[X] "We can't beat Zero, not like this, but I can buy time. Get your Disciple out of the battle and summon your Angel, I'll hold her off until then."
Three looked at Ruby for a moment, visibly shocked by Ruby's suggestion.
"Alone? She-"
The screaming was growing louder, and Ruby could hear the crumbling walls as Zero charged through the house. The song spiralling through the air was one of blood and fury, and for a minute, Ruby desperately wanted to change her mind.
She wanted to run. She didn't want to fight this. This was her mother, someone who was supposed to be a kind person, not this. And even if she was fighting anybody but her mother, she was fighting a person.
If this was a Grimm, she'd understand. Grimm only exist to fight and kill and destroy. Hearing a Grimm roar and scream and hat was natural, expected. Hearing it come from a person was something else entirely. People weren't naturally this expressive about that much hate. Even when people did hate, they kept it hidden, bottled up.
It took a lot for someone to scream their rage to the degree Zero was right now. People were more complex than beasts like Grimm, and had so many factors that usually balanced each other out. So if someone was that full of rage, it meant so much more then when it was a Grimm roaring out it's wrath.
There was just something so much more terrifying about a thinking, feeling person going over the options and emotions, and deciding that this kind of murderous hate was the reaction that they wanted to give to the world around them.
The fact that people like this existed was tragic, and horrifying. The fact that Ruby's mother was one of these people made it all the moreso.
But...
She couldn't run. Not now. Not with so many people here. Zero was here to kill Three and Ruby, for whatever reason. She'd hunt them. But what about everyone else here?
They had been hurting people since before Yang even got here. Ruby had seen the moment Zero had arrived, and Yang was already injured when that happened. People had been fighting before Zero and Ruby were here. Who was to say that leaving would make the fighting end?
No, they couldn't run. Not with Yang still so close to death, unable to defend herself. Not with Qrow unarmed, in two different senses, and doing his best to hold off attackers. Three's Disciple, and those girls that Ruby didn't know, she didn't know enough about them to know what would happen if Ruby and Three just ran.
Maybe the fighting would stop. Maybe Zero's allies would leave, or follow her in hunting Ruby and Three. Maybe it would work.
But this wasn't the time for maybes. Not when people's lives were on the line.
"Just go!" Ruby shouted, as Zero's song grew to deafening heights. "Summon your Angel and-"
Three's head turned to the side suddenly, as more and more walls started collapsing, and she suddenly threw her scissor blade at Ruby. The girl in the red cloak dashed for it, grabbing it just as the song started choke out every other sound in the area.
Ruby turned back to the wall, just in time to see it collapse. The girl in red jumped back, before realising that she was looking right at Zero's palm close around her head.
Her own hands shot forward, catching Zero's arm as she was thrown down. The ground buckled under the force of the blow, and as the oxygen was ripped from Ruby's lungs, the song she was trying to maintain faded.
The grip around her head tightened, and Ruby tried to scream as she started to breath again. She saw a movement out of the corner of her eye, and immediately wretched her eyes shut as she Zero's thumb moved, desperately letting herself fall into the Song again. Zero stabbed her eye down as she tried to gouge out Ruby's eye, and as she felt herself control her breathing again, Ruby sang.
The silver light pushed outwards, and with her grip loosened from trying to stab her eye into Ruby's eye, Zero's hand was thrown back. Ruby tried to roll to the side, and suddenly felt cold steel pierce pierce through her arm.
At this point, Ruby didn't know if she had stopped screaming in some time. Be it from pain, or an attempt to force out more of the song, she just kept belting the scream. Her throat was drying up, but that didn't matter.
Zero's eyes turned to the side as the red light around her faded, a cut of blood on her arm healing as the song stopped drawing from her bloody state. Had she hurt herself to stain herself in blood, and let herself use that enhanced mode?
...Not important. Zero was looking away, towards Three. As she started to move, Ruby reached out, tearing the sword through more of her muscles as she lashed out with her left hand, grabbing at Zero's ankle. She sang as she grabbed her mother, a silver barrier appearing just behind Zero and shooting forward to bring her down.
She shattered it with a casual backhand, and as Ruby pulled at her heel to trip her up, Zero just ripped her foot from Ruby's grip. Screaming again as she tried to tap into the power that had evaporated her blood earlier, Ruby forced her Semblance through her left arm, reaching to her right arm and ripping he blade out of it. Reversing the momentum in an instant, she threw the sword.
The blade struck Zero in the back of the head, blade first, and the momentum behind the throw was enough to do what Ruby couldn't with just a barrier of her song. Zero stumbled, and in that moment of time, Ruby was able to get to her feet. The scissor blade that Three had given her, she must have dropped it when Zero had grabbed her, which meant it had to be somewhere around-
There!
Dashing towards it as well, Ruby caught it as Zero tried to move forward again, and threw it as well. This time, Zero heard it coming, and was able to turn and catch the blade mid-flight, shattering it was the same casual ease as she had Crescent Rose.
In that moment of stillness, Ruby closed the distance, grabbing Zero's arm as she ran by. Using her as leverage, Ruby spun around without bleeding any momentum, and her grip tightened as she started running back towards the manor.
For a second, out of the corner of her eye, Ruby saw the battle by Three's Disciple. Gawain leaped between Intoner and Disciple as Ciel and the boy with grey hair forced him further away from her, and Three responded by sweeping Gawain's legs out from under him. As he fell, he grabbed at Three's hair, tugging at it in an attempt to bring her to the ground as well.
Three needed more time to get to her Disciple, it seemed. Ruby didn't know what the proper procedure was behind summoning an Angel, she'd never seen it herself, but for now-
The impact of Zero's fist into Ruby's stomach was like the force of a truck, bowling her over and bringing her momentum to a complete stop. Her grip on Zero's arm faded, and as she watched, the woman in white reached for her belt again, pulling out another dagger.
Letting out another cry through her song, Ruby created another barrier that Zero instantly punched through. It slowed her down by a fraction of a second, but for now, that would be enough, Jumping back, Ruby twisted her head away from the dagger. As she fell back through the air, Ruby felt the slicing sensation running across her stomach. Her hand shot towards it reflexively, and then Ruby screamed, as the dagger was thrust into her palm.
She hit the ground, singing softly to create a barrier to catch her as she fell, and tried to stand. Her leg gave up under her, as pain shot through the scar that Penny had given her, and as she fell, her right hand refused to catch her fall. The tearing through her muscles there, from the blade, had made it useless. throwing down her forearm of her left hand, Ruby blocked the ground from hitting her head. A shadow fell over her, and Zero loomed down on her, as Ruby looked up. Another dagger was in Zero's hand.
Ruby let out another scream, forcing it out louder and stronger than before, as the song pushed the boundaries again. The crescendo was hit again, as Ruby felt the blood across her body begin to fade away again, and she twisted her left hand around the dagger impaled through it to bring out more blood. The cut across her stomach, barely holding her organs together, was soaking the front of her shirt, or at least what was left after Zero's attacks tore into it. The hole in her chest compressed as she breathed in too much, forcing more blood out that way. Ruby felt herself getting light headed, as her song struggled to maintain the blood she was losing.
The song that flowed around Ruby was overwhelming, as it rejected the world around her. The silver light cloaking her was impenetrable, as Zero stabbed down at her. The woman in white was forced back a step, as Ruby used to silver light to prop herself up. She wasn't standing, not really, but the sorta-barrier under her shoulders was enough to force her up, to look Zero in the eye.
"Why?" She asked, the melodic tone of her voice sounding melancholic, as the silver light wrapped around to make sure Zero couldn't just run past Ruby. "Why are you doing this? Why-"
"Why does it matter?" Zero replied angrily. "You're going to be dead soon anyway."
"We can work this out!" Ruby repeated, speaking louder to match Zero's volume. "J-Just stand down and talk! Explain! It's not hard, we can find what you want-"
"What I want!" Ruby watched her mother spit out, as she gripped the dagger in one hand while gesturing with her unarmed hand. "Is for you to shut up and die!"
She swung down, the knife penetrating her own flesh and stabbing into her palm. Blood splattered across her hand, and Zero gave a bloodthirsty grin as Ruby realised what she was doing.
"No, stop-"
Zero sang, and in that instant, from that distance, Ruby realised the difference between them.
Ruby's song was the most powerful thing she could control. She didn't even know she had it before now, until five minutes ago, but the instinctual way she could control it was amazing. It was like it was made for her, or she was made for it. Every blow enhanced by it was worth so much more than anything she could accomplish on her own, the energy flowing through it eclipsed her Aura a hundredfold, and everything she could do with it amazed her. It was astonishing, amazing, and powerful. With this kind of power, she'd bet that even Uncle Qrow would have trouble facing her.
Zero's song eclipsed Ruby's. When Zero began to sing, Ruby's voice was lost to the grander sound. It strangled the sound of Ruby's song, Zero's red light casually crushing Ruby's silver, spiking pain through her brain as that simple flow of the Song was resisted and forced back.
It was almost beautiful, in an odd way. A beautiful destruction that tore through the world before her, stabbing through her song like it wasn't even there. Caught so much in admiration of the song, Ruby didn't realise that the killing blow was coming until the last second, and jerked back. The dagger took up all her vision, and even as she pulled back enough for it not to be fatal, it still struck true.
Ruby's eye ruptured as the knife stabbed into it, and she screamed. The bones around her eye cracked under the force of the blow, and the slipstream hit a moment later, throwing her back with explosive force. Her eyes wretched shut, as Ruby flew back through the air, until her momentum suddenly stopped. An arm wrapped around her, shifting to try and hold her comfortably.
"I've got you." Said the voice of Uncle Qrow, and from the reassuring tone in his voice, Ruby opened her left eye. Looking up at him she saw him smile, even as he struggled against the black ribbon around his neck holding him back. "It's going to be all ri-"
The black sickle soared through the air, striking Qrow in the back of the head. His expression fell into one of shock, his eyes glazing over as his grip on Ruby fell. Falling to the ground, Ruby reached towards her uncle, but her right arm wouldn't move, and when she hit the ground, the pain through her left hand, her chest, her stomach, her leg, all of it, tore through her mind and stole the words from her tongue underneath another scream.
The crawling forward smoke consumed Qrow, and the flaming beast within roared as it set the smoke around him alight. Qrow's screams echoed out of the flames and were consumed by the roaring fire, a demonic howl emerging from the smoke where only a vague silhouette was visible through the burning haze. A second shadow appeared vaguely, and the sound of a blade piercing flesh echoed out.
"Stop!" Ruby shouted, melding her song into her voice again, and the shockwave she was able to create pushed the smoke away. The burning creature fell back with it, revealing the sight inside.
For a minute, Ruby didn't want to recognise it or accept it. But there was no denying it. That was her Uncle Qrow, charred to cinder like a burnt piece of toast. The bones in his cheek were visible, tarred black by the consuming flames, and the only thing on him that wasn't charred was the black knife piercing through his heart.
Smoke slipped out of his lungs, as he exhaled softly.
"Am..." He wheezed, looking at nothing in particular. His body fell forward, as the cat Faunus pulled the blade out of him, and the collapse was the last movement his body made.
No. No no no, this isn't happening, it couldn't be happening. Not Qrow, not her uncle, not him...
Extending her left hand, Ruby pulled it towards her face and ripped the dagger out of her palm with her teeth, before using her arm to crawl forward. Reaching towards her uncle, she desperately started tapping into her song, as the smoke descended again.
She could still save him, like she had saved Yang. It wasn't too late, not yet. She just needed to reach him, and-
A bullet echoed out, and Ruby jerked her head to the side, letting the rounds shoot through her shoulder rather than her skull. Her left arm buckled in pain as Ruby tried to keep crawling forward, but she managed it, somehow.
She just needed t-
A screech screamed out again, echoing out across the Schnee manor, as the purple light exploded like a nova. The shockwave pushed against the smoke, scattering it to the sky, and the cat Faunus turned away from Ruby in shock, towards the source.
Standing on a windowsill three storeys up, Three sang.
"Behold the Third Song!" An old voice declared from ground level, as Three's Disciple stepped forward. "Quickened Puppets of Antiquity!"
"Fuck!" Zero roared, as she ran forward. The cat Faunus by Ruby opened fire on the old man, by the purple shockwave enveloping him and Three threw the bullets away. The girl in the red cloak saw a bolt of red energy pass by as the silver knight charged into battle, and a moment later, the cat Faunus followed, throwing a burning blaze behind her to explosively propel herself. Even Gawain trapped as he was on his knees in the greyscaled space of Ciel's Semblance, reached to interfere with the summoning.
Everyone ran at Three, except for the boy with grey hair.
"You look like shit." He said, as Ruby tried to ignore him to get back to crawling towards Qrow. Maybe he'd attack or maybe he wouldn't, the boy with grey hair was confusing to Ruby, but either way she needed to save her uncle. "Why don't you let me help you stop worrying?"
A moment too late, she heard the rushing air by her head, and turned her head again just in time to watch the boot slam into her her. Ruby heard herself sob, and her vision went black. Not a slow fade, but a sudden cut to consciousness.
[X] Purple
[X] Blue