Sorry for the delay but writing action scenes is harder than I realised. I had to start this one again after a false start. Italics indicate that Fox is using her telepathic semblance

It was now 11 PM in Kulsa. Claire Arc was still working hard and trying to judge how much dust resource she needed to preserve or how much she should expend now. While, so far, the LGDF, the Kingdom Guard and the hunters had kept the Grimm at bay, they could not carry on indefinitely without starting to take major casualties.

The Grimm just kept coming and she would not be surprised if this were not the largest Grimm attack since Mountain Glenn. Luckily. In the aftermath of the Faunus War and because of the prosperity of Kulsa at the time, the town had the best Grimm defences in Ansel province and the town had contracted in the last fifteen years so that few people lived outside the town walls.

She knew how to recycle defenders so that people could recharge their aura and Jaune's semblance had given her more headroom than she could have expected. The problem was that if everyone's aura gave out simultaneously the town could still easily be overrun. She had to hide from the civilians how low the aura levels were now amongst the defenders.

No longer were the defenders able to take out the alphas at a distance from the city. The hunters had now retreated to the city walls and were relying on the walls and their skill to keep the Grimm at bay. Even Amber, Winter and Jaune's teammate Nora were now working close to the walls.

Winter Schnee and Amber between them had taken care of the flying Grimm which had been present. As far as Claire could tell, they had all gone. This did allow the bullheads to fly back to Ansel and pick up some dust bombs to launch at the Grimm. She was fortunate that she had stockpiled dust for the last five years, although she had not expected to have to blow it all in one night.

While the Grimm charging at the walls were being taken out, she was frustrated that she could not spread out the hunters and trainees more evenly. The reality was that they were concentrated in the Faunus quarter because of the damaged gate and the earlier use of Raddock's semblance meant that the stronger Grimm were charging that area and had a means of getting into the town through the damaged gate. As it was Amber, Winter and Nora had been her nearest to a mobile group taking out larger Grimm around the city.

The Centinels had threatened to be a problem, but it had turned out that the largest ones had been attracted to the Faunus Quarter and between them Yatsuhashi and Arslan had dealt with them. Three smaller ones had got under the walls in the human sector, but the Kingdom Guard had dealt with them, and the walls had not been undermined. Others had been attracted to the surface by the carpet bombing by the bullheads and picked off by snipers.

Some Beowolfs had nearly leapt on to the walls but had fallen short by a foot or so. The defenders had targeted their fire on the larger ones who may have been able to make the jump.

She had been able to arrange for the teenagers and pensioner Faunus to be evacuated into the main city. The police chief had been bullied by the other prominent leaders in Kulsa to withdraw his objections and to accept that obstinacy on this issue would be counterproductive. She suspected that Jesse Earl had threatened him with a mutually assured destruction disclosure of their deals over the last twenty years.

She was relieved to hear from Deputy-Chief Reynard in Ansel that the rest of the province was peaceful. Perhaps all the Grimm had been pulled into Kulsa by the Raddock girl. There had been problems in one Faunus village, but Port had said that that was in part down to someone leading the Grimm to it.

The man had spoken to his students there and she could have sworn that there were tears in his eyes at the end of the conversation. She had asked them if they had been badly hurt, but he had said by the grace of the gods no and that he was proud of them.

Port had eventually insisted on being allowed to join the fighting in the Faunus quarter. He had said that she could contact him quickly through Fox Alastair and, so far, that had turned out to be true. It also helped that Winter Schnee's personal jet had infra-red camera coverage.

She was vaguely aware that something was going on in Mistral City. In the last hour or so she had been receiving expressions of support from factions in the capital which would normally could not have been bothered by the provinces and the local criminal sub-bosses had apparently been ordered by their capos to defend the Faunus evacuees.

Nicholas was dashing around the walls of the main part of the town and was rallying the troops and taking out the larger secondary Grimm. She smiled, it had helped bring able to call on the premier hunter of his generation in Mistral to deal with Grimm and shame civic leaders into doing their best.

She was worried about Amber. She was taking too many risks and seemed determined to compete with Winter Schnee in killing Grimm. She loved and respected her daughter but although her determination was second to none, she did not have the raw talent of Winter Schnee or such a powerful semblance.

Claire was distracted by seeing the feed from the Schnee jet. Two miles out from the town there was an alarmingly strong group of alpha Grimm on their way in. There were six old Goliaths and four huge Nevermore surrounded by a fresh group of Beringel, Ursas, Boarbatusks and Beowolfs. They were all heading to the Faunus quarter.

She muttered to herself the unexpurgated family saying dealing with unexpected and unwanted surprises, "You have got to be fracking kidding me." She sent an urgent message to Port, Winter, Amber, and Pink alerting them of the Grimm approaching the city.

She also authorised the distribution of the emergency stocks of dust and bullets she had brought with her. The one thing which in her worse nightmare she had not envisaged worrying about was running out of ammunition. She had deliberately gone in for overkill and was shocked to find that she may have erred on the side of underestimating what would be needed.

She ordered Jesse Earl to relieve his niece and the monkey Faunus. They would need everyone at the gate if they were to defend the walls. While the design was based off the wall around Mantle, the construction had been not been designed to defend against ancient Goliaths.

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Jaune was at the gate with Yatsuhashi. The combination of his aura and Yatsuhashi's sword meant that the Grimm which got past Ruby and Pyrrha had not yet got past the broken gates.

He worried about the fact that after six hours of fighting Grimm were still charging the town. On the plus side, it had led to most people exchanging information about their powers and semblances. It had been weird watching Neptune recharging Nora with Tri-Hard. It had taken Amber's reassurance that they had already used the emergency generator at the airport to persuade him to fire at her. It was not as though the attacks were constant. There was around twenty to thirty minutes between each charge

While Nora was still not as technically adept as Pyrrha, as a Grimm fighter she was more effective. Pyrrha had the advantage on skill and agility, but Nora's brute force had a destructive power of its own against creatures with no aura and little maneuverability.

He had also been impressed by Professor Port. His boasting in lessons was justified although it was important to ensure that none of the defenders were remotely in the line of fire.

Ruby's father had also been a revelation. He supposed that anyone who had fathered both Ruby and Yang would be capable, but he suspected that dad and Taiyang would make a good double act in close quarters fighting. His style seemed closer to Yang's than Ruby's although he did recall that Ruby had stressed that she had based her weapon off her uncle's.

He had spent time helping Amber, Nora, and Winter recharge aura. He now felt he understood Weiss better than he had before. Winter was so much taller and muscular than Weiss and was so demanding of herself that he understood why Weiss was so much of a perfectionist and pushed herself so hard. At least in his case he had only wanted to be as good as the twins and had not even dared to emulate Amber or dad.

He had been puzzled by the sunglasses which Taiyang, Ruby and Yatsuhashi were wearing, but Yatsuhashi had explained to him that they were night vision glasses designed by Velvet which picked up Grimm at a distance. Certainly, Ruby opened fire with Crescent Rose before he could see anything approaching the defenders. Indeed, after one near miss involving a speedy Ruby, Taiyang had handed over his pair to Port

Team ABRN and the twins had been effective on their side of the gate in taking out the Grimm. Hoverboard girl was a good sharpshooter and could keep out of range of the land-based Grimm while Arslan had a punch which was incredibly effective. Indeed, she and Yatsuhashi were working closely together against any Ursas or Beowolfs which got close to the gates.

Emerald and Ren were both good at mixing up the hand-to-hand combat and the fire power. Their fighting styles were similar, and they had made a good double act. Jaune hoped that Nora had not noticed them working well together. He suspected that Nora despite her protestations that she and Ren were not together/together would not react well to Ren interacting with another woman.

Pyrrha and Ruby were just spectacular. Curiously, Ruby was the better against Grimm although it was a close-run thing. Jaune had found himself shutting his eyes as the young woman had charged Beowolfs and Boarbatusks and had eviscerated them with Crescent Rose. Even the snarky Haven student Mercury had given a whistle of appreciation at some of her attacks.

As the evening wore on, he and Fox had increasingly spent time together. Both were more valuable for their semblances than their fighting skills and while Fox preferred to communicate telepathically, the number of people he had to stay in contact meant that he was unable to snark using his semblance. This meant that Jaune got the main benefit of the man's gallows humour and asides. He gathered that Winter Schnee made Weiss seem relaxed and slapdash.

Fox also made certain that Jaune did not exhaust his aura and that the others did make certain to return to Jaune as soon as they got low on aura. Jaune felt that some of them had left it close. Winter and Amber's clothes had tears in them. Indeed, the second time Winter came round her hair was down.

He sensed Fox tense his body and then heard Port bellow using Fox's semblance, "Back to the walls. Incoming ancient Goliaths and alpha Nevermore plus supporting cast."

Pyrrha quickly volunteered to use her shield to launch Nora and Ruby into the air to attack the Nevermore. Amber, Port and Winter debated whether Winter's first priority was to use her semblance to attack the Nevermore or the Goliaths. That dispute was dealt with by the fact that the Nevermore arrived first.

Nevermore normally did not attack towns. Their ability to fire their feathers was admittedly destructive but their size meant that they found it difficult to pick off humans individually in narrow streets. These Alphas seemed to be willing to explore the possibility that if you flatten the buildings the humans become easier to pick off.

Fortunately, Crescent Rose worked as well with Gravity as with Weiss's glyphs and one Nevermore was decapitated. Unfortunately, it retained its shape long enough to take out the top floor of a block of flats. Jaune hoped that the inhabitants had taken refuge in the lower parts of the tower. Standard LGDF instructions had encouraged this, but frankly Nevermore of this strength were not something anyone expected to deal with.

Nora managed to use her Neptune enhanced strength to hit two Nevermore on the head and Winter Schnee riding a Queen Lancer finished off the other two in short order. She had also, whether by luck or judgement, distracted them so that they had turned to face her and they crashed outside the town.

This left a fourth one which fired a barrage of feathers at Nora on her way down and at Winter's Queen Lancer. It then swooped low over the town and let loose a barrage of feathers. It then received a blast from Port's blunderbuss and saw that Winter's Queen lancer was approaching. It decided to fly off deciding that it wanted no part of this battle, at least for the time being. Yatsuhashi reported that it seemed to be hovering over the goliaths. It had clearly caused casualties as well as destruction and had merely temporarily retreated.

Nora had taken an aura hit and came over for a recharge of aura. Jaune checked his aura levels. He was still at 15% despite the constant calls on him, but there was little room for error now. He looked around. Everyone was very tired even if their aura levels were still mostly above 45%.

Some were clearly more distressed than others. Lucas Earl was taking almost as many risks as Amber without her experience and talent to back him up. Amber insisted that she was not foolhardy and intended to survive. Lucas did not seem to care whether or not he lived. His brother and teammate had been doing their best to protect him, but he was not to be reasoned with.

Gordon Tulip who seemed to know Port and had introduced himself as an old Beacon student had apparently arrived with mother. He was clearly a talented huntsman but still seemed to be trying to prove himself to other people. He had fought steadily after arriving at the gate and had been immensely helpful to the students in suggesting refinements to their technique. He had also been keeping an eye om Lucas Earl.

Port through Fox organised the students and made suggestions to Winter and Amber. Yatsuhashi handed over some dust ammunition to Ruby who nodded and loaded Crescent Rose with it.

Just then Sun and Daffy Earl joined the group at the gate. They at least were fresh although the oncoming onslaught was beyond anything they had trained for.

The front line consisted of Port, Amber, the twins, Ruby, Nora, Pyrrha and Tulip. Taiyang was in charge of the snipers which included Team Blood, Mercury, and Neptune. Team ABRN, Yatsuhashi, Ren, Professor Pink, Sun, and Emerald were guarding the broken gate.

The first person to fire was Ruby. She aimed Crescent Rose and fired five shots in quick succession. Fox transmitted her message generally, "Tell Velvet that her bullets are ace. The Goliath I hit is retreating. He did not like them up him."

Unfortunately, that left seven Goliaths and they had spread themselves out. While Winter had summoned the large Goliath she had dealt with earlier and occupied one of the other Goliaths and Amber and Nora distracted a third, the other Goliath more or less ignored the defenders.

While every shot she fired hit home, Pyrrha's bullets seemed to be mere insect bites to her Goliath while Port's blunderbuss seemed merely to irritate his target. It made a detour to try and stamp on the man. The twins did their best but were outmatched as was Tulip. The seventh was targeted by the sharpshooters but simply shrugged of the barrage of bullets. Hoverboard girl got as close as she dared and dropped dust grenades on the Goliaths, but again they seemed to have negligible effect.

The first Goliath hit the wall at top speed. Jaune now understood force equals mass time acceleration in a way he had never done so at school. The walls were breached, and it was hard to see how they could be defended. The Goliath did not itself advance into the town but the howls of the supporting cast who were now on the move made it clear that other Grimm were prepared to fulfil the role of mopping up the civilians.

He saw Jessica was carrying Nancy's body. He hoped that she was merely concussed and then realised that the likelihood was that it was merely a matter of timing. Tulip and Port also seemed to be somewhat the worse for wear.

A siren rang out and Fox relayed the message that the Faunus quarter was to be evacuated in its entirety and that their job was to ensure that as many got into the human sector as possible. Mum had encouraged the Faunus to congregate near the gate to the human sector, but the design of the gate system meant that evacuation would take at least an hour.

Just then three more Goliaths hit the walls some of the debris flew in his and Fox's direction. He moved to cover the blind man as well as himself with Crocea Mors and to share their auras. Jaune knew that the Ada system used by Fox must be good, but he doubted that the man could concentrate on both that and his role as coordinator.

A few seconds later Jaune realised that he and Fox were still alive but were covered in debris. Their auras were protecting them for the time being, but they were not in a position to move the debris away. He could see out of the debris through what was left of the gate.

Trying desperately to look at the positive, Jaune saw that Ruby and Winter between them had actually killed one ancient Goliath. The other Goliaths seeing the breaches in the wall seemed to decide that their job was done and ambled away as the other Grimm charged the city. One of them moved with intent towards Professor Port who was aiming his weapon at it. Clearly he had done damage

Everyone heard through Fox's semblance a scream from Ruby of despair and anguish. She said, "No one else should die today."

While Jaune agreed with the idea he did wonder how this could be managed. What he was not expecting was a sudden blast of silver light across the battlefield. He blinked too late. It took twenty seconds before he regained his sight. He blinked again.

The last time he had looked the entire panorama had been covered in Grimm. Now they were gone. Actually, this was not entirely correct. There were six frozen Goliaths, a frozen Nuckelvee, and three frozen Beringel he could see. They were not moving.

He thought that he must be concussed and was hallucinating. Still, it was a superior quality hallucination.

He also saw Taiyang running across the battlefield to a small red figure lying on the ground. He also heard Fox thinking "Could someone see what has happened to Ruby? I think she just burnt off all her aura."

Fox then turned to him and spoke rather than said "Yatsuhashi is on his way to help, just lie still and say and think nothing. Others need more help than us and he is strong enough to lift these things off us to allow us to escape."

Jaune actually was feeling rather done in. He closed his eyes and waited for rescue.

A few minutes later, Fox thought at him, "Ruby is unconscious but uninjured. Her father says that she just needs a day or two in bed and she will be fine. Your sister Nancy is simply knocked out and aura depleted. She will a few days in hospital, but her twin is confident that she will be fine."

Just then Yatsuhashi arrived and started lifting the debris off him and Fox. Jaune found himself pulled out from under the debris and pulled into a tight embrace. He was happy to reciprocate the hug. He the realised that it was not Amber and opened his eyes to see a tear-stained face belonging to Pyrrha. He opened his mouth and found her lips locked on to his,

Fox thought at him," For once in your life, do not be a dork. Just kiss her back."

Jaune took the advice. He half caught a whisper from Fox to Yatsuhashi, "My work here is done. Let us contact Coco and Velvet. Winter Schnee wants to place an order with Velvet for Goliath killing bullets."

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Hazel at Haven was glad that he did not have to pass on the messages in person to Salem. He had Watts with him to lend immoral support and to put the boot into Leo. Actually, Watts was competent and sane, if petty and arrogant, and so was preferable to Cinder and Tyrian.

Lionheart should have told them about the Grimm magnet woman. As it was she had been wasted and killed in an unintended sideshow. If they had known about her then he could have recruited her and persuaded her to use her semblance in Vale to assist Cinder's attack on the maiden and the destruction of Beacon.

Hazel would hint that the omission arose because Lionheart did not enough about the overall plan to have realised how important the young Raddock was. Salem was not entirely unreasonable and normally forgave mistakes made out of ignorance. Besides which Lionheart had not signed up for encouraging Grimm attacks in such an explicit way

The first problem was that Tyrian had been mutilated. Watts was along in part because he was confident he could replace Tyrian's stinger. The problem was that it had been Salem's call that Tyrian had been near the village in the first place. Hazel had learnt that the queen was more willing to forgive mistakes you made by yourself then an objectively innocent person she could blame her own mistakes on.

There should have been no danger for Tyrian in taking on a second rate. if competent, team of hunters and two second year trainee huntresses. Admittedly one of them had been known to have been potentially first rate, but apparently it had been the sidekick who had dome the damage.

Even this would not have mattered but for the fact that the events of the evening had played out to Lionheart's advantage. He had allowed Hazel to kill his most virulent internal opponent at Haven and he had set in motion political plays which might well overthrow the current government. Whatever happened at Kulsa tonight would play into his hands.

In the short-term chaos would dominate which would suit Salem. Lionheart believed that the likely result was that the most extreme factions in Mistralian politics would be discredited and that a let us keep the show on the road set of centralists who would talk about a third way and compassionate capitalism backed by the Malachite gang and its associates would take over. They would almost certainly fail in about ten years but for the moment most people would give them a chance to have a go.

Hazel suspected that this would also suit Raven Branwen. He and Raven bonded over their distrust of Ozpin and had agreed that fighting each other would be a bad idea. Actually, he had more in common with her than with Team Salem. He believed that she actually did care for the tribe and that her promises to Sienna Khan were made more out of conviction than realpolitik.

Explaining to Salem that a third-rate ally had just achieved their objective by accident would be hard. She actually expected people to be competent and would find it hard to believe that Lionheart had not planned the result as opposed to having seized the unexpected opportunity. He thought that he could persuade her that the man could not have counted on the combination of circumstances and at worst had tossed the dice with a willingness to see how they fell.

Actually, he thought Salem would get that. She had said things which suggested that causing problems for Ozpin was an end in itself and the fact that on the whole she preferred to allow Mistral to go to hell under its own steam were consistent with someone giving throwing a rock into a cesspool and seeing what rose to the surface.

On the other hand, if Lionheart achieved his domestic objectives, his incentive to hold true to Salem would be reduced. They would have to rely solely on the stick and not on the carrot and Lionheart was not a Tyrian style true believer and regarded Ozpin as a wet liberal who thought that all kingdoms were like Vale rather than as an enemy,

Perhaps Salem would decide to make clear that all conversations had been recorded and Leo had no choice but to comply. Besides which as far as Hazel knew they had no cunning plan in relation to Mistral and so merely keeping him in the fold was all that she needed for the time being.

He also wondered about Raven Branwen and whether she had control of the Spring Maiden. Certainly, the last few years advances by the Branwen tribe made more sense if they had access to maiden powers in case of emergency or where a demonstration of power was needed. He wondered if Vernal was the maiden. The girl was the right age and was inseparable from Raven. He was reluctant to raise the issue as Cinder would insist on going after her if she knew. Perhaps he would simply mention his speculation while communicating via seer and wait until he was back at the castle and speak to Salem alone on the question of the possible identity.

It was clear that Raven wanted to be a power in Remnant beholden to no one but the primary target of no one. For the moment Salem was happy enough to indulge her. It was why he was Salem's preferred ambassador in Mistral. He had no problem with treating Raven or Lionheart with respect. When he crossed them he made it clear that it was pursuant to direct orders and would investigate whether there was a halfway house which worked for all.

He sighed. It was time to make the call. He turned to Watts who was watching the Beacon TV raw footage. He had apparently tapped into the connection and had been watching avidly. Watts said, "Rainart, have a look at this. Sorry, old chap, but we are going to ask her which piece of unwelcome news she wants to hear first.

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Mercury was mostly delighted to still be alive. One of the Goliaths had hit the wall within ten yards of him and he had been sent flying. He had only just regained consciousness when there had been a flash of silver across the sky and a few seconds later the Fox Alastair telepathy semblance had communicated the reactions which ranged from a remarkable piece of understatement "That was a thing." to various renditions of "Fracking Remnant, what was that."

He wandered down the walls and greeted Emerald. To his surprise she hugged him. He decided that this was simply being happy that they had both survived and decided not to try and take if further.

He whispered into Emerald's ear, "What happened to all the Grimm?"

Emerald whispered back, "It all happened after Little Red screamed."

Mercury gave five seconds before asking, "Was Little Red responsible for the silver flash? I despise the clockwork orange fan as much as you do, but my call is that tonight was the first time she pulled that stunt. Roman told us what he knew. Frankly, if she or Claire Arc knew that she could do it to order it would have happened two hours ago."

He then realised that Lisa Lavender and her crew were filming them. He whispered to Emerald, "Emerald, we are being filmed. We are in danger of being a human-interest story."

Emerald whispered back, "It is probably for the best if we hide our faces and wait until the journalist moves on."

Mercury nodded and looked over Emerald's head. He rather questioned her logic, and he had no doubt Neo and Roman would find it very funny. Still, he was to carry on holding Emerald.

Emerald whispered back, "Ruby has a semblance of Grimm destruction. We must warn Cinder and make certain that either Tyrian or Hazel fights her. You can continue holding me provided you do not grope."

He tried to position himself so that Emerald could pretend to ignore the fact that he enjoyed her hugging him. Frankly five minutes ago he had expected to die tonight and at the moment he wanted to celebrate the fact that he lived to fight another day.

He decided to keep her talking "What exactly happened to the Grimm?"

"You missed that? I Little Red fell to her knees and screamed just before that silver light appeared. After that the Grimm had vanished apart from those frozen ones"

Mercury looked out. One of the frozen Goliaths was surrounded by Amber Arc, Winter Schnee and Professor Port. They seemed to be debating what to do with the Grimm. They shrugged their shoulders and attacked it simultaneously. They left it to Winter to strike the final blow and the Grimm turned to dusty ice.

He then received another message from Claire Arc via Fox. "Chief Arc says that the Grimm are running away. This includes the ones who were attacking the human part of town. She sees no good reason to pursue them. Please all look after each other. Ambulances and doctors are on their way."

Emerald then said, "Don't think we will be leading on the human-interest story tomorrow. Pyrrha Nikos is giving Jaune Arc a tonsillectomy." He turned his head and saw that the two Beacon students were indeed embracing enthusiastically.

He watched the other defenders seek out their friends and loved ones. Neptune was charming Daffy Earl. The Faunus LGDF members were talking to Sun and Nora seemed to be following Pyrrha's example with Ren. She then dragged him off to the battlefield grabbing Amber Arc and Port on the way through.

A few minutes later he remarked to Emerald "It's sort of romantic that the two of them kiss and then go off to kill a Nuckelvee together."

She laughed. Neither of them had moved away.

I am probably close to the end of this story now. There will one or perhaps two chapters of immediate consequences. I will then continue with the Cardin story and also the MI story. There will be a winter holiday in Atlas story featuring Weiss, Winter, Coco, and the Atlas elites.

I do not feel strongly about ships and some of the more irritating aspects of Arkos do not hold true here. In my version, Jaune is undertrained through no fault of his own and has not lied. The two have been on the same team for months, shared a dorm and she has had time to come to respect him.