AN: So this is slightly later than I planned, I cranked this out late at night, couldn't get my creative juices flowing too well during the daytime, but I like what I've done nonetheless. As ever, I don't own RWBY, I'm just playing in the sandbox.

Disclaimer: Parts of this chapter get a bit visceral and bloody.

Chapter 4 – Battleground Atlas.

She should have known he would lie to her. A honeyed plan to lure her in, keep her too focussed on the terrible prospect that she would have to betray her friends to curb Adam's wrath, to suspect that he would turn the tables. She stood there, hugging the wall of the Schnee family's wine cellar, cursing her very existence. Adam had known who her teammates were, known precisely who to target to break her spirit, and now he got to eradicate the family that had done more harm to the faunus than any other in the last generation, all in one fell, decapitating blow.

It was just so obvious.

Adam, the Lieutenant, some ten White Fang commandos and Blake were hunched in the bombed-out cellar, listening intently to the gunfire noises echoing their staccato death-rattle off the upstairs walls. The first wave had moved in ahead of them, engaging the Schnee-family's mechs and human guards, the muffled boom of exploding machinery and the occasional wet squelch of spilt vitae giving voice to the White Fang's successes. The audible thump of falling bodies, and the pained screams of survivors, crying out to their friends who could no longer hear them, spoke volumes about the first wave's true purpose though; to thin out the Schnee guards...and die standing. Adam was still as a statue, even his breathing seemed to have stopped. The rebel leader listened silently to the macabre serenade of his men dying upstairs, not an ounce of emotion displayed on his face, no remorse for the faunus he had sent to die thinning out the Atlesian numbers. He just stood there, unmoving, the patient hunter, the prowling beast caged within for a moment. Wilt and Blush hung loosely in his grip, their thirst for blood subsided for now. Adam Taurus stood there and listened to his men die, and that terrified Blake more than anything.

'Now.' The order was cold, neutral, emotionless. Not an ounce of anger, pride, rage. Nothing. Just the cold calculus of battle. The enemy's numbers had been thinned, the gunfire upstairs was starting to recede, the time to strike was now. Nothing more, nothing less.

Blake swallowed hard, tentatively, each step an uphill, reluctant, painful effort, she followed her old mentor upstairs. They emerged into an antechamber, snow-white furniture and ebony bookcases torn apart by small arms fire, the books once displayed around the room torn and shredded; ashen flakes of paper falling in chaotic spirals like the final, frozen, falling petals of autumn. Blake blanched at the devastation; she had lived her whole life around books, they were a part of her, a fundamental doorway into the human soul. To wreak such callous destruction on something so precious sent lances of guilt searing into her heart.

That was before she saw the bodies.

There were three of them strewn about the chamber floor. A White Fang soldier, mask blown off by the same high-calibre round that had liquefied her face underneath it. She lay on her back, legs at an awkward angle, ruined skull lolled to the side, an abandoned marionette on the devil's nursery floor. The body was little beyond five foot tall, with soft, fair hair that had weathered her grisly fate, albeit flecked with tinges of scarlet. She could not have been any older than Blake, in fact, to her mounting horror, Blake realised that the poor girl had probably been even younger. Some little idealist student who wanted the bullies to leave her alone, buoyed up on ideology and convinced that these rebels could give her a true family. Adam had tossed her aside into the meat-grinder in the name of his vision without a second thought.

There but for the grace of fate…

The second body was a soldier too, a middle-aged man in an Atlesian uniform. His burnt jacket, singed hair, and the dark crimson shards that perforated every inch of his jacket told the tale of the grenade that had ended him. The revolver in his limp hand still smoked idly, the calling card of the round that had blasted the brains out of the poor fanus girl...but the grisly chunk torn out of his left shoulder told Blake that the she had shot first. The third was an old, greying man in a servant's uniform, slumped awkwardly against the wall behind an upturned table, still bleeding crimson rivers from innumerable holes in his chest. The charcoaled oak of the coffee table had been peppered through with machine-gun rounds; the Butler had dived for cover at the White Fang's approach, only for his shelter to betray him and become his tombstone. So much wanton death, so much pointless sacrifice…and this was just one room.

Blake could feel the bile rising in her throat, she choked back tears, her teeth ramming down hard on her tongue to pre-emptively force a scream back down her throat. She had re-joined the White Fang to try and rob Adam of his need to target her loved ones, now she stood in the ruins of her teammate's home, amid the ruined bodies of her family's aides; Weiss would never forgive her, she could never forgive herself. All this death, all this destruction…it was all on her.

"Blake," Adam spoke, catching her stunned, shell-shocked attention, "You and the Lieutenant sweep the upstairs bedrooms and meet up with squad B." The White Fang leader turned on his heel and made for the doorway, blade drawn, his manic grin starting to paint its way across his features.

"I'm going to go cut the head off the snake."

"Get down!" Weiss barely had time to acknowledge her sister's outcry before she was hurled sideways; Winter's diving form knocking her prone through an archway with barely a heartbeat to spare before the space Weiss had been occupying exploded. The primal, scorching fury of the grenade blast finished off what Winter's momentum had started, careening them through the archway and into a drawing room, splinters of oak and steel ricocheting around at every lethal angle, mercifully missing the sisters by a hair's breadth.

Weiss' head was pounding with the ear-shattering aftershock of the blast, but she didn't have a second to spare as Winter was already pulling her to her feet not a moment after they'd landed. An earlier struggle in the room, which had left the bodies of two maids and an Atlesian guard sprawled around the floor at odd angles, had also turned over the room's billiard table; it was behind this merciful piece of furniture refuge that the sisters dived behind, just as four White Fang commandos burst into the room; assault rifles and submachine guns lancing great chunks out of chairs, lamps, corpses but thankfully not the resilient wood of the table. The noise was deafening, cacophonous, and weighed down Weiss' very soul with terror, as though her aura itself was made of lead.

"Four of them, two of us…I guess I've been in worse." Winter's humour was dry, gallows-esque and her chuckle never made it close to her eyes.

"That was against Grimm, who last time I checked, didn't have machine guns." Weiss cold laughter was almost petulant, flashing unwelcome images behind her eyes of the uptight, elitist, racistlittle brat she had been when she first stepped off the Beacon airship. She forcibly thrust the images away with a shake of the head; now was not the time to look back and cringe, to waste even half a second on old memories now would mean her very last memory would be bleeding out on the floor of a shot-up drawing room. Weiss steeled herself, gripping the pommel of Myrtenaster with bruised, bleeding knuckles. She was a Schnee, she would not go down without a fight; and she certainly would not go down here, in some gambler's hole in her childhood home. Her fate, when it came, would mean something, even if she never saw this struggle through to the end, even if some horror laid her low; returning to the dust as Pyrrha had, she wanted her sacrifice to galvanise, to inspire, to help one way or another.

She was Weiss Schnee, and she was not going to die here.

With a war-cry that she never thought her lungs could muster; Weiss broke cover; vaulting over the billiard table before her panicked sister could stop her. Her glyphs manifested forth even as she flung herself through the air; an icy shield against harm, bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the armour her soul had cast around her.

The first commando died before she could even fully register she was under attack; Myrtenaster puncturing her skull from just under the jaw; the tip, sheathed in crimson, shattering the top of her cranium in a spray of viscera. Weiss was onto the second would-be-assassin before her foes had even been able to train their weapons on her; her blade carving out her enemy's throat before he could blink; the faunus warrior collapsed, desperately grasping his throat as his lifeblood fountained forth from his ruined gullet, vainly trying to hold his life in with both hands.

The third killer died much quicker and cleaner than the last; a shard of ice, needle-sharp, blasted through the eye-socket of his mask and clean out the back of his head; spray-painting a tiny patch of bookshelf with condensed brain-matter as the warrior collapsed in a lazy sprawl. It was Winter who had claimed the tally this time, her semblance glyphs dancing before her as she engaged the final commando. This one, a young woman sporting a long, jagged combat knife, was obviously the squad leader; she charged Winter with zealous fury, blade arcing overhead, rifle abandoned so she could put both hands behind the blow; the faunus screeched a war cry that set Winter's teeth on edge…

…It died in her throat as Myrtenaster pierced her heart from behind. She followed it a heartbeat later.

The Sisters stood amongst the carnage, surveying the results of their bid for survival. The battle had lasted eight seconds from the time Weiss had jumped the table, one kill for every two heartbeats. One kill. It took her another few seconds to wrap her head around it, for the weight of her actions to sink in…but realisation soon hit her like a thunderbolt. Weiss' mind blasted into overdrive as her brain replayed the last few seconds at hyper-speed, her heart hammered, her brain ached. She'd killed them…she'd cut them down…her sword clattered from her grip, her fingers failing her as the shock set in; her whole body shivering despite the heat. This wasn't like her last battles; not culling soulless Grimm or even killing White Fang soldiers with dust; the wounds cauterising as soon as they were caused. This had been her blade alone, her bare hands alone; bloody, brutal, visceral, wrong. She stumbled, her legs failing her, tossing her clumsily into Winter's outstretched arms. She felt physically sick, and she surrendered fully to the tears. She was supposed to be a Huntress, not a thug; battle had never been this…this evil before.

"The first time I had to kill a man, I threw up all over a superior officer's boots." Winter stroked her sister's hair, her voice calm and collected, wholly at odds with her erratic post-adrenaline heartbeat, thudding like a jackhammer inside her ribcage. She had been 'Winter the Soldier' and 'Winter the Sister' today, now, in this moment, the eye of the storm, she was both. "I was sick for a day and couldn't sleep for a week." Weiss listened intently to her sister's words, latching onto them like a life-raft in a sea of guilt and consuming grief. "The trick is to focus on what all this death means, what the purpose was behind it all, and if that purpose was worth it."

"Was it?" the question squeaked forth from her amidst the wracking sobs, slowly subsiding but still jettisoning tears freely.

"I don't know," Winter replied, holding her sister's shoulders and staring her in the eye, "But we're going to find out." She extended a hand to her younger sibling, proffering her discarded weapon. Taking what comfort she could from her sister's words, Weiss took up her rapier, wiping away the tears from her bloodshot eyes with her off-hand. She wavered unsteadily on her feet, but forced herself to find her balance. Now was not the time, she had let the shock and grief take her for too long here, and every second lost bought their attackers more time to regroup. Nodding once to her sister, and hoping against hope that she would not have to kill anyone else today, Weiss hurried back out the archway, head down; eyes narrowed, determination steeling her gaze.

The bullet took her in the shoulder before she'd even gone three paces; the pistol-round shattering her collarbone and sending her clattering to the ground, an undulating scream tearing its way out of her throat. The pain was like nothing she'd ever felt, even as her aura fought desperately to heal the damage, re-knitting muscle milliseconds after the impact, the pain alone kept her on the floor. She tried to pull herself into a crouch, but couldn't. Her ears were ringing, her vision was hazy; she could make out Winter kneeling next to her, crying out her name, trying to shield her from another volley with her own form, but it was the sight over her sister's shoulder that sent chills up her spine.

There were two figures standing at the end of the corridor; the first, a heavyset man in White Fang uniform, sporting a snarling full-face mask; in his hands he carried the largest chainsaw Weiss had ever seen, snarling metallic teeth hungry for blood. It took her a moment to recognise him as the rebel lieutenant she'd fought on the train so long ago, back to finish what he'd started in the Mountain Glenn tunnels. But that was not what made her blood run cold. Standing to the lieutenant's left, was another figure hefting a smoking weapon; the same pistol-blade that had just gunned her down, amber eyes glistening with tears, hands trembling even as she gripped her sword; guilt and pain made manifest in her every expression.

"Blake?"

"They're coming around for another pass!" Jaune called out, his authoritarian voice flecked with edges of panic, pointing Crocea Mors to the heavens to direct his team's fire. Crescent Rose answered his call, a single perfect sniper shot rocketing skywards, bisecting a diving Nevermore from skull to tail.

"Awwh Yeah!" Ruby called, punching the air in jubilation, "Nailed it!" but her celebration was cut short as three more of the murderous flock of Grimm scythed downwards, dive-bombing the fountain, talons glinting in the sunlight with an evil glare. The first was driven off by a burst of purple fire, small-calibre dust rounds pelting its side; causing more annoyance than harm, but Ren's volley forced it into retreat nonetheless. The second swooped low over the fountain, talons missing Nora by a hands-span as the Valkyrie hit the deck, firing Maginhild prone into its exposed belly. The warrior cackled like a demon as the beast exploded, showing disintegrating black feathers all across the surrounding area. The third Grimm slammed into the fountain with the force of a hurricane, snapping the top, seraphim and all, off of the central obelisk and coming within inches of decapitating Jaune and Ren, before it hurtled skywards once more, chased away by sporadic bursts from Stormflower and Crescent Rose.

Jaune cast his eyes about him, analysing, calculating; they had killed six of the Grimm so far, for only minor injuries in return, but their cover was fast failing them. The fountain had allowed them to pick firing lanes and bring multiple weapons to bear on one target without being ambushed from behind, but multiple bodily impacts had all but shattered the stonework around them. They were thigh-deep in dirty, bloodied water, without shelter and their ammunition was starting to run dry. The tide was turning, and not in their favour.

"We need a new plan!" He called out, open to ideas. He turned to his comrades, taking in their haggard expressions; even Nora, maintaining her usual vibrant humour throughout, was visibly flagging. Ruby caught his eye and nodded, her brain putting her own accumulated leadership skills to good use as she sought out a new angle, firing constantly even as she desperately sought an answer, buying herself time to think with every round she blasted up at the circling predators overhead.

It was no use; there was no way out. The nearby houses had been torn apart in the first dives, they had nothing to offer in the way of cover, and behind them there was only fifty metres of open terrain, where they would be picked off one by one with ease. To leave the fountain was to invite a messy death, to remain was, at this point, simply to delay one.

As if her own internalisation of hopelessness was the que for their doom to approach, no less than ten of the giant, monstrous birds dived; hurtling downwards with an eerie grace, launching volleys of razor-sharp feathers as they went. The Hunters hurled themselves up against what little remained of the crumbling walls and obelisk as death rained around them in a whistling volley of unbound doom, the angle of the stonework mercifully saving them. They turned their weapons on the swooping flock, but as though futility itself powered their tools, the combined fire of Crescent Rose, Maginhild and Stormflower had almost no effect; a single Nevermore dropped like a stone from the heavens, flattening a building as it crashed to earth with an ear-splitting howl; the others just kept on coming.

Terror gripped Ruby like a glove, every round that missed, every desperate bullet that just nicked or grazed her targets constricting the noose of fear about her. She was staring death in the face and she knew it; forty metres, thirty, twenty-five. She was facing mortality just as surely as she had the night she'd seen Cinder Fall put an arrow through Pyrrha's heart. She would die here, her mission failed, her sacrifice worthless, knee-deep in a fountain in the middle of nowhere, picked apart by soulless carrion like a scrap of meat thrown to a pack of wild dogs.

Twenty metres, fifteen, ten…

Crescent Rose dropped from her numb fingers. She saw the encroaching Grimm as though from a great distance, her vision narrowed, elongated, a burning sensation erupted behind her eyelids as the Nevermores bore down on her. The closer the creatures came, the further away they seemed to be, until Ruby was looking at them as though through a telescope backwards.

Time slowed to a crawl. Each heartbeat took a lifetime to sound in her chest. Each breath took an age, each blink took an eon. She wasn't aware of her arm moving until she saw it there in front of her, hand-splayed, palm thrust forwards at the onrushing Grimm. The burning sensation behind her eyes built to boiling point, until her very brain felt like it was on fire.

Five metres, four, three, two…one…

She felt as though a volcano had erupted within her; a primal roar ripping itself from her lungs in the process, an inhuman cry of pain and desperation resonating within her very soul. And just as soon as the fire within her came, so too did it leave; blasted forth from her mind so fiercely that it consumed itself, burning out within her until not even the candlewick remained. Blackness rushed in, swallowing her whole, teasing her out from the folds of reality.

She felt herself hit something soft but firm, gentle fabrics cradling her head, somehow soothing her hazy mind: Ren. A man's voice, etched with concern, at the edge of her hearing, and a pair of violet eyes – so close, yet so so far away, confirmed her suspicions…suspicions? What a funny word? Sus..pish..uns…She tried to shake her head in a bid to clear her wandering thoughts, but to no avail; why was Ren worried about her, what about the Nevermore? Never…More…Never…More… The voice was calling her name from afar, trying to lull her away from the blackness, but it had already taken her; her sight shifting to total darkness, the faraway noise becoming more and more distant, more and more muffled by the black…

…and then, just once, for one elusive word, it came closer again, as though the speaker had ghosted through the walls of her mind. The voice was musical, soft, warm, loving, and definitely not Ren's…this was a woman's voice; familiar and yet not, like a long forgotten dream, a happy memory long buried, replaying it's sweet music in the recesses of her mind. Ruby…

For half a heartbeat, she saw something in the dark; faint, distant, there-and-gone again, but unmistakable. Two bright pinpricks in the dark. In the heart of the blackness, for the briefest of flashes, two silver eyes gazed back at her.

And then they were gone.

The force of the door exploding off its hinges sent Ironwood sprawling; the general reeled from the blast like a wounded animal reels from the deathblow, one hand uneasily going for his gun as he attempted to pull himself to his feet. To his left, out of the vaguest corner of his eye, he saw Franz staggering to his feet, one hand on the hardwood desk. The head of the Schnee family looked paler than James had ever seen him, scrabbling around in his desk drawers, desperately searching for the handgun he kept stowed there. It had been fairly ordinary meeting until a few minutes prior; discussing the latest designs for Atlesian infantry mechs. Fairly ordinary in that where the topics of conversation were nothing knew, on a deep level, Franz certainly was. He had seemed distant, far from his usual business-like self, something had enraptured his attention even before the fighting broke out. It had wounded the SDC patriarch on a very deep level; you could see it in the dimmed tone of his eyes, in the creases of his brow, in the ever-so-slight slump in his posture that had never been there before. Franz Schnee looked like he was having to try exceedingly hard not just to look normal, but to care enough to do so.

That something could ruffle his feathers on such a noticeable scale had been all the notice James had needed that the world was turning upside down. A lesson reinforced by the punctuating cracks of gunfire a handful of minutes later.

The ringing in his ears persisted, a low whine that robbed him of his senses; he finally staggered the whole way to his feet, bringing his pistol up to cover the smoke wreathed doorway, when a monstrous uppercut sent him crashing back down again; the air brutally battered out of his lungs, his revolver spinning away harmlessly to clatter against the back wall. Coughing, winded and spluttering, James Ironwood stared up at his assailant, finding the tip of a fearsome crimson blade mere inches from his face.

"Gentlemen," began Adam, a manic, devil-possessed chuckle underscoring each syllable, "I would stay down if I were you."

AN: And there we go, don't you all love cliffhangers? Many thanks to all the wonderful followers, favourite-ers and reviewers to have graced this story so far, you're all amazing! Thank you for joining me on this journey! I'm sorry to say that there probably won't be an update tomorrow as I'm going to be very busy, but I'll get what I can done so I can get chapter 5 to you promptly on Thursday! Until then!

Next Time: Chapter 5 – Sins of the Fathers.