AUTHOR'S NOTES: Here we are, the end of the Battle of "Haven." Sorry this is a little later than I hoped, but Thanksgiving...you know how it is.

Those hoping for an epic Blake vs. Adam dogfight are going to be disappointed, I'm afraid. One, I want to save that for later on, and two, I already feel wiped out writing the rest of the battle-the conclusion of the GRIMM/Hazel fight, and naturally the fight between Cinder and Raven. I think you'll still be pretty satisfied for what does happen.

Over the Sea of Japan

Near Nishinoshima, Japan

21 June 2001

It was times like this Lie Ren wished he had chosen a different line of work. Farming, he thought to himself. Farming sounds rather peaceful. Fresh air, healthy work, and a nice home to come back to at the end of the day.

Of course, Ren thought to himself, if he screwed this up any more, he was going to be buying a farm of a different kind.

The five GRIMM he'd engaged—all Beowolves—had done something he hadn't anticipated. Normally, GRIMM, especially Beowolves, just attacked with no programming for self-survival. Someone had altered these drones' programming, however, because they had gone into a Lufbery Circle; Ren recognized it from the training at Beacon. A Lufbery Circle, so named for its inventor, an American World War I ace, was when aircraft—in this case, the Beowolves—went into a defensive circle. It sounded ripe for a shooting gallery, but any attempt to break the circle to kill one GRIMM exposed Ren to the fire of the four others, who could either fly in behind him, or cut across the circle. After two passes of nearly getting his tail shot off, it was time for a different tactic. Ren, like so many other fighter pilots on both sides this day realized he was trying to play the game by his opponents' rules. He was also distracted by constantly checking for Nora, who was having no luck gunning down the A-9; of course, it wasn't having much luck either.

Ren had an idea. He adjusted his third dive at the circle to fly alongside of it for a moment, then suddenly turned away, engaging his afterburners. A quick glance behind showed his idea had worked: the GRIMM sensed a target, broke out of the circle, and came after him. Ren accelerated, getting out of the Beowolves' range, and as they began a slight turn to the left—undoubtedly detecting Nora's presence—he turned around in a hard turn and came straight at them. The Beowolves' electronic brains were briefly confused by the sudden reappearance of a new target, and before they could react, Ren was already firing an AMRAAM. One of the GRIMM vanished in an explosion, and he was past the formation before they could react. And, Ren saw to his vast pleasure, his turn was putting himself into a superb position to get behind the A-9.

Hazel Rainart was, he admitted to himself, getting a little furious.

Neither the A-9 nor the A-10 was built for dogfighting, and though both aircraft were carrying Sidewinders, neither really had the speed to extend and get far enough away from the other to really use them. The result had been an inconclusive, five minute long knife fight, with each pilot trying to turn inside the other to use their huge gatling cannons to kill the other. He smiled wanly at the sight of the A-10 as they passed close enough to easily see each other: Hazel noted that his opponent was female, filled out her flight suit nicely, and had written BOOP in pink letters over the nose above the snout of the heavy GAU-8 cannon. He decided he would have to chance it: Hazel advanced the throttles to the stops, hoping that the other pilot wouldn't notice until it was too late.

Nora, for her part, did notice the move, and mumbled curse words in three languages as she accelerated herself: she'd been thinking the same thing. She jerked the stick to the right; at low level, not even a F-16 could turn with an A-10. Then, out of the corner of one eye, she saw Ren's J-10 curving in to get behind the A-9's tail. "Yeah, get 'em, Ren!" she crowed; Nora wasn't above sharing. She expected him to fire his AMRAAMs, but Ren's speed was too high, and he was closing to use Sidewinders. As she curved around to keep both her lover and her opponent in sight, Nora suddenly knew what was about to happen. "Ren, no!"

Hazel had spotted the J-10 coming in behind him. Like the A-10, the A-9 had a straight wing. In modern air combat, straight wings were a throwback to World War II; swept wings were built for jets. The problem was, at low level, straight wings were actually an advantage, because they provided for more lift in thicker air. And if a F-16 could not turn with an A-10 at low level, a J-10 could not turn with an A-9, either.

Hazel turned hard, grunting as his G-suit squeezed his big body, came out facing Ren directly, and opened fire.

Ren had practiced dogfighting Nora enough that he realized what was happening, and though he was a fraction too late, the sudden dodge was enough to save his life. The hail of thirty millimeter shells mostly missed, but it did not take more than a few of the depleted uranium slugs to do fatal damage. Two of the shells tore through Stormflower's engine; two more took off most of the tail. Warning lights came on all over his instrument panel, and Ren knew it was time to step out. He didn't curse, just sighed, shook his head, braced, and pulled the ejection handle. The canopy separated and Ren, unlike Weiss and Vernal, had a clean ejection. He watched dejectedly as his J-10, which had taken him through so much at Beacon and elsewhere, glided into the ocean and exploded.

"REN!" Nora screamed. She saw her lover get out, but she was still terrified: she knew Cinder's bunch might shoot at parachutes. She spotted the A-9 turning in her direction, and flung Magnhild towards it, gritting her teeth. The two went straight at each other.

"How many more children must die for you, Ozpin?" Hazel sighed, and pulled the trigger. Nora, a fraction slower, pulled the nose up and held on.

The shells struck the A-10 just behind the gun barrel and marched down the length of the aircraft, pulling slightly to the right. They missed the gun, but hit below the cockpit, through the left wing, into the left engine, and into the left endplate of the tail. Nora grabbed the stick with both hands as it was threatened to be knocked out of her hands; the sheer impact caused the nose to go up and the Warthog to stall. The titanium-armored tub the cockpit sat in had been rated only to 23 millimeter, but it somehow held against the impact of Hazel's gunfire. Two shells went straight through the wing, holing a fuel tank, while the left engine failed and then tore itself apart, shredding the "can" it sat in but missing the rest of the aircraft; the left rudder was half torn away. Magnhild wallowed and fell out of the sky as Hazel swept past. He threw the pilot a quick salute for her bravery as he did so, then flew on, searching for new targets, watching the GRIMM take up station far to the right, still in formation. Then a smoke trail suddenly connected with a Beowolf, and it exploded. Hazel craned his head back and to the left, and saw a F-18 diving in behind the GRIMM.

Oscar had gotten a little turned around in the confusion of the dogfight; he knew now why fighter pilots called it a furball. Rather than get in the middle of Yang and Ruby's fight with the A-4 and the Mirage, he'd headed north to gain a little separation, then turned back into the fight, crammed on the power, and dropped down to help Ren and Nora. He'd been too late to stop Ren getting shot down, but as he saw the Beowolves angling towards the stricken J-10, he locked onto one of them, only for his own RWR to come alive. A quick look behind: the two Beowolves he'd thought he'd lost earlier were coming in behind him, and Oscar thought they looked even angrier now. Oscar decided to ignore them: he'd get at least one of the damn GRIMM ahead of him before the other two got him. He fired an AMRAAM, expecting to see the telltale smoke trails of missiles behind.

Instead, as his own missile destroyed one of the Beowolves in front, one of the ones behind him disintegrated, and the other broke away. "Qrow to Oscar; you're clear, kid." Oscar wanted to cheer as he saw the ungainly F-117 fly past the burning GRIMM, then go past his left wing to engage the other two. Two missile shots later, and two of the three remaining were on fire and going down.

Oscar set up for a shot on the remaining one, only to see the other Beowolf behind him suddenly swing back over to reengage. "Dammit!" he yelled, and broke as it fired. Cannon shells sailed past like little fireballs, and Oscar tightened the turn, trying to remember if Beowolves could turn with Hornets. Then it became a moot point, as the GRIMM exploded much like its erstwhile brother had.

"Ruby to Oscar! You're on the last one—swat him!" He saw the F-16 holding high and understood; Ruby had shot the GRIMM off his tail. He was suddenly seized with the ardent desire to kiss her somehow, but instead turned back into the fight, locked onto the last Beowolf, and added it to the day's toll. Suddenly the sky was clear.

"Splash…five?" Oscar said in wonderment. With a rush of adrenaline, he realized abruptly that he'd made ace on his first combat mission.

Hazel saw the last of the GRIMM go down and shook his head, more annoyed than afraid. He got the A-9 down low, only a few hundred feet above the waves, and headed for Japan. He'd lose his pursuers in the mountains of Honshu, then head for the secret divert field on the north part of the island, where a handful of Salem's people were waiting, as they'd been waiting for Raven and Vernal when they'd secretly landed there a few days before. Assuming his opponents simply didn't let him go; they had to be low on fuel. He throttled back himself for the same reason; the A-9 was already painfully slower than his opponents, but at low level, he'd already demonstrated that was more of a help than a hindrance.

He was so busy watching above and to his right, where the F-117 and the F-18 were, that he didn't check directly behind. Movement caught his eye, and he finally looked in that direction—into the eight barrels of Nora's GAU-8. "How—"

Nora had shoved the stick into the instrument panel and applied as much right rudder as she could, fighting the A-10's tendency to pull towards the dead engine. It had come out of the stall barely above the waves, and she'd made the turn, to see the A-9 flying away. She angrily rammed the throttle forward, threatening to burn out her remaining engine, and caught up. "Go DOWN," Nora hissed, and pulled the trigger.

The A-9 was nearly a tough an aircraft as the A-10, but even it could not survive the onslaught, as Nora systematically sawed off the single tail. Flames blossomed from the bisected fuselage, and Hazel ejected, becoming the fourth and last parachute in the sky. Nora flew under him, once more fighting to keep the Warthog in the air, but not so much that she didn't flip him off as she did.

Ashiya

Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

21 June 2001

Adam Taurus began to laugh. "Blake! To think that I went through that much trouble to find you, only to have you deliver yourself to me."

"This isn't going to work, Adam," Blake told him. "That group of trucks down there are filled with Faunus—the Faunus volunteers from Menagerie."

Adam dipped a wing. The trucks were almost to the police cordon; they were ten minutes from the airbase. "Volunteers. Not much more than a mob of people. You've got, what, maybe one out of ten are trained soldiers? The rest are dockwockers, repairmen—"

"They're Faunus," Blake interrupted. "My parents, Sienna, even you claim to fight for the Faunus. And now you're going to order the White Fang to fire on their own brothers and sisters? Parents, maybe even children?"

"They'll obey orders." He climbed and orbited, looking for her. The sky was filled with fat cumulus clouds, a few gray with rain. He kept his radar off for now, to keep himself hidden; the Moonslice was a small target.

"Will they? Ilia didn't. The team that the Albains sent to kill my mother at Abbotsinch didn't. It's one thing to talk about killing your fellow countrymen; it's quite another to actually do it."

"I don't have a problem with it." Adam quartered the sky. She was here, somewhere.

"It's because you're a psychopath. Maybe you weren't always, but you are now."

"I'm going to find you, Blake!" Adam shouted. That had struck a nerve.

"You will," Blake agreed. "And you might even kill me. But there's no escape, Adam! Not for anyone! Even if you get me, you still have to fly somewhere. You've got the fuel to make Korea, but no further. I know the range of the Moonslice. You stay and fight me, and you'll never survive. You may kill me, the White Fang may fight, but they'll be overrun. And sooner or later, the entire JASDF will get down here. How far will you get, Adam, before they run you down?" Her voice became pleading. "For God's sake, Adam! How many people have to die before you realize you've lost! You lost before you even left Lossiemouth! We knew you were coming to Ashiya! While you were flying across Russia and China, we came over the pole! We barely beat you here, but we beat you!"

Salem, Adam thought. She betrayed us. She told the Japanese. We were nothing more than a diversion for her true objective on Tsushima. Our purpose is just to draw the Japanese off while Cinder Fall and Hazel Rainart attack Tsushima, and she doesn't care if we die. "The least I can do is kill you," he snarled. "You're alone. Come out and fight and we'll settle this."

"She's not alone." It was a new voice, a masculine one, not Yang Xiao Long—not that he expected her ever again. This time, Adam saw something flit through the crowds, and turned towards it. It was a F-18, in the light gray of the US Navy.

"And who is this?" Adam demanded.

"Sun Wukong is the name, air combat's my game."

"Does Blake make all her squadronmates fight for her?"

"Naaah," Sun said flippantly. "This is a volunteer gig."

Adam saw the Hornet leave the clouds again, made a sudden turn, and fired an AMRAAM. Sun dived away, towards the ground, leaving behind clouds of chaff; the missile was confused and flew into the side of a hill. Adam rolled in behind the F-18, only to have his RWR go off as Blake locked onto him again, this time much closer, though he still couldn't see her F-14. He went into a hard break, causing Blake to lose him, but as he kicked the tail around, he saw the F-18 climbing to reengage. Adam glanced at his fuel gauge. It was already down by a third. At Beacon, he'd been able to dogfight because he'd had external tanks until he'd arrived at the base, and the White Fang had reoccupied Roman Torchwick's old hideout at Mountain Glenn as a temporary fueling stop. Neither existed now: if he tried to land at Ashiya, either Blake or Sun would shoot him out of the sky on approach, when any aircraft was at its most vulnerable.

"Adam." Blake's voice was flat, emotionless. "Run."

Adam's fingers tightened around stick and throttle in rage. To stay was to die, and Adam Taurus, in the end, was not ready to die.

He dived to just above the ground, firewalled the throttle, and headed out to sea.

"Tally-ho on the Moonslice!" Sun called out. "Eleven o'clock low, heading out over the ocean."

"Sun, Blake," she replied, then hesitated. She could see the Moonslice through the nose-mounted TCS' display in the cockpit. Her own fingers tightened on the trigger. Then they relaxed: against the sea return, her AMRAAMs would be confused where the target was, and the problem with the Phoenix was that it was never designed to be used against high-performance fighters. She pushed the radio button. "Sun, Blake. Let him go."

"Blake, we can take him!"

In her mind's eye, she saw Sun in a terminal dive, on fire, the same way Yang had been over Beacon. Blake shook off the mental image. She wouldn't take the chance. She wouldn't let Sun take the chance. She couldn't lose another friend to Adam. "Let him go," she repeated.

"Blake, you're making a mistake," Sun warned, but the F-18 broke off the pursuit.

"More than likely," she sighed.

Deery didn't see the Moonslice fly off; Adam had been too low. She was seeing trucks stop on the roads in front of her, out of range of all but her machine guns, and she wanted to wait on those, to let the JGSDF get close, to make them think the White Fang were poorly armed. "Hold fire," she reminded her troops. "Stay under cover."

The White Fang had found cars in the parking lot and pushed them together, forming barricades. They had a handful of claymore mines set in the gaps; each one would send a hundred ball bearings outwards at high speed when they exploded, killing or maiming all in their path. Deery would let the Japanese forces get within a hundred yards before she opened fire. The streets were wide, and hemmed in by buildings; they were perfect kill zones.

She picked up her binoculars. "Snipers, stand by," she spoke into the radio mike at her throat. She had placed snipers in the control tower and atop the hangars. "Go for the officers when you see them, but hold you fire until I give the word." Then she looked through the binoculars.

To her surprise, they were not JGSDF. They were Faunus. They were dressed in fatigues, but it looked like British Army surplus, the same thing that the Menagerie Defense Force wore. All of them had weapons, but from the way some of them handled their weapons, they were clearly not used to them. A huge Faunus stepped out of the back of one of the armored personnel carriers—which were painted in JGSDF colors, but their crews made no effort to turn in the White Fang's direction. Deery zoomed in: it was Ghira Belladonna. He began organizing his Faunus into loose companies, and they began marching forward. It was not a very disciplined march, but there were a lot of them.

"It's…it's Faunus," the wolf Faunus next to Deery said. "They're not Japanese troops!"

His words rolled down the line, as other White Fang started noticing their opponents. Deery saw her troops begin to look at each other, then at her, for reassurance. "Hold your ground!" she shouted. She wished Adam was here; Deery wasn't sure if she had his ability to inspire.

"I think…that's Mata!" One of the sheep Faunus to Deery's left looked to her, eyes wide. "God, no! I can't fight my own brother!"

"Quiet!" Deery shouted. "Quiet! Hold the line!"

The Faunus and Ghira Belladonna stopped about 500 yards away. Then they heard the sound of turboprops getting closer and louder. She looked up. Two C-130s flew overhead, well out of small arms fire range. Neither wore the camouflage pattern of the JASDF, but an overall dark gray. "Paratroopers," the wolf Faunus said. "They'll drop behind us."

"I suppose…" Deery's voice trailed off as the first of the C-130s began a slow left turn. Without warning, flame licked out from the aircraft's side. For a second, she thought the transport had caught fire, but then the noise of ripping fabric reached her ears, followed by a rhythmic thumping. The 707, parked half a mile behind them, disintegrated, erupting in an explosion as it was hit by twenty millimeter rounds and forty millimeter shells. Deery snatched up her binoculars and looked. It wasn't a C-130 transport at all.

"Oh my God," she gasped. "Gunships. Those are AC-130s."

The wolf Faunus swallowed audibly, especially as the second one began its orbit. The guns were now aimed at them, at the barricades. "Where's Adam?"

"He's…I don't know…" Deery felt lost. She had teams with Stingers, but not many, and she wasn't sure they would even help.

"What are your orders?"

"I...I don't..." She felt lost, unsure, with her own death staring right at her.

The wolf Faunus made a decision. He climbed up on top of one of the cars, raised his rifle over his head, then tossed it to the ground in front of him. The other White Fang hesitated, then did the same. Deery fell to her knees and began to cry.

The White Fang surrendered without a shot being fired.

Over Mount Eboshi

Tsushima, Japan

21 June 2001

Raven Branwen and Cinder Fall faced off with a closing rate of over a thousand miles an hour, both sides holding their fire, both sides daring the other to break first. It was Cinder's nerve who gave first, and she broke right. Raven, knowing her Night Raven could not turn with the Su-27, broke left and climbed, rolled, and dropped in behind Cinder. She switched to guns and put the gunsight pipper on the back of Cinder's head.

Once more, however, the other woman had baited a trap. Cinder counted one full second, slammed the stick into her right knee and stomped the right rudder pedal. The Su-27 seemed to disappear out of Raven's gunsight, and she swore as she overshot, throwing the Night Raven into another left roll and climb. Both pilots made a complete circle and ended up going directly at each other again; neither had anticipated the quickness of the other, fired their guns too late, and missed. Raven and Cinder reversed their turns, and found each other going head-to-head for the third time. Cinder managed to get off a few shots from her cannon, but succeeded only in grazing the Night Raven's wings; Raven didn't bother trying. "All right, you fucking bitch," Cinder growled. She pulled the throttle back and the nose up, shedding airspeed as they entered their fourth head-on pass, to force the overshoot.

Raven noticed the move, and knew she was being forced to fight on Cinder's turf, just as Qrow had been trying to do—a maneuvering fight the Night Raven could not hope to win. She threw her aircraft into a climb, at a speed the Su-27 could not hope to meet. In seconds, she was ten thousand feet higher than Cinder, daring the other woman to follow her.

Cinder smiled behind the oxygen mask. "Oh, no, Raven," she said. "I know your weakness." She made a lazy turn, found Vernal still descending in her parachute, and headed for her.

"No!" Raven shouted, and dived. Cinder, who had kept an eye on the Night Raven, saw it coming down, waited, then made another hard break to the right—but almost as suddenly reversed her turn. As Raven pulled out of her dive, a quick kick of the rudder pedal finally put Cinder where she had been trying to be since the fight started, a long 45 seconds prior—right behind the Night Raven. "Goodbye, Spring Maiden," Cinder spoke, and her finger tightened on the trigger. They were far enough apart for her Sidewinders.

Raven knew she had made several mistakes so far in this dogfight, and her next move might be her last. In a blur of motion, she took her left hand off the throttle, reached up, and flicked two switches above it. Four speedbrakes opened above and below the fuselage.

To Cinder, it was as if the Night Raven had simply stopped in front of her: it went from the length of one finger to filling her windscreen in a single second. "Mother of God!" Cinder screamed, and pushed the stick forward to dive underneath the Night Raven, clearing its ventral fins by less than two feet. Raven was already closing the speedbrakes, pushing the throttle forward, and shoved her own stick down. Cinder was now well ahead. Raven didn't even pull the trigger. "Sidewinder missile fire," she ordered. One of the side weapons bay doors opened and closed in a moment, kicking out a single AIM-9, which ignited and tracked on the Su-27's tailpipes. Cinder rolled and dived, leaving flares in her wake; the Sidewinder missed.

This fucking bitch is good, Raven mused to herself. She throttled back a little, knowing Cinder would have to come out of the dive and climb, since the alternative was to dive into the side of Mount Eboshi. Raven switched back to guns; both her Sidewinders and AMRAAMs would not be able to pick the Su-27 out of the ground clutter and heat of the forest. As she climbed, Cinder broke to the left this time, but Raven, anticipating that, did not try to turn or overshoot. She climbed again. Come on, Raven thought. I know your weakness, Cinder. You're impatient.

She was right. The Su-27 came out of its turn and climbed after her. Raven put herself in the younger woman's flight boots: she would let the Night Raven continue to climb, switch to radar-guided missiles, and fire. The problem was, Cinder's radar would not be able to get a lock on her stealthy opponent. She would get frustrated and dive away to reset the situation, and when she did, Raven would use the heavier weight of the Night Raven to dive on the Su-27 and finish it. Raven glanced at the rearward facing camera display, saw the other fighter beginning to falter, and pulled the stick back into her lap. The Night Raven rolled over on its back. Cinder had dived into a split-S, and Raven fell on her like an avenging angel from on high, coming out of the sun. Raven rolled her wings level, dived just slightly past her opponent, pulled up, and found herself in the best position possible: below and behind the Su-27, in its blind spot. She closed in for the kill.

Cinder looked around frantically, knowing that the Night Raven was behind her and she was about to die. In desperation, she pulled the stick back, engaged the thrust-vectoring, and pitched the Su-27 backwards. The aircraft audibly groaned over the sound of her hard breathing, as wing spars were stressed to the maximum; she'd done this manuever in practice, and Salem's engineers had told her doing it in combat, with external stores and more than minimal fuel, was asking to tear the wings off. It also meant that, if Raven was anywhere but nearly on top of her, she'd just made herself the easiest target in the world.

The problem for Raven was that she was nearly on top of Cinder. The sudden pitch-up did the same thing to Raven that the latter's speedbrake extension had done to Cinder: it killed her airspeed, and the Night Raven overshot, flying beneath her. Worse, the thrust-vectoring was such that Cinder simply continued the pitch up, doing a full loop almost within the length of the aircraft, and ended up behind Cinder. Raven was cursing herself for an idiot—she had completely forgotten that the Su-27 had thrust vectoring—and hit her afterburners to extend out of range. She was too late: Cinder had already switched to heat-seekers. "Got you!" she shouted in triumph. The twin glowing exhausts of the Night Raven were perfect sources of heat, and her Sidewinders were growling in her ears, eager to be let loose.

Then something else was resounding in her ears: the Su-27's radar warning receiver. Cinder hesitated, wondering if the Night Raven could somehow fire missiles backwards, but then saw on her threat display that the radar spike was from behind her: two AMRAAMs were headed her way. She engaged her own afterburners, but realized in horror that the sudden loop had left her without airspeed, and time. In panic, she jabbed the chaff button on the throttle and twisted the Su-27 to the left.

Her frantic maneuever actually worked—partially. One AMRAAM missed, flying past, locking onto the Night Raven for a fleeting moment before the radar seeker lost lock, and flew off into the sky. The other ignored the chaff and the turn; to its seeker head, the Su-27's radar return was as large as a barn. It impacted between the aircraft's twin tails, the fragmentation warhead detonating and sending steel fragments through both engines and the control surfaces. By a miracle, it missed the fuel tanks, but the Su-27 was doomed all the same: it nosed over, and all Cinder could see was the waters of Tsushima Strait rushing up to meet her. She reached for the ejection handles, then saw in the mirrors of the canopy what had shot her down.

It was a F-22. "Pyrrha Nikos," Cinder said aloud, and knew she was dead. If she ejected, Pyrrha would have no trouble gunning her in her parachute; the Greek girl had done it before. Her only chance was to ride the Su-27 down and somehow survive the crash—and then hope one of her opponents didn't gun her in the water.

She pulled back on the stick to bring the nose up; her instrument panel went dark, then came back on as the dying Su-27 dropped its ram-air generator into the slipstream to restore power. With no tails or horizontal stabilizers worth the title, the aircraft was almost uncontrollable, but somehow she got the nose up and dropped the flaps. It was still too fast. The last thing Cinder Fall heard was the tearing of metal as the aircraft hit the water at over a hundred miles an hour; the last thing she felt was the seat harness snapping and sending her helmet into the instrument panel.

And then there was nothing, nothing at all.