Yang struggled to finish off the last Brother while the rest of us watched helplessly from the side. It was all we could do. She set everything around her on fire with every step she took. When she punched her fists threw balls of fire. The carpets, some of the bookshelves, and pretty much all of the curtains were on fire. That is to say nothing of the explosions her fists caused when they made impact.

She unleashed a barrage of fire and destruction with every blow. It was hard to even tell what was going on. The only things I could really see were her and the man with the snake mask, the last Brother.

I grew increasingly concerned for the students. If the whole building went up in flames many of them would die.

"Yang, Stop!" My words didn't seem to reach her.

She shouted back at me and said, "Shut up!" When she looked away the masked man bashed her with his arm. As she reeled back, he hit her again. And again. Finally he kicked her in the head and tossed her, by the hair, over to us. My blood was practically boiling.

"Stop this nonsense. Let's talk. We have no reason to fight," The masked man finally spoke. I don't even have the words to describe how dumbfounded I was at his proposition. Peace? After all that? No way, no chance, not after what he had just done to Yang.

"You just gave us a reason," I told him.

"I apologize for what I had to do to your comrade, but you have to see things from my perspective. By no means is she weak, you're probably well aware of that. If I held back even a little she would have killed me, of this I am certain,"

"We're not going to let you get away just because you gave us some miserable little excuse for an apology. If you're really sorry then jump in the fire and die!"

"There seems to be a misunderstanding. I'm not asking to be let go, I'm giving you and your friends a chance to escape. Make no mistake, you hurt my friends as well. Some may even succumb to their wounds. No doubt you've stained your hands today, but that can all be forgotten if you allow me to find what I came here for in the first place. In this whole library there is but one book that interests me. Allow me the time to find it before this place burns and I will allow you to leave in one piece. It's a rather generous offer I'm making, all things consi-" His soliloquio was interrupted by Ruby, who threw her ax and nearly took off his head. Unfortunately, the weapon only managed to find his shoulder.

It came whizzing back to her, wet with new blood, and the look in her eyes was like nothing I had ever seen before. She was angrier than me, and rightfully so. She threw it a few more times, but he blocked each one with his hands. Sprinting and flipping between throws, she closed the distance. In an instant she was on him. She spun, hacked, and slash. However, none of them had any effect. He just kept blocking. Occasionally there was a parry as well, but he never got the chance to capitalize on them.

Ruby was moving so fast that he simply couldn't touch her. The two found themselves in a nasty stalemate. Ruby had hit him over a hundred times. Not one blow phased him. He had swung at her just as many times. Not a single punch landed.

I gripped the war hammer I stole from one of The Brothers. My knuckles turned white and my fingers were so red they looked almost maroon. The second I started to run over and help Ruby, Blake grabbed my arm.

"Jaune, don't go," Her earnest eyes shimmered in the light of the flames.

"Why not? Ruby needs our help!"

"Have you and I been watching the same fight? That man is a monster. There's nothing we can do,"

"You say that like it's easy. How am I supposed to run after what he did to Yang?"

"I know it's hard, believe me I'm so mad I can hardly see straight. I'd kill the bastard right now if I had the strength to do it, but, Jaune, now is not the time! I'll take Yang somewhere safe. The rest of you need to get Ruby and get out of here," Blake grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me a bit. Ostensibly, she was trying to physically shake some sense into me. At that point I could only hear two things: Blake's voice and the sound of Ruby's ax clanging against that bastard's aura. It sounded like a hammer working hot iron. It was the first time I ever heard an ax sound like that. Then I looked up and saw the silver glow in her eyes. The light in Ruby's eyes was almost as bright as the flames. It may sound odd, but I think that the glow in her eyes might've been a ray of hope. Of the axe's clang, it was no doubt the sound of a new path being carved right before us, the path to a brighter future, one where we won.

I can't run away. I've been running all my life. For once, I'd like to stand. Blake wasn't going to let me do that though. So I had to come up with a plan.

"Alright, I'll go, but we have to be smart about this. Right now Ruby is acting as the perfect distraction. While the snake is busy with her you should take Yang away, as well as the other students. Take them to the clinic and alert as many professors as you can. Once they're safe we'll take Ruby and the hostages and make for the clinic as well,"

"Hostages? Do you plan on taking The Brothers with you?"

"I do. That way we aren't just retreating. By taking captives we could potentially cripple their entire operation. I know how this sounds, but I think this might be the only way we put a stop to The Brothers Grimm once and for all. Do you trust me?"

"I hardly know you,"

"That's fine, but even if you don't believe it in your heart, I need to hear you say it, please," Blake paused for a beat and stared at me before her lips eventually parted.

"I trust you," She said, "Do you promise that you'll run the second the other students are safe?"

"I promise," I lied, "I'll make a break for it as soon as we have a chance,"

"You're oddly reliable, Jaune. Perhaps one day I'll come to trust you in earnest," Blake smiled. She snatched up Yang and disappeared in a puff of black smoke. When next I saw her she was standing in the broken window sill. She told the other students to follow her to safety, and so they did.

"Are we really retreating?" Said Emerald.

"Depends, do you have any bigger Grimm?"

"I'm afraid I don't have any Grimm, period. The one from before was a fake," She propped herself against a wall and slid down until she was sitting. I guess it made sense that it was fake. After all, where did it suddenly disappear to after the explosion? On top of that Emerald looked exhausted. She wasn't going to be conjuring new illusions anytime soon.

"That's fine. I lied to Blake just now. I never planned on retreating. Do you see that thing over there, that silver light that shines through the flame? That light is the gleam of tomorrow and you should consider it a blessing that you saw it with your own eyes. It's everything our forerunners asked for in the silent prays they offered to gods long since passed. They prayed for justice, for strength, and, failing either of those, they prayed for peace. It's so close that we could take it all for ourselves if we were to just reach out and touch it. That light is Ruby Rose and if we follow it, if we follow her, we can win,"

"What are you saying?" Said Cinder.

"This isn't the first time Ruby's done this. On the night of the great bonfire her eyes glowed just like this and rejuvenated her aura. It's not a coincidence. I think that there's something magical about the way her eyes glow,"

"Get a room" Mercury spat.

"That's not what I meant! I mean the light of the Masked God shines through her somehow. I'm telling you she's our only hope,"

"Oh yeah? Well what do you suppose we do, goldilocks?" Mercury asked me the question facetiously, obviously not interested in an answer. The snake bastard smacked Ruby into the wall behind us. She left a crater in the wall and shot up a dust cloud when she hit it.

"I don't know. Let's ask the woman of the hour. Ruby!" I called

"Huh?" She groaned.

"What say you, my lady? How should we proceed?"

"For what he did to Yang… We'll cut his fucking head off,"

"Of course. Once he's dead, perhaps we could finally have that talk we agreed to,"

"Aye, sure, whatever. I just really need to kill this guy," Ruby dashed off with her semblance and continued clashing with him. She managed to cut the mask from his face. To my surprise the man's face looked about as much like a snake as his mask. I hesitate to say that he was a faunus, but if he was it wouldn't surprise me.

She started doing something rather clever. Ruby threw her ax over him and towards the wall. When it returned to her hand it hit the bastard from behind. It hit him with so much force it knocked him over. He landed on the ground face down. Ruby moved in and hacked at his arm. He howled in pain and flipped over, kicking the ax from her hand. It went flying. Ruby jumped over him. Facing his back, the ax came back to her, but he batted it away with his fist. While she was behind him she swept his legs and he fell to the ground, face first.

Ruby stomped on the back of his head. He squirmed to try and get up, but she kept him down with her feet. Her ax came back to her and when it did she slashed his right arm again. It was a bloody mess.

"Now's our chance! Rush him!" I shouted. Me, Cinder, and Mercury charged at the snake bastard and swung at him. Mercury joined Ruby in stomping on his head while Cinder threw a knife at his back. It lodged deep in there and drew a trickle of foamy pink blood.

I used my warhammer to wedge the knife even deeper. I struck the knife and heard him wail. If it were anyone else I would have felt awful for doing that. I had caused grievous injury to anyone before. This was something totally new to me, but that didn't matter. He had to pay for what he did to Yang.

The fool somehow managed to roll over on his back. When he did that all of our attacks suddenly became useless and deflected all of them with his hands.

"Fall back!" Ruby commanded. We withdrew under the cover of Cinder's knives. Apparently the girl could manipulate glass, or something like that. Either way, she was at home in our battlefield of broken windows. She kept him at bay while we pulled back.

"This is bad. All of the sudden he's untouchable," Mercury wiped the dripping blood from his brow.

"He's not untouchable, he just blocks everything with his aura. That only works when you attack him head-on though. That's his semblance. If you hit him from behind he's wide open!" Said Ruby, never taking her eyes off him for a second. Her silver eyes still shined bright and her focus was like no other. Whatever power had taken her was clearly still in effect and I planned on making the most of it.

"I don't know how you're doing it but it seems like you know what he's going to do before he does it, Ruby. Do you think you could tell us what you see and let us know when and where he's gonna strike? If we can coordinate his attacks, then we can target his back and bring him down,"

"Sounds good to me. Just follow my voice and kill the bastard,"

"Right. Everyone! Tonight we move as one to subdue The Brothers Grimm and avenge our fallen comrade Yang Xiaolong. Attack!" We all rushed at him with the intent of getting behind the front facing fighter and taking advantage of his weakness. All we had to do was land a few blows from behind.

Cinder came at him with a blitz of knives and kicks but he kept pace with her and blocked them with his aura. He slapped her a few times to get her off of him, but that only made her more mad. She conjured two sabars from glass and swung at him wildly. Then she turned the sabars into a scythe and tried hooking his neck from behind with it. He ducked.

"Cinder! Mercury! Look out! He's going to try and knock both of you out with a kick," Ruby shouted from atop a bookshelf. She perched herself on top of it to get a better vantage point on the battlefield I suppose. However her presence in the fight was sorely missed.

Cinder and Mercury ducked underneath his kick, which he threw out exactly the way Ruby predicted. Mercury rolled under the bastard's leg and kicked him in the back of the knee. He fell to the ground, kneeling. The three of us prepared to attack him while his back was exposed, but he flipped himself.

While he laid on the ground he was facing us and all of our attacks were useless.

"Dammit," Said Mercury.

"Fall back," Ruby shouted, "Jaune he's coming for you next watch out."

I wasn't sure what to do. Then I remembered something from one of Port's lessons. Hunters can focus their aura in specific parts of their body's in order to make them stronger. It was a pretty basic technique, but I decided to do something unusual with it. I focused my aura into my hammer instead of my arm and hit the ground with it. The floorboards came flying up from where I hit them. The bastard went flying along with them.

Cinder nailed him in the back with glass knives and Mercury kicked him in the neck as he fell. We tried to rush him to deliver the final blow, something blocked our attacks.

"Don't count me out yet. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve," sneered the bastard, "Behold my invincible technique: Python's Wall!"

"This has to be a joke," Mercury taped the invisible wall between us and our target, "If you always had the power to do this why didn't you just use it at the start of the fight?"

"I didn't think you would manage to put me in a corner like this. You should be grateful that you got to see my final move and lived to tell the tale. I fear it may be time for me to take my leave,"

"We won't let you get away," I said.

"Again, like I said before, you don't have a say in the matter," He snapped his fingers and a gunshot rang out from the second floor of the library. Ruby shrieked and fell to the ground, blood running from her leg. I ran to her, but she was unconscious. She was in bad condition. The bullet had hit one of her arteries so blood was steadily pouring. I had two empty pens in my pocket. I tried using them to pull the bullet out, but I made very little progress. The others were looking back at the scene in disbelief.

Cinder was the first to come over and I asked her to make me a pair of glass tweezers. In shock, she was only able to make two slender pieces of glass. They would have to do for now.

"What happened?" Mercury shouted.

"There's a gunman on the second floor. He shot Ruby in the leg and she's losing blood fast," I fiddled with the bullet in her leg but couldn't manage to dislodge it, "Cinder these things aren't working. Can you try to make a pair of tweezers again? If we don't act soon she could die." However, Cinder didn't hear a single thing I said. She just stared at us, almost catatonic. "Cinder, please! I know this is hard, but we need to focus. We need to do something right now! There's not much time left."

"Do something?" She asked in a daze.

"Yes, we have to do something or Ruby won't make it,"

"Right, okay, I'll try," Cinder was enveloped by a whirlwind of broken glass soon after. The crunching cacophonous noise the maelstrom made was sickening, it almost made my ears bleed. I thought about taking Ruby out of there, but before I could do anything the whirlwind stopped. The glass fell to the ground, all of it, and in the center of it all stood Cinder, wearing a black mask. From her shoulder hung a short cape of glassy shards which were, likewise, black as night. She kneeled down next to Ruby, crunching glass as she knelt. She held Ruby's face in her hands and she wept. Crying black tears which ran down from underneath her mask, Cinder sobbed quietly.

"Cinder, come on, now's not the time for tears! Please, she's bleeding out, let me-" As I reached over Cinder snatched Ruby away and hissed at me; Literally hissed at me! Like she was some kind of Wildcat. She picked up Ruby, carried her in her arms, and jumped onto the second floor. A spray of red mist and bones came flying from the balcony, along with a severed head. Turns out there was no gunman on the second floor but rather a gun-woman. Her head partially split upon impact with the ground, but its feminine features were still apparent.

Gods be good, what's gotten into her? It was like she was a completely different person. Although I was in shock, Mercury seemed unsurprised. Hell, he was chuckling to himself while all this was happening.

"Looks like Cinder's finally back," He smirked.

"Mercury! Don't be cheeky about this, tell me what's going on!"

"What's the problem, Goldie? Never seen a hunter before?"

"You know that's not what I mean. Why is Cinder acting like this? I know I just met her, but I can tell this isn't how she is. She's a sweet girl. I'm mad about Ruby too, but this, this is too much," I gestured to the severed head in front of us, but Mercury only laughed.

"Wasn't Ruby saying earlier how she wanted to cut that snake bastard's head off for what he did to her sister? And you agreed with her too didn't you? Well this is what a beheading looks like Sir Arc. Get used to it because you'll be seeing a lot of dismembered bodies in this particular line of work," He taunted. I ran over and grabbed him by the collar. I knocked him square in the nose with my fist and watched the blood begin to trickle.

"Do you think this is a game, you fool?"

"Of course not, Bruv. If this was a game I'd be having fun. Now put me down will ya? Let's let bygones be bygones,"

"Oh yeah? And then what?"

"We watch the show," He pointed over to Cinder. She had dropped down to the first floor and was facing off against the man with the supposedly unbeatable semblance. Cinder was frantically kicking his barrier in a vain attempt to break it. However, the man paid her no mind. Instead he stared intently at the head of his lost comrade.

"Alexandria," He sobbed, "I'm so sorry. If I had known that a monster like this was going to be here tonight I never would have brought you. Your death will not be in vain. Tyrian will hear about this, you will have your revenge, I swear it. I swear it before the gods that have long since passed and the gods that have yet to come; before the three kings and the fourth who abdicated. You will be avenged." The man's face was red with tears. The two of us were more alike than I had initially thought. He too was fighting alongside a woman who he deeply cared for. Now that I was able to get a better look at him I could see clearly that the man was a Faunus. His face not only had the slender features of a snake but also a thin forked tongue, which slipped out from his mouth periodically to taste the air. In Vale Faunus were sometimes treated cruelly. I remember as a child seeing a Faunus hung from a tree. When I asked my father what had happened to him, he simply told me that the man was a burglar. As if that justifies it. Men were typically not put to death for stealing, nor should they. Perhaps if I had lived the life of a Faunus I would have joined The Brothers as well and met a girl not unlike Alexandria. Perhaps we would have fallen in love and spent our nights together dreaming of a better world. Just as I had sworn vengeance for Yang, he too was just as quick to vow enmity to those who harmed his beloved. However, Yang was still alive and would likely live to see the morrow, the same could not be said for Alexandria.

Although his words moved me, I tried my best not to cry for him because I knew what was coming next. The Faunus was standing in front of a window, littered with broken glass. Cinder flung the glass from the window into his back. The shards dug into his body and rested deep in his back. They dug through and reached his chest. From there, while they were still embedded in his body, Cinder used the shards as a means of lifting his body. Ostensibly, her ability to manipulate glass didn't stop where your body began. No, much the opposite in fact. If enough glass was in your body then she could use that to move you around.

The Faunus was levitating in the air, howling in pain. That's when Cinder used the glass inside him to grind his innards into a bloody past. She destroyed his back. It peeled off from the rest of his body and a gush of organs followed. Then his arms fell, and the legs followed soon after. Before long he was nothing except a hollow torso with a head attached. The skin of his chest clung to his ribcage, but that was the only meat left really.

With that the deed was done. We won. All our enemies had been thoroughly routed, perhaps a bit too thoroughly for my tastes, and everyone was safe. Except for Ruby that is. Being carried around by Cinder while she went on that crazy rampage probably wasn't good for the wound on her leg.

"Cinder!" I called to her and she turned to face me. Her posture was animalistic. She was hunched over, knees slightly bent, and all the while she cradled Ruby in her arms. "You have to let me see her. I know you care about her and you want to make sure she's safe, but she's dying right now. She won't make it if we don't treat her. Please! Put her down and let me see her!"

Cinder was reluctant at first, but then a hand tugged on her cape, drawing blood as it touched the jagged glass.

"It's okay. He wants to help," Ruby managed to muster the strength to say that. I think it was exactly what Cinder needed to hear. She put Ruby down next to Emerald and we all gathered around her.

"Can we try the tweezers one more time?" I asked. This time she was able to conjure a proper pair of tweezers. I was able to remove the bullet with minimal trouble. Next came the real problem. Taking the bullet out was one thing, but stopping the bleeding was another issue entirely. I used cloth from my shirt to dress the wound, but that wasn't gonna cut it. We didn't have any suchors or gauze or anything to properly clean it. Our only real hope was making a break for the clinic and hoping Ruby would survive the trip, though the odds of that were slim.

Mercury was the only one left who could talk because Emerald was unconscious and Cinder had no grasp of language in her animalistic state. So, I talked with him about what we should do and he agreed that heading to the clinic would be our best course of action.

However, before we could move the roof collapsed. Beams of wood and tiles came crashing down onto us. I threw myself onto Ruby in order to block what little of the debris I could. Digging the two of us out of the rubble, I noticed the other two standing on the surface in relatively good condition. Cinder was carrying Emerald in her arms, just as I was doing with Ruby. Mercury was okay too.

Before us stood a dragon, a terrible construct cobbled together from snow and ice. This false drake was around 11 feet long from head to tail and stood at about 4 feet tall in its hunting posture. Were it to stand at its full height, with its back straight, the creature would have been much much larger. It wrapped one of its clawed feet around the mangled remains of the snake faunus from earlier. It seemed like it was getting ready to fly away with the body.

Where the hell did that thing come from? The only fairytale creatures running around Remnant were Grimm. Though I suppose to some people Spriggans, like Weiss and Cardin, were fairytale creatures of a certain sort. Likewise, some people considered the Faunus to be magical creatures as well, only they conceived of them as the malicious kind. The kind who brought hexes upon unsuspecting villages and snatched babies out of cribs.

I also heard rumors of Giantkin milling around in Vacuo in ever dwindling numbers. However, none of those things compared to a fucking dragon. Especially when the dragon showed no signs of being a Grimm. Grimm had black flesh and reeked of death, but this thing was white.

It didn't make any sense, so I assumed, naturally, that the creature in front of us was the result of some kind of semblance. We weren't out of the woods yet. There was still one last hunter somewhere conspiring against us.

"Looks like we've got company," Mercury stumbled to his feet, "What should we do?"

"We have to-" Before I could finish Cinder, still masked and silent, handed Emerald to me and started walking to the dragon. She fused together her two sabars and formed a halberd with a long bladed head; Part sword, part spear, and owning the best qualities of both. I don't know what got into her, but it seemed like she planned to fight the dragon.

"I guess that's what we're doing," Mercury followed her into battle and the fight erupted almost immediately. The breath of the dragon was so cold that it froze anything it touched in an instant. The flap of its wings caused snowy gales to fill the room. It was like we were in the middle of a blizzard. The two of them evaded the icy attacks with their insane speed and before long the battle became neigh unintelligible.

I could make out the figure of the dragon through the snowstorm as it struggled against their assault. Its long neck recoiled from the force of massive blows and parts of its snowy body were flung to the ground by Cinder. In fact, she stabbed the thing dozens of times, and to great effect. While it was reeling from her Halberd's stabs, Mercury took advantage of the openings she made and kicked it in the head.

As the creature screamed in pain I breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed as though the two of them had the situation handled. I suppose it was a shame that Cinder was, more or less, going to be like this forever. Even still, it never hurts to have another reliable hand in a fight. They would hear no objection from me provided she stayed this useful the whole time.

My attention turned to the two girls on the ground beside me. One was bleeding out and the other was unconscious. I didn't know what to do. I thought about picking both of them up and carrying them to the clinic, but then a thought occurred to me. Well, to be honest, it was less of a thought and more like a memory. I recalled a time when Pyrrha spoke to me about how a hunter needs good friends. When one hunter experiences a change in their aura and further develops the power of their semblance, she told me, those around them will also begin to flourish. The way she described it was like dynamite, when one stick goes off the rest are soon to follow. And, in this case, you want to be as close to the explosion as possible (If you're a hunter that is). Hell, that phenomenon was one of the main reasons why hunters trained together in close proximity in colleges.

Ruby's latent abilities had activated that same night, as well as Cinder's. So I reasoned that we had to be experiencing a chain reaction similar to the kind that Pyrrha described to me. I pleaded with my aura for strength. For context, before that night I hadn't unlocked my semblance and I had no idea what it was. It was basically just nonexistent to me, completely foreign.

I needed to awaken my semblance right then and there, otherwise we were doomed. So, I made a deal with my aura. Yes, as strange as it may sound I spoke to my own aura and made a deal with it. So long as it gave me the power to save my friends, I promised to never use my semblance to harm another living person. The wording was something that I was very particular about. After all, Grimm weren't alive, nor were they people. Although my aura never spoke back to me directly, it made its decision clear in the form of the powers it bestowed.

Moved almost entirely by instincts, I pointed at Ruby and said, "Please! Get up!" as light shot from my fingers directly into her chest. The girl jolted awake and sat upright.

"Jaune?" She said quizzically.

"Aye?"

"What the hell was that?"

"A new trick I learned. Glad to have you back, Rubes," I fought back tears that desperately wanted to flow. We hugged and we both began to breathe easy.

"Can you do Emerald next?"

"I can certainly try!" Just as I had done with Ruby, I moved my hands over Emerald and healed her. She gasped awake as the last of my aura depleted. I wasn't useless without my aura perse, but I was a hell of a lot more useful with it. Also, Ruby and Emerald seemed to be out of aura too. My semblance could heal wounds, but I guess that's about all it could do.

Left without any aura, or weapons or dust, the three of us just watched as our friends grappled with the snow dragon. The dragon's hide was riddled with broken glass and long black spires, both of which were Cinder's doing. She was keeping pace with the thing too. It would nip and bite at her whenever she got close, but she evaded every swipe.

Flipping over its neck and rolling onto the dragon's back, Cinder stabbed it in the nape. It tried to fly away but Cinder produced a black bow. From the bow she flung long arrows which pinned its wings to the floor. From there it was easy for Mercury to finish the thing. He lept in the air and killed it with a falling ax kick, shattering its icy skull.

"Looks like the peanut gallery is doing alright! Glad you all managed to pull through," He looked back at the three of us with a rye grin, one that was all too common to see on his face.

"Do you ever shut up?" Emerald shouted, "I almost died you know!"

"Keyword being 'almost'. Me and Cinder saved you so who cares?,"

"Oh bother," Emerald groaned. Ruby let out a bit of a chuckle, seemingly amused by their bickering. Perhaps this was just how they always were. All I know about them comes from that one escort mission Ruby made me help her with. I assumed they were just having an off day, but I guess those two were always arguing. Hmmm. They seem almost like brother and sister, or rather a boy and a girl who had known each other for far too long. It reminded me of my own family in some ways.

However, at that exact same time, Cinder's mask fell and she stumbled, nearly falling. Her glass cape slipped from her shoulders and the shards which comprised it became exactly that, mere ordinary shards of broken glass. Dry streaks of black ran down her cheeks. It wasn't from make-up. This was something else, I was sure of it. When she came to her senses Cinder looked around the room and saw the carnage she had left behind.

She screamed. We tried to snap her out of it and calm her down, but it wasn't easy. When she came to her sense she asked us,

"What happened here? Who did this?"

"It was you. Don't you remember?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. How could she not remember?

"Last I recall, Ruby was shot in the leg. Everything after that is just a blur, a big black blur of whirling, and screaming. Are you saying that all of that was me? Did I do this?"

"You did, but that's not important now. We-" Before I could finish speaking a giant glowing sigil appeared where the dragon's snowy body slumped into a wet pile of slush. Engraving itself onto the snow, the glyph began to glow and from it came a Gygas. An armored giant, over 30 feet tall, stood before us. His sword was almost as tall as him and the room shook as he lumbered over to us.

"W-what is that thing?" Cinder's teeth clattered together in fear.

"It's a semblance based construct, most likely made from someone's aura. I suspected that there was one more hunter we hadn't dealt with and that that was where the dragon came from, but I never considered the possibility that they could summon two constructs back to back!" To be honest, I was shocked to see Cinder back to her regular self as well. Or rather, it was nice to see her return to the version of herself that I was familiar with.

"So what should we do? I'm out of aura, you're out of aura, you're out of aura, and you may as well be out," Said Ruby, pointing at each of us, "seems like our only option is to run,"

"Yes, yes, do what you humans do best: run," Weiss' prickly voice poked at us from atop the shoulders of the Gygas.

The situation was making less sense by the second. I had heard from Yang about what happened to Weiss. She broke off from team RWBY and was hunting solo. She was a vindictive girl with more pride than brains, but this was beyond even my darkest expectations.

"Why are you always following me? Don't you have anything better to do?" Said Ruby.

"That's where you're wrong, dear leader. For once I actually wasn't following you. Tonight, I had plans of my own, plans that you and your little band of midwits ruined. I'll take your apology in writing, and I'd like it on my desk sooner rather than later," Weiss's construct picked up the bodies of the remaining brothers. It had to sift through rubble to find some of them, but nonetheless it did find them. The massive creature was ready to leave with its master, but before they could go Ruby felt she had to say something.

"So that's it then? You're just gonna leave without telling us what you're doing here?"

"Is that even a question? After all, it wouldn't be a very good scheme if I went around telling people about it. Besides, you're not the boss of me,"

"The school's records still place my name at the front of our team's acronym. Like it or not I'm still your leader and I'm ordering you to tell me what's going on,"

"That's rich. For someone who calls themselves a leader I hardly ever see you leading anything. All you do is spend your days with that girl and her parade of freaks. What self respecting hunter would call you their captain?"

"Her name is Cinder,"

"What?" Weiss practically snarled the word, like a mad dog.

"Her name's Cinder, that's Emerald, and the boy with silver hair is called Mercury, though I call him Merc 'cause we're on good terms. Next time you talk about them, refer to them by their given names. You've been tailing me for over a month so don't pretend like you don't know them," Ruby clasped Cinder's hand and held it tightly. She smiled. However, the sight of Cinder and Ruby being happy only seemed to make Weiss angrier.

"Do you know why I've tried so hard to set you back on the right path? Why for all this time you've never been far from my mind? It's because you're wasting your potential. From the very moment I met you, I saw something in your eyes, and knew you were destined to do great things. You could do anything you ever wanted, but instead you seem content to mill around in the muck with the rest of these little idiots!" Her words didn't fall on deaf ears. We all saw the potential that Weiss was talking about on full display that night. Had she not been shot in the leg by a sniper, Ruby would have made quick work of our enemy. If what she was saying was true then, for a brief time, she could literally see into the future. Mind you, she's doing all of this at the age of 16. Imagine what she'll be capable of by the time she graduates from Beacon. Even still, what Weiss was doing was crazy.

"That's sweet, but I never asked you to do any of that. It feels like everytime we talk you say so many things and yet you seldom explain any of it. Even now, as you're speaking to me as clearly as you can, I find myself lost in your words. Weiss, just come home, we can talk about this,"

"You'd like that wouldn't you? More meaningless chatting. No, I'm through talking, especially with such low creatures. I will say this though, I lured The Brothers Grimm to this place so I could kill them; Bounties have been placed on the heads of all The Brothers and I've come to collect. I used one of my proxies to subtly feed them false information about the books here. I had them believing that one of the tomes in the library held directions to the location of a fallen star. All I had to do was lie in wait and ambush them, until you turned this place into a warzone that is,"

"I thought you were a girl of high pedigree, a natural born lady set to inherit lands and titles. It doesn't make any sense for you to kill them for coin. What could you possibly need the money for?"

"I don't. Chances are I won't spend even a single copper," The Gygas walked off, carrying its master on its shoulders and destroying what little remained of the library. We all stood there in the rubble for a moment, silent with everyone afraid to speak first.

"We should go check on the others," Ruby led the way to the clinic and the rest of us followed. While we walked there were no japes, no songs, and all the way we marched in silence.