A/N: So, this chapter is about one hour shy of being posted properly on rwby Tuesday, and about 30 minutes of that was picking a chapter name - I never expected how secretly difficult it is to name chapters...

Apology hugs,
Defenestrator

"I can't believe she agreed to be bait."

Amber eyes watched Ruby and Weiss from afar, unhindered by the complete darkness of the cloudy, starless night. The two were working fast under the gentle glow from Myrtenaster's blade, setting up the... incredibly primitive trap Ruby and Yang had devised.

A crate. Propped up on a stick, attached to a length of rope.

The plan was simple - stick Blake in a tree to keep a lookout and give the signal since she was the only one who could see without needing a light source, place Weiss under the propped up box with Myrtenaster alight, and wait for a Liliac to attack. Then, Ruby would speed in and remove Weiss while Yang pulled the stick out, dropping the box and trapping the Liliac inside.

It was far from foolproof, but Blake had to admit, spending the day helping the incredibly unhappy heiress scout out a prime location to set up their trap had felt more productive than any of the scouting they'd done that morning. Ruby and Yang, the town's favorites, had spent the day securing a large, oblong wooden crate from the town's warehouse, a sturdy 2x4 from the carpentry shop, rope from the shepherds, and a mountain of sandwiches from the fresh market. Their "fearless hunter-gatherers" had returned just before nightfall, food and supplies in hand, looking incredibly pleased with their success.

"Well, when you're the only one with a weapon that glows... And you're the smallest... And the grumpiest... Grimm are drawn to negativity, right?" Yang smirked, rolling the end of the soft, well-worn rope between her fingers. She wasn't quite able to see the length of it stretching out to the crate in the distance, but she could pick its trail up once it reached the cool circle of light emanating from Weiss's dust-powered blade.

"Telling her all of that to her face certainly didn't improve her mood any. Thanks for leaving me with that all day. I've never even heard of some of the things she called you."

"She didn't seem too unhappy about the food though," Yang laughed and reached out to give her partner a hug of apology, but missed by a mile, finding nothing but the empty air in front of the amused Faunus.

Blake rolled her eyes, humans had the worst vision in the dark. She grabbed Yang's flailing arm and pulled it around her shoulders, giving her a gentle jab to the ribs with a finger. "Yes well, be sure you apologize to her later. Weiss's height is a sensitive subject."

"I will - where are you going?"

The Faunus had already slipped from her partner's grasp and moved to the base of the nearest tree. "It looks like they're nearly finished. I'm going to start keeping a lookout. Listen for the signal."

"You got it!" Adrenaline already rushing through her ears, Yank hunkered down with the rope, hidden behind a wall of brush, squinting through the leaves at the shadows shifting about in the soft blue brightness in the distance.

Ruby backed off from her partner, slipping out into the shadows. "I'm right over there. Don't even worry."

"I am so far beyond worrying," Weiss hissed from her crouched position under the edge of the box.

The other teen cringed, "Yeah, no, it'll be fine though. Well, at least you'll be fine."

"Obviously," the heiress white-knuckled her sword.

Earlier in the afternoon, they had talked out trap ideas, everything from nets (but reports said the Liliac had claws capable of severing the occasional steel cable in the mines) to freezing them on the spot (though smaller Grimm caught in Dust ice had a tendency to die instantly, which wasn't terribly conducive to research) to, well, a box and stick set up. The latter won out.

"This is beyond moronic", "I hate all of you right now" and "I agreed to be bait not a Dust-forsaken carrot" were among the highlights of Weiss's ensuing tirades, plus a few more intricate verbal daggers reserved for Yang. It hadn't helped that wonder-blonde had come back crowing about what a fantastic idea the villagers thought this was. Several had asked if they could come watch. After all, what disgruntled backwoods miner would pass up the chance of sticking the Schnee heiress under a box and waiting for the Grimm to eat her?

... on the other hand, of course, if through some quirk of fate this worked, it might help prove she was on their side. Or something. The night was cold and she couldn't see much of anything beyond Myrtenaster's circle of Dust-born light. Weiss didn't particularly care about what the James Pointers thought of her- really, she didn't- but she hated being the one holding back her team, keeping them from doing their job as huntresses in training. So she waited, crouched under the edge of the sturdy crate, putting on a mask of calm while her heart raced.

Ruby took up her position at the edge of the small clearing. She'd taken the liberty of clearing out any rocks or branches or anything she could trip on in the dark on her way to Weiss. This wasn't exactly the best idea she and Yang had ever cooked up, but what budding huntress hadn't daydreamed about catching a live Grimm in a rough hewn wooden crate? Okay, maybe that was just a Rose/Xiao-Long thing, but still. If the crate could just trap the Liliac for a second- long enough for Yang to get her hands on it- it would be enough. So Ruby crouched, waiting for Blake's signal.

It was after midnight before Ruby heard any sound at all other than the shush of wind through pine needles. She straightened, alert at once. She couldn't see Blake or Yang, but Weiss was listening, knees drawn up to her chest in the circle of her rapier's light.

The sound echoed over the hills- the distant, lonely toll of a bell.

A sharp report followed, lighting the clouds from below for a fraction of a second: Gale's lightning.

Ruby braced her arms on the ground like a runner at the mark and focused on Weiss, on listening for the signal to get her out.

Up in the trees, Blake tensed, scouring the skies. Her gaze zeroed in on a dark mass high in the air slowly headed their way - the Liliac she had seen minutes earlier, passing right over them in favor of the town proper. It was now gliding back, the membrane of its right wing sporting an impressive, smoldering scorch mark.

Blood red eyes locked onto Myrtenaster's light-blue glow. Blake watched as the beast folded its wings and dropped straight into a nose-dive, descending far more quickly than she'd expected.

"Ruby!"

An almost instantaneous flurry of rose petals and the blue light was gone, removed from the Liliac's sights a split-second before it touched down with a hearty thud against the forest floor right where Weiss had just been crouching.

"Yang!"

With every ounce of force Yang could muster, the brawler yanked at the rope. A resounding snap rang through the air, deafening in the silence of the darkness.

Blake could see it, but she knew the others couldn't - the length of rope had snapped in half.

Not even bothering to fathom why the trap hadn't worked, Yang dashed towards the propped open crate, refusing to let their elusive guest escape. She registered her partner's cry of warning a second too late. The brawler yelped in alarm and pain as two razor-sharp claws seemingly materialized from the darkness and struck her in the face, one catching the edge of her right eye and dragging back across the tip of her ear to lock behind her head, the other scoring a deep red line across her cheek and down her neck to grasp the back of her shoulder.

Glowing red eyes opened right in front of Yang's own, illuminating a cracked and weathered mask of bone stretching back across the Grimm's smallish skull, partially covering a wide, grinning set of jaws sporting no discernible teeth other than two oversized needle-like fangs. Fangs that were headed straight for her neck. Snarling a few choice curses, Yang grabbed the bony fingers of the long spindly wing wrapped around her head with one hand, and punched the dog-sized creature right off of her face with the other.

"Weiss." the Liliac was flailing like mad, slashing through the dark at every bit of Yang it could reach with the enormous claw tipping the joint of its free wing, but the brawler held her semblance at bay for fear of incinerating their research subject. "I need light!"

Ruby was already circling Crescent Rose open in the dark, defending the fencer as she levered herself up and summoned one of her glyphs. A spiked ring of blue sprang up in the clearing, perpendicular to the ground, giving off just enough light to see Yang wrangling what appeared to be an angry shadow, a patch of night gone wrong.

A second shadow darted into the newly lighted area, and Blake was at her partner's side in an instant, snatching the Liliac's flailing free wing and pulling, stretching the limb taut in an effort to keep it still. Yang reached to grab the immobilized wing just as the Grimm whipped its head around, looked Yang dead in the eyes, opened its gaping mouth wide, and screeched.

Nearby animals scattered in the wake of the unfathomably hideous sound tearing through the air, the point blank attack rattling Yang's teeth and reverberating through her whole body. Dry, jagged, and harsher than nails on a chalkboard, the sheer volume and pitch of the cry dropped Blake to the ground in agony, hands that were once clutching the Liliac's free wing now clutching at the ears beneath her bow.

An outburst of rage from Yang mixed its way into the Grimm's sonic assault, heralding her own attack - a long overdue chokeslam, taking the Grimm by its neck on a one way trip into the ground where she quickly straddled the struggling beast to hold it down, pinning a wing beneath each knee and wrenching its fanged muzzle shut to stop that awful horrible screeching. Silence returned to the forest as the Grimm writhed and twisted, trying desperately to get its jaws open, but the brawler held fast, minding those nasty-looking fangs.

A hand touch Yang's shoulder and she looked up, smiling when she saw her partner's worried expression, but frowning as she watched Blake's mouth move, hearing nothing but a faint muddled ringing.

"Whoa, you got it!" Ruby cheered and zipped over to see.

"Wait, wait," Weiss held her glyph to provide light while she scrambled briefly in the brush for Myrtenaster, who she'd lost during Ruby's full-body tackle.

"It's kind of tiny," Ruby crouched over the angry creature pinned in her sister's grip. She was about to poke it when she noticed the blood and the bewildered look on Yang's face, "Hey, you okay?"

The brawler squinted up at her little sister, starting when she felt Blake's hands gently brush either side her face. The Faunus turned her partner's head left and right, inspecting the long angry gashes running tracks across her skin. They were bleeding profusely, as face wounds often did, but they didn't seem deep, and there had been no reports of the Liliac's claws being poisonous... "She seems okay - Yang?" The brawler was shaking her head as if to clear it, amethyst eyes boring into amber when she finally stopped. "...Are you okay?"

Yang glanced back and forth between Blake and Ruby, her expression slowly falling until she eventually letting loose with a lengthy groan. "Sorry guys. Can't hear you."

"It must have been that sound," the blue light faded out and was replaced with the softer glow of Weiss's sword as she joined the others. She stood at Yang's side, holding Myrtenaster so she could assess the blonde's injuries. It was difficult to tell if blood was coming from her ears or if it was simply from bat's claw marks. Weiss nudged the body of the still-thrashing Liliac with the tip of her sword, "In any case, we should probably take care of this first."

Ruby slipped into team-leader mode, "Right, okay. Blake, you've got the bandages," She laid Crescent Rose out on the ground near the Grimm, measuring it's wingspan against the straight portions of scythe-rifle. "Weiss, can you give me some more light?"

Blood dripped down Yang's chin into the Grimm's fur. Weiss huffed, tilting Myrtenaster to give both Ruby and Blake enough light to work by. They knew very, very little about these creatures, and while the James Pointers hadn't experienced any sort of toxins from the bats that didn't preclude the possibility. She recorded Ruby's measurements and added her own observations on her scroll, but couldn't help stealing glances at the slash marks on Yang's face.

"Do you think we can look at its teeth while it's alive?" Ruby looked up at Weiss and Blake, eyes silver-blue in the weird light. "Or should we just kill it and take pictures fast?"

Blake already had her pocket-sized first aid kit out, pouring disinfectant onto a small square rag as she knelt beside Yang. "We should probably get all the information we can while it's alive..." she pressed the rag to her partner's neck, earning a few choice curses in response as she tried to clean the amazingly precise gashes. "These look like they were cut with razor blades... Yang," she place a hand on the brawler's arm to get her attention.

"Hm?"

"Yang, we need to see its teeth," Blake spoke slowly, carefully mouthing each word as she motioned to her eyes, tapped her own canines, then pointed to the Grimm's face, clamped shut beneath brawler's hands.

"You... you want to look at this thing's teeth?"

Blake nodded.

"Okay..." Yang glared down at the wild crimson eyes peeking out from between her fingers. Never once loosening her grip, she shifted her hands from covering the tip of the bone-white muzzle to holding it shut at its base, revealing a pair of pristine, two-inch pearly white fangs, streaked with the telltale grimm-red markings.

Ruby held her open palm beside the creature's head for scale while Weiss snapped a couple of pictures with her scroll. The young team leader scooted a little closer to get a good look at the designs in its teeth. "I wonder why it's got red here."

"Is it blood?" Weiss frowned glancing from the bat to Yang and back.

"It's like what they usually have on their masks," Ruby sat back. They'd taken all their measurements and gotten some pictures. Analyzing attack patterns and coming up with effective extermination strategies would have to wait till they had tangled with a few more of them. For now, the way the little clot of darkness squirmed in Yang's grip made Ruby's skin crawl. She hauled Crescent Rose into her lap, "Okay. Good job, team," she chambered a round, "Let's clean up and head back to the cabin."

"Ruby," Blake placed a hand atop Crescent Rose, catching her team leader's quicksilver eyes, "Maybe we should hold off on gunfire. The shots might draw more of them."

"Uh.. guys?" Yang's voice cut through the fresh silence, "It stopped moving."

Everyone's attention dropped to the prone Grimm bat. Its ears no longer pricked madly in every direction and it seemed to have gone limp in Yang's grasp. Was it even breathing? Or was the icy breeze just stirring through the creature's thick fur?

"It could be playing dead," Weiss cautioned, pocketing her scroll and angling Myrtenaster to get a better look at the creature's eyes.

Yang stared down at the blank blackened holes where the red glow of a Grimm's eyes usually shone. Unable to hear the heiress's words of warning, she loosened her grip.

"Did I strangle it?..."

The second her fingers left is jaws, the red glow of the Grimm's eyes snapped back into existence as the Liliac lunged for one of Yang's hands. Before the brawler could react, a flash of black steel severed the creature's head from its shoulders - the newly liberated skull flying off into the darkness where it landed in a tangle of bushes.

Blake paused for a moment, letting her thoughts catch up with her reflexes as she re-sheathed Gambol Shroud. "Well..." she glanced sheepishly at her team leader, "I guess that's all the research we can do on this one."

Weiss dropped her hasty guard and snapped at Yang, "Did I not just say it might be faking?"

"Weiss," Ruby's tone checked the heiress. Yang was deaf. Hopefully temporarily.

The young team leader relaxed her grip on Crescent Rose as the bat's body sifted away into the night like ash. She offered Blake a thumbs-up, "Let's list 'decapitation' as the top extermination technique so far. Maybe next to giant bolts of lightning."

The moon was nothing but a smudge behind the clouds now. Ruby gave her team a quick once-over and announced, "Let's go see if we can wake someone up at the infirmary. Er, clinic? Whatever it's called," she tilted her head and waved to catch Yang's attention, before she pulled on her arm, "Those cuts look okay but we really need you to be able to hear, so let's go."

Yang got to her feet, brushing black specks of Liliac from her hands. She smiled down at Ruby. "...What are you doing? You want a hug or something, sis?"

Amber eyes rolled and Blake stood as well, grabbing the brawler's other arm and helping Ruby drag her away. "Come on, you."

"Wait, what?" Yang happily allowed herself to be pulled past Weiss, out of Myrtenaster's circle of light, and into the surrounding darkness of the forest towards town. "Oh no Weiss help me I'm being abducted~!"

"I'm not helping you, you enormous moron," the heiress grumbled. She hung back, taking one last look at the trap set up, the severed rope- doubtless cut by the bat's claws- and the dark shapes of the surrounding pines. The cold and the soft hiss of the wind through the needles made the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

Ruby yelped. There was the sound of her tripping over something in the dark. Weiss picked up her pace to light the way.

From the outside, the James Point Clinic looked more or less like the other houses on the street, save for the sign that hung over the door. "Clinic" it said simply in cursive script, burned into weathered wood. The hours were posted as 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., but a light in the window came on when Ruby knocked.

A handful of seconds later the door's latch clicked and it opened a few inches, revealing a familiar face- the young woman who'd escorted them to the tavern their first night.

"Hello?" she wore a blue night shirt over a rumpled skirt and seemed to have just woken up. Her sleepy expression changed when she noticed the blood on Yang's face. "Oh, you're hurt."

"Um... hi again," Yang shot a sidelong glance at her teammates, whispering very loudly, "She's making a face at me. Do I look that bad? I don't feel that bad."

"Yang," Blake crossed her arms, "You're bloodier than a butcher's block and you've been deafened."

"...What?"

"Exactly," Blake pushed her partner past the startled woman into the cozy clinic, shoving her into the nearest high-backed chair.

"Er... can we come in?" Ruby peered in past the doorstep, squinting in the lamplight. Their host motioned for her to enter. Weiss followed, finally allowing Myrtenaster's glow to die away.

"Please, through here," the young woman shut the front door and crossed to another doorway, beckoning to Blake, "there's a few beds and examination tables, and we have better lighting." she leaned to call up a steep, narrow staircase tucked in the short hallway leading from the front room. "Curtis? Curt, wake up."

The room they steered Yang into was open and clean. Several beds occupied space against the east wall, near a window, while counters and shelves packed with medical supplies lined the rest. A couple of chairs and a sturdy wooden table- plus dishes lined up to dry beside the sink- clued Ruby into this room doubling as the kitchen.

She watched her sister pretend to be totally fine while she got settled at the table. The girl put some water on the stove and started sorting through packets of some kind of herbs from a cabinet nearest the beds.

A man with dark hair and glasses entered, rubbing his face. He wore a mussed button-down shirt and had a blue handkerchief tucked into his back pocket, "Okay, what've we got? More bats?" He stopped at the table, resettling his glasses to take a look at Yang's injuries. His brow furrowed in recognition, and he stole a glance at the brown-haired girl by the cabinet while he spoke to Ruby's team, "Oh, you're the in-trainings from Beacon. Why... are you covered in blood?"

Resting at the table, Yang watched as her teammates spoke to who she assumed was the local doctor, keeping an easy smile plastered to her face despite the claustrophobic silence pressing in on her from every side. She didn't need to hear their voices to see the worry on Blake and Ruby's faces - even Weiss kept casting glances in her direction. It wouldn't help matters to start worrying herself as well. She could handle a little peace and quiet for a while. Maybe not forever but... even then she could probably still fight. She would be fine, probably... There were blind hunters and huntresses, right?

An unfamiliar hand tilting her chin up broke Yang from her thoughts. The doctor had just said something. Was he talking to her? She grinned up at him. "...Hm? What? Sorry, my hearing got a little... BATtered, you'll have to speak up."

The man, Curtis, blinked while the others groaned. Weiss stalked to the far window, grumbling about idiots. Ruby picked her head up off the table, mustering a half-hearted laugh, "Yeah, um. A Liliac made this loud sound at her and..."

"Blew out her hearing," the dark-haired man finished, digging in a drawer for a small scope. He wiped the instrument on his shirt and stuck the small end in Yang's ear. "Hm... Cy, could you hand me a towel?"

"I guess all the cuts are from its claws?" the girl dipped a cloth in the near-boiling water and wrung it out into the sink before passing it over. Without a task to perform, her hands slipped into her skirt pockets, "You're lucky. They're usually a lot deeper."

To have been able to score through Yang's protective aura... even if she hadn't really turned up the heat, that was pretty serious. Ruby swallowed, scooting her chair a little closer to the table. She fidgeted with the cuffs of her black long-sleeved shirt and tried not to imagine what would have happened if the Grimm's claws had caught her sister's eye. Maybe the box idea hadn't been so great. Well, she knew that beforehand, but... well... "So you see a lot of bat injuries these days? Uh, I'm Ruby, by the way."

That got her a smile from the young woman. "I'm Cyan."

"And I'm afraid it'll be a little while before your friend'll hear much," Curtis dabbed at the dried blood around Yang's cuts. He pointed to his own ear, speaking slowly and loudly for Yang's benefit. "It'll come back," he said. He added in his normal tone and volume, "Mostly. Probably."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Weiss demanded as she returned from the window and slipped into the chair beside Ruby. She shed her white outer coat and crossed her arms.

There was recognition in Curtis's sleep-heavy eyes, but he didn't comment on her name or family, "Well, it means I'm not sure of her healing capabilities, so we'll have to see what happens," he sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. "How did she get these in the first place? Are these shotgun bracelets she's wearing?"

Cyan brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and handed Yang a cup of something warm, "Here, drink this."

Standing just behind Yang's chair, Blake watched her partner accept the steaming drink from Cyan with both hands - the familiar scent of black tea rising from the pale pink mug. One dark eyebrow quirked as the brawler flashed the young woman a winning smile before downing the scalding hot beverage in one shot.

"They're shotgun gauntlets, actually," Blake addressed the curious physician rather than rolling her eyes at her partner. "We had to get up close and personal with a Liliac for research purposes." Taking care to avoid the nasty slash on her partner's neck, Blake laid a hand on Yang's shoulder, fondness creeping into her tone. "This one is very hands-on in her approach."

"Which is a nice way of saying she didn't think to wait and reset the trap," Weiss tossed her hair back over her shoulder. Ruby ducked, nearly getting a face full of it.

"Weiss, it would've attacked us," the younger girl chided her icy partner.

"And we would have killed it," the heiress glared at her, "The end. No injuries to speak of."

"And not a single scrap of research to speak of either," Blake replied, leveling an irked gaze at Weiss. "At least this way we've made significant headway with our mission. Not to mention, if we'd reset the trap, there's always the chance it could have been you sporting these injuries."

"Because I would definitely try to hold onto a live Grimm. With my bare hands." Weiss deadpanned. She swung an arm in an open-handed gesture towards Yang, "Research isn't worth losing your hearing over."

"Okay, okay," Ruby shifted in her seat, feeling more and more guilty about not having stopped everything to take care of Yang, "So it didn't work out exactly. She'll be okay," she grimaced at her sister, "Probably? But yeah, actually the grabbing it with your hands thing was maybe a bad idea."

Curious amethyst eyes blinked at Ruby, stealing quick glances at Weiss and Blake as well before returning to watch the younger girl's expression darken. The exact words were missing, but it was painfully clear none of her teammates were pleased. And the look on her little sister's face - that one Yang knew by heart.

It was that same look Ruby gave her every single time the brawler had emerged from a scuffle brandishing a victory claimed only inches shy of defeat. The look that, whenever she returned to her sister's side, told her she might have come just a little too close to never returning at all.

Yang placed her empty mug on the table with a dull thud, taking a moment to appreciate the feeling of solid ceramic hitting thick tablecloth linens in lieu of hearing it. She placed a hand over Ruby's and squeezed. "Hey, what's that face for? There's nothing..." A spell of lightheadedness stripped the remainder of Yang's sentence away, nearly sending her face-first into the table if not for Blake's sudden grip on her shoulders.

The startled Faunus held her partner upright, a pit of dread opening up in her stomach as Yang, hunched over, dazed, and still gripping Ruby's hand, burst into flames.