[X] Make a break for the window.

Don't overcomplicate it. The window was the old plan, the window is the current plan, the window's a plan that'll work.

Probably.

She just needed to get there. She couldn't fight her attacker, and her options without any Dust or weapons on her were limited. If she tried hard enough, she could harden her Aura while using her Semblance so it covered more area, but that just led to taking more Aura damage from things almost hitting her. Sure, she had one or two nice tricks that made use of that, but it was like fighting with two arms tied behind her back. She didn't train properly for dealing with not having certain tools on her.

Stupid of her. Who cares if Dust made it more effective if it meant she was borderline useless without it?

No, no, this was fine. She could pull through this somehow. It's just one attacker, one dangerous situation, and she already had her plan. It could be worse.

Usually, this would be the point where she took a breath in, extended her Aura so she could feel through it, and ran. But she was in a combat situation right now, and taking a breath would be letting her attack know that she was about to make a move.

So instead, she started out running.

It was hard to start sprinting from a casual position, and it took Periwinkle a moment to get the speed she needed. The window was within sight, now that the nearest book cases had been knocked down, and she just needed to get to it.

Three steps into her run, the girl took a deep breath in. Her heart was pounding. as her Aura creeped outwards, before a foot behind her cleaved through it again.

Desperately, the girl threw herself to the side, slamming into the ground in the process. The leg soared over her head, and as she hit the ground, she felt the edges of her extended Aura interact with the leg as it once again shifted, cleaving down with an unnaturally quick change in momentum.

Was that this persons Semblance? Sudden shifts in momentum like that?

Hardening her Aura, Peri pushed it down, rebelling herself off the floor. She bounced up, and quickly latched on to the top of a bookshelf, using her upwards momentum to pull herself on top of it. That was fortunate. Her attacker had been surprised enough by her dodge that she had been able to pull that off before he started his attack again.

There was the sound of shattering wood beneath Periwinkle, and she felt the book case tilting to the side, almost falling. If she was right, then that shattering would be the sound of her attacker kicking through the wood. Which would mean, at least for an instant, his foot was stuck.

Hopefully, that would be enough. Kicking off the shelf as it fell, Periwinkle leaped towards the window. As she fell, she reached with her Aura to try and harden it under her feet, so she could kick off of it and keep herself in the air. It wasn't a trick which had worked for her before, but it'd be nice if she could pull it off for a second, at least.

Alas, it was not to be, and after a second of trying, she hit the ground. Her legs buckled from the impact, and as the momentum from the fall forced Peri to her knees, it occurred to her that she should have braced for landing.

Another mistake made. She was supposed to be better than this. Even if she specialised in standing still and blasting people, she did have some training in moving around and having momentum. Her standing still was supposed to be a flaw she hadn't overcome, not the end-all to her fighting style.

In a fight, movement and momentum were king. She usually fought through area denial, hitting enough of an area to avoid the issues of fighting a faster opponent while denying an enemy their momentum, and ideally, she'd eventually learn how to adapt this to similar tricks while on the run. Deny the enemy's movement and dictate the pace of the battle herself.

That was such a nice ideal. Really something to keep in mind and give her hope, as she scrambled to her knees and realised a moment too late that her extended Aura had closed inwards again.

The boot hit her in the back of the head and sent her flying, slamming into another bookshelf in the process. There was a lot of tho-

The thought was cut out by the boot which kicked her again, sending her through the bookshelf rather than into it. Periwinkle felt her Aura strain from the force of being thrown through the wood and into the floor hit her all at once. Even as she was wincing from that, however, she heard a creaking sound from overhead. The books on the case fell onto her as the bookshelf toppled over, and Peri's eyes widened as she stretched her hand upwards, hardening and extending her Aura as quick as they could.

The best fighters in the world were the ones who could identify a threat and counter it quickly, applying the needed techniques even if they were panicked or rushed. Periwinkle Flowers was far from the best fighter in the world.

The bookshelf slammed through her haphazardly hardened and extended Aura, and Peri was crushed under it's weight for a second. Her lungs were already empty from the impact through the bookshelf, so she didn't have that to worry about, but her Aura was starting to get to breaking point. She couldn't afford to take many more hits, if she wanted to also make the fall without getting hurt too much.

Though even if she did, the fall would probably hurt her less than being trapped with a lunatic who was attacking her without any reason.

She hardened her Aura again, properly this time, before she threw it up into the bookshelf. It slammed up into the roof, and Periwinkle quickly rolled out of the way before it could slam into her again.

Her attacker was leaning against another bookshelf, just blocking the window from Peri's view, as he casually looked over at her like none of this had happened. He looked like something out of a romance movie, around the scene where you had the generic confident jerk planning to get too pushy with one half of the main pairing, so that the other half could get overprotective. That kind of look was apparently one that some actors had to practice, Peri vaguely recalled from one interview or another, to mix in the right brand of smug surety that you wanted to see them punched in the face.

"Here I was." He spoke to himself, as he stretched. "Worried that I'd be thrown into a tough job so soon after finishing calibrations. You are one of those out of cityers, right? I'm not beating up some non-combatant Servant, am I?"

Periwinkle's eyes widened as an idea came to her, and she quickly tried to fake a timid tremble-

"Wow, you're a shit actor." The actor noted. "So much, the moment I say it? You know how subtlety works, right?"

Well, there goes the act innocent plan. Moving on, then. Distractions.

"Why are you doing this?" Peri asked. "What have I done to you? I wouldn't have left the room, I wasn't in anyone's way, so why are you attacking me?"

The attacker shrugged. "Boss said she didn't want any witnesses around or something. Trying to get into someones good books by making their job easier or something? I don't know, I was just told to knock out or kill some people until they arrived."

Kill?

Periwinkle felt her blood go cold, but tried to distract herself from that thought. "W-Who do you mean, 'they'?"

The boy with grey hair opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the next sound to echo through the building.

The alarm, Periwinkle had gotten used to. She could just barely hear things over it, but in the heat of the moment, that was enough. For the most part, it was ignorable. This wasn't.

You didn't ignore that roar. It was bestial, but proud. It wasn't something you ignored. It was something you feared, something that was made in the night to remind people to fear the dark. It echoed over the alarm, and despite sounding so distant, for a moment, all Periwinkle could hear was that roar. Her other senses dimmed, as she just barely noticed what was going on around her.

But just barely was enough, as she saw her attacker stumble in shock as well.

As quick as she could, Periwinkle took advantage of that momentary distraction. Her extended Aura was usually no good for the purpose of attacking, as any foe with Aura could simply power through it, or even just ignore it.

But with the grey haired kicker already off balance and stumbling from the shock of the echoing roar, it was easy enough to harden her Aura just at his unprepared heel, forcing it back as the rest of his body moved forward.

He fell forward, and before he even hit the ground, Periwinkle moved. Her ears were ringing from from the roar, but that stroke of luck might just have saved her life. Pushing back the falling boy, Peri ran for the window.

He was falling, and she was close. She'd done it. She somehow managed to pull it off. Maybe her attacker hadn't been in the room long enough during her Scroll call after all, because even if he had positioned himself for an ambush when she ran for the window, he certainly hadn't acted like he knew her escape plan was that way. He hadn't even acted that much to keep her away from the window.

Periwinkle's eyes looked forward, and she saw where she was running. As the realisation struck, she paled.

The window was closed.

Damn it, damn it. She knew she had opened it when she was planning escape routes, and the windows here were hardened to prevent breakage. That window wouldn't break just from the force of Peri trying to dive through it, and the impact would probably leave her with too little Aura to make the landing unscathed.

Her hand reached out, extended out and to the side to try and grab at the latch to the window. If she could just pull it open, if she could just make it through before anything bad happened-

A gunshot rang out, and just as Peri's hand reached the window latch, something shot into her back. She stumbled forward, her head hitting the glass, panicking as she did so. Too slow, she bet too much on her opponent not overhearing her, the plan was flawed from the start, and now-

The boot kicked her in the head again, firing another gunshot in the process. It all happened so fast, Periwinkle hadn't even lost the force and momentum of her initial mad dash for the window. All of that combined was enough to throw her through the window, the sound of shattering glass filling Periwinkle's world as her Aura strained to breaking point.

For a split second, she vaguely noticed the grey haired boy saluting her. And then she was falling.

She didn't have time, she couldn't think. The air was rushing by her so fast, and she was falling so fast, the world was a blur around her. She was falling, and she didn't have the Aura to make the fall unharmed, she needed a plan.

A plan. She needed to make sure she wasn't hurt too badly from this fall. Right now, she was spinning forward, head towards the ground. That wouldn't do, that wouldn't do at all. She needed to land on her feet, so when her Aura broke, nothing vital broke with it. Reaching out and extending her Aura, Peri tried to create a small bubble of hardened Aura to force her head up with. Even as she did that, she curled her legs back, trying to focus her weight in that direction so that her body would spin around.

Once she got her feet pointing down, she should be able to focus her Aura downwards so that it formed a safety bubble, bleeding off momentum and the force of the hit before she hit the ground.

But she was falling too fast, and she was still headfirst, and it wasn't working, the hardened Aura bubble was still staying below her head and she couldn't move it upwards, and trying to make the bubble connected to her head just hardened the Aura around her head. She didn't have enough Aura to risk landing on her head, trying to do that would just break her skull open, but she needed to do something to force her head back, literally anything with some momentum behind it to throw her head back so she could land without dying, she needed something, anything-

There was a blur of green, and something collided with Periwinkle's forehead at the last possible moment. Her body twisted back, and just as Peri realised that her head was above her legs now, the impact came.

Her Aura shattered like it wasn't even there, and as pain shot through her legs, Periwinkle screamed. The bones in her legs seemed to follow her Aura's example, a sickening crunch echoing as Periwinkle crushed her legs under her. The rest of her body fell forward, even as the sudden stop inflicted its consequence on that as well. Even with her Aura helping, the girl could have sworn she heard another crack as her head bounced off her arm.

For a moment, all Periwinkle could hear was the alarm, and her own panicked breathing. Some glass from above finished falling above her, slicing into her legs, but she could barely feel it, at that moment. She could barely feel anything.

It took her a moment to realise she was alive.

Her eyes were tearing up, as she looked up. There she was. Front of the Schnee estate, and no attacker in sight. She'd survived, somehow, despite how she was falling. How-

Her eyes saw something green past the screen of tears, and the girl quickly moved her left hand to wipe her eyes. The instant she moved her arm, pain shot through it, as if something was stabbing her muscles from within.

Her arm, the bone was broken, wasn't it?

She could feel herself tearing up more, but she needed to see what the green thing was. Whatever it was, it being thrown probable saved her life. Periwinkle started blinking, trying to bat tears out of her eyes, and for just a second, she managed to get a look at what had saved her.

"A gun?" She asked herself. "How did-"

There was a groan, and as Peri blinked again, throwing tears out of her eyes again, she turned her head and looked further away.

Lying on the ground, one bloodied arm hanging loosely by his side even as his other tried to hold a matching gun, was a face Periwinkle didn't know well. It was someone she recognised, sure. Another Mistralian.

"Ren?" She asked, her voice soft.

The boy in green nodded, as he stumbled forward. His clothes were torn, blood clearly visible from a variety of sources on his body, and as he took another step forward, Periwinkle saw his ankle bend at an unnatural angle. He fell, and he landed on his arm, eliciting a scream from his lips for a split second before he managed to stop himself.

"You..." He panted out, the pain obvious in his voice even as he tried to hide it? "Okay?"

Periwinkle tried to claw forward, pulling herself forward with her right arm slightly. Her leg trailed across some sharpened glass, opening up a cut, and she let out her own cry.

"No." She admitted, her voice sounding as small as she felt at that moment. Ren didn't respond, and as Periwinkle looked up again, she saw that he was looking down, eyes closed, with tears rolling down his cheek.

What had happened? How had he gotten injured out here?

A dark thought whispered into the back of Periwinkles mind. Didn't he usually have a friend he stuck around with?

She tilted her head to look behind her, and to the left. Towards the centre of the Schnee manor.

The front door of the building was gone. A significant part of the wall around the building was as well, either eradicated or caved in by the immediate aftermath. Some of the steel of the building had been charred black, with what Periwinkle could vaguely recognise as looking like electricity burns. Rubble was laying on the stairs and area surrounding it, twisted and charred and broken as well.

Her head slowly tilted around, towards the front gate. It bore similar scars, the ground cratered slightly, as if someone had dug out a line from one side of the entry gate to another, and let it detonate. And struck it with lightning, it seemed, judging by how charred everything was, and how much smoke was coming out of the twisted metal around it.

As she watched the front entry, though, Periwinkle saw an interesting sight. A vehicle rolling up towards the front gate, slowly, cautiously. The driver passed by Peri's attention, though, as the back door was flung open as soon as the gate came withing view of it.

Periwinkle saw her, as she vaulted over the car door to get by it faster. Yang Xiao Long. Burning a radiant as the sun, as she looked towards the gate in a mixture of shock, horror, and rage. Her hands were curled into fists, Periwinkle noted.

Wasn't her sister here?

Clenching her right hand into a fist of its own, Periwinkle tried to drag herself forward more. Her mouth opened, and even if it took her a moment to remember how to talk over all the pain, she eventually managed to force out-

[X] A warning, telling Yang of the grey haired kicker in the library, and of the fact that he might not have been alone.
[X] A plea, begging Yang to help her, to escape, to get everyone out of this situation before it got any worse.