Motion to strike: Most often sought by the defense, motions to strike are requests to the presiding judge by one party in a trial that the judge order the removal of some or all of the opposing party's pleading to the court.

For someone in a STEM field I'm apparently very bad at basic addition. There will be 30 chapters, not 29.

Chapter 26: Motion to Strike

"The manta's two blocks east now!" Ruby called. "They had to relocate because of a megoliath."

"Got it!" Blake called back as she shot a lunging creep before it could reach the nearest civilian.

Ruby shot down a pair of small swooping nevermores and glanced back at the group. "Just a little farther, everyone. We're almost there!"

Three sabyrs bounded out of a nearby alley. Ruby was there in a burst of red, Crescent Rose flashing in Mantle's strobing alarm lights as it shifted to a scythe and tore through the beasts. Blake had no time to stay focused on Ruby; centinels, which had been circling them from the start, were finally starting to break the surface.

"If you see cracks by your feet, call it out!" Blake ordered.

With only the two of them covering the entire column of evacuees—nearly thirty of them, all terrified, some injured, some old or weak—there was never a moment to rest. A centinel burst from the street with its mandibles circling a boy's throat, but they closed around one of Blake's shadows instead. Blake severed its head from its body and shot the next one to break free from the ground before she helped the boy to his feet.

The rest of the civilians, terrified, had paused.

"Keep moving," Blake encouraged them. "The sooner we get there, the sooner you can get to safety."

They started back up again. The Grimm, of course, never relented for any single hard-fought yard. Sweat, worked up despite the freezing temperatures, soaked into Blake's clothes. Her every breath frosted in the air and if she stopped, she caught glimpses of steam rising off her skin.

At the next block, they passed the ruined transport truck they'd used for the first two convoys before a cenitaur had caught them by surprise and melted both the driver's seat and a good portion of the cabin to slag. Without any other trucks to spare, Atlas had ordered them to escort remaining civilians in their sector on foot.

As she slammed another magazine into Gambol Shroud and almost immediately emptied half of it into a swarm of creeps, Blake wished for Weiss's versatility in a fight. But she and Yang had split off to be a duo of their own so they could, combined as a team, evacuate the whole sector. It made sense—Ruby and Weiss could both tear their way through massive crowds faster than Yang or Blake. Like Yang, too, Ruby's weapon had the stopping power Blake and Weiss lacked that was required when larger Grimm crossed their paths.

So the split made sense, and if they wanted to rescue as many people as possible then they had to do it, but Blake missed having another two people to cover her back.

"Behind you!" a woman shouted, and Blake ducked under a sabyr's lunge, spearing its belly as it passed over her head.

The civilians were helping a little, at least.

They rounded one more corner to see a line of soldiers and robotic knights shooting down a charging pack of beowolves. When the alpha reared up in front of that line, undaunted by the standard munitions, Ruby blew out its skull with a single high-caliber shot. She drew back from her scope and waved at the soldiers.

"We've got the next group!"

As the soldiers maintained the evacuation zone's perimeter, Blake and Ruby guided the civilians to the manta. It was going to be a very tight fit, but they would fit. They had to.

A few sparks drew Blake's eye to the crater by the manta's left landing strut that she hadn't even noticed at first, too busy helping an old woman up the ramp. At its center was a busted paladin, a massive hole torn through its center as though speared by a massive blade.

"What happened?" she asked a nearby soldier, who was also helping people find seats and standing room. He peered out of the doorway to see what she was pointing at.

"Megoliath's last charge," he answered. "Thank the gods the paladin blew a hole in its chest before it got totaled. Pilot survived, barely."

Blake bit her lip, glancing back at the paladin. The gods certainly hadn't intervened because that was a lot of lifesaving firepower they'd just lost.

"By the way, you two are going up with this lot."

"We're what?" Ruby replied. "There are still—"

"This sector's clear, as far as we can tell." The soldier's lips thinned. "Look, it sucks, but we don't have the time or manpower to knock on every door. We get who we can."

"We'll stay, we'll knock—"

"You're needed elsewhere. The general's asked for you, so it's probably important."

"What about the people we missed?"

The soldier glanced out at the street, fingers squeezing her weapon's grip. "We hope they've found really good places to hide."

"Loading complete," declared the robot pilot from inside the manta. "Preparing to depart."

"Time for you to go," said the soldier. "Good luck up there."

"Good luck down here."

Ruby looked back out at Mantle and Blake followed her gaze, the city bleeding smoke and bathed in red from every Grimm alarm going off, the billboards projecting evacuation routes and live Grimm locations, the airships buzzing through the sky, the distant gunfire from the gunships raining down armageddon on the Grimm approaching the city sounding like faint thunderclaps to Blake's ears.

Blake exhaled. Pressing her lips together, she put a hand on Ruby's shoulder. Her team leader was rigid to her touch, Crescent Rose gripped like a life preserver in a flood.

"Ruby, we should go."

After one final second, Ruby turned away from the burning city, frustrated tears shining in her silver eyes.

They crammed into the manta with the civilians they'd just been escorting. The moment they were inside, the ramp retracted, the door slid shut, and the pilot set off on the preplanned route to one of Atlas's landing platforms.

"Shouldn't you be down there helping more people?" one of the civilians asked. Ruby wiped her eyes clear and straightened her shoulders.

"We have to go where we're needed," she answered. Since they were stuck by the door, Blake peered through the window set into the metal. Her blood ran cold and she lost track of whatever Ruby said next.

The smoke was still there, underlit by the fires that were its source, but every other bit of light—every alarm, every streetlight, every billboard, every single piece of Mantle's electrical infrastructure—was dark.

Watts had cut all power to Mantle.

Blake briefly flashed her huntress license to the next set of guards before returning the device to her ear and half-jogging to keep up with Ruby's swift pace through the academy's echoing halls. All of the students were either out fighting or sheltering with their families, so the echoes carried even more than normal.

"How long can the emergency supplies last?" Blake asked. On the other end of the line, Fiona sucked in a breath.

"A couple hours? Maybe enough to get through evacuations, but losing power has made everyone panic way more than before. Not even Robyn can get things under control anymore. And with night falling, it's only going to get worse."

"I'll let the general know, but I'm sure he's already aware."

"Please tell him how urgent this is. We can't maintain our rate of evacuation like this and we can't hold off the Grimm that are already here, much less the next wave." Someone in the background on Fiona's end called Fiona's name."Thanks, Blake. Stay safe."

"You too."

The call ended right as they rounded a corner and saw Yang and Weiss at the foot of the stairs to Ironwood's office.

"Yang, Weiss!" called Ruby, zooming over to them and wrapping them in a hug, which they returned with the arms not pinned by Ruby's embrace.

"Good to see you too, sis," said Yang with a tired smile.

Blake, a bit late to the hug, still joined for the last second before they all separated. Yang caught her hand and squeezed; Blake squeezed back. There was a distinct moment of hesitation, none of them quite ready to ascend the steps and find out what else was crashing and burning.

"Well, I suppose we should go in," said Weiss. "We're just wasting time out here."

"Right. In we go."

Ruby led the way into a small hive of activity. Blake stepped to the right to let a soldier she didn't recognize run out of the office, another one hot on his heels. Ironwood, Qrow, Marrow, and another person Blake didn't recognize stood around the table. Marrow had three screens pulled up and a hand at his ear, talking on the line about whatever he was seeing. The table itself had dozens of projections gently spinning nearly up to the ceiling. Beyond it, between Ironwood and the stairs leading to his desk, was a holographic projection that showed Atlas, Mantle, the outlying settlements, and the rough progression of the approaching Grimm. It was a tactical map but, seeing just how many Grimm were already here and how many were still on their way, Blake couldn't imagine a strategy that would get them safely through the night.

Oscar, nearly lost in the confusion, was by Ironwood, staring at his own set of screens in mute horror. Blake could tell it was Oscar and not Ozpin by that expression alone.

"Handle it," Ironwood was saying to the person Blake didn't know, who promptly saluted and took her leave. Ruby, sensing the lull, stepped forward.

"Watts cut power to Mantle," she announced, drawing everyone's eye. Weiss and Yang, judging by their grim nods of assent, had witnessed that tragedy as well.

"I'm aware," said Ironwood. "He set one last delayed command before we took him into custody. One last trick."

"Mantle can't finish evacuations in time," Blake said. "The lack of power is slowing them down."

Marrow leaned back from the screen he'd been scrutinizing over the table and crossed his arms. "With Watts no longer running interference, we're doing what we can to get it back up, but there's no silver bullet. It's sector by sector. We'll prioritize the area around the Crater, though—that's where most of the people left are at, anyway." He looked to Ironwood. "I have what I need. Do you need me for anything else, sir?"

"No. Join the rest of the Ace Ops, but be ready to pull out of Mantle. We'll need all of you ready for hwat comes next."

"Understood."

Marrow saluted and left. Qrow, who had been staring at Ruby since she spoke the first word, used the opening created by Marrow exit to rush over and scoop Ruby into a bone-crushing hug. Ruby wheezed, kicking her feet a little, and tried to tap out to no avail.

"Uffl," she gasped.

Yang put one arm around Qrow's shoulders and tried to ease his grip on Ruby with the other. "Uncle Qrow, are you okay?"

The sisters' fingers grazed the singed sections of Qrow's outfit. Seeing those, Blake looked more closely at Ironwood and realized he was favoring his right foot and that he was just as singed as Qrow, if not even more. There was a single perfect hole burned through the right breast of his shirt but only silver shone beneath.

Right as Qrow's grip was starting to loosen and Ruby could breathe again, the doors opened once more to admit Jaune, Nora, and Ren, all looking a bit ragged but in one piece. Blake, glancing down at herself, realized she didn't look any better.

"Mantle's lost power," Nora announced without preamble.

"There's a school that needs to be evacuated, we didn't finish before you pulled us out," Jaune added.

"You defeated Watts," Ren realized upon seeing Ironwood.

Ironwood cleared his throat and began addressing their comments, but Blake was more focused on the evolving scene between Ruby, Yang, and their uncle. Qrow had set Ruby back down but he still had his hands on her shoulders. He was rattled, more than Blake had ever seen—not that she'd seen much emotion out of him, well, ever, now that she was thinking about it—and that had Ruby and Yang visibly worried about him.

As Qrow heeded Yang's gentle nudges, he patted Ruby's shoulders, almost as though he was reassuring himself she was there, and then took a deep breath.

"I'm okay," he said. "Two on one wasn't really a fair fight, not that he deserved one."

"If it wasn't the fight, then what's got you all shaken up? Did you see something on the way back?"

Qrow's eyes cut to Ironwood, who caught the look, and, after a beat, nodded. Qrow pulled both of his nieces close while Ironwood cleared his throat to get everyone's attention.

"As I was telling JNR, Qrow and I captured Arthur Watts roughly one hour ago. After the fight, we discovered something in the bag he had brought to the arena."

"It was some kind of Grimm," Qrow said. "A seer, I think. Dormant. But the second James opened the bag, it flew up and started shrieking."

"Was it hurt?" Ruby asked.

Qrow shook his head. "Not that I saw. It made a hell of a racket and then shriveled up, fell, and cracked open."

"We've suspected for years that seers have telepathic capabilities and that Salem can use them to communicate across Remnant without needing the CCT." Ironwood clasped his hands behind his back. "This was confirmation. The seer opened and, from the black smoke that came out, she appeared."

"It wasn't some kind of hallucination?" Jaune ventured. "Some Grimm can do that, I thought."

"Not seers."

"She talked to both of us. No hallucination does that." Qrow went for the inner pocket of his coat but stopped himself and instead squeezed his hand into a fist at his side. "Hell, talk isn't even right. She was just taunting us."

"She doesn't care that we know she's coming," Ironwood said tightly. "She doesn't care about our weapons, our defenses, our scouts. She offered a deal: the relics for this kingdom's safety."

"That's insane," Ruby said.

"There's no way she can get her hands on the relics," Yang agreed. "That's, like, the end of the world."

"Relic of knowledge ain't the problem," Qrow said. "It's Atlas's that could cause the real trouble."

Ironwood nodded. "The relic of creation. If Salem got her hands on that, then there would be no stopping her. Obviously, I refused her offer."

"It kinda feels like we're ransoming Atlas for the relic," Nora mumbled, and Ren pursed his lips.

"Better that than all the world for Atlas," Ironwood said. "I took power here to make Atlas a sword and shield strong enough to turn back whatever darkness Remnant could hold. That is what it will do."

Ruby chewed her lip. "So…Salem is here. She knows the relics are here. Does she know about our plan?"

"Didn't seem like it," Qrow replied, but there was a quicksilver flash of pain in his eyes. His hand once more drifted towards his jacket; he once more pulled it away. This time, Ruby saw it too.

"What else did she say? She showed up, offered a deal, and then what?"

Ironwood looked at Qrow, but Qrow refused to meet anyone's eyes.

"Uncle Qrow."

"If you do not explain, I will," warned Ironwood, and Qrow closed his eyes in defeat.

"Salem knew Summer."

Blake's breath caught, not because the words meant much to her, but because of the shock and subsequent despair on Ruby and Yang's faces. Yang pulled Ruby close and asked,

"She knew Mom?"

"How?" added Ruby.

Qrow's hands were shaking. "Dunno. No way that's good. She—" he swallowed, stopped. Started again. "She bragged about 'extinguishing their light,' the experiments she did on all the silver eyed warriors her people have hunted down and captured over the years."

Yang stepped closer in worry, pulling Ruby with her almost by coincidence. "You think Mom—"

"She said she'd do the same thing to Ruby. She knew about Ruby."

Qrow had the flask to his lips by the time Ruby realized what was happening and caught his wrist. The liquid inside sloshed out, and even from several steps away, Blake's nose stung. Whiskey—strong whiskey.

Yang took the flask and capped it; Ruby wrapped Qrow in a hug just as bone-crushing as the one he'd given her. Qrow groaned, the soreness from his earlier battle finally starting to catch up to him.

By some signal she couldn't articulate if she tried, Blake took the flask from Yang and discreetly pocketed it. She shared a nod with Weiss and, past Weiss, saw that Ren and Nora had both put an arm around each other. Nora's eyes were shining.

"It's not gonna happen," Ruby was saying into Qrow's shoulder. "It's not."

"We're in this together," Yang added as she joined the family hug. "All of us."

Ironwood let the moment stretch as long as he reasonably could before he cleared his throat. "I called you here not because of Salem's latest mind game but because we've received a report from the scouts we sent to investigate the army on its way."

Blake was tired of everyone's words putting her ever more on edge. This was not going to be good news.

At the table, Ironwood minimized most of the screens and pulled up a few that showed images of the approaching force—and the thundercloud hanging over it.

No, Blake realized, not a thundercloud. A swarm of flying Grimm.

"Salem's words at Amity confirmed one thing that we've only suspected thus far: she is in that swarm. The most likely place is here."

The largest image of the swarm zoomed in. There were actual clouds in there, a few stray arcs of red lightning revealing the shadows of gargantuan seer-like Grimm in the haze, but the focus was on the black shape in the center of it all. With one more gesture from Ironwood, the image zoomed in one last time and switched to a different lens, letting all of them see the shape and rough colors of the creature approaching Atlas.

The Grimm had a black body and purple fins interrupted by occasional spines stretching down its back. More fins, suspended in flight in this picture, extended from its sides. Lacking eyes, it instead had an orange glowing cloud shining through its skull. Dotting its flank were massive gravity Dust crystals, probably what enabled its flight.

"It's…a flying whale?" asked Jaune.

"Leviathan class, designation: Monstra," confirmed Ironwood. "Escorted by two leviathan-class tempests, which, judging by their electrical output, are responsible for the strange weather interfering with our long-distance equipment. We can't see exactly what's inside that whale."

"How big is that thing?" Yang asked. She and Ruby were still flanking Qrow, each of them holding one of his hands.

"From head to tail, approximately one-third the length of Atlas."

The goliaths, the Beacon dragon, the Argus leviathan—each one had been the largest Grimm Blake had ever seen. They were nothing but jokes in comparison to Monstra. The sheer scale of the approaching threat left her weak in the knees.

"Scans of its exterior suggest that conventional weaponry won't be effective. It's too tough." Ironwood indicated Monstra's oversized maw, which was open just slightly. Black goo carried far by the wind dripped from between its teeth. Spots on the ground showed where more Grimm of all varieties were clawing their way out of that goo. "Worse, it appears to be capable of spawning more Grimm at will."

"It's a mobile base and troop carrier," Ren summarized. Ironwood nodded.

"Some of the scans returned strange readings, specifically around its mouth and presumably its stomach, or whatever cavity passes for its stomach. We think those readings are coming from concentrated stores of that dark matter."

"That matter isn't just some way to store Grimm," Ozpin said. His hands were shaking on the head of his cane. "She's found a way to transport the Pits of Darkness themselves. If she's drawing power from those, she'll be as powerful here as she is in the dark continent."

"Then we absolutely have to destroy that whale," Ironwood stated. "Anything we can do to weaken Salem, we will do." He straightened. "A few scouts also reported an unmarked ship flying through the Grimm unimpeded—when one of ours tried to follow, it was destroyed. The last thing we heard from any of the scouts was that it appeared to have landing zones protruding from its sides under the wings. Unfortunately, none of them were able to get a clear shot."

Grainy images that could have shown anything appeared over the table before Ironwood waved them away.

"What happened to them?" Weiss asked. "The scouts, I mean."

Blake knew the answer before Ironwood spoke it aloud: "They were all destroyed."

A chill descended over the room. Blake couldn't take her eyes off the images of Monstra. That thing and the thousands upon thousands of Grimm around it were on their way, growing closer by the second. What were any of them supposed to do about it? Even with all of Atlas's weapons, every flagship and manta and paladin and turret, there was no way they could hold back that tide.

"How do we kill it?"

Ren's question, quiet and determined and entirely unexpected, yanked Blake out of her despair. Shocked at how quickly she'd let it sink into her thoughts, she stood a bit taller and tried to match Ren's resolve.

"Our teams are already working on a way to destroy it from the inside," Ironwood said. "But killing that thing doesn't end the threat. For that, we need a more purpose-built solution." He glanced at the table and the clock on one of the screens with a frown. "I called—"

He stopped when the office doors slid open to admit Pietro and Maria. Pietro had dark circles under his eyes, a streak of something on the left lens of his glasses, and stains on his clothes, but he radiated proud satisfaction as he directed his chair into the room. Maria had a similar air of pride about her.

Behind them followed a small parade of four robots, each one carrying a dark gray rectangular block approximately four feet tall and half a foot wide. The blocks were segmented into three sections, the middle one being the shortest.

Ruby all but bounced over to him, Monstra's approach for the moment alleviated by whatever was happening now. "They're done? You did it?"

"No small part thanks to you, young lady. They're fully functional."

"The last demonstration collapsed on itself," Ironwood said.

"Right, that was an unfortunate rounding error."

"No need to worry about that now," Maria said. "Ruby, help me with this?"

Ruby took one of the pillars. "It's light," she noted in surprise.

"Right over there, please," directed Maria. "Though I suppose the exact location doesn't matter much."

Once Ruby and Maria both had a pillar standing up, Pietro directed a robot to put one down next to him. "You'll need at least three pillars within three yards of each other for the field generation to work," he explained. "Place them—on soft or uneven ground, they will deploy stabilizers, but that isn't a concern here—and then hit the switch on top to activate them."

Pietro flipped off the clear cover and toggled the switch. His pillar lit up, an indicator light by the switch as well as the gaps between segments glowing white. "White means that you've activated it. Activate the other ones, and…"

Maria and Ruby activated theirs as well. A distinct hum filled the air as the pillars' lights transitioned from white to green. Blue light shot out from previously unnoticeable perforations in the pillars' sides to form the sides of a solid triangle. Those walls angled themselves, overlapped, developed a floor and ceiling, and then overlapped even more until there was a tiny, triangular prism suspended in the middle of the pillars. Blake would be hard-pressed to fit her head inside, much less her entire body.

Ruby was shifting from foot to foot with excitement, but her restraint spoke to how that excitement was tempered by the reality of their situation.

"Once the field is deployed, you can move the pillars around." At Pietro's signal, Maria shifted her pillar to the left and then to the right, then shook it for good measure. Her pillar's indicator lights turned yellow. "You can see the stability reading with the lights—green is good, blue is borderline, and red is failing. Disturb or damage them too much, and they will fail."

Maria continued messing with her pillar. The humming reached a new, frantic pitch, and the hard light forming the container noticeably thinned in places.

When Maria's pillar flashed red, the entire Dust construction shattered and disappeared. Blake tried not to take that as an omen.

With a way to achieve their ultimate goal finally on the table, the rest of the meeting passed quickly. The final mission, the people involved, the consequences of failure; Ironwood walked through it all with stoic focus. Even so, Blake couldn't get that first impression of a brittle blade out of her head.

She wondered if she looked the same.

The meeting's end almost caught Blake by surprise. Ironwood's office was a kind of limbo. Things did not happen while they were there. So long as they were there, things would not happen. Maybe that was a holdover from her time under the gears in Ozpin's office, an echo of the omnipresent certainty that time did not pass the same in that tower.

Regardless, time did pass, and now Ironwood was sizing them all up, his orating finished. Through the bank of windows behind him, the Atlesian flagships that had not moved since Blake's arrival in the kingdom began to turn to the east. Their moon-cast shadows sent ripples of darkness across Atlas.

Ironwood's gaze settled on Ruby but he addressed everyone. "As soldiers in the operation targeting Monstra and Salem, you have until two hours before dawn to prepare yourselves. Do what you need in that time so you can be focused when the moment arrives. Dismissed."

The day Penny had shown them their dorm, the room had been impersonal, practical, and—in Blake's eyes—just as cold and clinical as the rest of Atlas. That first night had been miserable thanks to that impression, the innate discomfort of being in an unfamiliar place, and the stress of Adam's presence with Qrow in Mantle.

In the days and weeks that followed, however, the simple dorm room had little by little gained some life to it. Their teams' boots and shoes by the door; weapon maintenance kits half-shoved under the table; clothing Yang and Ruby hadn't gotten around to putting away scattered by and on their bunks; a handful of books Blake had checked out from the school library during her fleeting free time stacked on the desk she'd claimed as hers. Even Ruby and Yang's inability to make their beds helped, much as it irritated Weiss.

All that time spent building up a feeling of homeliness and now that life was turning dull, suffocating under a blanket of tempered dread. Ruby and Yang were at the table; Weiss had claimed one of the desks. And Blake—Blake had gone to her bunk. Even with the three walls acting as shields, flashes of light from the window still reached her. Atlas's air fleet had been firing off long-range missile barrages at targets only they could see for nearly an hour now. After Ironwood's description of Monstra, Blake wasn't naïve enough to think those missiles would be enough to take down Monstra or even the tempests escorting it, but they would at least thin their accompanying hordes.

Every flash made her tense. She caught the rest of her team doing the same. Weiss, in the middle of loading fresh Dust cartridges into Myrtenaster, merely pressed her lips together and carried on as though she hadn't flinched. Ruby and Yang looked at each other and then tried to refocus on the papers in front of them.

It felt wrong to be sitting here, resting, when people were laying down their lives outside. But if they didn't rest, they'd be useless when the time for the operation arrived. Those flashes just stirred up that tension anew.

"Should we tell him about what Qrow said?" Yang asked her sister quietly. "About Mom?"

"I…I dunno. I've been trying to focus on the positives. He'd want to know we're doing okay."

"I'm not sure anyone's doing okay right now."

It sure seemed that way. Though Blake's scroll had started to calm as people found more useful routes of communication, what she'd heard from Fiona and even Alanna hadn't exactly inspired relief.

"Maybe, but when we make it through, things will get better. We might not be able to see him for a while, since Amity isn't ready and there's probably going to be a lot of Grimm left to take care of. I don't want him to worry when he gets this."

"That's a good point."

Blake had copied their idea to write a letter home the moment Ruby voiced it to her sister. As far as her parents knew, she'd joined her school friends on a trip to Atlas. They deserved to know about Adam, about her assumption of the role of Menagerie Representative, and about the end of the world.

Once again, though, she found herself tapping the pen against the paper without any idea of how to put any of those concepts in writing. A small blizzard of marks now decorated the margin—her mother would no doubt comment on that.

She'd done this—sat down to write, hesitated—a hundred times after she left her parents for the White Fang. So many drafts crumpled up and thrown away. Once, back when she'd still been sharing a tent, she had gotten all the way to sealing the envelope. Adam had been mending a tear in the back of his coat as she wrote and had asked her, "Are you sure?"

When she'd hesitated, he had added, "They aren't interfering with your life right now. Send that, and they'll start getting in our way. Is that what you want, Blake?"

After that, anything she'd wanted to write stayed forever as half-forgotten drafts in the annals of her own mind. Seeing her parents after Beacon's collapse had helped tear down that wall, but Adam's return and everything else had built it right back up again.

Thinking about Adam brought up something she hadn't considered: would Adam want to write something? He'd never been one for letters, but he'd also been cut off from the outside world for a while now. There was a chance he wanted to write something. Maybe.

When she finished her letter, she'd ask him.

With someone else now theoretically relying on her to finish her letter, Blake found the motivation to push through the block in her head and just put something on the page. It didn't have to be the right thing to say, it didn't have to be said in the best way, it just had to say what her parents should hear to know that she was okay and the things they had to do to prepare for if—when—Salem was defeated.

She signed the letter with a flourish and had just lifted her pen from the page when there was a knock on the door.

"It's unlocked!" called Ruby.

Blake shifted in her bunk to see who the visitors were and saw Qrow in the doorway. "Hey, kids."

She couldn't help looking towards the desk where she'd set his flask—only to see a tiny black glyph pulling the flask out of his line of sight. Weiss, with a perfect poker face, nodded in greeting to Qrow, her finger firmly pressed against her desk's surface the only sign of her action.

Unaware of the subterfuge, Qrow nodded at her and Blake but focused on the sisters. "Writing to Tai? Good, he'll want to know how you two are doing." He shifted on his feet. "I didn't mean to interrupt, but can we talk? About Summer."

Ruby and Yang exchanged a look and then both stood.

"Definitely," said Yang.

As they went with Qrow to a more private spot, Blake glimpsed white in the doorway. Sure enough, when Qrow was gone, Winter stepped up to take his place.

"Winter," Weiss said in surprise. "I had expected you to be busy with preparing."

"There is only so much I can do at this stage," Winter said. "Before more obligations get in the way, there is one matter we must discuss."

Weiss straightened in her seat. "Whitley."

"With Father's arrest and against the directive of the shelter-in-place order, many of the staff have left the manor. He is essentially alone in that place."

"Right, I can—" Weiss stopped herself and glanced at Blake. "You were still writing, weren't you? We can talk somewhere else."

"Don't worry about it," said Blake, setting her letter aside. "I just finished, anyway, and there's someone I should talk to."

Winter's eyes creased in displeasure at the presumed identity of that person but a pointed cough from Weiss stayed her comment. Blake took a spare pen, sheet of paper, and her leave.

Adam was of course in his usual. The guard outside the observation room had recognized Blake and let her in unchallenged. Gossip in the observation room informed her that Jacques and Watts had been confined to a different cell block to avoid conflict.

That was for the best. Who knew if Adam's self-control would hold if he were put in that position with no way out. If he would even care if it held; his last comment before she went to the manor suggested he wouldn't.

This time, when she entered the main room, there were no buzzing walls; other than the turrets in the ceiling, and the guards in the observation room, Adam was unrestricted. He even had his weapons.

His coat, cloth facemask, and gloves were neatly folded next to him. Adam himself was seated with his back resting against the bench while he sharpened Wilt. As he moved the whetstone down Wilt's edge, Blake glimpsed the old scars stretching in uneven lines and knots across his hands. Unlike the rest, she had never heard the story behind those.

"You've heard?" she asked, more to break the ice than anything.

"Suicide mission to somehow get through a Grimm army, destroy a flying Grimm whale, and then imprison the immortal witch controlling it? I heard. Believing, that took longer." He set the whetstone aside and ran a finger along Wilt's edge. He frowned at whatever he felt and set to sharpening once more. "I heard the plan, too. It's…aggressive. Are you prepared?"

"As much as I can be." That was a lie; Gambol Shroud could use some maintenance, and there was a tear in her jacket she needed to mend.

He raised his eyes to hers. The whetstone slowly halted. "You look tired."

"It's been a long night. I'll be fine."

"Blake—"

"Don't, Adam."

"What?"

"Don't act like you care."

A line, one that had never been drawn before. He stared in shock. It hadn't been an act. The tangles in her hair, the slight droop to her ears, the set of her shoulders, and the shadows under her eyes had raised in him genuine concern, the same as they would have before any White Fang mission.

But this isn't a White Fang mission, he reminded himself. And they were so far from teacher and student, commander and subordinate, or even friends.

"Sorry," he offered.

Blake had watched that conflict play out behind his visible eye and vented her guilt at reacting the way she had with a sigh as she sat cross-legged across from him. "It's not…I have enough on my mind already. We can talk about it, us, later. After."

He eyed her, a peculiar feeling fluttering in his stomach—a feeling that, when after came, one or both of them would not be there to have that conversation.

"After," he agreed.

While Blake worked through her thoughts, he flipped Wilt, poured more oil onto the whetstone, and set to evening out the edge on the opposite side of the blade. He found his own serenity somewhat disconcerting. Perhaps, after being so close to death for so long, the prospect of going down in a blaze of glory trying to save the world was an acceptable way for his life to end. Blake didn't seem to have that same sense of peace; though she was seated, she was restless, ears twitching and her weight constantly shifting.

Finally, she pulled something from her coat—a pen and paper.

"Here."

Adam stared at the offered things with a light furrow lingering in his brow. Then he shook his head. "Thanks, Blake, but I don't need that."

His swift refusal left her bemused. "Are you sure?"

"My parents and everyone I grew up with are dead and buried. Ilia and your parents wouldn't want to hear from me even if I was the last one who saw you alive, never mind anyone in the White Fang." He shrugged. "Who would I write to?"

That old ache resurfaced in Blake's heart.

"I'll leave it over here," she said, getting to her feet and setting them on the bench. "Just in case." He watched her do it without comment, which only made her feel more awkward. "See you in a few hours, I guess."

He wanted to tell her to get some rest but stopped himself. "Until then."

The mission prep had been surprisingly smooth from the moment they stepped foot in the hangar. Blake knew she shouldn't have been surprised; Atlas ran a tight ship, and with the apocalypse approaching, order and cohesion were their best defenses against Grimm-drawing despair. Even so, the efficiency with which Winter and Clover had laid out their exact plan was impressive. In the back of the hangar, Adam had watched with visible appreciation for the specificity and speed of the presentation.

There were two angles of attack: the suppression teams, which would do their best to distract and hold back the main forces of the Grimm army both ground and air, and the strike teams, which would break through the Grimm aerial lines to land on Monstra itself. The strike teams consisted of two sub-teams, Shock and Awe. Shock was another distraction force tasked with grabbing and holding the attention of everything inside Monstra while Awe, the infiltration team, snuck to the creature's core and planted a bomb. Once the bomb was planted, they would find somewhere to shelter—either in place in a far corner of Monstra or at a distance on any intact ship—detonate the bomb, and the fight to contain Salem would take place wherever the whale's remains landed.

For the duration of that matter-of-fact presentation, Blake had managed to wrangle the absurdity of what they were about to attempt into something manageable. When Ironwood stepped up with his final remarks, that solid ground had cracked.

"The fate of not only this kingdom but all of Remnant rests on your shoulders," he'd said. "Give everything."

Give everything. She wasn't sure if her everything was enough.

To distract herself from those doubts, she looked up from her hands. All of her team, plus Adam and the pilot, were on this manta. JNOR was on a second manta, the Ace Ops and Qrow were on a third, and then Winter, Fiona, and May Marigold were on a fourth with pilots of their own. According to Clover, the infiltration teams had been split into multiple ships, each one equipped to either hide from the Grimm or fight through, to minimize the chances that the whole operation went down with a single ship.

Weiss, strapped into the jump seat across from her, was tapping Myrtenaster's pommel with her brows furrowed in thought. Yang, to Weiss's left, was rubbing her thumb against her prosthetic's palm with her distant stare piercing through the manta's floor to the tundra below. And Ruby, strapped in to Blake's right, almost appeared to be meditating. Silver light occasionally filtered through her closed eyelids.

And Adam, seated to Blake's left, was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his palms resting on Wilt's pommel. The blade and sheath, cleaned and polished to a gleaming shine, were resting against the floor. He noticed her looking but, after waiting a second for her to say something, looked away.

Blake looked back down at the floor. Her attempt to distract herself had failed and the silence was suffocating.

For his part, Adam was merely waiting. This calm before the storm was something he had grown to appreciate. This growing tension, the build to the inevitable break, used to irritate him but Sienna had shown him its value as a necessary step before the catharsis of battle. So he sat, contributing to the silence, and with every inhale let his simmering rage spread just a little farther through his veins.

"Adam."

Weiss's voice drew his eye to her. "Schnee."

She pursed her lips, her obvious attempt to alleviate the crushing quiet faltering under his stare. After a beat, though, she pushed through her trepidation. "What was it like where you grew up?"

He thought back to that split-second decision to show his scar to her. It had gone against instinct, against that animalistic reflex hissing that it was showing weakness, to do so. He'd intended for it to have an impact, and apparently, if she was still thinking about it all this time later, it had.

That didn't mean he was eager to talk about it. "We're on a mission to die and you want my life story?"

"You don't have to share."

A brief inventory of the manta's other occupants showed that they were all listening, even if most weren't making it obvious. No one besides him liked the silence, it seemed.

He sighed. Fine. If they wanted an alternative, he would give them one, and they could reflect on that mistake all they liked.

"I grew up in a Schnee-owned Dust mine in Mistral. It was always struggling to meet its quota; the Dust veins were hard to reach and many were unstable. So we were worked hard. Harder than the humans in the camp, and with worse equipment. So people got hurt.

"When I was twelve, there was a man who taught me how to dig out fire Dust without setting it off. Connor. He learned it the hard way himself; paid with his right hand and a few fingers on his left. Most people who worked at the mine for a few years had missing limbs and some could even afford prosthetics. Connor bought one to keep mining; it took what he'd been saving to leave. Set him back years. He should've been gone before I ever knew him.

"When I was thirteen, Connor lost his other hand. He couldn't afford another prosthetic." Adam flexed his fingers, the ghostly sensation of a pickaxe grip prickling his palm. "One hand wasn't enough to meet daily quota. He was let go from the mine and never came back. A faunus man, broke and wounded, no family, no friends who could afford to leave the mine with him, kicked out into the slums of Mistral."

Next to him, Blake closed her eyes. She knew what that meant. Even Weiss could put the pieces together.

"I once tried to track him down, give him a new job if he hadn't found one for himself," Adam mused. It was odd; he hadn't thought about this man in years. That search felt like so long ago, now, even though it was half a decade at most. "The last sign of him anywhere was in a Mistralian dive bar. He had an unpaid tab."

Adam anticipated the melancholy silence that followed and reflected that, if they wanted to avoid negativity on this flight to their deaths, then his story was the last one to explore. There was nothing written there but misery.

"All of you back there, brace yourselves!" called the pilot. "We're about to hit the Grimm!"

Weiss readied Myrtenaster. The cylinder spun over to the yellow Dust cartridge and Adam, who had never particularly suffered from motion sickness, couldn't help a feeling of dread.

It started as a growing vibration in the floor accompanied pops, booms, and a mechanical roar intense enough to rattle his teeth: their manta, and the tens of other mantas and bullheads charging towards their fate, opening fire on the Grimm ahead. When the four flagships that had been diverted from the protective ring around Atlas to join this charge opened fire, they briefly turned the whole sky to fire.

Just as soon as the moonlight filtered back through the smoke, it vanished, blotted out by innumerable Grimm rushing to fill the gaps in their swarm.

Weiss closed her eyes. A ticking glyph bloomed to life where Myrtenaster's tip dug ever so slightly into the floor and bathed the interior of their manta in gold, a light mirrored from the cockpit.

Even knowing about the flying Grimm and the unnatural thunderstorm they'd hit about a third of the way through their ranks in advance, Blake still found her stomach shooting up into her throat when the pilot—boosted by Weiss's time-dilation glyph—threw them into evasive maneuvers. The belts for her jump seat dug into her hips and shoulders with every nauseating dive, roll, and climb.

Weiss gripped her sword for all she was worth, keeping its tip firmly planted in the center of the glyph glowing under her feet, but every rock of the ship rocked her and Myrtenaster too. Even Adam, so calm and composed a minute ago, was grimacing and grabbing his seat's straps in a futile attempt to steady himself.

A roar rattled the ship and pierced right through its walls. The manta's engines screamed in protest as the pilot threw them through the closing maw of a wyvern, which Blake only caught as glimpses of white and glowing red through the windows. The red lingered as bolts of lightning, generated by the tempests, lanced towards the manta—but the ship's faraday cage weathered the storm and the attacks only served to thin out the Grimm flying around them.

Another dive became a desperate climb over a tempest's sweeping tentacle. Blake's head snapped back and cracked against the wall behind her. A grunt from Adam and yelp from Ruby indicated that they'd suffered the same fate.

"How much farther?" shouted Yang over the din, her face pale but unlike all the rest of them, untouched by nausea.

"He can't understand you," Weiss forced out between gritted teeth. Sweat streaked her brow. Another missile explosion lit up the night and buffeted their ship. Turbulence and lightning strikes left them dropping or rising tens of feet without warning. Blake's neck and core burned from the effort of keeping her upright; her shoulders ached from the straps digging in.

Blake closed her eyes and focused on breathing through the nausea. With her eyes closed, the soundscape became all the more overwhelming. Through the Grimm and gunfire and groaning engines, she picked out chatter coming through their manta's radio, other ships crying that they were targeting a specific Grimm, being swarmed, going down, or changing course. Someone was reporting an unmarked ship flying away from the whale and away from Atlas, but no one could afford to follow it. Within that flurry of communication were reports from the strike teams' other mantas. Blake took heart in hearing that they were all intact.

She held desperately onto that heart when something crashed into the side of their ship. An alarm light flared to life but the pilot disabled the warning siren as soon as it started. The pilot shouted something but it was too garbled—too fast—for Blake to understand. Weiss had her eyes squeezed shut, lines of strain digging into her face. The yellow Dust in her sword was nearly depleted.

Something else hit their manta. Blake knocked into the wall again and then they were falling, her body lifting off the seat and kept in place only by the straps. Yang's eyes were wide, lips pulled into something between a smile and a grimace, and Ruby wore her fear plainly on her face. It was one thing to be in control of their own falls; it was another to just be along for the ride.

They turned sharply, then banked in the other direction, then dove again, and then they hit something below with a thundering boom. Their manta skidded, alarms blaring, and then came to rest. Panting, Blake lifted her head. Weiss was slumped in her seat, glyph gone, chest heaving as she dragged in air.

"Everyone okay?" Ruby asked.

"I think so," Yang responded. "Did we make it?" She undid her straps and stood on shaky feet, then offered a hand to Weiss as she did the same.

"We're here," the pilot confirmed as he emerged from the cockpit with his dual rifles slung over his shoulders. A lanky man about twice their age, he was another huntsman chosen for the strike team for his ability to fly a ship just as much as well as fight Grimm. "Everyone out—the Grimm thinned out when we got close to the whale, but there's no telling if they'll try to follow us here."

He strode through the hold and hit the main door release. The wall opened up and the sounds of combat sharpened. They were distant enough to not be overwhelming, but the vibrations still hit in waves.

Outside their manta, Monstra's row of odd landing platforms stretched out for hundreds of yards. They looked like bone protrusions sticking out of its otherwise fleshy sides and led to an even fleshier looking interior.

"Quite a sight," the pilot remarked before he stepped out and dropped to the platform below. Their manta, unable to deploy its landing gear, had rolled onto its side slightly, meaning that he dropped fully out of view.

Ruby hefted Crescent Rose and stepped forward. On the threshold, with wind whipping through the hold, with the distant roars of Grimm drowning out the manta's cooling engines, she stopped and glanced back at the rest of them with her cape blowing out behind her. Resolve shone in her eyes.

"When we first came to Atlas, we were running, even if we didn't realize it then. We can't afford to run anymore—too many people are counting on us. It's dangerous and it's a little bit terrifying, but we haven't been training all this time for nothing. Let's show Salem what our team can really do."

Short, simple, and to the point. Blake nodded her approval and agreement, as did Weiss. Ruby jumped down a second later. Yang went to go too but paused on the lip.

"For Mom," she whispered, and jumped.

Weiss finished reloading Myrtenaster with fresh Dust, took a deep breath, and dropped down after her.

Blake found herself pausing too. Adam halted his own exit next to her. She felt his gaze linger on her, but it didn't stay.

He jumped.

She followed.

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