Weg zur Isolation

Path to Isolation


The benches between Adam and Winter were reduced to splinters behind their weapons. With a shockwave that left every inch of glass from meters around shattering at once and trees once well-watered in the center of the hall bending back, their blades finally met. Behind each, years of rage lay. Adam's eyes already burned crimson, his gaze unwavering from Winter's cold blue even through the sparks where they forced their blades against one another.

Scowling, Adam stepped forward and brought his other hand up, pressing down on Winter's saber with all his might. Winter remained impassive, holding him back with a single arm. It trembled, yet she stepped forward into the clash. Aura crackled and flared around their blades, bloody-red crashing against a frozen white.

Winter was forced back. Only by an inch, but it was enough for them both to know: the first victory, however small, went to him.

She snapped a kick up that forced him to jump away, but when Winter advanced, she struck not with her saber, but swift, trained kicks. Adam matched her blow-for-blow, blocking each with his legs and refusing to concede even a single step. If anything, the two advanced closer. Furious kicks turned to knees from Winter and swings of his sheathed blade from Adam, then to sharp, accurate jabs and hooks narrowly dodged. Then, so close that footwork was impossible, their strikes were deflected and weaved away from just as swiftly as they had come out. Yet their gazes burned into each other.

As one, they stepped back, not to concede but to instead drive their fist towards the other. Their fists met dead-on, leaving their knuckles burning and pain shooting across their arms, but they didn't care. Another clash began, one strong enough to leave their aura flickering across their forms. The air warped and twisted around them both.

It was for pride, plain and simple. They grasped each other's hand, the aim to simply push the other back. To make them fold. Yet, once more, it was Winter whose boots began to skid back against the tile.

"Pathetic!" Adam let up and used the momentum to hurl Winter behind him. She crashed into a railing in the center of the hall, overlooking the first floor through a large opening.

"Is that all the Specialists have!" he roared. He was on her before she even had the time to regain her bearings, leaping forward to try and kick her down to the floor below.

Winter drew her saber, blocking his strike and throwing him back. Adam's foot had barely touched the ground before she was at his side, and he narrowly blocked her follow-up thrust with his own, sheathed weapon. It wasn't enough to keep him from getting launched through the entrance to a bookstore beside him.

She drew first. Another victory, only acknowledged by the faintest narrowing of Winter's eyes. It was also a short-lived one, for when Winter launched forth hard enough to crack the ground, he was forced to draw Wilt to defend himself. Like a crack of thunder, the pressure between the two rattled the shelves and sent books of all kinds tumbling to the ground. Adam held his ground for a second longer, hair and blade alike flickering red with the energy stored.

They parted, then lunged once more, blades flickering between one another as little more than flashes of red and white between narrow shelves. Her saber pierced through where Adam once stood, his straight chokuto swiping only through air when it wasn't parrying Winter's strikes. Slowly, Adam was left to step back as their battle grew more intense. The two nimbly stepped around and over pages and books fallen only a second before as if they had always known they were there, yet once more, their glares refused to leave the other's.

A simple parry left Adam's blade ripping through countless books with its sheer force, but in even the brief time it took for Winter to thrust for his neck, he'd twirled it back around to slap it to the ground.

Yet Blush sat unused, hanging at his waist. He didn't use it yet. Not while the two were testing each another. Teasing one other.

She blocked an overhead slash he wouldn't have expected even Ruby to see coming. It slid across her saber, leaving him open for her to swing for his head once more.

Adam caught her wrist. For a moment, the only sound was their labored breathing. "I had a feeling you gained your rank through your name, Schnee," he spat. "You're as weak as when we first fought!"

The corner of Winter's lips twisted up. "Strange, Taurus: I was going to say the same to you." The two stepped back, Winter raising her blade in defense, Adam sheathing his to prepare.

Winter aimed her saber at Adam. "I merely wanted to measure how much you have improved. Unfortunately, it is clear that you are—" She was gone.

Instinct roared at Adam, and he nearly threw himself against one of the shelves.

"Inadequate." Winter's saber passed through where his head was in a fraction of a second. In the next, he'd twisted and slashed out for Winter, knowing her to be wide open.

There was nothing.

Winter kicked him in the square of his back, yet even when he turned, a wave of aura flung free from Wilt, it only ravaged a number of encyclopedias. Worse, she'd kicked him out from the bookshelves themselves, leaving him deeper in the store and in the open with only chairs and tables surrounding him.

He caught a flicker of white out of the corner of his eye to his right, and he turned to block a strike he felt yet never saw. Wind rustled behind him, and a twist of his wrist meant the point of Winter's saber met the flat of his blade instead of his spine. The floor creaked to his left, and Adam leaned back from a stab at his neck. Instinct and old memory guided Wilt to slap away the follow-up to his right. The strikes came faster. From all angles. Adam could block them, but barely.

Adam kicked one of the tables up behind him: at the speed they were going, even the time it took for it to hit the ground again made it a shield.

A poor shield, for when he turned to swing at where he thought Winter was, he heard wood shattering behind him. Adam twisted to block the incoming thrust, yet he was still launched into the bookshelves with enough force to break the first and leave the rest collapsing in a heap of dust, paper and splintered wood around him.

Crackling aura raced around Adam as he pulled himself to his feet, every inch of red across him radiating a deadly glow. Winter watched him while sitting, one leg over the other, atop a table spared the destruction. She was unfazed.

"Go ahead," she goaded. "Use it. You are nothing without that Semblance. I find it humorous, really: in retrospect, you needed it even when you were in Altebrucke."

With a roar, Adam kicked off of the shelf, books wasting away to petals in his wake. Winter was already off of the table, her blade swinging up to parry the inevitable. Yet, Adam stopped just in front of her, the glow suddenly ceasing. Her eyes widened. A feint. She was open.

In desperation, she gathered her aura and brought up not her blade but her arm, just as Adam swung into it. The room flashed red from the impact, lasting faintly even after the force had vanished.

Winter's arm trembled, glowing a white bright enough to obscure it entirely. Adam's blade stopped right at the edge of her aura, his own a blazing-red that passed over his blade like fresh blood, gathering at the edge, yet never falling. Adam could feel her aura faltering, threatening to give in and allow his to pass through.

"I didn't need it to beat you then, and I don't now!" His blade was back in his sheath and lashing out for Winter in the blink of an eye, but for her, it was plenty of time to lean out of the way. She sped for the center of the ravished room, but Adam was already beside her, Wilt shrouded in red as it came for her. The two were once more on even ground, blurs as they leaped over fallen shelves and dodged strikes just as fast as any bullet, yet so much more dangerous. Shelves were cleaved in half from Winter's parried blows, books blasted to pieces by Adam's gunfire.

"Following through with your strikes this time, Winter?" Adam called out as he fired Wilt and left Winter diving back between some of the last bookshelves standing.

"Willing to kill?" Adam was swift to capitalize, rushing in to grab his sword, leap over a return thrust and kick off one of the shelves to slash in at Winter's side. She leaned back, Wilt a line of red racing an inch over her head. By the time she'd risen, Adam was backing off, twirling his sword.

"For how long, Winter?" He sheathed his blade, and the shelf next to her split in half, tumbling right over her. Aura made it no problem for Winter to throw even the heavy wood aside, but it did make it hard for her to move when she had to block Blush's bullets.

"How long have you been so desperate to kill me?"

"Since you had the gall to take me hostage—"

"Liar!" Adam was upon her, and the force behind their blades reduced the books around them to shreds and the wood they sat upon to splinters.

"That was your problem, Winter! You didn't have the resolve to even try!" Adam ignored his own hypocrisy. Fooled himself into thinking that keeping her alive was just a mistake. Once more, they kept their blades locked, pressing down on the other. "But that's always been your problem, hasn't it, Schnee?" he snarled. "You have no will! Nothing to fight for!"

Adam stepped forward, and Winter was pushed back. "Not your people, your country, your company or even your family!" Where their blades met began to glow not with aura but heat. "This is all you have: your hatred. Your want to kill, but it's shallow!"

Another step. Another foot of ground conceded, but Winter continued to fight back. "How hypocritical, coming from you," Winter hissed. "You've done nothing but destroy, nothing but kill!"

"With purpose!" Adam roared. He could feel his aura push hers into submission, could feel his blade begin to bite into her saber. "They died for a reason, worth something in death even if they were scum in life!"

"Then for what reason did my teammates die!" Winter halted him, eyes brimming with hate as they bored into his own. Slowly, she pushed back, leaving them in a silent stalemate just in the entrance of the store.

There were many reasons Adam could've given. Genuine ones. Ones that, as unlikely as it was, could've granted closure, even if obvious. So the faunus could have their era of peace. So the White Fang could protect another town. So the Dust could fuel furnaces Atlas never would. To save those not working for an oppressor.

But he didn't want her to feel closure. He didn't want the slimmest chance for this fight to end. He wanted her to hurt.

Adam kept his gaze on hers. Now, it was his turn to be impassive, his turn to not care. "Because they were weak. Just like you."

Winter's breath caught in her throat. Her eyes widened. Her saber clicked. A flicker of steel flew towards her other hand, and Adam could feel Dust coming to life.

He didn't need his instinct to tell him of the danger: he vanished out of the store in a blur, yet still felt an arctic chill run down his back as he landed atop a railing overlooking many now-broken escalators leading down to the first floor. A grand department store, darkness mere feet beyond its window frames, loomed ahead.

When Adam turned back, the first thing he noticed was the sheen of ice across his arm. The second was that the bookstore was completely encased, looking as though a wave struck it and froze mid-crash. Mist rose from the devastated store, and Winter stood at its entrance, standing still and watching where he once stood. He couldn't see her face, but he could see the second, smaller saber in her off-hand.

"Coward." Her voice was as cold as the frost she left behind.

Adam hadn't even recognized that she was gone this time before the tip of her saber was pressing into his cheek, mid-thrust. Only quick reactions and a quicker dive to the floor stopped her from stabbing him clean through his jaw. First 'blood'.

But even as he rolled to his feet, he was granted no respite.

"How dare you hide behind those excuses!" Winter shouted, laying into Adam with strike after strike. There was no attempt to clash now, only a frantic defense from Adam as he stepped back. "You are no different from the rest of your kind, shouting about how everything is 'self-defense' even as you slay the innocent!" A thrust sliced across his cheek. She kicked him further back.

"Your 'morality!' " A strike from her off-hand heavier than even Yatsuhashi's slammed away Adam's attempt to block. "Your 'just cause!' " A thrust to his open chest left him flying back, slamming into the very railing he'd had Winter pinned against. "All just masks to hide your hatred and vengeance!" Each blow was one Adam blocked, yet the sheer force left the steel he was pressed against crumpling.

But Adam caught a weakness in her anger: the ferocity of her strikes left her too focused to offense. Carefully, masked by every blocked strike, he aimed Blush.

"And this very building is a testament to yours!" she shouted.

Adam's concentration broke, and so did the railing behind him, leaving him crashing down into another set of benches below. Groaning, he pushed himself up to his knees.

"Vale may not be so willing to put you on trial for causing the Breach, but Atlas knows there could have only been one perpetrator, and General Ironwood is not so kind to terrorists." She was before him in an instant, thrusting forth for the killing blow. "Now accept your sentence!"

Her saber stopped not even an inch away from his throat. Adam, kneeling and with his gaze still to the ground, held Wilt's tip against her chest, piercing just barely through her aura and uniform. The line of blood stood out clearly on the Atlesian white. The two remained frozen in that moment, daring the other to push forward and ensure that neither would be leaving alive.

Finally, Adam matched her glare once more. "You're still hollow."

Slowly, he stood. Winter kept the point just against his skin.

"You can say whatever you wish about me, but we both know hatred is what guides you, too."

Panting, the two began to step away from one another. They let their blades lower.

"But that's alright, Winter. I was just as hollow as you were." A flick of a switch, and Blush's spent magazine clattered to the ground. "But I found others. Partners. Friends." He sheathed Wilt and withdrew a magazine from his coat. One emblazoned with the Schnee insignia. Adam smirked.

"Maybe you've heard of one of them."


"I should've known from the second they recognized each other!" Weiss cursed herself as she and the remainder of Team RWAY raced through the dorm hallways. Ruby was frantically dialing for her uncle, but he hadn't picked up the last four times.

"Okay, so, silver lining: maybe he's just trying to be safe?" Yang offered, trying to find anything good in this. "He looked ready for a fight, but not like a killer!"

Ruby groaned in frustration at Qrow not picking up yet again. "It's so much worse than you think: she was there when his dad died and apparently knew about it!"

"She was in a mine?" Yang asked.

"Some place called 'Altibrook' or something! They were friends!"

"Altebrucke..." Weiss muttered, then groaned and rubbed at her temples. "Of course they were both there." That didn't explain much more, though: she threw the possibility that her sister had anything to do with that travesty in the back of her mind, but how did that lead to Winter being so prepared to kill Adam that she even had the letter ready for her? As they raced down the stairs to the first floor, Weiss searched her mind.

Wait. There was another time she'd heard about Altebrucke: Winter had suddenly grown interested in it right around the time she left for the military. Just after she was held hostage by the White Fang. She was distraught, but Weiss had just passed it off as it being such a stressful situation. But the fury afterwards wasn't as explainable. Unless...

Her eyes widened. "Oh my god, Adam had kidnapped my sister."

They flung open the front door of the dormitories only for Ruby to run face-first into Qrow himself. The three of them wasted no time in desperately trying to explain the situation. Unfortunately, for Qrow it just sounded like a loud jumble of panicked words.

He held the bridge of his nose. "Woah, woah, woah, slow down a second, kids! Where's the fire?"


A wide wave of flame forced Winter away from Adam's side. He was forced to keep his back to a tree in the center of the corridor, eyes flicking around him. The floor was shining with countless glyphs that surrounded him. He'd fought with Weiss enough to know how quick that would make Winter. Combined with her natural enhancement, it meant he had no chance at all to match her in speed.

But he could still match her in wits. Adam grunted as, in little more than a flicker of white, her saber raked across his left. But because of that, he knew when to twist to his right and block the next lunge with Wilt half-drawn. That fraction of a second of her needing to stop would've normally been a perfect opportunity to strike, but she was sliding away using her glyphs before he could think of it. He needed to get out of this death trap.

He was open from ahead. He couldn't see Winter, but he knew that was the most likely angle. Adam kicked off of the tree behind him, diving not even a foot above the crash of wind and flash of white that his opponent had become. He heard the quiet hum of Dust as he rolled to his feet. Spotted Winter with her shorter saber already raised where he once stood. The glyphs in front of him and at his feet were ice-blue.

A wall of ice spikes came barreling towards him.

Adam fired Blush and ripped the now fire-charged Wilt free. Not a wave but a thin of line of blue flame sliced out faster than a bullet. The ice wall and even the tree fell, sliced in half. Winter rolled to her feet beside it.

Half of her off-hand saber clattered to the ground. The glyphs flickered. Adam fired Wilt for her in an instant, using the glyphs to his advantage to outpace it and slam his foot into Winter's chest. She'd already recovered enough to block when he caught and swung Wilt down.

With a smirk, she flipped back—kicking Adam in the chin for his troubles—and was gone, racing back for distance. Growling, Adam refused to give her any, blitzing forward and forcing her into the fight. Every dodged swing only fed into their momentum, neither able to even recover before needing to flip or slide over another strike.

Adam cursed himself as Winter twisted out of the way of a wild stab and leaped ahead into the mall's atrium. Here, with two stories of balconies on either side and a half-shattered glass ceiling even higher above, Winter had the height advantage. Worse, the ground was cluttered: stone benches, inactive escalators, decorative trees, a garish elevator, even a grand fountain still shooting twin streams of water.

He could see the glow ever-present around him now, casting the darkened mall a bloody-red. Sparks of black or crimson leaped across him whether he wanted it to or not: his Semblance was reaching its limits, a pressure demanding to be released. But he needed Winter to be still, and she wasn't cooperating, leaping from glyph to glyph higher up. Spears of ice came firing down from those she jumped from.

Fire, ice, lightning, gravity, energy. Two shots of each element, each separated by a standard cartridge. That was what he had to work with, and he was already out of fire. Just great, he thought. He dealt with what he had, slicing two out of the sky, rolling away from a barrage of four, and when faced with eight more, flipped, fired a shot into Wilt and turned his momentum into twirls of his blade, channeling aura into it.

By the time he'd landed, a shield of ice—half-broken already from the bombardment—almost completely surrounded him. All except for one "weak point" in his defense: a gap just behind him. Adam launched himself up and through it. A glyph formed right where he was headed, but he landed first: he knew she couldn't resist that target. Winter came in already swinging, the force nearly sending Adam back off. The glyph turned as they fought atop it, Adam forced to fall back on sharp kicks. Wilt was too long to use in such close-quarters, and he needed to conserve ammunition. Every shot counted.

Breaking Winter's second saber proved to work against him: it made it an excellent dagger that constantly sliced and cut into Adam's sides. He ducked under a stab aimed for his head and swept at her legs. Refusing to concede the glyph, Winter leaped over it and landed a kick to Adam's cheek, sending him off the edge.

A single shot struck her wrist, and her broken saber went flying into a souvenir shop, encased in ice. Winter scowled down at the falling terrorist.

Adam landed hard atop one of the halted escalators but didn't give Winter time to begin attacking again, laying back and firing at her. She blocked the first with ease, but grunted as the second, charged with electricity, shocked her through her saber. In the space between it and another shot, she was swift enough to form a barrier of ice in the air. A far larger glyph formed behind her, one much more intricate than the others. She was summoning.

She was still.


Faster than any jet or dreadnought, a lone crow sliced through the air across the city of Vale, having a grand total of zero leads as to where the people he was searching for would be.

He really should've expected them to do something this stupid.


"So be it, Winter! No more masks!" He fired at the barrier to make her think he was still making a futile attempt to attack, then sheathed Wilt. A candle burns brightest just before it goes out, and the embers of what he once was came flaring to life: the hatred of the Schnees, the frustration at every missed opportunity to strike one down, the determination to free and lead the faunus, all flooded into his blade. For a moment, the world was black, all but for the shining glyph and the glowing man beneath it.

"If you want to know what my hatred—my vengeance—truly is, then take it!"

It was not Adam Minier nor Adam 'Belladonna' that gathered his Semblance, not Minier nor Belladonna that leaped up towards the frozen shield. It was all of who he once was: Major Taurus, leader of the Vale White Fang who rained terror upon the SDC.

"And DIE!" In an instant, he fired Blush, loaded with Gravity Dust. In an instant, a frozen King Taijitu, its head easily as large as an entire dorm, had rushed to less than a yard away from him. In an instant, Wilt was ripped free, and in an instant, crimson drowned the world.

Adam sheathed his blade.

The Taijitu, the barrier, the glyph, and the entire wing of the mall ahead of him flattened itself in an explosion of dust, rubble and wilting petals. The frame of the glass ceiling now twisted down, and as Adam landed and glass rained from above, all that was left of the mall's wing was, further in the distance, a hollow, warped frame of the building only around where its entrance was. It was ripped from its foundation, leaning back like the bow of a sinking ship.

Yet, his anger was not sated. He could still feel it pressing against his skin, still feel it burning within. Perhaps that was why he felt nothing when he approached the ruins. The rubble wasn't moving. Was that really all?

"Disappointing, Winter."

A cold wind whipped across him, and he turned to leave. He'd only gotten one step before his instincts called to him. The rubble erupted in smoke and dust. Birds of ice and snow flew out like missiles from the cloud, the rush of a frozen storm following behind. He unsheathed Wilt, slashing some from the sky, but it only took one crashing into his head to leave him unbalanced. The wind shoved him back, miniature Nevermores striking and throwing him even further.

His back met the stone fountain, and cold water came up to meet him. Coughing, he shoved himself to one knee and snapped Wilt up to turn another incoming pest into nothing more than frost and mist. A flash of cold bit into his bones and threatened to steal the breath from his lungs: his sword-arm was encased in ice, trapped in the fountain's now-frozen stream. His legs were no better, one frozen up to his shin, but with his right knee against the fountain's floor, that leg was locked up to his thigh. He was stuck.

He was completely open.

Screaming her fury to the heavens, Winter came flying from the rubble atop a collapsing mass of snow in the shape of a King Taijitu. Adam dropped Blush and reached out, but even with her summon dissipating, with all the force of a tank shell, she slammed into him, and her saber crashed into his chest hard enough for him to shout out in pain and his aura to crackle and wane. Only his weakening grip on the blade kept her from stabbing him through the heart.

Winter was a mess: hair hanging loose around her, rips and tears across her uniform, and why she needed a mount to strike him clear with a leg of her pants ripped away to reveal skin mottled with red and black. Broken. But aura was healing it, and fast.

Pain shot through him. Her ruined leg didn't keep her from pushing on with her good one. His grip couldn't stop her forever.

"I refuse to let you harm my sister," Winter hissed.

"You're a fool if you thought I would!" Despite the blade pressing now past his coat, he managed to grin, vicious and wild. "But I wonder how she will treat you after you if murdered a family friend."

"You are nothing of the sort! You were never a friend of my family! Of her or myself!" His aura failed him only for a second, but it was enough for her saber to punch through cloth and into skin.

Adam hissed in pain. He could feel his Semblance trying to rush to life. Dregs of hatred not yet washed away, anger that he simply couldn't have expended before. "Only after my eyes were opened to how much your family killed and enslaved my own!"

"And so you struck at the only one who cared! You truly are nothing more than an ungrateful, foolish savage!"

The two were now lit only by the growing, crimson glow that surrounded him. "And yet when you knew the truth you only changed which master to kill us under: there is no difference between SDC and Atlas, but you're too shortsighted to see it!" His aura tried and failed to repel her: it was simply too much force. "You only care for your own satisfaction, like so much of your family!" he growled through gritted teeth.

Winter held a cruel smile, her leg healed enough for her to put all of her strength into it. Her saber was pressing on despite his hold, blade slashing across the aura of his palm, slowly pushing further into his chest. "Perhaps I am getting some satisfaction from this. From finally putting down a beast like you!"

To die in a place like this? To her? Adam refused to imagine it. His Semblance screamed for release, yet he had nothing to channel it through. Blackened petals fluttered down past his vision. He tried to bring down his arm, yet the ice held. His anger began to bubble over.

"The beast that saved your worthless life, something I regret doing to this day!" He shouted. "I should have let you die in the collapse! I should have let you be ripped apart, unloved even by your own kind!"

"You should've been branded like the animal you are, alone and scared! To think I ever stained my hands for you!"

"To think I didn't kill you when I had the chance!"

"But I do have that chance now!" Winter screamed. The ice weakened, but the slow grind of metal through muscle left Adam unable to focus. "So just give up! Surrender! Die and meet your father in hell!"

His breath caught in his throat. He didn't see the ice around his arm break. All he could see were wilting petals trailing behind his sword hand as he slammed Wilt's pommel into Winter's forehead. Her grip loosened. He shoved the Schnee forward, blood flowing from his wound yet his tattered aura gathering to heal him.

His enemy took an uncertain step back. He snatched her wrist, twisted to fling her saber behind him and, roaring, pulled her forward.

Wilt had far less trouble punching through her stomach. Yet, he didn't get to take in the satisfaction for even a second before he heard stone shatter behind him and felt ice gripping his hair. Adam was flung back, head cracking against tile and sending pain lancing through his body. Wilt, ripped free from Winter, went sliding off into the shadows.

Adam forced himself to look up. A Beowolf formed from ice, spikes lining its entire back, stalked closer. Winter was clutching her wound, standing just behind the summoned beast. His aura was barely hanging on, supported more by his now-raging Semblance than his strength. Their weapons were scattered, but in the open, free to be taken. The logical thing to do would be to fall back and recover. The logical thing to do would be to retrieve his weapons and strike while she was disarmed. But through the anger and pain, only one thought stood out.

That Beowolf was in his way.

He shoved himself up and into a sprint that had him in front of the Beowolf while it was mid-swing. Fingers curled in like claws, he swept his arm across the beast. A burning-red gash opened itself, and like a disease, decay rushed across it until all that was left was blackened rose and mist.

Winter was already lunging through what remained, her caution thrown to the wind and her fist flying for his face.

And through the anger and pain, Adam grinned.


Was this what Yang felt like when she used her Semblance?

There were no masks. No words. Only rage guided the two of them in a far more brutal battle of fist and foot. He narrowly weaved out of the way of a jab fast enough to leave the air cracking behind it and returned with a kick to her stomach that left her aura peeling away in its wake. Winter kept him at a distance after that, summoning for only fractions of a second: a thin Taijitu to whip out and trip him, the paw of Ursa falling behind her punch while he was grounded, her Beowolf to take a kick in her place. Long-term thinking and accuracy had given way to instinct and fury.

And it was exhilarating. Every one of Winter's strikes slapped aside or blocked still carried enough force to shake him, yet his Semblance came back stronger. Each time his fist only grazed her, it was motivation to be faster. Better. Whether it be from the thrill of the fight or pure bloodthirst, he couldn't deny the grin on his face.

He understood. He understood so much why Yang hadn't tried to focus her own Semblance down like his. It felt wasteful. Insane! Why surrender this kind of power?

Unfortunately, his power didn't grant him the strength Yang's did: the saber-teeth of a Sabyr Grimm yanked his leg back from behind, and Winter tackled him to the ground. He couldn't help but notice she looked the same as he, held the same grin as he, held the same hate. So, bloodthirst it was. Blows of fist and elbow rained down upon him, pushing his aura closer to the brink. All it took was for him to catch her wrist, however, and with a grunt of pain she lost focus as his rampant Semblance tried to waste her aura away.

He rolled over, leaving her beneath him and his hand quickly finding her neck. Aura crackled around the two like lightning, her own trying and failing to fight his off. With a strangled growl, she grasped at his arm, but he refused to move.

The speared hand directly into the wound in his chest, however, was more convincing. But even though he was forced off of her, he held onto that pain. That fuel.

Winter was on her knees even when he stood up. It was time to finish it. With a last shout, he dashed forward and stopped short only for a sparking clone of aura to slide forward and knock her back down. Another, spotty and ephemeral, flipped up after it to launch her into the air. He saw Winter form a glyph to catch herself, crouched down to rush through the shadow versions of himself—

And felt pain shoot through his chest as the tail of a manticore punched through the glyph and both his aura clones, halting only an inch away from his chest but leaving the agony from his ruined clones ripping through him. His shadows collapsed and took his aura with it. All at once the energy his anger fed into ceased, leaving only the physical heat of combat that felt so cold in comparison: his aura was depleted. How clever, taking advantage of his clones' drain on him.

Winter crashed down into the ice and stone of the broken fountain in a cloud of sparkling white: she'd sacrificed her own aura in that last attempt to kill him. He forced himself forward against the shock of his aura breaking, at first a stumble, then a jog. He could see a glint of silver in the fountain: Winter's dropped saber.

Winter's gaze had found something else beside her, though: the matte-black of Blush.

He snatched Winter's saber. She latched onto Blush.

He cleared the last few feet. She raised his own rifle at him.

He lunged. She pulled the trigger. Their gaze never left the other's.

The report of Blush filled the shattered mall. Metal screeched against metal.

Vindication was replaced by a greatsword that blocked their path and a tattered, red cape that blocked their sight.

With his back to him and that weapon having halted his pilfered saber, Qrow Branwen sighed in relief. His mentor's brother shook his hand out to his side, and a number of crushed bullets fell free from his palm.

"Alright, kids. Playtime's over."