Final Motions: Take place once all evidence has been presented and the jury has left the courtroom. The defense or prosecution may move for a directed verdict. If that motion is made and granted, the trial ends, and if not, the case is ready for submission to the jury.


Chapter 28: Final Motions


Adam's entire body ached like never before. The pain was something physical, a python that curled around his every limb and his core and squeezed until he could barely breathe.

He considered trying to move but the mere thought worsened the pain, so he stayed where he was. As far as he could tell, he had ended up mostly on his back with his shoulders and head on top of something raised and slightly soft; most likely some of the whale that hadn't yet disintegrated completely. His aura level was…low. Very low. Single digits. The explosion alone would've taken out over a third, and coupled with the fall, he was lucky to have any left at all.

In fact, he shouldn't have had any left at all. That explosion should've wiped it out, much less anything he hit on the way down, never mind crashing into the ground at terminal velocity with no landing strategy. He tried to cast his mind back to that fateful instant when the explosion hit, but beyond recovering from Ruby's semblance, a glimpse of Blake, and some flash of green, his memories turned up nothing.

No point in dwelling on it. He was alive; that was something. What little aura he had couldn't absolve him of injury completely, though, even with the time he'd been unconscious, and so he lay there biting back a groan while he worked that python loose bit by bit.

One spot of discomfort surged above the rest: a sharp poke in his right shoulder growing sharper by the second. He forced his eyes open and turned his head slightly to find the source.

Visible between strands of hair hanging over his good eye, Neopolitan stood over him with her closed parasol pushed into his shoulder. A thin blade stuck out of its end, the source of the pain. Adam shifted his gaze to her face. He didn't bother tensing or trying to draw Wilt, which was still clipped to his waist and pressing rather uncomfortably into his side with how he'd landed. Even if moving wouldn't have hurt like hell, she didn't want him dead. She would've killed him long before he woke up if she did.

Movement past Neo drew his eye. Dark shapes swirled below dark clouds, buzzing like flies around the ships from the Atlesian air fleet that were mounting a desperate defense at Mantle's border against the Grimm not caught in the explosion. Two hulking tempests—the third appeared to have been downed by the blast alongside the whale—loosed bolts of lightning every few seconds, casting the sky and tundra in red before darkness swallowed it once more.

Seeing that he was awake, Neo retracted her parasol's blade and rested it against the ground so she could lean on it. The parasol's fabric was noticeably scorched in places, as was Neo's outfit. Her pose wasn't to exude confidence; she needed the support. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow in a pointed look whose meaning flew over Adam's head completely.

He frowned at her, and then, not liking having any kind of conversation on his back, pushed himself up to a proper seated position. He couldn't bite back the groans this time, but after several arduous seconds, he was sitting with his back against a convenient shard of bone. He was lucky he hadn't impaled himself on that while unconscious and falling.

Upright, he could get a better look at the devastation around them. The whalefall had left craters in the earth where the larger chunks fell, and the ground for hundreds of yards in every direction was dyed black and slick with Grimm flesh. Unnaturally thick and black smoke hung a foot over the ground as that flesh began its slow deterioration, a process made slower than any normal rate by Salem's intervention in the whale's existence. Bones stuck up from the haze in random clusters.

Neo drew his eye by repeating the same facial sequence as before, only with more irritation this time.

"I don't know what you're asking," he said.

Her irritation turned to exasperation and she flung out a hand at their surroundings, then pointed at her hat, then gestured towards Atlas, and Adam finally got it. "Why am I working with them?" he clarified. He shot back: "Why are you helping Salem?"

Neo frowned. Adam frowned.

"You…aren't helping Salem."

A wave of pink fragments raced up Neo's body from her feet and left Cinder Fall in its wake. The hair was different than what he remembered, the outfit too, but it was undeniably her.

Cinder lived. Had she been in Atlas this whole time? All along, during all those dark days, plotting and scheming from the shadows?

She had been in the whale. Those ships Clover mentioned—if she'd been in Atlas or Mantle, she would've used one of them to get back to her master. She'd been right there.

He took solace only in the idea that the explosion probably hadn't been enough to kill her outright. If nothing else, she excelled at survival. She lived, and he was going to find her, Salem mission be damned.

Did he mean that? He probably meant it. He could call it removing a threat to the Salem team. Working independently. Taking initiative.

Seeing something in his reaction, Neo dispelled her illusion. He clamped down on the rising tide and asked, as calmly as he could, "Why are you helping her?"

With a roll of her eyes, Neo called upon her semblance again. This time, Ruby Rose stood in her place. She gave a mocking bow while her expression communicated just how idiotic she thought he was for not being able to put that together himself.

He laughed. It hurt, but he couldn't help it. He was looking into a mirror and the absurdity of that realization could only be vented one way.

Neo cut him off with an upraised hand. Her silent rebuke—do you think I'm an idiot?—hung between them as she dropped her semblance. He didn't think she was an idiot, no, but he did think she was a fool for trying to use Cinder when Cinder was so obviously getting the greater benefit from using Neo. More importantly…

"You've misplaced your anger."

Neo arched a brow.

"Cinder won't get you what you want."

Neo crossed her arms.

"Of course she'll promise it. She'll dangle it in front of you. But she will never you have it. She doesn't have allies. She doesn't have partners. She has pawns. She has no reason to get you close to Ruby. All she needs to do is keep stringing you along."

His audience remained unimpressed.

"Is she useful to you now?" he asked incredulously, sweeping a hand at the absolute carnage around them and hiding a wince when his battered shoulder spasmed. "Can you get what you want now? Tell me, you were in Atlas with her these last weeks, weren't you?"

Neo narrowed her eyes but, after a beat, nodded.

"You had to have seen Ruby Rose at some point. When Cinder learned that Ruby was in Atlas, did she allow you to pursue her, or did she assign you a different task entirely?"

Neo's eyes twitched. A fractional movement, nearly imperceptible—but perceptible all the same.

"You're the one who sought me out like this," he pushed. "Clearly, you're having doubts."

She scoffed without making a sound and shook her head. Her parasol traced his silhouette.

"Claim curiosity about why I'm working with them all you want, but I know exactly what you're feeling. I felt the same and I know better now. Whether Ruby Rose dealt the final blow or any of the thousands of swarming Grimm did, it doesn't matter. She was doing what she was training to do at the school Cinder ordered us all to attack. You might as well get angry at Ironwood, at Watts, at Torchwick himself."

Neo's blade was at his throat before he could blink. He didn't flinch.

"Blaming any of them makes far more sense than pinning your grief on the child caught up in all their schemes."

The blade, initially steady, began to shake. Adam pressed his advantage.

"Have enough respect for the man you followed to see he could make his own mistakes. He chose to follow Cinder. He chose to go to Beacon. He chose to fight. The consequences of his actions are his to own."

Her scowl deepened, but there was a crack in her defiance. Adam bore down on it.

"The only reason any of us were there that night is because Cinder needed distractions. That's all we ever were: disposable tools to be sacrificed so she could get what she wanted. You want revenge for your lost partner? You want to disrupt the game? You don't target the pawn, the knight, or even the rook. You take down the queen." He clenched his hand into a fist to drive home his point. The pain from tensing those muscles traveled all the way from his fingers to his ribs but he kept all of it from reaching his face.

Neo narrowed her eyes, withdrew her blade from his throat, and then flicked a few fingers towards the disintegrating Grimm around them.

He shook his head. "Salem is the king. Cinder comes first. In that, I believe, our interests are aligned."

She tapped her blade against the ground in thought but her eyes never left his face.

"I know who deserves my wrath," he said. "Do you?"

Her response, if any was to come, was cut off by a flash of silver light from just beyond a black mass that had once been part of the creature's jaw. When Adam lowered his hand and blinked the spots from his eyes, Neo was gone. He stared at where she had been for a moment. When she didn't reappear, he sighed.

A quick inventory of himself revealed aura that had crawled back to double digits, one spare magazine left for Blush, and a prickling chill that let him know the cold was, despite his coat, slowing his aura's recovery.

He spat out the lingering taste of disintegrating Grimm—which promptly returned on his next inhale—and wiped some of the dirt and melted snow from his face, slicking his hair back in the same motion. That light meant Ruby was likely in combat, and he intended to see exactly who she was fighting against, and if Neo would listen to a word he'd said.

Blush became an inglorious cane for him to use as leverage to get to his feet. The world spun for a moment when he was upright, and every muscle in his legs and core threatened to mutiny, but he just stayed where he was and focused on breathing through it until the worst of the discomfort passed and he could move without falling over.

Despite the silver light thinning the Grimm coat on the ground somewhat, picking his way through the whale's remains was still treacherous and tiring. Every foothold either slipped on melted snow and mud or disintegrated under his boot. Every breath of the hazy, Grimm-filled air coated his mouth and throat in dark matter that lingered just long enough to taste of tar before it disintegrated completely. His exposed eye watered.

As though trying to outdo the silver light, flares of red, yellow, and orange flame reared up from beyond the slight hill that shielded the source from his view.

At the incline blocking the origin of the light, he ended up crawling fully prone not only to stay out of sight but also because anything less left him sliding right back down. Sludge coated his front and limbs as quickly as it peeled away; with his face this close, his eye began to burn. He blinked out the particulates as best he could and slowed as he reached a gap between the teeth jutting out from the remaining flesh.

In the stone-encrusted crater that lay beyond stood two figures: the first was Ruby, unmistakable in her red cape. The second, holding Ruby by the neck with her right arm, was a woman in an outfit Adam had seen for the first time only a few minutes ago.

Cinder Fall. Alive. To infer it from Neo was one thing; to witness it himself was another. The ground tilted under him; he braced himself for the vertigo of weeks of pain and rage he'd thought safely left behind flooding back anew, only to find himself vastly overestimating the impact. Oh, there was anger. Fury, even. But it was so far from the all-consuming rage that had controlled him for so long. Perhaps he'd crashed too hard to ever feel that kind of rage again.

A few yards from Cinder's feet lay Yang, arm outstretched but facedown, bloodied, and unmoving. Only the rise and fall of her chest showed she was still alive.

Flickers of silver drew his eye back to Ruby. Cinder snarled something Adam didn't catch and hurled her to the ground. Ruby's aura gave out. Cinder raised a foot to stomp her head into the stone that her body had just cracked.

Rather than connecting with Ruby's head, Cinder's foot hit the ground an inch to its left after a bullet slammed into her ankle and lit up her intact aura. Another three bullets followed, these aimed at her head and chest, but Cinder waved a hand and a shield of flame melted them all before they could connect.

Adam, sliding down the side of the crater, tsked and lowered Blush. Cinder eyed him as his momentum ran out and he slowed to a stop, blade stowed once more.

"Your fight is with me first," he said. Cinder cocked her head. Flames were flickering around her eyes, flames matched by those threatening to jump from her hand to Ruby.

"And why, exactly, is that?"

On solid ground and with any aura at all, Adam was more than fast enough to close the narrowed gap. Cinder blocked his thrust with crossed swords materialized out of thin air. All his rush did was shove her back, but it was at least enough to get her away from Ruby. He lunged again before she could recover.

"We have unfinished business," he snarled, leaning in close over their locked blades.

Cinder scoffed. "What business? Your failure to lead your people?" Flames once more flared to life around her eyes and Adam, sensing the danger, leaped back and to the side before a wave of fire could burn away what little aura he'd recovered since the fall. Cinder spun her swords to adjust her grip. "Blaming me because you couldn't handle power? You disappoint me, Adam. You had the potential to be so much more."

Trying to contain his anger was a wasted effort, as was engaging in Cinder's mind games. He was on a battlefield facing nothing but disadvantages. Cinder's maiden powers were divorced from her aura, so even if she was low, she wasn't limited, losing consciousness had dissipated anything he'd stored before the fall, and his aura was lower than it had been when he sparred Winter. Moreover, he wasn't her target, not really. She wanted Ruby.

There was only one option: complete and crushing offense. Refuse to let her counterattack. Go until something gave. Either he took her down or he bought enough time for someone else to do it.

Cinder cocked her head and drew breath to taunt him again. He cut her first word in two with a slash that would have cleaved her head at the jaw but was deflected high by Cinder's left sword. She drove the other towards his stomach, but he grabbed her wrist with his other hand and pulled so her back was shoved into his far shoulder.

Seeing her other sword arcing around for a stab to his side, Adam kicked out the back of her knee, recovered Wilt, and leaped back just in time to avoid the slash and accompanying fire.

If Cinder expected him to wait, she was disappointed: Adam charged again, using suppressing fire from Blush to force her onto the defensive until he could close the distance. On her back foot, Cinder still held her own. Her weapons resisted Wilt's edge and their blades threw sparks with every clash.

She caught an overhead slash on crossed blades and the ground under her feet cracked. Adam pressed the advantage, using bullets and aura clones and even kicked shards of stone to keep Cinder from recovering. He slammed his last magazine into Blush and renewed his offensive. Sweat dripped down from his hairline. Cinder's skin was steaming, her irritation spiking into anger with every blocked attack.

When he leaped over her as she was distracted by afterimages, he found not twin swords but a glass spear punching towards his chest. He landed and spun around it, used his left hand to knock Cinder's subsequent flame-wreathed hand aside, and went to drive Wilt into her heart—

Only for the clawed hand he'd hit to bend and stretch in a way no human hand could to grab his right wrist. Adam let go of Wilt, grabbed the falling sword with his free left hand, and sliced off the inhuman appendage. Where he expected to meet aura resistance or at least bone he found none; the limb was Grimm, through and through.

Grimm or not, its removal still made Cinder cry out in pain and lash out with a kick that threw Adam back.

Before he could catch his breath or even shift Wilt back to his right hand, a full pillar of flame erupted around Cinder and blew him off his feet. He hit the ground and rolled, coming up with Blush drawn and aimed at the sight of his possible victory evaporating.

He inhaled, exhaled, and pulled the trigger. Not because he believed it would do anything, but because not doing so would be a regret he'd take to his grave.

The bullet melted to uselessness when it met Cinder's searing flames, which were only growing in amount and intensity. Cinder herself hovered a dozen feet off the ground, fire trailing from her feet and steadying hand—a hand that abruptly went to clutch her other shoulder as she bit back a groan. Her flames sputtered. She dropped.

Adam blitzed across the distance between them in a heartbeat. He wasn't fast enough. Cinder's arm, regenerated, deflected his thrust away from her neck. The blade sliced through her high collar instead of her flesh, the wilt that spread from it revealing a scar of a type that Adam recognized instantly.

His eye met Cinder's and found only rage.

He brought Blush up and tried to get Wilt in the way when she retaliated with a fireball to his chest. Some of it went into Wilt but the force threw him into the air. He flipped to land on his feet several yards away, staggering only a step upon landing, as Cinder rose up on jets of flame once more.

Blush, pointed at her, clicked empty when he pulled the trigger. It slowly fell as a decade-old but familiar leaden sensation gripped his arm. That feeling bled from his chest, spreading further and further with each beat of his battered heart. His hands dropped to his sides. His shoulders bowed. He tipped his head back a little, caught between a grin and a grimace.

How long had it been since he'd been so powerless to change his fate? All those years gathering power, and it took just one person with more to wipe that time away. This was what he deserved for trying to play hero.

Well. There was one thing left that he could do. This was only about buying time, after all. No need to be altruistic. Now that he'd seen that scar, Cinder wasn't the only one with mind games to play.

He sheathed Wilt and gestured to his neck. "I've seen that kind of mark before." Electric collars weren't common—they were saved for the rare upstart faunus with aura who weren't in charge of handling Dust—but they'd been around enough for him to recognize their signs. "No wonder you took to Salem and magic—you're still terrified."

Orange light bloomed under him and he threw himself away from the flaming pillar that erupted from it an instant later.

"Come on, Cinder! You think I can't recognize that?"

More attacks rained down. Uncaring about trying to counter, Adam focused on dodging what he could and absorbing as much as he could of everything else. Her anger made her sloppy, and that meant there were—amid the hell coming down around him—windows of survival.

"The only one afraid of what they used to be is you!" Cinder snarled. "I have power. I earned power. You fell to the bottom only because you weren't strong enough!"

Adam's breath caught in his throat, stopping up the reflexive retort and giving his mind just enough time to reign in the rage seizing his tongue. "You're still a child," he managed instead. "Thinking magic and weapons will save you, but all you've done is find a new collar."

The ground lit up again, and again, and again, until Adam had nowhere left to go. He backed up a step, trying to catch his breath as he turned in a slow circle. He was completely trapped inside a roaring well of flame, and if he tried to rush through, what little of his aura was left would burn up. It was already working hard to let him breathe through the heat.

This time, just the helpless smile broke through. He'd gotten her angry—furious, even, with that jab at her past. He was, if that angle had paid off, her only target until that particular rage was satisfied. He'd bought Ruby some time.

At the cost of his own.

He kept turning, knees bent, right fingertips brushing Wilt's hilt, left index finger caressing Blush's trigger. He wouldn't hear her coming over the flames, he couldn't see past the flames, and the flames' constant shifting meant he couldn't trust his peripheral vision either.

Sweat dripped into his eye and down his face. He tasted it on his cracked lips.

There was no warning. He was on his feet, ready, and then he was on his back with his hands gripping the blade of a burning knife inches from his throat. The half-second between those points was a blur of reflex and panic, but now, he could think straight enough to move his hands up to Cinder's, which weren't glowing with heat like the blade itself. With his aura so low and hers apparently recovered—or she was aided by magic—he couldn't win the contest of strength.

Past the knife, he saw that same all-consuming rage still in her eyes. In that rage, he saw himself, the way he had been mere weeks ago, blinded and controlled by what he'd thought he'd harnessed as a weapon. In truth, he'd just been too afraid to confront the source. There was no controlling what he refused to understand.

"Struck a nerve?" he grunted as he tried to drill a knee into Cinder's stomach. It barely moved her, and she just put more weight on driving the knife down. It glowed even brighter and Adam had to blink and squint to keep his eye from stinging.

"Salem is my path to power. Nothing else."

It was like by convincing him she could convince herself. "Salem is to you what you were to me, and you were not salvation."

The blade began pressing through his patchy aura, a single point of searing pain amid the haze.

"You were born with nothing," she spat, "and you'll die with nothing."

His arms shook. He swallowed and his throat brushed the blade's tip. The heat was nearly unbearable; his aura was straining to hold it all back but there just wasn't enough left. He was resisting on instinct more than anything at this point, drawing out the agony second by arduous second.

What was the point? These last few seconds didn't matter. He'd always wanted a quick death in combat if he thought about dying at all, so why was he resisting? Why was he fighting? Wouldn't it be easier—

He blinked and in that second of darkness he flashed back to the nightmare he'd had all those weeks ago: his child self, staring at him through the flickering wall of an Atlesian prison. His next blink and he was that child, staring into a dirty mirror with tears in his good eye and fresh blood in his left. His final blink brought him back to the present, where his grip on Cinder's hands was slipping and the blade was burning his flesh and releasing a smell he knew in his bones.

He was done fearing that child. He was done letting that child down. And he was not going to let that child die, not here, not like this, fighting in a war that had nothing to do with what had made him who he was.

Adrenaline ripped through his veins and a roar tore itself from his throat. Decay exploded from his hands and Cinder's blade evaporated. She blasted herself away from him, right hand trailing skin peeling off like petals before a wave of fire stopped it in its tracks. Her left arm continued to shed.

Adam rose to his feet panting as the fiery cage sputtered into embers, his semblance raging through the air around him like an animal gone berserk and devouring his waning aura just as fast. He couldn't control it if he tried.

"I'm not you," he spat.

His wilt wasn't fading in the face of her fire—it simply began to consume that too. Cinder's eyes widened in understanding and flames bright enough to hurt his eyes burst to life around her. She unleashed the torrent at him with a scream of rage. Weaponless, he threw up his hands and called on all the power he had to wilt away every bit of flame as though that had ever been a possibility.

His vision went white and burning heat seared his skin.

When he could see again, he was still on his feet, but his aura was on its last legs. Cinder, eyes still blazing, raised a shining black bow she hadn't held before. Three arrows sprung from its string; he dodged one but the other two found their marks in his flesh.

He fell to one knee, his right thigh pierced through and his left arm limp at his side, an arrow lodged in the bone near his shoulder. The last of his aura had finally given way. With it, the semblance eating at Cinder's hands. He barely even registered the pain, too focused on clinging to consciousness.

Cinder, patience gone and knowing he was beaten, turned her back on him and stalked back over to Ruby. She planted her heel on Ruby's throat. Ruby, semiconscious herself and having only just managed to reach her sister, choked and scrabbled at Cinder's ankle. Fear clouded her eyes, fear that overshadowed their silver light.

"RUBY!"

That was Jaune, coming over a ridge to the left—but he was too far and he didn't have a ranged weapon.

Move, Adam demanded of himself, but he collapsed instead.

Move, he ordered, but his pathetic outstretched hand was useless.

"RUBY!"

Blake now, a step behind Jaune, Gambol Shroud's bullets impacting uselessly against a shield of flame Cinder put up with an irritated flick of her wrist.

Move, Adam begged.

He could not.

"You," Cinder snarled to Ruby, pressing down harder on her throat. Ruby's mouth opened and closed but only pathetic wheezes came out—and nothing went back in. She was suffocating. "Do you have any idea what you've cost me?"

Fire bubbled up from Cinder's palm and then extended into a spear with white-hot edges. She lowered that spear until its point hovered an inch from Ruby's left eye.

"Let me show you."

She raised her arm in preparation to drive the spear into and through Ruby's eye and skull. Her eager smile stretched in anticipation of revenge years in the making.

The spear reached its apex. She tensed, drove it down—

A stiletto blade erupted from her chest. The last sparks of her aura, weakened by Adam's semblance, showered down around it and lit up every droplet of blood while her triumph twisted into torment. Behind her, the shimmering air parted to reveal Neo. She had her handle-less parasol resting daintily over one shoulder but hatred flashed in her eyes.

With a savage jerk, she yanked her blade from Cinder's body and kicked her away from Ruby, who was staring up at Neo with a mix of shock, horror, and Cinder's blood all over her face. Jaune and Blake skidded to twin stops a few steps away, weapons raised, but Blake's finger was soft on the trigger and Jaune's sword was hesitant, hovering between stances like he couldn't decide between offense and defense.

Cinder fell to her knees, shaking hands uselessly spitting flames that burned up to nothing. Her lifeblood poured from her chest. Her snarl melted from her face to be replaced with disbelief. She raised her head, watering eye failing to find the open sky beyond the Grimm and clouds.

Her lips parted, but her strength left her before she could speak. Her eyes went glassy and she toppled.

Neo, now assured of Cinder's death, looked at all of them. Blood still dripped from her blade, staining the ground an inch from Ruby's hair. She stared down at Ruby in particular, echoes of that same hatred still burning in her eyes.

But then she looked at Adam, frowned, and moved no further. For several seconds, no one broke the stalemate. Ruby was the first to cave, curling in on herself and succumbing to a coughing fit now that she could breathe again while unnatural light swirled around her. In the process she brushed up against Neo—or, the illusion of Neo, because her likeness shattered into pieces at the lightest touch. Blake swung around, anticipating an attack, but none came.

Neo was gone, again.

She really did like that trick, Adam mused, his last thought before the ground fell out from under him and he tumbled into the dark.

Focused on Ruby, Blake still noticed Adam going limp out of the corner of her eye. How badly was he hurt?

Ruby waved Jaune off and pointed at Yang. "She's worse," she managed. "And Adam—"

Jaune, seeing that Ruby was not going to let herself take priority even with the borderline molten light warring with the silver trying to drip from her eyes like tears, held up a hand to forestall her. "I got it."

He gently tugged Ruby over to where Adam lay while Blake brought Yang. "I'll heal you together. All of you—Blake, can you hold their hands? Yeah, like that. You just all need to be touching."

Blake squeezed Yang's hand. She had blood matted in her hair around her temple and more blood on her clothes, and the simple fact that she hadn't woken up yet meant she'd gone down hard. Adam, whose hand she held with her left, had arrow wounds to his limbs and smelled distinctly of smoke. Too much longer and he would bleed out.

When Ruby had taken Jaune's hand and Yang's free hand, Jaune straightened his shoulders, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. His aura lit up. Its light concentrated on his arms, dissipating elsewhere, and then flowed down over his hands. That light spread from person to person, enveloping each of them in a comforting blanket of aura that almost felt warm. The wooziness went straight to Blake's head and she had to battle it back while contending with the thoroughly peculiar sensation of her aura regenerating at speed. It was like a limb waking up after falling asleep, but duller and all over.

"Ruby?" Blake kept her voice quiet to avoid disturbing Jaune's focus.

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

Ruby looked down at herself. More amber light was crackling around her, arcing out from her recovering aura before being re-absorbed. Over time, it seemed to be shifting to match her crimson color. "I don't know. It doesn't hurt, at least. I think. It's hard to tell."

Jaune's semblance took several nerve-wracking minutes to heal them all. They were twice interrupted by Grimm; Blake handled them both times and returned, retaking Yang and Adam's hands. At the end, Jaune released them and, breathing hard, turned his semblance on himself. While he did that, Blake helped Ruby position Yang's head in her sister's lap. The blonde hadn't woken up yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Ruby's hands, when Blake brushed against them, were hot. It was odd but all the better for Yang, who was unconscious in frigid temperatures.

"How much did that take out of you?" Ruby asked Jaune while she nervously tried to pick some blood out of Yang's hair.

Blake, assured that Ruby had Yang in her care, knelt next to Adam. He was similarly out of it, eyes closed, breathing deep and regular. Jaune's healing couldn't erase the blood staining his clothes or the lingering scent of smoke.

"A lot," Jaune admitted to Ruby. "I can replenish my own aura, but each time I do it with my semblance instead of letting it happen naturally, my max goes down. I'm topping out at about eighty percent of what I have normally."

Ruby pursed her lips. Jaune shrugged. They couldn't exactly let people stay injured in a situation like this.

"Ruby?" Blake asked. "What happened?"

Ruby looked down at Yang and shifted so her sister's neck was better supported. "I don't really remember the whale blowing up, or falling. I was pretty out of it because of my semblance. When I woke up, I was alone and my aura was almost gone."

"Same here," Jaune said, and Blake nodded as well.

"I tried to find you guys, but my scroll broke in the fall and this," she pulled her earpiece free, "is just static."

"I took mine out," Blake admitted. "With our scrolls dead, they can't boost the signal enough on their own to get through all the Grimm matter."

Ruby stared at the gadget for a second and then slipped it into her pocket. Before she could continue her explanation, Yang let out a quiet groan and cracked an eye open.

"Ruby?" she mumbled. "You're on fire."

Then her eyes shot wide open and, in an impressive feat of flexibility and agility, she pushed herself up, twisted, and threw her arms around her sister in one near-instantaneous motion. Ruby fell back onto the stony ground with a shocked yelp while Yang hugged the life out of her.

"I'm okay, I'm okay!" Ruby managed as she failed to pick between hugging her sister, rubbing her back, or trying to get herself free. More trails of light shot off of her. Vague shapes tried to form around her eyes but flickered out.

Yang pulled back but kept a grip on her sister's shoulders while she gave Ruby a once-over. Though her brows furrowed in concern at the sight of the strange light, her shoulders dropped with relief and she pulled Ruby into a much less desperate embrace than before.

"I thought I'd lost you," she whispered.

Ruby pressed her head into Yang's shoulder. "You didn't. I didn't lose you, either."

Jaune caught Blake's eye, and she signaled for him to wait another second. When that second was up, Blake gently cleared her throat. The sisters separated but stayed close and, while Ruby tried to remember where she'd been in her retelling, Blake found a spot by Yang and pulled her into a quick hug of her own.

"I'm glad you're okay," she said.

Yang's arms pressed against her back for just a moment before letting go. "Me too."

"Ruby was telling us what happened after she fell," Jaune explained.

"I was right at the part where you found me," said Ruby. She flexed her fingers, and after a moment of concentration, the extraneous light around her settled and disappeared. "I guess we'll get to that. So, um, right. My scroll was broken so I started heading for a bone nearby that I could climb to look around, and that's where Yang found me."

"I found the nevermore that was diving at you," Yang corrected. "But yeah. Didn't get to talk much before Cinder showed up. What happened to her, actually, now that I'm—"

Jaune swayed a little so she could see past him to the body. Yang sucked in a breath and immediately put her arm around Ruby, who leaned into the embrace.

"She did awful things," Jaune said, his own expression conflicted. "She's killed so many people. Even knowing all of that…"

"People don't end up like her for no reason," Ruby finished.

Blake felt one of her ears twitch towards Adam. "Maybe, if we'd had more time, like with Adam, a chance to talk, things could've been different."

Ruby swallowed and pushed off of Yang. "Maybe. I just…I didn't want her to die."

"Did you kill her?" asked Yang, and Ruby shook her head.

"Neo did."

"Stabbed her in the back," Jaune confirmed.

"Neo?" Yang repeated. "Did she try to go after Ruby again?"

"No." Ruby tapped Crescent Rose, which she'd rested across her lap. "She just left."

"Something must've changed her mind," Blake surmised, though she had no idea what could be capable of that.

Yang pursed her lips, dissatisfied, but distracted herself by asking Blake, "Do you have a water bottle in your backpack?"

Taken aback by the non sequitur, Blake nevertheless unslung her backpack and tossed Yang the narrow flask she kept in there. Any proper bottle was too bulky for the bag's compact design. Yang unscrewed the cap and turned to Ruby, who only realized what was happening after Yang took a dampened finger to her face.

"It's fine, really!" Ruby said, trying to squirm away.

"Let me do this. Please." Yang's tone stopped Ruby in her tracks. Her eyes flicked to Blake's, then to Jaune's, and then she submitted herself to Yang's ministrations. "You got Cinder's maiden powers, didn't you?"

Ruby swallowed, weighed down by the knowledge that, even though she hadn't been the one to deal the killing blow, she had still been Cinder's last thought. "Yeah."

"How do you feel?"

"Okay."

Yang carefully poured more water on her hand. "Ruby."

"I'm okay, honest. It just feels like—like I ate too much, almost, but not in my stomach. It's the same place my eyes draw from. I can control it the same way. Probably."

"Can you use it?" asked Blake. Cinder had been able to use that power to take down Ozpin in his prime. If they had a silver-eyed maiden against Salem…Blake paused that thought when she saw Ruby's expression falter.

"M-maybe? I don't think using it's the same as my eyes." She held one hand way out to the side and concentrated. Bits of fire, sparks, and then a couple jolts of electricity arced between her fingers before fizzling out. Ruby released the breath she'd been holding; sweat gleamed on her brow. "It's like trying to hold back a charging goliath."

"All or nothing," Jaune summarized.

"I'll use it if we need it. But…I don't want to risk hurting our own team if I can help it."

It was a reasonable decision, one made unanimous by the ensuing silence.

Yang's cleanup took only a minute, and when it was over, most of the tension permeating their group had eased. Yang tossed the water back to Blake.

As the flask reached the apex of its arc, Blake, the only one following its course, saw a shadow descending from above.

"Move!" she cried as she threw herself and Adam out of the way of whatever was coming down on them. The shockwave when it landed knocked her back another yard but she still got Gambol Shroud up in preparation for an attack, only to see the thing had its back to her. Massive wings made up of black spines and red flesh stuck out of the hound-like Grimm's back and dripped black matter constantly, the same matter that was constantly shifting on the Grimm's body. It stood on deformed back legs and roared at Ruby and Yang, who had likewise avoided its attempt to crush them.

"Adam!" Blake tried, but he was still completely out of it, which meant he didn't even have his aura up to protect himself. "Jaune, can you—"

"I've got this, go help them!"

With Jaune covering Adam, Blake raced towards the hound as it lunged at Ruby. Yang caught its maw with her hands and skidded across the ground, still holding it back, while Ruby raced around to hook her scythe around its neck.

But she hesitated to pull the trigger, and the beast punched Yang away with one hand and reached for Ruby with the other. It caught fire instead when Blake yanked Ruby out of the way and left a burning shadow in her wake. Roaring in pain, its wings buffeting them all with wind, it threw itself onto the ground and rolled until the fire went out, shrugging off a hail of gunfire from all three of them as it did so.

"Why is it so tough?" Yang demanded of no one in particular as her salvo left no visible damage.

"Its skin just keeps shifting to cover what you hurt," Blake said. "We need to cut through."

And with Adam unconscious and Jaune busy defending him, there was only one person with a blade big enough and—with recoil—powerful enough to slice through.

She'd already hesitated once.

The hound howled and dove at them, claws ready to disembowel anyone in their way. Ruby jumped up to avoid them and started to break into petals—

Only for the petals to swirl aimlessly in a sudden wind and coalesce. She reformed looking sick and the hound's wing smacked her into the ground. Ruby groaned. The hound prepared to stomp on her with the spikes growing out of its foot, but Yang body slammed it and sent it staggering back. She rained down more hell on the beast while Blake helped Ruby to her feet.

"Ruby—"

"I'll get used to it," Ruby said with only a twinge of desperation in her voice. "I will."

"Ruby!" Yang called as the hound started to advance through her shelling. She glanced back, eyes hard, no more room for apology. "You know we have to do it."

Ruby swallowed and adjusted her grip on Crescent Rose. "I know. Pin it down—I'll take care of the wings. Yang, get its back legs. Blake, see if you can tie up the front."

They launched into action. Blake rained down gunfire to draw the hound's attention, and when it roared at her, she filled its maw with ice. Her last three Dust bullets and the Grimm's jaw was frozen open, leaving Blake clear to hook Gambol Shroud's ribbon around its nearest forelimb. It raked new and wickedly sharp claws along her aura, but that aura held. Her foot kicked up pulverized fragments of petrified whale as she slid it across the ground, shifted her weight, and—in sync with Yang thanks to a callout from Ruby—yanked the hound's legs out from under it.

In the brief moment as it tipped and fell, she ensnared its other front leg in the ribbon and pulled the two limbs tightly together. The hound's guttural growl, muffled by the ice cracking in its jaw, sent a shiver down her spine.

Its wings shifted in preparation to lift it up. A blur of red shot across its back, Crescent Rose's blade flashed with reflected red lightning from a Tempest firing at an Atlesian frigate above, and then the wings were crashing to the ground. Black matter spewed from the stumps. Ruby twisted in the air, fired Crescent Rose again, and used the recoil to launch herself to the hound's neck.

Crescent Rose hooked around its throat one last time. The black matter fell like rain. Ruby's eyes shone with tears.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

The ice shattered. She pulled the trigger, then pulled it again, and a third time, each recoil-fueled slice going deeper and deeper into flesh. The hound howled after the first but lost its voice to the wound with the second and third.

Face twisted in grief and Grimm matter running down her cheeks, Ruby fired one last time, whole body arching with the force she exerted to drag her blade through the last of the flesh standing in its way. The resistance against Gambol Shroud's ribbon disappeared; the hound's head hit the ground and rolled; Ruby landed, face ashen, eyes going anywhere but that severed head. Blake made the mistake of looking: the disintegrating Grimm matter was peeling away to reveal the mutilated flesh beneath.

The same phenomenon was occurring with the body that had slumped to the ground: Grimm disintegrating, non-Grimm remaining.

It was a horrifying sight, so much so that Blake was almost grateful when Jaune called a warning about more Grimm approaching. Perhaps drawn by Ruby's guilt or any of their distress, Grimm were loping over the lip of their little crater and breaking off from the fight overhead to circle them.

Blake readied Gambol Shroud and tried to ignore both her nausea and the tired burn in her limbs that not even Jaune's aura boost could erase completely.


Consciousness came to Adam in pieces lined up one after another like lights along a dark tunnel. There was nothing, then a feeling of vague weightlessness, and then as the tunnel abruptly ended and reality hit, his stomach flew up into his throat and he was sitting bolt upright—an action that should not have been possible with the injuries he remembered.

In fact, he felt fine. Good, even. Limbs and aura intact and decidedly not impaled by glass arrows. The only issue was a slight headache which, considering his last memory, was absurd. He should've been suffering from debilitating agony, not mild irritation.

Was he dead?

A quick survey of the Grimm hellscape around him cured him of that notion. The ground and air seethed with Grimm drawn to their little group. To his immediate left, Jaune was holding back a furious trio of beowolves. He picked out Ruby's red cloak amid the chaos, then Yang's yellow hair, and finally—amidst all the other black—Blake.

Then there were new colors: a flash of green, of pink, and then the Ace Ops' distinctive red and white. More allies; they must have arrived while he was unconscious. How long had he been out? Long enough for him, Yang, and Ruby to receive medical attention and the Grimm to arrive, so several minutes at least.

His fingers closed around Blush, which was, to his relief, at his side. He stood, expecting a wave of vertigo or pain or something and coming up empty. That was for the best; his motion drew the attention of Grimm that Jaune had been trying to distract. Adam thumbed Wilt loose in its sheath.

It was to be a culling, then.

He gave himself to the melee, ripping and tearing his way through putrid flesh like a reaper while he sank into the heady feeling of his aura restored. Though his attacks lacked the crowd-clearing potential of Yang or Elm, he made up for that lacking explosiveness in speed and cutting power. Grimm fell before him like wheat. Every attack one tried only fueled the strike that cut it down.

He tore up a section of petrified ground with Moonslice and leaped back. The boarbatusk charging at him went up that makeshift ramp and sailed over Adam's head. Wilt lashed out, lightning quick, and speared it through the belly.

It squealed. Following its momentum and adding to it, Adam shifted his feet and drove the beast into the ground. Wilt twisted. The Grimm's complaints went silent and he wrenched Wilt free to find the huntsmen and huntresses around him likewise mopping up their opponents. So caught up in the rush of his restored aura, he hadn't even realized the skirmish was coming to a close.

He straightened, flicked Wilt to cast off the stubborn Grimm matter clinging to it, and sheathed it. By some unspoken signal, their group convened in the center of the crater. Adam heeded that signal but slowed after only a couple of steps. Without a writhing mass of Grimm in the way, he had an unobstructed view of the bodies sprawled across the cracked and scored stone. The first, decapitated, he almost recognized—and then he glimpsed the scars on the man's face and placed it. The faunus in the Grimm.

Adam hoped he'd at least found peace in the end.

The other body had him wishing the opposite. Cinder lay crumpled, curled around herself. One bloodied hand rested near the chest wound that had no doubt ended her life. Her other hand was gone, the Grimm matter decayed to nothing. Her eyes were open but unseeing.

He slowed further. Uncomfortable echoes of her words and his own words were swirling in his mind, and beneath them bubbled a single nauseating thought: that could just as easily have been him. In any of his weaker moments, if any of the thousands who wanted him dead had seized the opportunity, it would be him lying prone on the ground, glassy eyes seeing nothing and no one.

Swallowing, he looked away and stopped a few paces back from everyone else. The figuring out of what the hell had happened when the whale blew up took less time than Adam expected. It was, in large part, aided by Vine, who had been conscious through almost the entirety of it save for a brief blackout on landing.

"I grabbed who I could," Vine explained. "Unfortunately, the shield Oscar made broke before I could gather everyone, and we were scattered."

"Do we have any idea where the others could be?" asked Blake.

Ruby pursed her lips and glanced up. "Let me…"

She vanished in a rush of red petals going straight up. Her flight, aided by wind that could not have been natural, was short-lived but still let her get nearly a dozen yards of height before the cover of petals peeled back and she could scan their surroundings. As gravity began to tug her back down with unusual reticence, she caught sight of something, tensed, and fell into Yang's waiting arms.

"See something?" Yang asked as she set her sister down.

"Weiss, May, and Fiona. They're hurt and being chased."

Adam was not the fastest over anything but short distances in their group, not when his weapon was both out of ammo and not built for recoil-enhanced movement. Nor was he about to try focusing his aura and putting the integrity of his muscles, ligaments, and tendons on the line when he didn't even know exactly how far away these people were.

He still ran, of course. He didn't want to see Fiona hurt, and she did have all of the spare supplies they hadn't been able to carry individually. Keeping pace with Nora, Elm, Vine, Ren, and Jaune was easy enough.

In the short span of time it took them to clear the edge of the crater, the other three resolved the problem. Amid a backdrop of disintegrating Grimm, the Schnee stood bent over with Myrtenaster as a crutch. Blood stood out starkly against her short white hair. May and Fiona fared little better; they were leaning on each other so heavily that, when May's legs buckled below her, Fiona fell too. Yang caught May and Ruby caught Fiona while Jaune, hands already alight with his semblance, rushed to their aide.

Yet another rehashing of their situation, with a particular emphasis on Ruby acquiring the maiden powers, washed over Adam like the distant roars of Grimm. He caught the gist: the Happy Huntresses and Weiss were separated from the group in the explosion, found each other after the fall, their auras low and eventually depleted by Grimm. They'd seen this fight from a distance and headed over as quickly as they could in hopes of getting help.

As Adam absently pulled several magazines for Blush from the crate of ammunition Fiona produced the moment Jaune finished replenishing her aura, he reflected that the help, in this case, went both ways. He doubted the pylons they'd brought on the mantas had survived the explosion or crashes; the ones Fiona had were their only hope, now.

"Where to now?" asked Nora while they finished restocking.

"I believe—" Vine started, but he stopped with a startled grunt when a distant explosion rocked the earth. Adam staggered, as did everyone else except Elm, and then gritted his teeth when an accompanying shockwave of distinctly non-Dust energy—magic—buffeted them. Its power felt like pins and needles on his skin, his soul. Something alien and far stronger than the vague unease Ruby's new abilities engendered.

Ruby slammed a magazine into Crescent Rose and chambered a round. "That's where."

It was an order that went without saying: they ran towards the source as one. The scattering of Grimm in their path grew thicker as they got closer, until they had to fight for every foot of forward progress. Blake tried to keep her use of Dust down, but in a melee this thick she had no choice if she wanted any space to breathe.

A consequence of being enmeshed in that fight without comms was that information about her surroundings and everyone else's movements came in scattered bursts:

Winter amid a squadron of her own frost Grimm, holding the line but faltering. Weiss going to help her.

Harriet and Clover engaging an enraged Salem amid shattered shards of bone. Ruby, Vine, and Elm, dashing off to assist.

Qrow standing over a downed Marrow. Fiona, Jaune, and May running straight for them.

Oscar rammed by a sphinx and his subsequent green shield disappearing under a horde of diving winged beringels. Yang already en route.

Their unannounced splitting up left Blake and Adam to handle the Grimm they'd brought to this crater with them. Memories itched in the back of her mind as she fell into step with him. Their old partnership weighed on them both but fed into near-flawless teamwork. Here, there was no need to worry about innocents or casualties. It was kill or be killed. And that, they both knew well.

There was a scream, high and breaking. Harriet. Blake kicked off a beowolf. Hanging in the air, twisting to avoid a swooping griffon, she saw the reason: Clover, Salem's clawed hand erupting from his chest, falling limp with his heart clutched in her fingers.

For the second time in as many hours, Blake's world went white.


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