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I hadn't exactly gotten the details on what had happened with my semblance because Ruby had moved so swiftly to the next problem. Ever onwards and upwards.

I wasn't going to ask either. She was so exhausted even before. Plus, there were other concerns to deal with. Like taking the legs off a Sabretooth Puma. I sidestepped it like it was a bull, it got closer than I would have liked but the range of my sword allowed me to clip one limb enough to make it stumble. With that I was able to divide its head from its body.

When my semblance came back again later it wasn't because I was losing. I removed limbs distantly before stepping in and throughout dicing the Grimm which possessed them. It wasn't neat and clean like Ruby's, but it was working.

As before I activated it from dealing damage. Again, I'm really not sure. Ruby wasn't telling me, but she also wasn't stopping to enjoy it either.

I think I sort of spent it again, though. If that makes sense. It was frighteningly easy, but I just reached out and sank the tip of Crocea Mors into the belly of an Ursa and ripped it in half.

I stepped over it and continued onwards.

Like I said, our focus remained on the village. Not on these little victories.

"I think I feel something in here." Ruby gestured towards a burning cobblestone and wooden structure. Home. House. Fucking idiot.

The hardest part about searching through a wave of energy like fire was that it was hard to distinguish the flames from something like a group of people burning to death, so we were forced to search the rubble in a more manual fashion.

Ruby grimaced at my treatment of her, but I dug Crocea Mors under the fallen blocks of cemented stone and with a grunt I heaved downwards.

I lifted most of the collapsing structure and Ruby glanced in only to recoil from the heat. She just backed up, shaking her head. No person could survive in there without an aura and even if they had it, they wouldn't be at it long.

The insides of burning buildings were like giant furnaces, sometimes. Except they were also collapsing and melting.

It wasn't hard to imagine somebody cooking dinner or working on something when the attack started. Then there would be a fire on top of everything else for the city watch to take care of and suddenly there was no more civilization.

It wasn't dinner I thought I smelled burning inside, though, but it was something made of protein.

I yanked Crocea Mors free of the building and nearly dropped it on us. Well, in fairness I tried to lower it into place but then it started to collapse anyways. Ruby was already free, pink and red and gone. She probably shouted something super helpful which could even have saved my life.

I missed it and then the fire struck me. Raked at my aura as the building fell inwards, a block of lumber struck me and together with the burning wave of air it was enough to charge my semblance.

Or activate it. I'd guess. As before it seemed like I'd hit a threshold between taking and dealing enough damage.

I landed beside Ruby with a grunt back on the stone church. Together and alone in the village, we surveyed the burning wreckage.

Or rather, alone with the Grimm. Us and it.

"You can say it, you know."

"Huh?" The moon was still high, but the sun was rising with the fire fading. The two combined maintained an even orange and red glow. There was no rush to get anywhere and we had nothing to do but try and explore the ashes. If we wanted to keep looking. We were finding the same thing in nearly every place we found anything.

"At the cave, you told me it would be destroyed, and look-"

"-Ruby," I tried.

She finished anyway, "-it was. You can say 'I told you so.'"

I looked at her pale face. Her cheeks were white, or else covered in ash. So much so that I couldn't make out her trademark blush. I had to recoil a little from that. I looked away and brushed ash and wooden flakes from Crocea Mors.

"Why would I want to?" I didn't let the hurt I felt hide from my voice. "Why would I have wanted to be right about any of that?"

"I-" Ruby stuttered off. "I'm sorry." She said nothing more for a beat. I bit my cheek and rubbed my stinging chest through my armor. "The way you figured this out. It looks like you don't feel any of it. The way you looked at the cave, and the body, and the bodies. It's like you don't care at all." She winced.

"I'm looking at the same things you are, Rubes."

"I know, I know. I'm just…" I waited for her to finish her thought but she didn't. I held out one of my arms to embrace her.

"Ruby…" I murmured. I wasn't hurt by what she said, I was just trying to puzzle it out. She took the opportunity to bury her face in my chest.

She would never hurt me on purpose so I easily forgave her.

"I'm so tired of being too slow," she sobbed a little. "Too far behind the bandits, or cultists or whatever they are. Too slow to stop the big one or even these little ones."

"You can't be everywhere," I tried. Like she didn't know that. "Ruby, if you couldn't get it done, nobody could have. You want too much from you."

"What about you? You're here."

"Yeah, but I do what you tell me, I just don't let you tell me how to do what you tell me to." That seemed to be what I was for, anyways.

She sniffled back a laugh, but I heard it. I wiped the ash from her face and kissed her forehead before pulling her back in and rubbing her back and stroking her hair. "I wish I had saved someone, though."

I nodded. The first rule of warfare was to know thy enemy. If you know their strengths and weaknesses and mindset you can beat them. The corollary being to know thyself, or they can do the same back to you.

"You saved me today."

"You never needed my help," she frowned. "You held your own just fine all day. You can never see the progress you've made."

"I did all of that because of you."

"It was all Pyrrha," she insisted. "It was her plan."

I traded it easily. "Pyrrha isn't here and you are and even if she was, she wouldn't have done it like you did. I'm not the same person I would have been. I'm someone else now because of you."

"And Pyrrha."

"Yeah and Pyrrha and you and my parents and anyone I've ever met if you want to. That's not what I mean. Ruby, I'm telling you that no one can do this like you." I squeezed her hands in mine. "What would I be doing without you?"

"You would have been fine. And this all turned out into nothing!"

"Not nothing," I insisted.

She whipped up at me. Eyes full of tears. "Then what? What has this been for? What have I actually done?"

"I tried to kill myself at Beacon once," I explained Ruby shuddered in my arms, but I just squeezed her tighter. I tried to bring her as close to my chest as I could.

"Jaune…" she moaned but she wasn't sure what could console me.

"Pyrrha stopped me. Then after… I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't put me together again. These last few months, even if they are spent in vain for our journey, they haven't been worthless."

She sniffed and shivered in my arms. I could feel her heart breaking for every person she'd ever met. I shifted Crocea Mors to my back and pulled the bastard sword.

We didn't say anything, I just carried her in a close silence. I drank in her arms around my neck and chest and how close her hair was. Sweat and grime were a familiar duo for us to share these times with. We'd been fighting and hiking and riding for weeks.

In those few minutes, I tried to give her a lifetime's worth of vacation. I didn't, couldn't, and was doomed to fail from the start.

If I could have, I'd have plucked even something so bright as a dandelion from the brown grey and dull green steppes, but there was nothing I could see in the nearby hills that was half as bright as the tips of her hair.

I felt nothing and nothing and sheathed my sword behind me. I moved to brush her tears from her eyes but she sniffed and recoiled.

She pushed gently at my chest through my armor. I realized I'd felt it without looking and suddenly I knew it wasn't her body I was really feeling, though, the weight and breath felt nice. It was nice. Only nice. The contact that set my skull on fire wasn't with her body. Or just with her body, that is to say.

I felt her presence as always, but I realized it wasn't just her perfume or sweat or musk or touch. I could feel her aura against mine. It was electric even through the plate.

I almost leaned into it. Had been. Perhaps it had been for longer than I realized. How much could be transmitted through aura? Most of human communication was non-verbal anyway. Had I been broadcasting like this all the time and receiving it too and not known about it? Were we a special case?

I couldn't ask and didn't care. Not now.

I could feel what she wanted, though. We walked in silence from the ruined village. Our horses shyly approached her. She shushed them, even though they were totally calm. She wiped her tears and brushed the bridge of Georgia's nose.

"Of course. I'm sorry Jaune. You're right." She slid up onto the Georgia's back and I clambered onto Indiana. I was worried she might fall asleep in the saddle and I took the lead and reached over and stole her leads.

She just drooped and rested against the horse. She made it look easy too, as easy as laying in a hammock. She yawned and if she ever did that closer to my face again, then I would kiss her until I was cross-eyed.

She pulled her hood up over her eyes. "So, what? I'm just supposed to take the first watch? What if I'm tired?" Already I was thinking of how to get far away from here. We couldn't stay here, bandits and else besides lurked in the hills.

Sparing her some time to rest was everything.

She giggled. "You're more amazing than you know, you know that, right? Jaune?"

"Yes," that didn't make me very special, though-

"Not this time, you don't get to hide your head in the clouds. You need to say it."

"Maybe."

"I'll get it out of you."

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I'd like to say that I'd been perfectly on guard and ready for the attack. I mean, I'd told Ruby how the bandits were doing what they were doing. Setting lures and manipulating the Grimm. We hadn't been subtle either, though.

Ruby playing ping-pong in the sky didn't detract at all from our presence. She literally flew around, and we'd made no attempt to hide our attempt to save the village. We couldn't. That made us obvious targets.

All that aside my semblance glows in the dark, and I'd been consciously trying to activate it while riding. We were just taking a mellow pace to try and get back to civilization, so I wasn't doing much more than steering and thinking.

It suddenly worked and I just sort of lit up in the dark. Georgia jerked Ruby awake before I could do anything. "Huh- whats-"

My semblance is anti-stealth. If camouflage could collide with something and destroy itself and become pure energy, it would be my semblance.

She made out the blue blur that must have been me and woke up quickly, "is something bad or good happening?"

"I-"

Then I got shot.

I was falling off the horse which was taking off someway. I was going to land flat on my back and my chest stung, too. The Titania plating was more than tough enough to take the bullet through my aura without fear of breaking, but not enough to not hurt.

Whoever fired had a friend that also tried to shoot Ruby, but she just burst into petals with a flare of aura and took cover behind a tree. Georgia, pre-spooked, may or may not have taken off in the direction of Indiana.

I'm not sure. My head cracked against a rock hard; hard enough to concuss or kill a normal person, even. I just rolled with it and found a tree to hide behind. I swept my sword from my back and stood with the sword tip down and my body hidden behind the tree.

"Are you hurt?" She wondered. "It wasn't high power, or MA based."

I shook my head. Twelve percent. Maybe ten, based on the discomfort. I peeked my blind and the tree lost a lot of itself in a small explosion of wood. I might have lost a few percent, too. If I wanted to use my semblance, then I'd need to use it before the power faded. Peeking out into the dark again, I saw nothing, however.

"How fast did your semblance activate that time?" She wondered. I guess we were the only ones in danger, so she felt confident enough to chat.

I shook my head. "I think I can charge it."

"Oh, really? That's useful."

"Huh?" I was checking my chest to make sure I really was all good. Sometimes Aura was hard to believe. I glanced over.

"Oh, I just thought you were trying to keep me asleep again?"

"In a gunfight?"

She raised an eyebrow at me. "Ready?" She was waiting on my mark. Poised with Crescent Rose ready to snap into place.

I folded my weapon, slipping my left arm into the shield and drawing the sword free. I swept out from cover with Ruby, perfectly synchronized. Humans and animals usually responded to audible stimuli faster than visual ones, even still I didn't say anything as I leapt out of cover. Ruby was in perfect harmony with me regardless and she was already prepared to use me as cover to fire out.

We gazed out into the dark in a shower of petals and I held my sword up to extend a soft blue glow. We received no fire and perceived no targets in the dark trees. Therefore...

We were already mid ambush on this position.

I whipped around in time to be thoroughly jabbed at by three quick stabs of a small and fast dagger. The girl behind it wore a simple tunic and dark olive skin with some visible even darker tattoos.

She slashed at me and I stepped back, trying to make some space. I heard Ruby call out behind me, likely engaging my opponent's friend.

I leveraged my shield between us, but she jumped off it and backflipped above me. I watched the eighteen-centimeter blade in her hands fold inwards like a fan or accordion. She let it roll across her fingers like she was reversing a butterfly knife and its form became that of a jagged pistol.

She shot me twice more as she twirled over me. A confident grin like she'd killed a thousand idiots like me roaring on her face, which may be the case.

I turned around, grabbed Crocea Mors with both hands over my head and whipped it at her. It caught her at the pinnacle of her leap in the center of the blade and it slammed her into the ground nearly ten meters away.

It was immensely satisfying to watch a deep green crackle come over her. It was hard to fake that. I'd done something to another hunter.

I didn't get to soak it in, because it became clear why Ruby was being kept busy while I was keeping up. We were outnumbered.

Ruby shouted out again, something very helpful that I couldn't interpret without our connection. With it, I was able to spin around and meet the butt of a spear. The man behind it knocked me back and reversed the weapon.

It was shorter than the longest reach of Crescent Rose. He was also shorter than me by nearly ten centimeters. Maybe more. He was also at least ninety pounds lighter and much less broad across.

I was able to avoid his attack but all it did was force me back into the range of the girl with the green aura in purple. Her light blonde hair was held back into a tight ponytail. To keep it out of her eyes, I imagine.

She had the glow to her that all people with aura had that made them stand out. The hue of her eyes. The shine of the hair. How she backflipped and kicked me in the face before burying her blade at my collar bone.

It bounced off my aura and armor and I heard Ruby call out and the last opponent, a girl in mostly white and brown with pale skin and red hair, flew by. She slammed into a tree next to me hard enough to shake it.

She slumped down with a blue aura pouring over her and she lay without moving.

The dude turned around only to eat lead from Ruby's gunfire before she was on him. The purple girl shouted the dude's name and I dashed towards her while she was distracted. I got my shield between us before she could rip any more of my aura out.

She tried to regain her advantage, but it was already lost. She rushed me but I'd had practice with similar ranges of weapons with Ren and even some other people back at Beacon not worth mentioning.

I was ready for her to go low and I predicted her movement with my shield. I slammed it into her face. I took my sword in both hands once she was air-born and lashed out in two hits. The first one knocking her up, the next bashing her out with both hands. I ended it with a shout.

She landed on her back and pushed herself away from me. I watched her land back next to her friend with black hair.

I glanced back. Ruby was dancing circles around the poor guy, out-speeding and out-ranging him. Slowly picking his aura off in large tan chunks.

I rolled my wrist with my weapon over the one with my shield and the two clicked together into the massive broadsword. I pointed it down at the two girls. The girl with the purple tattoos didn't get the memo and was fumbling for her friend's sword but she only looked up to meet the lowered business end of Crocea Mors.

I clicked my tongue. She met my eyes and must have known I wasn't kidding because after just a moment of consideration, she dropped it.

"Jaune!" I whipped around. Ruby's enemy had left the fight. He abandoned it and ran straight at me, some desperate jailbreak but…

I stepped forward and swung. My semblance… I didn't realize I'd gained it.

"Don't-" Ruby finished her eyes wide.

I stepped through him and across the other side. I turned around.

I watched as the boy fell apart.

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Killing someone was something new for me. The cold Titania edge glided through first aura then muscle and bone as I swung in a tremendous cross slash. I stumbled with it. I expected to meet resistance, instead I just went through.

I imagined it was cold. I couldn't feel it beyond the padded wrapped handle. The cold night air was constantly drawing warmth from my fingers like a giant heat sink. I actually felt that lessen, as the weapon moved through him. I had so much time to think.

I stumbled through the falling puddle of person. The spine and ribs were splintered and crushed. His upper body rolled around trembling in the gravelly mud and soft grass. His legs twitched behind me on the ground while he shuddered and gasped one horrific choking last.

I was hardly looking at him, I was staring at Ruby and she was gaping down at the body. I flinched, feeling scorched just being so close to the target of her dread. The sheer frost against my soul wilted me in a way that not even my mother's harshest glares could. I wanted to destroy it, but I was the source of it. The cold was me. I turned back to his compatriots.

I knew far better than to underestimate them. Unarmed or not. Woman or man. I'd gotten my ass kicked before.

They panicked when I stepped towards them, which was expected. Big dude, bloody sword, evidently homicidal. Yep.

I took two steps and halted at the sight of the terror on their faces. My emotions were ablaze, roaring in my chest, but my mind was stunned and muted.

Ruby was beside me in a scattering of petals, her hand on my chest. A gentle crimson touch. Her lips were tight but her eyebrows were wide. Bright eyes pleading with me, something desperate in them.

My indignancy over their reaction faded slightly, I mean, they did shoot me. My face, I realized, was twisted into something awful. My skull roared in a way I wasn't super comfortable with, clashing with the feeling of victory I deserved and the rush in veins. My heartbeat hammered in my ears for a terrible moment and I thought the sum of it all would drive me mad if I wasn't already.

My indignancy didn't fade entirely.

Ruby's gaze was so full of concern that I could barely hold myself together. I swept a hand through my hair, rubbing the whole of my face hard. The motion broke our eye contact and I felt her recede in the direction of our prisoners.

How dare Ruby empathize with a dog like me, honestly? As though something like her could empathize with something like me. The sheer audacity brimming in those eyes made me want to lash out, but against what?

I always meant to kill them; whoever was responsible, that is, but I hadn't wanted to get my hands dirty for real. It was inevitable upon retrospect. I'd need to kill again, too. Probably here soon. That wasn't really what scared me.

I… wanted to, too.

Ruby would understand what had just happened. Any sane person would. However, even the gore and the trauma of shredding a mortal coil with my own two hands didn't actually shrink my rage towards Cinder one iota.

I wanted to do it again.

I wanted to guide Crocea Mors through Cinder Fall's body. I wanted to watch her life fade. I wanted to feel it in my hands when I unwound her. I was hungry for it in a way that kept me up at night with an empty stomach.

That desire to make someone end felt gross. As gross as any of the bodies I had seen or… or made myself, I guess.

The sight of the guy with his staff was far, far easier than having to gaze at Ruby again. If I really felt so bad and gross, then why was I doing it anyway? How could I face her? Could I look at her and say this was an accident and then… then when I made my move, whatever that meant, what could I say?

I wanted to talk to her about it, too. I wanted to tell her how I felt. I wanted to tell her that every single day it ate me a little more.

Surely only she could save me, lest I sink, though if she saw what I really was, would she still rescue me?

"Jaune," her soft voice returned me. "Jaune, I need you." I woke up from my stupor.

Ruby and the music were waiting for me to face them. She was right. This was no time to lose focus. Who was to say this trio was alone? They almost certainly weren't.

I focused my disgust and self hatred on the problem at hand. I felt like an ocean that was as still as a lake.

"Look, you have no idea who you just killed, alright." The girl with the dark tattoos began.

I blinked, "well yeah. You shot me in the dark."

Silence reigned.

"Well Khagan Branwen isn't the sort to forgive people killing her people."

"Branwen…" I murmured, absently, trying to think.

"What did you just say?" Ruby spun her scythe off her back. The edge, a razor to the waking girl's neck. "What was that name? Branwen who?"

"Branwen, Branwen." The girl insisted. "Raven Branwen."

Ruby's face twisted into something awful. Something like disgust filled her as her nose twisted and she glared downwards. She put a round in the chamber.

"Khagan?" Ruby wondered.

"Branwen as in…" I struggled. "Qrow Branwen?"

Skepticism turned sideways in the kneeling girl's eyes. They flicked from Ruby's weapon up at me. "You know the Khagan's brother?"

"I thought she was Khatun Branwen," Ruby refocused.

"No, not anymore, not since the black-out. Maybe before."

"Jaune, uh, a little pow-wow?"

I bent down and grabbed the bandit's pistol. Her eyes followed it, as I collapsed it and slid it into a belt. It was actually well-made. Not Ruby Rose(TM) quality but the way it folded couldn't be cheap.

We stepped back, I matched Ruby's distance away from the prisoner. "Aunt Branwen?" I wondered. She glanced behind me at the captive.

"No. Not Aunt Branwen. She was-ugh- I wanted to..." She squeezed her hands tight at her side. "She was Dad's first wife."

"Oh."

"She abandoned us after Yang was born. She went here and started a horde of bandits." She snarled. She just spat the words out.

"Um." I just blinked.

"What do I do Jaune?" She reached out and grabbed my shirt.

How in the fuck could I possibly know?

I opened my mouth and stopped. Ruby looked up at me. I felt the tip of something press against my head.

When I got off the ground my head was ringing. I wasn't in a lot of pain. Well scratch that. The inside of my head pounded like an entire xylophone being struck at once over and over.

The girl with the gun… her weapon had a twin.

I realized, dazed. It was a sort of black flash when it happened. The point blank shot immediately dropped my aura to red and activated my semblance at the same time. It threw me forward and made me splay against the ground.

I lost sight of Ruby as the force tossed me but I am fairly certain I heard her gun fire again accompanied by the girl's arm twice more. One final crack of Crescent Rose, then there was silence.

I picked myself off the dirt with a groan, but I pulled my weapon into my hands and stood up. "Ruby?" I whipped myself around. I blinked a few times fast. My vision wasn't clearing.

At all.

I rubbed the back of my head, that would leave a bruise. Right above the occipital lobe, too. I really liked that hemisphere, two.

Vague grey shapes I distinguished using aura rather than with any means of light. I felt beyond myself in the ways Ren had showed me. I wasn't one half as good as him. I barely made out colored blurs before me. Mostly red and fading green on the ground but… no distant blue?

I expected a distant blue by the vaguish tree, there was nothing, though. "Jaune? Are you alright?"

"That's a hard maybe?" I gave, squinting. "The prisoner?"

"She's alive. Probably stable." Ruby judged for me.

"The other girl?"

I felt as much as I saw the blur turn around. "Gone. A semblance, maybe?"

I nodded. I watched my own power fade, my aura turned to its usual dull gray and yellow, the charge wilted. There was nothing to spend it on and so it left. It took my breath with it as my gauge fell to empty. I felt exhausted and swayed on my feet.

Ruby caught me. My vision completely going. "Ouch," I confessed. "The horses?"

"They'll find us, you goof." She shushed. "I'll set up camp and secure her. Rest for a bit, alright?" I didn't have much choice. My head in her lap and her fingers against my forehead and through my hair and in my scalp was like a narcotic. I couldn't even try.

She cooed, running my hair through her fingers as darkness descended over even those details my eyes made out. "I'm sorry Jaune." She whispered, hands cupping my cheek.

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-WG