I should have been able to finish this a couple weeks ago, but, y'know, life. Anyway, again, warning for a bit of a tone shift here, though I'd still rate it T.

Riding on Appa's back as he soared miles above the landscape would have seemed a more novel experience for Team RWBY had they not been so accustomed to being thrown about during their battles, be it by the force of their opponents' weapons or their own. Seeing the bulky bison hang in the air as though gravity had left the building for a smoke was bizarre, but many a metallic ship, often of a much larger size, had pulled off the same trick back in their world. Normally, Ruby would be asking hundreds of questions about sky bison and how to care for them (and probably where to purchase one), but the heavy sense of dread hovering over the group was keeping her silent.

Weiss, on the other hand, had taken upon herself the burden of introducing Aang's companions to the concept of the Grimm.

"For the most part, they look like different animals," she explained, grateful that she was managing not to sound pompous in her lecture. "But it's easy to tell them apart from real animals. They're always primarily black, with varying amounts of white armor and spikes. Their eyes glow red, and they usually have red markings on their armor. As they get older, they grow more spikes, and they get bigger and smarter. We don't know much more about them, because their bodies dissolve shortly after they die, so they're hard to study. What we do know is, they only attack humans and -" she glanced at Blake - "things we build. Machines. They'll fight back if animals attack them, but otherwise they ignore anything but us."

Sokka frowned thoughtfully. "But why do they -"

"We don't know," said Blake, shaking her head. "It's just what they do."

After a pause, Weiss continued, "The one big thing we know about them is they don't have souls."

The otherworlders looked startled at this, except of course for Aang, who remained sitting on the front of Appa's saddle, holding the reigns in silence. Momo had mounted Aang's shoulder when the flight began, but the Avatar had ignored the lemur's nudges for attention, so he was now curled up in Ruby's lap, and she stroked his back lightly every now and then.

"What do you mean?" Katara asked.

To answer, Weiss conjured a glyph in the middle of the saddle, causing Sokka, Katara, and Zuko to lean back in surprise.

"In our world," said Weiss, "we can manifest our soul as power - energy. We call this Aura. We mostly use Aura to defend against attacks and empower our weapons, but every individual also has a unique Aura power called a Semblance." She pointed down at the glyph. "Mine . . . has a variety of uses." The glyph vanished. "The Grimm can't use Aura because they have no souls."

"It's true," said Aang without turning around, though his friends turned toward him. "I looked inside one, and there was nothing." He spoke as though he meant to add more, but apparently decided against it, leaving just the whistling of the wind again.

After a while, Blake said, "Our world is basically overrun with them. Our people have - problems - among each other, but our biggest problem is the Grimm."

"It's only because of Dust that we've lasted this long," added Weiss.

"Dust?" Zuko asked, confused.

"What, do you throw it in their eyes or something?" suggested Sokka.

Weiss and Blake shared a look, and Weiss said, "We call it Dust. It's a mineral, with frankly amazing properties. Combined with our Aura, it lets us use elemental powers, kind of like your - bending?"

The benders nodded, clinging to something familiar amidst all the new information.

"The other important thing to know," Weiss went on, "is the Grimm are drawn to negative emotion. Sadness, anger, fear, anything like that. They can sense it."

As she elaborated on this point, Aang, Ruby, and Yang all remained uncharacteristically somber and silent; Yang stared back at the zeppelin that followed them through the air, apparently deep in thought.

"Hope!" called Mommy. "Don't wander too far!"

"Let her play, Ying," said Daddy. "Kids need to have their adventures."

Hope ignored them both and kept walking. Mommy and Daddy were doing laundry because it was so important. Why did grown-ups only want to do boring things? Hope had a better idea. She wanted to go see the piggy cows and the piggy sheeps and the piggy deers and the piggy chickens. They were cute. That was important.

As she ran toward the farm, grown-ups got out of her way because they knew better. Most of them said hi to her and smiled and stuff. One guy dropped a box and it sounded like breakable stuff.

"Sorry!" Hope said without stopping.

Some other guys were playing earth ball in the road. Hope ducked under the ball, and the other guy got hit in the face. It was pretty funny.

When she got close to the farm, all the piggies started oinking and mooing and baaing and cock-a-doodle-dooing and whatever deers do. Lee was sitting on the fence scratching his swords, and the piggy noises made him look at her.

"Oh," he said, "it's just you." He hopped off the fence.

Hope wanted to pet the piggies, but she went over to Lee because he would of made her anyway. How come nobody knew what was important?

"Hi Lee. Where's the piggy food?"

"Same place as always," he said like she was a moron. Lee was annoying. He was waaaaaay older than her, but still a kid. Sometimes he was boring like a grown-up, but he always let her feed the piggies.

After she got some food and came back, Lee was doing his sword dance. Whatever. Hope held out the food for the piggies and they all pushed each other trying to get it. She giggled at their cuteness.

Lee finished his stupid dance and came over by her. "Hey Hope, can you read yet?"

"Duh!"

Lee held up his sword. "What does this say?"

Hope squinted at the scratched-on characters. "Um . . . 'Sword of Piggy Boy?' "

"Close." He looked at the sword like it was important. " 'Never give up without a fight.' "

"I knew that."

"Sure you did."

"Whatever."

Hope went and got more piggy food. When she came back, all the piggies were over at the far-away side of the fence trying to get out, and something was standing by Lee.

It wasn't cute.

"Hope, get in the house!"

"What is that?"

Lee blocked the ugly thing's hand with one of his stupid swords. "Get inside!"

It looked kinda like a wolf bat, but bigger and taller and all black and with a white hat.

Hope wasn't scared, but she dropped the piggy food and ran in the house because otherwise Lee would of been a brat about it.

She wasn't cleaning that up.

Behind her Lee's swords made schinky noises. She closed the door, but she could still hear them a little. The wolf not-bat did a howl.

Hope wasn't scared, but she went under the table because Mommy would of told her to hide. Mommy worried too much. Hope wished Mommy was here so she could of told her not to worry so much.

It sounded like something broke outside.

Hope wasn't scared. She was bored. She decided to play animals and pretended to be a turtle duck and curled up into a ball.

Something scraped on the wall from outside. It was really loud.

Hope wasn't scared. She was so bored that she started crying from how boring it was.

Then she heard the door fly open.

She had been sleeping well lately.

On one hand, there were the Grimm, those ravenous monsters (privately, she had begun to admire their tenacity, despite their crudeness); on the other, her particular methods of security left her, in theory, as safe from them as anyone could be in this world. Those same methods, of course, left some of the peasants a bit perturbed, but she was proving persuasive enough that there were always others to stand between her and the wilier ones. When she was awake, the protests were little more than tea leaves in a wildfire, but more than one hole in her ancestry had been carved while its occupant was suspended helplessly in the land of dreams. Nonetheless, all of this was secondary to the true reason for her concern.

The voice.

At its most insistent, it had often rambled her to sleep, but she had never felt truly rested in its presence. Then she had finally gotten rid of it, and, despite camping in rags like a lowly worm, she had rediscovered what it meant to get a good night's rest.

Now it was back, but she was still sleeping well. It was suspicious to say the least.

"You once had allies, but now you can't even trust your own mind."

And whose fault is that?

"My point exactly."

All of this circular thinking was starting to make her dizzy.

Physically dizzy. Is that even possible?

"It would appear so."

Azula distracted herself by conjuring a puff of blue fire in her hand. With its light, she checked the room for intruders - again.

"Under the bed, in the closet - isn't that where children look for monsters?"

There's pride and then there's folly.

"And which is this?"

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Neither.

Calling her a child was a natural bridge to a comment about her mother, but the voice bit its tongue, metaphorically speaking. Azula tried to empty her mind to avoid provoking it again. With a wordless thought, she snuffed out the flame in her hand.

A shadow temporarily blocked out the light of the moon - one of the guards on patrol around her quarters. In the near-total darkness, she crawled back into bed.

Sounding, as usual, all-too self-satisfied, the voice whispered to her again.

"Sleep well, Princess."

"We should be getting there any minute now," said Sokka, glancing over the top of his map at Aang. Aang said nothing, staring at the ground below.

On cue, the first buildings of the village became visible on the horizon. Sokka stowed the map as everybody turned their attention forward.

For a few achingly long brief moments, the village's growing visibility refused to yield the kinds of details they sought. It was a small village, but big enough to call home. Indeed, most of the buildings were houses. There seemed to be no movement . . . anywhere . . .

Maybe they're all just taking naps inside? Sokka thought to himself. But then - a figure! Multiple figures - er - but what was with the - oh -

"No . . ." Aang breathed. "No . . ."

Each person to be seen in the village lay on the ground, cradled in a lopsided, red pool stark against the brown earth. It was as though the villagers had found a garden of giant, misshaped roses, and each lain to sleep atop one. As Appa drifted closer, decorative rocks became visible throughout the garden - evidence of earthbenders having fought back. But now, none of the rocks moved.

Rosebuds, not fully in bloom, were provided by some of the less substantial cases of partial figures. And upon closer inspection, these outnumbered the complete flowers.

Aang just kept repeating "No" like a slow heartbeat as everyone else looked on in silence.

Blake was acutely aware of her own heartbeat as her eyes studied each of the others' reactions in turn. Katara had covered her mouth with both hands, and tears already flooded her eyes. Zuko was as immobile as a statue, his expression frozen somewhere between disbelief and the first sparks of rising fury. Toph's milky eyes pointed down at her feet, her frown shifting almost imperceptibly between puzzlement and understanding, back and forth, again and again. But then Blake's gaze fell on her own team, and her heart seemed to stop.

The fact was that she had not only grown up outside of Remnant's kingdoms - essentially in Grimm territory - but had also spent most of her life as a member of what even she now had to admit had become a terrorist organization, and the village below was not the worst thing that she had ever seen. But as she soaked in the concerned faces of the first people she had opened up to since her departure from the White Fang - Yang, her headstrong partner whom she had almost never seen this quiet; Weiss, who like ice was stubborn but ultimately fragile; and especially Ruby, who after all their adventures was still such an innocent little girl - she was awash with an all-consuming desire to protect them. It made little sense; all of them were well aware of what the Grimm did, whereas Aang and his companions were facing something new to them. But, rational or not, Blake felt as though Team Avatar needed to go through this experience to understand what they were up against, whereas her team -

"My Lord!"

The voice snapped most of them out of their respective trances, and their heads toward its source. A man with the most incredible sideburns was hanging precariously from a rope by one hand, the rope in turn dangling down from the royal Fire Nation blimp.

The man continued uncertainly, "What uh-are your orders?"

Zuko, with effort, collected himself and spoke evenly.

"Establish a perimeter. If anyone sees anything strange whatsoever, keep at least two eyes on it and report to me immediately. Engage if necessary, but if you're outmatched, then fall back."

"We'll go with you," Blake said quickly. Before her teammates could inquire or protest, she added, "We know what to look for."

Weiss nodded. Yang still gave Blake a questioning look, and in response, Blake performed the smallest inclination of her head toward Ruby that she could manage. From what she could read of Yang's expression, the message was received, and Ruby, if she had noticed, did not indicate it. For some reason that she could only attribute to instinct, Blake was most afraid of Ruby's reaction to seeing such mortality up close.

She hoped that they were not too close already.

Though once again feeling refreshed - or perhaps because of it - Azula awoke already knowing that something was wrong.

It was too quiet.

She took the appropriate precautions: first listening intensely for any hint of a presence in the room with her, then snapping open her eyes and scanning everywhere quickly (but not so quickly as to miss what she was looking at).

"Don't forget to look under the bed."

Azula was infuriated at having to give the voice what it wanted, but again, it was not worth missing a concealed assassin. But there was nobody there.

Deeming the room secure, she cautiously approached the window, glancing to the left and right, above and below, for anyone pressed against the outer wall just outside the glass. There was no one there.

Then she began to register what she was seeing of the village.

It was completely in ruin, but not in any way that made an iota of sense.

The Grimm did not discriminate; she would have been attacked along with everyone else. And should the peasants have come to blows, they would surely not have completely wiped themselves out before rousing her. Furthermore, she doubted that she would have been able to sleep through the inherent noise of any such combative scenario.

No; as baffling as it was, the village looked not like the remnants of a battlefield, but like a ghost town. A very old ghost town. The inhabitants all could have fled in the night, but that did not account for the years of aging that all of the buildings appeared to have experienced. In fact, many of them were so overgrown with vegetation that she would not have recognized them as buildings had she not seen them in their prime only yesterday.

Before she could form an articulated opinion about this mysterious occurrence, the voice intimated again.

"I've given you another gift."

What?

"That pathetic village was unworthy of your rule. You need a far grander nation."

But what happened?

"I've sped things along."

Azula stared at the rotting houses, confused and angry at her confusion. What do you mean?

"Much time has now passed in this world, but you did not experience it. This village succumbed to weakness without you, but the rest of this world is ripe for conquer."

That's what you said before.

"I speak only the truth."

In her irritation at the voice, Azula realized that her eyes were burning again. It was still only energy, not pain. With an upward wave of her hand, Azula dissolved the now-ancient wall before her into ash in a brief flash of blue.

She stepped outside.

Toph heaved herself off of Appa's back and landed in a perfectly stable horse stance, but a second later she fell over backward in shock, unconsciously lifting her feet just off of the ground to dull the sensation.

She could feel it, everywhere. Oozing across the earth. Trickling out of - things, dripping down from - places. Caking in the heat of the sun. Its presence was overwhelming.

The scent of it was in the air, too. She half-expected Sokka to pinch his nose and make some overly-expressive comment about the smell, but everyone stayed silent. Everything was silent. The heartbeats of everybody around her were fast, but outside of their group, the entire village was completely, utterly still.

Except for the oozing, the trickling, the caking, and the drip, drip, drip, drip . . .

Zuko had always lived with conflicting emotions, but there seemed to be no end to the number of ways that they could combine to create tempests of turmoil that were new to him.

Guilt was a factor. As an Earth Kingdom village, the scene around him reminded him all too much of the horrors that his country, and sometimes he personally, had inflicted upon the world for an entire century. Of course, the wrath of the Fire Nation tended to be more . . . dry, but the contrast only served to sharpen his awareness.

The alien nature of the Grimm tossed in a number of different ingredients, including a kinship with the other three nations that he had never quite felt before and a good old-fashioned fear of the unknown. And from a darker region of his soul whispered a bizarre kind of regret: the idea that, had he not gained the perspective to feel this much compassion for these people, he would not have to suffer so at the sight of their demise.

But boiling through everything else was the all-too-familiar anger. Anger at the ruthlessness and pointlessness of this particular display of cruelty. Anger that - judging by a certain freshness - they were only minutes late, and the whole of the massacre might have been averted. Anger that, given what they knew of the nature of the cross-world portals, there was conceivably almost nothing that could be done, at least in the short term, to prevent something like this from happening again.

The water was only beginning to boil, and outwardly he probably appeared numb, which was certainly how the others looked to him. But the last component of his current emotional storm was a fear of what he himself might do if he lost control of it.

Then he heard Katara gasp. Loudly.

Turning toward the sound, he saw that she stood over what looked to be a husband and wife. Sokka approached her, and Zuko followed. Katara, it seemed, was too distraught to speak, and she began looking around frantically, moving from house to house.

Sokka examined the couple uncertainly. Quietly, he said to Zuko, "They look familiar . . ."

Zuko tried to study their faces, but the blank, open eyes unnerved him. He did not recognize what features he could take in, though.

"Oh," said Sokka, "that's right; we helped them cross the Serpent's Pass . . . and then they had a . . ." His eyes widened. "Oh no . . ."

"What?" Zuko feared the answer.

"They had a baby."

Zuko's brow furrowed, and he took off after Katara.

Dully, Sokka watched his sister and the Fire Lord move further into the village. He was at a loss for what to do with himself; no amount of humor could defuse this situation, not that he felt much like it anyway. Strategy was also rather useless when your enemy could jump out of random holes in thin air at any time. Maybe if there was some kind of pattern to the portals - some way of predicting where and when the next one would appear - but even then, as this village demonstrated, they might not get there in time.

Sokka looked back toward Aang, and his vague notions of planning were put on hold.

Aang stood, eyes and fists clenched tightly, tears streaming down his face, his whole body trembling. His pain was palpable, but more disturbing was that every few seconds, his arrow tattoos would pulse with a brief flash of white light; whenever this happened, his falling tears would be momentarily suspended in midair, and small pebbles would leap around his feet like popcorn.

Sokka recognized the danger immediately: usually, the Avatar State would either remain on continuously, or it would just pulse once when Aang was really in control of it. Sokka had never seen this flashing behavior before, and chances were infinitesimal that it was a good thing.

Normally, Katara was Aang's rock, but after Weiss's rundown of the Grimm and what they had already seen of the village, Sokka had no confidence that anyone (besides the man who had sent them here) had survived, which meant that - well - it was up to him.

He approached cautiously. "Aang?"

Aang gave no sign of having heard him.

Slowly, very slowly, Sokka took the last few steps toward him. Then, slowly, very slowly, he reached up and gently placed his hand on Aang's shoulder.

Aang's head snapped toward him, eyes open and burning white, and at the same time the earth underneath their feet cracked loudly, forming a spiderweb pattern. Sokka had to grip Aang's shoulder more tightly to keep his balance, but he forced himself to look into those glowing eyes the whole time, hoping that his own eyes displayed sympathy.

Slowly, very slowly, the glow faded from Aang's body, and his face fell from sorrowful fury to just sorrow.

Imitating what he had seen Katara do so many times, Sokka pulled Aang into a hug, unable to think of any words to add to it.

The almighty Avatar wept into his shoulder.

As Zuko pursued Katara toward the far end of the village - she was approaching blind panic - his stomach began to knot, and it took him a moment to realize why.

This village was starting to look familiar.

He tried to deny it - things seemed a little different, after all, and just because that particular body over there was armed with a pair of hammers did not necessarily mean -

But no. They were coming up on the farm, and the difference was that the town had expanded a little closer to it. New buildings here. Same farm there.

Zuko seemed to have lost control of his body, watching vacantly as his field of vision moved closer to the now-empty pig fence.

No noise. They had been so loud before. No animals remained.

Allegedly, the Grimm had no quarrel with animals, so it would seem that the large break in the wooden fencing had been incidental, and the livestock had fled out of it in unnecessary fear. Nevertheless, their absence seemed - ominous.

Katara had stopped in front of the house. The house which had a large gash along the wall. She stood, staring at the doorway. The door was ajar, but only just; Zuko could not make out the interior. Katara seemed to have frozen.

Just as Zuko caught up with her, though, she barged into the home.

He followed.

Sokka was not sure for how long he silently comforted his friend - or tried to comfort him - but he suddenly became aware of Toph standing next to them, and it seemed that Aang did as well, because he made an effort to recover. But still, for a while, none of them could find any words.

Toph was rarely stealthy - Aang was "Twinkletoes," after all. Sokka dwelt on this for a moment before realizing that his mind was trying to distract him. Focus, he told himself. Somebody needs to be the voice of reason here.

Aang pulled out of the embrace, but Sokka kept hold of his shoulders. Looking him in the eyes, he tried to imagine what was going through Aang's head.

Happening upon a certain notion, he decided that it needed to be voiced. Sokka inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and then spoke.

"It's not just - this, is it?" he asked. Both Aang and Toph responded only with tiny facial expressions of confusion. Sokka elaborated, "You still don't want to - kill these things, do you? The Grimm?"

Aang's eyes rippled like a mirage as he considered Sokka's question. Finally, he said smally, "I don't know."

Toph opened her mouth, then closed it again. Aang pulled away from Sokka, turning around and looking up at the sky.

Sokka kept his voice even. "I don't know either, Aang. We've faced some pretty bad stuff and you've always found a way. Every time I think it can't work, you make it work. Un-bending Ozai, that whole promise fiasco with Zuko - even when Katara went to find the guy who . . ."

Aang turned back to face him. "But what about General Old Iron? Or the Fire Navy at the North Pole? There have been times when the only solution was . . ." Aang held out his hands and looked down at them, then looked back up. "For me to become a monster."

Toph broke in, "You said yourself they don't have souls. Whatever that really means. It -" She touched Aang's forearm lightly. "It almost sounds like they were specifically designed to mess with you."

Aang sighed. "My people said all life is sacred, but they never met the Grimm." After a contemplative pause, he continued, "There's really only one person who I can talk to about Air Nomad philosophy." Turning toward Toph, he returned her gesture, resulting in them locking arms in a similar manner to a Water Tribe handshake. His voice wobbling again, Aang asked, "Can you make sure everyone gets a proper burial?"

There was a long silence before Toph croaked, "Okay."

Katara entered the house.

Images lunged at her like monsters, hazy and jumbled. A cracked window. A spilled bag of feed. A shattered table. An engraved sword.

A boy. A girl.

Red.

So much red.

An earthquake. Zuko.

Zuko thundered over to the boy. He searched for a sign. A breath, a pulse.

The thunder had deafened her, but she could tell there was no sign.

Katara walked - drifted - fell over to the girl. The little girl. The tiny little girl. The baby she had helped deliver.

Hope.

Her vision swam; her head swirled. Through it all, she could still see her arms shaking. Trembling as she reached down toward her.

She reached and reached forever, but came no closer. She pushed, but something that was nothing pushed back.

Her tears fell through freely, but still she could not breach the nothing.

The girl lay before her, uncaring. So tiny.

So much red.

A red pillar of fire erupted before Aang, but only persisted for a moment. In extinguishing, it revealed the tall, white-haired, full-bearded figure of Avatar Roku.

Roku's default expression was sympathetic - in hindsight, this could probably be explained by their meetings always being in regard to rather grave matters - but this time, he could not even manage an introductory smile. Neither could Aang.

"Hello, Aang," Roku said. It was a simple statement that his distinctive voice subtly infused with a cacophony of emotions.

Aang's own voice was more stable than it had been in the physical world, but in truth the words were spilling out of him. "I don't know what to do, Roku. None of this makes any sense. All life is supposed to be sacred, but all they do is kill other life. And I'm supposed to be the bridge between the human and spirit worlds, but it seems like nobody even knew about Remnant."

"It is true. No Avatar before you has ever visited this third world, or even heard tell of it. Nor has our world ever beheld such insatiable malice as that of these Creatures of Grimm."

Aang hung his spiritual head. "I wish I knew what they really were; where they come from . . . But if all of Remnant can't figure it out . . ."

When at last he looked back up, Roku spoke again, his gaze steely. "It may be best not to dwell on questions whose answers remain elusive. If one thing can be said of the Grimm, it is that they are decisive. But the world that I once walked has transformed into something new, and on these matters you have proven yourself to be a wiser man than I." The elder Avatar's countenance softened, though it was still not quite a smile. "You wish to speak with Avatar Yangchen."

Aang shrugged. "She's the only other airbender I know."

"All of your past lives are here to aid you. But it is you, Aang, in whom I have confidence."

Roku was enveloped in flames once more, but when they cleared, he had been replaced not by Yangchen the airbender, but by the waterbender Kuruk.

"Pardon the interruption, young Avatar," Kuruk said. "These monsters plaguing you - some take the form of black wolves with white masks and red eyes, is that correct?"

Aang blinked. "Uh, yes . . ."

Kuruk glanced aside thoughtfully. "I believe I have seen one of these creatures before," he explained. Then, looking at Aang meaningfully, he added, "Or at least . . . its face."

So, Koh teaser aside... This doesn't exactly compare to losing Pyrrha and Penny, but I'm hoping it has some impact. In my opinion, this is the natural result of a Grimm attack on a world where people don't have Aura and don't know what they're up against, bending or no bending. Over time, they can become better prepared, but first wave without warning? There's going to be some bloodshed. And if that's what was going to happen, I didn't want it to just be faceless villagers. Logistically, I know that Hope's family was in Ba Sing Se, but they didn't exactly have a great experience there, and enough time has now passed that Hope learned to talk and stuff, so it's pretty feasible that they moved to Lee's village. I know that Zuko did in fact glimpse them, too, but I don't think that he would recognize them just from that.

The next chapter is already done, but I'll sit on it for a week or so because I'm evil. In the same vein, we'll still be working through the Aangst there, so it won't be until the chapter after that that we finally get some actual Grimm-butt-kicking action. But, just like in the 2014 Godzilla movie, it will eventually happen.