The unidentified woman sat up from her hospital bed, rubbing her eyes as the light from the window penetrated through, fiercely tickling these new senses. It felt as if she was waking from the longest nap of her life, but it was impossible for her to remember anything that happened before she fell into this slumber, no matter how hard she tried.

She began glancing about, looking up and down the empty hospital room, trying to gather her bearings and perhaps deduce what had happened. But nothing about this plain-looking facility gave her anything useful to work with, not a single hint or clue. Perhaps she was still dreaming, she thought to herself, and maybe if she went back to sleep she would then later wake back up to something that made a lot more sense.

Time for speculation ran out, however, the moment the door swung open to have a lanky gentleman in a stylish dark suit walk in. The man smiled at the young girl just as he began twirling his mustache.

"Oh, good. You're awake." He took out a notepad from his breast pocket, simultaneously grabbing a chair to sit on. "I'll get right to the point, my name is Arthur Watts. I'm a professor at Beacon Academy, and I have a few questions for you if you don't mind me asking."

The woman sat there, not reacting to a single thing he just said. Instead, she just continued to look onward, all around, then back down to her limbs and hands, still trying to figure out her surroundings.

"I understand it may seem confusing. But believe me when I say that I am here to help. The circumstance surrounding how you got here is… bizarre to say the least. So if you cooperate, I promise you we will get to the bottom of this."

The woman glanced at the man, still a bit hesitant as she pulled on her blanket. But ultimately decided to nod her head.

"Wonderful. Now, do you know what your name is?"

She paused for a moment, in deep contemplation. Yet her radiant yellow eyes never once blinked during the duration, something Watts noticed and became instantly fascinated by. After a good long few minutes of silence, the woman finally spoke:

"Blake… it's… Blake."

"Is that a name you remember? Or…"

"I don't know," she shook her head. "It just felt… right."

"Interesting." Watts scribbled down his notepad. "Do you remember anything else?"

Once again, she paused for a similar amount of time, before finally speaking in a quiet soft tone:

"No. Everything is a blur. I remember… parents. My parents, or… I don't know if they're really my parents. Something feels off about it. But I think they're called… Belladonna. They live on an island in the far South. I think I also have a sister. Her name is… escaping me."

"Anything else?"

"Maybe… there is another woman. I think… she's called Raven. I'm not entirely sure who she is. Besides that, there might be more, but it's not coming to me right now. Maybe if I have more time…"

"I understand," said Watts, before leaning forward, becoming gloomier as his expression focused forth. "Final question. Tell me – does the word Edenite mean anything to you?"

Her eyebrows began to grimace, which Watts had trouble deciphering whether that meant she knew what he was talking about or if she was just trying to remember. She then proceeded to say simply:

"No."

Watts nodded his head, closing his notepad to place it back in his pocket as he stood up.

"Thank you, Miss Blake Belladonna. We will be in touch soon. You will get the help you need, that is for certain."

"I'm sorry, General," Weiss sat there on a chair facing the unconscious Ironwood, lying on his hospital bed.

The damages didn't seem too severe now that the doctors had worked their magic on him. Wrapping his head, arms, and legs. His heartbeat was steady, but Weiss could not find any sign to suggest he would be waking up any time soon. Most concerning of all was his Aura, now that he was deep in Dream his Aura could only flicker every now and again, instead of permanently coating his body. It was clear his spirit was fighting to keep his body together, but for how long before a full recovery, Weiss could not tell.

"I know you had your directive. But I can't just sit by and do nothing. My power is a responsibility. My Pa taught me that. You, sir, taught me that. I…" Weiss sighed, leaning over to hold his hand tight in hers. "I should have been there when it happened. Maybe I could've stopped all this from happening. But I just… couldn't hear your voice. I… I want to hear your voice now, sir. I can't do this on my own."

"And you won't have to."

A familiar voice whispered from behind, prompting Weiss to turn her head. There she would catch Rubio standing there leaning against the wall in his female form once more. What was noteworthy, however, was his new outfit.

Instead of donning his old raggedy cloak that covered his bandaged body or his more feminine black frilly dress, he was now wearing what looked to be a proper black double-breasted military service coat with a banded collar and red complimentary fabric on the sleeves. Which Rubio had casually rolled up to presumably mimic his uncle's style. There as he walked forward Weiss could see his long stylish pants alongside what looked like heavy clicking boots armed with a couple of sniper rounds. And of course, his signature red hooded cloak was still there, worn over his shoulders.

"Hello, Rubio. New look?"

"This is what my uncle wore when he was knighted. Or at least something similar anyway. I thought I'd give it a try."

"It's nice."

"I'm sorry about what happened. It must be hard, shouldering all this responsibility. But… at least on the bright side, I heard you found Ozymandias. So turns out you didn't need me after all."

"I'm sorry you got put in our holding facilities for nothing. If I had known I wouldn't have put you through all that."

"Don't worry about it, I'm a tough guy," he flexed his small lean bicep, feeling it proudly. "I can take whatever you throw at me. But enough about me, you still have that Ghost Vester guy hanging around, don't you? Now that your three top generals are out of commission, maybe it's about time their replacements step up to prove themselves. Not that you need to prove anything, since – you know, you're you."

Weiss sat there, staying silent. Which prompted Rubio to raise an eyebrow.

"You… do plan to let them help you, right?" He asked.

"Ghost Vester and his team GOLD are Maru's disciples," she said bluntly. "I am Ironwood's. We serve the same army, but our methods are vastly different. They are strong enough to operate on their own terms. But my business must be my own if I'm going to be Chancellor."

"If you can find it in you to trust me, a Valean, then you can find it in you to trust your own people."

"Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden? You're acting like… you're not going to be here," Weiss said as she turned around trying to read his expression and heartbeat.

To which Rubio responded by simply shrugging after a long sigh:

"I suppose it was only a matter of time. I might as well rip off the bandage – I am going to go find my mother Summer."

Weiss stared at him in shock, with her hands almost shaking as she heard those words. She stood up and floated forward overpowering the lanky Rubio with her imposing shadow.

"You are going after the legendary hero of Vale, Summer Rose?"

Rubio simply shook his head:

"She is known as Summer Rose to many, but I know the truth. And the truth is my mother is the Summer Maiden. The mortal avatar of the archetypal primordial concept of Summer, the God of the Hunt and War."

It took a second for Weiss to fully process. After which she could only blurt out:

"What? How is that possible? How do you even know that?"

He would answer by simply pointing his finger at his silver eyes:

"These future sights are proof of Summer's gift. Ancient holy books describe stories and myths of Summer stealing Winter's moon, lighting it with her own magical sunlight to illuminate the future."

"That means very little in the face of Aura and Semblance. That kind of power can be replicated."

"In function, maybe. But not in strength. You have no idea how far I can see. I spent a lot of time in my jail cell meditating, Weiss. Contemplating and reflecting on my life ever since my uncle Qrow came back from the dead. I tried looking into the future, looking in obscure places. There are limits despite its distance, I can't see through other people's eyes, not without touching them at least. But I did see a mountain, I'm not even sure it is on this planet. Perhaps it resides in a pocket dimension paralleling our own. The gravity there is strong, stronger than you can imagine."

"The Legend of Mount Nephilim. The birthplace of Giants."

"Detailed in the Holy Book of Dawn, yes. That is where I will find the Seasons. Where I will find my mother."

"Not everything in holy books is meant to be taken literally, Rubio. Myths and legends have some truths in them, but there are things that are questionable. How do you even know that mountain is even reachable by mortals? And even if you are able to get there, then what? You said it yourself, the gravity there is stronger than anyone can know. Do you plan on getting your bones crushed?"

"That's just something I'll have to deal with when I get there."

"IF you get there."

"Regardless," Rubio shook his head, "it's not like I'm left with much of a choice. Now that your Empire has taken over our land and you have declared war on Ozymandias. If I stay here, it is inevitable that I will get involved, and that is not something I want. Face it, Weiss. There's nothing left for me here on Vale."

"Nothing left? What about your uncle?"

"He has no tie with neither Vale nor Atlas. We can always meet again."

"And if you don't?"

"I refuse to entertain that possibility."

"Entertain it. Because you are not invincible. You are not me, Rubio. You are flesh and bone, you can get hurt."

"Then I just need to not get hit. Speed of thought," he winked.

"You are fast," Weiss admitted, before shaking her head, "but not that fast."

"You sure about that? How about a little wager then?"

Weiss stared on, confused.

"It's simple – we race," Rubio smirked, "if you can catch me, I'll stay behind. But if I win, you get off my back about this and let me go."

Weiss could only respond by glaring onward intently, almost exhaling into a chuckle at the mere suggestion of the notion.

"Rubio, this is me we're talking about. You do remember who I am, don't you? What exactly are you going to race me with? Your little future astral projection? You said it yourself, these are just projections. You can't touch anything. Even if I humor you, what do you plan on doing if you beat me and proceed to go to that mountain? Talk to the gods? Then if you have to fight back? Are you prepared to have your soul scattered across the universe?"

"Actually… that's another thing I want to tell you. I told you I've been meditating. Staying inside my cell, thinking about what I will do. And – thing's changed now."

"What do you mean?"

From behind his red cloak, he pulled forth his sniper rifle which quickly morphed into his signature scythe, one that was so reminiscent of his uncle's own weapon. What Weiss could not understand, however, was why he was pointing the rifle at her.

"My Semblance has evolved – I can do this now."

Cocking the rifle, Rubio proceeded to blast Weiss with an enormous anti-tank round, instantly exploding a hole in the wall of the hospital room. Using the recoil from the rifle, Rubio would then use this new momentum to dash forward outside through the hole at a speed Weiss had never seen anybody but herself reach before.

Approaching Planck time itself.

The race was on.

Tossing the sniper bullet aside, Weiss would ready herself. From the bottom of her feet came a glowing white glyph that emerged from her fierce Aura emanating from within. The ground beneath her began to quake even without her feet touching the floor. Rupturing the floor tiles, her eyes would steel the moment she took off flying out the hole after Rubio, chasing the man down.

Zipping through the air at a speed faster than light, several thoughts began popping up in her mind. Many of them were questions, others were deductions on how exactly Rubio's Semblance really worked. Because at the end of the day, his Semblance was by far the most bizarre supernatural ability Weiss had ever seen in her life by a wide margin. Perhaps even surpassing the strange things the God King was capable of doing.

Was Rubio now capable of making his image projections tangible? Were these things clones?

No. Weiss told herself, because Rubio was adamant that this was a race, and that he was going to Mount Nephilim on his own, instead of just staying behind inside his jail cell. That only left her with the terrifying conclusion that Rubio was now capable of pulling himself physically from where he originally was all the way to where his image projection was flying toward. In other words, he could now time travel into the future.

In essence, he could basically move as fast as he wished. All he had to do was simply project his image a few seconds into the future, then instantly make himself tangible to where that projection was. The smaller the gap in time, the faster he will move.

Truly as he had boasted – speed of thought.

A thousand more questions popped up, but now that she had reached where Rubio was flying toward, all she could focus on then at the moment was straight ahead. Where Rubio stood on top of a Forever Fall rock, admiring his massive scythe.

"So what do you think?" Rubio laughed. "Pretty nifty don't you think? The Forever Fall is so beautiful. I can never get tired looking at it."

"How are you flying through the air like that? Don't you have to have someone to project your image to?"

"Lots of birds in the sky, my friend," he winked. "You'd be amazed by how many of them there are. Even subatomic bacteria are usable. It does make my eyes a bit dizzy, reacting to things at such high speed. But I'll get used to it."

"You really want to go through with this? You plan on fighting gods?"

"That's the plan, ha! If I can beat you in this race, that will be proof enough."

Without another word, Rubio dashed off again, leaving Weiss behind. Scanning across the surface of the planet, through the crust and curvature of the earth, she could quickly spot where Rubio was heading in the far distance. This time in the far corner of the western desert – the Kingdom of Vacuo.

With her white glyph glowing at the bottom of her feet once more, Weiss launched herself through the air, scorching the atmosphere itself with just her mere speed alone as she left behind traces of ice and light – empowering her own body to an exponential degree. The explosion from her sonic boom was deafening, as if a volcano had just erupted.

That sound would, however, be overtaken by the roar in the distance. A powerful thunderous howl from a beast of disaster status Kaiju. There on top of a tall sandy mound stood a gigantic desert wolf Grimm, baring its fangs just as the tiny Rubio was approaching from the ground up. Dashing through the air at an unfathomable speed. In a time frame so infinitesimal that the foul creature did not even get to finish blinking – Rubio had already taken out his oversized scythe to slash directly at the wolf's jaw, taking the entire upper half of the skull clean off in one smooth motion.

The monster did not even get to scream its final agonizing moment.

"Your uncle taught you well."

"You can thank my dearest Crescent Rose as well," he said, kissing his scythe. "Now, shall we fly further west, milady?"

Without even letting Weiss answer, he began zipping off again, to travel forward a few attoseconds into the future. To which Weiss would follow shortly behind, determined not to let him out of her sight as the two dashed through the vast ocean separating Vacuo and Mistral, letting the salty water beneath splash upon their face.

"You can't fight a Season, Rubio! You're out of your depth. You are going to die."

"I think I've about had it up to here with you lecturing me," he said as he turned around in midair swinging the blade directly at Weiss, which she simply reacted by blocking it with the back of her left hand. Using that to create some forward momentum, Rubio would confidently fire another round from the rifle to ricochet himself off Weiss' hard body thus launching himself further into the distance, increasing his speed even further.

"I don't even know why you even bother," Rubio said. "Why do you even care so much if I go? This is none of your business."

"What kind of a question is that? Of course it is my business! You… you are my friend."

"We are not friends," he said plainly, slicing through a hoard of Grimm sharks on the surface of the ocean, using their corpses as a launching platform to bounce himself off even further into the distance.

"Rubio!"

"Face it, Ice Queen. You don't know anything about me. Do you even know whether I'm a man or a woman?"

"Enough of your trickery, you are not Oz's student. You don't do tricks, I know you!"

"Evidently not. How do you know for sure that this female form isn't my original form? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I've just been showing you a version of myself that I wanted you to see? Be thankful my magick isn't being used to aid Ozymandias. With the power of our illusions combined – you will lose. You can consider me leaving an act of mercy."

"This is absurd. Stop this foolish mission before you do something you'll regret!" She shouted, bolting from the sky down to where Rubio was flying, trying to catch him by the throat. It would ultimately be in vain the moment Rubio used his Semblance once more to zip himself far in the distance elsewhere, another few attoseconds into the future.

Weiss scanned around – this time spotting him going north. Into the frozen kingdom of Atlas.

Speeding through the air, rupturing the atmosphere, Weiss was becoming more annoyed as the seconds went by. Never in her life had anybody been able to compete against any of her powers. To force her to use her Semblance at all and take things a little seriously was a mark of Rubio's hidden abilities. He was already dangerous enough before when he could only project images and see into the future. But this – this was something completely different.

To think, Oz had possessed such a power in his court all this time, right under his nose. Weiss shuddered to think what he could've accomplished if he had Rubio's loyalty.

Perhaps the Kingdom of Vale wouldn't have fallen at all five years ago.

"You're still holding back," Rubio shouted, dashing about all over the surface of the airships and the towers of Atlas. "I know you can go faster. How many times have we circled the planet so far?"

"3,879,653 times."

"That is nothing," Rubio scoffed. "To the limit now!"

"If I go any faster I may break the planet."

"It's time you live a little, Ice Queen. You're the only one I want to race."

"This is utterly pointless. You can see the future – you should already know the outcome of this battle."

"Doesn't work like that I'm afraid. Not against someone like you who exudes so much gravity that it literally bends the flow of time, space – Destiny. My future vision has always been in flux when it concerns you. That's what makes it so exciting!"

"Is this a game to you, Rubio? This is serious business. People's lives are at stake!"

"Your people. Or the Valeans, the Vacuans, the Mistralians. You all can fight each other until the end of days for all I care. I told you – I have NOTHING left on Remnant. Nothing tying me to this world."

"You… still have me."

Not looking back behind him, Rubio would pull down his hood as he launched himself forward once more. In his hand wielding the bloody Crescent Rose as his red cloak fluttered in the wind. Bloodied by black Grimm essence as both Rubio and Weiss zipped through mountains, oceans, rivers, and forests destroying any monster they found in their paths, simultaneously with Rubio striking at Weiss with everything he had. Brandishing this silver blade while twirling gracefully in the air like a beautiful spinning rose, slicing her at every angle.

No hits were strong enough to pierce Weiss' skin, but they were getting stronger by the second. Strong enough to force Weiss to continuously get more serious, emanating stronger gravitational fields with her Aura powering up, quaking the very ground itself.

Back to the heart of the Valley. There as the two of them approached the igniting Valean soil in the distance, they could feel massive tremors rocking the crust of the planet back and forth, creating massive waves in the middle of the ocean in the process. Beneath the boiling earth of the Valley – Weiss began to hear the sound of something she thought was impossible.

The sound of a heartbeat. The heart of the Valley – a Summer war drum.

"This is… no… how?"

"You know of the legend, yes?" Rubio asked. "If Summer's heart were to ever stop beating – this country will fall. You can hear it, too. I can tell from that look on your face. My mother is alive, thus the Valley lives on."

"Rubio…" she paused for a good long while, as the two continued to dash around the planet. "I… I cannot do this without you. You – you are my friend. And I know you feel the same. Your heartbeat does not lie."

"Well, can't blame a guy for trying to hide," he chuckled, slicing a Beowolf in half. "It would've been a lot easier to say goodbye if I had managed to convince you."

"Convince me, or convince yourself?"

"Ha, I will never forget you, Weiss Schnee. And I promise you – as long as Summer's heart still beats, my heart shall as well. I WILL come back home. For the sake of my uncle… and for you."

"There's really nothing I can do to change your mind?"

"I'll still keep my word. The wager is still on. If you catch me, I'll concede. So how about it, Ice Queen? One final lap? First one to step foot back on the Forever Fall wins."

No more words, no more holding back. Mustering everything he had left, Rubio would now channel his Semblance for his ultimate move. Instantly teleporting into the distant lands far beyond the horizon. Weiss floated there, shaking her head in somber sadness. She would then clutch tight her fists to prepare for a speed she had never had to reach before in her life.

The glyph at the bottom of her feet glowed like a star made of diamonds, sparkling like snow. And within the next imperceptible timeframe – she would launch herself forward, rupturing a nearby mountain from the shockwaves of her speed alone.

Stretching her arms forward in this flying pose, her military cape would drift along so violently in the middle of this cold slicing air in a way Weiss had never felt before. Flying at this speed so intense the sky began to boil from the heat, cutting violently against her invincible skin. It did not hurt, of course, but there was a concern at the back of her head. One that had never existed before because the fact of the matter was – she had never felt physical pain in her entire life.

And yet, Rubio was the only one on the planet so far who had prompted Weiss to think about such a concept, something that was so foreign to her before this moment.

If an invincible girl such as herself could think about the notion of getting hurt, then what about a mortal like Rubio? Of course, she was still worried about her friend. Nobody had ever been to this mythical mountain. He will surely meet monsters and foes that will be beyond anything that could feasibly exist on this mortal plain.

And yet…

Thinking back to what Rubio had said about her trust in him, a Valean – a friend.

And thus, at the very entrance to the Forever Fall, Weiss would arrive, only to then immediately stop dead in her path just short of the grassy field before her. She stayed there for what felt like an eternity, and yet she knew well that from the point of view of the ordinary, there may as well have been no gap in time at all.

Because only a mere two microseconds later, Weiss would feel the flutter of Rubio's red cloak rushing past her. Darting straight forth into the far distant horizon so far and so fast Weiss could no longer see him even with her enhanced super vision.

Or perhaps, it was more accurate to say that she did not wish to see him. For she knew deep down – this was their farewells. So the only thing for her to do now was face the setting sun and salute him as she readjusted her red tie and service cap.

The race was over – and this was the result.