Talking to a girl as beautiful as Blake Belladonna was kind of like driving in a lightning storm with the top down. Every moment was dangerous and exhilarating and it was so hard to pay attention to the specifics of her words even as it was easy to understand what she was trying to say to me.

"You're here to stay?" I tried to keep the sliver of hope out of my voice as I tried not to think about the curvature of her chest and the way the bow that sat on her head twitched when she raised her eyebrows.

She knew it too. Blake claimed to be something between a personal angel and a tired traveler checking in at Hotel Earth. In her journey, she must have met many boys who wanted to impress her. Some of them might even have been me.

How ridiculous.

I wish I were more like Yang. She would have played it cool and gotten into her pants in an instant. The thought distracted me for a couple of seconds, buzzing around my thoughts like a bumblebee.

"I am," she confirmed, stretching. "These beds are pretty comfortable. Beacon seems to have some high standards," Blake said, like that was some kind of inside joke.

"I guess we do," I replied, strangely defensive.

"Of course, it's not like they'd just let anyone in here."

I wasn't sure what she'd expected my response to be but it clearly wasn't polite confusion.

She flashed me another one of those smiles that I'd already come to associate with her. I was sure that wasn't how Weiss thought she'd look.

There was somewhat of an edge to the smile. It wasn't the smile of a sadist nor a pained grimace, but the smile of someone who knew that you might be into that sort of thing. What that sort of thing was is better left to the imagination.

My continued lack of response seemed to sap the fun out of it because she sighed, putting Cardin's chemistry textbook down with a strong thump onto his desk. Her grin returned to something cheekier.

"Well, since we've established that I'm here to stay, I think it's better if we get to know each other," she said.

I stared at her numbly.

"We should play some icebreakers!"

Gods above. "Were you an RA in another life?"

Blake sniffed imperiously but the way her teeth flashed in the moonlight told me she found me as funny as I did. I hoped. "Wouldn't that be the best way for new roommates to know each other?"

Luckily for Blake, I had some deep insights into the nature of the social phenomena of icebreakers. "Icebreakers don't exist to get you to know your roommate better." I kicked at my sheets with my shoes still on. "Icebreakers exist to make you hate icebreakers."

"Really."

I was on a roll. "You're supposed to share the hate with the person you're forced to play them with. Learning more about each other along the way is just a happy coincidence."

"How about I ask you questions about yourself and you ask me questions about me?"

"Deal." I tried my patented lopsided grin. It made me look suave and debonair and nothing like a stroke victim, no matter what Ruby says. My eyes narrowed deviously. "That was your first question."

Blake nodded, humoring me. "Ask away then."

I went straight to the point. "What are the Grimm, really?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

I sat up. "Look," I said heavily. "You... you've appeared out of nowhere. You're a voice in my head that gave me some sort of blessing during my midmorning chem lecture."

She nodded. "Observant."

I slammed my hands against the bed, wearing at a spring, which made a loud twang. "Yeah. Observant," I drawled, trying to mock her tone in my anger. "You see where you're sitting right now? That's Cardin's bed. Get out."

Something had finally broken in me. I was angry. I was sad. And I was going to make sure that Blake and her stupid face and her stupid bow knew it. I was done playing around.

"You're so cute when you get all demanding," she said in a deadpan. Her bow twitched but she sounded so bored with me. I let out an incoherent growl of anger.

"This isn't cute!" I shouted. "This isn't funny. Cardin's dead." I swallowed my choked sob.

"Boo-hoo."

I ignored her, even though all I wanted to do was to pounce across the room and throttle her. "Ever since your little pet Beowolf," I spat, my fists clenching, "nearly cut Weiss in half, her eyes have been mismatched and she sounds like she's on fucking mushrooms."

"What?"

Blake's face twisted from a cold, hard-hearted teasing to genuine interest.

"Does she not go crazy really often in your Real Life Simulator, Beacon University Edition?" I twisted my head to the side and threw her something between a pained smirk and a grimace.

It was her turn to ignore my commentary. "What does she say?"

"Aren't we playing twenty fucking questions? It's still your turn to answer."

"I don't know." Blake's voice became something wistful, but I was too angry to care.

"What do you mean you don't know?" I spoke shortly, thumping my fingers against the bedspread in a frenetic rhythm. "How is it possible you know so much about my life?" I breathed in deep. "How is it possible that you know so much about the lives of everyone around me? How is it possible," my voice rose in volume with my anger, "that you have no idea about the things that you're claiming to follow around like a seventies band from one universe to the next?"

I inhaled and exhaled heavily, tired of ranting, tired of being pissed off, tired of this apocalypse thing.

"If I knew, it'd be over, right?" She sounded lonely. "I would have won at least once." Blake crossed her legs and seemed to sink into herself. I hadn't known her for long but it seemed she had become a different person. She was upset and I hated it when girls were upset.

I felt bad too. I cast my eyes downward, refusing to look at her. My anger had crushed some kind of tension in the air that I had taken for granted, something enticing, leaving a phantom sense of pain. In my discomfort, I played with my hands, picked at my fingernails and shuffled my feet, wishing I'd not lost my temper.

"They don't eat."

I looked up sharply. She was running a thumb along her nails as well, unconsciously mirroring my actions.

"They don't sleep. They don't feel, love, think, fear." Her eyes met mine. "They wait."

"They wait?" There was a quaver in my voice. It felt cold again, like we weren't supposed to be talking about this.

"They wait for a chance to be our end. They are the end, probably." Her eyes held mine.

The nail of my index finger dug deep into my thumb.

"I told you earlier, didn't I? They're infinite. They're unstoppable. They're proof." The grimace returned to her face, a sort of Stepford smile that looked practiced. Ugly.

"Proof that it's all over for you. And that it's all over for me. And maybe," she chuckled to match that smile and an itching, cold sweat ran down my back. "Maybe we never had a chance to begin with."

"What can we do, then?" I grit my teeth.

"Nothing."

"No." I refused to believe that.

"No?" She looked almost angry at me. "Are you going to go on some epic quest to find the source of all Grimm?" She sneered. "You just have to follow the yellow brick road, Jaune."

I didn't say anything. What could I say to that?

"Surprise, Dorothy. You were in Kansas all along." The smile returned but it was a little more bright, a little more empty, a little more faraway.

I bit my lip. I had so many things I wanted to say to her. I wanted to comfort her. I wanted her to comfort me. I wanted to know if she was really just a voice in my head.

"Have I answered your question to some degree of satisfaction?" She was a little less friendly now. Or maybe I just understood her better.

I nodded.

"So." Blake's eyes narrowed. "Tell me about Weiss."

"She's a Schnee. She's an heiress, an amazing recording artist, a-"

Blake sighed. "No. I know who Weiss Schnee is. Tell me what she's seeing right now." Blake pursed her lips. "Not who she's seeing. What she's-"

"I'm not an idiot. I know what you mean." My face turned the shade of a tomato. "I was just trying to give you some context about her."

"Right. Some context." Blake smirked, nodding along.

"She said it was like everything and nothing. Like ashes in the air." I struggled to remember her exact words. "She said it was between everything and us." I shrugged helplessly.

"Like ashes in the air?" Blake took a look around like she expected to see it too now.

Something like a giggle or a purr grew out of her center. She laughed and laughed in a way that made me worry for her.

"Ashes to ashes." Her eyebrows waggled, she covered her mouth and she let herself fall onto Cardin's bed. Thick locks of black hair pooled about her like a halo. "Of course it'd be Weiss. Weiss Schnee."

Abruptly, she stopped, sitting up. "I haven't seen it in a very long time. I was starting to believe that it was another one of those things that didn't really exist. Things like me."

"Seen what?" I was officially troubled. I still wasn't sure that Blake wasn't a voice in my head, but I was pretty sure that she was crazy.

What does that say about me?

"Dust." Her voice became almost reverent. "It's pretty hard to explain what it is. Weiss probably knows more about it than I do already. She was always..." Blake trailed off. "She was always talented at that sort of thing."

"What does it do?"

"Everything."

I cast a flat stare at her. "Really?"

Blake tilted her head to a side. "No. I'm not trying to be cryptic. It really does do everything. It's an energy source. It reacts to the soul of mankind. It's everything the Grimm are not." She seemed to be reciting a passage from a textbook.

"Didn't you just say that the Grimm couldn't be stopped?"

Blake's eyes rolled upwards. "You're inferring a lot about Dust that I haven't said. The Grimm aren't afraid of Dust, just like how they're not afraid of you."

"What use is it then?" I couldn't keep the despondence out of my voice.

Blake smiled. "It's up to your imagination."

I hated Blake Belladonna with a passion that stretched into a stunned silence. My eyes started to wander again, even though I tried to keep her face firmly pinned in my gaze.

My phone rang, breaking the silence into a million little pieces. I pulled it from out of my pocket.

"What a quaint Scroll," Blake said, staring at it. I glared at her and, on impulse, threw my phone at her.

She caught it easily and glanced at it.

"It's from Yang."

I paled. Looks like she wasn't part of my imagination after all. She threw it back at me, nailing me in the stomach with it. My knees clasped together, catching it before it could drop to the ground.

I considered turning the phone off and getting a good night's sleep with the hope that I was just delirious.

"You should really answer that," she said with that decadent drawl. "I think Ruby might be in some trouble."

My blood turned to ice. The phone was at my ear before I realized it.

"Cute." I gave her the middle finger, forgetting my trepidation, and she winked back at me.

"Jaune. Jaunejaunejaunejaunejaune." Yang sounded hysterical. "She's missing."

How could Blake have possibly known?

"Ruby?"

"Ruby's missing, Jaune!" Yang wailed into her Scroll. I held the phone away from my ear a little. "What do I do? I should have had her come along with us, I should-"

"Calm down, Yang," I barked into the receiver, praying to any god that would listen that she would. "I'm coming over."

I hung up quickly and pulled my jacket from off the other end of the bed and slid it on in a run. I threw my door open.

"Don't forget your keys!" Blake called after me. I didn't. They were in my jacket pocket. I checked.

I tore down the corridor like the devil himself was at my heels and down the stairs.

It was so, so cold outside and a hint of mist was beginning to form.

"Fuck!" I screamed into the wind. The mist was already beginning to thicken. It swirled around my feet, luminescent and off-white.

When I reached Yang's dorm, she was already standing outside in her parka, shivering. She stomped at the fog, looking like she wanted to kick it away.

"Ruby's gone missing," she said to me, noticeably more muted, but her hands were shaking and her teeth were chattering. She sat down on a bench and stood up again, several times. "I came back and she wasn't there!"

"Don't worry about it. We'll find her, we'll find her," I promised again and again, hoping that I wasn't lying to her.

"I'm the worst sister." I'd never seen Yang cry before. "This is all my god damned fault. If I'd just taken her out like she wanted me to, this wouldn't have happened."

"You couldn't have known," I tried.

Yang slammed a fist into the park bench. "I should have," Yang snarled. "Ruby's never been one to do something because you told her to. Was I really stupid enough to think that she'd stay put in the dorm and play Counterstrike on a night like this?"

Yang raked her fingers through her hair, a nervous habit. "We took Weiss out," she said. "She's not even our friend, she's Ruby's friend."

"Calm down," I repeated. "Did Ruby take anything with her?"

Yang shook her head. "I don't know. Her Scroll's still on her bed."

On cue, a large rose petal caught my eye, floating downwind.

I heard a cheerful Blake Belladonna in my ear. "Follow the yellow brick road."

What. The. Fuck.

Blake snorted delicately, proud of herself. "You know. Ruby Rose," she finished. I stewed in impotent anger. Blake brought out the worst side of me, full stop.

I turned to Yang, trying to pretend Blake hadn't said anything to me. "I have an idea," I said to Yang. I broke into a run from the direction where the rose petal had come from. It was in the direction of the quad.

"You think she might have been headed towards the bar?" Yang dashed after me, her panic replaced by determination.

I nodded, not trusting myself to blurt out everything at once if I opened my mouth. I had already decided that I'd tell Yang about the voice in my head but now didn't seem like the best time to do so.

The mist thickened at our feet as my sneakers crunched through the layers of slippery frost on the grass.

In the distance, amongst a copse of trees covered in that beautiful hoarfrost I had learned to hate in the span of a dark day, was a figure dressed in red and black. Ruby. Ruby Rose. She stood tall despite her stature, unmoving.

Covering her head were her pair of designer headphones, blasting her pop-punk so loudly that I could hear a slice of drums and electric guitars from hundreds of feet away in the dead of night. In one hand was an open bottle - the rum that Yang had foisted off onto her.

Circling her were a trio of Beowolves. They dwarfed her in size, lounging in a limp, deceptively relaxed stance.

Yang's face turned white. She bit back a scream as she took shaky steps forwards.

Before I could move or think or shout out at Ruby to run, one of the Beowolves lunged at her.

I couldn't handle this. Cardin had been a mainstay of my life at Beacon and, occasionally, someone I enjoyed talking to. Ruby Rose was more than that. Ruby was a friend - a better friend to me than anyone I'd met before Beacon.

I squeezed my eyes shut and grabbed for Yang, for someone to hold onto. I stood vigil for Cardin's end, but I didn't want to see this.

But instead of the scream I expected, I heard a soft thump and a howl the distance. I couldn't feel my throat but I heard myself making incomprehensible noises. Yang grabbed at my forearm so hard it hurt.

I forced myself to look.

Ruby was alive, somehow. She had slid out of the way of what must have been a careless lunge. She looked up at us and nodded. I thought I saw a smile. In the distance I could see a splash of red on her dress which dripped down the front.

I thought I could almost hear it. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Ruby didn't understand the sort of danger she was in. Ruby was out of time. There was nothing I could do to reach her. But I had to try.

I ran. I ran faster than I'd ever run in my life. Yang was hot on my heels, willing to forget everything she'd said before, every complaint she'd had about Ruby being here at Beacon with her. Because she was a good sister.

We had to reach her.

Thirty yards.

Ruby was looking down. The fingers of her free hand traced the wound. I could almost feel the wince that must have run through her. Maybe it was like my shoulder. Maybe she couldn't feel it just yet.

I hoped she wasn't in pain. I hoped she wasn't scared. I hoped she didn't have to die too.

The Beowolves jumped at her, as one.

"Nonononono," Yang muttered, crazed in despair. We were still running forward in a suicidal lope.

But Ruby did not fall. She rolled out of the way gracefully as I had. Her lips were moving to the music or so I thought. Maybe she was talking to Blake. Maybe there was hope.

Twenty yards.

The music wafted over to us, sounding like the sick parody videos we'd watched with Weiss earlier. I wasn't sure why I had laughed at them to begin with. This wasn't funny. This really, really was not funny.

Every step sent a jarring pain through my legs and thighs as I sped forward.

Ruby wasn't talking to anyone.

"This will be the day we're waiting for!" Ruby sang at the top of her lungs now.

Ten yards.

She slid out of the way of another lunge, so fast I could only see a blur of red in the distance.

"This will be the day we open up the door!" Ruby continued to sing, twisting out of the way of a claw.

The bottle in her hand surged upwards and came into contact with the mask of one of the Grimm and shattered, raining liquor and glass and blood everywhere. It must have been her blood. It painted her sleeves red.

I could hear the singer from the headphones sitting on her neck now.

"For it is passing that we'll find," Ruby sang. That was not in the song.

Time seemed to slow as I stopped and listened for the words.

"Our immortality tonight," Ruby continued.

My blood ran as cold as the mist.

"What?" Blake hissed my thoughts into my ears, all humor gone. I hear the shock in her voice.

Another Beowolf howled again and I threw myself forward, trailing Yang now, who didn't understand, who couldn't have understood.

Ruby stood her ground this time and drove the broken bottle straight into the Beowolf's chest as it jumped at her. Its mask shattered into fine dust in the darkest hours of morning.

Ruby panted quietly, her breath misting in the moonlight.

And then I was by her side.

I knew better than to give a chance for the other Beowolves to regroup. I threw myself on one of them and drove it to the ground. My hands found its neck as I pinned it and forced all my weight onto it.

There was the satisfying sound of crunching bone or cartilage or whatever the Beowolf was made of and it died in a short whimper, its mask cracking slowly, then quickly.

The other Beowolf had gone for Yang, who'd been right beside me, but Ruby was suddenly next to it, throwing it off kilter and sending it careening to the ground.

She balled her knees up for momentum as she jumped, pointing the bottle directly into its center and landed with a hearty squelch.

The Beowolf screamed. It was an inhuman sound, an anger like nothing I'd ever heard before.

Ruby stood with a delirious giggle as she swayed, drunk off the liquor and off of battle over to me.

"And that," she said, with a flourish, "is what happens when Little Red fights back against the Big Bad Wolf."