The Flagbearers
"Yang, how's your end going? Did you find Ruby?" Weiss' voice was barely heard over the devastation.
Ruby struck out ahead of Yang and CFVY in the streets, bringing her scythe in massive twirls that cleaved Grimm with every swing.
"I'm fine!" Ruby called back as she ducked under a swing from a Beowolf and struck it back with a swing of Crescent Rose. "And honestly? It's going pretty good!" She watched Coco's minigun cut a gash in the Grimm and road alike from above, every potent bullet bursting into flame and force on impact that crushed even Ursai beneath its rain. Yatsuhashi pulled rear guard duty, driving Creeps out of the ground with a stomp of his foot before batting them away.
As a Nevermore was struck by Velvet with ice Dust and came crashing down behind them, Yang prayed they never fought Team CFVY in the Vytal Tournament.
"We're almost there!" Yang followed up. A train car pierced out of the plaza ahead, Grimm still crawling out from the shadow-clad ruins. "CFVY must have that Super King Taijitu thing running scared! We haven't seen heads or... uh... other heads of it ever since they got here!" A smaller King Taijitu sprung out of the miasma ahead at Yang, only for a rain of gunfire to shred it to pieces. A rain of gunfire that didn't come from a Bullhead.
Yang looked over her shoulder. A dozen other people were bringing up the rear. It wasn't just police, either: Vale soldiers, White Fang defectors, even other Huntsmen were advancing with them, even through all this insanity. She turned her gaze towards Ruby, pushing further ahead with every step.
She had an idea why they'd follow them.
"I'll try to get Atlas' attention and find Adam. Try not to have too much fun without us." Weiss' line dropped.
Ruby let out a breathless chuckle. By now, she was sure she was running on fumes and determination. Her lungs burned. Her muscles screamed at her. The thought of having to fight that King Taijitu was starting to fill her with just as much dread as excitement. But she couldn't stop: if she did so now, she might not be able to get herself moving again. A heavy bat of her scythe slapped down another Grimm.
Someone screamed. Ruby's eyes flicked up. A citizen clad in little more than nightclothes tried to wave her down as a trio of chittering, arachnid Grimm crawled up the walls. The Grimm were pale: plates of armor spread across all but its abdomen. She hadn't even seen that kind of Grimm before. The civilian squealed and ducked as one of the spiders fired a black, viscous web up towards him.
Ruby's eyes widened and, with a shot from Crescent Rose, she launched herself over the battle lines and used the spindly Grimm as a springboard to launch her the rest of the way up onto the roof.
"What happened!" Ruby called out the second her foot touched down on the edge of the building. She only pulled her eyes away from the civilian to twirl and slash the legs out from beneath one of the spiders in a single, smooth movement.
"We've been stuck here since the beginning! You have to help us, please!" the man begged.
"Of course I am!" She shot the final one down from the wall, thankful that these new Grimm were at least not that tough. "How have you stayed here this long?"
"W-well... we had a Huntsman helping us, but one of those spider things bit him and... I guess they must be poisonous." He didn't need to say much more, nor did he have the chance to: splintering wood and the screech of shifting furniture came from below, followed by panicked screams. The man blinked and turned towards the stairway downstairs.
Ruby had already vanished, leaving only a trail of rose petals for him to follow.
Three floors below, people scrambled over one another in the tight quarters of the apartment they'd barricaded themselves in. An Ursa had finally forced its way through the meager furniture and barriers put up in its path. The massive beast had gotten trapped in the doorframe to their safe haven, but it was already splintering. Their barricades were crushed under its paws the moment it could reach them. At most, they had perhaps a minute to pray, hide or take their chances with the horde clambering for them in the street.
In the end, they had only seconds. The people within screamed as the frame gave out with a tremendous crack and the Ursa stormed in and bellowed as if in thanks for the meal it had been given. Yet, its bellowing soon turned to one of pain. The civilians watched on in a mix of terror and curiosity as the Ursa thrashed about, then was dragged out of the room altogether. Its roars were silenced.
No one dared move. No one dared breathe.
Ruby poked her head out into the room. "Um, I got it!"
When she didn't hear anything, Ruby stepped fully inside, folding Crescent Rose behind her back. "Is everyone alright?" Her eyes scanned across the people in the room and, like a match brought to the wicks of candles, hope and recognition lit in each of the civilians' eyes when they met hers. There had to be at least twenty cooped up in this tiny apartment.
When faced with yet more silence from the citizens, Ruby opened her mouth to speak again, only to be practically swarmed with cries, shouts of thanks and cheers.
"A Huntress!"
"Is that what's going on, outside?"
"They're reclaiming it already! We've made it!"
"You're here to save us, right?"
The room grew quiet, and Ruby was left scrambling just to recognize that people were talking directly to her at all. After a bit of stammering and trying to ignore the fact that twenty people were staring at her and more people that were hiding were popping out to look at her too, she gulped. What would the rest of her team tell her? Yang would probably tell her to just woman up and answer, Adam would say to quit doubting herself, Weiss would say something about being a dolt and then tell her to remain calm...
"Y-you, I, uh..." Alright, that wasn't helping! New angle: what would they do?
Yang would be confident! "You... bet I am!" Ruby declared with the brightest and most confident grin she could muster. Already, she could feel a bit of that weight lifting off her heart.
Then what? Weiss would gain control!
"Listen up, everyone! My name is Ruby Rose, I'm with Beacon!" She unfurled and spun her scythe around her in a grand flourish. "And I'm gonna get you all outta here!" Adam would be dramatic!
As Ruby waved the cheering people upstairs and called for their Bullhead to start picking them up until they could clear the entrance, and as she watched the hope flooding back to the civilians' eyes, she knew that no matter what happened here, she knew was a hero.
"Well, isn't this just one big, happy reunion." Adam turned his gaze around the room. There were twelve, including Chiffon, whose neck he had not drawn his blade from just yet. Each and every last one of them were students he'd personally taught, having followed the White Fang into an attack of this caliber. Perhaps they refused to fire at him because of that old connection. "So, have you realized what I was speaking of before, Chiffon?" He turned the edge of Wilt away from her neck.
"O-of course! This... this isn't what we wanted! I thought the Grimm were just a distraction! I thought it'd just be taking out the police or bases o-or something—anything but this!"
Adam's shoulders slumped as Chiffon rambled on, eyes panicky and brimming with tears. They were red, like it wasn't the first time she'd found herself crying, this morning. She was hysterical. They really did have no clue what they were getting into. He couldn't lie and say he wasn't glad for it.
"Have they walked down the same path as the humans?" Adam asked, and finally sheathed his blade.
Chiffon quailed, lemon-yellow eyes finding everything but him and the other people in the room interesting.
"... Yes," she murmured under her breath. "It's why we ran."
A sharp bang came from a door down the hall, followed by shouting. They weren't holding up to defend themselves from Grimm, but from other people.
"Is that right? All of you?" Adam turned to look at the others who, one by one, lowered their weapons.
The splintering of wood echoed through the hall. They grew restless, looking from him to the faltering door, too afraid to move. Surviving a fight with whichever faction out there wasn't impossible, but even if they did have the numerical advantage—of which there was no guarantee—the tight quarters, wounded personnel and low morale would no doubt leave even more casualties. Nothing would prevent another attack, or their deaths. Especially against the Grimm.
"Please, Adam," Chiffon said, "we'll go away, leave Vale, anything. We won't bother anyone again just, please... help us, Major Taurus."
Adam's lips drew to a fine line. He wasn't their Major. He wasn't their mentor. He wasn't their leader. He gripped his hilt hard enough for it to dig through his gloves just as the door came crashing down.
But he could be.
Adam's gaze turned up to the door as the soldiers beyond shouted. He could just see the eyes of the first person stepping inside as he pulled Blush's trigger. Wilt launched into the stomach of the soldier and Adam was right behind it, slashing up and clean through his aura the second his hand could reach his blade. Four other soldiers were in the hall beyond, two on each side of him. They didn't even have the time to blink. Adam switched his grip at the peak of his slash, twisted and struck down the first at his left before stabbing the one on his right. Two snap shots from Blush silenced the other two.
The air was full of the noise of crackling auras as Adam sheathed his sword. He paused as he caught a better look at the unconscious and wounded soldiers. They wore green. They were Vale's military. He narrowed his eyes: it was a reminder that the defectors beyond here had nowhere to go. They wanted to run, just as Blake did, but they were known traitors to Beacon, known traitors to the Kingdoms and, now, known traitors to the White Fang. There was nowhere for them to run.
"You won't be leaving anything," Adam said.
"What are we supposed to do, then!" Chiffon spoke up. "We can't stop this: it'd be suicide!"
"Correction: you can't stop this alone." Adam walked back into the room, eyes steeled. "There's more of your kind out there fighting right now: Fang who have turned against their radical brethren. We all caused this mess, and I know we can fix it." He drew Wilt and twirled it in his hand. "You want to know what you're supposed to do?"
Adam smirked and, with a flourish of his blade, pointed to the stairwell. "Follow me."
It was time to take back what was his.
Ozpin stared out at the pillar of smoke marring the dawn sky and stretching into the clouds, hands steepled in front of him, gaze not so much stoic as glazed over: the Bullheads sent from Beacon were mere dots in the sky moving towards Vale now. But would they be enough? He would have never believed that Salem's pawns would have built up this much in so little time, even with her faunus. Qrow's warning only felt like it was yesterday, and now...
He gripped his cane tighter. The worst part was that he knew there was so little he could do. To leave the CCT undefended, to leave the Vault below undefended, to leave her undefended, could very well be what the mastermind was waiting for. All Ozpin could do was watch. Watch and pray.
"Headmaster!" The shrill voice of the council chairman knocked him out of his thoughts. Ozpin turned to face the screen, where the council was one image of many displayed in the center of any video or surveillance on this breach he could get his hands on.
"I can assure you, fellow members of the council, that Beacon is doing all it can to defend Vale. We are leaving a guard barely fit to manage any attack on the school grounds, as it is." Ozpin sighed. "They struck when the majority of our students were away on missions. I am afraid this was not just premeditated: it was planned for some time."
The council members looked between each other before their feed muted itself. Ozpin was slipping back into his thoughts once more when the volume returned. They were averting their gazes. Only the chairman was prepared to look him in the eye as he spoke, even over a connection.
"Not everything, Ozpin. You still have Miss Goodwitch."
Ozpin refused to let any emotion show. "She is already on her way, Chairman. Her fighting and repair expertise should lighten the load on emergency services considerably."
"We don't want her to fight. In the case of the situation deteriorating, I believe there is a plan placed for her to use her Semblance to... seal an area."
Even through his concentration, Ozpin could not hold back his glare. "You're suggesting we create a second Mountain Glenn."
"We're suggesting that it would be better than the first time a Kingdom has fallen since the Great War."
"It's out of the question." Ozpin rose from his chair. "We do not have the authority to sacrifice millions of lives!" He leaned forward, ready to lecture them further, when the ground shuddered beneath his feet, and a sense of dread filled him. If that was the mountain...
Gouts of flame twisted and flickered in the smoke and embers as the earth shook and left the building Weiss stood atop creaking ominously. Crests of the Schnee family faltered, but returned bright over her head as she looked around for the source. Her attempts to get Atlas' attention seemed to pay off, however, as a dropship broke away from the pack, engines screaming as it came to a halt in front of her. Its back dropped down to form a ramp, and Atlas soldiers waved her forward, blocky helmets masking their eyes.
"Ma'am! Please board the plane: we're leaving the area immediately!"
"Leaving?" Weiss turned her nose up, scandalized. "You haven't even arrived! What is the meaning of this?"
The ground rumbled once more, leaving Weiss to stumble and the soldiers to look between one another, grimacing.
At the front lines, even the Grimm halted, ears and noses turned up in curiosity as the loud claps of thunder reverberated through the earth beneath them like artillery, and a low groan came from all around. The roof Ruby and the last civilians were on started to crack, and she could see Yang trying to wave her down from the streets below.
"Hurry!" Ruby practically shoved the citizens into the Bullhead's waiting door and glanced around until her eyes fell upon the source of the breach itself. As if on cue, the Taijitu they were searching for burst through the earth so close she could almost touch it, ripping apart the road and sending up clouds of smoke and dust to join the cloud above. The groan of the earth became a final shriek of stone and metal as the foundations of buildings, pipes along the streets and the remnants of the subway system below the plaza all came crumbling down into an abyss, dragging countless Grimm with it.
Countless more were wriggling within, ready to climb out. Ruby ducked as the gargantuan Grimm plunged into a building and began slithering out of the massive hole it had created.
And just like that, the Breach had almost quadrupled in size.
The part of her claiming this was her fault tried to claw back at her, but a single look at the civilians staring at her in the Bullhead, still needing hope, threw it aside. She was the flame lighting each candle of hope. She could never go out. She was the hero.
Ruby smiled to them. "We've got this, go!"
She leaped down to join Yang, standing at the edge of the crater left behind, watching the Grimm begin clambering up. Countless more of those strange spiders were rising. Velvet was already pouring devastating Dust upon them from above with Coco, and both Yatsuhashi and Fox were getting ready for yet another round against the Grimm, but there were others that Ruby didn't remember coming with them: police and military and White Fang—that raised a lot of questions—and Huntresses.
"Sis..." Yang took a step back from the encroaching horde.
Ruby could see that the ones that had followed were frozen in place, eyes unsure and weapons turning every which way.
Then the alarms, so constant and loud that they'd become background noise to them all, ceased. The speakers crackled with disuse, then a voice made itself clear.
"I am afraid, Headmaster Ozpin, that such an authority is exactly what we have. As such..."
"The Council of Vale has come to a decision: the Government District of Ildaite City, as well as all districts within a one-mile radius, will be sealed off from the remainder of Vale. All entrances and exits will be sealed within five minutes, and the districts will be reclaimed at a later date. We shall return. Vale's sacrifice will not be in vain."
Weiss' grip on her rapier was almost tight enough to draw blood. The Atlesian soldiers frowned, and one called back something to the pilot that she didn't hear over the roar of the engines.
"Sorry, Miss Schnee, Vale isn't letting us do much more than self-defense. We have to go."
"I refuse to!" Weiss shouted. "There has to be something we're capable of doing."
"Our hands are tied!" one of the soldiers protested. "The only thing we're allowed to do is defend ourselves and Atlesian citizens caught in the crossfire. That includes you: we can't leave you behind." He sighed. "Between you and I, Miss Schnee, we we hate this too."
"And we'd hate whatever would happen to us if Jacques Schnee found out we just left you here," his partner added with a snort, but turned away when Weiss leveled an icy glare at him.
Still, he had a point: the retribution Jacques would bring upon them if she got even a scratch under their watch would almost be as bad as what he would do to her for getting in the middle of all of this in the first place.
And yet, if they were so held by that... Weiss had grown to sneer at how much she depended on her name before, but using it to help save others? She could live with that. She could live with using a reputation grown from cruelty to give hope.
"You're right, my father would be furious, and rightfully so. So, as an Atlesian citizen and a Schnee, I suppose you have no choice but to protect me, is that correct?"
The two soldiers looked between one another. She caught a flicker of a smile on the one who protested against Vale's abandonment in the first place.
"It would be self-defense of Atlas and its constituents, yes."
Weiss gave them a pleasant smile. "Well, then, it would be terrible to derelict your duties as soldiers." She took a step forward towards them, then twisted and sprinted off towards the breach.
"You heard her! Protect Weiss Schnee; we're not leaving!" was the last thing she could hear before the hatch closed and the dropship took off, soaring right behind her.
"Faunus! Comrades! Allies to the cause!" Adam shouted from atop a van surrounded by Grimm corpses wasting away into dark mist. Behind him stood the young defectors, traitors to Vale and White Fang both, face bare of masks and their allegiance shown by torn sleeves and black armbands. Once merely twelve soldiers, they'd tripled since the sirens fell silent.
"Is this what you desired from your 'Third Crusade'? To unleash the Grimm upon your own kind?"
Ahead of him, over two dozen White Fang loyalists took cover behind scattered cars and behind the corners of buildings, rifles aimed at their former comrades, yet they could not bring themselves to pull the trigger. Even a full prototype Paladin stood silent at the head of the pack, White Fang emblems emblazoned on its side.
"To massacre countless humans and innocent faunus under the command of a common, human criminal? So focused on terror, you've forgotten your strength, White Fang!" He slammed his fist to his chest. Some of the soldiers flinched. Good.
"Where is the strength in having the Grimm do your work? Where is the strength in following a human even in your supposed finest hour? Where is the strength in only fighting when your opponents are scared and defenseless? Well? Answer me!"
Only the far-off pops of gunfire and roars of far off Grimm replied.
Adam stepped down and walked towards the lines, ignoring the raising of weapons and charging of the Paladin's rifles. "Listen to me. You wear masks because the humans wished to make monsters of us. But in the end, they do not believe us to be monsters, they want us to be monsters so that they can justify all they've done to you. To us! The only thing you'll prove is that they are right to try and stomp us out." If only he had thought of that before he had created them, perhaps he wouldn't be in this situation, Adam ruefully thought.
He drew his blade. Two warning shots zipped by, one even grazing his cheek, yet he walked forward, unfazed.
"We will keep moving. We will help the innocent out of this mess." He stopped within arm's reach of the Paladin, staring up at its cockpit. "But if you really think this is strength, if you really think this is worth it, then go ahead and shoot me. What's one more faunus to the pile, right?"
Silence reigned. The Paladin's rifle lifted up to aim at his chest.
Cracks resounded throughout the street: masks being crushed beneath the soldiers' boots until the only one hiding their face was the pilot of the Paladin.
Its guns lowered. "What would you have us do?" the pilot asked through its speakers.
Adam smiled and walked past the Paladin as he sheathed his blade. "Have the strength to know when you have gone too far. Have the strength to be willing to fix it." He spun on his heel when he reached the back of their lines, watching all sixty people waiting for orders.
"Follow me, Fang! We're saving Vale!" He turned and dashed for the epicenter, a small army following behind him.
Adam's eyes widened as he noticed a shadow watching from atop a building ahead: Blake. She smiled down to him, eyes soft and carrying an emotion he couldn't recognize from so far away, then leaped down to wordlessly run at his side.
Yet, one thing nagged at him.
"Blake, where's the rest of your team?"
"There's no way we can beat that!"
Ruby bit her lip as the Huntsmen began to speak up. Now what was she supposed to do?
"You heard the Council, we have to go!"
Heroes couldn't just abandon everyone like this, but if Vale was about to pull everyone out, what could she do? Ruby looked back at the odd mix of soldiers and Hunters she had following behind her.
"What about everyone else here?" someone in the crowd called out. Most were prepared to run already, but she couldn't. Not when she was this close.
"We'll be as screwed as they are if we don't move!"
Ruby's grip on Crescent Rose tightened, and she made her choice. "No! We can't just leave Vale like this! As long as there are still people trapped here, how can we just run away and save ourselves? Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Make things better, not worse?"
One of the Huntsmen spoke up: "Look, kid, the Council said—"
"Screw the Council!" Ruby shouted. "I'm staying here, and I'm saving as many people as I can! If they wanna try to block me from saving people, then I'd like to see them try it!" She loaded her last magazine into Crescent Rose. "We cut a path all the way here, the least we can do is keep an evacuation route safe. I know I am." Ruby yanked back the bolt. "Because I'm a Huntress. That's. My. Job."
"It's kinda what you do, right?" Of all those there, it was a demasked White Fang member who stepped forward first: the very one she'd saved on the train. One of his arms was in a rudimentary sling and all he could hold was a pistol, but he remained. Like knocking down a chain of dominoes, that little push was all it took: one by one, the rest of the fighters caved and stepped forward, cheers rising from them as they prepared their weapons and spread out to secure the area.
Yang could only watch her sister, eyes wide and the smallest hint of a smile creeping on her face before Ruby turned to her. Ruby nodded to her, and Yang shook herself out of her trance. She fumbled in her pocket for her Scroll as Ruby jumped ahead and started cleaving Grimm before they could fully climb up.
"Coco, Velvet did you two get that?"
"Don't worry, Yang: we got every word. We'll bring the worst of the civvies out in our Bullhead. You think you'll be alright down there on your own against that King Taijitu?"
"We'll be fine, don't worry!" She fired her gauntlet with a jab, catching a Beowolf mid-leap and blasting it back down into the abyss. "Just stay safe out there!"
"Heh, like you need to be telling us that." The Bullhead's engines picked up in the distance, and the aircraft flew off in the search for more civilians. "Your little sister's really growing up, you know that?"
"Yeah..." Yang chuckled to herself. "Yeah, I do."
The call ended, leaving Yang to stare at the status of her team. It wasn't bad enough that Weiss was struggling to get back to ten percent of her aura and that she was scraping by around fifteen percent, nor that even Adam wasn't doing much "better" still at twenty. A timer above their pictures flashed red. Combined with their time in Mountain Glenn, they had been fighting for over an hour straight. With the adrenaline keeping them going, Yang didn't doubt they could see this through, but auras could only constantly regenerate so much. This much strain meant they'd get less and less back... frankly, she wouldn't be shocked if she didn't see her aura go up even five more percent by the time this was over.
Even if Ruby was sitting at half of her aura, Yang thought, she didn't know if that'd be enough to last her.
Ruby launched herself atop the closest building and spun her scythe when she came to a halt, finally face-to-face with the gigantic, cobra King Taijitu. Its black head was adorned with countless tribal markings glowing a sickly green. The same color showed through entire sections of its body where scales were ripped away or surgically excised, broken up only by four, sharp eyes still shining red. It was easily larger than the one that had crushed the hotel, and may have been even longer: both sisters could only see its body breaking through another building, not its other half.
Bemoaning her sister's determination to kill this thing in the same thought as she appreciated it, Yang fired herself up onto the roof beside her. Spider Grimm crept up the sides and onto roof, approaching faster. For a moment, the three stood there, the beast ignoring the other soldiers and Hunters it could've reached, the sisters ignoring the dog-sized spiders skittering closer. They appraised one another. The Grimm, more an Emperor than a King, hissed in a manner all too similar to the rattle of a snake.
Ruby narrowed her eyes and, just as the Grimm hissed louder and lunged, she fired Crescent Rose and leaped forth, shouting.
