Weiss and Yang weren't far away from the dance floor when those black creatures jumped out of the fog. Weiss barely had time to realize what was happening before Ruby dispatched the first one. The heiress stared in shock as more and more monsters rose from Yang's stupid fog and surrounded the students. Her eyes narrowed at the beasts Ruby was quick to fight. "Oh, no you don't..." Weiss scowled and opened her scroll. Out on the dance floor, a smile found Ruby's face. A group of Soldiers stepped up to her first. They stood no chance.

The jittery heartless were fast with their strikes, but Ruby was faster. The first to leap at the wielder bounced right off her guard. As it came back down so did Crescent Rose, slamming the heartless Soldier right into the ground. The next Soldier to attack slung it's claw at Ruby only to strike empty air. Ruby dashed back in from the creature's flank, her weapon a blur. A small crystalline heart escaped the cloud of smoke the monster had become. The remaining Soldiers surrounded her. Ruby struck all of them with a spiraling ground attack, the Vicinity Break. Those that survived were eliminated with a quick "Thundara!"

The Darkballs approached next. The first lunged without hesitation, prompting Ruby to jump out of its range. She jumped straight up and shifted in the air so she would land on top of the heartless, plunging her Keyblade deep into the creature. She stirred the weapon around, dealing more and more damage before finally leaping off, the destroyed Darkball fading into nothing. She struck the next one as she landed in front of it, causing it to spiral away from her.

CRASH

Before the melee could continue, one of Beacon's rocket-powered weapon lockers fell straight through the ceiling, as well as the remaining Darkball. The dark smoke dissipated as the locker opened, revealing to Ruby a familiar rapier.

"What?" Ruby did a double-take as her partner strode past her. "Weiss?"

"I spent what is perhaps the two most stressful days of my life organizing this entire dance," Weiss explained as she drew her sword from the weapon locker. "I will be damned if I just sit back and let these monsters ruin the whole night."

Ruby smirked and settled into combat stance, back to back with her partner. "They've been focused on me, so I've been fighting back. But I'm afraid they're going to start attacking others soon. We need to clear the big guy from the door when we have a chance, so people can escape."

Weiss's eyes narrowed at the Large Body. "On it."

"Weiss, wait!" Ruby tried to call after her partner, but she was too late.

Weiss was already speeding toward the Large Body with the aid of her glyphs. She thrust forward with Myrtenaster, right at the figure's round gut. Her rapier bounced right off, doing no apparent damage and forcing her off balance. Weiss stumbled backward, the look of surprise clear on her face. Ruby's shadow announced the young leader's presence above the fencer. The young leader's mighty leap allowed her to jump clear over both Weiss and the Large Body. Crescent Rose was brought down in a heavy cleave as she landed behind the large heartless, carving into it's back.

This hurt the beast, and it retaliated quickly for a being of its size, swinging it's fist backwards as it turned. Ruby easily ducked under the attack and brought her guard back up as she stood. While reacting to this threat, The Large Body unwittingly exposed its back to Weiss. The Heiress didn't fail to notice. She planted her feet and thrust her blade forward once again. Her rapier found purchase this time, burying itself to the hilt in the creature's back. Weiss cycled to burn Dust and poured the fiery energy down her blade and into the monster. The Large Body exploded. The smoke cleared, leaving only Weiss with her blade still engulfed in flame.

Ruby was quick to throw the doors open now that the path was clear, ushering the unarmed students out of the event hall. Weiss, with her fiery blade, pressed her advantage. She turned her attention onto the small floating creatures that looked like little blue and red bells. Weiss swung, throwing the fire off her blade in a burst toward the multi-colored monsters. The blue ones completely evaporated in the heat of the flame.

The red ones, however, only glowed brighter before sending their own fireballs back at Weiss. The heiress was quick with a shield glyph, silently vowing to be more careful with her elements in the future. From behind her, Ruby shouted, "Blizzaga!" A blast of blue energy soared between the collection of Red Nocturnes, which exploded into a mass of ice freezing them all solid. The ice, in turn, exploded as well, shattering the heartless into nothing and effectively destroying them.

Weiss noticed those strange heart shaped things escaping the monsters Ruby vanquished, something absent from the monsters Weiss herself dispatched. She spared a brief thought to wonder what that meant, but had to cast it aside as she recalled the other monsters still in the room. Monsters with only two targets now.

Most of what was left were the little black imps, hunched over and writhing. Weiss felt her partner's presence rejoin her, and tilted her head Ruby's direction to ask, "is there anything else you might be able to tell me before I use another ineffective attack?"

"Nah, there's nothing special about these Shadows," Ruby assured. "Just don't let them swarm you."

"Duly noted," Weiss nodded, and both girls leapt into the fray.

Cinder finally reached the CCT tower. She stepped out of the shadows and into the full view of the two guards at the door. The guard in charge stepped forward with his palm held out. "Ma'am, I apologize, but the transit tower is currently closed. Please move along."

"Oh, but I have business here tonight," Cinder goaded, black fire slowly gathering in her hand.

In the darkness of the night, the guard failed to see the growing black energy. He continued calmly, "do you have a technician's badge? Or other proof of entry?"

"This is all the proof of entry I need." The dark force exploded out from Cinder's hand, shattering the glass of the doors and throwing the guards with enough force for them to crack the concrete walls on impact. She stepped over their fallen forms and through the broken doors, a glass blade in one hand and a quickly blackening fireball in the other.

Behind her darkness continued to seep upward from the very ground. The black vapors began forming a solid wall in front of the tower entrance, before picking up in energy and being joined by even more dark winds to create a vortex completely obscuring the base of the CCT tower, blocking all entry and exit.

Thud

Weiss's rapier impaled a Shadow. As it faded away, she did a visual pat down of the event hall. "I think that was the last one," the heiress announced.

Ruby examined the area as well, coming to the same conclusion. She turned to her partner. "Thank you, Weiss."

"Of course," Weiss yanked her sword from the ground and examined it, wondering what maintenance she would have to do before settling for sleep that night. "We probably would have seen them a lot sooner if it weren't for Yang's stupid fog machines. Where did those Grimm even come from?"

Weiss was still examining her weapon and didn't see Ruby's gaze dart away and refuse to face her partner's direction again. "I… don't know," the Keyblade wielder lied.

"I mean, I've been on door duty all night," Weiss continued unfazed, "and I've been keeping a hawk's eye on the hall in general. You'd think I would notice someone smuggling in crate-loads of monsters."

"Ms. Rose?"

Both girls turned in surprise toward Ozpin's voice. Neither of them noticed him re-enter. Or did he never leave? Ruby wondered. Ruby also thought back on every interaction she has had with the man, and frowned. Either way, whatever he wants to talk about, I doubt either of us want Weiss listening. She cleared her throat and turned to her partner, "Weiss, would you please go see if anyone was injured?"

Weiss looked from Ruby to Ozpin, and back to Ruby again. Sigh. She and Blake had long suspected their leader of keeping secrets, and here her chance to overhear something slips through her fingers simply because she couldn't find an excuse to stick around. "Alright," she nodded and turned for the door.

Ruby made sure Weiss would be well out of earshot before approaching the headmaster. "Did you need something, professor?"

Ozpin stepped onto the balcony with Ruby in tow. "I wanted to ask you," he gestured over the railing, "if you had any idea what that means."

Ruby gasped. The darkness swirling around the CCT tower could be seen from campus. Too much darkness to be natural. She recalled seeing a familiar looking figure walking away from the school, moments before the heartless attacked the dance. "Nothing good," Ruby finally answered.

"Does it have anything to do with the creatures that attacked just now?" Ozpin pressed. "You seemed very familiar with them."

"I-i'm a huntress in training!" Ruby quickly dodged. "Of course I'm familiar with Grimm."

Ozpin sighed. "Ms. Rose. I, more than anyone, understand the importance of keeping dangerous secrets. But please try not to insult my intelligence."

The two pairs of eyes bored into each other, each look as serious as it could possibly be.

Ozpin continued, "I think it is long past time to two of us had an honest and open conversation."

"Yeah," Ruby nodded, "I thought you might say something like that soon." She looked back toward the dark vortex in the distance, "but we don't have the time right now."

"I suppose you're right," Ozpin's gaze followed the young wielder's. "It will have to wait. But it cannot wait for much longer."

Ruby nodded and hopped up onto the railing.

"One last thing," Ozpin interrupted. "General Ironwood of Atlas went ahead to investigate the situation. Just so you are aware."

Ruby nodded again. In a flash of light she had mounted her glider and blasted off toward the tower.

General Ironwood approached the vortex slowly. A tentative hand reached to the dark barrier. Ruby's hand grabbed his wrist, stopping him before his fingers could make contact. "Ms. Rose?" Ironwood questioned her presence.

"You know me?" Ruby questioned right back.

Ironwood frowned and yanked his arm out of her grip. "Do you know something about this barrier?"

"I know you don't want to touch it with your bare hand," Ruby informed him.

She stared into the flowing darkness, hoping to come up with some method of dispelling it. While she stared into the windy void, Ruby witness the opening of a large, bright yellow eye. The Keyblade wielder instinctively leapt backward and summoned her weapon. Ironwood also tensed at the young leader's reaction, his eyes turning to the dark vortex as well.

An orange glow grew just under the surface of the darkness. Ruby's eyes widened. "Move!" she shouted at the general, dodging to one side and trusting an experienced military leader to follow suit. A massive fireball launched from the vortex and struck to position the pair used to stand.

A figure rose from the loose energies of darkness. A snake's head with a single bone plate covering it's entire skull, complete with red markings and two large fangs jutting downward. The vortex around it began to slow and solidify, forming the rest of the heartless, a two headed snake reminiscent of a massive King Taijitu, it's scaled form large enough to completely wrap around the tower. The second head was visually identical to the first, aside from its colored markings being blue.

The blue head focused on Ironwood, opening its mouth and firing a blue beam at the general. He dodged this attack as well, watching as the ground the beam hit formed large spikes of ice. The general pulled out his pistol while Ruby settled into her combat pose.

"This probably goes without saying," Ruby piped up, "but don't use fire attacks on the fire head, and vice versa."

"You've seen this Grimm before?" Ironwood inquired, almost sounding interrogatory.

"No," Ruby answered. Staring down the heartless emblem on the middle of the monster's body, she added, "but I've fought tons like it."

Ironwood decided his questions could wait until after the creature was dead. He loaded Burn ammunition and turned his aim toward the ice head, firing three shots. The ice head retaliated, spitting icicles at the approaching general. He dodged the blasts as he rushed closer to his chosen half of the monster.

The fire head charged another blast in it's open maw, aimed at Ironwood. Ruby noticed, and moved to intercept. She ran toward the steps in front of the tower and jumped on the handrail. Flowmotion energy took over, increasing her speed as she slid up the railing. She launched off the end, arcing over the scaly body, and bouncing off the tower wall toward the creature. With the added strength of the flowmotion energy, Ruby's attack was enough to knock the head aside and throw off its aim.

Ruby fell back to the ground in a slow flip. Upside-down, she was facing the heartless and aimed her Keyblade. "Blizzaga!" The third-teir ice spell missed the serpent's open maw by inches and exploded against it's cheek. Ruby managed to twist and land on her feet with just enough time to dodge the heartless's next attack.

The creature brought its entire head to the earth in an attempt to turn the young wielder to paste. Ruby leapt backward toward a nearby lamppost. She caught herself and spun around it, building her flowmotion energy. Ruby aimed herself at the monster's head and once more launched herself at it, taking a swing once in range. She repeated this attack a few more times using walls, ledges, and a nearby bench as launch points. A quick Scan told her she had done a more than respectable amount of damage already to the single head.

Her opponent decided it had enough and that it was time for another fire breath attack. It gathered heat and flame in it's mouth, but instead of firing one big ball at Ruby it flung its head back and launched multiple smaller fiery spheres in the air to rain upon her position. Rather than dodge and dance her way between the many falling flames, the young Keyblade wielder stood her ground and block the one that would strike her if she didn't move.

Ruby deflected it with a wide swing of Crescent Rose and unintentionally sent the fireball in an arc that would damage the heartless's ice-powered second head. This prompted her to peek, Scan still active, at Ironwood's fight with the other half of the heartless. While the details weren't too exciting to describe, the general had managed to inflict a surprising amount of damage with only a single pistol with Burn rounds. He currently stood on the snake's head several feet in the air, firing shots straight down through it's skull.

The fire head made another sound of gathering fire on it's breath. Ruby turned back to her own opponent in time to see it launching its meteor attack once again. This time the young wielder had a grander plan. "Magnega!" The attraction spell pulled in most of the individual fireballs, merging them together into a single larger sphere in the process. Just before the spell faded, Ruby bolted around and swung her Keyblade as if it were baseball bat, aiming for the ice head.

It hit its mark, dealing significant damage but also throwing Ironwood off of it. The general tumbled across the ground, his gun flying from his hand, before finding his feet and sanding back-to-back with Ruby, who had returned her attention to the fire head. "How is it this strong?" Ironwood asked mostly himself, "we've done so much and it seems to do nothing."

The comment served as a brief reminder why Ruby relied on Scan so much. Heartless don't often wear their damage visually. "Don't worry, you've done a lot more than you think," she assured the general.

"This is still taking too long," Ironwood insisted.

Ruby frowned in thought. "Well, if you're that impatient, I have an idea that might work. For your head, anyway."

"And what is that?" Ironwood asked, all ears.

Ruby fumbled with the Dust cartridges she hung off her belt for show, holding the Burn vial over her shoulder in offering. "Blow it off?" She didn't have to turn around as she felt the vial get snatched from her hand almost immediately.

Trusting the general with the ice head, the Keyblade wielder ran for the fire head once more, a new plan forming in her mind. "Blizz-Za-Ga!" each syllable accompanied a burst of the spell. The masses of ice that formed on the fire head's jaw were enough to weigh it down, bringing it's chin nearly to the ground.

Ruby jumped, and the beast responded by opening its mouth to catch her inside it. Anticipating this, Ruby brought her weapon down on it's snout and forced its maw back closed. The momentum flipped her. Once she found her feet on the fire head's skull, she jumped right back off. She had used the snake's head to reach the flat stone of the CCT tower's wall, and once there she began running up its sheer face.

Ironwood stared down the ice head, which soon did exactly what the general hoped it would. It dived at him, jaw wide open. With the Dust vial in his ungloved hand, the general caught the monster's upper 'lip' with his gloved one. The monster, working through its surprise at its sudden halt, growled feebly. Ironwood used a burst of his aura to destabilize the Burn Dust, and quickly threw it in the creature's mouth. Once again using his surprising strength, the general forced the snake's mouth shut just before the vial exploded in the back of the ice head's throat.

Ruby had reached the underside of a balcony near the top of the tower. She jumped for it, planting herself upside down and gathering the familiar red aura of her flowmotion once again. Kicking off sent her straight down, aimed for the neck of the fire head which still struggled to raise itself. As she got close, she righted her position in the air and held Crescent Rose above her head. Focusing the flowmotion energy into her blade, she severed the heartless's neck in one almighty swing.

Both heads of the beast had been lost. One through decapitation, the other with an explosion. Ruby exhaled a sigh of relief when the creature began to fade away. She watched the crystalline heart vanish while the rest of the heartless faded into black smoke.

Ironwood looked to the young girl with something close to sympathy. Perhaps… perhaps Ozpin is right. Perhaps she isn't a threat to us. "Ms. Rose, I-"

"Well, well, well..." he was interrupted by a voice Ruby recognized from her fight under Vale's roadway. The redhead stared in horror as the speaker emerged from the shadows of the tower's interior, complete with mask and hood once again. "You've certainly gotten stronger, little one."

"It is you," Ruby noted to herself, remembering the figure she saw from the event hall. She settled back into her combat pose.

The woman only laughed. "Oh, please. I've gotten stronger as well. Couldn't you tell?"

Ruby could feel the wave of darkness emanating from the villain, but she did her best not to let her fear show. "General, with all due respect… you should really go now."

All goodwill Ironwood had a moment ago vanished as suspicion entered his mind once more. "Excuse me!?"

"You should do as she says, general," the woman taunted as she summoned a fireball into her palm. "You have no idea what I'm capable of now."

Ironwood returned his cold gaze to the dark enemy. "You have half of a single Maiden's power."

"An oversight I will correct with the help of my new power," the woman boasted proudly.

Ruby noticed the fireball in her hand become slowly consumed in black and purple energy. "General..."

"So you also have some new, powerful magic that has made no impact on Remnant's entire history before now?" Ironwood scowled, clearly skeptical.

"Oof," the woman winced mockingly. "Does it hurt to keep your mind so tightly closed?" She wasted no time waiting for another rebuttal. Her arm reeled back, and Ruby saw her eyes flash a deep yellow.

The Keyblade wielder didn't have time to think, only to react. She tackled Ironwood out of the area of the upcoming blast, taking the full brunt of the dark attack on herself. Ruby felt herself fly backward, her entire body already in pain before she hit the ground. The attack wasn't meant to kill, though Ruby might have had a hard time believing that if told.

Ironwood saw his gun nearby as he pushed himself up. He took his eyes of the villain for a moment to jump for it. He grasped his firearm and raised it quickly, but it was too late. The woman was gone, vanished into the shadows. As he stood, his attention turned to the only living being nearby. His eyes narrowed at Ruby's prone figure.

Ruby managed to sit herself up. The immediate pain had passed, but she still ached all over. "By the light, that stings… I miss my armor..." She saw Ironwood approach her, and she raised her head to meet his eyes. "General! Are you okay?"

"You have the gall to ask that," Ironwood nearly growled, "after you helped her escape?"

"Help her?" Ruby question. "What part of that looked like helping her?"

Perhaps he was too enraged, or perhaps he believed she was lying. Either way, Ironwood didn't seem to hear her. "I will not sit idly by and simply 'observe' an obvious threat!" He raised his pistol to Ruby's ever-widening eyes.

"Ruby Rose, I am placing you under arrest."