Yang rolled under the hail of gunfire, blasting a pair of White Fang goons with bursts from both gauntlets before diving out of the way again. Bullets pinged off her Aura, depleting her reserves faster than she'd have liked. But even as her Aura faded, her Semblance built power.
She bared her teeth as she came out of the roll, feeling the flame surge through her hair, the telltale prickle in her eyes as they went red. With a battle-cry she dove into the thick of enemy. The White Fang scattered before her. She didn't push outward from the little ring of enemies, however—instead, she turned, orbiting her teammates, trying to pull as many of the enemies' focus and fire as possible.
Her circle was aborted about halfway through when the blast of a high-caliber weapon hit her ears. She dodged out of the way, and the Dust projectile sailed past her ear. She whirled, skidding to a halt, kicking up dust around her boots.
"Neo, go after the red one!" Torchwick was shouting, already aiming at her with his cane for another attack. "Get the train moving!"
Behind him, the girl—her name was Neo, apparently—nodded once and, still grinning, shot after Ruby. Before Yang could do anything about it, Torchwick was shooting at her again—but she saw Zwei barreling after the girl. She hoped Raven was right about his being a well-trained huntsman's dog.
Yang dodged Torchwick's first shot, then launched a Fire Dust slug to intercept the next. The two Dust projectiles exploded in a billowing cloud of flame and smoke when they impacted in the space between them.
Yang grinned, ignoring the bullets still peppering her Aura, and charged straight through the hot smoke. It stung her eyes, but she was rewarded for keeping them open by the sight of Torchwick's astonished face as she emerged barely two feet from him. He didn't have time to fully avoid her buckshot blast, and she saw the flicker as his Aura was clipped by several pellets. Before he could bring his cane up for another attack, she slipped into his guard and started throwing punches.
Torchwick's cane wasn't exactly a long-range weapon. It was only about as long as Jaune's sword. But that was still more reach than Yang's fists had. This was a good thing. It meant that as long as she was close enough to him, she could throw everything she had at Torchwick, and he would have a hard time getting his cane into position to retaliate.
That was the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, just two punches into her combo the man bent backward at the waist like a blade of grass blown by a strong gust, using the opened space to give himself room to bring his cane around, hooking it around her left wrist and throwing her aside.
"You're better than I remember," he said, panting, as she picked herself up. "But still not fast enough, Sunny; still not—" He cut himself off, diving aside as a yellow Lightning Dust blade cut through the air where he had been.
Yang stared as Raven pursued him. Her sword was at least four feet long, but she moved it like it was as agile as a dagger, weaving a ribbon of yellow light around herself like a dancer. The bone-white of her mask over the red and black of her outfit gave her the appearance of some spectral creature, like one of Geralt's monsters.
And she was definitely faster than Torchwick. Yang could see the sweat running down his face in streams as he gave ground, step after step.
Then someone else charged at Raven's back. A thick-set man with a White Fang mask and a mechshift chainsaw leapt into position behind her, arms already back to swing.
Yang moved to intercept, diving for him, blasting him with a burst from Ember Celica. He whirled on her, blocking the shot with the flat of his whirring chainsaw, sending several pellets scattering. Then he took one large step forward, swinging the rattling blade at her head.
She ducked it. When she came up again, she saw a strand of golden hair falling in front of her face.
She grinned through the rising tide of wrath. When she struck at him again, it was with the force of a cannon. He managed to catch her fist on the flat of his blade, but the impact sent him skidding backward several feet. Still grinning, she kept after him. Her Aura was low, but the bullets had stopped coming for her—she was too close to the leaders of the operation, and Blake and Weiss were pulling the grunts' gunfire now.
All she had to do was avoid that chainsaw, and sooner or later, the sheer weight of her Semblance would overwhelm him.
Ruby came to a stop at the corner of the train car immediately behind the engine. Moving as quickly as she dared, she pulled out the volatile canister of Lightning Dust and carefully removed the cork before affixing an aerosol tip to the vial. She crouched beside the train, looking at the undercarriage, looking for—
—there. A fiber of black crystal, inert Gravity Dust, running around the perimeter of the car's undercarriage. She scanned for the circuitry—it should be right around here!—which would connect the Dust thread to the power regulators.
There it was! A portion of the Dust thread protected by a plate. She wedged the tip of Crescent Rose under the plating, popping it off to expose the power regulator. Her eyes darted across the circuit, quickly analyzing. That was the central capacitor, that was the antenna to receive the signal, that was the resistance grid, so this should be…
She grinned as she fired a quick burst of clarified Lightning Dust at one golden thread of the circuit. The concussive blast nearly knocked her off her feet as she overloaded circuit dumped its power into the levitator, detonating the Dust and pushing the car upward. It was barely held in place by its connections to the cars ahead and behind.
It was delicate work. She could just shoot the regulator circuit with a Lightning Dust round, but if she didn't perfectly strike the wire just two to three millimeters off of dead center, the bullet would either strike the wire and sever it before the Dust charge could deploy, or tear the delicate thread of gold as it tore through the surrounding board. If either of those happened, it would disable the car, but in a way that would be mere minutes' work to fix. The detonated repulsors, on the other hand, would take days, per car, to replace.
"One down," she mumbled to herself. She looked down the long line of train cars, resisting the impulse to turn back and check on her teammates. "Who knows how many to—"
An impact from behind sent her sprawling, cutting a furrow into her Aura reserves. She rolled as she hit the ground and came up turning.
Neo, Torchwick's henchman-partner-whatever, grinned brightly at her. She blinked, and her eyes changed color.
Ruby sighed, readying Crescent Rose. "Fine," she muttered to herself, with much the same tone that she might complain to her mom about having to eat her greens. "I'll go through you first."
Neo was fast. She charged Ruby, the point of her sharp-tipped parasol extended. Ruby, however, was faster, and flashed around her in the space between blinks, swinging Crescent Rose along the arc of her motion. Neo caught the scythe blade against her parasol at the last second. The impact knocked her aside, but she kept her footing. She recovered quickly, with a fencer's stab in Ruby's direction. Ruby slipped backwards through the vortex of her Semblance, darting out of range, then made as if to leap back in, swinging Crescent Rose in wide arc over her shoulder.
Neo moved her parasol to intercept the blow, but Ruby stopped short just outside her range. Crescent Rose came to a sharp halt halfway through the striking motion. Neo's eyes had just long enough to widen at the sight of the high-caliber sniper barrel three feet from her face before Ruby pulled the trigger. The Gravity Dust round slipped just over Neo's opening parasol. It blasted her backward, detonating against her Aura and sending her careening down the length of the train. She caught herself a few cars down, but by that point Ruby was already pushing towards her.
She reached the corner of the next car just as Neo was skidding to a halt. Neo's eyes were wide, her grin manic as she charged. Ruby's muscles tensed as she braced, waiting just long enough. She nailed the timing, hooking Crescent Rose under the plating which covered the regulator circuit and tugging the metal free. Neo visibly flinched as the steel panel struck her parasol from an angle she hadn't expected, spinning her around. Ruby used her momentary distraction to pull out the Lightning Cust canister and spray the regulator. Two down.
The car blasted upward while Neo was turning back to face Ruby. In the momentary distraction, Ruby slipped under the car, driving across the distance with her Semblance in the fraction of a second before it came crashing back down. Then she kept going, speeding down to the next car.
Unfortunately, Neo had not been fooled by her evasive maneuver. She leapt down on Ruby from the roof of the car just as she was pulling the plating away. Ruby flung the panel in her direction, but Neo didn't fall for the same trick again, batting it away mid-dive before spearing downward with her parasol. Ruby spun Crescent Rose, parrying Neo's blow with the base of the haft and leaping onto the footholds below the blade of the scythe. As Neo landed, she fired a Gravity round, flinging herself back up, above the train car. As Neo tugged her parasol free, Ruby angled herself and fired a Lightning Dust round straight down at her.
The round pinged against the mute criminal's Aura. It did not break, and the arcing electricity scattered around her. As Ruby had hoped, it hit the regulator. Three down. She managed to hold out a hand and ride the thrust as the car drove upward, pushing down against it to gain a dozen or more feet of elevation.
From this vantage, she saw Zwei speeding in Neo's direction down the length of the train. She took note of him in case she was able to find a way to use his presence to her advantage. Then she rotated so that her body was parallel to the ground, fired another Gravity Dust round to shoot her in the direction of the far end of the train, and slipped into her Semblance.
She reached the train's caboose in less than five seconds. As the rose petals fell around her, she saw that Neo was sprinting in her direction, but was still less than halfway across the distance. Ruby took advantage of the space she'd created to demolish the caboose's repulsors. Four down. Then she started sprinting towards Neo.
They met halfway down the length of the next car. Ruby twisted Crescent Rose before her like a chakram, deflecting Neo's thrust, careful not to look over the girl's shoulder at the corgi getting steadily closer.
For the first time since the fight began, Ruby let herself be drawn into an engagement. She and Neo exchanged lightning-quick blows. Most were parried. Some—on both sides—connected, pinging off flaring Aura shielding.
Then, after a few seconds that felt like minutes, Ruby decided Zwei was close enough. She feinted to the left, leaving her center exposed, then dodged right when Neo tried to capitalize, slipping past the girl with a flare of her Semblance. She slipped out of it as she passed the dog, skidding on the uneven ground, twisting on her heels, rotating Crescent Rose so that the point of the scythe slipped just inches over Zwei's back, then brought it to a stop so that the barrel of the rifle was aiming at the ground just behind him.
"Zwei!" she shouted. "Cannonball!"
She fired a Gravity Dust round. The concussive blast knocked her upward and over the train, and sent Zwei, curled up into a cute, fluffy sphere of whirling death, careening directly into Neo's surprised face. Both dog and criminal went flying.
Ruby landed by the regulator panel of the next train car, disabled it, then hit the next two before Neo finally caught up with her again. Five down. Six down. Seven down. Zwei was not following her, but Ruby doubted he was seriously hurt—it was much easier to just knock him away than expend the effort to get through his Aura and kill him, and by the way Neo's grin had faded, Ruby had a feeling she wasn't in the mood to compromise efficiency.
By that point, she had finished counting the number of cars on the train. Twenty-five, counting the engine and caboose.
She'd have to hit more than half of them before she could be certain the train was disabled. She was doing well so far, but she was running out of tricks, and Neo was too smart to be fooled by the same one twice. She needed to find a way to take out six more, and already her Aura was starting to flag, strained by overuse of her Semblance.
Can I do this? The question wasn't asked out of despair, or fear, or exhaustion. It was a clinical assessment of the situation. And the answer was—no. Probably not, not alone. It didn't excuse her from trying, but it did mean she needed a new approach, a new plan.
Her mind, buzzing with adrenaline, spun through ideas. If she stopped trying to work around Neo and fought her head-on—could she beat her? Maybe; it was hard to be sure. She'd gotten more hits in than Neo had so far, but there was no visible indication that she'd taken a significant chunk out of her Aura yet. Anyone capable of the kinds of feats Neo assisted Torchwick with was bound to have large reserves, and Ruby's had always been on the smaller side, for a Huntress trainee—though part of that was just her age.
Could she free up one of her teammates to back her up? Again, it was hard to be sure. There were a lot of White Fang back near the engine car, to say nothing of Torchwick himself. Even with Raven's help, she wasn't sure her teammates could win that fight. She was confident they could keep the group busy, but would that still be true if one of them left that engagement to come support her? She couldn't know.
Those were her options, though. Stand and fight, keep trying to dodge Neo while taking out the train, or pull a teammate to keep the criminal busy.
…Or maybe there was a fourth option.
She turned her back on Neo and activated her Semblance, speeding back towards her teammates. She felt her Aura draining away, but kept going. She slipped out when she was about three-quarters of the way to the engine. Then she fired a Gravity Dust round down, throwing herself back over the train, sailing above it in an arc as the skirmish below came into view.
She quickly took stock. Yang was embroiled in a brawl with a burly White Fang goon armed with a mechshift chainsaw. Raven was running rings around Torchwick, but he had enough Aura and tricks up his sleeve that he could probably hold her off for a while. Weiss and Blake were keeping the rest of the Fang at bay, fighting back to back as the footsoldiers encircled them.
Ruby shifted Crescent Rose in midair, extending the blade into its polearm configuration, and used the momentum to turn the barrel, pointing it directly down into the middle of the crowd of White Fang. "Flashbang!" she screamed, hoping to any echoes of gods that might be listening that her voice would carry to her teammates, and fired.
The flashbang round struck the ground in the middle of the crowd of Fang. She closed her eyes just in time, channeling the last of her Aura to protect her eardrums.
The detonation was still painfully bright and loud in spite of those measures, but when she opened her eyes and let her Aura stop flowing to her ears, she could still see and hear. The same could not be said of the Fang, most of whom were screaming. She winced when she saw a bat faunus clawing at her ears in agony. A few were even writhing on the ground, rubbing at their eyes and moaning. The downside of inherent night-vision, Ruby guessed. It made her feel guilty, but she shoved that emotion down where she could deal with it later. For now, she had a job to do.
She landed between Blake and Weiss just as Weiss stabbed Myrtenaster into the ground, blasting out a ring of crystalline ice which entrapped the Fang surrounding them in frozen bindings. Blake was blinking teary eyes, her pupils shrunk to narrow, pinpoint slits, and rubbing at her pained ears, but she was still upright, which was better than their enemies were doing.
"Ruby," Weiss greeted crisply, tugging her sword out of the ground. "Status?"
"Train needs at least nine more cars disabled," Ruby reported. "Neo's been interfering. One more good hit or Semblance use and I'm out of Aura."
"Where is Neo?" Blake asked, her voice slightly louder than it needed to be.
Ruby glanced around. Sure enough, the mute illusionist was nowhere to be seen. "I don't—"
A screech rang out as the disabled train cars began to grind against those still running. Slowly, ponderously, the train began to move.
The three unoccupied members of Team RWBY looked at each other. Blake summed up what they were all feeling. "Damn."
Raven had just broken another of her blades when she heard the train start to move. Grimacing, she clipped a new one onto Omen's hilt even as Torchwick spun back around to face her, smoking slightly. "Finally!" he crowed, rolling his eyes theatrically. "How long does it take to beat one little girl?"
Raven's eyes narrowed as, unbidden and unwanted, a surge of something rose up in her. An instinct she thought had been trained out of her years ago. Where was Ruby? Was she all right?
Raven couldn't take any more time to play with Torchwick. Her priority was stopping that train, and stop it is what she would do. The couplings between the train cars were magnetized, and the electromagnets were protected inside the cars—it wouldn't be easy to decouple the engine from the rest of the train. No, she needed to seize control of the engine and brake.
Her daughter landed beside her, throwing the burly faunus she'd been fighting to the ground behind them. There was a series of rapid clicks as she reloaded her gauntlets. Torchwick's face visibly fell. "Now, two-on-one is hardly fair, is it?"
Braking the train, Raven noted to herself, would not prevent it from being started up again. Even jamming the brakes wouldn't do that, it would just delay them by the hour or two it would take them to find a mechanic. No, if they wanted a permanent solution…
"Yang," she said. "I need you to get out of here."
"What?" Yang said sharply, glaring at her through (achingly familiar) red eyes. "You can't seriously be letting him—"
"Not because of that, girl," Raven growled. "I need a fast way out—and you're it. Take your team and go."
Yang blinked. "Fast way out of wh—"
"Got it!" Ruby's bright voice came from behind them, and Yang was pulled back by her sister. "Be careful, Miss Branwen!"
Raven nodded, careful not to let her relief at hearing the small girl's voice show.
"What's going-?" Yang's voice fell away behind her as her sister pulled her back. Quick on the uptake, Summer's daughter. Raven had a feeling she'd already figured out exactly what Raven was planning.
Raven sheathed Omen's Ice-Dust blade, spun the chamber, and pulled out its last remaining Fire-Dust one. She really needed a resupply—and, well, after this she doubted Vale would have enough dust to do it.
"I think I'll break a record with this," said Raven aloud.
Roman frowned. "Record?" he asked.
"Most property damage in a single attack," Raven said. Then, even as his eyes widened, she darted to the side, charging towards one of the cars Ruby had damaged as it scraped against the rails.
"Neo, get us out of here!" Roman screamed. At least the man knew when to cut his losses.
Raven leapt onto the train car, slammed the hilt of her sword into the lock to break it, and tugged open the door. Barrels upon barrels of Dust greeted her, lined up in neat rows.
The train was picking up speed now. She If she opened a portal outside, it would fall too far behind for her to reach in time. So she stepped onto the train car, tugging the door shut behind her. She swung her sword once to open the portal, then stabbed the blade into the bottom of the car. She braced one foot against it, took a deep breath, and pushed.
She heard it break even as she slipped through the portal to Yang. She had just enough time to stumble backwards onto the flagstones of Mountain Glen's surface streets before the detonation echoed through the ruins. A few blocks away, the ground rose up like a blister bulging, then started to collapse, taking the city with it.
"Move!" Raven ordered, pulling out another blade and opening a portal to Summer.
"Belay that," Ruby said, firm—not shouting, but loud enough to be heard over the collapsing city. "Keep pushing, Weiss."
Raven spun, glaring. "What—"
The Schnee girl was panting as she pushed nearly three dozen groaning White Fang members along on a Gravity glyph. The faunus, Blake, was glaring at Raven with incandescent fury. Beside her, so was Yang, who was carrying Zwei in her arms. Ruby wasn't even looking at her—she was watching Weiss, lips pursed.
"Never mind," said the diminutive team leader suddenly. "We're moving too slowly."
"You don't say," growled Raven, even as the ground started to pitch and roll beneath her feet.
Ruby ignored her. "Weiss—plan B. Give us a barrier."
Weiss nodded, releasing the glyph and stabbing her sword into the ground. A dome of earth rose around them, enclosing them in a hemisphere of rock just as the ground fell away.
Their stone sled slid down into the newborn crater. Within it, they bounced around like pinballs. Raven heard Ruby cry out and saw a flash of red in the black as her Aura shattered.
They tumbled for what felt like an hour, but couldn't have been more than a minute, before finally falling still. Raven heard several of the injured goons weeping softly.
"Would someone," she said testily, "care to explain what all that was?"
Gold light flared as Yang's Semblance set her hair alight. She glared furiously at Raven, her face silhouetted against the light. "You were going to kill more than thirty people," she hissed.
"Yes," Raven said. "Our enemies. Get over yourself, girl; the real world isn't—"
"Enough." Ruby's voice was quiet, tight with pain, and—more worryingly—oddly choked. "Weiss—give us some light."
"Are you all right, Ruby?" came the Schnee's worried voice, even as she ignited a Combustion-Dust flare.
Raven heard Yang gasp, and saw her hands fly to her mouth in horror. She didn't even register it—her attention was entirely captured by Ruby.
The tiny girl buried from the waist down in fractured stones and bricks. Blood was dripping from a jagged gash above one of her eyes, and that eye was already swelling shut from whatever impact had put it there. One of her arms was angled oddly at a dislocated shoulder.
Most worrying of all, however, was the way her chest was sandwiched between the remains of two massive pillars. Raven could tell at a glance that if she didn't have at least one broken rib, it was incredibly lucky—and if she was really unlucky, she might have a punctured lung.
The girl, ignoring their visible horror, turned her good eye on her faunus teammate. "Blake," she said. "Check whether you have CCT reception. Weiss, Yang, check on the Fang prisoners, cuff them if they look like they can still use both arms.
"Rubes," Yang choked out, stumbling towards her sister. "Oh, gods, I'm so—"
"Save it," said Ruby. Then she coughed. Blood started to dribble out of the corner of her mouth. "Check on the prisoners first. I'm stable."
"You don't know that," Raven said. Her own voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of a tunnel. The girl was so small, pinned there between the stones, blood already staining the rubble around her hips where her legs were buried.
"No," Ruby agreed, teeth visibly gritted. "I don't."
"Reception's weak, but it's there," Blake reported.
"Good," Ruby said. "Raven—portal to my mom, get her to a hospital, and get them to send a medevac team."
"I'm not leaving you here," Raven hissed.
"Somehow," Ruby said, somehow perfectly cool in spite of the blood pooling around her, "I doubt you were trained in safe rescue procedures while burning villages in the wilderness. I'd rather not bleed out because you pulled me out without a tourniquet on hand."
"Fuck," whispered Yang.
"Then I'll pull you out," Raven said, "and portal us to Summer immediately. Qrow has rescue training, and I'd bet your professor does too."
Ruby met her eyes. "I'm not leaving until we have a way to get everyone out," she said simply.
Fury flared to life in Raven's belly. "You're going to die for those terrorists?" she demanded. Going to leave Summer, Tai, and your sister to bury you for the sake of a couple dozen extremist goons?"
"Yes," said Ruby. "And the longer you take to portal out of here, the more of our limited oxygen you're using."
"Why doesn't she just keep a portal open for us to take the Fang through?" Blake asked, her voice shaking.
"I don't think she'd be willing to," said Ruby.
"Don't speak for me," snapped Raven.
"Well, are you?" Ruby asked blandly. Then her breath suddenly hitched. "Ow. Adrenaline's wearing off."
Raven stared at her. They're weak, she wanted to say. Why should I stick my neck out for them? They're my enemies, they were too weak to get out on their own—they were too weak for this world.
As she looked into Ruby's silver eyes, she found she couldn't. "I'm… willing," she ground out. "But I probably can't. Every person going through one of my portals is a drain on my Aura, as is just holding it open or opening a new one. I could maybe get half of them through. Probably not even that many."
"Ruby," Weiss said. "This is—we can send a medevac back for these people! You don't have to—"
"One of us would have to stay," Ruby said. "Unless one of them is carrying a Huntsman-grade scroll and transponder. Otherwise we'll never be able to find where they're buried."
"Then let me stay!" Yang said desperately.
"I'm not leaving one of my teammates behind." Ruby glared at Raven. The effect was somewhat ruined by the trembling of her lips, the way her eyes were filling with tears. "Get going, Raven. The sooner you leave, the sooner I can get some painkillers."
"You," Raven said flatly, "are one stubborn bitch." Then she turned, opened a portal, and stepped through.
The morning was stretching towards noon when the Bullhead finally touched down at the Beacon airfield. Theirs was not the only ship disembarking. Atlesian soldiers bustled about, filing out of a transport, carrying a line of stretchers with them.
"Geralt." Ozpin's voice was grave as he emerged from the transport. "Welcome back. How was your mission?"
"Better than we could have expected, even though the situation turned out worse than we could have known." Geralt watched the stretchers pass them by as JNPR stumbled out of the Bullhead behind him and Regis. "What's going on? We heard an explosion on the flight over."
"Yes," said Ozpin grimly. "A massive cache of stolen dust was detonated to prevent it from being used to breach Vale's defenses. Unfortunately," he gestured at the stretchers, "there were several injuries. Some were… more severe than others." He met Geralt's eyes. "The explosion," he said, voice flat, "occurred in the middle of the operating zone for Team RWBY's student mission with Barty."
Geralt's heart froze. "Are they all right?"
"Yang, Blake, and Weiss escaped with nothing worse than minor Aura exhaustion," said Ozpin. "Ruby, on the other hand…" He sighed. "She was rushed into an operating room at the head of this caravan," he said. "The medics did what they could in transit, but we will not know until they tell us whether she is stable."
"Oh, no," whispered Pyrrha just behind Geralt.
"What happened?" Jaune asked, voice high. "How was Ruby caught in an explosion?"
Ozpin pursed his lips. "Walk with me," he said. "I will explain on the way to the infirmary."
"Those are White Fang," Ren said suddenly. Geralt glanced at him to see that he was pointing at the people on the stretchers—some of whom, he suddenly noticed, were strapped down and struggling.
"Yes," Ozpin said. "Team RWBY appears to have uncovered the root of the Dust smuggling operation which has been terrorizing Vale these past few months. Apparently, the White Fang, in collusion with the human criminal Roman Torchwick, were intending to use the stolen Dust to break the seals on both Mountain Glen and the Grimm cavern which destroyed the sector years ago."
Geralt wasn't familiar with Mountain Glen specifically, but kingdom expansions often failed for similar reasons, based on his research. "Shit," he said. "And Team RWBY was deployed to Mountain Glen?"
"Yes," said Ozpin. "It appears the White Fang were jamming communications, so they were unable to get word out. They received backup in the form of Qrow and his sister Raven. Unfortunately, they were escorting Summer, who had already been severely injured in an unrelated incident."
"Wait," Geralt said. "Summer's hurt? I thought she and Qrow were in Anima?"
"Raven Branwen's semblance allows her to create portals capable of traversing vast distances," Ozpin said. In any case, it was decided that Barty and Qrow would escort Summer out of the exclusion zone and call for medevac, while Raven, as the most competent fighter, assisted Team RWBY in disabling the train the White Fang was intending to use to deploy the Dust. Unfortunately, they were unable to disable it before the train started to run. In an effort to prevent the detonation from reaching Vale's walls, Raven detonated the dust beneath Mountain Glen. She intended to use her portals to get herself, and Team RWBY, out before the detonation reached them."
"But she was too slow," Jaune said.
"Apparently not," said Ozpin, a wry smile touching his lips. "Miss Rose, realizing what Raven's plan was, and realizing that it would kill all the White Fang members she had apparently disabled with one of the flashbang rounds she developed for your class, ordered her team to bring the injured combatants with them. They were too slow to get out of the blast radius with the extra load. They were able to defend themselves using Miss Schnee's skills with Earth Dust, but Miss Rose's aura broke as their protective dome was buried, and she was injured by the fall."
"And she refused to leave until all of the White Fang were safe?" Geralt asked. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"And Miss Branwen was unable to maintain a portal capable of transporting all of them, yes," said Ozpin gravely. "So she instead took herself alone to Summer, Qrow, and Barty, who by this point had called for medevac. She was then able to coordinate the rescue efforts, and we were able to rescue both Team RWBY and their thirty-nine White Fang prisoners." They came to a halt outside Beacon's medical wing, standing against the wall in single file as the last few stretchers passed them and entered. The door closed behind them. "Summer and Ruby are both currently undergoing surgery," said Ozpin quietly. "Summer, they are confident, will pull through with no permanent injuries, although her recovery may be as long as two months. Ruby… they are less certain about."
"Ruby might die?" Jaune whispered.
"Unlikely," Ozpin said, "but possible. However… Miss Rose had two severe injuries. The first were three broken ribs. I am told she was fortunate to escape severe organ damage. The second… is her leg."
Next chapter is already written, you only have to survive this cliffhanger a week. I promise.