Early Fall, One Month after the Disaster

Tell me, why do humans fight each-other? I don't mind of course, I quite enjoy it, after all... you wouldn't be here otherwise. But I always marveled at their propensity to ignore the greatest threat and divide themselves. No shared ideology, no common goal to follow, no satisfaction for complacency... no... I have never seen a human settle for perfection. You look confused...

Yellow sparks exploded at the intersection of blades.

Moonlight was bright that night, and for a faunus like Blake, that was more than she needed. For Jaune, he wasn't really looking anyways. Two hands on his sword, the knight shifted between several stances and angle of cuts, little real consideration put towards tactics or finesse, as his sparring partner wasn't going to attack out of pattern. Each powerful swing was a step forward.

"Don't hold it in," she said, receiving his blows with her proper sword.

He sighed. "Alright." After several swings in, he started. "Do you think Pyrrha still loves me?"

Blake slid the cleaver sheathe over her sword, stomping into Jaune's space and slamming his sword in different directions. "No," she barked, stabbing once at him and throwing him off. "You can thank Amber's soul for that."

Anger flared up inside of him, and he pushed back, his swings slightly more powerful and giving more trouble to Blake. "But Pyrrha's soul is still hers. There has to be something there still."

"She's moved on Jaune, you were a phase, a novelty. Now focus!" Blake's inflections were sharp and mean, but cold in a comforting way. "What did she do this morning? Was that love?"

The young man in full armor lashed out once before returning to pattern. Voice ragged with a hint of choking back tears, he answered, "she ignored me, disregarded me, and chose to volunteer for overseas without so much as looking at me."

"Exactly!" Blake barked back, now slamming her cleaver downwards at him repeatedly, violently, in a way that only conveyed frustration. "Now tell me! What are you to her? What did she say? What does it mean?!"

The yellow sparks illuminated Jaune's quivering lips, and he began drawing sharp breaths. "She said she couldn't be with me!" he shouted, stomping one step back, then gave Blake a furious uppercut swing that after blocking actually lifted her up off the ground. He continued with even simpler swings, each one more powerful than the last. "I was a commodity! I was something interesting when we first met, and now she's bored of me! Why bother fostering any sort of love when you could bathe in the admiration of strangers!" His voice started breaking, tears clouding his eyes. "She said the distance and time we spent apart made her think it wasn't worth pursuing!"

Over time, Jaune and his classmates had learned more properties of their aura, such as how as a entity of their will taken form, it protected them and their tools as base instinct. They also learned that with the right mindset, a surprisingly difficult mindset to achieve given the simplicity of the concept, their aura could overcome someone else's protective properties, though the specific method differed from person to person. The yellow sparks flying from Blake's and Jaune's blades was the greater quantity of Jaune's aura spilling out every time it clashed with Blake's aura, an aimless discharge of power. But with Jaune's increasingly heart wrenched mindset, his caustic power was forming miniature explosions that would both knock away Blake's cleaver, and, allow his blade to pass through the no longer aura protected spot and cut into her blade.

"After all my waiting, all my love and patience, she just gave up!" he sobbed, every third strike missing Blake's weapon entirely. "When everyone loves you, what's the love of one helpless loser! I get it Pyrrha, you're too good for me!"

All tactical patterns had dissolved. Jaune swung down at Blake, again and again, missing half the time, every cut over shooting and cutting through the ground, grass and mud flying both behind him and somehow in front of him. Blake stumbled continuously backwards, all her might going into swinging against his strikes just to cancel part of the momentum, her hands aching.

"She said she was confused! Didn't know how to feel!" his sobbing went on. "Even with Amber in there, there should still be a part of Pyrrha that cares, that did love me! Was she just pretending the whole time!"

Jaune slipped in the mud. His sword cut into Blake's Gambol Shroud, stopped, and slipped from his hands. He stumbled towards her, threw a tired punch, missing by a foot, and fell down. He curled into a ball.

"Does she even care?" he whimpered. "She just gave up. Did it all mean nothing?"

Nora and Ren approached from the surrounding woods. Blake crouched down and ran her hand through his hair, stroking his blond locks with care. "Good job Jaune. You did good. Just remember, Pyrrha will always love you." Lifting herself up and dismissing herself, she whispered to Ren and Nora as they passed, "He let it out. I think we successfully drew in some Grimm."

"Okay, we'll get him standing again," Nora whispered back.

Ren crouched down beside his good friend while Nora kneeled as to put his head in her lap. Like Blake, she stroked his hair, and Ren grabbed his hand. "Pyrrha is too far gone, it's the consequence of her burden. There is a part of her that cares, very much so, but..." Ren looked to Nora for help.

"But, Pyrrha has to bury that under the weight of her task. She's the Fall Maiden, she is one of four people with the responsibility of saving the world by force. Every life is in her hands, every baddie is in her sights, and she, in the most literal sense, has no time for relief."

"In fact," Ren added, "or I guess I should say, is it really that different from how you've acted in the past?"

Jaune coughed before he could speak again. With great despair, he muttered, "Me and Pyrrha will be dead before the fighting's over. I just wanted to die with hope."

Nora reached down and kissed his forehead. A sigh. "No, not if we can help it."

Blake found her way back to their campfire, a leg of deer cooking on a stick, Ruby cutting off bits of barely cooked meat and fat and stuffing the steaming clumps into her mouth, utterly at peace with the world. The cat faunus scratched the back of Sun's neck as she passed him, tearing off a bit of the meat herself. "We should expect Grimm soon."

Levon the horse neighed, and Sun yawned, "Good."

Neptune scratched at his chin, restless. "You don't need to hurt him like that."

Blake and Sun looked to their friend. Blake started to open her mouth, then paused. "I'm... confused. I... what?" She grabbed another piece of food and sat by Sun.

"We're all hurting as it is and you have to make the guy cry?" Neptune continued as it became apparent he was somewhat upset.

"I did that just now to attract the Grimm... and to let him vent. You realize that much, right?" Blake defended herself, still confused.

The once blue haired boy rubbed at his face in frustration. "I-I get that, you're right, but did you really need to do that? I mean, you need negative emotion to draw the Grimm, but don't ya' think having all of civilization collapse and the deaths of millions might be enough?!" Ruby stopped eating finally, taking notice of Neptune's rising anger. They held their breaths. "I mean, I'm still pretty upset about the whole catastrophe, I don't know if my family is alive, a good number of my friends are dead, I can't bathe with any regular schedule, and I'm starving half the time– I'm scared, I'm pissed– Ruby might be fine, fucking eating and zoning out 95 percent of the time, that's freaking great for her, but for the rest of us... do we need to aggravate the point?"

Ruby flinched. She felt as though she might be under attack.

"Dude, chill, I get it, we get it, but all of that was to help him in the long run," Sun offered, holding out his hand as he gestured for Neptune to lower his voice. "Calm... try to take it out on the baddies, please."

The angered man grabbed his trident and stood up, stomping away into the darkness. They could hear him muttering to himself as he went, "It hurts enough as it is..."

Ruby looked to her meal. A frown stained her lips as she sympathetically asked herself, "What is he mad about?"

This time, Sun grabbed his weapon and stormed away. "Take a guess. We all have a million reasons to be pissed."

The younger girl shook her head in shame. "Tsk, it was a stupid question."

Many miles north, at a southern cape of Solitas, the continent of Atlas, snow sprinkled down on the airstrip like sweet confectionery sugar turned bitter, the cold enveloping the men, women, and children refugees that were unfortunate enough to not dress appropriately. Yang ignored their fearful gazes from the high perch inside her cockpit, stomach churning at their pitiful sight.

Pyrrha marched down from the ramp and out of the light, disappearing briefly in the night time darkness before stepping back into the light of a gazebo. The once hopeless people now swarmed the idol, reaching for her as though her touch would save their worlds.

Weiss waved at the departing Pyrrha, though received no such gesture in return. Thumbing the red button on the wall, the gunship's rear ramp moaned into live, raising to seal the passenger cabin and clamping shut. The man refueling the ship slammed the nose twice to inform Yang she was set to take off.

In the time Weiss spent pulling out a crate from under a seat and retrieving a paper bag, Yang lifted the craft high into the air, then accelerated to a point where the twin jets locked into horizontal thrust.

Her gunship was designed to produce enough lift with its shape alone to not require vertical thrust via jets if it was going fast enough. Essentially, it went from a Close Support VTOL to a Transcontinental Intercepter Jet Plane. Originally a enhanced Atlesian Gunship, Vale shipwrights took the blueprints and experimented with aerodynamic consideration and improved armaments, named the new model a 'Ramhorn,' brother to the 'Bullhead,' and gave the component parts to certain pilots to build their new death machines. Yang was one of the chosen pilots, her durability and resistance to a fiery death acting as the main factor in her selection.

The white haired passenger dipped her head under the threshold between the cabin and the cockpit, and slithered around the clutter to hug Yang's seat. A brown paper bag was thrust in front of the blonde's face, admittedly rudely, but she didn't mind.

"Is it what I think it is?" she asked, interested but never looking away from the dark sky ahead of her. Snow pelted the windshield, but blew up and away before it could stick. It was the gusts of wind that carried the snow that shook the aircraft and rattle cabin parts off out of sight.

Weiss leaned in, sniffed Yang's hair, then replied in her usual high then low inflections, "Soap and a sense of shame? No."

"Is it Weiss's love for humanity?" Yang gave a exaggerated gasp. "Oh wait, that's right, that never existed."

She pursed her lips in an attempt to not smile. "It's wine, aged twenty years." The bottle, once removed from the bag, was a deep maroon and the cork betrayed no signs of prior opening. "Thought you might like some too." A cork screw was pulled from the bag as well.

"Ha, surprised you didn't want to share any when Pyrrha was here." Yang cleared her throat.

Her body rocked with a shoulder shrug and a roll of the eyes. "She wouldn't want any I thought, too responsible. Wouldn't appreciate it either. Besides, she's a tea drinker... I think." Weiss squinted, unsure of her statement.

"Says the tea drinker."

"What does that mean?"

"Well you– You're going to drink it right?" Yang asked, hand fluttering in inquisitiveness.

"Yeah."

"And you're saying Pyrrha wouldn't like it as a tea drinker– if she is one– and yet you too drink tea."

"I like bittersweet, it's different," she retorted with sincere innocence.

"What about Pyrrha?"

"Excuse me, I don't know," Weiss said, regressing back to her prim and offended inflections. "Do you know what Ren's favorite flower is?"

Yang scratched her imaginary beard, slowly beginning with obvious doubt, "Storm flower–"

"Bad example," she said, punctuating 'bad' with the launching of the cork and taking the first swigs. "What's his favorite tree? There we go."

"Hell if I know, what am I? A botanist, miss bossiness?" Weiss handed her the bottle from which she took her portion.

In the loud ambience of the cockpit, Weiss mumbled, eventually speaking up, "The bossiest botanist brokered a bedlam..."

Yang pulled the lip of the bottle from her own, then saw the lipstick she tasted. "It's good, but... you still wear lipstick?"

"I like to look good, what's your excuse?"

She shrugged then blew a raspberry. "Don't actually know how to respond to that. Let's see... the bossiest botanist buffalo brokered a bodacious bedlam..."

Weiss snapped her fingers. "The bossiest botanist buffalo basked in the brokered bodacious bedlam!"

She bobbed her head side to side, pondering her word choice. "It could be worse. Blake still has us beat though; a wet wondering whale will wail while welting and waiting in a well."

Weiss took back the wine and sipped, irked by her friend's dissapointment. "Lies. Sun came up with it." Without warning, the heiress's laughter filled the cramped room. "Remember what Coco said? I mean, it wasn't that funny, but the look on Velvet's face, she was so embarrassed. What was it? Pussies parade pretend passiveness pertaining particularly to penises?" Weiss leaned over as her chest heaved for air, her face quickly turning red. "Velvet's face!" she cried.

"Freaking Coco," Yang chuckled, grinning from ear to ear, a little red herself. "Weiss, I can't believe you just said that, I can't un-hear it. Nope. Never say that again please."

They went on to laugh a little more before the amusement faded away and they were reminded of reality, a sad look permeating their faces.

"Well, what's your plan for reclaiming Vale?" Yang eventually asked, now bored of the depressed silence.

"What?" the other asked cooly.

"You heard what they said. With the area around Vale mostly evacuated, we should be ready to start counter attacking."

Weiss blew her own raspberry. "I don't know. If we still had destroyers in the air, I'd air strike first and foremost, but that's not happening, at least not anytime soon. I might side with Jaune's idea if we convene for war council, but more importantly, we have Nevermores approaching." Weiss directed Yang's attention forward where, sure enough, a murder of Nevermores flew in formation.

"Hmm," was her first reaction. She checked the gauge that read out her munitions, the number displayed always less than desired. "That's some annoying bullshit," she grumbled in apathy.

"Yes we have to engage, we can't let them target anyone less prepared." Weiss patted the pilot on the shoulder and stepped out of the cockpit, taking to one of the seats and strapping in.

Yang flicked down her targeting visor and craned her neck, the satisfying sound of bones popping clearing her mind. Xiou Long may have been chosen to pilot their special crafts due to her lower mortality probability, but it took more than toughness to keep a high priority target in the air. That is to say, Yang was a good pilot.

Back to where they had left before, the redhead marched with a gentle yet imposing grace, a sea of refugees parting for her while weakly reaching out in hopes of being somehow blessed. She smiled down to each of them, her nearly perfect face easing their panicked minds. Only a scar that ran horizontal through her right eye brow, effectively segmenting the hairs to a top and bottom side, lingered to remind others that she was flawed. A stocky man that came up to her collar followed behind her, features shaking as he filled her in on the situation.

Exiting the warehouse of people and finding themselves regrettably once again in the cold, Pyrrha turned and faced the man, and she took a while to compose her words.

He caught a pained look glimmer through a confident and humbled facade, and in turn felt humbled himself. He diverted his eyes, but couldn't help feeling guilty about avoiding Pyrrha's polite gaze and so looked back to her.

A voice befitting her outward demeanor spoke her thoughts, strong but tender. "I would be honored to hold a memorial service," she nodded, "and I will do all I am able to fight along side the soldier's of Atlas. Tell you're people to rest easy, for I leave now to liberate them. I promise all of you a better tomorrow." She closed her eyes and bowed her head, bothered by the lack of overt happiness in the man.

A hand reached for her shoulder, clasping only tight enough to make her feel through her many layers of clothes. He pulled her into a huddle and said in hushed words, "what you're doing is fantastic beyond measures, but don't lie to me." A smile creeped on his face, one of friendly knowing. "As a man of limited strategic knowledge, all I can ask is that you help our soldiers." She winced at the word 'strategic'. "We're aren't winning a war anytime soon, and false hope will kill our chances faster than the Grimm. So I suggest miss Nikos, do what you know how to do best, and don't overextend yourself. Insert some maxim about a healthy mind and something cringe-y, just tell me what you want to do, and what you're going to do."

Reluctance plagued her movements, but she straightened her back and looked out to the dark and cold of a soon to be winter wasteland. "Thank you. I want to find Grimm, and I want to hunt them. I'll go where ever you can point me."

Sure enough, his arm lifted and a finger casted a clear direction. "20 degrees North by North-East, the road is getting buried and no one is going to clear it anytime soon, so follow that direction and you'll find a village with some Hunters." Resting his arm, he continued. "Should take a few hours of walking if you're not slow. Got a compass?"

Reaching inside her clothes, Pyrrha extracted a brass compass etched with a scene of wheat fields waving to the wind under a bright sun. Flipping it open, she confirmed the directions with an adjustable arm in the unlikely case she forgot where she was going. Nodding to the man, she kicked up some snow as she turned and started her march.

"Going already? Not even hungry?"

"Yes, I mustn't keep those men waiting. Thank you."

-End Chapter 2-