Far from the tournament, across land and ocean, the thump of fists on a punching bag echoed off the soft blue walls of a physical therapy room. The chain rattled and the bag rocked behind the force of Noxis's fist. It swayed back into his other– built of black steel.

Noxis winced. He let the bag rock, shook out his arms, rolled a network of metal parts exactly as complex as a human wrist, and continued.

Three hits this time. Prosthetic arm. Organic. Prosthetic, but harder. He fell to his back foot, clutched where flesh met steel above his elbow, and gasped for breath through clenched teeth. The breath escaped, and he balled his fist again. Four hits. The first with his left arm, the next three with the prosthetic on his right. Each came stronger than the one before, leaving craters in the bag before it had a chance to swing back and right itself.

He yelped in pain at the last, hunching over his prosthetic and heaving for breath. It evened slightly, but remained deep, fast. He held both hands to his sides and plates of black crystal overtook his left arm and chest, down to the tip of each finger. They spread across his right shoulder, halfway down his arm.

They stopped abruptly at the cold, dark steel.

His eyes twisted in disapproval. He took in a deep breath and shouted it out, growing spines out of the armor at his chest and shoulder, and another layer to each plate down his arm. None spread to his prosthetic.

He dropped his arms with a shouted curse, and his semblance rained to the ground in a thousand shards.

"Lazula. You're already suited up, so we're sending you in first. You're still good to fight, right?"

"I'm fine."

"Good."

Straight ahead in the dull grey hall were the locker rooms. Lazula went in, past her locker, straight through to the emergency exit.

"The Red Claw is conducting a partial takeover of Frontline Premier Medical Center," the Headmaster's voice began to explain. He was in her ear out the door, to the airship pad, and through the half-minute jolt to the hospital that left her feeling motion sick. "There's a Marlin-Class waiting for you on the pad that'll take you there. We don't know much at the moment– what their goal is, casualties, anything, really. They only began their attack a few minutes ago. What we do know is that they took a hostage, and we have reason to believe they're moving her toward an unidentified airship on the roof."

"Then drop me on the roof."

"Too risky. If they see your ship coming, they'll shoot you down. You'll go in from the bottom. The elevator will take you to floor thirty-five, and past that you'll have to take the stairs. Your priority is securing the hostage alive, and slaying any Grimm that get in the way. Caspian and the rest will be close behind to clear out remaining Grimm, and secure the area to allow care for any injured. On top of Grimm, you can likely expect Red Claw Heads– maybe Condor himself. Do you understand?"

"Yep."

"Good. There's just one more thing." The Headmaster paused, and Lazula wasn't sure if the scratch on his end was a sigh or a glitch in communication. "The hostage. It's Moka's mother."

The doors to the thirty-fifth floor opened to darkness and silence. A sharp odor stabbed her nose– a smell she hated. A smell she hated that she knew so well, rising from a dozen bodies swimming in their own blood. Some human, some android, all discarded. In pieces, or leaking from bullet holes that took chunks of flesh and steel with them.

The only light was born of the screens those bodies sat by an hour previous, on desks to the outside of the hexagonal room. On a few, a live feed of Beowolves storming the halls, tearing into patients, doctors, androids.

"Oh, gods! They're dead!"

"Help us!"

A scream cut short.

The voices again. She shook them from her mind, and continued the only way forward, to the door at the far end of the room. Her boots echoed in tangible silence, then a spatter beneath each step.

"Biometric scan required," the door requested. Lazula's eyes narrowed, and she raised her palm to the pad next to the frame.

"Access denied. Access can only be granted to Frontline Premier Medical Center employees with Grade B clearance or above."

Lazula's eyes followed a streak of blood down the wall, landing on an open palm. She looked back at the pad, and muttered a curse under her breath. She picked the severed arm from the floor, and held its palm against the pad.

"Access granted."

Through the glass, Caspian looked out at the audience. They filed out of the stadium in ignorance– it wouldn't be blissful, so long as Lazula's victory still broadcast on each Holo. And it wouldn't be ignorance if the Red Claw's takeover replaced her. He was a bit surprised the attack hadn't spread to the stadium, considering it filled to the brim and spilled over with negative energy. But again, the Red Claw's Grimm acted different than the Grimm of old; mindless killers, of course, but mindless killers that killed exactly where they needed to. Like a half-sentient artillery strike.

The Headmaster arrived, out of breath and leaning on his cane to give the briefing. Frontline Premier Medical Center was partially taken-over. Grimm filled its halls. Team MDLN was busy Downtown, investigating a sighting of the Red Claw's Sable. Most troubling was the Headmaster's last note. Mrs. Chino had been abducted. He left them with that, told them to get to the SFC and change quickly as possible, then get on the Marlin waiting for them.

Caspian's empty gaze was on the ground somewhere in front of him. "...Somebody has to tell Moka," he finally spoke.

There was a pause. A murmur of agreement. He could tell nobody wanted to. And as the closest to her in the group, he realized it would likely fall to him.

"I'll do it," Lilly volunteered. She nodded at Caspian "She's probably still in the womens' locker room, so it makes sense. I'll meet you at the ship."

"Thank you."

Moka wasn't hard to find in the locker room beneath Sentinel Stadium. Lilly followed the sniffles and gasps for breath around a corner, and saw the faunus facing away from the door, hunched over herself. Her tail slumped across the concrete behind her, and every few seconds her shoulders would seize or rock forward.

She settled into slow, uneasy steps as she approached, and Moka didn't turn her way. "Hello? Moka?" she tried.

"Lilly?"

"Yeah. It's me." She searched the ceiling for how to frame her next words. Then the floor. "Look. This is a terrible time, and I'm really sorry, but I thought you should know. Your mom's been taken."

Moka's lethargy snapped and she whipped around. In her movement tears flung across the floor. "What?!"

"It's the Red Claw. They took over FPMC, and they took your mom. Lazula's on her way already. I'm going in with Caspian and everyone else, we'll be right behind her."

"No… No, no, no, no. Why? What do they want with her?"

"I don't know," Lilly admitted. "Right now, nobody does."

Moka stood, and began re-strapping the gauntlets she discarded after her match. "I'm going too. I'll be ready in a second."

Lilly stopped her with a hand at her shoulder. "No. Your aura's broken. You can't."
"My mom was taken hostage. I'm going to get her back!"

"No, Moka. I'm sorry, but you aren't." They stared at each other for a moment, Lilly's solemn but stern look not faltering from Moka's determination, splotched pink and stained with tears. "If you died today, what would your mom do? She still needs you to fight for her."

Moka finally yielded; took a step back, lowered again to the bench and her face returned to her palms.

"I'm so fucking useless."

"You're not useless, Moka."

Another pause. "Just go. Please."

Lilly nodded, but stopped a couple of steps away. "We'll get her back."

Caspian felt uneasy in the cabin of the needle-tipped Marlin. The seats were hard and forward-facing, and there was little in the way of decoration. A strip of tempered glass was a window down each side, the rest was the same slate grey broken up rarely by a band of light.

Lilly caught her breath as she entered the cabin, only getting a chance to tie back her hair when she was seated. She had finished her remastered combat outfit. Her combat skirt was gone in favor of a tailored ivory peacoat, hemmed and buttoned the same dark brown of her pants. Its tails, which began at the front of her thigh and wrapped to the back, lapsed over each other like the petals of a lily.

The ship began to lift, and Caspian prepared for acceleration. From a standstill to almost two hundred miles an hour in an instant, cushioned by gravity dust so the human brain didn't liquify on takeoff and arrival.

"I like the outfit," Caspian opened, once their speed evened out to a manageable hundred and ninety-five.

Lilly smiled faintly, and pulled out the edge of her coat. "Thank you. Sewed it myself."

Caspian expressed how impressed he was, but made it quick. The Marlin would be at FPMC in half a minute, and there wouldn't be much time to talk once they got there. He swallowed.

"How did Moka take it, by the way?"

The smile faded easily. "...Not well."

Caspian nodded, but his head was held forward by their incredible deceleration. They stopped even with FPMC's tenth floor, and began descending. "I figured as much."

Soon they were on the ground, and the walls of the ship slid open.

The door at the far end of the room opened to a dimly-lit back hall, the only lights from twin strips of white and gold from the corners of the ceiling, and one purple where the floor met the wall. Lazula left a bloody boot print with each step forward, past a set of restrooms and up a flight of stairs. The next door opened to another hexagonal room. Same lighting, same silence, apart from the whirr and chirp of computers and Holos. Hundreds, thousands of dots of light twinkled up each wall and across each desk like stars in the night sky. But every screen was black– aside from two.

On the wall adjacent to the far end of the room, her own portrait. The one used in Frontline Biomedical's database. Next to it, a live feed of another hexagon.

"What the hell?" she muttered, glancing to each side before creeping up to the screen. It was her face, her name. Had the Red Claw been researching her? Or was this merely to get her attention? In either case, they must have known she would come. She didn't like being exactly where they wanted her. She spotted a letter, resting above a flat disk the size of her palm that raised half an inch from the desk.

"Hello, Ms. Skye."

"Three rooms attach to the next. Behind one, an Ursa. Behind two others are one Frontline Biomedical employee, or five. Twenty seconds after this note is read, the door containing an Ursa will open along with the door containing five employees. They're terrified. I made sure of it. But should you decide to press the button, the door containing one employee will open instead."

"Choose wisely."

She let the note fall to the floor. Do nothing, kill five. Press the button, kill one. There had to be another way. Her breath had trouble escaping the tightness of her chest, but she still managed a run. She slammed the door shoulder-first at full speed, and other than forcing the rest of the air from her, it did little. She held her palm to the keypad.

"Access denied. Access can only be granted to–"

Impetus's tip drove six inches deep into the plastic and steel of the pad, and it exploded with a flash of sparks. Lazula tried the handle, heaved with all her unnatural strength, but it wouldn't budge. She took a single breath. She didn't have time for more, as she'd already lost half her twenty seconds. She focused herself on the feeling she got once before, under the Beithyr's claw. In that moment, her weapons weren't steel. They were an extension of her flesh and blood– an extension of her aura. She was able to blow a hole in the Beithyr's armor, surely a door wouldn't be an issue.

But no matter how hard she tried, how hard she focused, how much she convinced herself that abomination pinned her to the street, Aegis and Impetus refused her aura. They felt hard, stubborn and cold in her hands.

She ran from the door. And slammed her fist into the button.

The door opened automatically before her, and she tore her way up, two, three stairs with each step. She burst into the room with two doors open, one closed.

Too late.

The Ursa hunched over its prey, and looked to her with blood dripping from its maw. Its breath stirred the puddle spreading from the mangled shape on the floor, and it turned to face her. It barreled toward her. She caught its leaping slash with Aegis, and with a single swing of Impetus nothing above its chest remained.

The lobby of Frontline Premier Medical Center was empty. Caspian ordered his group into three teams to scour each of the circular offshoots for anyone left. Coats were left on the backs of chairs, bags next to them. All had evacuated, or were safely hidden down some back hall or secure room. Hopefully. Lazula had gone through the same way, which likely explained the complete lack of Grimm. All that was left was silence. The fifty foot tall floating statue of solid gold, any other day, was a marvel for patients and their visitors. In the quiet it floated, rotated slowly, making the air feel heavy.

The teams met up again at the front desk. "Ichigo. You're going to be huge here," Caspian addressed. "I want you to post at the front desk. Try to get us a playback on the cameras first, especially any on the twelfth floor. That's the oncology unit, where Moka's mom was. Once you have that, see if you can get us a floorplan of the upper levels."

Ichigo was at the desk already, laptop open and feet propped up on the counter. "Yes, sir."

"The rest of you, stay by me."

They made their way through, one floor at a time. FPMC had a mercifully simple floorplan– one big ring around the hollow center, that let patients look out upon the city on one side of the hall, the golden gaudiness on the other. They settled into a rhythm, encountering a few Beowolves along the way. Up the stairs, around the ring, up the stairs, repeat.

Half an hour in, they reached the twelfth floor. Caspian looked at the directory and led his crew counterclockwise, the way it told would reach 1249-A sooner.

The emergency lock, which held every other patient in relative safety, had been disengaged. The door held open a couple of inches, enough for Caspian to fling it open on arrival. And enough to present a full view of a body splayed out in a pool of crimson. He slid the door back shut, turned and looked to the ceiling with jagged breaths and his back against the wall.

"What's wrong?" Snow asked.

Caspian's voice couldn't carry much more than a whisper of strength. "There's a body in there," he stated.

Quiet fell over the group. It was Rowan who finally spoke. "Is it…"

"No, don't think so," Caspian answered. The body's skin was a couple shades darker, and she was heavier-set than the frail Mrs. Chino. "But it didn't look like an android."

"I'll go in," Snow volunteered, moving ahead to the door. She looked at him.

"I'll go too," Caspian replied. He took a deep breath, swallowed, readied himself. He'd seen a few before, during the Red Claw's attacks. It looked like there was another down the hall. But he never quite got used to seeing bodies, nor did he care to. "Alright. I'm good."

The nurse lay face-down, feet toward the door and head toward the vacant hospital bed. The back of her scrubs was soaked wine red, and more spread to each side of her form. An arm was outstretched, the other was under her. And on her face, her agony immortalized. Snow crouched next to her, inspecting the hole in her back.

"Single knife wound to the upper back. Punctured her heart and left lung," Snow reported. She leaned in closer as Caspian pulled back, blocking the stench of blood from his nose. "Some blood found in her lungs, which means the wound didn't kill her instantly. She did likely bleed out before she aspirated." Her eyes moved to the nurse's outstretched hand. "No defensive wounds."

"She was taken by surprise then– by someone she didn't suspect," Caspian theorized. "Didn't have the chance to fight off her attacker, either." In his idle investigation of the room, he spotted something that unsettled him almost as much as the body. Crimson stains across Mrs. Chino's sheets. His voice was shaky again. "...There's blood on the bed."

"It's a match to the nurse's," Snow analyzed.

"So Moka's mom wasn't hurt?"

"Not here, at least," Snow answered. "I don't see further signs of a struggle."

"She probably couldn't put up much of a fight."

Snow nodded once. "Regardless, I don't think we will find any more information here. Let's continue."

"Yeah," Caspian confirmed. He glanced around the room one more time for any kind of hint, though considering he had only human eyes and not the hyper-advanced optical-analytical systems of an android, there was nothing left to be found. Almost on cue, Ichigo's call rattled Caspian's Holoband.

"Alright. Good news, bad news. The bad news doesn't make sense without the good news, so I'll tell you that first," Ichigo greeted. "Good news is, I finally got into the camera feed."

"Good, thank you," Caspian replied. "And the bad news?"

"Take a look."

Caspian poked at the "New attachment (1)" floating above his Holoband, and a screen spread out over his forearm. On it, Python led Mrs. Chino out the same doorway they stood in with a dagger at her back.

"Python."

"If she's been abducted by a Head of the Red Claw, we can presume she's still in immediate danger," Snow advised. "How should we proceed?"

"She's a forty-six year old kindergarten teacher with leukemia," Caspian muttered. "What the hell does the Red Claw want with her?"

"Yeah, doesn't make a lot of sense to me either," Rowan joined in. He pursed his lips, looked like he might be sick for a second. "Think it has to do with the fact Frontline's treating her? That's all I have."

"About all I have too," Caspian added. "But why her? For her to be the one hostage taken from thirty-five floors is too much of a coincidence."

"We're free to ponder why they took her once she's safe," Snow reminded. "For now, we have twenty-three more floors to clear."

"Snow's right," Lilly affirmed.

Caspian swallowed and nodded. "She is. But this attack feels targeted. First two bodies are on this floor, near this room." He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his glasses away from his eyes. "I guess we don't know they're the only two, though. It could just get worse as we go up."

"I think we should stick to our assigned mission," Snow proposed. "Lazula is already on her way. As she left before us and went straight to the hostage, she may already be there."

"True," Caspian noted. He tapped his foot to some frenetic, imaginary beat until an idea popped into his mind. "Wait. Ichigo, you still there?"

"Yessir."

"Can you get us a cam feed from one of the upper floors? Any will do, more than one is preferred."

"Easy enough."

Yet at the end of his sentence the hall plunged into darkness; lights, machinery, Holos, all whirring down into a suffocating silence.

"That complicates things."

"A power outage? Now?" Rowan exclaimed.

"Laurel, anyone coming our way?" Caspian asked.

Two golden, slit-pupiled eyes shone in the dark. They flicked away, then over Caspian's shoulder. "Nothing."

Caspian shook his head. "A lot of people in this hospital probably rely on that power to survive. Ichigo– everyone, actually; change of plans. We need to get the power back on."

Without power, the utility elevator a quarter way counter-clockwise was out of the question. They ran back down the stairs. The two minutes it took to make it back to the lobby, two more they spent running across and to the hidden utility stairwell were excruciating. He knew each second the hospital went without power could have been a life lost. Luckily, by the time they made it to the door, Ichigo's temporary credentialing override had taken hold, and it allowed them to pass into the darkened stairwell.

They descended further into the darkness, held at bay only by projected light from their Holobands. The heavy gate suspended partway open. Tall enough Lilly and Snow could fit under, Caspian, Rowan, and Laurel all had to duck a bit. Caspian couldn't tell how big the generator room was. It was a rounded-off hexagon, but the ends of each wall adjacent to the door were lost to the darkness beyond his light.

He knew it should have been lit. And each of the twenty foot tall walls of machinery should have been roaring with noise and spewing heat. But it was silent, cold.

A voice called out in the darkness.

"Yoo-hoo," it taunted. "Over here!"

In the light of Caspian's Holoband, leaning against one of the silent generators, exactly who Caspian suspected. Python's tail flicked as her head turned aside, and she stood to face the four that entered.

"And here you are!" Python announced with arms outstretched. Her tail lashed. "Boss had a hunch you'd come down to get the power on as soon as we blew the fuse. Clever guy."

Undertow was already in Caspian's hand. He heard weapons being unsheathed behind him, the shifting and clicking of metallic parts, the cocking of a lever, and the flash of hard-light dust coming to light. "You."

"Me." Python rattled the side of her idle disk-like weapon with her boot. "Thanks for giving me a chance to catch my breath. Boss has me moving all over the damn place. Take that lady up, come straight back down. I'm getting tired."

"Before we fight," Caspian said. "I need to know what you want with Mrs. Chino."

"Honestly? Don't know. Boss told me to fetch her, so I did. Less questions asked, the better."

"Moving you out of solitary was a mistake," Caspian grumbled.

"Probably. But here I am! We met in some kind of engine room last time too, didn't we?" she mused. "Funny how things work out."

"Yeah. We took you out last time, too," Caspian returned. "Really is funny how things work out."

"You're a little different than the last time we met." She grinned, and the blacklight glow of her semblance spread from the palm of each hand to encircle each massive sawblade. They began to stir, lifted from the ground by ropes of pure energy. "I like it."