Ruby panted for breath, one hand on Crescent Rose's shaft, another braced on the damp carpet. It was dark, and the kids she'd found were crying. She almost couldn't hear them over the screeching rush of the bats outside. Flickering slivers of Dust-lamp light from the Grimm-swarmed street outside caught in broken bits of broken mirror. It used to be a vanity, maybe. More Liliac thudded and flapped against the bedroom door, to Ruby's left. They must have chewed their way into the rest of the house.

Arms: check. Legs: check. Head: check. Ruby hauled herself to her feet. The room spun, and she almost fell over- she almost fell over something. A quiet shape on the carpet. Bile rose in her throat, but she managed to bite it back and heft Crescent Rose again. The steel was comforting, solid in her grip. She sighted out the narrow gap between the window frame and the desk they'd upended to block it.

Behind her, in the corner, the pair of twins were fine. Their dark-haired bigger sister was too. Maybe a scrape or two, or four, but they were fine, huddled in the dark of the small room.

Ruby's aura patched the claw marks across her face. She rubbed her wrist across her cheek, fending off the itch that accompanied the hyper-fast healing process. She'd tried to extend her aura healing to the kids' mother, but it didn't work with strangers the way it worked with someone you knew and trained with. It was tricky enough with Weiss.

Weiss.

Ruby's stomach turned. There hadn't been time to get back to the bell tower. She wasn't sure if she could've made it anyway- she'd barely made it here. The bats outside were so thick they blotted out the view of the house across the street. Their shrieks and cries drowned out the kids in the corner.

She tried not to think. Her heart hammered in her chest and she was still breathing hard.

This was her fault. She should've gone to help Yang and Blake right away. Maybe they could've stopped whatever had happened. Whatever had brought the bats in these numbers. They scrabbled at the edges of the windows, fangs bared, hungry.

Ruby wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

"Guys, are you still there?" she listened close for sobbing and sniffling and heard it. "I'm going to have to shoot some stuff, so cover your ears, okay?"

She chambered a heavy round, aiming at the crimson eye forcing itself against the gap.

Another rooftop, another wave of Liliac rushing to an early, blazing death. Each Grimm fell to a single strike, shattering like glass under Yang's vicious straights, hooks, and uppercuts alike. A few lucky shots from stray Liliac had put a handful of shallow scratches on her, but they were nothing like a hit from an Ursa or Beowulf, nothing substantial. Unfortunately, substantial is exactly what Yang needed.

The brawler operated best on a system of give and take, always giving back everything she took, with interest. But this - this was just giving. Yang paused in her assault to let a lone Grimm plow into her side, using the impact to give her semblance a slight boost, anything to take the edge off of the fatigue beginning to set in. A growl escaped the brawler, well aware that at some point there would be nothing left to give. She unloaded another volley of explosive rounds into the circle of Liliac around her, gritting her teeth when the gaping holes she created filled right back in.

Endless. There was no other word to describe them. Yang had long since lost count of how many she'd killed by this point.

She had, however, kept perfect count of the seconds between the shots she'd heard from Crescent Rose. At least, up until it had passed 10 minutes. That was around when her worry began to shift to overwhelming dread, leading her to circle the same group of rooftops near where she'd last heard something. Just as it occurred to her to check inside the houses underfoot, another shot rang out. The sound was so close it was deafening - completely impossible to miss, in fact, as a line of disintegrating Grimm dropped from the sky right before Yang's eyes. The brawler instantly followed the trajectory of destruction straight back to a house on her side. For a split-second, Yang caught sight of a shattered window, the gaping would-be entrance blocked by something solid, before it was once again engulfed by a fresh wave of Liliac.

Ruby.

Gale's distant lightning tore across the sky as Yang leapt down from her rooftop directly into the fray, landing right in front of the blocked window with an explosive blast of fiery aura. "Ruby," she shouted over the din of bats swarming to replace the large swath she'd just incinerated, trying to keep the edge of panic from her voice, "tell me you're in there!"

Ruby would recognize those flames anywhere. She hauled Crescent Rose back, springing to the edge of the heavy desk to yell through the gap, "Yang! Yang, I'm here!"

"Ruby," relief flooded the brawler's veins as she glanced behind her to catch a glimpse of quicksilver, taking her attention away from the fray a second too long. A Liliac slipped through the brawler's blind spot and collided with Yang's head, sending her staggering sideways. She spat blood with a snarl, grabbing a dark leathery wing in each hand and ripping the bat clinging to her face clean in half. Firing another incendiary shot to scatter the writhing mass of Grimm and buy her precious seconds of time, she pressed her back to the charred, splintered wood keeping her from her little sister. "Are you all right? Are you injured?"

"Yeah, I mean no, I mean, quick, get inside for a minute, there's kids here," Ruby braced one foot against the sill and strained to pull the desk back enough for her sister to slip through the gap.

"Kids?" Yang started at the sound of wood scraping against wood, feeling the barrier behind her shift, "Ruby, what-" Yang snapped to attention as the wall of Grimm surged forward, driven into a frenzy by the dark scent of fear leaking through the widened opening. "Just try it," she roared at the Liliac trying to push past her, using her entire body as a burning blockade. The second she tumbled through the opening, she shoved the desk right back into place, snapping a Liliac's wing in half as it tried to shove its way inside. Yang gripped Ruby's arm, taking two seconds to breathe before taking stock of her surroundings. A shattered room, three children huddled in a corner, Ruby, looking roughed up but still in one piece... Amethyst met silver. "...Where's Weiss?"

Ruby's eyes darted to the gap and back, the cold air like a knife in her lungs. The desk held as Liliac scrabbled at its edges. She swallowed, trying to keep her voice steady and leader-y. "She was... she was at the tower. She rang the bell. What about Blake? What happened?"

Yang cringed, not daring to mention the complete lack of anything she'd seen at the bell tower from the rooftops. Not a single dart of white or flash of blue. Maybe she had just retreated to a lower level. "Blake is at the mines," the brawler replied, glancing at the terrified children in the room and offering them a warm smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, "she... she took Jack's body with her. Gale said there was a stronghold there." Yang pressed her back against the heavy oak desk, helping hold it against the relentless assault of Grimm.

"We - Blake and I saw something while we were on watch. We tailed it back to a huge cavern of these things and it was... Jack was..." the sight of the boy's mutilated form flashed through Yang's mind, eyes flashing crimson in tandem. She halted then, the relief of finding Ruby finally freeing her mind of its singular tunnel vision to latch onto a realization far, far worse. Horror-stricken, she slowly turned to peer out the small gap at the Liliac swarming outside, their impossible numbers briefly illuminated by two quick flashes of lightning. "...I did this."

"Yang..." Ruby watched Yang draw into herself. Blood dripped down her hand from a cut her semblance wasn't healing. She couldn't let her sister withdraw—not now. She'd figure out the non-healing cut later too. For now, she scrubbed her eyes and brushed her sister's knuckles with her own. "Yang, I need you, okay? We didn't know it'd be like this, but now we've gotta take care of these guys and... and..."

There was no way they'd make it to the tower to help Weiss. If only Ruby had kept her scroll, they could try contacting her. She tried to remember if there were any good defensive positions in the tower, but with the open belfry walls and floor...

"The bats don't like the light, right? I mean, I know we're not sure, but we can always hold this place till morning, or rest and make a run for it, alright? Hey, I'll watch the window if you check on these three real quick," Ruby motioned to the kids in the corner, but glanced at the dark bundle on the carpet near the door. "I... I kind of got here late."

Yang's shoulders visibly relaxed at her sister's words, but a deep breath hissed through her clenched teeth when she followed Ruby's eyes to the covered figure on the floor. She gave Ruby a quick, fierce hug before nodding and heading over to the three children huddled together in the corner.

"Hey there," she placed a warm hand on the oldest girl's shoulder. Don't you worry about a thing, my sister and I are going to keep you safe." Peals of thunder rattled the walls in time to bright flashes of light. Yang glanced over at Ruby, "And so is miss Gale."

The girl and her brothers shrank farther into the corner. One of the boys whimpered, but the sound was almost lost in the flurry of screeches and the roll of thunder.

Ruby kept her sights on the bats jamming their faces into the gap. The desk weighed a ton, though- she'd had to use the kick from Crescent Rose to get it in place, and it wasn't too keen to move now. When one Grimm stuck its claws through, raking its claws over the woodgrain surface, she fired, clearing the whole opening.

A couple seconds was all it took for a new batch to scramble, clawing and biting in their attempts to get through.

There was a scratching at the door, and then a harsh grating sound. The Liliac were still trying to come in through the rest of the house. Ruby motioned to Yang, calling over the noise, "Sorry, but there's a door- can you block it?"

Yang shot a glance at the door standing across from them, shuddering and shaking on its hinges. "Yeah, I got it," with a parting smile at the children, she stood and gave the room a quick once-over for anything suitable, eyes landing on a stately wardrobe. The harsh grating returned, dragging Yang's eyes right back to the door in time to see a single claw sliding its way through the center of the wood. They were trying to break the door.

Just as the thought entered her head, a sickening crack resounded through the room as the door splintered in half, exploding open in a shower of splinters and hissing Grimm, the first of which immediately met Ember Celica in an explosive denial of entry the second it crossed the threshold. Stripped of any time to form a better plan, the brawler braced herself between the empty door frame and flared her semblance to its limits, daring any Liliac to meet a fiery death if they attempted to pass.

For a split second, lightning illuminated the partially-collapsed house, the missing chunks of roof granting Yang an open view of the sky filled to the limit with Grimm. A particularly brazen one charged her, heedless of the flames. As her fist flew to catch the snarling Liliac it head-on, Yang missed the bolt of lightning reaching up through the sky, finally breaking through the cloud of Liliac to reach the cloud of storms above.

She didn't miss the blinding flash of light that followed, or the column of energy that rose from the rooftops, feeding jagged tendrils of light that streaked through the dark storm clouds above before dropping a rain of electricity that arced a thousand times over, jumping indiscriminately from bat to bat, incinerating anything that was close enough - including, Yang realized a second too late, herself. She watched, stunned, as the smallest arc of lightning crossed that final inch of distance between the Liliac right before her, and her fist.

Ruby, fast as she was, barely had time to dive and cover the kids, gathering the trio under her cloak as she brandished Crescent Rose against the blinding light.

For a moment, Yang's entire world was white-hot pain, the relentless current searing her from the inside-out in a way her flames never had. The next moment, it was gone, replaced by the familiar rush of her semblance kicking into high gear. The brawler grinned, feeling pure energy coursing through her - this was exactly what she'd needed. The flash of lightning faded, replaced by a new, steady light.

Pushing a strand of glowing blonde out of her face, Yang glanced over to Ruby and the children. "You guys OK?" She quickly returned her gaze to the open doorway, fists up and ready to wreck some Grimm, only to stop short and lower her fists. In place of the cloud of Grimm, a black snow of what looked like soot drifted down from the sky, blanketing the town.

Yang's hair burned as bight as lightning. Ruby squinted, shielding her eyes.

"Yang..." she breathed. She'd seen her sister take hits before-crazy hits that would break an average person in half. Nothing like a lightning strike, though.

Ruby checked the kids. Minor cuts. No bites. Blood smeared one of the boys' shirts and Ruby panicked for a second before she realized it was blood from her own hand. She shook droplets off and put the cut to her mouth for a second, too focused on looking after the others to wonder why her semblance wasn't taking care of the injury.

"We need to get them someplace safe and find Weiss," she fumbled the ear plug from her right ear, cloak swirling at her heels as she leapt to get a better view of the sky. The Grimm red was absent from the rain of black ash. She swallowed, trying to get rid of the copper taste of her own blood. She turned to Yang, mouth open to ask if she was alright, but she knew the answer- as long as her semblance burned, Yang was golden. When that energy started to die, however... Ruby swallowed again and shoved at the desk blocking their quickest exit.

Yang moved to Ruby's side and slid the desk away with one arm, letting the other slip around her sister's shoulder as they looked out the newly unblocked window at the half-demolished town. Well, actually, mostly demolished. She sent a steady stream of healing aura into the younger girl, intent on putting her excess of energy to good use while she still had it. "Go find Weiss," she said after a moment of silence, glancing down to catch a glimpse of silver, "I'll take the kids to the stronghold at the mines."

The brawler turned her head to throw a bright smile back at the three children Ruby had saved, "Hey, you guys want to help me find the other townspeople on the way?" A thoughtful look crossed her face. "Then again, they'll probably find us," she laughed, pointing to her luminous hair, "I'm tough to miss right now."

When Yang moved to step away from Ruby, the younger girl wrapped her both arms around her sister's waist in a surprise side-attack.

"Where do you think you're going? Who's the team leader? Also who's the one who keeps telling me what happens when the good guys split up in horror movies?" she was still tingling from that aura healing. Ruby shoved Yang with her shoulder, mock-growling, "We're sticking together."

In a tumble of rose petals, Ruby was at the kids' sides, coaxing them up and out of the corner. "C'mon guys, we'll get you somewhere safe. Safer. If it's still there. Want to ride on Yang? She's really not as scary as she looks with the glowy hair and all."

Yang couldn't help but beam down at her little sister. She loved seeing this side of Ruby. Ozpin had made the right choice for team leader and she was so proud - but rather than embarrass Ruby with an explosion of affection, the brawler got down on one knee before the three children and opened her arms wide. "I come equipped with three seats - one on each arm and one on my back!"

The kids clung to Yang like monkeys, hiding their faces against her shoulder. One of the boys peeked every now and again, and the girl's face was grim.

Ruby ducked through the window, collapsing her scythe on the way so it would fit and circling it open again out in the desolate street.

Half the buildings she could see were pockmarked with holes. The Liliac had clawed their way through shingles, wood, anything they could tear through. Slash and teeth marks scored the mortar of the stone structures; everything else was in ruin. Grimm ash fell among rooftops still smoldering from the close encounter with the lightning.

How much time had passed since the start of this? An hour? No. Half an hour, tops. Ruby set her jaw and led Yang and the kids through an alley thick with splintered shutters and trash to Jack's house.

Jack. Ruby kept Crescent Rose at the ready as they navigated an open street. Jack was dead. A lot of people were probably dead. They scanned the rooftops for any sign of movement. The town was quiet, muffled in the sifting ash.

"Here," Ruby dropped to her knees, sweeping an armful of disintegrated Grimm away from the cellar doors, trying not to inhale any of the stuff. The surface of the thick wood was shredded, but the doors themselves had held. "Hey, anyone in there?"

After a moment, Ruby heard the heavy thud of a cross bar and the heavy door lifted a few inches, revealing Jack's mother. She stared out at the wreckage even as Ruby and Yang bundled the kids into her arms.

"We'll come back for you," Ruby tried to assure her. The woman's gaze, almost vacant, drifted to her. Tears were running down her face. Ruby gripped Crescent Rose and looked down at her hands and then away, in the direction of the bell tower, "We'll come back really soon."

Ice.

The top of the belfry was patched with heavy frost. It traced down the stone walls like spiderweb cracks to the base, ending in a ring of solid spikes of ice. The streetlamp out front stood bent in half by one of the far-reaching spikes, its light sputtering.

Ruby held her breath. Nothing moved. The empty silence was broken only by the soft shift of the wind through the vanishing flurries of Grimm ash on the cobbles.

"Weiss," Ruby called. She ran, skidding at the edge of the spikes blocking entrance to the tower's double doors. Dark shapes dotted these defenses- Grimm trapped in the Dust-born ice. Ruby clenched her fists and yelled louder, "Weiss!"

There was no answer.

Yang slid to a stop beside Ruby an instant later, glaring daggers up at the spindly structure of ice. The stillness in the air did not sit well with her. A quick glance at her little sister revealed that it didn't seem to sit well with Ruby either. They waited for a moment, Yang quietly watching the dimming reflection of her hair in the ice. The trip through town hadn't been that long, but Yang could already feel the rush from the earlier lightning strike beginning to wane. She clenched her teeth. Better make use of it now. After cursory search to find the one point where the ice was at its thinnest, a languid roll of each shoulder, and a quick smile for Ruby, Yang dropped into a low stance, flared every bit of energy she had into her flames, took careful aim, and smashed her fist straight into the icy barrier.

It shattered, showering the sisters with splinters that glinted in the light of Yang's fire and rang on the cobbles like bits of broken glass. The darkness previously embedded in the ice flickered away on the breeze- even frozen Grimm didn't remain in a physical form long.

In a flash of crimson, Ruby was at the double doors. Another flash, and she was back at Yang's side, silver eyes full of worry, "Still okay? Tell me if you're not okay."

The older girl was bent forward with both hands resting on her knees, steam pouring from her mouth with each heaving breath. Pain danced at the edge of her senses. Her hair flickered. She was still fine though. She had to be - at least for now. Yang took a deep breath.

"Yeah, yes, I'm okay," she straightened up, shaking herself out with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "You'll know if I'm not." The worry in those silver eyes staring up at her did not diminish. "Uh, anyway let's go. I'm right behind you."

Yang was right—they had to go. Ruby took the few front stairs in a leap and shoved the double doors hard with her shoulder. They didn't budge, and she came away with frost and splinters on her cloak. Not to be deterred, she set her jaw and whipped Crescent Rose in a vertical circle, right down the gap in the two doors, bisecting the heavy cross brace Weiss must have put in place.

Ruby burst into the tower and stopped dead.

The interior looked like a scene from a fairy tale- like a winter palace. Street light came through a single window whose ice had given way under the Liliac's onslaught. The snow underfoot was dusted with ash- whatever bats had been inside had gotten a taste of Gale's lightning.

Ruby stepped into the room, boots crunching in an inch of snow. The iron staircase had been transformed into a delicate frozen spiral. Yang followed through the door, the molten glow of her semblance glinting off the myriad pillars of ice that stretched toward the roof. The centers of these were dark, spotted with Grimm, and the ceiling hung low like a chandelier cast in black and white. Ruby stared, hardly daring to breathe. There had to be dozens- hundreds- of frozen Grimm up there.

No Weiss, though. Ruby looked down at a pattern of snowed-over scuffs in the powder and ash. A dark splatter at the base of one of the pillars. Was that blood? Please don't let it be blood.

"Weiss?" Ruby hazarded, tightening her grip on Crescent Rose as she crept through the frozen space. All the piled-up crates and bags of wool and junk stored at the base of the tower were dusted in snow or encased in ice. She almost didn't notice the shoulder-high clump of spiked ice curled against the curve of the far wall. Half of the prickly spires were broken. Some were ragged, as if they'd been chewed on. It was streaked with Grimm ash. Ruby scrambled over a bundle of rope and wool, ice splintering under her boot soles. She climbed onto the lowest intact spike, and polished the snow and black off the surface of the ice, trying to see through. It was no good.

Her nose was running in the cold. She wiped it on her sleeve and called, "Yang, over here. Come quick."

Yang tore her gaze from the ceiling, kicking up a cloud of ash-streaked snow in her haste to reach Ruby's side, only to stop short at the sight beneath her sister's feet. She wasn't sure whether the cold creeping down her spine was from the dust-born ice and snow that surrounded them, or the glimpse she'd just caught of white and red shimmering beneath the slowly melting surface of the suspiciously person-sized clump of ice Ruby had climbed.

The sisters shared a look, silver filled with a silent plea. Yang nodded, taking another deep breath. A gentle tug on Ruby's red cloak pulled the younger girl down from her perch and back to a safe distance as Yang's gears spun a mile a minute. If that was Weiss in there - it had to be Weiss in there - she would have to be careful... The brawler eyed the frozen structure for only a second before settling on a point of attack, wedging both hands between a junction of icy spikes where the tips had been snapped off.

Willing her energy reserves to hold out just a little longer, Yang flared her semblance once more, a blast of steam rippling through her wild mane of gold as she dug relentless burning fingertips deep into unyielding ice. It was slow, painstaking, delicate work, and the ice was deceptively thick, engulfing nearly half of Ember Celica's fully extended form as Yang pushed, reaching for the other side.

Just as the terrifying prospect occurred to her that this might also be a solid structure of ice, Yang felt her fingertips break through, finally finding enough purchase for her to get a firm grip on the ice. Stance solid, fingers wrapped around opposing sides of the opening she'd created, the brawler set her teeth and pulled with all her might. A grim smile crossed her face the instant the icy barricade give way with a resounding CRACK.

Yang hauled away a huge, curved piece- practically half of the spiked, ellipsoid shell. Ruby jumped into the gap at once, "Weiss!"

The heiress was a small heap of light and shadow, curled in on herself at the back of the protective shell so all Ruby could see was her slender back and the spill of her hair over her shoulder. Myrtenaster lay beside her, propped against the wall, its hilt and lower blade streaked with a dark substance. Her coat lay in a discarded crumple in the half of the broken shell Yang had dragged away.

Ruby took her shoulder, voice timid, "Hey, Weiss, wake up, the Liliac are gone. C'mon, okay? We've got to find Blake and… and..."

Weiss didn't open her eyes. She was had what looked like one of her layers, a dark cloth balled up under the curve of her neck, her hand limp in a position that suggested she'd been pressing the cloth against her left shoulder. Ruby's first thought was that she'd been using it as a pillow while she waited out the Grimm. But Weiss didn't own any really dark clothing.

The icy floor inside the shell was black in shadow till Yang leaned to see, and then, with growing horror, Ruby saw it was really red. Weiss's clothes, the trailing end of her hair, everything that touched the ground was coated in dark, frozen red.

The heiress wasn't moving.

A/N: Shout out to our guest reviewer who somewhat called this.

Stay tuned, folks,

- Fiercesomest