Exhausted but alive, team DEEP crawled from the cave. Somehow we were alive.

How many Grimm had we fought? I had lost count. In the darkness of the maze, there could have been hundreds of thousands and we killed them all.

How had there been so many?...

"C...Can you all make it... up the tree?" I said gasping. We were all using our arms to drag our bodies across the forest floor but it was night and we were in danger. There was no possible way we could fight anymore Grimm. If a pack of Beowolves comes, I'll just let them eat me.

I couldn't have healed the tiniest cut if I tried.

I could barely keep breathing and the other four were no better off.

"M...Maybe." Peyton whispered, slowly attempting to push himself to his knees.

Elise just didn't move.

Even though I had no strength, I still used all of my willpower to force myself up and stumble over to her and put her arm over my shoulder.

Together we hauled her up to her feet, leaning on each other for stability.

She turned her dull eyes at me and I felt a wave of gratitude roll over me.

I looked up.

"To that branch there. It's high enough that we won't get caught but it's not too far. The twins are done in. Peyton? Can you take Elin up?" I said slowly. My mouth felt dry and my breath rattled in my throat.

Without speaking, Peyton threw the half unconscious Elin onto his shoulders and used the last fumes of his strength to climb to the branch I pointed out. When he reached it he laid Elin down and toppled over next to him. Thankfully, I had chosen a large branch.

Working in tandem, Elise and I reached the tree branch and collapsed near Elin and Peyton. Oh, it felt so good to not move and not think. My body felt like jelly and I knew that I could no longer move. But I was so proud of my team.

We had made it when everyone else would have given up. Even on our last dregs, we had continued fighting. To the point that, if my readings were correct, it would take two to three weeks to fully recover our strength. Our Semblance strength and physical strength. Our wounds would take longer to heal and it was going to be hard to get back to Beacon in our condition.

"P-Peyton… you still awake?" I breathed. I heard a grunt and guessed that was all Peyton could muster. "If you can… send a message to Beacon… tell them we made it… we've gone to ground… we'll be back when we're strong enough to move again." My vision was going dark.

Perhaps I heard Peyton typing into Tech Slash. Maybe it was a figment of a dream.

At that point, Ursa could have come out and dance on top of me and I would've stayed blissfully asleep.

A day and a half later…

My eyes must have been glued close. When Elise poked me forcefully, trying to wake me, my eyelashes were stuck to my face.

"Come on, Dally. It's time to wake up."

I moaned. But I like the darkness where I don't dream or feel at all.

But she scraped the crust off my eyelashes and I forced my eyelids up. It was twilight outside and I lifted my head up.

Oh yeah, we're in that tree.

"Report." I said, cracking my neck and back, massaging some of the soreness from my joints. My hair was a mess, I felt disgusting, I looked even worse covered in dried blood and pieces of the Grimm I had killed. Orchid was closed and stored in its back sheath and my leg ached as if I was being shot with a thousand tiny fire arrows.

"Well, this is the first time we've woken up before you." Elin said grinning. He looked as haggard as the rest of us but I was glad to see him smile.

We were alive. I looked at Elise who was massaging her dead looking sword arm. "I don't need healing." She snapped at me when she saw me looking. "You need all your strength for yourself." I smiled at her and nodded respecting her wish. I couldn't have healed her even if I wanted to.

"We got a response back from Beacon." Peyton said ominously. I looked at him and there was a twinkle in his eyes. "Oh?"

He nodded. "Not surprisingly, the Headmaster intercepted my message. He sent his opinion on what we did, along with Goodwitch's, Mykel Dionard's, team RWBY's, team JNPR's and team CFVY's along with all of our professor's and Daren's. I decided to wait until we were all awake and lucid before breaking it to you. I haven't read them yet. I'd prefer to reach the ship first and eat something and maybe clean up before we hear what our comrades and teachers think of our impulsive actions."

I looked pained but happy. At least they wouldn't be too frantic about us. "Thank you for getting that message to them. It would have been a thousand times worse if we hadn't."

Elin looked at me. "Dahlia, they all assumed we were dead. The minute we went into that tunnel, they all gave us up for dead. Don't think we got off so easy." His smirk was for me and Elise. He knew our male counterparts would have quite a bit to say to us when we got back.

"C'mon, Mommy Quicksilver. I want to get to that ship soon." Peyton said hauling me to my feet. I grimaced at being vertical but I recognized the sense. At the ship, we could clean up, change, get medicine, eat and get a few more hours of sleep in real beds.

Just thinking about it made me weak with relief.

Once I had showered and eaten, maybe things wouldn't seem so bleak?

Oh, such optimism...

Our trek back to the ship was onerous and left in silence. For all the banter earlier, we all still felt impact of what we did. So many things whirled inside my head.

We could have died. The White Fang could've turned on us in the tunnels, a slight mistake would have brought the entire team down, and just how many Grimm did we kill collectively? How many White Fang had we been too late to save?

How many of them had I put out of their misery?

Instead, we lived. We survived it under incredible circumstances. Even then, I had no clue as to what kept all four of us going down there in the dark. Where did the strength to continue fighting come from?

That particular question gnawed at my mind. How did we do it?

So many questions. I knew we had done the right thing. I knew when I dove into the darkness that it was the best course of action. Now we had a wild card in our hands to play against whoever had concocted this evil plan.

The White Fang we had saved. We saved many of them and now they had a choice between the leaders who had left them to die… and us. Team DEEP who had risked our lives to go back into Hell to bring save them. The best part was that no doubt, the Head of this plan had no idea that those White Fang members had survived. They'd call it collateral damage and seek to gain the rest of the White Fang's trust back.

And now I had my own personal group of loyal Faunus who would quietly spread the word about Dahlia Derivalle and team DEEP. Humans who were better than their own Faunus leaders. And just imagine how easy it would be to help that loyalty to me grow when they learn the Dahlia Derivalle was actually a Faunus? I thought about that Wolf Faunus and his show of respect for me. I prayed that he'd have the strength to convince his fellows that a young woman would be a better leader than Adam.

I rubbed the back of my neck and growled under my breath. I was playing a dangerous game. But if I learned anything from Omar, it was how to think ahead to how you can use things like this to your advantage.

Cinder wasn't the real mastermind behind this. Neither was Torchwick, Gods forbid. Neither of them truly had the cunning to bring this all to bear and there were far too many other threads to this web that I didn't know. So I would weave my own web and sit in the middle of it and wait to see what the enemy's next move was.

Meanwhile, I had my team to take care of.

It was pretty terrible; the extensive injuries we all received. Even worse, I couldn't heal. I had drained all the power from my Semblance. Even my Quick Heal was failing to work at that point.

My face was bruised and I had deep welts on my forehead, cheeks and chin. I had a pretty nasty one that ran from my right temple to the bottom of my jaw. The rest of me wasn't pretty either.

It took me forever to clean out all of my teammate's wounds. I feared infection from the blood and gore in the wounds and wasted no time with it. I pulled so many teeth out of the wounds. I hadn't even gotten to mine and we had enough to make three necklaces.

Elin volunteered to do just that when he woke up later.

We would all have new battle scars to show our classmates when we finally made it back. Elise fretted over my facial wounds but I didn't particularly care. I'd seen Oz's scars and I knew he'd still love me for mine.

And Daren would still love Elise for hers.

I let Elise take the first shower while I fed Elin and Peyton. We were able to wipe off most of the blood and gut and fur from our bodies but it would take a real shower to feel clean again.

Pumped myself full of non-drowsy, non-hallucinatory pain medication and finally after three days, my leg didn't feel like I had shattered it repeatedly. Which when I commented that statement, Elin's quip remark was: "Well, you kind of did."

We lounged around the ship in robes since we didn't want to leave our grimy clothes on but we weren't going to put fresh clothes on our grimy bodies. Our killer gear, as we were wont to call it, was stored in a sealed container so that when we went back to beacon I could use my special cleaners to remove all traces of blood and gore from it. We would have to get new head covers though, after losing ours in the train fighting.

Elin and Peyton showered together to save time and water and Elise was much more relaxed when she toweled off and consumed her massive meal. "Oh man, I thought I'd never feel clean again."

She wrinkled her nose at me as I rubbed ointment into her welts and I laughed. "I'll wait my turn. But I can't wait to not smell like this." I said, dabbing the salve on her last cut.

She nodded with her mouth full of food.

I smiled, relieved that even though she'd been through some awful things lately Elise was still Elise. Still loud mouthed, rude, straight-forward, strong and all-consuming, darling Elise.

I had been worried about how my team would hold up. When I had been learning the things they had, I had nearly broken under the strain. Add onto that all the normal classes and stresses of life and I had worried. Not to mention the killing and the fear and the close brushes with death.

Elise belched and sat back contently, her eyes slowly closing.

"C'mon, Feistypants. Let's get you to a bed." She rolled up reluctantly and shuffled to a bed and then clean and full, Elise fell asleep. I checked the antiseptic on her wounds and then let her snore away.

It was the same with my two boys. They ate huge meals as I finished taking care of their injuries and then passed out soon after.

Finally, it was my turn to wash off. The hot pounding water helped me tremendously. I scrubbed every last bit of Grimm off of me and reveled in the slight rawness I felt. I wanted desperately to be clean.

My hair was the worst. It took the longest to finally get all the blood and other stuff from its strands. How gross.

I hissed in pain whenever I rubbed a wound the wrong way but I was just relieved to see that they were all clean. I knew from experience the hell a festering wound, no matter how big or small, could put a person through.

And when I stepped from the shower, it was fully nighttime.

I knew I should have listened to the messages but as I ate and rubbed my salve into my injuries, I felt my eyelids growing heavier and heavier.

Once I had checked to make sure the rest of my pack was safe and sleeping did I allow myself to give in to exhaustion.

I barely had time to lie on the bed before I was fast asleep.