling. "Maybe this'll all stop."

"Oh, you can beat it, huh? Just like you beat the Deathstalker in initiation all by yourself?"

Ruby opened her mouth to protest, but seeing Yang move at all silenced her. Ruby flinched as she drew close, unknowingly holding her weapon tighter to her.

Yang pulled her into a crushing hug. "You... you just can't solve problems by running at them alone, sis. Not when you've got your team right behind you. Especially me. Alright?"

The tight embrace muffled whatever response Ruby tried to give, but Yang got the gist of it: she knew.

She let her little sister go and tried to mask how much her just vanishing off into the swarm of Grimm had scared her, just like she tried to mask how she swiped a tear away from her eye.

"So..." Ruby tapped her fingers on Crescent Rose. "Does that mean you'll help me?" she asked with a hopeful smile.

"Nope!"

Ruby's face fell.

"I'm here to drag you back whether you like it or not. I know it's hard to hear, but..." Yang wasn't the most heroic type, she knew, but she still found the words hard to say. "I... don't think we can fix this one."

Ruby drew her lips to a fine line and furrowed her brow. Unable to keep her gaze on either her sister or the district they were about to leave behind, she stared down at her feet and took a deep breath. Yang was right. She forced herself to look at Yang and opened her mouth to speak.

The wind whipped around them and the whine of a Bullhead's jet filled their ear as one of Beacon's aircraft swept by the building then hovered overhead. The doors at its sides rose.

"We heard you two needed some fire support!" called Coco, still dressed as if she were going out to the mall, fanciful purse and all.

Ruby's eyes sparkled as she pulled away from Yang and waved them down.

"You bet your butts we do!" she shouted with a grin as Yang watched on, unsure whether she should be glad her sister got her hope back, or afraid of exactly what that would entail. "There's a big Grimm controlling all of this: if we can take it out, it'll bring this whole thing tumbling down!"

"Well then, kid, sounds like you're going to need a spearhead." Coco smirked and nodded off to the rest of her team.

Yatsuhashi leaped into the street below, crashing down with a pulse of green aura that shook the building and shredded not just the road but the Grimm for yards around. Fox landed at his side, but was only visible for a moment before he'd taken off down the ruined road, cutting down any remnants of the creatures of darkness that had survived.

"Come on, Yang! There's still hope for us, yet!" With a shot from her scythe, Ruby was off into the fray yet again, leaving Yang to follow behind and pray nothing else would go wrong.

With Velvet weaving intricate webs of Dust that sent comets of ice and flaming meteors soaring into the largest groups of Grimm, Ruby and Yang were even able to catch their breath. The commotion—and no doubt the serpentine leader realizing it was in danger—was summoning hordes of Grimm towards them, but with CFVY at their side, Ruby was sure they could do anything.

The time for heroes and heroines hadn't ended, it had only begun.


"What... What's going on, here?" Weiss asked herself as she stared out into the plaza she and Adam had jumped down to. They'd thought this was a faunus-dominated neighborhood: a prime target for the White Fang to take, Weiss had thought out loud. An unlikely place for the Vale military to defend, Adam had added. Combined, it'd likely be a stable location free of fighting, making it the perfect place to get prepared to down the White Fang's operations.

Instead, they'd fallen into a warzone as bad as the one they'd left. Soldiers clashed across the plaza, gunfire ringing out across streets and in houses, roars of Grimm occasionally rising out of the chaos. Vale's military had tried to form a foothold here, instead finding themselves faced by the White Fang. But it was not the White Fang fighting the military that drew their attention.

"It's a mutiny," Adam muttered.

What drew their attention was the White Fang soldiers fighting each other. Surviving only from the Grimm targeting only the protectors of Vale, the White Fang had turned on itself, the differences between the two 'sides' being invisible to them beyond a few who were without their masks. The entire plaza was a messy, four-way battle: Grimm against the military against the White Fang against themselves.

Weiss only narrowed her eyes at the battle ahead. Adam jogged forward.

"We don't have time to think on it! Take them down!" he called back, and Weiss followed. In the madness surrounding them, the two managed to grow close with barely any attention brought to themselves at all, even with the Schnee crest emblazoned on Weiss' back like a target. Gunfire smacked into the ground around them as they passed by, the occasional rocket even soaring above their heads, but by the time they were close enough to the carnage to fight, it was much too late to stop them.

Weiss rushed into the fray, shattering auras with pinpoint strikes and leaping away to deliver the same fate to another before the White Fang grunts could even recognize what happened. Adam split away from her, firing Wilt into the window of a building he heard gunfire within and leaped after it. He grabbed his blade from the air and twisted to swing at first soldier he saw: one peering at a door down a hallway, hand wrapped around a shortsword.

The soldier turned. Her cheetah ears twitched. Adam's blade halted at her neck just as she yelped and fell to the ground, bringing an arm to cover her unmasked face. An arm still carrying a black armband, almost invisible against her dark sleeve. Chiffon.

Adam gazed down at his former student until he heard the murmurs and labored breathing around him and realized she was not alone.

Huddled behind couches and against walls were others like her: White Fang soldiers without masks, yet with black armbands. Some of the soldiers still carried their weapons, yet looked unsure if they even wanted to aim at him or not. Many were wounded or showed signs of a struggle. They were all traitors to Beacon.

The question was if they were traitors to the White Fang, as well.


Her aura was almost completely drained now, Weiss thought: her soul could only create so much to fill the gaps she kept creating and so much to power every strike and slash across the White Fang soldiers. Still, she refused to stop now, flipping over a car a squad of five White Fang were using as cover to pin down Vale's soldiers. With one swipe of her rapier, she struck one across the face and left him collapsed on the ground. With another, she knocked the gun of a second out of their hand and froze a third to the ground.

She turned a fierce glare towards the last two. They dropped their weapons on the spot. Weiss could faintly hear some of Vale's soldiers whistling and cheering for her. Taking a page from her dramatic teammates, she flourished her rapier for them before jogging off further up the street. She couldn't see Adam anywhere, but he could hold his own. What she needed was time to check her Scroll and find out just where Ruby and Yang had gotten to. Weaving through the warzone, she finally managed to slip into an untouched alleyway.

A check of her Scroll had Weiss grimacing. The situation had arguably gotten even worse for their team, with herself struggling to stay above ten percent of her aura, and the other two not faring much better. With Ruby's Scroll destroyed, she couldn't even gather how much she had. Even so, Weiss knew they were running on fumes. Scarcely two hits away from total vulnerability in a best case scenario. At least, none of them appeared to be taking any further damage. Worse yet, she was out of ice and lightning—thanks a lot, Torchwick—Dust. Her fire and energy Dust weren't doing much better. A flick to her map showed Yang about where she expected her to be: near the epicenter of all of this and getting closer.

Weiss just hoped that wherever Yang was, Ruby would be as well. They weren't too far, at least. She and Adam could catch up.

She sighed. "Those two are going to get us killed, some day, I swear."

"Traitor!" A shout echoed through the alley over the din of conflict.

Weiss was already running that way before she could think.

"We're giving everything for you, and you protect the one who'll take it away!"

She peered around a corner to find a trio of White Fang goons aiming their weapons at a pair of civilians. One had a lion tail protectively curled around himself. The other had dog ears flattened to her head. Behind them was one of the White Fang's own, wounded and without their mask. A defector. They had the civilians trapped with their backs to the wall and, though they had space to escape left or right, there was no way they'd outrun the bullets of the White Fang.

Weiss bit her lip: one of the three soldiers was stockier than the others with a large machine gun in his arms. Just her luck to run into some officer rather than more grunts. A dark part of her mind told her to just leave, that it wouldn't be worth it to risk herself for them. For the ones who caused this. In defiance of those thoughts, she spun Myrtenaster and whirled around the corner. A rush of wind Dust blasted one of the three into the ground, and before the other two could even turn she'd twirled over their heads and in between them and the civilians.

Both sides were silent.

"Schnee," the leader of the trio growled, and was forced to raise his machine gun up to block Weiss' lunging blow. The fallen soldier had just begun to rise behind her, but the civilians had scrambled to steal his rifle. With such a sluggish weapon, he could scarcely do more than keep his weapon between him and Weiss. His partner had no such trouble, however, and whirled out to slash into Weiss' side. Crying out as it bit at her abdomen through her already-faltering aura, Weiss whipped Myrtenaster up and launched the two backwards from the alley with another blast of wind.

The third soldier shouted and leaped for her back with blade in hand. Ignoring her wound, she spun around his swing and slashed out from behind him before peppering his back with rapid stabs. It only took two to shatter his aura. The third dug deep into him and brought him down, cursing and clutching his stomach where the rapier had pierced out the other end.

"Are you three alright?" Weiss looked over her shoulder, panting and gripping her side. Her eyes widened.

The girl with dog ears was aiming the assault rifle at her with a trembling grip. The maskless White Fang they were protecting had a hand at a sword hanging from waist, an arm in front of the unarmed civilian. Their eyes danced across her but kept returning to the same thing: the Schnee emblem on her back.

"Do you really think that this is gonna be enough to make you a big hero?" Torchwick's words echoed in her mind. "That people are just going to forget who you are? Whose family is screwing up the world?" What was worse was that, for the briefest second, she believed him. Even after what she'd done, was she about to get shot in the back by faunus she came to protect because of her name?

She shunted those thoughts from her head and turned fully to face them. "I know I may not be the one you want to see, but please, trust me. I'm here to help you." The three remained silent. Slowly, the girl lowered her gun. The soldier stepped forward, but pulled his hand away from his sword.

Then, his eyes widened, and his gaze fell onto something behind her. Weiss turned around as the roar of a machine gun filled the air and a stream of bullets sliced through the alleyway. One caught her leg and forced her to one knee, but that didn't keep her from draining every bit of energy Dust she had left to throw up a glyph large enough to cover the alleyway. Bullets crashed into the shield, and Weiss glanced over her shoulder to find the three faunus staring at her.

"What are you waiting for? Go!"

The three practically tripped over one another racing off.

The former White Fang, however, slowed to a stop just before he would've vanished from her sight. "Schnee... Thank you."

Being thanked by the White Fang. What a world. Weiss chuckled ruefully at her situation as the rain of bullets faded and her glyph fell apart. Forcing herself to stand—that bullet didn't get through her ravaged aura, but she was sure it'd leave a nasty bruise—Weiss scowled at the machine gun-wielding soldier and stepped forward. She was a Schnee. Her father may have tarnished that name, but she was going to leave it shining.

Maybe Torchwick was right. This might not be enough to make her a "big hero", nor would it be enough to make people forget what her father would done. But they'd remember what she had done. What Weiss Schnee had done.

Her soul soared as the White Fang soldier suddenly stopped and raised his gun. Weiss took a step forward. He took a step back. She took another step. The soldier fired, yet his aim was off enough to not even shake her. With a wave of her rapier, she brought her aura up as far as it could go.

And her stomach dropped when she heard the sharp scream of two fireworks from behind her. Torchwick. Yet, two blue lights flew past her completely, the first bursting into a cloud of white smoke and knocking the soldier onto his back. The second froze him to the ground. Weiss whipped herself around to face Torchwick, yet the only thing she saw was cold mist and fading, white light. She was alone.

Weiss gulped and glanced around. No one to her left. The three faunus had already run out of view to her right. The soldier was knocked out and frozen ahead of her. Not wanting to wait around and get ambushed with so little aura, Weiss jogged towards the dim light of the streets. With smoke covering most of the sky, it was like she hadn't even left Mountain Glenn. She ducked down at the alley's exit as a pair of Beowolves raced by, but they didn't even glance in her direction.

A constant hum filled the air, by now: the Atlesian airships were floating just above them as grand silhouettes. The light of their guns were like lightning in a storm as they let loose, yet few shells fell down to Vale, instead fending off swarms of squawking Nevermores. Weiss narrowed her eyes as she brought up her Scroll and started a call with her teammates: what were they doing? She was as much of a patriot as the next Atlesian, but thousands were at risk down here.

Why would Atlas let Vale burn?


"Surely, Chairman, you understand the gravity of an attack like this." It took much of Ironwood's resistance not to slam his fist on the console displaying the Vale Council, safe from all harm, so flippantly refusing Atlas the right to help protect their own people. Indeed, as he stood on the bridge of the Atlesian Aerial Ship Atlas Telemon, aerial dreadnought and flagship of the entire Atlesian Fleet, it took all he had just not to raise his voice. If it weren't for the officers flanking him, natural resistance may not have been enough.

"And surely you understand why that means our soldiers must handle as much as possible!" the leader of the council replied in his shrill, grating voice. "We cannot surrender the sovereignty of our nation by allowing Atlesian troops loose on our soil. We've done enough letting you flaunt your might, as is."

"Thousands of your citizens are dying," Ironwood said through gritted teeth as he leaned over the screen. "This is a matter of survival!"

"A matter of survival? Our survival depends on hope! What hope can Vale have if they do not think they can protect themselves! Unless you're suggesting we keep your aerial fleet above us full-time." The chuckles of the chairman's comrades said enough on their opinion of that possibility. Ironwood only thought of how much it contrasted with the screams of their own below.

"This is final. We will be handling this matter on our own. You may defend yourself as you see fit, General Ironwood." The line cut.

Ironwood clenched his fist tight enough for his right arm to creak.

One of the officers raised a hand to his ear, nodded and looked towards his leader. "I believe I have some good news for you, sir: we've captured the one you were looking for."

The door to the bridge opened. Two soldiers nudged their 'captive' forward.

Penny pressed her index fingers together and grinned up at him.

"Erm... salutations, General?"