A/N: Warning for character death.
Happy Trans Day of Visibility, y'all. I appreciate the reviews. Enjoy!
Blake isn't going to call for help and let someone else get hurt because of her. This is her fight, whether she lives or dies.
"Blake, what a shame it is that we've ended up on opposite sides of this war."
She has the advantage of stealth, and his peripheral vision is already stunted due to the mask. She can launch an attack and kill him before he can react.
She can't. She can't kill him. They'll come to an understanding of some kind, and the White Fang will remain a more peaceful group. They're not unreasonable people.
"Darling, you could come back. There's still a place for you in our ranks."
Blake will never go back. She abandoned the White Fang for good long ago. It's still a tempting offer. They are winning after all.
"You do have old friends to visit, like Ilia. Poor, deluded Ilia Amitola. Shame what I had to do to her."
Ilia stayed in the White Fang when Blake left. Blake tried to convince her to leave, but Ilia maintained that without the group she had nothing.
Adam turns toward her, looking almost bored, and smiles.
"You really can't hide forever. Welcome back."
She's frozen in time.
She has something to lose, for once in her life. She has a team.
Ruby and her smiles and the tea she always makes for herself and then pushes into Blake's hands, Yang and her fire and her rage and her forgiveness. Pyrrha and her grim dedication to the fight. Hell, even Weiss.
She stands, one leg almost buckling under her, and looks him in the eyes.
"No."
Adam's face changes, freezes into an animalistic snarl Blake knows too well.
"You are nothing, Blake. You have nothing. What choice do you have?"
"No."
She lunges out. She's fought him before. She knows all of his tricks and habits and weaknesses.
It's not enough.
She's on her back, Adam's blade at her throat.
"Reject the White Fang," he says, voice too calm, "and I will make it my mission to destroy everything you love."
"Blake, where are you?"
Yang is silhouetted in a broken window. She's bleeding, one hand pressed to her chest, moving slowly. Still fighting.
"I'll start with her."
"No," she chokes out.
Adam glances back at Blake for long enough for his blade to flick down, almost casually. Blake cries out, even though every cell is screaming at her to be silent, to die quietly and not let someone else die with her. Someone she loves.
…
Yang calls out Blake's name again and makes her way over the rubble. She's somewhere by the docks, next to an abandoned factory. Her GPS is damaged and glitching, so it isn't much help.
She needs to find Blake and save her. That's all. She grits her teeth against the pain. Just one mission.
There's movement in the factory that she sees out of the corner of her eye. She whips around.
The factory floor is cluttered with old machines, most of them recently toppled over. In the middle of them, there's a man standing with his back to Yang. He turns, revealing a red-and-white mask.
"I'll start with her," he says, and Yang has to sort through her confusion for a moment. He's a gang member, and might be well-trained, but he doesn't have a hope of beating a hero like her.
There's a sound, more of a whimper than anything, from inside the factory. It sounds too much like Blake, and Yang might be losing blood and not thinking straight, but she's going to save her teammate no matter what.
Someone cries out. Unmistakably Blake this time.
"Get away from her!" Yang screams, and feels fire begin to flare up around her.
She attacks, for Blake and for herself and for something to fight for no matter what and for someone she loves.
She misses. He steps away and she falls, past him, feeling a sharp pain in one arm.
She doesn't miss. Never. Not when it counts.
She can't have – can't have lost.
She's out of ammo, but still tries to raise her arm in a desperate attempt to shoot him.
Her right arm is gone.
She lost. She tried to fight and fell before striking a single blow. She'll never fully recover from the attack, and she'll likely never fight again.
She lost.
Blake raises one pale, shaking hand and twines her fingers into Yang's own, and all she can say is "I'm sorry."
…
"Pyrrha might need our help," Weiss insists.
"There's nothing we can do to help her," Ruby says, dodging another strike from a robot. "If anything can defeat her, it'll go through us like tissue paper. Pyrrha's on her own."
…
The Huntress ignores the robots rampaging through the city. They're a lesser concern. She has power, and it's calling her to another. A villain who broke the source of her power, and scavenged fragments of it to gain power herself. Another person to fight.
She has the body and the mind of Pyrrha Nikos, but the soul of the woman is gone. All that is left is power and will.
She lands on a rooftop, one of the highest in the city, and roars.
"Cinder, you coward, where are you?"
"I'm already here."
The woman is deceptively small. One arm is cybernetic, dark with white marks. The colors of the wild robots that are never tracked to a villain in control. Her clothes and eyes are both red, glowing slightly.
She has nothing compared to the raw power of The Huntress.
The Huntress summons a firestorm, forcing it toward Cinder, vision fading into shades of red and black.
Cinder smiles through the haze and catches the fire, twining it around her own hands and compressing it into a ball a few inches wide, white-hot and brighter than the sun.
"Power does you no good without the skill to wield it," she says, then almost casually flicks the ball away from her.
The explosion knocks The Huntress away from Cinder and off of the rooftop now consumed in flames, but she recovers and lands on the nearest skyscraper.
"You can't win," she snarls.
Cinder soars out of the fire, hands spread wide, collecting energy from the very air around her.
"Really?" she purrs, then flicks one hand, summoning ropes of fire that The Huntress tried to dodge. They burn.
The Huntress is forced to her knees, thrashing against her bonds and ignoring the pain. She is stronger than Cinder. She has trained her whole life for the battlefield, and now has unimaginable power.
Cinder lands and smiles slightly, forming a staff of pure fire in her hand.
…
The skyscraper explodes above them, raining shards of glass onto the pavement. Weiss's shield of ice protects them both, although it's thinner than usual. They can't afford to do anything more than defend themselves and try to cut their losses.
"Pyrrha has everything under control," Ruby says automatically.
Weiss frowns and squints again at the skyscraper, before giving a yelp of shock and hastily blocking another attack.
"Ruby, she's losing."
"Are you crazy? She's The Huntress! She never loses a fight."
"That woman in red has her tied up already. Pyrrha isn't going to win."
The Huntress doesn't lose. It's her nature. Her combination of power and ingenuity can defeat anything or anyone.
But Pyrrha broke when she killed someone. Pyrrha is the one who arm-wrestles with Yang and brings her weapons around to get tuned up. Pyrrha isn't invincible.
"I need to get there as fast as possible," Ruby says. "Weiss?"
Weiss is looking pale already, but she nods and raises her hand.
The wind lifts Ruby straight upward, too fast and not fast enough.
The woman raises a spear, slowly, and plunges it into Pyrrha's chest.
No.
Pyrrha can't be dead.
The Huntress is a symbol as much as she is a fighter, and Ruby bought into her mythology as much as the rest of the city. If she ever died, it would be a heroic sacrifice to save the earth and everyone on it. She wouldn't get unceremoniously impaled by a mysterious villain, as just one part of a loss.
They've lost.
Penny is dead and Pyrrha is dead, and countless other civilians are dead, and they've lost.
The woman in red turns to look at Ruby and Ruby screams.
Her vision fades to white on white shadows.