Two Minutes Silence

by catsvrsdogscatswin

When Yang falls, its quiet. Calm. She did what she had to do. When Ruby and Blake fall, it's a jolt, a cold shock of horror that they didn't quite make it. When Weiss falls, it's almost with relief. Living or dead, she'll see them again. When Jaune falls, he thinks of his team, of one more letter knocked off of Team JNPR. When they wake up, they're at Beacon. Fix-it fic after V8.

28. Snuff Lights

This'll be a bit of a swerve for you guys compared to my AO3 readers, since in a reversal of my usual mode of operation, this fic was originally posted there and I later transferred it over here. I'm updating both versions of the fic consecutively, of course, so neither is ahead of the other at all, but that doesn't change the fact that this story was originally intended for AO3 and thus the attendant "Major Character Death" and "Fix-it Broken" tags were up there for all readers to see since the beginning, whereas what's about to happen in this chapter will be more of a…fun little surprise for y'all.

I'M SO EXCITED.

---

Originally, Neo had stolen a Bullhead and faked her credentials to make it up to the airship Roman was held on.

This time, because Little Red and her coterie were all insane, she had spent the whole ride clinging to the back of Weiss Schnee, who was clinging to Ruby Rose in turn as they rode a weapon locker like a witch's broom towards the ship. Technically, the two Huntress cadets had permission to be aboard; Neo did not, and to avoid any questions, she was wearing her Atlesian disguise and, if pressed, would answer to the name Spumoni.

According to the other two, this method of entry/exit was both sneakier and faster than an airship, and more to the point, would not trip proximity alarms on Watts's part the same way an approaching airship would.

All three of them were more than fairly certain that he had, in fact, infiltrated the airship. While Ironwood had managed to shift most of the control terminals away from his flagship, some still remained onboard, and the Atlesian radio network had suffered a mysterious blackout shortly after Ironwood had told his soldiers to dig in and defend Vale –and prevent any prisoner rescue– at all costs.

That was not yet cause for concern, though. Watts was a menace to deal with on a purely technical level, but his combat skills were, well, hardly deserving of the name. There were at least two full squads of soldiers on that ship, and they'd been ordered to execute Cinder Fall less than ten minutes ago. While it would take a little time for them to arm up and extract her from her cell, still, there would be ranks and ranks of soldiers around Cinder to prevent anyone from getting to her for a rescue. Watts, alone, wouldn't stand a chance.

Tyrian Callows was another matter entirely.

His location had been unknown since he'd jumped off Amity, and Neo hadn't received any new orders from Watts –nothing but a single text telling her that it was time for the plan to begin. There were too many places that Tyrian might go in order to cause chaos and disrupt the defense efforts for Neo to be sure of where he was right now, but there was every chance that Watts had anticipated the issue of surplus bodyguards and brought Tyrian with him as backup, and Neo did not fancy running into him on the ship.

They were hoping that they would be able to sweep in to confirm (or assist in) Cinder's death, then return back down to the ground to assist in Beacon's defense. Little Red also planned to break at least Emerald out at this juncture, although Neo found it doubtful that Cinder's little minion would be so easy to pry away from the fold this time, or that the Atlesians would let them walk off with a prisoner.

Still, what did she care. As long as she could get Roman out and then out of here, she did not particularly mind what Ruby and her friends did and did not do. The other two had promised to distract the officers of the law if need be, and Neo had spent most of her childhood learning how to pick increasingly more high-tech locks even before she'd become a career criminal.

She could do this. She could get Roman out of here.

She could keep him safe.

All of them being on the level of graduated Huntresses, it was easy to jump off of the rocket-propelled locker and land before it crashed onto the docking bay, and a heartbeat after her heels hit the floor, Neo had Hush furled and extended outwards like a rapier as the other two belatedly followed her example a moment later, brandishing their respective weapons.

"What is it?" Weiss hissed, and Neo pointed to her throat.

"Yes, I know you can't talk-"

Neo stamped her foot and jabbed her finger at her throat again, then twirled it to indicate the docking bay around them.

Little Red caught on first, and Neo watched her shoulders stiffen as she glanced around and raised her weapon, that oversized gardening tool held ready in sniper mode.

"She means it's too quiet," she said, voice sinking low in worry. "Right?"

Neo nodded vehemently. This was an Atlas battleship, on combat footing, in the middle of a Grimm incursion –it was at Threat Level 7, last they'd heard– staffed with multiple squads of Atlesian soldiers, and currently in the middle of an extrajudicial order to execute a prisoner.

Them aiming something that was essentially a missile towards an unmanned platform should have sounded an alarm, or alerted some soldiers, or something. Ironwood had managed to call ahead to alert the ship of their reinforcements before the comms went dead, too, and so they should've been met with one or two privates at the very least.

The fact that nothing at all had happened before they landed, or after they landed, was more than merely ominous.

"Stay frosty," Ruby whispered, and Neo valiantly resisted the urge to make a joke about the Schnee as the three of them ghosted over to the hanger door that led inside the ship, with Little Red taking point. A few buttons were duly punched on the keypad, and the doors hissed open: the sight that followed made Weiss give a small cry as Ruby flinched back, and even Neo grimaced.

Well, they had indeed had a welcoming committee.

Key word being had.

The corridor floors were awash with blood, with broken bodies and mangled helmets sprawled across about twenty meters or so of the tight space. The unnecessary ferocity was a pretty telltale sign as to who'd made it onto the ship first: as if to erase any doubts, there was a sickly-sweet scent of poison in the air, reminiscent of spilled ink.

Fuck.

Fear gripped her hard and tight beneath her ribs, but before Neo could bolt forward, Little Red's hand was on her shoulder.

"They don't have a reason to kill him yet," she said, squeezing with a touch of pressure that thankfully ended up grounding Neo rather than infuriating her. Ruby looked to her partner and jerked her chin ahead. "Let's hurry up, though. I'll carry us over the… over that."

A brief swish and blur of rose petals later, and they were over the spread of carnage, and Neo, following her memory, took the lead as they began moving at a light run into the bowels of the ship. All three of them kept their weapons ready, knowing that there was every chance that they'd turn the corner and see Watts, or Tyrian, or even Cinder herself.

As they pierced deeper into the ship, heading for the cell block, they did find more bodies, more bloodshed, more bullet marks strafed into the walls that indicated a furious and desperate defense. On the plus side, they found no scorch marks, and soon arrived in the corridor that had relentlessly haunted Neo's memories –and nightmares– for longer than she wanted to admit.

It was awash in even more blood, even more bodies, spread out in a last-ditch phalanx facing away from the cell doors. The white plates of the soldiers' armor were broken and slick with the blood spreading in pools on the ground, and almost all of them had their guns in their hands. One sole, singular soldier was by the cell doors, and the blood streaking down the wall in a trail towards his slumped body made it clear that he had been sniped from a distance.

The floor was no good indicator of who had been here and who had gotten away, only that several people had, walking with swift bloodied prints deeper into the ship. Presumably, they were heading towards the part of evidence lockup where confiscated items were stored.

Neo hissed through her teeth as the Schnee cursed, and Little Red's lips tightened, her knuckles showing white against her weapon for a brief moment. None of them were particularly skilled trackers –at least, not so far as Neo knew– but they also did not need to be skilled trackers to see what had happened. The Atlesian soldiers had been within moments of executing Cinder, and Tyrian (and possibly Watts as well, but he was not important in this case) had come upon them from behind, and then wiped them out to a man.

Weapons at the ready, the three of them swiftly checked down the rows of cells, peering inside. Neo was not expecting anyone but Roman to remain in the cell block, and she was not disappointed. His door was the only one still locked, and Neo shifted restlessly as they gathered around his unopened cell.

Little Red pulled out her Scroll, consulting the codes Ironwood had sent for a brief moment, and then approached Roman's door with steely resolution.

---

As the door opened, the first thing that struck Weiss was how small the cell was.

Roman Torchwick was a tall man –topping six feet, if she remembered the criminal files she'd thumbed through to see if there was any information new or useful to her there– but even so… it was hard to describe just how cramped he looked, like a jack-in-the-box clown that had been shoved into a box two sizes too small. This was not a cell. This was a gods-damned closet.

Even Weiss, as gracefully petite as she was, doubted that she could fully lay down on the hard bench across the back wall without at least curling up a little. She certainly wasn't going to step in there to try –not with a dangerous and (even worse) constantly sarcastic criminal already inside.

"Well, well, well…" Torchwick's visible eye lit up as he saw Neo. He had one leg crossed over the other, slouching with a dangerous kind of ease against the back wall, hands braced on the bench beneath him. Then again, Weiss was fairly certain that he couldn't stand up straight within this… closet.

That worried her. Oh, not for him –dastardly, cruel, and downright amoral man that he was. No, what worried Weiss was the fact that this was just one cell amongst rows upon rows of the same, which meant that this wasn't a bit of extrajudicial discomfort arranged for him personally: these were just the cells that Atlas happened to have.

And while Weiss wouldn't shed a single tear for Torchwick's comfort, the same did not hold true for other people. Statistically speaking, Atlas had to arrest the wrong person at least a small percentage of the time, which meant that innocent people would inevitably be held in these same cramped, small, downright barbarous cells.

Weiss didn't like the implication that whoever'd built this ship had known that and not cared.

Torchwick's nonchalant expression flattened slightly as it landed on Ruby.

"Little Red," he added, his suave voice laced heavily with disdain. "To what do I owe this dubious displeasure?"

"We're busting you out," Ruby said, and took one step to the side, implicitly opening up the way for him.

Weiss was rewarded with the undoubtedly rare sight of a nonplussed Torchwick, who blinked at her partner as if not entirely sure what he was seeing, before he hastily pushed himself off of the bench, bending almost double to duck his head under the arch of the cell door before he straightened up with a groan. Weiss could understand that: he could throw out any number of cutting remarks and sarcasm at them later, after he had finally gotten out of that cell.

"Missed you, darlin'," he said to Neo as she tossed his cane and hat over, removing the latter from the former and plunking it down on his head. Weiss was disturbed as much as she was impressed by the fact that he had, somehow, managed to keep those black lines of makeup streaking from his eyes perfectly intact even after all this time in prison.

Torchwick spent a moment straightening his hat, then flicked the curved end of his cane up into his hand.

"So,"

Weiss tensed and grabbed for Myrtenaster as he swung that cane up towards them, pointing the business end at her and then Ruby in quick succession.

"-would ya mind telling me what you and you are doing here, kiddos?"

"We told you: helping," Ruby said as Neo reached for the cane and pushed it down. She glanced towards the carnage behind and around them on the floor. "Is Cinder still here on the ship? What about Emerald? Mercury?"

"Nope, nope, and nope," Torchwick answered, apparently more satisfied by Neo's lack of aggressive intent towards them than Ruby's answer. He then reached up with his free hand, demonstratively pinching and rolling the point of an invisible mustache with cunning, villainous flair. "After the, ah, fireworks were over, some mustachioed twit hacked their cells and popped 'em all out –leaving me behind for gods know what reason. Honestly, you guys took so long to come get me, I was feeling all sorts of lonely and abandoned. I should file a complaint."

"Watts," Weiss said grimly, ignoring Torchwick's drivel. "Well, that explains how Tyrian managed to tear through the ship so quickly. They should have been able to close off sections to at least slow him down."

Ruby cast another glance at the people on the ground, and shivered. She looked back at Torchwick with a decided frown –the frown Weiss knew so well as a sign that Ruby was well and truly done with playing around.

"What did Cinder say to you about the plans they have?" she asked, and Torchwick raised a slow eyebrow.

"Ooh. Playin' with the big kids now, Little Red? Are ya sure-"

To Weiss's infinite gratitude, Neo planted an elbow in his side, and he looked at his partner askance.

"What? What?!" he asked indignantly at her unimpressed look.

Neo raised her eyebrows at him, and the duo seemed to enter into a brief silent conversation that was carried solely in her micro-expressions and his reactions. After a few moments, Torchwick paled.

"No," he said. "Neo, no."

She gave him a thin smirk.

"Neo, no."

Weiss coughed pointedly, and he shot her a hacked-off look.

"You can have your crisis or whatever it is later," Weiss told him, laying a hand on Myrtenaster. "For now, we intend to prevent one of the biggest disasters in Remnant's living memory, and your partner has already negotiated the terms for both her and your assistance."

She narrowed her eyes, tapping one finger against the pommel of her sword.

"So assist."

Torchwick gave her a sour glare, but sighed and –at Neo's warningly raised elbow and pointed look– capitulated.

"Same as Neo told you, presumably," he said with a brief nod in his partner's direction. "While she and her lackeys book it off the ship, me and Neo are supposed to hold the line as long as we can. That Watts guy said he disabled Atlas comms so we should be able to last longer, but I know a dismissal order when I hear one. Don't think either of us are supposed to get out of here alive –and yeah, yeah, Neo, I know you told me so. You don't need to say it again."

Neo's smug expression ratcheted up a few notches.

"What about the others?" Ruby asked. "Did they say where they were going?"

Torchwick shrugged.

"Down to cause more trouble," he said dismissively. "Seemed like it was all planned out, inasmuch as Cinder seemed to know exactly where her target was, and so did the mustache guy and his pet scorpion. Don't think things are looking that good for Beacon, to be honest."

"Cinder's almost certainly going for the Maiden," Weiss said, thinking aloud as she continued to tap her fingers against Myrtenaster. "This airship is still the hub for most of Atlas communications, so if Watts has left, it's probably to attempt finding where the controls for the robots have been moved to. Tyrian…"

"Knowing him, Tyrian's probably gone down to destroy as much armed resistance as he can," Neo said, projecting the words from her Scroll again. "Still, it'll be trouble if he goes to reinforce Cinder."

"Then we need to get to the bridge and restore communication," Ruby said. "And then update everybody."

Neo nodded, and then typed quickly on her Scroll.

"Follow me."

More sprawled corpses met them as they made their way from the brig to the command center, the walls and floor spattered with red, each body the center of a crimson-streaked frozen firework of gore. Since they were meant to engage Grimm from a distance, few of the rank and file of Atlas soldiers had firm control over their Aura, and this bloody tableau was a stark reminder of how much deadlier Huntsmen –or Huntsmen-level– foes could be. Even with all their armor and guns, Tyrian had torn through the airship like a wolf among sheep.

Weiss had already had evidence of just how obnoxiously good Neopolitan's memory was, but she was starkly reminded all over again as the petite criminal swiftly led them up to the bridge without a single false turn. She'd only been here once, so far as Weiss was aware, and yet she'd found her way back flawlessly.

Neo shoved the door open with Ruby and one of her own illusions covering her, but as they slunk onto the bridge, it was revealed to be empty of everything but dead technicians. Weiss winced: she may have been long removed from her home kingdom, but seeing how easily Watts and Tyrian had ripped through the ship was still a blow to her pride as a member of Atlas.

"Right," she said to cover for her wince. "Now what?"

"Now you kiddies step aside and let the professionals handle it," Torchwick drawled, lacing his fingers together and cracking his knuckles theatrically. Neo was already heading for a terminal, frowning in concentration as her fingers began to dance over the holographic screen.

Weiss met Ruby's eyes as Torchwick moved to join his partner, and Ruby nodded, gesturing outward slightly with Crescent Rose.

The two of them split up to sweep the bridge and make sure that there were no longer any enemies present, their own weapons at the ready. All they found were more bodies, slumped over broken screens or collapsed onto the ground, still clutching the guns most of them hadn't even been able to fire. Knowing full well how dangerous Cinder was, Ironwood had stationed several Specialist teams on the ship, but it looked as if Watts and Tyrian had worked to make sure they never had to engage more than one or of them at once.

If she had to guess, Watts had probably done something to disable ship-wide communications, then hacked the interior mechanisms to allow Tyrian a straight shot to the brig. She'd never seen the scorpion Faunus fight herself, but Weiss had been the witness to his aftermath several times before tonight, and she could well believe that Tyrian was more than a match for even Specialists, if he caught them by surprise.

Which, clearly, he had.

After that, it probably had been a trivial matter for the two of them to divide and conquer, splitting the Specialist teams apart and luring them one by one to a swift end among their fellow, less-experienced soldiers. And then they had left the ship, going to spread more chaos, fear, and suffering in the defenders below…

Weiss clenched her teeth, tightening her grip around Myrtenaster. She had just about had it with those two destroying places she cared about.

When the two of them reunited in the center of the bridge, Ruby had clearly reached the same conclusion Weiss had –that the four of them were very likely the only ones left alive on the ship– and her face fell for a moment, before she visibly steeled herself and swung Crescent Rose around to her back.

Her lips moving in what was likely an apology, she reached out and gently eased a headset off of one technician's bloody head. Ruby put it on, and then squinted for a moment.

"Anything?" Weiss asked. Ruby sighed.

"Still just static," she said, laying it back down on the desktop a tactful distance away from the collapsed owner.

"It's an art, not a science," Torchwick quipped from where he stood over the main control terminal, although his voice was absent its usual cutting level of sarcasm and his eyes never left the screen. Neo's hand briefly lifted from the screen she was typing at, making him glance over, and she made a series of gestures. Torchwick looked affronted. "He is not."

More gestures.

"Oh, well, a doctorate." He snorted and looked back at the screen. "Having a doctorate just means you didn't have enough of a real life to spend it outside the classroom."

Weiss exchanged a baffled glance with Ruby. Ruby shrugged.

It didn't matter in any case, since after a tense five minutes or so, Neo punched the air with a silent cheer, and Torchwick whooped a few moments later.

"Hah!" he shouted, and then banged his cane against the side of the terminal with a smug grin. "How's that for Atlesian efficiency, Mister Mustache?"

"Everything's back up?" Ruby asked, brightening, and Neo nodded, before executing a graceful mock-bow. "Awesome! You guys are amazing!"

She snatched the headset up again and began babbling instructions, relaying the situation on the ship (minus their affiliation with Torchwick and Neo) and warning the defenders on the ground that Tyrian, Cinder, and Watts were almost certainly at large.

Weiss very pointedly did not turn her back to aforementioned criminals, sticking close by Ruby's side and watching them with a hawklike gaze as Ruby and whoever was on the other side exchanged a rapid stream of information, ending with Ruby hanging up with as pleased an expression as she could manage while holding onto headphones still bloody from their owner's disheveled hair.

"So," Torchwick said, and Weiss did not miss how he stuck close by the side of his partner as he spoke, nor how his fingers were curling around the grip of his cane and it was swung low and ready down at his side. "Truly a victory for the forces of justice and whatever. Now would you mind explaining to me just what the hell is going on?"

"We want Cinder and her backer gone," Ruby said staunchly, and Weiss made a harsh noise in the back of her throat.

"To be more precise, we want her dead, any plans she has enacted destroyed, and the earth salted behind us when we leave everything she has wrought in smoldering ashes," she spat, and Torchwick eyed her in a way that she imagined meant he was reassessing the threat levels in the room.

"Riiiiight…" he said slowly.

"It's a personal grudge," Ruby said, managing to look both sheepish and in complete agreement with Weiss –if such a thing was possible. "The point is: we're the ones who got her caught, we're the ones who foiled her plans at Mountain Glenn, and we're the ones who are going to finish her once and for all. Neo's been helping us all along-"

Torchwick cut his partner a sharp look, and Neo shrugged at him with an unrepentant half-smirk.

"-and part of her deal was getting you out of here safely. So!" Ruby clapped her hands together and rubbed them. "Now that we've got communications back online, we should probably go and back up the others, and you two can…?"

"Full offense, Little Red, but I am not risking my neck in the line of duty," Torchwick said flatly. "If not for the Grimm swarms, me and Neo would be on an escape ship and halfway to the city by now."

He glanced at his partner, as though confirming this, but Neo was nodding along in full agreement. Ruby sighed, but neither she nor Weiss was terribly surprised by this development.

"Very well then," Weiss said. "Neopolitan, you have access to the emergency funds I've granted the two of you, and I'm sure there's already an escape route planned out. Take what you need to get out safely: we'll contact you afterwards to plan our next move."

"We should fly out together in the airship, at least," Neo said, glancing warily at the bodies on the ground. "It'll be easier to pass through any Atlas checkpoints that way."

"Fair enough."

"Uh, excuse me," Torchwick said, raising a brow. "But as the nominal senior partner in this criminal relationship, I feel like I should remind you kids of the teensy weensy little unimportant detail of a massive Grimm swarm outside this battleship. We wouldn't get more than a hundred yards before they ripped the hull to smithereens."

"I can take care of the Grimm." Ruby said determinedly.

"Ha!" Torchwick barked out a laugh. He turned towards the windows, swinging his cane at the wheeling shapes outside with a patronizing smirk. "Little Red, I don't know if you've noticed, but the skies are swarming. I'm pretty sure that there's more Grimm out there than you've got bullets in your magazine."

"I'm not going to use bullets," Ruby told him, already heading towards the ladder to the outside hull and top deck.

Torchwick stared after her for a second as she began to climb, then pulled his hand down his face.

"I'm dreaming," he said flatly, eyes closed. "Her headless body's going to drop down the hatch in ten seconds, which is fine, but I could swear that I just heard Little Red say that she is not going to use her weapon to kill an army of Grimm. I'm dreaming."

Neo reached up and pinched him.

"Ow! Motherf-" Torchwick's eyes abruptly snapped open as the realization of what that pain meant struck him. "Oh no, no no no, this is a dream, this is absolutely just a dream-"

"While your coworker is speedrunning the first few stages of grief, may we please get on with it?" Weiss asked waspishly, and Neo rolled her eyes. Rather than saying anything to him or to Weiss, she just grabbed Torchwick by the sleeve, his cane safely hooked around the crook of his elbow, and dragged her partner over to Weiss, who was already opening the doors back into the ship's hallways.

"Okay, Neo, please tell me I'm dreaming," Torchwick begged as they reached Weiss. "I need to hear those words."

Neo looked up at him, and shook her head pityingly.

Torchwick groaned.

"Fuck. Fucking fantastic," he snarled, reaching up with his free arm to rake his fingers through his hair. "Here I am assuming you've got somebody important and powerful for us to turn our backs on Cinder and you've got a pair of fucking brats."

"Actually, she has thirteen fucking brats, give or take," Weiss said briskly as the metallic doors slid open. "Some of us quite powerful. Ruby is confident that she can take care of the Grimm because she has done something similar before."

"Right. Okay. Cool. Right. Fine." Torchwick reached inside his white jacket as they started walking down the hallway, swore again, and then grinned as Neo wordlessly held up a silver case. He opened it, expertly flicking out a cigar, and put it between his lips before he snapped the case shut again and tucked it inside his jacket. Weiss heard the clink of a lighter, and then a long, satisfied exhale. Well, nicotine was supposed to be soothing to its addicts, and his next words were certainly much calmer. "Right, so, I assume we're booking it out of here as fast as we can run?"

"You assume correctly. Cinder will undoubtedly suspect you of a double-cross the moment she realizes Atlas's robots aren't being deactivated and this ship is taking no aggressive action against the rest of the fleet, and I believe that Atlas is already alarmed at Ruby's message," Weiss said, her and Neo's heels clicking rapidly across the steel floor as the three of them headed for the emergency bay. "All in all, I would say that this is an unhealthy place for us to be at the moment."

"Can't you just radio your headmaster or whoever and tell him mission successful?" Torchwick drawled as they cut around a corner. "I've really learned the error of my ways, turned over a new leaf, and then the comms up here can conveniently short out 'cause someone spilled motor oil on 'em or something…?"

"Neither General Ironwood nor Professor Ozpin are aware of the fact that we intended to make an ally of you two," Weiss said, making him cough out his latest exhale of smoke.

"Okay, now I'm definitely starting to believe you brats might be useful," Torchwick said when he recovered. "You got the balls to lie to your teachers just for little old me?"

"Oh please," Weiss huffed under her breath, rolling her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself."

"It's not flattery if it's true, Ice Queen."

Weiss's eye twitched at the reemergence of the familiar nickname. Neo might be mute, but Weiss could feel her giggling at this.

"Kindly jump from the level of your ego down to your skill and die."

"Ouch!" Torchwick grinned around his cigar. "She bites."

Weiss darted a needlelike glare to their companion, who was grinning like her birthday had come early as Neo skipped along beside the other two, nearly having to take two strides for every one of theirs.

"Neopolitan, control your disgraceful partner before I shut his mouth for him," she snapped. "Permanently."

Brown and pink eyes narrowed slightly at her in response, but Neo still turned an admonishing look upon Torchwick, which Weiss counted as a victory.

Unfortunately, they did not meet with similar success as they wound deeper into the ship, passing landing deck after landing deck: every single one of them was empty, when there should have been enough small Mantas to rescue an entire squad in each bay.

After their seventh empty landing bay, Torchwick swore under his breath, his fingers tightening on the grip of his cane.

"Ho-kay," he said, shaking his head slowly as his eyebrows rose high on his forehead. "I'm bumping that 'this is a dismissal note' estimation of those orders downwards. This is a 'get fucked and die, please' note. They didn't even leave us a life vest, the bastards."

Neo nodded, looking outraged on her and her partner's (theoretical) behalf.

If things had gone the way Salem's cohort clearly intended them to, the two of them would have been left alone on this ship to stand against all of Atlas's remaining forces, and if they should attempt to retreat, this seemed to indicate that they would have no avenue for it. Watts –perhaps Cinder, but more likely Watts– had deliberately jettisoned each and every means of reaching the ground, leaving Neo and Torchwick stranded in the sky until this ship either crashed or someone else landed on it.

Or at least, that was how Salem's cohort had planned for things to go. Weiss was pleased to report a different outcome.

"I think we can safely assume there is no longer any emergency transport attached to the ship," she said. "We should get back to Ruby and see if the Grimm are at least cleared out. Between her mechanical expertise and our experience, we should be able to rig some form of transportation back down to the ground."

Torchwick sighed, but it seemed more theatrical than anything, since he followed in her wake easily enough as Weiss turned to head back away from the edge of the ship. Neo, oddly, seemed almost chipper, still skipping brightly along at their side as Torchwick turned his head to glare at her.

"Wipe that smirk off your face," he grumbled as they passed by the cafeteria.

Her grin noticeably widened.

"I know you told me so, you don't need to keep saying it. 'Oh, Cinder's so sketchy, we shouldn't get involved with someone like that' –yeah, and you know what else we shouldn't do? Go behind our partner's back to cut deals with Beacon students!"

Weiss rolled her eyes at almost the same time as Neo, although Torchwick had attention only for his partner, reading all the little micro-expressions that seemed to translate into speech for him.

"Yeah, I- yeah, I know I would- obviously I wouldn't!" he yelped after a moment, looking infuriated. "What self-respecting criminal mastermind would put his safety in the hands of a bunch of first-year trainees!?"

Neo raised an eyebrow, and Weiss could almost hear the And what self-respecting criminal mastermind would almost get caught, repeatedly, by one team of them?

"Oh, shut up," Torchwick growled, pulling his hat down low over his face as Weiss choked down a tiny snort and Neo grinned.

They rounded the corner and saw Cinder.

She stood alone as the three of them skidded to a stop, but that did not make her any less threatening: to Weiss's eyes, her dress looked like spilled blood against the cold grey steel and harsh white lights of the Atlas airship, shimmering richly with gold decorations and woven Dust. Her voice was a sultry purr just as warm as her dress, but its warmth could not disguise the danger.

"Imagine my surprise and irritation when Watts informed me that I had to return to the ship barely five minutes after I had left it."

She must've been the one to knock out all the transport ships, then. Weiss shuddered at the thought of how they must have just barely missed her in the air.

"I suppose you have a very good reason for why you have failed to enact your part of the plan? Roman." Those smoldering golden eyes moved to the side. "Neo."

Weiss held back her flinch as Cinder's gaze landed on her. This wasn't the same woman that had knocked her friends, her teammates, her family into the abyss. This Cinder was younger, weaker, overconfident in herself. This was a Cinder that was bloated on never-ending victories and saw them as mere bugs to be squashed, little knowing how skilled Weiss was.

"And… Weiss Schnee."

Cinder's features shifted into the perfect arrangement of playfully amused surprise.

"My my. I heard that you'd acquired a taste for low company at Beacon, but I had assumed that that was just your father justifying a Faunus teammate," she purred. "What an… interesting development this is. Was it you that tempted Roman to turn his back on me? On everything I promise? Did he really want to throw our deal away for mere obscene wealth?"

"Hey, yeah, she does have a point," Torchwick said, and Weiss jumped a little as he jogged her side with his elbow, quite frankly not expecting the man to touch her, ever. "You oughta pony up if I'm gonna be working with you, Schnee. Spread some of that acres of blood money around, I say."

"Gods," Weiss said faintly. "Are you really discussing my family wealth and how it applies to you right now?"

"Oh you've just got a silver spoon rammed right up in there, don'tcha, little miss 'wealthiest family on all of fucking Remnant'-"

Neo coughed pointedly, drawing their attention back to Cinder just in time to see her hands burst into flames.

"As fascinating as this conversation is," the half-Maiden purred, all liquid malice, "I'm afraid I must interrupt. Are you turning your back on us, Roman?"

"If I say no, will I not get flambéed?" Torchwick deadpanned, raising an eyebrow. However reluctantly, Weiss had to admire the wretched man for managing to seem so nonchalant before an enemy of this caliber. "'Cause I gotta say, looking at you right now, it kinda seems like it doesn't matter what my answer's gonna be."

"How very astute of you," Cinder drawled, and raised her arm in a swift, sharp motion.

Weiss acted.

The hallway before them exploded with pillars of ice, which then burst into melting fragments a microsecond later as they met the torrent of flame Cinder had hurled in the same moment.

However shaky her expertise may be, Weiss had fought Maidens, and seen Maidens fight, before. They might have all the elemental fury in the world, they might have incalculable power, but even they had limits. And she knew Cinder, knew that her preferred elements were fire and flame, just as Weiss's were snow and ice.

It might be created, controlled, and fueled by magic, but fire was still fire in the end. Water extinguished it.

The hallway filled with hissing steam as the fire Cinder had channeled melted through the ice Weiss had put up with a blast of heat, and Weiss's heart jolted as she heard Neo and Torchwick behind her, already running away. Well, that made sense –they were hardly going to stay to face an enraged Maiden, even if Cinder was still probably only half of one.

Weiss wasn't either. Oh, she could counteract some of Cinder's moves with Dust, but she naturally had a limited supply of it. Cinder did not have a limited supply of her magic, only her control over it, and this was a very bad time to experiment with where that threshold lay.

Weiss ran too, following the others. They were engaging Cinder on her terms right now, not their own, and for someone as powerful as a half-Maiden, they needed to be the ones on the attack. They needed to catch Cinder off-guard, not the other way around.

However fleet he might have ordinarily been, however, Torchwick was still shaking off the effects of a long imprisonment, and his run was a shambling thing compared to the graceful lope he should have been able to manage. Weiss was far too ladylike to curse, but that didn't mean that the urge to do so didn't streak hot and bloody across her mind as she easily caught up to him.

She flung a series of glyphs under his feet and poured on the speed as Neo flicked the tiniest of grateful nods in her direction. As the three of them ran, Weiss diverted her path to slap her hand over a control panel on the wall. The corridor clanked behind them, a blast door slamming shut just in time to catch another lance of fire aimed for their backs.

These ships were designed, after all, for military purposes, which meant that there was every chance that it may be grounded by a swarm of Grimm. It was important that the personnel on board would be able to section themselves off, separating the hallways into units that could be defended or used to trap Grimm that had breached sections of the walls. In emergency situations like this one, closing them was meant to be easy –opening them took a code.

Weiss was willing to bet Cinder didn't know the code, but it wasn't like mere metal walls would stop her for long, even if she still only had half the Maiden powers. Already, as Weiss tossed a glance over her shoulder, she saw a circular spot in the center of the blast doors warping and glowing orange, the metal starting to melt.

Neo, however, had caught on to Weiss's plan, and was darting ahead, quickly hitting more buttons to seal off every section of the corridor behind them that she could. It wouldn't stop Cinder, but it'd slow her down.

"You were on this ship the longest," Weiss said to Torchwick, who was running somewhat gingerly on her shimmering white glyphs as they swept him along, helping him keep pace with her and Neo. "I don't suppose you can think of any places to ambush her?"

"You're from Atlas," he sniped back. "Can't you?"

Neo clocked his shoulder with her parasol as they ran –not hard, more like she was threatening him to behave. Torchwick groaned without breaking stride.

"Maybe one of the storage hangers? If these tin cans haven't all been dropped with the airships, it'll give you room to engage and room to hide."

"Right." Weiss nodded sharply to herself, fixing the location in her mind. The sounds of banging and melting metal were growing fainter behind them, but that could change at any moment, if Cinder decided to launch a particularly strong piercing attack with the Maiden powers. Weiss glanced around, estimating where they were in relation to her and their stated goals on the ship. "Roman Torchwick, since you are at less than your best, I would highly recommend it if you joined Ruby on the exterior of the airship and informed her of our situation. The two of you can figure out how to get us down to Beacon."

"And you'll be…?"

"Dealing with Cinder." Weiss flashed a look towards Neo, who gave her a curt nod. "The two of us can probably take her in a fight, if we manage to center ourselves."

"Your 'probably' isn't winning my confidence here, Ice Queen."

"How about this –you'll be in our way, so get out of it before I stab you myself, so help me gods."

Neo cleared her throat meaningfully, and Weiss shot her a glare.

"If the man isn't intelligent enough to take steps to save his own life-"

The bulkhead exploded behind them, nearly throwing Weiss, Neo, and Torchwick off their feet. The latter was saved from falling only by employing his cane, stabbing it into the ground and bracing himself against his weapon as he used it for its intended function possibly for the first time in his life. Weiss and Neo, significantly more agile, just rocked and staggered on their feet, quickly regaining their equilibrium.

Weiss turned and saw Cinder standing many meters down the hall, one hand outstretched, her figure outlined in the molten orange glow of many different burned gaps in the heavy metal doors. She didn't see anything else, though, before Neo's parasol suddenly hooked around her belt, jerking her violently to the left, at the same moment Neo twirled to kick her erstwhile partner right in the chest with her opposite heel, sending him staggering to the right.

Weiss didn't have time to do anything but blink as Torchwick rolled to his feet and Neo swung over to join her, before the taller criminal suddenly vanished under a rippling sheen of glass shards at the very same moment a fireball rocketed through and shattered what Weiss realized was an afterimage of all three of them, which had been standing as though stupefied in the gap.

Smart.

Weiss didn't need Neo's prompting as the two of them dashed off down the hall, hopefully in the opposite direction as Torchwick. Neo used her Semblance again as an image of him popped up alongside them, but there was danger in this, too. If Cinder actually managed to hit the illusion, it would shatter, and if she was anywhere close to the intersection at that moment, she might go after Torchwick as the weaker, isolated target.

Weiss's brain said it might be acceptable.

Her heart said absolutely not.

He might be an absolute villain, but people were people and Weiss had sworn to protect people from the Grimm. Torchwick was a person and Cinder, as later encounters would show, was at least partially Grimm. The math was simple.

And besides –as much as a churlish, bitter corner of her wanted him dead– including the weighing of lives in her combat plan, judging whether it would an acceptable sacrifice to abandon someone to Cinder in order to secure Weiss's victory… it felt a bit too cold-blooded for her tastes. It reminded her of Jacques. It reminded her of Ironwood, when he'd well and truly gone off the deep end of raving insanity.

She wouldn't do it. She might be tempted, but she refused to do it, to lower herself to that level of callousness.

(The fact that Neo would stab her for even considering it was also a hefty factor in that decision.)

They both slowed as they neared the intersection, tossing a glance over their shoulder –Cinder needed to see them fleeing in this direction for the distraction to work. No fear of that: she was already through the gap of the last door, turning towards them with ominous calm as the air warped and shimmered around her.

Weiss whisked herself sideways with a glyph as Cinder hurled a fireball at them, which Neo leaped and somersaulted over, planting one heeled foot on the steel wall before kicking off to join Weiss and the glass illusion of Torchwick as they bolted headlong down the length of the ship.

What mattered now was speed: speed, and finding a way and a place to properly ambush Cinder. They couldn't do it in these corridors: they were too cramped, and Cinder could melt the steel walls with both her Semblance and the Maiden powers. Even with Aura, touching molten metal was a bad idea, so it wouldn't take long for Cinder to box them in. They needed a wider area. They needed-

Neo hooked her parasol around Weiss's elbow and tugged her sideways, into one of the docking bays for the Atlesian robots. It was currently empty, which meant the robots must have indeed been dropped down into Vale: but it was also much bigger than the hallways they had left. The illusion of Torchwick promptly burst, and Weiss saw a shimmer go over the world as Neo pulled her flat against the wall. Just as she did, Weiss saw three figures form, herself and Torchwick and Neo, running ahead with frantic footsteps.

She spared a moment to nod in respect, but Neo had her eyes squinted shut in concentration –well, she was controlling four illusions at once. Weiss made her job slightly easier by shifting inwards, overlapping Neo's body with her own as much as she could in the cramped space. With another person between her and Cinder –another person with Aura, no less– Neo should feel marginally more secure, which should help her concentrate.

The air heated rapidly, and Weiss could feel Neo tense alongside her as Cinder bolted through the door, chasing after the fleeting illusions with her body wreathed in heat and the Dust on her dress glowing red. She did not look around, and did not notice their switch.

Slowly, cautiously, quietly, Weiss took a half-step to the side, away from Neo, as Cinder ran after their illusions without a backwards glance. Weiss exchanged a look with Neo, who had opened her eyes and given her a smug, proud grin.

"Well done," Weiss whispered softly. "Now what?"

Neo pulled out her Scroll with a slight huff of exasperation, rapidly typing out her plan before angling the screen to show Weiss as she leaned in a little, shoulder to shoulder with the shorter woman.

I attack her with illusions, you support me with speed and glyphs and whatever else it is you do, since I'm not wasting Aura to hide you too. Don't get caught.

Despite the curt and rather unflattering summary of her Semblance, Weiss smiled a little. The last sentence was tacked on almost as a reflex, but it spoke of camaraderie. Even sarcastically, Neo was wishing her well, and hoping that she wouldn't die. That was very good forward progress.

"I won't," she said, and flourished Myrtenaster as the illusion in front of them faded away. "Best of luck to you as well."

Neo huffed and tilted her chin up, in a way that seemed to indicate who needs luck when I have skill?

"Of course." Weiss rolled her eyes a little, smirking, before she sobered. "Let's go."

A ripple of pink shards shot up from Neo's feet, hiding her as she went, and Weiss heard the almost-imperceptible sound of her tapping feet a moment later. Not to be outdone, Weiss quickly cast her glyphs for speed and followed, skating along the shimmering white surface with grim determination.

Neo was skilled in assassinations, able to cut through Yang's Aura in a single fierce stab, so Weiss needed to let her have the first strike. Neo wouldn't linger once she'd done it, though –not with Cinder's affinity for flames and heat. Knowing Cinder, she'd lash out with a burst of fire, and since Neo did know Cinder, she'd stab and immediately retreat as Cinder hurled her defense outwards.

Then, that moment, Weiss could press her attack: in that minuscule gap between sending out her flames and deciding her next move, Cinder would be vulnerable, caught in a split second of indecision as she waited to see if she had caught her enemy or needed to try another attack. At that very moment, Weiss could press her own attack, using her Lancer summon to pelt Cinder with bone chips.

Using Dust would be inefficient: ice would melt and lose its sharpness, while Cinder might be entirely invulnerable to fire, and Weiss did not have a very firm control of her Earth Dust even now. It would have to be a summons, since she didn't dare come into close proximity with Cinder and her flames, and the Queen Lancer would do nicely to keep Cinder busy, if Weiss pinched down the size a little.

So thinking, Weiss dropped to her knees once she cleared the second large docking area, stabbing Myrtenaster into the floor as a shimmering glyph grew under her feet. She would need to time this correctly, since if the fleeing red shape caught the sound of the Queen Lancer's buzzing wings and turned, it might ruin their ambush…

A glowing shape bloomed to life above her, and Weiss quickly sent it soaring up to the ceiling, wings pattering as quietly as she could make them. Now she moved forward again, leaving her speed behind as she focused on the next complex arrangement of glyphs. This would need to be flawless…

Cinder cried out, more of a roar of rage than anything, as Weiss saw her Aura strain and flicker briefly against something trying to pierce into her back and lodge between her shoulderblades. Though her Aura held firm, the force of that blow was enough to send Cinder to her knees, and a coruscating blast of fire and raw heat slammed outwards from her body as she gave a snarl, burning a circle several feet all around her.

Neo was already gone, though, as Weiss had expected, probably riding that wave of heat with her open parasol to dodge the rest of the attack, and Weiss flexed her will as the Lancer summons dove, spewing out a hail of bone chips from its stinger. Cinder cried out from surprise this time as a significant amount of them landed, cutting further into her Aura, and Weiss took a deep breath, smoothing her finger down Myrtenaster's blade and closing her eyes.

The Time Dilation glyph was quite tricky. It required time to set up, and a very rare amalgamation of Gravity and Lightning Dust to use. Weiss, naturally, had access to such Dust, but even she had to use it sparingly. The actual effects were also limited despite their rarity: she could speed the time of whoever stood on the glyph, but only for about ten seconds. Since it took almost half that time to set up, the Time Dilation glyph was fairly useless against thinking foes, especially when she was alone.

However, in cases where she wasn't alone, where she had someone or something to distract the enemy while she prepared the glyph, it could be quite useful.

This was one such case.

A yellow glyph filled with a madly-spinning clockface bloomed under Weiss's feet, filling the air with a thrum of power, and everything seemed to slow, the fire zooming through the air pulling back to a lazy crawl.

Weiss began a mental count as she shot forwards, readying her Semblance again as several white glyphs spun into existence surrounding Cinder. Myrtenaster's chamber clicked as shards of ice blasted out of several glyphs, impacting her, and Weiss bounced around and between them, ricocheting off the glyphs surrounding the other woman as she hammered Cinder with sharpened ice and fierce, lunging stabs from her weapon, gouging as deeply into the woman's Aura as she could manage with every thrust.

As close to ten seconds as she could judge, she dropped her glyphs and created a Gravity one on the ceiling, yanking herself upwards as the Lancer swooped in to cover for her –just in time. The world lurched as time seemed to jolt back into its proper flow, and Weiss staggered from her place standing upside-down on the steel bulkhead. That was another reason she rarely used the glyph: the disorientation from the rapid flow of time back into the normal one was quite disorienting, especially when she wasn't used to it.

Cinder shouted in frustration as fireballs billowed out everywhere, hurling in every direction, and even when Weiss was already frantically skating and dodging to the farthest reaches of the ceiling she could, a quiet corner of her mind tabbed that behavior. So far, Cinder had used fireballs, concentrated blasts of heat and flames, and centered, flailing, area-of-attacks where she just flung fire outwards from herself for a meter or so and hoped to hit something.

Nothing else.

She hadn't used her Semblance concurrently with the Maiden powers, either –Cinder was definitely less powerful, less experienced, than Weiss remembered. Streams of fire that she shot from her hands, large explosions with an epicenter around her body, and fireballs seemed to be the extent of her control and creativity, as far as the Maiden powers went.

Weiss, naturally, wouldn't trust that assumption with her life, but it did give her and Neo something to build on.

Speaking of which, one of the explosions seemed to have blasted Neo out of her illusion, as when Weiss glanced back she was lunging at Cinder with parasol drawn, using the spread canopy to deflect fireballs and the pole to clash against the glass sword that Cinder had summoned and was using in one hand.

Weiss pointed with Myrtenaster, and the Queen Lancer swooped in, spewing more ghostly shards at Cinder as Neo lightly leapt backwards. Weiss kept the Lancer summons flying away from her as she ran back towards the duelists, using her glyphs to keep her on the ceiling, but she was forced to dodge to one side with a cry as Cinder hurled a stream of fire upwards. How had she-?

Right.

Cinder still had both eyes.

Stupid, stupid, stupid –Weiss cursed herself for her blunder as she disengaged the Gravity Glyphs and dropped, flipping rightside-up and landing on her summons as it dove past, carrying her around to try and get into Cinder's proper blind spot while Neo pressed her attack.

No more lazy assumptions, no more remembrances of how Cinder used to be. Weiss was fighting an entirely different person, and she'd best keep that in mind. She wasn't fighting Cinder, she was fighting… Cinder's weaker, younger twin.

Yes, that was the way to adjust her mentality –this woman had the same rough moves, the same fighting style, but it wasn't quite identical. It wasn't really Cinder.

Her Aura was falling. Weiss could measure from experience even if she didn't dare distract herself with her Scroll: if she wasn't in the yellow, she would be soon, and reluctantly dismissed her Lancer as she landed on the steel floor and shot forwards. Glyphs were smaller and took less Aura to make, which meant they were more sustainable.

Weiss and Neo needed to wear Cinder's Aura down as fast as they could, because unlike how it was with anyone else, Cinder would not be defenseless once her Aura had broken. In order to kill a half-Maiden, Weiss and Neo needed to keep up their own Aura reserves well past the normal safety points.

Ideally, they'd both be at half power by the time they brought her down, but Cinder wasn't making that likely right now, twisting to slash at Weiss with a glass scimitar as a wave of fire was flung outwards, forcing her to duck and slow her pace as Cinder blocked Neo's strike with her other sword. They'd forced her into dual-wielding –she probably couldn't throw fire from her hands, anymore, not without a bit of concentration.

"Enough!" Cinder snarled as Weiss ran towards her, plunging one of her swords into the ground as the air became chokingly hot and Weiss felt heat radiating through her shoes. She quickly switched out her glyphs, pulling herself and Neopolitan up to the ceiling with her Gravity Glyphs as the floor burst into roaring, towering flames.

Cinder stood unharmed amidst the fire, her chest heaving up and down slightly as she panted, before she slammed those two glass swords together to form a bow and arrow, swinging it around to face them. Neo quickly opened her parasol, blocking herself from the glass arrow that shattered against it a moment later, and Weiss created a shimmering white glyph to serve as her own shield.

Safe behind their respective protections, Weiss and Neo looked at each other. Ambush had failed, inasmuch as Cinder was still alive, and she was busily filling the cargo bay with fire, using Maiden powers to spread the flames that burned without fuel. Weiss couldn't hold them up like this forever: if her Aura didn't break, she'd eventually run out of Gravity Dust.

Weiss opened her mouth to say something, anything –but then one of those black arrows slammed into the ceiling just outside of the glyph holding Neo up, and a swirling fiery circle started up around the buried arrowhead as the metal whined with heat.

Neo's eyes widened, and Weiss immediately dismissed the glyph as Neo began to drop –just in time to avoid the explosion as the place where she had been standing became awash with flames.

Another arrow exploded against Neopolitan's opened parasol as she dropped, holding the canopy between herself and Cinder like a shield –and even though she blocked it, the force was more than enough to send the petite woman flying. Neo slammed into the bulkhead wall with a worrisome clang, before she fell limply towards the ground.

The ground that was currently on fire.

"No!" Weiss cried, spinning Myrtenaster's chamber and drawing on her Ice.

She flung it towards where Neo would land and then, rather than using the paltry amount of Dust in her sword –the amount that could only create a spray of ice about as big as a car– she recklessly jammed a hand into her belt pouch and pulled out her supply of reserves, cracking open the tough glass vials with a squeeze of her Aura-shrouded fist as fierce cold bloomed over her skin.

Rather than let it freeze her arm solid, Weiss channeled her Semblance and her Dust magery, forcing as much of that raw energy towards the midpoint of the room as she possibly could.

The flames under Neo's tumbling form went out as a chilly puddle formed for her to land in, and a solid wall of jagged, malformed ice slammed up between them and Cinder, covering the cargo bay from one side to another and from floor to ceiling like a glacier.

Weiss could only pray that it would be thick enough to delay Cinder as she shook her frost-burned arm free from its painful coating of ice, skating over to the wall before she dropped her Gravity Glyph and landed beside Neo, who was sitting up wincingly.

Neo spat out a concerning strand of blood, and her multicolored eyes flashed in Weiss's direction. It only took Weiss a few seconds to decipher the meaning behind them, and she scoffed.

"Don't be a dolt," she said with a twirl of Myrtenaster, readying herself to cast a glyph, be that one to block any strikes in their direction or to speed their escape, as an ominous orange glow flared brightly behind the wall of ice. "Cinder's our enemy too, so I'm hardly about to leave you behind."

Neo staggered to her feet, wiping a wrist across her mouth and chin. She didn't say anything, but Weiss fancied she felt a tinge of relief –or perhaps satisfaction– emanating off the smaller woman.

Honor among thieves, indeed. Weiss had the mendacious thought that Jacques would be tearing his hair out if he saw her now: consorting, making deals, and even allying with a bonafide criminal.

Well, whatever. He wasn't important right now, and he would be in for a rude surprise if he tried to wrest her away from Beacon in the aftermath this time around.

Weiss and Neo shifted away from the probable blast point as steam began to hiss through the air, Weiss raising her sword as Neo flourished her parasol. A thought occurred, and Weiss glanced worriedly to the side.

"Are you…?"

Neo glanced at her impatiently and then mouthed her lower lip once as she looked back towards the melting ice, pressing her teeth there without biting. Weiss got the message: Neo had cut her lip or the inside of her mouth on her teeth, not injured her lungs. Good. Chest wounds like that had a nasty tendency to be fatal.

Still, the fact that she'd injured herself at all proved that Neo's Aura had run low –perhaps even snapped– after casting all those illusions to distract Cinder and give them time and a chance to divide and conquer. Weiss considered that, thinking of how much Aura Cinder must have had left after tanking all their shots and using her Semblance a few times, and made a decision.

"Go."

Neo's head whipped around, looking at her in surprise as Weiss gripped Myrtenaster with both hands.

"If it isn't broken completely, you're low on Aura," she said, and took a deep breath, steadying herself. "It isn't worth the risk. Get outside with Ruby and Torchwick, and the three of you can decide how best to reinforce me –if I don't finish off Cinder in the meantime. It'll give you time to recover your Aura at least a little, too, since Ruby will have eliminated the Grimm in the skies around us."

Neo still hesitated for a brief second, looking into Weiss's eyes. She read the questions there, and quirked her lips.

"No, I am not making a ridiculously heroic self-sacrifice so you can get away," Weiss huffed. "This is simply the most strategic decision. If I hold out long enough, perhaps you can get the exterior cannons working and I can dash outside and lure Cinder into one of their paths."

Neopolitan grinned, then reached out to pat Weiss's shoulder. It was just a momentary touch –just a quick, firm squeeze– but the complete lack of sarcasm, patronization, or disdain in Neo's eyes made it worthwhile.

For that brief moment before she dashed back the way they had come, she sincerely wished Weiss well.

Weiss smirked thinly in satisfaction as she turned back to the giant wall, just in time for Cinder to burst through it amidst several falling chunks of ice. With a flick of Myrtenaster and a spin of the Dust chamber, a strong wind carried those chunks up, bashing them against the half-Maiden as Weiss darted in, drawing her rapier back for another lunging stab with all of her weight and glyph-sped momentum behind it.

Cinder barely knocked that blow away, and Weiss twisted to avoid the retaliatory lash of fire as Myrtenaster scraped down, drawing what would have been a severe gash over Cinder's leg if not for her Aura.

Cinder could handle objects at a great heat, as evidenced by her Semblance, but she needed to use her Semblance to do so, and that burned Aura just as much as guarding against flames in the regular way did. She could control her Maiden flames, but if she used them for attacks rather than propelling her into the air, she seemed almost as vulnerable to those flames as she was to anything else.

Therefore, if Weiss didn't give her any room to breathe, to back away and summon her fireballs, Cinder would have to fight her more or less as a regular person, with swords and that glass bow.

Weiss could work with that.

A flick of her wrist had white glyphs shimmering into existence around Cinder on all sides, and Weiss shot herself forwards again, ricocheting from right to top to left to bottom, piercing deep into Cinder's Aura with each traveling strike as she did. Her last strike was tipped with Dust, and Cinder snarled as the thrust of it slammed into her belly, sending her skidding across the floor. She kept her footing, though, which was impressive.

"I see money can buy talent, if you're a Schnee," Cinder coughed spitefully, and Weiss narrowed her eyes, lightly raising her sword as she kept it between them. If she lost Myrtenaster in this fight –no, that didn't bear thinking about. She would win this, and the only possible way she would lose her main advantage was if she was disarmed.

And Weiss could still use her Semblance, even if she lost Myrtenaster.

"Well, you'd know all about trying to buy talent, wouldn't you?" she sneered back, deciding to try for a taunt of her own, to make Cinder lose some of her control and focus. "Constantly grubbing after power and prestige like a hog chasing scraps in a cesspit."

Cinder's eyes narrowed into molten slits of amber, and she raised her fist with a snarl.

The resultant fireball was much bigger than any of the others, bursting against the glyph Weiss hastily put up as she skated to the side, veering around Cinder as she slammed those two black scimitars down against Weiss's guard.

"You know nothing of what it means to have power!" Cinder spat at her between the gap of their crossed swords. They disengaged, Cinder trying to swing her swords in from both directions at once as Weiss twisted, catching one blade on Myrtenaster and spinning the tip up to deflect the other as they locked again, swords twisted together. "It's been yours all your life, so you take it for granted!"

A heeled foot slammed into Weiss's solar plexus, catching her off guard as she flew backwards a few feet.

Cinder clapped her hands together, fusing her swords in the same move as she bent her newly-formed bow back, a glass sword kindling between her hands.

"Why shouldn't I take it from you?" she hissed, and let fly. Weiss batted one arrow aside with her sword, and streaked off, following the path of her glyphs as she sped along and tried to dodge those arrows, knowing that even if they didn't hit her, they could still be activated by Cinder's Semblance and thus explode.

"And you know nothing of what it means to get power!" Weiss snapped back as she slid across the room, ducking and dodging as her path zigzagged between whistling arrows of blackened glass. Keep her distracted, keep her angry. "You might want everything, but what do you expect to do when you finally have it?"

"That doesn't matter!" Cinder shouted back, and Weiss lurched away as one of the arrows exploded almost in her face, forcing her to sideslip backwards. She slashed Myrtenaster outwards as she landed on one knee, and her oldest summoning glyph quickly spun to life under her feet, the slightly-larger-than-human-sized Arma Gigas growing in front of her.

"You call me a spoiled brat, but are you sure you aren't projecting?" Weiss huffed in bitter amusement as she wiped her wrist across her mouth, the Arma Gigas summon taking a protective stance before her body. "I want, I want, I want –you're like a child throwing a temper tantrum."

Cinder howled her fury as flames burst to life around her, and Weiss clicked her tongue as her summons charged and Weiss shot forwards –but at an angle, ascending up a slope of white glyphs.

Controlled by her will, the Arma Gigas swung for Cinder's side with its enormous broadsword, and even as she vaporized it with a furious blast of heat, Weiss was already landing on the bulkhead wall behind her, crouching on a Time Dilation glyph as it bloomed to life under her feet. This would have to be her last one: Weiss could feel her Aura pulling tight over her skin –not painful, but tense, her heart aching like she was on the last leg of a marathon. She was running low.

The world slowed around her as Weiss launched herself off, aiming with as much force as she could at Cinder's most vulnerable points. She'd gotten sloppy: time to punish her for it.

In her rage, Cinder had directed her more powerful attack at the first thing coming for her, forgetting that Weiss and her summons moved independently of one another, and in that split-second of blind wrath as Cinder hurled her flames, she couldn't be sure of which white blur was the human one.

Myrtenaster hit Cinder and clattered off her Aura, again and again, as Weiss strained, biting her lip. It was so close, she could see the dim orange light glinting like sullen sparks where she hit. Cinder's Aura was faltering, fading: not yet flickering, but close. She was almost there…

Weiss's attack slashed across Cinder's throat –and then her legs trembled as time rushed back into its proper proportions.

A fiery hand slammed into her abdomen, knocking Weiss back and eating through the last remnants of her own Aura as it dipped into the red. Weiss hit the corner of the wall, before looking hastily around and flicking her last –her very last– glyph under her feet as she bolted forwards, heading for the hole in the nearby ice wall. On reflex, she ducked as she reached it, and a fireball skimmed over her head as Weiss darted through the gap.

There were more doors on either side of her as she came out on the other side, places she could go, and of course, the outer bay wall, where ships could make emergency landings and the drones could be deployed horizontally onto a conquered surface. Weiss ran for that wall, because her allies were on the outside and it would do them no good if Weiss hid in the interior of the ship. She had to get to it, to reach the outside, somehow.

Sudden, tearing, agonizing heat burst across her back and shoulders, and Weiss yelped as she was flung forward, skidding and tumbling across the ground as she kept a tight hold on her weapon.

Her fragile coat of Aura trembled, weakening. She could feel how it had shrunk in even more, leaving her clothes to blacken and burn while still protecting her flesh.

Weiss hastily rolled to her feet and turned towards that attack before the momentum of it even finished, holding Myrtenaster out in front of herself with both hands as she backed towards that wall, now less than six meters away. Cinder sauntered through the gap in the ice, both hands aflame, her eyes gleaming with deadly intent.

"It hurts your pride, doesn't it?" Weiss panted defiantly, still edging her way, shuffle by careful step, slowly towards the outer wall. "That a mere student is enough to challenge you like this."

Cinder's lips compressed as she held up her hand, fire dancing over her palm.

"Considering yourself a challenge is rather arrogant," she replied in a silken, deadly purr, and Weiss risked the briefest of glances backwards. She was near to the wall, now.

"What else should I be?" she asked, quickly turning back towards the other woman. "A mere seventeen-year-old trainee is enough to almost break your Aura. I bet if I hit you just a few more times, I'd be able to kill you."

"Kill me?"

Cinder's head tilted to the side, a cruel smirk marring her face.

"My goodness, standards really have dropped amongst Hunters," she drawled, making Weiss's lips draw back in a snarl, exposing her teeth, at the sly callback to Cinder's broadcast. "Kill me? Shouldn't a good little Huntress like you want to arrest me, instead?"

"Considering the power you stole, I think not," Weiss said, her breathing slowly evening out as she reached her second wind, her Aura strengthening just a little as the moments passed without incident. "The safest thing for Remnant is for you to die."

"How very dramatic of you."

Cinder slashed her hand, flinging a sweep of fire towards Weiss, and she ducked under it, running for the other woman in what would be a reckless move under any other circumstances. But Weiss didn't have a choice: her Aura was enough to protect her from a hit or two, but not enough to do that and cast more glyphs. Right now, her only chance of survival was killing Cinder before Cinder killed her.

That, or delaying until Ruby and the others showed up, but talking was clearly done and Weiss had no other way to stall, not unless she wanted to fight.

Ducking and dodging around those bolts of fire, Weiss finally got into swinging range with Myrtenaster as she and Cinder clashed together, metal scraping against glass as Cinder summoned her twin swords again.

Weiss made sure to stay out of kicking range, or at least kicking position, as she tried to pierce Cinder's defense with quick, probing darts and slashes from Myrtenaster. Cinder's curved swords were designed for slashing and hacking, and the ear-piercing shriek of glass grating down the tang of her blade made Weiss grit her teeth more than once as she deflected those swords to one side.

Cinder grew more intense the longer Weiss withstood her assault, hitting harder as that icy control slipped from her expression, just a little, a frown twisting her beautiful face as her swords clashed and clattered against Weiss's.

Weiss cried out as Cinder swung one of those scimitars down so hard it broke, shoving Myrtenaster towards the ground as a flying shard of red-hot glass speared across Weiss's cheek, scoring a thin line there as she felt blood start seeping down. Her Aura was spent, well and truly.

She barely managed to block Cinder's next attack as the woman swung her remaining sword viciously at Weiss's middle, sending her flying back to crash against the bulkhead as light seared its way across Weiss's brain and pain burst inside her skull.

Her hands felt numb as she slid down the wall, her legs too weak to stand. Tiny blue-white sparks were fizzling off of her body when her vision focused again. The breaking of her Aura –of the force of her soul– was exhausting as it always was, even as Weiss stabbed Myrtenaster in the ground, straining to get up as she pulled herself onto one knee.

Despite her exhaustion, her heart was beating frantically as sweat poured down her spine, hearing and seeing and feeling Cinder approach. This was it. She'd failed. She'd failed-

No.

No, failure wasn't failure until it was over. Weiss was still alive. There was no one to stop Neo from reaching Ruby and Torchwick on top of the ship, nothing to stop them from sending help to her right away. Neopolitan and Torchwick both wanted Cinder dead just as much as they did, so there was absolutely no reason for the two of them to go turncoat now –especially when Cinder was already weakened, already vulnerable. Neo had probably reached them ages ago, and Ruby had already hatched out one of her brutally efficient battle plans.

Weiss held that hope in her heart as she looked up through her bangs at the approaching Cinder, panting raggedly as she finally accepted that she didn't have the strength to get up. So be it.

Weiss had to trust the others.

She did.

She believed in them.

Thumbing Myrtenaster's Dust chamber and firming her half-kneeling stance, Weiss knew that somehow, they would see this all through.

---

Ruby took a deep breath as she climbed upwards, concentrating on the cold of the metal ladder against her ungloved fingers, letting that coldness sink into her mind and calm her. She could do this. She had to do this.

Life is precious, life is beautiful, and it must be protected. Think about the people that love you.

Knowing what it was like out there, how many Grimm were wheeling in the sky, she'd probably have to flash her silver eyes the second she popped her head out of the hatch. She needed to summon that energy now, rather than climb out and then start centering herself. Ruby could feel the warmth building in her eyes, the hint of a glint at the edge of her pupils as a faint ring of silvery white light grew around her vision.

She thought of Weiss, trying to wrangle Torchwick and Neo in the airship below, indomitable and defiant and always at Ruby's back.

She thought of Yang, her big sister who had always been there for her, even when they disagreed.

She thought of Blake, measured and passionate, who wanted to become the person for Ruby that she hadn't had when she was in Ruby's place.

She thought of Jaune, her first friend at Beacon, just as socially awkward, just as fiercely devoted to protecting people.

She thought of Pyrrha, as sweet as she was strong, who had fallen trying to protect people and now had a second chance at life.

She thought of Nora, whose fun and energy had colored many a happy day at Beacon, who had supported her all the way across Anima.

She thought of Ren, a rock to put her shoulders against and a level head when everyone else was panicking and confused.

She thought of Penny, bright and shiny as her namesake, whose future Ruby had a chance to protect.

She thought of Oscar, who had almost as much ingenuity as she did, who was brave and strong all out of proportion to his lack of experience.

She thought of all her friends.

She thought of Summer.

Look at me, mom. See how I'm saving people! See how I make you proud… wherever you are.

Ruby's hand flattened against the escape hatch, and she took one last deep breath.

Love. Protection. Friends. Family.

She shoved the hatch open as the screams of Grimm poured into her ears, before setting her boot on a higher rung and propelling herself an extra foot upwards as she opened her eyes wide.

Night turned to day as light blazed across the sky with the suddenness and intensity of a lightning bolt, a flash of silvery-white radiance engulfing the ship and probably –hopefully– a fair distance around it. Ruby couldn't tell, couldn't see, but she could still hear, and the shrieks of Grimm had receded greatly by the time she blinked her eyes a little, the glow fading.

Around her –all around the ship– there was nothing but foul black Grimm ash in the wind, and Ruby could see, faintly in the distance, more shapes at what must have been the edge of her range dropping out of the sky, Grimm partially or completely turned to stone.

"Heh." Ruby grinned and hopped the rest of the way out of the hatch, standing on the deck as she turned to view the, well, lack of carnage in the air all around her. "I totally took care of that."

Still, there was no reason to rest on her laurels, and Ruby quickly skipped towards the extreme forward end of the enormous airship (fore or aft, she wasn't nearly militaristic enough to remember) as she prepared to use her eyes again on the few Grimm that were already wheeling back towards her.

One use of silver eyes or more –Salem would get news of it eventually, now that Ruby had blasted half a horde's worth of Grimm. Right now, the best thing to do for herself and everyone else on the ground would be to zap as many Grimm as she possibly could reach from up here on the Atlas airship.

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and all that.

It was getting easier to get into the headspace she needed to use her silver eyes, though it had also been one of the things that Ruby had to physically relearn. Her Semblance and her Aura were as strong as they had been in Atlas, but her body was still fifteen. She was a few inches smaller, and it was harder to swing Crescent Rose with the force she had once used.

Enough training over the past few months had bulked her up, but she couldn't exactly practice her silver eyes without using them on Grimm, and that was an endeavor fraught with several different kinds of risk.

Still, at least she hadn't knocked herself out again, like the first time she'd used her silver eyes as her fifteen-year old self.

That would have been embarrassing.

Radiance exploded across the sky again as Ruby waited for a Nevermore to swoop towards her before summoning all the memories of her friends that she could and blasting it –and everything else her eyes could reach. Ruby still wasn't 100% sure what her range was, or how her eyes worked. They were activated by Grimm, so was her range "as far as Grimm existed"?

But that had to have a limit too, because her eyes hadn't destroyed every Grimm currently at Beacon, and she hadn't done more than petrify the Leviathan in Argus. The Manticores and Sphinxes that had been swarming around nearby had still been fine, so was the power of her silver eyes targeted instead?

Too many questions, not enough answers. Ruby should really see about getting Penny to get Doctor Polendina in contact with Maria, and then find a way to successfully reintroduce herself.

She turned towards the other end of the ship, beginning the long trek to the back end. If Ruby was feeling particularly gutsy, she might have tried climbing onto one of the three stabilizer fins that stuck out behind the engines, but quite frankly, it was probably only a matter of time before Cinder or Atlas or both turned their attention towards this giant inactive ship, and at that time it would be a particularly bad idea to be balancing on a thin metal strut only a little wider than her feet, some hundreds of meters above the ground.

Besides, it only added like twenty or so yards to her range. Totally not worth it, when all Ruby could reach were the flying Grimm. If she'd been able to vaporize some of the ones on the ground, it might have been worth a try, but so far her attacks seemed to be a lot more horizontal than vertical.

The fact that –even if there weren't any Grimm swooping around– the shuddering strength of the wind whooshing past her made Ruby's palms sweat certainly didn't have anything to do with that decision, nope, no siree. It wasn't a hurricane or anything, but it was enough to send Ruby's hair lashing at her face and her cloak whipping behind and around her as the air howled past. It was also enough to tug at her body as she jogged, subtly, just enough to feel as she swayed on her course by the merest half-fraction of an inch.

So yeah. Ruby was not going out on those struts.

She paused at the edge of the ship, sweating for a different reason now as the heat from the Dust engines and the vented exhaust radiated up from beneath her feet, and swallowed thickly. Her lips were already chapped, and Ruby made a mental note to hydrate at the soonest possible opportunity as she closed her eyes and sank into her peaceful, happy image of her friends, before opening them with another blasting flash of silver light as the shrieking cries of the Grimm died even further.

There were barely any stragglers now, and Ruby turned worried eyes to the other ships on the horizon as she skipped back to the place where the bridge stuck out from the rest of the airship. Sure, maybe someone had seen the flashes of her eyes and mistaken them for some sort of anti-Grimm weapon (not… entirely false), but she was less worried about the ship not being marked as hostile and more worried about reinforcements getting here before Neo and Torchwick could book it.

However doe-eyed she may or may not be, Ruby had very firm ideas about how to employ her optimistic outlook, especially during combat: hope for the best, plan for the worst.

They probably had less than five minutes before someone decided that this ship warranted immediate investigation, and Ruby had had ample experience with Atlas's shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality. If someone saw her and Weiss with Torchwick and Neo, they'd probably all get arrested –or at least the people from Atlas would make the attempt– and they couldn't afford that kind of delay when Cinder was probably also on her way right this very second.

The hatch she'd come out of was still open as she reached it, and Ruby immediately whipped out Crescent Rose when she saw movement inside, leaving her baby in sniper form.

"Woah-kay." Torchwick held up one hand in a somewhat sarcastic pantomime of surrender as he popped up over the edge, keeping his other hand on the metallic rungs of the ladder. "Guess you're still alive after all, Little Red."

"Uh, same to you?" Ruby replied somewhat awkwardly. She saw that he'd hooked his cane on the crook of his elbow for storage as he climbed, and somehow, Torchwick's hat stayed on as he moved the rest of the way up, despite the wind blustering past them. He mock-brushed some dust or ash from his shoulders, then took a look around and whistled at the almost-completely-empty skies all around them.

"How'd you pull this one off?"

"I have magic eyes," Ruby said absently, her eyes flicking from him to the open hatch and worry rising in her when neither Weiss nor Neopolitan followed. "Where are the others?"

"All the airships got shoved out before we could get to them, and then Cinder showed up to demonstrate her displeasure at me not sticking to the plan. Neo and the Schnee kid are taking care of that while we're left to plan a route to the ground," Torchwick explained briskly, removing his cane from his arm as he stepped across to join her. Ruby saw his eyes roam over the sky. "Y'know, if you hadn't blasted 'em all, I could probably get us a ride down by hooking my weapon around somebody's beak. 'Grimm Cowboys' has a nice fun ring to it, don't you think?"

"Nope," Ruby deadpanned, folding up her scythe and stowing it on her back. She bit her lip and looked towards the other command ships, which were busy firing onto the horde below and the few flying stragglers that she hadn't reached with her eyes. "You think when Atlas sends a few ships over to check on us, we can ride them out?"

"Eh, me and Neo can pilot a Bullhead, but somehow I don't see those ships accepting any pilots without type-in credentials," Torchwick said, stabbing his cane onto the ground and leaning on it as he cocked one hip. "How'd you three get up here?"

"Beacon's weapon lockers," Ruby said. "They have guided rockets in them."

Torchwick blinked at her for a second, then pulled his hand down his face, muttering something about 'and Neo calls my ideas crazy.'

"Okay, Red, so let's try this," he said, lifting his head from his hand. "You got your Scroll, right? Dial up the rocket code for one of your little friends, pray that they haven't left their shit in their locker during the apocalypse, and we can hook that thing as it comes in before it crashes, then ride that sucker back out."

Torchwick then gave her a slightly disconcerting up-down glance, and sucked his teeth.

"Eh, make that two lockers," he amended. "I don't think we'll all fit on just one no matter how tiny you kids are."

"Shouldn't we wait for Neo and Weiss?" Ruby asked nervously, and Torchwick rolled his eyes.

"Obviously. Sheesh, brat, for some conspiracy theorist or whatever, you'd think you'd never schemed anything before." He rapped the top of her head with his cane, not very gently, as Ruby tried to figure out whether or not Torchwick had been more bearable when he was trying to kill her. "Calculate the flight time –how long that thing's gonna take to get here. We factor that in for how long it'll take our partners to get here, minus how long it takes for them to beat Cinder, and wham, we've got our window."

"Um… thanks?"

"No thanks necessary," Torchwick deadpanned back at her. "Lien has a much more tangible effect of gratitude, I've found."

"We are literally saving your life." Ruby swatted away his cane with some annoyance. "You owe us for the next, like, thousand forevers."

"Now, see, I did not agree to those terms."

"Would you rather we left you for Cinder?!"

"I'd rather I'd get to negotiate, is all," Torchwick said, and then flicked his hand at her dismissively. "Get cracking on that calculation, Little Red. Timing is the most important part of a heist, and we don't want to miss our window."

Ruby grumbled a little at his condescending tone as she pulled out her Scroll, opening the calculator function. Trajectory and Dust power and all the rest of it was stuff that you learned at Signal –as a Huntress, Ruby had to have this stuff in her head as second-nature when she was fighting, especially with her kind of Semblance.

Knowing how things would fly with this amount of force behind them, how a wide range of objects would be affected by Dust explosions, how to use all that information to chart a course through the air for human and nonhuman bodies alike… hasty calculations of that nature could save lives on a battlefield, so they were exhaustively drilled into Hunter trainees' heads from day one. Ruby knew the math without even thinking on it.

Still, no reason not to be thorough, and this wasn't exactly something she could afford to mess up on –more so than usual.

Ruby glanced up from her Scroll as there was a series of somewhat worrisome crunching noises, only to see Torchwick stretching luxuriously in a series of semi-familiar poses as his joints and ligaments popped and pulled in a disturbingly audible manner.

"Oh, that's good," he said with a faint groan as he finally relaxed again. "You ever been locked in a closet for weeks on end, Red? You never appreciate mobility until you can't even fully extend your arms and legs."

Ruby sighed as she folded up her Scroll again.

"Do you really expect me to say yes to that?" she said, putting her Scroll away on her belt. "And if I use one of the lockers at Amity, it'd take about a minute and a half for it to get here."

"Duly noted. Also, how am I to know what pushed you to choose this quite frankly idiotic career path? Maybe your parents thought you were tearing around the house too much as a kid and stuffed you in a closet to get some peace."

"Hey, you need Hunters," Ruby shot back, choosing to ignore his quite frankly abusive example as she folded her arms. "In case you forgot, we're the only thing that protects you and everyone else from the Grimm."

Torchwick scoffed, turning to look at her with palpable disdain.

"I can protect myself from the Grimm just fine, Little Red, thank you very much."

You really can't, Ruby thought, glancing upwards to the cloudy night sky by reflex. Still no Griffons –no Grimm at all, actually, not for a mile. Good. What few remained in the sky after her blast of silver-eyed-power were all still focused on the other airships.

Still, this was… somewhat awkward.

For Torchwick, this situation was probably just slightly weird: Neo had showed up and rescued him, as per the plan, and then introduced him to the allies that they planned to use to get one over on Cinder. The fact that it was two Huntress trainees definitely threw him, but Neo's insistence had mostly won him over.

And besides: it wasn't like he could really go back on his betrayal. He hadn't deactivated the robots, which meant Cinder would come for his head no matter what excuses he gave, so at this point Torchwick's only way out was through, mediocre allies notwithstanding. What Ruby had done to the Grimm had probably boosted his confidence a lot, though.

Still…

Ruby smacked her lips a few times and rocked on her heels. Awkward didn't even begin to describe it on her end. How were you supposed to deal with a man that'd tried to kill you on multiple occasions? Who was indirectly responsible for your sister losing her arm and your school burning to the ground?

Ruby couldn't even look at Torchwick without remembering the last time they'd met, the last time he'd been alive, his cane cracking down onto her body (it hurt, despite her Aura, was he aiming for all the bony parts on purpose even through his rage?) again and again before she managed to kick him back and away from her.

The memory of that hysterically controlled fear still pierced her with utmost clarity, a snapshot of the horror that was Beacon's fall. Ruby could remember every detail, from the feel of the cool metal deck under her back to the ache in her limbs, from the keening cries of the Grimm to the faint scent of Dust and cigar smoke coming from Torchwick's white coat before he was swallowed alive.

But now that hadn't happened at all, and probably never would, and Ruby was left to stand gingerly next to the guy who didn't remember any of it.

Take all that and then add the fact that they were now suddenly allies –a decision that'd been made without Torchwick's awareness or input, no less– and it was just plain weird. Torchwick seemed somewhat fine with it, alarmingly so, but Ruby put that down to his trust in his partner, Neo. If she vouched for them, he was willing to go along with it… for now.

Still, 'for now' was all they needed, and they could update him on the whole Salem-Ozpin-Relics situation later.

"So…" Ruby tried to think of conversational topics you could start up with a criminal mastermind/archnemesis-turned-ally without making things even weirder. "Uh… you and Neo are partners?"

Torchwick gave her a slightly hard look.

"Yeah?" he asked with an undertone of wariness.

"That's cool," Ruby said, nodding her head a few times, rocking on her heels again. "I mean –she's cool. We've sparred with her a couple times. Her Semblance is neat."

"It is, isn't it," Torchwick said, relaxing a little as he smirked.

"You got a Semblance?"

Torchwick turned slightly to raise an eyebrow at her.

"Do I look like I had the fancy academy training for that kind of thing, Red?"

"Ehhh." Ruby didn't exactly know the politest way to answer that. "I mean, like, wouldn't street smarts count as training, or something?"

She waved jazz hands at him hesitantly. Torchwick stared at her, deadpan.

"Um… I'm guessing that's a no?" Ruby cringed.

"I'm guessing you get most of your criminal knowledge through the Scroll network," Torchwick replied flatly.

"Hey!"

Ruby had plenty of experience with criminals. Just… not criminal society. Or Torchwick –come to think of it, she didn't actually know if he'd been a criminal since he was a kid or not. Oh gods, Ruby hoped that she hadn't accidentally dug up any bad memories with that comment.

And speaking of bad memories…

"Shouldn't Weiss and Neo have come up here by now?" Ruby asked, her hand inching back to Crescent Rose again as she looked around, suddenly alarmed. Sure, Weiss and Neo were facing Cinder on their own, but they were two skilled Huntresses, and Cinder only had about half of the Maiden powers right now, right? How long could taking her down possibly take?

Torchwick pulled out his Scroll, flicking it open with a twist of his wrist.

"Neo hasn't sent me anything," he said after a second, staring at the blue screen as Ruby hastily scrambled for her own Scroll and opened the message function. "Which means she's still in the middle of the fight, or…"

Or.

They both knew what or meant.

Ruby looked up from her own –message-less– screen, and met Torchwick's green eyes.

"The locker takes a minute and a half to get here, so as long as we aren't all wiped out on Aura, we can call our ride while fighting and still be able to get out of here safely," she said briskly. "Heck, we could be in the middle of falling from the airship and still call one in time, as long as it's right after we start to fall. You wanna go help?"

Torchwick jerked his chin curtly towards her in agreement, and they both turned in unison to the escape hatch. Ruby was smaller and lighter, so she scrambled down first –and stopped moving near the bottom, her hands and feet still on the ladder rungs, as Neo whipped around the corner into the bridge area, almost stumbling as she ran.

"Neo?" Ruby called worriedly, and Neo pointed urgently to the ladder as she ran, jerking her hand upwards. Ruby quickly started climbing back up, almost bumping her face into Torchwick's shoe on the way.

"Hey!" he called down, twisting indignantly to glare at her.

"Neo says climb!" Ruby blurted, in no state to care about apologies, and she just had time to see his eyes widen above his arm before Torchwick quickly turned back to the ladder and yanked himself upwards. She followed in his wake, and they all bundled out of the trap door again, one by one by one, and as soon as Neo slid her legs out she turned and slammed it down, locking the hatch.

Ruby's heart froze.

"Weiss?" she asked. "Where is she?"

Torchwick glanced towards Neo as the smaller criminal stood up, moving her hands in several quick signs.

"She told Neo that she'd hold Cinder back," he said, translating a message only he could understand as he and Neo backed away from the hatch and Ruby followed automatically in their wake. "We're supposed to come reinforce her if we can figure out a way to help, and get out of here if we can't. Neo, how's your Aura?"

Neo just shook her head. She looked exhausted.

"Fuck," Torchwick said softly.

What he did next was almost imperceptible, it was so artfully casual –but Ruby saw Torchwick shift his position, moving so that he stood between Neo and the escape hatch that they'd climbed out of.

It was such a little movement, just a mere shuffle of his feet like he was leaning to stand hipshot on the opposite leg, so subtle and smooth that he barely seemed to move at all –but he did it. Almost automatically, he put himself between Neo and Cinder.

Ruby gave him points for that, if nothing else.

"Where were you guys when she sent you for help?" she asked, turning to Neo, and Neo glanced down the length of the ship, then pointed. Ruby gulped nervously, and then started to step forward –only for Torchwick to grab her arm and shoot her a warning glare.

"Look, Red," he growled, "-I know you've got all these ideas of heroism swirling in your head, but we're dealing with the real world here. Our chances are not good if we run back there."

Ruby shook herself free of his hand.

"I know, but we've got to do something," she said.

"Yeah, well, that's a royal we." Torchwick straightened up, gesturing to himself and Neo. "My partner here's low on Aura, and I've been locked in a three by six box for the past few weeks. Neither of us are exactly in fighting form right about now, so the best thing we can do for your partner is see that her plan goes through. That means that we need to get out of here so at least some of us live through this. That's a hero thing, right? Trying to save as many people as possible?"

Neo's Scroll chimed, and she held it up so Ruby could see.

I/we owe you that much, but be strategic. There's not much we can actually DO right now.

"UgghhhHH!" Ruby turned away from them for a brief second, stomping away a few paces before she whirled and returned. If they wouldn't take it as an obvious attack, she would've unsheathed Crescent Rose and smacked it over their heads, one after the other.

"How long until you two get it?!" she burst out furiously, overcome with sheer frustration. "A low chance is better than no chance, so put aside your- your fucking selfishness and help, already!"

Neo raised an eyebrow, looking nonplussed at the uncharacteristic outburst, while Torchwick just looked annoyed. Ruby stabbed a finger at the smaller criminal as Neo reflexively skipped back, like it was an attack.

"It wasn't strategic to try and recruit you after you almost killed me, but I tried because that's the right thing to do, and look where that's gotten you!" Ruby almost-shrieked, her voice continuing to rise as she tossed both hands in the air, before balling them back down at her sides. Neo looked conflicted. "You know exactly where taking the "survivor's" route is going to lead you and Torchwick, so take a chance, and try something different for once in your life!"

The echoes of her shout faded amongst the clouds and the sky, and Neo looked up to Torchwick, and then bit her lip. She looked down and typed something out, then tugged his sleeve.

Torchwick leaned into her, looking down at Neo's Scroll, and for a few seconds there was silence. Then he sighed explosively at whatever he read there, dragging a hand down his face, before swinging both hands up in a gesture of defeat.

"Fine!" Torchwick exclaimed, his expression resigned. "Huzzah to heroism and etcetera. But whatever we're doing, you're first in the firing line, Red."

Ruby nodded. That was fair –and only strategic.

"Going through the ship might take too much time," she said, glancing over to where Neo had pointed. "If there's an opening, I can probably get us down there with my Semblance?"

Somewhat grudgingly, Torchwick stepped over, cautiously moving to the very edge of the airship and looking down at the side –and the ground hundreds of thousands of yards below. He grimaced.

"Yeah, I'm not seeing anything but bulkhead," Torchwick said, turning back and stepping away from the edge. "If you're gonna whisk us in, we'll need a hole first."

Ruby bit her lip. That was fine, her Semblance could probably-

The ship suddenly rocked under their feet as there was a massive explosion. Ruby looked around frantically as she steadied herself, wondering if one of the other ships had started firing on them –but no. They were still busy with Beacon and Amity.

Her eyes landed on Neo as the other woman hissed through her teeth, looking up at the sky with wide eyes. Only they weren't pink-brown anymore: they were both white, and Ruby turned quickly towards whatever Neo saw, deploying Crescent Rose.

A streak of fiery orange lanced up into the air from the side of the ship, and Ruby's chest tightened. She knew that silhouette, that fire.

Crescent Rose barked in her hands as Ruby immediately raised it in sniper form and shot at the ascending half-Maiden, and she heard the whistle of Torchwick's Dust flares a second later as he joined her, explosions splashing against Cinder's rising form as she blocked them with Aura and fireballs. Neo, who didn't have a long-range option, swung her parasol down at her side, ready to deflect any attacks that came their way.

Cinder slashed her hand out as a wave of fire cascaded towards them, and Ruby activated her Semblance and flickered backwards, seizing and pulling Torchwick and Neo with her as she went.

"Whoa!" Torchwick staggered a little as they reformed and landed, but Neo only gave Ruby a terse, appreciative nod as they both watched Cinder drift closer, hovering down to their level.

"Such an unpleasant greeting!" Cinder called to them, her feet crossing the line of fire that she'd flung onto the ship. "Considering I've come all this way to return something to you."

Return-?

Cinder stretched out her arm and let a charred lump fall, thumping down pathetically onto the airship deck. It was burned, broken, and half-melted, but it was still recognizable as a human skull.

A twisted, blackened length of metal that might have been Myrtenaster in another life clanged down beside it.

Ruby's world froze.

For a second, it was like reality had somehow wavered, like she had been jolted right out of her skin and everything that had happened before had been wiped clean of her memory.

Ruby was suddenly acutely aware of everything, like she'd just been dropped onto the scene: she could pick out the Dust patterns sewn onto Cinder's dress in perfect detail, feel the heat radiating off the flames a dozen meters away, the chilly wind flying past her, the flutter of her hair brushing her cheeks, the tenseness of Crescent Rose's steel beneath her fingers. She felt it all like she'd just noticed them for the first time. It felt so real, and yet- and yet-

Something utterly impossible was happening to her.

Weiss couldn't be dead.

Then reality –horrible, cruel, crushing reality– caught up to her, and Ruby screamed, and her eyes flared white as silver incandescence burst across the airship along with her anguished cry.

No. Not Weiss. It couldn't be Weiss. It had never been Weiss, she'd always been too smart, too swift, for the bad guys to catch. It couldn't. It couldn't. It couldn't.

Her heart was torn open and bleeding, and the love that poured from that wound was more than enough to power her eyes as silver light seared the sky, Ruby's scream of anguish drowning out Torchwick's startled cry and Cinder's gasp of rage.

When she blinked that light away, tears streaming down her face, Cinder was clutching her arm and steaming, lightly, like Ruby's eye had scorched her as she snarled her pain.

It wasn't enough.

Ruby swung her head around to Neo, who was staring at Cinder in surprise. Neo met Ruby's eyes a second later, though, and something of an understanding passed between them.

"She's taken enough," Ruby hissed, clutching Crescent Rose with both hands, and Neo gave her a short, determined nod.

No more.

They didn't give Cinder time to recover, Ruby blurring into her Semblance as she crossed the space between them in a heartbeat and deployed Crescent Rose in scythe form, reforming just before Cinder and slashing downwards with all the strength in her fifteen-year-old body. Cinder caught the edge of her scythe with one hand, but the force of Ruby's swing drove her downwards, and Ruby saw her Aura flicker orange over her skin and hair at the moment the blow connected.

Weiss had done that much for them, nearly breaking Cinder's Aura.

Now they needed to finish it.

Even if there weren't any Grimm around, Ruby seized her grief by the throat and throttled it down, packed it into a tight, manageable little box that she wrapped in chains and shoved into her subconscious. She could open that box and unpack things later –right now she needed to do her job, finish the fight, kill her enemy.

Grieving for Weiss could wait until after Ruby had finished the task they had started together.

Neo swiped in from the other side, carving out another chunk of Cinder's Aura as she struck a glancing blow with the spiked tip of her parasol and Cinder twisted to avoid the stab, but then her Dust patterns shimmered with heat as Ruby and Neo jumped back to either side: just in time for Torchwick to fire between them, striking Cinder dead-on.

Ruby dashed along the surface of the ship, dodging the fireballs that Cinder threw her way as her tears dried on her face. She picked off shot after shot when she could: it was easy to see and hear when Torchwick did the same, since his projectiles were flares that shrieked and glowed as they shot through the air, and Ruby trusted him to know Neo's attack patterns well enough to avoid catching her in any friendly fire.

Neo was jumping in when she could, but her parasol made for a poor weapon against Cinder when flames danced along the ground beneath her and Cinder was still fully capable of using her Semblance. Still, if they could grind down her Aura a little more…

Cinder dropped her fireballs and drove a flame-wreathed fist towards Neo, who bent and flipped backwards to avoid it. Within seconds Ruby realized what she was doing as she pressed her attack: with Neo having a low Aura and being the only fighter without long-range attacks, she was currently the weakest link in the trio, and with her and Cinder clashing so close together, Ruby and Torchwick couldn't risk shooting for fear of hitting the wrong person.

Cinder swiped and slashed as Neo danced backwards, ever-retreating, her parasol twirling between them to deflect Cinder's attacks. Ruby activated her Semblance and rushed in, only to catch a vicious elbow-blow from Cinder the second she blurred into existence: Cinder had somehow intuited where Ruby would reform as she half-turned and slammed her arm backwards in the same moment. Ruby coughed as she staggered backwards, but she'd given Neo a second of respite as the other woman nimbly skittered back, panting.

Ruby yelped as Cinder's next blow had flames sizzling along her face and front, and her Aura surged before she reformed again a few dozen feet away, Crescent Rose half-held protectively over her face. That hurt, and it'd probably dipped her Aura significantly.

She lowered Crescent to try and take another shot, dipping her target range as Cinder's leg buckled and her Aura shimmered again, probably having expected the bullet to land higher, towards a vital area of her body. Neo took that opportunity as she darted in, stabbing her weapon towards Cinder's chest as Ruby's heart leapt. If she could land that hit-

Cinder recovered far faster than any of them would have expected, and Ruby gasped aloud as both hands shot up, covering Neo's face completely before they blazed with heat.

Neo's Aura flickered –and then broke in a crackling puff of pink motes.

Neo screamed through Cinder's blazing palms as her skin bubbled and boiled.

"NEO!" Torchwick cried, and Ruby was dashing in with her Semblance before she even realized it, sweeping Crescent Rose in for a horizontal slash at Cinder's middle when she landed and not caring when fire shot towards her and licked her own body in response. She needed to make Cinder let go before-

Cinder finally dropped Neo's body with a snarl as Ruby refused to stop, whirling to direct the full force of her attention at the young Huntress as, out of the corner of her eye, Ruby saw the detachable part of Torchwick's cane catch Neo, whirling around her middle like a grappling hook before he reeled her in with a sharp and desperate yank. Ruby pulled sideways at the same moment, dragging her scythe over as much of Cinder as she could as she rolled to one side, drawing Cinder's attention with her, forcing her to turn away from the two criminals.

Ignoring the flames as their heat dug painfully into her Aura, Ruby whipped Crescent Rose in a vicious figure-eight around her arms, twirling and slashing from every angle she could as she tried to keep Cinder busy in close range for as long as possible as the other woman summoned her black glass swords to block her.

This was eating through Ruby's Aura faster than she would've liked, but Cinder had started this battle with her own Aura weakened significantly, and Ruby could see it shimmering with even the faintest graze. They were so close to finishing her off –they just needed a little more time, a few more attacks.

A flare burst against Cinder's back as she gave a howl of rage and pain mixed, and her Aura broke into glowing orange particles. Ruby surged in, wild enthusiasm lighting in her as she realized that Cinder was unprotected now, but then a fireball slammed against her stomach, the explosion warm and hard against her own Aura as Ruby was sent flying back with a half-cry of pain.

A jolt slammed through her as her feet found open air, and Ruby quickly slammed Crescent Rose down, hooking it into the steel of the ship with a cry of sheering metal as Ruby's body jerked to a halt, dangling in the open air.

It wasn't just the ground lingering hundreds of feet below that made her palms sweat, this time.

Ruby remembered being in this exact same position before, except Neo had been sauntering towards her with the steel tip of her parasol scraping ominously against the ground as Torchwick monologued. But this time he was on her side, marginally, and Cinder was here and Neo –Neo might be dead.

Grunting, Ruby pulled herself up hand-over-hand on Crescent Rose quickly, tugging herself back onto solid ground and wrenching her weapon out as she turned to the other three. Torchwick had apparently found the time to prop Neo against the protrusion of the bridge, and Ruby scampered towards her, wincing at the charred ruin of Neo's face. She was still breathing, though, and one reddened eye cracked open at Ruby's approach –brown, not pink.

Ruby pulled out her Scroll, almost fumbling the numbers several times in her haste as she punched in the code for Jaune's locker –she'd had to help him enough times, Ruby remembered it almost as well as the number for anyone on her team. She set the coordinates to just beyond their ship, so that the flight path would skin over the top of the deck, and she slammed the launch button with her thumb, before exhaling a quick breath.

"It'll take a minute and thirty seconds, but there'll be a locker coming from Beacon, and we'll get out of here," Ruby promised, stowing her Scroll again before moving to stand in front of Neo. Torchwick was doing surprisingly well for himself, considering he was going up against Cinder alone –which basically meant that he just wasn't dead yet, but under these circumstances and considering his skill level, that was an impressive achievement in and of itself.

Cinder was just fighting with half of the Maiden powers, though, which meant that although Torchwick could keep her busy by firing flares that she'd have to dodge or deflect with fireballs of her own, he wouldn't be able to get into close range. He'd have to reload eventually, too, and Ruby could only pray that it wouldn't be before the locker got here.

Neo rasped, and Ruby glanced over her shoulder, watching Neo trying to mouth something with seared lips. It took her a few seconds to understand the message, since she wasn't good at lip reading at the best of times, but Ruby thought she understood what Neo was trying to say after several repetitions.

Help him.

"But someone needs to guard you-"

Please.

Neo locked eyes with Ruby, something desperate and pitiful shining in her gaze, but then Ruby swallowed and gave her a quick nod.

She turned away and ran back to the fight, forcing Cinder further back as her scythe curved in, nearly taking a chunk out of her side. It did connect, slicing through her red dress as blood spurted out and Cinder snarled in pain.

"Hey!" Torchwick snarled across to her as Ruby ducked under Cinder's return shot. "Red-"

"Neo said to come help!" Ruby yelped, not bothering to collapse Crescent Rose as she snapped off several shots at Cinder. Unlike Torchwick, who fired Dust, Ruby's shots were compressed and solid bullets, not something you could ward off with fire. With her Aura broken, Cinder had to physically dodge them, and dodging bullets by definition was not an easy task. It forced her to kick off against the ship as fire spurted under her feet, and Cinder shot up into the air, swooping above them as Torchwick quickly joined Ruby in taking potshots.

They both ducked aside as she got close to them, moving in opposite directions to force Cinder to pick a singular target as they continued to fire. Cinder reared up, though, pulling her arm back –and Ruby suddenly realized she wasn't aiming for them.

"No!" she cried frantically, turning aside and flooding her body with her Aura as she shot forward like a lightning bolt flickering through the clouds. Her hands slammed into the cold metal bulkhead on either side of Neo a microsecond later, Crescent Rose reforming on her belt rather than in her hands, and Ruby dug deep into her Aura reserves as she wrapped an arm around Neo's neck and pulled backwards, using her Semblance again.

Ruby tumbled onto her back near where Torchwick was standing, her Aura crackling and breaking in a sprinkling of red motes of light at the same moment.

Neo's charred self landed atop her.

The bridge where Neo had been exploded into a molten mass as Cinder's attack hit.

"Shit," Torchwick swore under his breath, vehemently. "Red, the locker-"

"It's coming," Ruby gasped, pulling Neo's arm over her shoulder as she stood back up. Something tickled at the back of her mind as she did -something was off, her instincts were telling her insistently, something out-of-place was jabbing at her senses.

Ruby took a rapid mental inventory of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch, and blood drained from her face as she realized what was wrong.

Neo wasn't breathing.

"Oh no, no no no-"

Ruby quickly looked aside, touching a hand to the other woman's neck as Torchwick continued taking potshots at Cinder, searching desperately for a pulse. Surely Neo hadn't been injured that badly, it went beyond farce to think that she'd just quietly died while they'd all been fighting-

There wasn't any pulse.

You have to be kidding, Ruby thought desperately.

"Torchwick-" she choked.

"What, brat?!"

"Neo, she isn't- she's not- she's dead!" Ruby blurted desperately, and beside her, Torchwick locked up even while aiming at Cinder, his body going rigid. The next second he was all but shoving Ruby away from Neo's limp body as he took her in his arms, and Ruby let him have that moment with his partner as she deployed Crescent Rose again, fighting against the sluggish feeling that made her muscles feel like she was swimming in tar as she raised the muzzle towards the distant comet of Cinder Fall and kept shooting frantically.

They just needed to delay until the locker got here, and then they… and then her and Torchwick could get out of here, open up their options a little. Cinder wouldn't try and chase them while they were in motion and Ruby could shoot at her, she'd give it a little time to mark where they landed and then press her attack.

"You flame-slinging BITCH!" Torchwick suddenly howled, and Ruby watched and heard a rapid succession of Dust flares whistle towards Cinder from behind her, exploding almost all at once as the half-Maiden served and dodged jerkily in the air. "Let's see how you like being cooked alive!"

Ruby drew in a deep breath at those words, settling herself, taking heart from his defiance. She could do this. They could do this. Her Aura was broken and his was probably low, but they could still do this. The locker had to be coming soon, almost a minute had passed since she'd called it. They just needed to hold out a little longer.

Cinder abruptly hurled a fireball down towards them, and mindful of her own limitations, Ruby bolted out of the way, clutching Crescent Rose close to her chest. She tried to split off from Torchwick again, give Cinder different targets, but that was a lot scarier to do when Ruby was one of those targets and her Aura was gone. Still, she was a Huntress, and Huntresses did the dangerous and dirty work no one else could.

Ruby yelped and almost buckled in on herself as she bent her knees, ducking backwards under the vicious swipe of a glass sword. Cinder must have used the distraction of her fireball to land, and was now lashing out at Ruby and Torchwick both with her weapons. Well, that made sense: she couldn't afford to keep dodging Ruby's bullets with her Aura down. She needed to force them into melee combat.

Which really sucked, because Ruby didn't have any Aura to defend herself either, and she didn't have Maiden powers.

But my eyes-

It was a lot harder to try and summon her images of love and family while frantically spinning Crescent Rose around to block and destroy those sharp glass swords, but Ruby did her best.

Focus. Concentrate. Cinder's part Grimm even right now, you can still do this.

Her eyesight glinted white along the edges.

"Watch out for the light!" she warned Torchwick, trusting him to remember her flash of silver eyes from before –and knowing that it didn't matter if Cinder was ready for it or not– before she gave into the surging power and blasted the world with silvery radiance.

Cinder gave a hoarse cry of pain, much sharper and more agonized than before, which Ruby realized must have been because of her drained Aura. She could protect herself from the damage before, but not now. Not anymore.

When Ruby blinked back into her regular vision, Cinder was on her knees, almost sobbing in pain as steam rose from her body like she was a metal brand dipped in water. Excitement lashed through Ruby.

Yes!

She and Torchwick both moved forward, weapons at the ready, but Cinder was well-trained. Even through whatever agony was lashing her body, even through the daze of fear and disorientation and pain, she still fought.

The half-Maiden slammed a clenched fist against the ground, and a rippling ring of fire blasted out around her. Ruby yelped as it slammed into her chest, knocking her back and burning through her clothes as she rolled quickly over the ground. When she looked up, she saw that it had broken right through Torchwick's Aura as he rolled to a halt too, facing the other direction as he already pushed himself up onto his knee, his orange Aura flickering and dying over his body.

Cinder's fireball exploded against his back a moment later. The incredible heat burned through Torchwick so quickly that he didn't even have time to scream before he was rendered an ashen skeleton.

He never does see it coming, huh, Ruby had time to think, incongruously enough, before Cinder turned those flames on her.

Remembering the weapon in her hands, Ruby belatedly tried to jerk Crescent up to take one final fatal shot –and then the blast of fire hit her as her flesh sloughed and melted to the deck of the ship. Ruby felt her bones turn to blackened tar, her beloved weapon hissing into molten steel as it oozed painfully through her fingers.

I'm sorry, guys, Ruby thought as that haze of indescribable agony filled her. We almost made it.

---

But yeah anyway imagine waiting 2-3 months (which seems to be my average?) between now and the next chapter. Lol. You guys would use my spine as a pitching wedge. You would be in my WALLS.

And I wouldn't even be mad about it, too, because there's cliffhangers and then there's cliffhangers.

Hence, the delay between this chunk and my prior stray chapters. While making sure you guys get drip-fed enough content to avert disaster is important, I do also want this section all nicely scrubbed and polished before I hand updates out to the public (the Discord gang gets first viewing so they can make helpful comments/beta).

Also, according to the V7 commentary, Torchwick was originally supposed to have Fiona's Semblance (it's called Deep Pockets: the thing where she absorbs things through her hands and can whip them back out later), but since they could never figure out a time to show it, they left Torchwick Semblance-less and instead had him serve as an example of how you could still be a competent fighter that way.

Also also, I promise this fic is gonna have a happy ending. Honest. Ruby and the others will be fine, just give me a bit. This IS still a fix-it fic.