Lord Frieza's return to Vacuo was incredibly brief for the speed of his second form. It was but minutes before the sands of Sanus reentered his vision, the Dust-rich landscape dotted with black mining machines as he neared Shade Academy, where a scuffle looked to be taking shape atop the great pyramid.

"Oh, could this be a coup d'etat? Such a full day," he remarked with evident amusement as he set down in the courtyard to the distress of the guards. They regarded him cautiously, having never witnessed anything beyond his lesser self.

Frieza's body went quite still as it flared with light, and the handful of Huntsmen —Cagliusa Perrault running up in a sweat— saw it turn grey, before pink cracks saw Frieza step through it like an eggshell. He'd returned to his first form as the statuesque hulk crumbled, and the onlookers understood at last that it was him.

"S-Signore, a thousand pardons!" Perrault groveled. "Th-this… this… vagabonda has violated your quarters! She has power we cannot contest! Sought an audience with you while you were away!"

"Truly?" Frieza asked, not looking at him. "Then I'd best indulge her…"

The air whistled as he floated over the stepped floors, rising as the next of his guards charged the newcomer.

"You! Stop in the name of Lord Frieza!" the guardsman shouted, before being effortlessly tossed aside.

More guards rushed forward, but a rough female voice shouted indignantly as she swept them away with a burst of power. The others stood conflicted, torn between confronting the champion or hesitating to enact the cruel ruler's will.

"Stand aside, cannon fodder! Know your place! You're now in the presence of a High Level Executive Class fighter!"

Frieza leered. "I know that cadence..."

Without a word, Frieza stepped casually over, landing a few steps from the floor. "My dear captain, is that you in this ragged new vision?"

Jól Yaldā smiled beneath her platinum hair, her fur coat long cast off for the blue tank top which was little more than an undergarment. "Yes, Lord Frieza, your right hand, Captain Ginyu, has returned to your side!"

It was unmistakable, as the woman knelt down low in practiced grace, arms out as index fingers pointed to the sides.

"So you've survived," Frieza noted lowly, nearly turning his back on him. "I hope not through cowardice. And you return in the form of one of these barbarians?"

"N-no sir!" Ginyu said, sweating. "My team was defeated. It was a near thing, but a mishap with my body switching technique trapped me in a member of the local wildlife!"

"Either the magnitude of your failure is greater than even I dare imagine, or I am missing critical details!"

Losing patience, Frieza leapt from his step, planting a foot on Ginyu's chest as he ground him against the floor.

"How was the Ginyu Force, comprised of only the greatest fighters, scrounged from a galaxy that fears my name, felled by ragtags from a backwater of spacefaring neophytes and the Prince of ashes and refuse?!"

"L-Lord… Frieza!" Ginyu begged, pinned painfully.

Frieza only stomped harder. "Not days ago Vegeta was brought to bear against Zarbon, weighed, measured, and found to be lacking! When I found the trio with their hands in the proverbial jar, he had nearly matched this form and busied himself threatening the earthlings!"

Every incongruity of the ordeal seared itself back into Frieza's brain… and he had to consider if his faithful Captain was the cause of it all.

"So I ask, how could Vegeta have done this?! Having dealt with Saiyans and their penchant for returning from injury with greater power, even the edge over Zarbon should have been effortless!"

"T-there was… another!" Ginyu croaked.

Frieza stared pensively. "Another."

"A Saiyan, my lord! A Saiyan stronger than anything I've ever seen! His power registered a hundred and eighty thousand sir!"

Frieza growled. "I am in no mood for frivolity, and every word you speak impugns and insults me!" he admitted, though Frieza had no credible theories of his own as to why the Saiyan had contested him so effectively.

"Vegeta's underlings were reported killed, and they were barely comparable to a middling soldier in my ranks. The Saiyan that survived the purge, that is your suggestion? The brother to Raditz, a low-class dreg? You suggest my failure made flesh, in a fighter half again stronger than the highest of my elites?"

Ginyu spoke carefully. "H-he seemed familiar with the earthlings, sire! I tried to take the Saiyan's power for the empire, but their treachery was my undoing! Lord Frieza, please forgive me!"

Frieza scowled, but stepped off, leaving the Captain to wheeze on the floor.

"That will depend entirely on your next answer, my old friend… Though loyal you've been, failure is a thing I do not tolerate! But so trapped on this world, I must ask. Does that form leave you with anything to offer me?"

Ginyu stood up. "Yes, my lord! My old body is back on Namek, so I have to settle for these riff-raff, but they're stronger than they seem!"

Frieza smiled. "Oh?"

Emerald tore ahead of Mercury and Hazel towards the forest crater, using her chained khopesh to swing through the trees as they embedded in the old growth. Just reaching the treeline had been war. No allegiances with Salem could quell the mad throng of Grimm drawn by the terror of Haven's collapse, nor the thing that had caused it. Even now, Atlas ships had arrived to add to the chaos as unseen gods battled in the valley.

A dozen more trees and Emerald finally stumbled onto the field of flattened wood, toppled or half uprooted, bent away from the focal point wherein lied—

"Cinder…!" Emerald gasped, vaulting the last few logs to find her master still upon a bed of splintered wood, mouth agape and face twisted in exhaustion and pain. Her Aura sputtered. Her Grimm arm had evidently taken the impact, perhaps per Cinder's design. It was a heap of black goo, literally splattered, hanging from her shoulder like velvet off deer antlers.

"Oh my god…!" Emerald shot to her knees as she pressed her ear into Cinder's chest, while Hazel and Mercury warily wandered into the clearing. "She's alive! Cinder? Cinder, can you hear me?!"

The two men hardly took their eyes off the valley turned warzone. Mercury shook his head. "What the hell is all that? I thought we were the world's big dark secret."

"I don't know," Hazel answered, "but an ill wind blows."

No sooner had he uttered the sentiment than a surge of pink and purple wafted through the valley, and the Atlesian ships were swept from the sky like toys. The larger ships crashed and burned in spectacular fashion, while the smaller craft were a meteor shower, slamming into grass, stone and trees all around them.

"How does he do that?!" Mercury asked, crouching low as he tracked the falling debris.

The lot of them flinched as a Manta exploded into the trees behind.

Cinder's eyes flew open, and she gasped in surprise and fear, taking great gulping breaths as Emerald eyes brightened.

"Cinder! Are you—?!"

"Get OFF!" she snarled, lifting the ragged remains of her arm before her as Emerald obeyed like a struck dog. The Rogue Maiden winced, focusing before letting out a scream of agony as the black arm sprouted from her shoulder like a sleeve unrolling. She wheezed in rage as she examined the limb, before springing to her feet, only to collapse against Emerald, who took her weight without a word. "What happened? Haven… Did the White Fang…?"

"Don't know, like it really matters," Mercury opined.

Cinder bristled. "What does that mean?" she seethed, uncertain if he was being flippant.

"Something…" Emerald began, trying to put it to words, "showed up after you… I-It started to slaughter everything!"

Cinder lost patience. "Are you deflecting, Emerald?"

A chill ran down her spine as Cinder's stare burned into her. "W-what? No! I—"

"Because I recall coming up to see you trussed up, Mercury on the floor and not a single cold body among those brats! You were my chosen, and you let a bunch of children beat you outright…"

As Emerald spluttered, Mercury's mood only soured. "You forgetting current events, or did those four girls knock something loose when they kicked you to the curb?!"

Cinder's teeth began to show… as did the Maiden tearsign.

"Afraid I agree," Hazel added, towering as he stepped closer. "Hypocrisy is beneath us. Scrounge some honor in defeat."

"There IS no honor in defeat!" Cinder cried, like a cornered beast.

At that instant the sky flashed, and they all turned in time to see a colossal, broiling orange sphere expand and detonate as it engulfed Mistral.

"What…" Emerald breathed, before a scorching wave incinerated the valley below, and an ear-splitting roar finally reached them, having traveled miles at sonic speeds. A toss of flaming debris and steam shaded what remained, but in its wake was only silence from the four disciples.

But none were more taken by the smoldering ashes than Cinder, who stared as though she were divining reality from a mirage… and as though she couldn't be certain if it were the most horrific or the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. "That's not Salem… How is this possible?"

"It's that thing!" Emerald uttered in horror. "It's got to be! It vaporized three of those kids and cut another in half!"

"Pretty sure we saw something like that behind us while we were making tracks through the valley," Mercury said, fists clenched as he contemplated.

But then, behind them, a black void ripped into being, howling at them. Her voice echoed through. "Return at once… We shall have words… ALL of us…"

Salem's tone was venomous. Emerald looked as though she might sprint the other way, taking a step back. But she bumped into Hazel's chest, and one solemn look from him told her there was no escaping what came next.

"I… I wonder if any of those kids made it out," she thought aloud.

But no sooner had she said it than the hair on Cinder's neck stood up, and she whipped around to see near the treeline, where two familiar cones of light were trailing into the expanse. "At least one of them…"

"What was that?!" Blake asked, alongside her team, currently fussing over a drained and sobbing Ruby Rose. "Is something wrong with her Aura? Is she gonna be okay?"

"Yeah!" Oscar told her, speaking between breaths. "It's… her… Silver Eyes… Oz says she's… Just really… overcome."

Oscar was sweating bullets, finally in control of himself, mercifully after the action was over. Of course, he'd felt all of it. It wasn't as though he checked-out, he just wasn't in control.

Blake wasn't calmed by the explanation. "Her eyes? Wait, 'Oz,' you mean Professor Ozpin? He's dead! What is going on?!"

"Blake," Yang called, putting a hand on hers, "I think I can explain, but just… just not now."

"Silver eyes," Weiss repeated. "But that's just… So she's okay?"

Qrow tried for a reassuring smile, but only managed a curt nod. "She's gonna be fine, just… In a bit we'll get her home."

Weiss froze for a moment, nodding. She hugged Ruby around the shoulders, before slowly standing.

And then she bolted down the hill.

"Hey!" Yang shouted in surprise.

Blake stood up. "I've got her. I know where she's going…"

She took off in a jog, ensuring she didn't lose Weiss, but not outright chasing her down.

Jaune looked to the adults, antsy and distressed as he stared out at the city turned crater. "Hey, we're not just going to sit here, are we?! We've got to see about finding survivors!"

There was a low scoff from behind them, and they turned to see Vegeta near Krillin, leering. "Survivors? All that's left out there is glass and ash. Far be it from me to keep you from wasting your own time."

Krillin groaned in annoyance. "Don't mind him, I'll make a sweep with you."

"I'll go too," Oscar offered. "If anyone could survive, they'll be in rough shape."

Jaune managed a grin. "Thanks."

Raven sighed. "I'll stick around, I guess." She caught her brother's eye. "You take Yang and… Ruby," she uttered, trying the name, "and get them to Tai."

Qrow smirked. "Working up the nerve, huh?"

Raven only rolled her eyes as she swept the portal open. Ruby's uncle and sister lifted her to her feet, and she staggered forward. Qrow took up the back and heard another set of feet behind them. "You coming?"

Gohan nodded, dashing to keep pace. In moments they'd walked through, and Raven found herself alone on the foothill with Vegeta.

Weiss found the hulking shipwreck and felt only a brief foreboding at the noisy creak of settling steel. She'd need to move fast if the wrecks shifted. Like the grounds outside, the place was randomly burning, casting dark shadows, but if she were honest it was better than if she were to prowl a black hull.

She kept to the churned earth, beginning her search from the bottom up. She gulped, blinking away tears as she noted how nothing inside the frame was recognizable. The blaze was so intense it was like the ship's skeleton was all that survived. Every handful of steps she stepped over human bones. She fought to keep her sight clear. If Winter was among these, she might never know… The very thought left her sick.

She ducked low under a ceiling and into the partially buried forward battery. She saw enough to be certain Winters ship had—

"Oh my god!" she whispered.

Weiss had never walked the halls of a Theia class cruiser before, and couldn't have known, even in death, that the battery would be such a straight shot. Let alone expanded from within, likely from the detonation of Dust armaments in the crash. And at the end of the hall sat the remains of the Eiswind. Its frame had buckled, its nacelles gone and its front-end crumpled. Fire had eaten away at her paint, like rust, but the rear hatch was popped open.

"WINTER!" she shouted, bolting for the ship, batting away loose cables trailing from above. "WINTER, I'M COMING!"

The steel rang with her cry as she slipped over the ramp and took her first look inside. Her heart skipped.

The Eiswind was so different from the hull that swallowed it. Scorch marks had bled onto the walls from outside, but while battered and broken, it hadn't been consumed in the flame. And it was apparent why.

From behind the seat, Weiss could see Winter's white hair from the back, bent low. But explaining everything was the part-melted chunk of ice, dripping. It had receded, but Weiss was certain from experience that Winter had created a cushion of ice to engulf the cabin and protect herself from the flames and impact.

Weiss stepped over the bodies of shorted and shattered Atlesian Knights, clattering past the holographic table and around Winter's command seat to—

She froze. The air had gone out of the room. She blinked and blinked and blinked again and again, but the vision didn't change. She couldn't move, she couldn't scream, it took everything she had left not to collapse.

Winter was still in her defensive posture, knelt down with her saber planted into the floor where the ice had bloomed. But the ice in front of her was split, fissures running through it, and it was clear why.

The front panel had exploded outward, bowing out of the way of a series of steel pipes from the ship outside that had speared the cockpit… the ice… and were protruding inches out of her sister's back.

"No…!" she whined, finally stepping up.

She didn't know what to do. If she was alive, unfreezing her could kill her… but she couldn't move her out like this…! And removing the pipes could cause her to bleed out!

She twisted her revolver with a suite of clicks, and imbued her blade with fire. She swiped through the ice and steel like butter, leaving a little over a foot of steel sticking out of Winter's chest.

There was no choice. Myrtenaster still ablaze, she summoned a glyph around Winter and the ice melted and steamed off of her in seconds.

Weiss had never felt so focused despite her panic. With a flick of her wrists, tiny glyphs held her sister's limbs in place, preventing her from falling with the melt and aggravating her wounds. She only stopped briefly to wipe the tears out of her eyes in annoyance. She couldn't be distracted.

Finally she reached forward to catch her, handling her like glass. She wasn't moving. She was cold, but that was to be expected. But she nearly dropped her when she glimpsed her open eyes, staring blankly.

She hauled her out of the Eiswind to the battery outside and eased her onto the floor, just holding her back high enough to avoid the pipe ends. She took a shaking finger to her throat. Nothing. Not a beat.

She choked back a sob, thumb flicking her revolver again. Lightning Dust.

"Please work…!"

She set Winter on her side and found the front of one of the pipes, slipping Myrtenaster's blade through it along the inside of her body. She hesitated… and hit the trigger.

Weiss winced, the electrical burst shooting through Winter licked at her fingers as they held her sister's shoulder off the floor.

Nothing.

Her eyes welled up. "Winter please…! Come back!" She chambered her last round and fired. "Come BA-ACK!"

Her body leapt as still muscles responded, but yielded only white noise. Palest blue eyes continued their empty stare. Barely able to see through her own pouring blues, Weiss summoned small glyphs around the three pipes, and in moments, they pulled free, discarded with barely a spritz of red. She finally set Winter down and burrowed her face into the crook of her neck.

"Y-you can't…! I know we never s-say it… but I love you…!"

But Winter hadn't heard her. A pain coursed through Weiss like she'd never known. That warmth that shielded her as a child, that candle in the dark had gone out. A door had closed… forever. The world felt so much smaller, worth so much less.

...Because she was gone.

Blake didn't need to search long. The steel rang with echoes of pain, and her faunus ears picked it up all too easily. She stepped easily under the sunken ceiling of the forward battery and into a scene that chilled her blood, that felt a trespass for her to witness.

Blake had never formally met Weiss' sister, but recognized the form of Specialist Winter Schnee unmistakably. Dealing with Atlas for years, it was hard to avoid… But she never thought she'd see her in this light: still, eyes fixed straight ahead, laid on her side with Weiss' back against her. Her little sister's face was screwed up in pain, a hand clasping hers as it was wrapped around her front in a facsimile of embrace…

She felt her breath catch, a sensation in her nose and behind her eyes like inhaling water. Blake knew for a long time now that Weiss was sweeter than she let on… but she never believed she'd see such a picture of loving innocence from the girl, and in that instant she could feel her own heart breaking.

"W-Weiss?" she broached, breaking into the scene as though smashing a stained glass window. "Weiss, we need to go, this place could fall apart any second."

She didn't answer, even as Blake crept closer. But finally, she said something else as she hid her face. "It's my fault, Blake…" she quailed. "She came for me… I know it…!" She took several rapid breaths as she suppressed sobs. "She found out I left… and she came back for ME! And now she… she's…!"

Both hands hid her face as her mouth pulled, and Blake hurried to her side, hand on her shoulder. "Weiss… Weiss, I need you to listen to me, because I know what you're feeling… and you're wrong."

"B-But it's—"

"No," Blake told her firmly, without anger. "It doesn't matter if she came for you or not. Never blame yourself for being loved. I-Ilia…" Blake paused, a lump in her throat as she said her name. "Ilia is gone… She gave her life for mine… and I know she'd never have it differently. You can't take on every burden they choose for them."

Weiss didn't answer immediately, trying to calm her breath. "Sh-she… didn't mean to die…"

Blake shook her head. "No… maybe not, but… Someone else chose that. Weiss, we're responsible for our own choices, and… I once told you there's no such thing as pure evil…"

Weiss looked up. Blake's eyes were shimmering.

Blake swallowed. "...I think I was wrong."

Weiss understood her meaning perfectly. At the heart of it was Blake herself. A thousand memories, from their rocky start to here… comforting her… ready to mourn with her.

Before she'd known it, she'd thrown her arms around Blake, and shared her pain. Blake broke as she did the same. Together, it was not so terrible to weather.

Qrow, Yang, Gohan and Ruby stepped through and upon the grass of the Xiao Long home. It was a tired march, and the first to rush them from the porch was Zwei, his ears pricked as he raced around their legs.

"Hey bud," Yang offered with an obligatory grin. He didn't even have it in him to bark as his nose went wild. Gohan watched avidly as the corgi took particular interest in him before whimpering happily as he leapt to lean his paws on Ruby's knees. She tried for a smile and scratched his ears, but the little beast could feel it. He laid down instead, sighing as his chin sat on her boot.

Ren, Nora and Sun raced down after him, arriving one after the other in a manner that almost felt rehearsed.

"Guys!" Ren called.

"Are you okay?!" Nora added.

"Is this ALL OF YOU?!" Sun demanded in a panic.

"Hey hey hey," Qrow repeated, hands up as he took a breath. "Everyone's more or less fine, it's over, they'll all be here soon."

"Y'mean you guys actually BEAT that thing?!" Sun asked, his eyes agape.

"No!" Yang belted, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Look, give us a few, okay? It was… really rough."

"We'll wait for the rest to come through, then we'll tell you everything," Qrow told them, guarding Ruby in particular.

Suddenly, Gohan's eyes widened as the door to the house opened. Bulma stepped out, as well as—

"Dad!" Gohan shouted, running pell mell up the walk to Son Goku, stopping short of the warrior as he stepped gingerly. Zwei watched, panting happily.

" 'Dad?' " Ruby, Ren, Nora and Qrow all muttered as they looked upon the man in orange. The living legend Gohan had spoken of with more hushed reverence than Frieza… the savior of their world… the strongest among the most imminently powerful beings they had ever known.

"Gohan!" the man bellowed happily, chuckling as he placed a hand on his bowl-cut hair, clearly resentful he couldn't do more.

"D-Dad, you're… you're still hurt…" Gohan remarked, examining him with concern.

"Hey! I'm getting better!" he said almost defensively

"He's barely more than a kid," Qrow muttered, watching the two fuss over each other as Bulma watched on with a smile, shaking her head. "Acts a bit like one too."

"That hair though," Nora snorted, thumb to her chin. "Is that just what it does?"

Yang frowned. "Wait, it doesn't bother anybody else that his Dad is just here, at OUR house? There's 'coincidence,' and then there's 'get the hell out.' What's going on anymore?!"

Ren nodded. "It does seem unlikely."

But the door opened again, and sandy blonde hair and blue eyes stepped through in a rush, freezing upon sight of the newcomers.

"Dad…" Yang muttered, before Taiyang hurried towards them and she gently pushed her sister towards him, stuffing her discarded cape back over her head.

Without a word they met in the middle, and a fresh wave of quiet tears overtook Ruby as she wrapped her arms around her father.

"Shhhhh… Shhhh… Hey, you're home, it's all gonna be fine," he whispered, trying his best not to hug her as tightly as he probably wanted.

"It's been… really… h-HARD…" she muttered between breaths.

"Hey, you made it back," he told her. "Whatever you did out there, that's all that matters." His hand found the back of her neck and he leaned down to plant a kiss on her forehead. "Look how much growin' you did since you left…! And you found a tailor…"

"I-it's new...ish."

He chuckled. "Guess I can't call you my little girl anymore, can I?"

She didn't answer, merely basking in his comfort.

"Hey, come inside, get a glass of water. Lunch'll have to wait, I gotta… um… I gotta restock this place."

She nodded, letting go with one last squeeze and passing him. He watched her, his smile fading instantly.

Ruby ascended the porch step, to where Gohan, the blue-haired woman who came with Blake, and Gohan's father were standing.

Gohan watched her uncertainly, but tried to brighten things with his eyes if not with a smile. "Dad, this is my new friend, Ruby. She's… She's the first one I met here."

The man with the orange garb, understated yet unreal muscle structure and otherworldly hair stared into her with an intensity she didn't expect it was as if he knew exactly what she'd seen and experienced no, different from the others.

Still, he hummed and put on an impeccable smile, a smile that matched those of his son so closely it was uncanny. "Ah, yeah? I used to have a friend like that! Her name is Bulma."

"Used to?" the blue-haired woman muttered with plain offense.

Ruby stood immobile for a moment, but hastily wiped her wet face with her sleeve and extended her hand. "Y-yes, I'm Ruby Rose! Gohan, he's told me a lot about you… It's a pleasure to make your a-quaint… ants…"

He stared at her hand with polite confusion, as if she'd rolled up her sleeve and revealed a slimy tentacle.

The woman Ruby now realized was named 'Bulma' frowned, rolled her eyes… and backhanded the back of his head.

He flinched, snapped out of his reverie and closed his hand around hers, giving a firm shake as he looked her in the eye with a reaffirming smile. "My name is Goku!" His hands were so ROUGH…

He retracted it, adding, "Thank you, for watching out for Gohan. Wish I could have been there myself…"

Ruby gave a humorless scoff. "Oh, hardly… I think he more watched out for us… ha…"

Goku hummed. "Maybe… but you put yourself at risk for him back there. I won't forget it."

Ruby looked away. "Well, he's a great kid, n'... Hold up, how do you know that?"

Goku's eyes brightened, and he tapped his temple with his finger. "I sensed the whole fight… Felt like it got bad," he added, face falling.

"Oh, right… sensing…"

"So, you're Taiyang's kid? He's a cool guy."

"One of 'em… My sister Yang is over there, but… I think I'm gonna go inside. It was nice to meet you."

Goku and Gohan struggled to say anything at first, but ultimately Bulma offered a warm smile. "Sure, kid, go take a load off. We've all earned that much."

She locked eyes with Gohan for just a moment, nodded, and stepped past them and inside. She started as her eyes met a white suit and looked up to see green hair. "Doctor?"

Qrow stepped forward, locking eyes with Taiyang, who also approached silently.

"Hey Tai…"

And then Taiyang's knuckles connected with Qrow's chin.

"DAD!"

Qrow slumped onto his back as Taiyang rubbed his knuckles and stomped closer.

"Whoa!"

"Hey!"

The kids all raced closer, prepared to restrain him, but the Xiao Long patriarch didn't press the attack. The excitable corgi went ballistic, barking constantly as he circled. "You son of a bitch!" he spat. "You pushed her into this, you told her where to go! Did you not hurt our family enough?! You want to kill RUBY too?!"

"Dad STOP!" Yang demanded, the center of her brow rising.

The screen door slammed open, and Ruby herself was racing back down the walk in tears.

Qrow was visibly shaking. "All I did was show her a choice."

In a flash he grabbed Qrow's collar and reared his fist back. "You KNEW she'd go, because you know HER…! You KNEW I didn't want them to be part of this, not yet!"

Nora charged in to put the staff of her hammer over his neck, but without looking he ducked low, and his free hand shoved her as she landed on him, flipping her over him effortlessly. But then petals whirled, and both of Ruby's hands were gripping his arm as she sniffed.

"STOP IT…! I chose to leave! It's not his fault, it's MY fault!"

Taiyang softened as he looked back at her, but he sighed. "I knew I couldn't stop you kids from getting mixed up in this stuff, but I wanted you to at least graduate before that! This whole Salem mess broke our family apart… And he was no help in that."

Ruby frowned. "Do you mean his semblance…? Dad… that's not fair!"

Taiyang let Qrow fall back and brought a palm to his forehead. "We told him to watch you kids when we realized where your Mom was going, and he came anyway! He left you alone, and then we lost her! She went through to Evernight, I tripped, INCHES from her!" He admitted, his face and voice pained. "She was right THERE! It was HIM, his CURSE, I KNOW it was! It's ALWAYS him!"

"He didn't kill Mom…! That's not fair, you KNOW it's not fair!"

Yang's eyes went red. "So what Mom said is true, you DID know about this! We went our whole lives and you all kept something like this—?!"

"What? I was supposed to tell my children there's an ancient evil force looming over their lives?" He asked, not even angry anymore. "My children who all want to be heroes and Huntresses… Did I train you to defend yourselves, or to inherit a war?!"

Ruby went quiet. "But you didn't train me… He did," she said, looking at Qrow. "Is this why?"

Her father didn't answer at first. "Growing up… I knew nothing would stop you. Every time I look at you, look in your eyes, I see her staring back at me… That same, unstoppable look. I accepted you'd become a Huntress, but I couldn't bear to train you up myself."

She locked eyes with her uncle, remembering her time at Signal… and her sore lacking in the brawling skills of her father.

"I let him teach you, on the condition that we didn't tell you kids about Salem until you were of age, licensed, READY!"

"Tai… I—"

"And HE BROKE THAT!" he spat, jabbing a finger at Qrow. "I don't care if Oz is missing, Beacon falls or who did it! My kids are NOT a weapon to throw at HER when things go south!"

Ruby clung to his hand, holding it to her chest. "Dad… you talk like it was inevitable that I'd go if I learned the truth. So you have to know, if I didn't go, if I didn't try to do something to make things right, I was going to be miserable forever!"

His eyes slammed shut. The hand she held tensed into a fist, but she knew it was no threat.

"Maybe I'm not ready, but my team and I decided a long time ago that the world wasn't going to wait for us! This is something we have to do!"

Tai pinched the bridge of his nose. "It doesn't have to be you…"

She was quiet for a moment. "Who else is there?"

Sun, Ren, Nora, the Earthlings and even Doctor Oobleck watched in uncomfortable silence. Ruby's father turned from Qrow and held her again.

"You scare me, baby," he admitted. "I see you, I see her, and it's like I see the past rolling over us again… I see you running the same way she ran, and I feel helpless to stop it. I… I can't put another stone on that hill, marking an empty…"

Ruby shook her head, her eyes growing wet. "You won't have to. Dad, I promise—"

"No!" he barked, glaring. "Don't make promises you don't know you can keep, I raised you better than that… Just… I know what you're doing, and why you need to do it… Just let me be there for you. Don't put it all on yourself and shut others out. This war has enough martyrs."

"I'll try."

In the quiet that followed, Qrow stood back up, rubbing his jaw. He waited, but finally steeled himself. "Hey… Before we get ahead of ourselves…"

"Don't act like this is cool," Taiyang warned.

"There's something we need to say!" Qrow dared.

Taiyang nearly started up again, but Goku's voice called from the porch. "Hey Tai!"

He turned, glowering. Goku gave him a grave look.

"I think I know what he's gonna say."

He stopped. Qrow nodded at the stranger, inscrutable. "Mistral's gone."

"What?" Taiyang muttered, almost casually.

But it stirred their small crowd.

"Y-you're not…" Nora started, hand slowly covering her mouth.

"No way!" Sun projected. "He actually did it?! A whole Kingdom?!"

"The City anyway," Qrow elaborated, drawing his flask.

Taiyang blinked, releasing Ruby and standing awkwardly. "Look, Salem's powerful, but even she—"

Yang shook her head. "It wasn't her, this is something else."

"You gotta be—"

"It's Frieza," Goku said over them at last. Taiyang caught his eye again. "That's exactly what I felt… Thousands, an ocean of powers in one place, all gone out… There's nothing left."

Tai froze while the kids who arrived before his daughters and Qrow muttered to each other in shock. Faintly, he recalled Goku speaking that name before. All the more unnerving, not one of the newcomers contradicted it. There was no lie in their eyes.

He stepped back, scoffing, almost offended. "Come on, this… this guff about other worlds, planetary defenders and fantastical powers… that's not real!"

Oobleck finally stepped up, nothing short of disturbed. "Mistral, the Cradle of Civilization on Remnant… such a loss would be incalculable! Why there's so little record of our earliest past to begin with! To destroy such a city… short of falling interplanetary bodies there is no such force!"

Suddenly a golden ball launched into the sky like a flare, with an otherworldly scream, drawing their eyes. It was small to begin with, but only shrank as it soared higher.

Finally, a blinding sphere engulfed the sky above the wooded home, and dust was swept from the crannies of its rooftop as the trees bent away in deference. Those on the ground dug in their heels so as not to be made into detritus themselves. The little dog grumbled as he slid slowly across the grass.

It faded in seconds with an echoing ring that increased in pitch as it was quieted. They all looked to the source. Gohan's two fingers were lightly smoking from his demonstration. Oobleck stared.

"Yes… Yes I do believe that might do it…"

Taiyang however found his eyes drawn to his daughters, and indeed the others to emerge from Raven's portal. The skyward blast left them all tense, alert… as though the blast were the hallmark of a fresh trauma. Even Qrow's body language turned guarded, but he managed to speak up.

"It's a whole new ballgame. No more this or that generation. It's time to fish, or cut bait."

"So Mistral lies DESTROYED," the Black Queen projected, her voice ringing off the darkened rotunda walls, "at the hands of this all-powerful, inhuman interloper from across the stars…!"

Watts and Tyrian, largely cloaked and hidden with a number of crescent scars upon his face, watched near the hall, staring up at the ghoulish image of the others who returned with caution.

"...And all I am left to wonder," Salem continued, pacing beneath the black mass overhead, "is how this relates to my RELIC, now LOST?"

Emerald Sustrai's makeup ran up her temple, streaking black as she held back sobs of despair from the ceiling they all dangled from, their legs and lower bodies swarmed by an amorphous tangle of grabbing black hands and threading feelers which held them fast. At all times, it felt like they could be dragged into the center of it and consumed. Mercury, Hazel and Cinder were all bound in the same manner, blood rushing to their faces to compound the issue.

"Please, PLEASE don't kill us…!" Emerald begged, gasping in fear.

"Emerald QUIET!" Cinder ordered, her teeth grit as she struggled. The limbs holding them all were… grabby. "The Relic… urghh…! I-it wasn't at Haven! Raven Branwen, SHE was the Maiden! She opened the Vault and sent it off before I could stop her! I—!"

"Branwen?" Salem repeated, brows flat but rising in contemplation. "Yes, her familial trait… I was not concerned that the Lamp might be destroyed, I'm certain that is quite impossible… Butis this to say the White Fang were commanded to destroy the school ahead of schedule, absent our acquisition of the Maiden OR her identity?!"

The feeler's wound around Hazel, squeezing him as he wheezed in pain, agitating his stump. "The boy, Taurus! He broke our agreement, tried to slay Sienna Khan, and when he failed… ngg… turned his wrath on Haven…!"

Salem was unimpressed by his explanation. "And you sat idly by while he threatened the plan?"

Hazel did his best to ignore his surroundings. "Would you have had me destroy them all, Ma'am?"

Cinder and her disciples watched piteously as the tendrils pierced his wound, and even the giant of a man groaned piteously as Salem plainly willed it. They too felt his suffering through his semblance, and they knew that Salem knew… This, not even Watts or Tyrian were spared.

"I abide your taking pity on others in as much as it has frequently benefited our purpose!" Salem explained pointedly. "Indeed, a body is worth more in service than as rotting meat…! But the instant the boy threatened our goal, yes, Hazel, my expectation was that you destroy him! And instead you joined the battle above?"

Hazel's teeth grit as the feelers dug under his skin, quite visible, like black veins. Emerald shook in fear as Mercury watched in macabre fascination, even as the terrible sensation met them as well.

"The Relic was at stake…!" Hazel wheezed. "And our forces above were thinning…! Cinder was moving on the Vault, the plan was at threat or in motion…!"

The limbs and feelers contracted as one, jerking the four of them closer to the center. Emerald screamed.

"All the while, outwitted and outmaneuvered by a drunken fool and a pack of CHILDREN! Escaped certain death to wake all of Mistral, only furthered by the acts of a lone opportunist!"

"They KNEW!" Emerald cried, eyes slammed shut against the horror. "They knew we were coming! This KID sniffed us out, he was one of those FREAKS!"

"Yes," Salem followed, almost sarcastically, "the otherworldly opposition to this alien threat that destroyed a Kingdom. How conveniently unfortunate!"

"We're not lyi-i-ing!" Emerald sobbed desperately. "He even found me out while my semblance was on him!"

She wailed as she was drawn deeper, Salem threatening to let her be engulfed, such was her irritation. But Hazel's voice cut across.

"Ozpin was our undoing!"

The creeping limbs froze. There was silence but for Emerald's whimpering.

"Ozpin? Explain."

"He's returned, in the body of a boy…!" he managed, as the tendrils quieted their motion to hear him. "It was plain he anticipated our ambush… the game was given away well before."

"Ozpin…" Tyrian hissed, having watched with cautious sadism until the hated name was uttered. "Returned already…?"

"Yes, that makes sense," Arthur Watts added, thumb to his chin in contemplation. "Before they purged the surveillance systems, Qrow arrived with this little tan rube. Of course we knew they suspected from the start."

"Oh, so it's your fault, eh Doc?" Mercury blurted, as Salem seethed. "You were the first impression after all."

Watts' mustache twitched. "Qrow Branwen didn't trap a false Maiden on the spot. If anything, we know the good Headmaster was a weak link. We know he surrendered the Vault key willingl—"

"ENOUGH!" Salem cried, every light dimming as the mass on the ceiling reached out along the brick halls beyond the rotunda. "In your pointing fingers, I see a comedy of errors played out, but I am not laughing! The scope of your failures is so nuanced as to be nearly coordinated… And finally, you apportion blame on one conveniently dead."

None of them dared to speak, bracing against the building storm. Watts and Tyrian ducked low against the creeping mass as it spread.

"Perhaps I should start again?" Salem suggested at last. "I've done so many times. Have I a reason not to?"

Cinder was quick to speak up. "I'm your ticket to the Relic of Choice! Kill me and you throw that away!"

Monstrous eyes narrowed, but a grin bloomed beneath it. "Oh Cinder… you're quite wrong. It's not you that I need."

Cinder yelped as the vine-like feelers around her legs began to release, and they fell limp and lifeless as a golden, glowing pair remained attached and struggling.

Salem locked eyes with Cinder as she stammered in horror. "Just your soul."

If the others hadn't struggled before, they certainly were now, though no more so than Emerald who pleaded blindly on her master's behalf, and Cinder herself who begged in panic as more of her mortal form was peeled from its immaterial essence.

It was an unintelligible cacophony, and once it had carried on long enough, Salem sighed and swept out her hand. "Silence."

In seconds, the whole rotunda had been immobilized. Only the eyes of its occupants wandered as Salem paced the floor.

"Fortunately for you all, I know none of you are capable of the calamity wrought from Mistral," Salem offered clearly, her voice tinged with amusement at the thought. "But that leaves the unsettling reality that what you've told me is true… that we are no longer the sole power on Remnant worthy of the term. This could prove an unfortunate hindrance… or, potentially, an unexpected boon. Whichever proves true, I need capable agents, and a foe that can decimate a Kingdom must be acted upon with all speed. This… precludes the option of starting anew. I will have need of you still. Arthur?"

In a blink, the immobilizing field, the inky mass above, all vanished like smoke. Haven's defeated fell to the floor, all but Cinder managing to land on their feet as hers remained paralyzed, until their spectral essence merged flush with them once more. She moved and cradled a foot, relishing its response as she measured her frantic breathing.

Watts rolled his shoulders as freedom returned to him as well. "Mmm! Yes… As I'm certain Cinder is delighted to know, the disruption of the CCT system has diminished the effectiveness of my skillset, but that is not to say I've failed to put some feelers out to the Kingdoms and major cities with our Lady's help… Atlas, unfortunately excluded, though I have snagged a few rumors about an extraordinary rampage in the uptown districts. Suspect was neither captured nor identified."

As Emerald helped Cinder up, her mentor lost patience. "Get to the point!"

Watts' mustache bristled. "However, my threads elsewhere were far more fruitful. Several reports corroborated a high-energy pulse striking a clump of the lunar debris field days ago. Triangulation of the accounts based on where they were visible from puts the source in Vacuo, and while the local network is unreliable at best, I rummaged some rather intriguing information."

His scroll projected itself into the air, displaying a list of several words in a column.

"Prior to the pulse, the most common keywords in browser searches and private communications related to Beacon, Vytal, the CCT, Dust Embargo and Grimm—"

"I thought Vacuo had its own Dust supplies," Mercury noted in question.

Watts leered impatiently. "It's not concerns, it's gloating and speculation that Rosenrot Ventures will capitalize on the SDC's vacancy from the global market… Now if I may…"

With a gesture, the list changed.

"These were the hits in the days since: Moon… massacre… invasion… treason… and most curiously… Lord Frieza."

Hazel, Mercury and Emerald simultaneously twitched and froze. It didn't escape the notice of Cinder or their dark mistress.

"Mean something to you, does it?" Salem asked.

Surprising even her, Emerald spoke up first. "Y-yes… That's the name it used."

Mercury grunted. "Was all third-person about it, but yeah, rings a bell."

Salem's eyes turned once more to Arthur Watts. "Then we shall need an envoy to arrange a formal meeting between this 'Lord' Frieza and myself."

There was an unease in the group, and ultimately Tyrian breached the silence, his fingertips lightly touching. "Surely this… swine is beneath such an audience with her eminence?"

Salem blinked with a smile. "I appreciate your concern, Tyrian, but I'm quite intent on meeting this being. I have questions only his like can answer for me."

Even shadowed by his hood, the pout of his lips was evident as he almost imperceptibly whined.

"Arthur, I'm afraid I'll have need of you for this task," the Queen continued. "Tyrian, I fear your zeal will offend our guest… Hazel will require attention, and the rest of you fresh from this debacle are too close to the situation. You will remain here until we've taken stock of our circumstances and a clear path forward has crystallized."

A black void tore itself into being feet from Watts. He adjusted his lapels.

"It's good to be valued," he confided, turning an eye to Cinder, "but I'll not deny, it's wearying to be in such high demand. Be sure not to break any more Kingdoms while I'm gone, will you?"

He strode through the black gate and away, the air rippling as it shimmered.

Cinder growled under her breath, but it was Emerald who found the words. "I hate that guy."

Mercury snorted. "Brown-noser…"

"W-Me?!" she spluttered, rounding on him.

"No, the other kiss-ass—"

"Quiet," Salem demanded, her countenance darkening again. "Do not mistake my need of you now as a license to carry on as before. Consider this a stay of execution… a probationary period, during which I expect a proper argument for why each of you have value to our cause. Naturally, actions will be valued far higher than words."

There was no reply. The relief in their eyes was replaced. Salem couldn't help but smile.

"In light of that… I would spend your time wisely."

She swept from the rotunda, like smoke over still water.

Jaune, Oscar and Krillin passed the burning wreckage of the Atlas ships to find few surviving objects half-buried from being thrown in the initial blast. A lopsided car was an odd find, given Mistral lacked the infrastructure to support them. It was a city of bridges, lifts and foot travel, save air ferries between the most distant sections or indeed the mountains themselves.

Eventually though, they found the edge of the crater, transitioning from cracked, dead grass to—

Glass and ash…

Vegeta's words echoed in Jaune's head as they stared into the desolation. Mistral's famous winds carried over without resistance. All that remained of Sozo and Fuku were the outermost foothills to their left and right, trailing down past the rim. Slight discoloration suggested the stratification of the peaks that once towered, but with erosion they could only ever be a pair of opposing bluffs. Otherwise, it was so homogeneous, the dust so fine, it only took a glimpse to know the truth.

Jaune no longer wanted to walk into the crater. Spoiling the seamless earth would feel like treading upon a grave. The others seemed to agree without a word.

"I'll fly over," Krillin offered, "see if it looks any better on the far side."

"Yeah… I'll search the West rim," Jaune said quietly. "Oscar, you take the East."

"Yeah, sure…"

They separated, Krillin whistling into the air. Jaune shambled along his route as Oscar took his. The straw-haired teen was glad he'd left Crocea Mors back at the meetup spot, because the slog would have been twice as miserable.

It was pointless. Vegeta had been right. Nothing had survived, let alone any evidence that the Nikos' family had left before this. Their residence had been a level above the foothills, and even those had been erased. "Destruction" wasn't a sufficient term. There wasn't even rubble…

Oscar traced the edge, uncertain whether to even bother with a brusque pace.

"You've been quiet," he muttered. "Is there any sign I should look for?"

"I… I don't know," Ozpin admitted. "I've never seen anything like this."

"I thought our memories were thousands of years deep… You're saying I was next in line, but only came out here to see the world end?"

"Mistral… is not the world."

"You know what I mean!" Oscar snapped. His partner was silent again. He stared out, sought a familiar sight. In the far distance, he could make out twisted rails. He traced their path to the blasted void. Nothing else remained of the station he rode in on. He recalled seeing an adjacent rail round the cliffs and between the peaks, the alternate path of the Argus Limited. It might have never existed.

"Oscar, I'm sorry to impart my own pain unto you… For you, what's been seen is a horror in itself, leave alone my own attachments. I helped build this place. I'd call my feelings indescribable… but I'm certain you're inheriting those as well right now."

"All I'm getting from it is the dread of knowing how far beyond all of us this is," Oscar sighed. "Stopping Salem was all you thought of before, but I don't think she compares… If Gohan and his friends were so easily beaten, what hope is there?!"

Ozpin left him a moment's calm. "You're right. This may well be Remnant's final hour… But… it might instead be our FINEST hour."

Oscar only bowed his head.

"You KNOW I speak the truth when I tell you that every time I believed mankind had reached its peak, I saw extraordinary individuals draw it ever higher," Ozpin told him, the ghost of pride in his words. "Against every pressure posed by Salem and her Grimm, it was atypical that I served as the solution. Humanity THRIVES under adversity. This is why we must not surrender as yet."

Oscar slammed his eyes shut, extending the Long Memory and wacking it with a hollow sound against a nearby boulder. "That's EASY for YOU to say!" he shouted, the sound echoing lightly in the wind. "That whole time, it wasn't me fighting through that nightmare! I was terrified the whole time! Every time you made me attack when I wanted to flinch, or charge when I wanted to run… I couldn't even understand! I thought feeling it might make me less afraid, but instead I feel more helpless than I did at the start!"

Ozpin said nothing, let him shake and shout as he gripped both ends of the stave with an iron grip.

"I don't have the courage the others have… That Ruby has… I saw her fight so hard to throw herself at Frieza and stop THIS from happening… She didn't care if it was pointless, if she died… I don't have that in me. I don't know why I'm here…"

"Well I seem to recall the turning point in our fateful discussion…"

Oscar nodded. He did remember.

He stewed as he joined his Aunt Moserah for dinner at last. Ozpin had been respectfully silent throughout, despite effectively having a captive audience. Still, he regretted being short with her, if not explicitly rude. It was very nearly their last encounter, aside from a note he left the morning after.

Ultimately though, dreams wrought visions… Visions of a Queen of Grimm, hordes of dark creatures, slavering over the scared and helpless… A raven-haired seductress wreathed in flame…

Then he stood upon a dune under the purple skies of arid twilight, whirling a gold-hilted sword with a blue blade, and a golden staff unlike the Long Memory, with a blue crystal at its end… to devastating effect. The sand came alive as the sword stabbed the air, spears of glass hindering the advance of soldiers in green armor. A single swipe of the staff at an advancing, antiquated hover tank was like an infection of lavender flame, consuming the steel as its occupants in white plate armor scrambled to escape this impossibility before it could spread to the escape hatch. For those who neglected to follow their example, they screamed as they were undone by the azure steel…

He witnessed cities half-built in a clarity that preceded any photograph of the era… Nations forgotten by time, molded over into skeletal ruins.

Faces filtered through the dreamscape. A grizzled man with blood-red eyes and his rugged, beautiful twin. An old grey faunus, a bespectacled blonde with eyes of jade...

Then… there was a girl in a white cloak, scarlet hair set over the kindest face and shining eyes. Or at least he'd have described them like that before she blinked, and they truly gleamed like searchlights…

He awoke with a start, but was calm in moments. He grumbled as his suspicion mounted. 'What… was all that?'

'Memories,' Ozpin answered simply. 'It is, after all, during sleep that our minds parse and catalog—'

'It was you, wasn't it?'

'It was not a thing I planned. I cannot make you think or dream anything, just as I cannot force you to set for Mistral.'

Oscar sighed, turning to his window, and the fractured moon beyond. 'What's so important about Mistral anyway? Those… memories… I could tell some of it was a long time ago… What's this all about? Who were they? And that… The girl in white… who was she?'

Ozpin went quiet for a moment. Oscar couldn't be sure, but either the specificity of his question had taken him off guard, or…

'She… I once believed she was Remnant's last hope… Vanished thirteen years now. My hope is the torch burns still in her legacy… a daughter.'

'Last hope… are things that bad?'

'I told you I had a grave responsibility, Oscar. I am sorry if I've come off forceful, but I fear what inaction may bring. Still, you deserve to understand. What would you like to know?'

The rest of that night was spent in deep discussion, putting context to his dreams as at last Ozpin explained how it had come to this, what was at stake. He came to hear of allies and enemies with extraordinary abilities, of monsters and Maidens and Relics of limitless power.

What had before been an intrusion was turning into something out of a light novel. It was almost a cliche, really: the youthful farm boy joins an ancient mentor on a fateful quest to save the world.

The more they talked, the more the gaps in the tale filled in, as his own memories picked up the pieces. The people he saw, and who Ozpin described, were becoming like legends from fables, who he might soon meet and learn from.

It had turned from an unasked burden into the opportunity of a lifetime, and one day he'd return to the farm a different person and live the rest of his days fulfilled and renowned.

At first, it seemed to go that way. Running into Qrow Branwen was like meeting a comic book character, and when he laid eyes on Ruby…

It was uncanny how she resembled the girl from the dream, Ozpin's last hope. She had those same eyes. He didn't know from his vision if they had been glowing all along or if they really had that lustrous shine…

"I wanted to help save the world," Oscar said, shaking, "but that's when I thought it could be saved."

Ozpin gave him space, figuratively speaking. "Oscar, few, even among Huntsmen, have the manner of courage you respect in Miss Rose. The platitude goes that courage is heroism in the face of fear… But for those who so readily surrender themselves, for the sake of others… in my experience… it is rather that the ALTERNATIVE terrifies them more than any fear for themselves."

Oscar exhaled sharply. "She came all this way because of Beacon."

"Yes. And I assure you, she was as frightened as you, if not more so."

"I just… these people are incredible, and everything that makes me incredible comes from you."

"Forgive me, but I don't think you've allowed yourself the chance to know that for certain. Never forget, it was not I that chose you, and in a hundred generations, none have taken up this mantle who could not shoulder our burden. We have failed before, made grave mistakes, but to believe you will uniquely fail is, I think, unfounded."

"Hey!"

Oscar jumped, turning to see Jaune jogging up the path towards him.

"You find anything?" Oscar asked, trying to mask his feelings.

Jaune bowed his head. "No… I think we ought to head back, see how Weiss and Blake are doing. If we're not careful, Grimm could catch us out here if they regroup."

"Guys!"

Both turned to the sky as Krillin drifted down to land beside them, surprise in his face. "I think you oughta' see this!"

"Survivors?" Oscar asked, astonished that there was anything worth finding here.

Krillin's countenance fell. "Er… no… but… it's something. See that up there? Kinda greenish?"

They looked, and for a moment they were dead quiet as they sought Krillin's phantom as he pointed high.

But Ozpin uttered his surprise, before humming knowingly. "Of course…"

"What?" Oscar blinked, still trying to make it out.

"Ask if he'll take us to it."

"Huh? Why?"

Krillin noticed the one-sided conversation and frowned. "You uh… okay?"

"Can you take us— me to it?"

"Huh? Why?"

Ozpin let out an amused breath… metaphorically. Oscar answered. "I guess it's what's left of Haven' vault? That's what Ozpin says anyway."

Krillin's face went wild in his confusion. "Who? Vault? You're not talking in third person, right? I didn't catch your name."

Oscar idly scratched his upper arm. "It's… complicated. I'm Oscar."

Krillin thrust out his hand. "Krillin," he offered as Oscar took it. He didn't let go, redoubling his grip. "Welp, hold on…"

Oscar cried out in surprise as their new companion lifted into the sky and took him along, and in seconds they were over a hundred feet up, sailing serenely.

"Y'alright?" Krillin asked, glancing down. "First-time flier?"

"Y-yeah," he nodded nervously, his dangling feet trembling.

"No worries, I won't drop you… So what's in a 'vault' that's so important?"

"Nothing right now, it's more the Vault itself. You'll see in a sec."

They approached the green glow, which showed to be the huge fanning door of the Vault, still sealed, if looking ghostly.

"I'm amazed it's still here, let alone shut," Oscar opined.

"Well, it wouldn't make for a very good Vault if it could be FORCED open," Ozpin noted. "Still… I never dreamed it would be tested this far."

Krillin's tongue clicked as he stared at the Vault. "Well… Still not sure what this is all abou—"

Oscar extended the Long Memory, jutting it towards the door, which met it with the sustained crackle of jade lightning.

"...Oooooooo...t?" Krillin finished as he watched more and more arcs shed from the mass, and the boy he hoisted glowed with the same power until eventually the door began to vanish. Its corners softened and retreated into itself, all detail and definition muddling as it turned amorphous. It was like melting, but the runoff was streaming directly into the freckled boy.

In one last flash the last of it was siphoned, and the glow began to fade as Oscar sighed.

"That'll be enough to ensure a modicum of security for ourselves," Ozpin said, regaining the front seat. "Thank you Krillin. You've met Oscar, but I am Professor Ozpin. We've already met, of course, informally."

Krillin stared at him, gears turning. "Ah, right, I thought your voice was different before… Still don't really get it though."

Ozpin nodded. "Of course. One of many things the group will need to establish, and can wait until we've reconvened."

Oscar flashed again, and the farm boy shook his head like a dog ridding its ears of water. "I'm never gonna get used to that."

Raven leaned against a tree, arms crossed as she stared out into the desolate ruins. It was so quiet. She'd lived in the shadow of Mistral for so long, seeing the valley like this was legitimately shocking. Even she, who cleaved from the fat of civilization, who saw these Kingdoms as doomed from the start, never believed she'd lay eyes on such total annihilation.

In the forefront of her vision though, sat up against a boulder, was the man with the razor sharp eyes, who had done his best to shake Frieza's tree. And to her understanding, he was the strongest of their new allies. It was difficult to contemplate the power they'd seen before was neatly bottled into his lean package, like staring at a god.

Not hours ago she'd been at the top of the food chain, barring the likes of Salem. From a shark, to barely more than chum.

"Mind your eyes, woman," Vegeta warned, "lest they offend."

Her eyebrows rose. "A girl can't admire such a unique specimen?"

He scoffed, turning away. "You have no control of your energy, yet I can't sense it. Why?"

Raven hesitated. She recalled Krillin making similar claims. "Guess there's no harm telling the space man… I'm magic. One of the four Maidens. Maybe that's tripping you up?"

Vegeta grunted. "So you're like that one-eyed tramp from before…"

Her face fell. "I'm nothing like her…"

"Let's hope so," he said, "she's probably dead."

Raven smiled. "I saw that. She ruffle you somehow?"

He turned his chin to the sky idly. "Only my pride… Shame for her, pride means a great deal to me."

"You're easy to talk to," Raven admitted. "I understand. But my pride died with my people."

Vegeta fidgeted. "Mine were snuffed out by Frieza when I was knee-high, but you don't see me wallowing in despair. The bastard will pay, and the Saiyan race will survive him! My pride is more important as we diminish, not less. You dishonor them all to surrender it."

Raven winced. "Hmm…"

Suddenly, Vegeta stood up and waited. Raven watched, lost, before she finally saw the others cresting the hill. It was a solemn walk, Ozpin, the blonde and her little bald nemesis escorting the Schnee girl and Yang' faunus partner as they played pallbearer to the body of Specialist Schnee upon a stretcher of scavenged bulkhead steel. The heiress, naturally, was holding back hysterics. Soot from the smoke had dried upon her filthy tear-streaked cheeks.

"Told you it was a waste," Vegeta said, not gloating, but plainly annoyed.

"Just ignore him," Krillin muttered.

"Weiss," Vegeta grunted, not looking at her. "What have we discussed about showing weakness? Your childish blubbering is a disgrace to my teachings!"

Weiss froze, but there was a surge of insult on the air.

"She just lost her SISTER!" Blake told him, her voice shaking.

Vegeta shrugged. "My brother Tarble disappeared with the rest of our planet, but you don't see me simpering like some tot. Give me one reason I shouldn't destroy you, girl…"

"If you were going to, you would have done it already," Weiss told him. "If you expect me to beg, you can forget it… I don't care what you do."

Vegeta gave something of a cross between a sigh and a growl. "Nerve alone will only get you so far with me."

Jaune inched closer to Weiss as Krillin and Ozpin stepped between them.

"That's enough, Vegeta! We're not gonna let you hurt her."

The Prince smirked. "You won't be able to stop me."

Oscar flashed green, and his eyes turned steely. "This gets us nowhere! We need as many allies as we can muster. You will stand down or I will defend my student, even from you."

Vegeta blinked, finally taking a menacing step forward. "Are you giving me orders, kid?"

"You know full well I am not a mere child."

Vegeta laughed. "And I remember full well how you and that runt over there admitted you needed me if you hoped to beat Frieza! I'd say that puts me in charge."

Jaune frowned. "I'm like, a foot taller than you."

"Not where it counts, boy…"

Krillin nearly got in his face. "We'll see about that when we find Goku."

Vegeta laughed again. "Kakarot? He was nowhere near healed last I saw him. If he took the merry journey to this world, he did so still broken and useless."

"Neither of you know this world," Ozpin told them both. "How we proceed from here should not be a unilateral decision, but an informed one."

Raven finally interjected. "Oh, an experienced decision then? You're not as subtle as you think, old man."

Oscar's eyes closed. "I'm merely saying we should be working together towards a solution, not anointing formal leaders. As such, we will achieve that to greater effect once we've reconvened with the others."

The air was split as Raven slashed a portal into being.

"Then there's no point waiting. If we're going to kill each other, we might as well have a change in scenery."

They filtered through and onto the lawn. Raven trailed Vegeta as the last through before the portal closed. The reunion was awfully quiet.

Ruby and Nora covered their mouths as they saw Weiss and Blake carting a lifeless Winter Schnee, ultimately setting her down upon a flat spot and meeting their eyes. Weiss looked to Blake in question, who nodded, and then she made her way up the walk towards them. Raven slowly followed her as Vegeta kept rooted to the spot he'd entered onto, taking in the area and locking eyes with Goku. Krillin, however, muttered his best friend's name and raced over as quickly as could be considered respectful.

Jaune found his way over to Ren and Nora, who brought him into a relieved group hug.

Krillin stood before Goku, uncertain if he should even smile. "G-Goku… you… I had a funny feeling you might be here, but I can't explain it … It's been—"

"Hey… I know," the Saiyan of Earth told him gently, a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know how we get outta this one," Krillin admitted.

"Well, Bulma and I have been talking," Goku said with a grin, "and it might not be as bad as you think."

Taiyang and Oobleck stood close by, simply watching the impromptu wake that had formed in front of the house. Oobleck gripped his thermos as though the heat of its contents might wake him from this dream. Gradually, Tai was forced to accept that Weiss Schnee was most definitely approaching him.

"S-sir… Mister Xiao Long…?" she asked politely.

He hummed. "What can I do ya for?"

Her lips pressed together as she blinked. "I-it's just… Is there a place close by… Is there somewhere I can…" She stopped short, taking a breath as a fresh tear rolled down. "...bury my sister…?"

There was a slow shudder through the group. Taiyang and Oobleck stood up to their full height and peered back at the woman on the stretcher. It hadn't been immediately apparent. Bulma gave a barely audible gasp.

"For pity's sake…" Oobleck breathed. "Miss Schnee… I'm… I'm so sorry."

Taiyang stalled for only a moment. "I… We have roughly a square mile to ourselves here… Where would be okay?"

Weiss looked away. "M-maybe somewhere you can see birds? Winter always… liked…"

He nodded. "There's a little glade just over there we don't disturb much," Taiyang offered, indicating a break in the trees past the shed opening up into a larger clearing.

"Wait…!" Bulma said, rifling through her pockets for the thin case. She retrieved one of three pure white dynocaps and held it out. "You don't have to go through all that. This has a cold storage module for preserving… well, you can store her instead of digging the ground up, it's what we do on Earth."

Weiss took the tiny capsule, wincing with confusion. "Store…? In this little… I don't understand."

Bulma flushed. "Of course, right… Uh hey, Yang right?" she asked as she turned, pulling a yellow capsule. Yang nodded, before Bulma turned back to the mourning sister. "It's like this."

She pushed the plunger and tossed it over beside the shed, and in a burst of white smoke Yang's treasured motorcycle appeared, leaned upon its kickstand.

"What?" Ruby whispered appreciatively.

Nearly the whole house turned to see it. Ren, Nora and Qrow were so far as to witness it but missed the significance of a vehicle bursting forth from the ether.

"Okay, this has crossed into plain damn weird," Taiyang muttered, while Yang muttered her thanks. At first she looked relieved to see it, only to blush with guilt as she realized how callous it felt to be happy over the survival of a material possession, when one of her best friends had lost something irreplaceable. When so many others had lost everything. With a flash in her mind, she imagined being in Weiss' shoes… She imagined it was Ruby lying still on that stretcher. The real reaper yelped as Yang quietly grabbed her and did her best to fuse their bodies together with sheer compressive force.

Meanwhile, even Weiss herself couldn't help being surprised with the concept, if only for a handful of seconds. Ultimately, she took Bulma's hand and closed it back around the miraculous item. "Thank you, but… it shouldn't be easy. I need to do this myself. It's… It's a matter of respect."

Bulma took it back meekly, offering a sad smile. "Alright kid… If that's what you feel."

"Yes… E-excuse me," Weiss said, turning to the gap in the trees.

Blake and Yang made to follow.

"W-wait, Weiss, should we find something to put…" Blake began.

Yang finished the thought. "We can do better than pouring dirt on…"

Weiss turned, saying nothing, but didn't reject the offer either. Ruby trailed the lot of them, unable to help much with Crescent Rose mangled and propped up against the house, but she wasn't about to stand on the sidelines for something like this.

Taiyang only heard the shuffling of feet as the inevitable finally happened.

"I might have to ask you something similar."

Taiyang sighed, turning to the voice, and those unforgettable red eyes.

"Hey Tai."

He watched her in silence. Ultimately of course, he broke it. "Most of eighteen years, and that's the best you've got?"

"What would you like me to say, Tai?" Raven asked, looking away. " 'I'm sorry?' I'm not about to insult you, pretending anything I say is going to mend things. Don't insult me with the same. I'm not crawling back under any delusions of my own."

Taiyang rolled his eyes. "Man, it really would kill you to show some regret, wouldn't it?"

She blinked. "My absence kept Yang and your family safe all these years. No, I only regret that the best options were painful… Ask our daughter if you want details. Right now… I just want to bury my own."

Bulma, the Saiyan, his son and virtually everyone in earshot did their best to pretend they couldn't hear this conversation, turning instead to the kids choosing and felling a huge oak at the edge of the immediate property with a series of fibrous snaps.

"So the girl in my kitchen isn't some disposal scheme?"

"Say whatever you like about me, but leave Rufina out of it," Raven snapped. "I'll tend to her myself."

She began to walk inside, but Oscar frowned, stepping nearer.

"Yang called her 'Vernal,' " he noted.

Raven stopped dead, gripping the door handle.

"Why a false name? What did it disguise?"

Raven said nothing. Qrow turned as he shared Oscar's frown.

"She never was Spring, was she?" Oscar pressed.

Even Gohan was peering into her. "I can't sense her, just like Cinder."

Qrow finally growled as he understood. "Damn it, Raven…"

Throughout the onlookers rippled a swell of judgment, confusion —or indifference in Vegeta's case— and all in deafening silence. Krillin frowned. They knew something that explained Raven's inexplicable powers, but he wasn't in on the secret just yet. Spring?

"If you want an explanation, you'll have to wait," Raven told them, throwing the door open. "I have business to attend to."

It had taken exceedingly little time between them to fashion the casket itself. Blake's cleaver had shorn off the extremities and split the rest in half lengthwise, forming a bed and lid. Yang cracked open shells from Ember Celica and shook its glittering red contents over the bare wood. With a spark she provided, the Dust caught fire, eating its way down into the wood as the trunk was hollowed out and ready to house its eternal passenger.

By then, Red, Black and Yellow were left idle as the afternoon sky was filled with the scraping and crunching of a lone shovel.

However they offered, Weiss insisted on shouldering the burden herself. Her sleeves were rolled high, her dress was becoming progressively dirty, and somehow she was still doing all of this in heels.

For a pair of normal men it could take five hours of digging, but a Huntress, even without powers, was strong enough to make it happen in a quarter of the time. Still, it was a while to stay by Weiss' side, especially with the affair feeling so private and personal, so each of them split off in search of appropriate headstones for those with nothing to bury. Sun joined in the effort as well, and the local sisters led them to the nearby creek bed, that they might find the most appropriate specimens.

In the distance, Vegeta leaned against a tree as he watched, not having greeted Goku with anything but his eyes. Largely, his focus kept shifting to Weiss' lone vigil.

He blinked as he heard a whine underfoot, leering down to see the portly little dog sitting and examining him.

"And what do you want?"

Zwei's mouth closed, and he turned to stare at his protege in the distance… and then back.

Vegeta humored this a moment longer before turning away. "Tch… Dumb mutt."

Weiss jumped as there was a clatter nearby, and looked up to see Raven, having hefted another oaken box alike to Winter's. She also carried a shovel. "Room for one more?"

Weiss was surprised, but sympathetic. She nodded. Raven began digging in earnest, forming a separate pile nearby.

"I have to say… no offense, but damn decent of you to do this yourself. Not exactly like a Schnee to get down in the dirt."

Weiss scooped another shovelful. "None taken… you're not wrong. Jacques and Whitley would have just thrown money for some lavish marble tomb," her eyes narrowed as she imagined it, "and then made it some kind of circus to drum up sympathy for PR…"

She slammed the spade into the ground and caught her breath as she leaned upon it. She caught Raven's eye, but the bandit didn't comment, perhaps even out of respect.

Finally, Weiss asked, "So… who was she?"

Raven blinked, returning to her own plot. "The sister I never gave Yang. Rufina was an orphan. She hid in a well when the Grimm ravaged her village ten years ago." She smiled. "She'd scavenged half the place by the time we rolled up. Her parents were terrible, so it was alarming how cool she was through the whole situation. It was like her ship had come in. She insisted on coming with us."

"You didn't try to," Weiss asked, almost regretting she'd said anything, "you know…"

Raven sighed. "The Branwen tribe doesn't… didn't deal in trafficking. We might have made an exception in your case, that's just leaving money on the table."

Weiss froze. "That's… Anyway…"

"Rufina was raised by the tribe. I tried not to treat her any differently, but she was always so determined to be like me, to shoot for the top spot. She couldn't help but fill that need I had. I wanted to raise Yang myself, but I couldn't, and Rufina was there…"

Both of them had stopped digging. Raven was staring wistfully.

"But I think she knew I was always going to try to give the job to Yang. It must have hurt, seeing Yang reject what she sought for so long. And then we lost it all… I lost her… Failed her."

Her voice broke. Weiss looked over, warmth filling her for this kindred spirit. "I-It doesn't sound like it. But you can be there for Yang now."

Raven gave a shaky nod. "Yes… Yes, thank you."

Weiss heard a yip from behind, and turned to find Zwei at waist-level —the grave a few feet deep already— holding a white hand-towel in his mouth.

"Oh! Zwei… thank you, boy," she sniffed, accepting the offer and rubbing her face clean. She wrapped her arms around his thick neck in gratitude.

As much as Ruby and Yang loved their childhood home, it wasn't the most diverse when it came to mineral density. The best they could find for headstones were limestone rocks, though they were spoiled for choice.

They employed the same trick with Yang's shells to better etch the names with fire, and as inadequate as it felt, they were finished before Weiss or Raven were even half done. They spaced them carefully, but in the end they still returned to the rest of the group in silence, waiting for the two to finish.

Qrow approached them, beckoning them inside the house. "Hey, come on, we're trying to get everyone up to speed here. Better we get this all out as a group, right?"

Ruby and Yang looked back at the tossing dirt and the deepening graves.

"What about—"

Oscar walked out onto the stoop. "We're starting with information regarding Salem, and this world first. Raven is well versed, and according to Gohan and Miss Valkyrie, Miss Schnee has heard the basics. Is that correct?"

Ruby nodded. "Nothing about the Relics though."

"I'll bear that in mind. I'm sorry, but there's little time to waste."

Blake shut the first floor restroom door, plugged the drain and began to fill the basin. It was the first look she'd had at herself all day. All the others were dusty, run ragged, and she was no different, but unlike them, shiny, faded red spots still smeared parts of her face.

A more rusty color peppered her stark white coat, and a few drops even clung to her pants and undershirt.

Ilia's blood.

She must have looked ghoulish, but as she rinsed her hands and splashed her face it was hardly her largest concern. She knew it was a lost cause for her coat as she wetted some paper and dabbed it away. This would never quite fade… and it shouldn't. She watched the water grow increasingly pink as she worked.

Blake sought a container, and the best she had was a small canteen. She was loath to let her just… slip down the drain. Bubbles blipped pleasantly to the surface as she filled it with the basin water. This was all that remained of her. All she could bury.

She froze for a moment. It was the best she could do, but it felt so inadequate. Her fingers tugged the plug rod taut. She hesitated some more.

Then her heart sank as the pipes flushed and the ruddy water drained. She gripped the sides of the basin and shook as the tears came back.

"God… damn it…!" she whispered shrilly, as she allowed herself the moment.

The warm cottage was absolutely packed. Save the injured Saiyan, his son and the bluenette on the couch, it was standing-room-only. Yang, Ruby and Blake stood directly behind. Jaune, Ren and Nora leaned over the railing on the stairs. Predictably, Vegeta skulked in the doorway to the kitchen. Taiyang was probably the only one near as remote, watching from the front door like a guest in his own home.

Oscar and Qrow stood in front of the television, presently the center of attention. Strangely, there was no need to call for quiet.

"Okay… so," Qrow began, "It's been one hell of a day, and we've all got questions. Safe to say, a lot of people in this room don't know each other, but now we're all stuck in the middle of this. Probably not news to most of you by now, but Remnant ain't alone in the Universe anymore."

Ozpin grunted. "Yes, and let me be the first to welcome our new friends. I think we can all agree, we'll have need of one another."

Vegeta scoffed loudly, drawing a number of glares, yet the first to speak was Blake.

"I'm sorry… but who are you?" she asked Oscar as politely as she could. "I swear you claimed to be Professor Ozpin before."

While Taiyang gravely nodded, Oobleck wrung his hands in particular confusion as he glimpsed the unmistakable cane in Oscar's hand. Sun frowned, and Yang took on an almost knowing look.

Oscar sighed. "Actually Miss Belladonna, it might be prudent if we each began by briefly introducing ourselves, but I… rather we, will begin."

With a green flash, his demeanor almost instantly changed, and the boy grit his teeth in almost distress. "Wow, really putting me on the spot, aren't you?" he whispered, before clearing his throat. "Uh… hi… everyone. My name is Oscar Pine, I'm a fourteen year old farmhand from Mistral… and a while back now I started hearing this voice in my head…"

"Oh boy…" Qrow sighed.

The flash happened again, and the calm demeanor returned as he smiled. "Which is to say, my soul found its way to his, and we are now indelibly bonded. My name IS Professor Ozpin, or rather, that's what I went by in my previous life."

"Reincarnated, right?" Yang suggested, straight-faced. Then she looked around the room. "Yang Xiao Long, Team RWBY, Huntress in training… his and Raven's daughter," she finished, pointing at Taiyang.

Oscar nodded solemnly. "You've been speaking with your mother, I take it?"

"I'm sorry, reincarnation?" Blake asked, looking heady with her feline ears fully erect.

"Uh, yeah, I don't know what that means either," Goku agreed, as Blake stammered in surprise and Bulma clapped a hand to her eyes in anguish.

Noticing the silence and stares, he stood up straight. "Oh, sorry… I'm Goku! I'm a Saiyan from Earth, and Gohan's dad…" he added, hand proudly on his son's shoulder.

Yang turned surreptitiously to her sister. "Seriously, what's a 'Saiyan?' " she whispered.

"We'll get to that part later," Krillin promised.

"Reincarnation," Qrow began, "is when the soul of a past life passes to a new life and a new body. Qrow Branwen, Raven's brother, Uncle to Ruby and Yang… Professional Huntsman."

Goku leaned his head back to Krillin. "So… like me and the frog guy?" he whispered. Bulma's forehead fell heavy into her palm as Krillin waved him off.

Blake got back on track, still floored to put a face to the figure of Bulma's wildest stories. "But… into a person? ...Blake Belladonna, also Team RWBY… parents are in Menagerie, been traveling with Bulma and Sun to stop the White Fang attack on Haven."

Oobleck finally stepped forward. "I suppose if your claim is true, I won't need to introduce myself at all, Headmaster?"

Oscar smiled. "You are Bartholomew Oobleck, Huntsman and Ph. D. in Anthropology, Urban Archaeology, and Classical History and Professor of such at Beacon Academy… But anyone could research that. More importantly, three years ago at the faculty white-megoliath exchange, you gifted me an amusing bacon-scented candle in the shape of a Boarbatusk… Regretfully, the manufacturers' dual-wick tusk design was less functional than intended."

"My stars…" Oobleck gasped, truly looking as though he'd seen a ghost.

"Man, I could go for one a' those right now…" Goku added quietly, his stomach growling loud enough to cross the room.

"Uh… the candle?" Yang asked.

"At this point…"

"Miss Belladonna," Ozpin continued, "In a room with none present but the two of us, I believe you once told me, 'If you can't fight, you can't survive,' in regard to life outside the protection of the Kingdoms."

Blake's jaw slackened, and an astonished frown took shape in her brow as the memory came to her. "Professor Ozpin?"

"How is this possible?!" Oobleck asked.

Ozpin proceeded to explain of his unique circumstances, his unclear origins, and his astonishing powers. Ruby found her attention drifting, and saw the others who already knew all of this developing similarly glazed stares. Her attention drifted instead to the most attention-grabbing feature of the room, a golden winged lantern hovering just above the coffee table, its haunting blue glow pulsing and shifting inside. To say none of them had noticed it was patently false, but the little curiosity wasn't talking.

A surprise to Ruby, her sister shared her glazed expression. Or did, until Ozpin began to tell of the four girls he'd gifted wondrous power.

"Wait, this sounds…" Blake blurted, her eyes alight. "Y-you're trying to tell us you're the wizard from the Story of the Seasons!"

"What?" Yang exclaimed. "The fairytale? So… those girls were real?"

Ozpin smiled. "Were… Are… It's a matter of perspective. You see, their power does not vanish when a Maiden falls, but is bequeathed to the last soul in their thoughts… provided they too are female, and devoid of senescence."

"Sen… huh?" Ruby intoned.

"He means as long as they're not too old," Bulma told her helpfully. "Sorry, Bulma Briefs, heiress to the Capsule Corporation back on Earth. These other muscle-heads are with me. Scientist, pilot…"

"Oh? What field of science?" Oobleck asked.

"Huh? I dabble in whatever suits me," Bulma answered, head craning back.

"I… you're not formally credentialed?"

"I was learning from my Dad by the time I could walk and taught myself the rest. Doctorates are for people that aren't already their own boss. Waste of time."

Oobleck froze. "Well…"

She turned back to Oscar. "Anyway, the background is nice and all, but what's this got to do with Frieza?"

Yang snapped her head. "Jeez, lady, maybe let the others pick their jaws up off the floor, huh? You just all learned magic exists! Be impressed!"

Bulma snorted. "We made our first wish on the Eternal Dragon when I was younger than this one," she said, pointing at Ruby. "We know magic exists, hon'."

Yang gave an annoyed grunt and crossed her arms. Blake giggled, whispering, "She grows on you."

"What? Like a tumor?"

"Point is," Qrow continued, returning them to the task at hand, "the Maidens have a secondary purpose Oz engineered after the Great War a hundred-odd years ago, when he built the four Huntsman academies. Each of them can open a specific magic vault built under the schools."

"Mom… mentioned all of this, but this is the first I'm hearing about 'Maidens,' " Yang noted, frowning.

Qrow scoffed. "Yeah, hardly a surprise."

"What? Why?"

"And here it comes," Krillin sighed.

"Because your mother retrieved the Haven Relic, and sent it here," Ozpin told her.

"And unless we're way off," Qrow added, "we're pretty sure Raven is one of 'em."

Yang opened and closed her mouth like a fish, staring around looking for the lie in their eyes.

"Vault? Vault for what?" Sun asked, idly pacing.

Ozpin closed his eyes. "In ages past, twin gods of light and dark created Remnant, humanity, and in our formative years vanished… leaving only four Relics of power to aid us."

In example, he scooped the lantern up by its handle and held it for all to see.

"The Relic of Knowledge… 'liberated' from its place beneath Haven Academy," he added with contempt."

While Oobleck and Taiyang stirred at the reveal of the trinket's nature, Team RNJR far and away held the most surprise of all. The subject of all their efforts regarding Salem and the schools, an object forged by gods... laid bare before them in Ruby's own home.

"I was deceived by a being that sought the Relics and used me to break a seal containing them, a being that would purge the world of humans with their limitless power. After driving her off I was cursed to reincarnate, until my task is finished, and I've destroyed this thing we call 'Salem.' "

Unexpectedly, Oobleck strode closer, his mouth thinned. "And if I'm understanding this correctly, you endangered unwitting students and faculty by making the schools fortresses against this being? Of course…"

Blake and Sun snapped to attention. "Wait, what?!" Sun demanded.

"You're joking…!" Blake said, her voice shaking. "It wasn't just Adam, or Torchwick and the White Fang; THIS was what they were after, they worked for this… this Salem to steal this Relic! THAT'S what you're saying?!"

"Hey, calm down!" Qrow said, seeing the beginnings of a small riot forming.

Ozpin couldn't bear to look at them. He winced, staring at the lacquered floor.

Sun was blinking constantly as he pieced it together. "At the base! Ol' Horn-boy was talking about these humans helping him! Sienna Khan said he was being used! And that BIG guy...!"

Blake nodded. "Haven, that's why, this is why! These Relics! Beacon was attacked, our friends were hurt, KILLED, and none of them knew WHY! I blamed myself, I ran out on everyone, when it was your fault!"

"And I'll take full responsibility," Ozpin said.

Yang tossed her shoulders. "Oh! Well, that just makes everything okay!"

"I don't pretend it does, Miss Xiao Long…"

"PROFESSOR," Oobleck projected, cutting across the room. All was quiet. "Was the Relic at Beacon taken? Is the school still a target?"

Ozpin took a breath. "It was not taken. The measures I took to secure it against capture were rather more strenuous."

"The whole world went to hell and they didn't even get what they were after?" Yang exclaimed. "All that misery was a botched job?"

"No," Jaune told her, drawing a few eyes. "Cinder stole the Fall Maiden's powers… and then…"

Yang and Blake saw the survivors of JNPR collectively droop, and they glanced at each other as they understood.

Krillin leaned over the couch to his friends. "So are we just dropping that whole 'introduce ourselves' thing now…?"

"Who else is aware of this?" Oobleck asked.

"Of the permanent staff, only myself and Glynda."

Oobleck blinked, and turned. "I doubt you'll be returning to Beacon as you are, and so this might come across as an empty gesture… but consider this my resignation."

Oscar's brows couldn't help but rise, his eyes racing as he processed it.

"When these were naught but rogues and radicals, I accepted the risks as an occupational hazard… but if the schools were designed from the start as ostentatious—"

"Salem's powerful, but she works in the shadows, wedging us apart to weaken our position," Qrow clarified. "Hidden in plain sight forces her to risk exposure, plays to our strengths. Not a perfect plan, but the only other way is to hand the Council of each Kingdom a key to the Apocalypse and hope they won't use it, or the Maidens."

"Then why not expose her if she doesn't want to be in the open?" Yang asked, exasperated.

Qrow crossed his arms. "I dunno, how do you think people'd take it, hearing the Grimm have a source and a master, plotting in the dark corners of Remnant? That instead of dumb animals, they're a hivemind, effectively one creature in a million pieces with a serious bent against mankind?"

Krillin finally perked up. "Y'mean those bony black things back in the valley? Those are part of something bigger?"

Vegeta sighed in the back. "More mystical crockery! A distributed being, how absurd…"

Hearing the true nature of Salem left a number of them reeling, but Nora shrugged. "Honestly, does that matter right now? Frieza just blew up a KINGDOM… That's gonna make the rounds."

"Yes, and the resulting chaos and fear will be a perfect cover by which Salem can acquire the other Relics," Ozpin retorted firmly. "And then even Frieza's power might be contested. A single Relic in the hands of the enemy is unacceptable, and worth paying almost any cost to prevent."

Then, Oscar's eyes lit up, and a pained expression crossed his face. "Any cost…? Oz… Mountain Glenn… was the Relic protected the same way back then as now?"

He flashed again, frowning. "Oscar…"

Again.

"Was it or not?"

Flash.

"...I was always especially wary of the Relic of Choice."

Flash.

"...How many people died when you sealed the tunnels early?"

"...What?" drawled Qrow as a sort of tremor made its way through the room. Ruby froze.

Oobleck's voice deadpanned as he answered. "Twelve-thousand souls… sealed into the undercity."

Oscar's teeth grit as he appeared, reluctantly, to answer.

"...How many more still were saved by that decision?"

"How many is too many, Oz?" Qrow demanded. "How do you protect the people by abandoning them?!"

"Their sacrifice is not forgotten, not by me."

" 'Sacrifice,' is willful; YOU'RE talking about people as collateral damage!"

In the back, Vegeta's smile widened as his head turned. "Oh ho ho! I misjudged you, old timer! You've a ruthless streak after all!"

"I know how it sounds, but the explosion that led to this end was a strategic diversion by Salem's men, a lure to let them search for the Relic's hiding place. It's discovery could not be allow—"

Yang's eyes turned red as she advanced suddenly. "That's CRAP, and you know it! You just said it wasn't even found after Beacon Fell and they had time to root around in the rubble!"

Ozpin took Oscar a step forward, mere feet from the golden one's swinging distance. "There were NO guarantees, and as a largely lone actor there could be any number of eyes watching. I cannot know what she knows, and I cannot assume I'm so clever as to put infinite stock into my own conclusions!"

"You mean you've done this so long you've gone PARANOID!"

"Professor Ozpin…" Ruby said, clearly, with such a sharp tone that both had stopped at once. Pain stared from behind her eyes. "Did you really leave those people like that…? Just abandoned them to die…?"

Ozpin froze, but blinked as he insistently met her gaze. "It's not as simple as that, the Relics—"

"Yes it is," she snapped, not losing her temper. "I'm not a fool, Professor… I know we can't save everyone… Back at Haven, I locked up and my friends died… I tried so hard after that, but we could barely save ourselves… But we're Huntsmen and Huntresses! We swore an oath to the people… We can't save everyone, but we have to make them fight for every life they take! We can't just give them up!"

Oscar's face fell. Her behavior before made all the more sense now. She'd watched Neptune killed before them, struggled to free the people trapped under the rubble, and was so beset by guilt she threw herself at Frieza to keep it from happening again...

"I applaud your compassion, Miss Rose, but were Salem to attain the Relics those lives saved would—"

"I thought we were different from her, Professor!" she said, finally raising her voice. "I thought humanity was our strength, what we fought for, not a weakness… You praised me before for not being like other Huntsmen in this for glory, but apparently that's only worth something to you when it's convenient!"

Qrow tried walking between them. "Hold on, I don't like it either, kiddo—"

"Don't you start too!" Yang warned.

Ruby winced as she looked at him. "Uncle Qrow, I remember what you said to Professor Lionheart… You wouldn't have…?"

He grimaced. "No, I was talking about stationing guards around that school when he left it wide open…" he leered at Oscar, whose limbs slackened. "I wasn't talking about human sacrifice."

Oscar's eyes immediately softened. He gripped his cane in both hands as he glanced around the room. There was nary a face that would look at him without Yang's barely contained disgust or Oobleck's quiet disapproval. If even Qrow had turned on him—

"Hey, I dunno if it's any of my business," Goku began, "but this happened a long time ago, right? I'm not saying it's right, but I've seen people turn it around."

Krillin hummed. "I mean, Piccolo was almost as bad as it gets, but he did really come through…"

Bulma growled. "There needs to be remorse first, guys! He's still defending it!"

Goku sighed, staring at the ceiling as he thought. "Hmm yeah… he's not evil though, just wrong…"

A few brows rose, and Ozpin himself flinched, disarmed at how bluntly and casually the intergalactic champion had just surmised his entire character.

"This twaddle is a waste!" Vegeta cried from the back, breaking the silence even as the outside door creaked open behind him. "What's more to be said about this benchwarmer 'Salem,' her pets and Relics?! How does this help us in bringing down Frieza?"

Before anyone could say anything, Raven strode through, sweaty, dirty and tracking mud onto the lacquer as Taiyang grimaced. Weiss followed meekly.

"That's a simple answer," she said, "we use the Relics ourselves, bring them together and destroy both Salem AND Frieza."

There was a ripple through the group, stares between her, Vegeta, Oscar and each other.

"Okay…" Ruby said at last. "Let's do it. We find the other Maidens and—"

"What?!" Vegeta barked, stomping towards her as Qrow, Yang and Blake moved to block him. "No chance! Do as you like with your local small-time boogeyman, but Frieza will only die by the hands of a full-blooded Saiyan's power! I don't need some magic toys to do the work!"

Krillin shook his head like a dog. "For real?! You wanted to beat Frieza by wishing for immortality, and now you're demanding a fair fight?!"

"I wouldn't expect you to understand, Earthling, but the state of the body doesn't matter so long as Saiyan blood fills it! Revenge is the sole right of every Saiyan!"

"Whatever," Raven groaned, "we can argue their use after we've got the set."

Oscar finally seemed to unfreeze as he heard this. "That is not an option!" he cried. "Miss Rose, I should remind everyone, that unless you are the current Fall Maiden at this very moment, or Cinder somehow survived the ordeal at Haven, the powers will have been assigned aimlessly." His cane nudged a nearby globe, which spun in service to his point. "We will toil to locate her… or be forced to slay, subjugate or otherwise coerce Cinder ourselves, and I can't be sure which option is worse."

The banister creaked as Jaune's grip upon it deepened. Ren watched with vague concern.

"If you find her, give me a call," Vegeta offered. "I'll happily carry out any of those jobs, gratis."

Jaune stood rod-straight. "Hey, yeah! I mean, sure, a Maiden was a huge issue before, but now we've got these guys on our side…"

Yang didn't miss that Raven winced ruefully after he said that.

Ginyu turned a palm to a group of shanties. People scattered as a violet light filled her hand.

In a burst, a torpedo of energy sought out the structure, which briefly collapsed before its thatched roof vaporized and its supports blew out. A searing crater remained once the pink plume bloomed into the sky.

Frieza delighted in the sight as people scrambled to get out of sight.

"These people look and act like weaklings, but really they're just ignorant of how to use their power! Until we find a way back to the imperial fleet, I can dominate this world in your name!"

Frieza chuckled, closing his eyes while holding his hands behind his back as he walked the sands at Vacuo's outskirts.

"Ah, my dear Captain, you know me all too well. But as I am without a scouter, I fear I must assess your new form against my own power…"

Ginyu's feminine face blanched at the notion, but she entered a combat stance regardless. "Y-yes my Lord…! Of course, I have difficulty surmising my own strength as well, so I beg your caution."

Frieza chuckled. "Come now, Captain, don't take me for a rank amateur! But if your form is so fragile, the least we can do is make it known now…"

She braced as Frieza's finger shone with power. It was a deadly test, but a decisive one. The piercing beam was unleashed without warning, but Ginyu's palms blocked it readily as it seared uselessly. Her face, pale with concern, returned to confidence as she withstood it.

"This would have killed Dodoria in a trice," Frieza explained, "but these were the least of my expectations! Let us ascend to your plateau!"

The beam ramped up in intensity as Frieza smiled and Ginyu dug-in like a tick. A vortex of sand began to orbit the beam as it was caught in the increasingly ardent force.

At last however, Frieza's smile became a mutter of surprise. "Oh…!" His muscles went taut as the effort finally caught up with him. Ginyu leaned as her arms creaked and shook, until finally rolling off the beamhead as it tracked into the wastes and seared a line into the distance. Pink smoke, laced with lightning, formed in the distance like a thunderhead.

Ginyu panted as she examined her own hands, nearly as surprised as Frieza himself.

"Bully for you, Captain," he said appreciatively, "this form has at least trebled your previous assessment, if my own control has indeed been retained! Where has this individual you've assumed been hiding amongst its fellow dregs?"

"Without a scouter, I couldn't say, Lord Frieza. But if my journey here was any indication, she was an anomaly at best. She did seem to be able to commune with beasts, which I worked to my own advantage."

The despot creased his brow. "That broaches another question, Ginyu. Not availed by a scouter yourself, I'm curious how you came to be here so soon."

She smiled proudly. "I was deposited near a grand city near to one of the world's poles, my lord, and from there your Death Beam was impossible to mistake as it struck their moon! From there I interrogated the locals and defectors fleeing your dominion to find this place."

Frieza hummed. "A splendid display. But if what you say is true, we've bigger fish for the fryer."

Ginyu paused. "My lord?"

"It would seem our unsolicited sojourn was not made alone. I have already encountered our dear prince and his Earth allies on this world. It would seem any non-native to Namek was deposited here," he surmised, a finger to his lips before his eyes narrowed with a smile. "Including, I'd wager, your monkey enigma."

Ginyu's jaw went slack, but then he grinned. "Ah, well, there is good news there Lord Frieza! Our battle left the bastard's body broken! They took him to the ship's rejuvenation pods, but he couldn't have recovered in time! And this world is nowhere near developing that medical tech!"

Frieza's brow rose pleasantly. "Ah! So the wounded animal is bedridden? Well we'd be monsters to prolong his suffering. I actually wish to let the fear stew in them a while before plucking the ripe fruit of revenge. But should the opportunity present itself, shall we define for ourselves the meaning of bedside manner, Ginyu?"

Ginyu grinned malignantly. "Indeed, sir! I'll track him down and make him regret lifting a finger against us!"

Frieza offered a hum of laughter. "In good time, but I've an important task for you, of which you are exclusively qualified!"

Ginyu bowed elaborately. "My life to serve, sir!"

"If this rabble can truly be taught and make themselves useful, then I need them so instructed, and I am loath to do it myself. I rather lack the patience for tutoring."

"Of course, sir!" Ginyu said, surprised. "If I'm correct, the very best among them may hold quite a well of potential…"

"You've my express permission to assume the greatest of your pupils for your form," Frieza said. "It wouldn't do for my acting Supreme Commander to be overshadowed by an underling."

"S...Supreme—?! Thank you, my lord!"

Frieza reached his hover-throne and sat. "Ha ha… as if I were to entrust the position to any one of these malcontents. As you were, Ginyu—"

"Hey, HALT!" Ginyu shouted suddenly behind Frieza, who was struck dumb with surprise before turning to glimpse it.

Standing in their featureless patch of sand, a tan-skinned man with long legs in a high-collared grey suit stood before them, trepidation behind his green eyes.

"State your purpose!" Ginyu ordered. "You have some nerve to approach Emperor Frieza so brazenly!"

He raised his hands cautiously as Ginyu moved between the two of them. "My apologies, Emperor, was not my intention to offend. My name is Arthur Watts, I come to you on behalf of our Mistress, concerning dominion over this world."

"Scrawny presumptuous little upstart!" Ginyu growled, striding forward. "All worlds are his dominion, the Frieza Force doesn't negotiate!"

"Commander…"

With but the word, she stopped and turned, obedient if confused. "Sire?"

Frieza eyed the man curiously, as he offered that stare of men who had never conceived of a thing like him before.

Meanwhile, Watts beheld the scene with the surreality of a fever dream. Not only did this thing exist, plucked straight from a comic book, but he'd have sworn its more aggressive attendant was nothing less than Jól Yaldā, the Winter Maiden herself… in Vacuo of all places! The situation might be worse yet than he suspected...

"What Ginyu says is true, but I simply must know who in this cesspool would be fool enough to think I would entertain such an offer. The one you serve has quite betrayed you to send you to me… The least you can do is pay them back in kind, my good man."

His eyes widened slightly too much as a bead of sweat formed on his forehead. "The one I serve… is not of Vacuo or any Kingdom. She represents the oldest interests of Remnant, of a world long forgotten and ignored, which threads through the deepest pores of—"

Frieza's tail whipped the air in agitation. "I have asked for a name, not a manifesto! Your bluntness beguiled me, but my time is invaluable and while I can't place it, your voice causes me irritation!"

Watts gave a surprised, panicked mutter. "She… doesn't truly have a name she self-applies, Lord, but her enemies have long dubbed her under the moniker of 'Salem.' "

Frieza's leering eyes softened at once, from puzzlement… to genuine intrigue.

Ginyu spoke lowly. "All due respect, Lord Frieza, even a name seems meaningless on such a primiti—"

Frieza turned in a flash. "Our immediate plans will have to wait, Commander."

Ginyu's face blanked as she took a step back. "My Lord, this character means something to you?"

Watts looked as though he'd come up for air after having been chained to an anchor. The conversation had turned a corner certainly before he was to meet with disaster…

Frieza hummed. "The former head of the Academy, a withering tart, but nonetheless the pride of her kind before you discovered your host… She asked after the name before our brief little duel, suspecting that I was this being."

Ginyu blinked, eyes going somehow wider. "Lord Frieza, mistaken for a local? Old bat must've been senile."

Frieza waved her off. He fixed Watts with his gaze. "Very well, I shall confer with this master of yours. My curiosity is sufficiently piqued. Lead the way."

Arthur Watts wasn't certain how this had turned around so quickly, but he gave his suitcase a tap and muttered. "My lady…?"

Frieza smiled as the black void ripped into being. "Oh? How interesting. After you then, my good man."

Watts wondered at this suggestion, but of course… He suspected this as a trap. He did not hesitate, stepping through confidently.

Frieza looked to the still frozen Ginyu. "Ladies first, Commander."

Ginyu recoiled, cheeks pink at being addressed as such, but obeyed.

Frieza watched the portal closely for any sign of chicanery, and ultimately stepped through himself.

"The crypt I found the Relics within specifically warned that re-gathering the four would incur 'The Time of Judgment!' I have not labored for thousands of years to prevent disaster only to end the world myse—!"

"That's IT?!" Raven laughed. "A vague, spooky message upon a cavern's wall that's kept you from doing what must be done?"

Oscar's body went all the more taut. "Written upon the walls of a place which held fire handed down by the GODS!"

Raven ignored him. "And in the process of squandering that power, puttering around for EONS like a scared old man, of playing on the defensive, how many teams like STRQ… like my daughter's… how many of them were slaughtered wholesale in your stagnant crusade?"

"We are NOT using those Relics!" Ozpin shouted at last, Oscar's teeth grinding. "I FORBID IT!" he screamed, slamming the point of the stave down as every bulb within ten feet of him burst.

Every soul stood up or stepped back, and there was quiet as glass tinkled, and Ozpin's green glow illuminated Oscar in his darkened corner.

"You 'forbid it,' " Raven repeated, even as the boy's frame caught its breath, and glanced at the judging faces around the room. There was a clatter of footsteps however, as someone flanked him from the left.

" 'Kay… Oz…" Taiyang began quietly. "I dunno who in this… posse is in charge exactly… but under my roof, that's me. Cool it with the outbursts."

"Yes…" he agreed, his voice a mutter as he saw fit to feel embarrassed. "I apologize… I… Do you… all feel this way?"

There was more silence as they hardly saw fit to meet his eye. He winced.

"Maybe… I have been at this too long. Maybe I'm… I'm just too close to it to recognize my own failings," he offered, gazing into a vision they couldn't hope to follow. "Perhaps it is time for another approach. It's as you say, Raven… I've lost more ground than I've gained, carried on the same as though I could weather the storm. Even my notion of a bold new approach was ultimately just a better place to hide, with only the faintest sense of how to stop her."

The likes of Oobleck, Yang and Jaune appeared unmoved, but otherwise the tension in the house was fading. Ruby tried to offer, if not a smile, an encouraging nod.

Oscar slid to a small chair Taiyang had provided in the corner nearby. "With Frieza here, this has become much more complicated, and will require assertive, decisive action I'm less suited for. Perhaps now is not the time for caution."

Raven rolled her eyes, but gave a humored sigh. "I'm glad you finally see it my way."

"Hold on now," Vegeta said, strolling into the room at last, "I think it's time we finally just said it: it falls to me to command this little troupe."

"I agreed to no such thing," Ozpin said, the nerve returned to his voice. "Nor, Raven, do I see you capable of effectively operating as de facto leader."

The bandit growled, caught between the perceived slight and her otherworldly competition.

Qrow stepped in. "Neither of us have a complete picture of both sides here. You want my opinion, everyone should get a say."

Oscar nodded. "Yes, including the students."

"Tch!" Vegeta uttered. "They're children!"

He nodded again. "Yes… and sometimes, as I myself need reminding… it requires the clarity of a child to pierce the fog, and recall the heart of things."

Vegeta groaned. "I think you misunderstand the situation, man-child! Unless any of you want to try your strength against mine, I wasn't asking!"

Goku stood up. "Hey, I'm looking forward to it! But this doesn't help right now."

"Think I'll wait while your broken body mends, Kakarot?!"

Weiss awoke from her haze, and she stared at the man in orange. "Wait… you're his famous 'Kakarot?' "

Goku smiled. "Sure you will! You're not about to kick me while I'm down, Vegeta, that wouldn't prove anything, and you know that."

Vegeta blinked, bared his teeth, but otherwise froze.

Qrow grunted. "Alright then, pal… Just make like your hairline and recede, will ya?"

"Rece— Ignorant rube! Saiyan hair doesn't change with time, I was born like this!"

"Pfffffhahahhahahahahahaa!" Nora cackled, to her teammates' horror. "AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Vegeta stared daggers. A vein pulsed dangerously upon his forehead. Ren grabbed her by the shoulders. "Nora! Stop…!"

His teeth bared, he shook as he watched her, tears running down her face.

"I CA-A-AN'T HELP IT! I just see a baby with those eyes and that… THAT… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

"You… DARE TO MOCK ME?!" Vegeta exploded, a purple ball in his hands before the others could register the threat.

In a second it was over. The blast struck Jaune's shield as it formed to protect them, the three slamming reflexively into the opposite wall. It deflected at the floor before the couch, caught and smacked by Gohan as he dove to receive it like a volleyball. He set it up for Krillin, who kicked it through a closed window and into the trees, flaring and detonating somewhere deeper than they could see. It hadn't been a large yield at least.

"VEGETA!" Goku barked, an anger sparking like none the natives of Remnant had seen of him. Suddenly a hint of the warrior could be glimpsed.

"Your mother not teach you ya can't just go around blowing people up?!" Krillin demanded.

Vegeta's eyes were still on Nora, who had stopped laughing. Jaune was a wall, while Ren stood to full height, teeth bared with a cold fury in his eyes as Stormflower's guns pointed at the Prince.

"I'll not be derided by this heckling HEN! Or the washed-out rat!" he said, eyeing the grizzled Huntsman.

"Really reached for that one; my name is literally Qrow…"

"The lot of you think you have me on some leash!" Vegeta carried on, head full of steam. "This clown thinking I'll back down for a grudge with low-birth trash! My own student testing firm boundaries, calling my dictates bluffs! I won't have it!"

"Okay, fearless leader, what's your big plan?" Yang demanded, incensed. "Bulk up and throw hands at Frieza again?! Where do we feature?"

"I couldn't care less!" Vegeta admitted. "I'm a Super-Elite, Royal blood and I refuse to be disrespected by a pack of human vermin!"

Weiss tilted her head. "...So this is what it's like to be on the other side of the whole faunus thing…"

Blake rolled her eyes.

"The fact remains!" Vegeta continued. "You need me! I scarcely have need of you!"

Bulma finally stood up. "Look, we want to prepare for the worst, so if you stay out of our way with the Relics, we'll give you whatever you need to get stronger faster."

"And just what can you offer?" he asked, vaguely amused.

Bulma chuckled as she flashed her teeth. "Well, Goku and I were talking. He says he exploited the artificial gravity of the ship my Dad built to train at a hundred times Earth gravity, and boosted his strength almost ten times what he was in your fight on Earth in the six days it took to get to Namek!"

Gohan blinked. "Wasn't it fifty times gravity?"

Goku blinked back. "Where'd y'hear that?"

"It'd be a lot harder with limited resources here," Bulma continued, "except this planet has these elemental Dust crystals that feature gravity as a core element!"

Blake reeled. "One-hundred times gravity? That's stuff they do in material super-hardening…"

"Point is," Bulma continued, "you get what you're after, and we carry on with our plan. But if you keep threatening people, I stop maintaining the thing, got it?"

Vegeta grunted. "Even you think you can leverage me, woman?"

"I think even you can't think it's worth it to fight and threaten everyone here when we can just work together on this."

Vegeta considered. "Fine, enjoy this little armistice of ours, Kakarot… Once I've crushed Frieza under my boot, you're the next on my list."

Goku smirked. "I'll be here."

"Great," Raven sighed, chin to the sky in a full-tilt eye-roll. "Now if you divas have finished roughing out the basics, before we dive further into the whole alien side of this, it's nearly sunset."

Ears perked as she failed to elaborate, but Weiss stepped up, her hands on her elbows. "If anyone wants to join us… we'd… like to hold a small service for the people that didn't come back today."

Her teammates immediately stood straight as there was a mutter of ascent throughout the room.

"Of course," Ruby offered kindly, a hand on her shoulder. Weiss covered it with her own, closing her eyes as she nodded.

The group had largely filtered out to gather politely before the four crude headstones and the prepared plots and coffins for the two women with bodies to be buried. There was no true order to it. They all formed part of a circle as they arranged themselves. It was decided that only the closest to the fallen would eulogize them. It was an informal affair, unlikely to be a permanent home for the bodies, and less than was deserved. Proper arrangements would need to wait.

The tone was certainly set as Sun marched up on behalf of his team.

"I… I'm no good at this stuff," he admitted. "Neptune… Sage… Scarlet… they didn't deserve this. I didn't expect to see them at Haven, but it sure sounds like them, right?"

Ruby and Weiss found each other staring at Neptune's stone. Ruby felt her partner grab her hand. She rubbed it back with her thumb.

Sun was inscrutable, sighing as he blinked over and over again. "I'd trade places with any one of 'em… but I can't, so instead we're gonna make that bastard pay."

There was a mutter of agreement as he strode back into the crowd without another word, almost to the back.

Blake went up next, holding a canteen in her hands. "Most people here didn't know Ilia Amitola," she said matter-of-factly, "but she was one of my oldest friends. Part of the White Fang, like I was."

Oobleck and Taiyang alone shared significant glances, brows raised. In front of them, Oscar only nodded slowly.

"I didn't see her again until I went back to Menagerie. She always had a stubborn, ferocious heart… But convincing her to come to Haven, and stop living in the past, only took one good reason to have faith in humanity."

She gave Weiss a good, long look. Her grip on Ruby's hand tightened.

"She lost her parents as a girl," Blake continued, "and if n-nothing else…" Her voice broke, and she wiped the corner of her eye. "...She's somewhere now being held by them again… Because we helped her win back her soul, and then she gave her life for me."

Yang's eyes stung as she winced. Bulma had covered her mouth.

"She died for me," Blake emphasized, finding Sun's eyes in the crowd, "so I'm going to live for her."

Sun's mouth slipped open at that, but Blake was already unscrewing the top of her canteen. She let the pinkish contents pour into the soil before the headstone, not letting a single gurgle escape the metal container, and marched back into the crowd.

Yang stepped forward to put an arm around Blake's back, but as she did, the bluenette she'd shared barbs with before had rushed up on the other side, cheek to cheek, a hand behind Blake's head as she whispered comfort into her more human ear. It took a moment, but Yang found her annoyance with the woman being replaced with gratitude.

She turned now to see Raven walk up to the first casket. She softened as she leaned over, rubbing Rufina's cheek.

"None of you knew her," she said flatly. "I don't expect most of you to care. Any here would have known her as Vernal, briefly. I wish you could have known her, Yang. I wish she could have been like another sister to you."

Yang sighed. She couldn't help but believe that hope was sincere, but the life her mother wanted for them was as much a fantasy as anything Ruby had ever dreamt.

"With her, I commit all my people now lost. The Tribe is buried with her. Goodbye."

She slid the oaken lid into place, and there was a stir in the crowd as the crimson tearsign flared to life beside her eyes. Yang in particular blinked as Raven grabbed the casket with both hands and lifted the whole of it readily, gently depositing it into the plot. Yang recalled the orange flames beside Cinder's eye at Haven…

With a gesture of Raven's hand, a blast of air shoved the mound of dirt back into the plot, only leaving a raised mound. Yang recognized one of Vern— Rufina's odd crescent-shaped blades in her hand in its retracted form. She walked to the far-end of the plot and bent down as she extended them, jabbing both points into the dirt.

She left it there. Yang knew it was an old tradition… a Huntsman tradition… to mark a fallen hero's resting place like this in the field. In times of peace, they were usually buried with the body, to suggest their worldly work was done. By contrast, this denoted unfinished business, a call to action. It was shameful if the living left their comrades' blades to rust…

Raven stalked off, the tearsign extinguished. She did wander far, but found the porch where Vegeta stood and leaned against it.

Finally, Weiss squeezed Ruby's hand before letting go, shaking as she approached Winter.

"When you realize you've been numb for so long," she started, "when you realize it's been with you such a long time… you think maybe you know what real pain is. But as I've been shown time and again at this point… I didn't know anything!"

Her teammates glanced at each other with the same heartbreak as they imagined it. Ruby contemplated a world suddenly without Yang. It had almost happened, if not for Gohan and his friend. For a while, she hadn't known if it already happened when they were separated in the valley.

She'd put it out of her mind, shook herself from the thought whenever it came up: the possibility that she might be standing where Weiss was, as Yang lay lifeless in that box.

She accidentally gave a loud snort as her eyes brimmed, alarming everyone standing nearby. Yang had clearly been on the same track, arms around her as she shuddered quietly. She couldn't feel for Weiss more, realizing as she tried to block the idea that SHE was living that horror, and she didn't have that luxury.

"W-Winter and I shared a lot of things growing up. We both fenced, she took up piano while I sang…" Weiss smiled, if only for a flash. "And we shared a lot of the same pains."

She walked to the edge of the casket, barely able to look at her sister without her eyes trying to squeeze shut. She gripped the side with one hand. "But her pain is over now. I have to bear this for both of us… And unlike our childhood, I refuse to suffer it quietly."

With that, she waved her hands multiple times to form glyphs, which levitated the lid enough for her to schlep into place. Her lip quivered violently as the view of Winter's face was concealed, and for a moment she seemed to collapse upon the casket as she fought the tears. Her forehead pressed into it before she finally pushed herself to a stand. Two glyphs appeared underneath the box to raise it, and another two formed in the pit. Again, Weiss shoved, and the casket floated gently over the edge to sink steadily into place.

She barely hesitated as sideways glyphs carried the soil over as if by conveyor belt, and she knelt behind her to unfold a white sheet which contained Winter's twin sabers. She picked them up by the flat of the blades and walked to the back of the plot, mirroring Raven.

"It won't be in vain," she whispered, too low to be heard, "I'll make sure they're laid to rest with you by the end… I P-PROMISE…!"

She let the blades tilt and grabbed the handle in both hands, gently plunging the tip deep into the soil as a marker. Weiss closed her eyes, hands clasped as if in prayer.

To the surprise of all, she started to sing.

"It starts…. with the unexpected loss of something dear…"

There was a stir in the group, a few tilted heads from Krillin and Goku as they noticed the unexpected tones.

"The warmth… that comforted and cradled… just disappears…"

Bulma wrung her hands in sympathy. "Her voice is so pretty…" There were scant nods of agreement.

"And in its place there's nothing… Just an endless empty hole…" Weiss' voice tinkled as she sat straighter, letting her lungs expand. Her brow furrowed as her eyes closed. "The light that showed the way is gone… and darkness takes control…"

Vegeta was compelled to glance over as her volume increased. To those who hadn't heard Weiss Schnee sing before —or even croon idly while cleaning— they could be excused for downplaying her talent before this, but as she rang clear in the twilit skies despite her projecting louder and louder, there could be no doubt as to her mastery of the talent.

Her face darkened as she opened her eyes, the strict sadness boiling into hate as she pictured the thing that had hurt the people she loved. "Bitterness and anger… are quick to fill the void… The path to isolation… is littered with the dreams that lay destroyed…"

All was silent for a moment as she stopped singing. None were certain whether to say or do anything, but then Weiss' voice shook.

"I swear on my life…!" she began, her chin lifting towards the orange and purple clouds. "To any gods that are listening…! I'M GOING TO KILL HIM!"

There was a shock running through the air as her promise rang loud and clear. Vegeta nearly scoffed, but he didn't get the chance.

"We'll I'M listening…" came a nasally, croaking voice from the ether.

Weiss' face went blank as she heard it. "I… wha…" She wondered if she'd cracked, but there was a stir as everyone else shared her look of surprise.

But every one of the Earthlings shared a knowing smile, and Krillin voiced it at last. "Hey, it's King Kai!"

"You put too much on yourself, my girl!" the voice continued. "You don't bear this weight alone, love surrounds you… What you shared with HER has new life in THEM! True strength isn't only found within OR without…"

Weiss looked down and met the eyes of her team, who smiled in agreement. She couldn't help another tear rolling down her face as she rushed over to them and received a collective bear hug.

"Bah!" Vegeta belched. "Emotional codswallop!"

"Yeah, you WOULD say that, Vegeta…"

Weiss found it in her to giggle. In spite of its oddity, she found herself quite taken with the voice and its warm tidings.

"G...God?!" Ruby asked quietly.

"I AM a deity, yes, of the North Galaxy… so strictly speaking this isn't MY turf," King Kai confirmed. "Too often people shrug off good advice, but people tend to take it when they hear a voice in the sky… It's good to be the King!"

"Hey King Kai!" Goku shouted unnecessarily.

"Goku! I searched EVERYWHERE to find you and Frieza! I never would have dreamed Porunga would send you all the way to West Galaxy… If West Kai finds out about this I'll never hear the end of it!"

"W-wait, there's a West King Kai?!" Goku asked, astonished.

"Mhmm! There's a Kai for all four quadrants," King Kai explained. "None of them share my refined sense of humor of course…"

Taiyang looked around as his life steadily unraveled. "So, am I to take it the wake is off?"

"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting, but there's a lot to discuss," King Kai replied. "Buuut if it helps, I won't lie… you might want to be sitting down for this stuff."

Arthur Watts fell back immediately as he entered the long hall to the rotunda, forming ranks along the margins with Tyrian, Hazel, Cinder and her servants.

Frieza entered the hall without hesitation, as if he already owned it. Its true owner simply bowed deeply, haunting smile not leaving her face.

"Hmm... well that's rare. I'm quite accustomed to false bravado... but false humility?"

"You're most perceptive, my lord."

Flanking the room, Frieza noted various few… others present, wearing varying expressions. Their attentions were torn between him and Ginyu, who trailed behind offering them cautious glares. Most seemed appropriately wary, others indifferent. One lanky fellow seemed vaguely distressed, offended even, at his presence. Oh, he hoped the fool would give him a reason…

But all, it seemed, were blindsided by his host's accommodating behavior. Clearly this person was considered impressive, or even intimidating by their standards. Her pallid, ghostly visage and her monstrous eyes certainly separated her from the other humans he'd encountered.

"Ha! Perhaps. But I've also seen enough tawdry politics to know how to read scrambling rulers, abdicating their throne of sticks while taking up the knife of betrayal…"

Sticks was very near the word. This palace was appropriate to the term, but its keeper was a lazy soul. Chandeliers of the same glowing purple crystals dotting the discordant landscape, furnishings of what looked to be twisted driftwood, and functional lighting from half-melted candles dripping wax freely and —Beerus' eye-teeth— actual torch sconces...

So droll...

He refocused in a snap, shifting to the point. "Regardless, you have my attention. I cannot recall when last I was invited anywhere sight unseen, so you are either worth wasting words on, or have just made the worst mistake of your life."

His every step was a deafening creak through the hall, approaching the steps upon which she stood. The survivors of Haven watched him pass like a bomb with a lit fuse. Cinder watched the strange short being in fascination, fearless in his approach. All the more curious was his bodyguard, the Winter Maiden herself… though she doubted he needed such a guardian.

"I'll make this simple," he offered venomously. "What do you want?"

The glow of Salem's red eyes seemed to flare in the dim light. "Your public displays are spoiling decades of careful action. Rather than split Remnant's forces, you are giving them cause to rally against a common foe."

"Hmm!" he intoned, increasingly amused… and disappointed. "And this is where you've given up the game. Such tactics, simply to subdue that common rabble?"

"Humanity is not to be understated," she insisted. "They are strong."

He scoffed. "Then I'm afraid you know nothing of strength, my dear," He began ascending the steps. "So am I here simply for unsolicited advice, or have you anything else for me? Doubtful at best, I'd say."

"You're wrong. We can make you powerful beyond reckoning."

He stopped a few steps from her. She'd given no ground. "Is that to suggest I'm not already?"

"Indeed," she answered with a smile. "There is one thing you seek. Immortality."

Interesting. How was she so well informed? "Oh, hardly a secret, but at least my reputation finally precedes me..."

"Hm. No. It's in your eyes," she said, finally prompting dilation in his. "The fear of death. A fear I do not possess."

It wasn't the invitation he expected, but all the same… His finger raised. "Hm hm hmm! Then let me remind you!"

The fuchsia ray made direct contact as the walls were bathed in red light. She didn't even flinch. Tyrian Callows nearly howled in outrage, but as the light faded he squealed gleefully at his unfazed goddess. Ginyu's mouth dropped open.

"What?!" Frieza barked, taking a single step back.

"It is as I told you. Would you like to know more, Lord Frieza...?"

"The Namek dragon is DEAD?!" Bulma shrieked, the news rocking through the room as Taiyang swept the broken glass into the dustpan in Zwei's mouth.

"Almost the instant the wish was made," King Kai confirmed. "The Grand Elder simply couldn't hold out any longer."

Krillin grit his teeth as he stared into the floor. "I knew he was on his last legs, but I didn't think it was that bad!"

Vegeta growled. "Set yourself up for disappointment, I'd say, half-pint… It was either the old bloated spud kicked it, or the little green brat who put us here wasn't keen on inviting us back!"

"I-I'm sorry," Weiss interjected, "but what's the significance of this… dragon?"

Goku turned in his seat, voice low from the news. "Well, on Earth we had a Guardian from the planet Namek, where they made seven magic orange balls. And when you bring them together, the Eternal Dragon appears to grant your wish. On Namek you got three…"

"Had?" Yang noticed.

Gohan scowled. "There's a set on Namek, and Earth, but if the one who made the Dragonballs dies, then the balls turn to stone." He rounded on Vegeta. "He came to Earth and killed Piccolo, and his life was bound with the Guardian, so the Dragon died too!"

Vegeta grunted. "Despite my best efforts, kid, Nappa was the one who dispatched your pathetic little friends, not me."

Blake stood up. "You really are the WORST!" she told him. "So to bring him back, you went to this other planet to use their dragon to make things right… and now…?"

Bulma suppressed a sob. "N-now… both dragons are gone! We're STUCK here! We'll never see Yamcha, the others or our home again…!"

There was confusion and sympathy from the Huntsmen and Huntresses as Blake saw fit to comfort the brilliant bluenette.

"W-wait," Weiss began, mouth dry, "When Blake says 'bring him back,' you mean back…?"

"Back to life," Krillin elaborated with a nod, "sure."

"Yeah," Ruby said, nodding, "that's what Gohan told us way earlier."

"I didn't believe him," Jaune admitted.

Blake, Weiss and Yang offered understanding smiles, but Krillin had something altogether different. "Well, seeing is believing. Goku here bit the big one a year ago and trained in Otherworld. That's how he knows King Kai."

Yang stood rod-straight. "Wait… what?!"

Qrow hummed. "Yyyyeah, I was wondering just how you guys had an 'in' with the top brass in the sky."

Nora leered at Goku. "So you… died?"

Goku nodded, giving a breath of laughter. "I mean, I got better…"

"He's not the only one," Krillin added. "I got my brain kicked-in when I was still a kid. Haven't noticed any side effects," he was met with flat stares. "And uh… no… I don't think it had anything to do with my height…"

Yang's head snapped over to him. "You…?!"

Weiss looked between them, her eyes soft as she contemplated asking—

"What's it matter?!" Bulma cried, holding Blake for dear life. "It's over! It's all for keeps, that's that…"

"Well hey, then again maybe not!" came a youthful voice from the air. Surprising as it was in general, Bulma immediately stopped crying and stared.

"Yam...cha?"

"Hey Bulma… sorry to worry you."

"Hey!" King Kai complained. "I was getting to it! Shove off!"

Krillin couldn't help but grin. "Sonuva' gun! What're YOU doing there?!"

"Ah, right! I never told you guys!" Goku noted excitedly. "He made it to King Kai's!"

"He wasn't the only one!" added a scratchy voice. "Sorry again that we passed each other between Earth and Otherworld, Goku, I hear you cleaned house. Would have loved to see it!"

Gohan said it this time. "Hey Tenshinhan!"

Vegeta listened to it all with bemusement, but the last comment stirred him. "You heard wrong, three-eyes, every side of that battle was broken by the end."

"S-so wait," Ruby thought, her pupils shrinking as her fingers gripped her face, "we're talking to DEAD PEOPLE?!"

"S-SIR!" Weiss projected, louder than she meant. "Sorry… I know this is important, but… is my sister there? Anyone from Remnant?"

"Mmm," the Kai sighed sympathetically, "I'm sorry my dear, I'm not limited to those here in PERSON, but outside the mortal realm I can't interfere with souls from other quadrants. Outside my jurisdiction."

Her face fell. "O-oh…"

"It's just as well, newly departed souls are slow to adapt and accept their fate, they need time to come to terms. Speaking with a loved one from the living world so soon might cause great distress. But if it helps, you should know it takes a pretty obvious sort of scoundrel to get booted into Hell…"

A number of them blanched. Blake gave voice to them. "Th-there's really a Hell…?"

King Kai heard the tone. "Yes, but don't you worry yourself, Miss… The friend you fear for mended her ways in time, and that's your doing, lass! And YOU turned from a path of darkness long ago now."

Blake let out a breath and sucked air like she'd been holding it, a pair of tears running down her face. "Th-thank you…! You don't know what it means to hear… I-I don't suppose…?"

"Mmm… your former partner," King Kai deduced. "His fire might have been sparked by a just flint, as hers was, but in the end it consumed him. I'm afraid he will not receive the same reward."

Blake went numb, frozen stiff. It wasn't as though she hadn't expected it, but hearing it straight from a god made it all so much more real.

Adam had been damned to Hell...

"We DON'T have time for this!" a gruff voice growled, utterly different from the others.

"Ack! Hey, lay off!"

Goku smiled, but Gohan was beaming as they both cried, "Piccolo!"

"Hmm… How ya' doing, runt?"

Gohan laughed happily. Ruby stared in surprise, intrigued to see such happiness towards such a harsh, intimidating voice. Still, she couldn't help smiling too. She needed to talk to him when there was another chance…

"So the dragons are dead, but Dende and a Warrior Namekian called Nail are still alive. It's a long shot, but the kid is Dragon Clan. He COULD be taught how to resurrect their dragon and bind it to himself."

Bulma's eyes practically sparkled as she stood up to full height. "Y-you mean…?"

"Sounds like it's back in play," Raven surmised. "So, you have two wishes to fulfill…"

"Should be all three," Goku corrected, finger to his chin as he remembered. "When Kami brought Shenron back to life, he was able to grant another wish right away."

She nodded. "Even better. So wish Salem and Frieza dead, bring everyone they killed back with the last one. Your Earth dragon comes back too, you wish yourselves home."

Gohan and Krillin looked to each other with a frown. Gohan took the lead. "It doesn't work like that. I dunno about Salem, but the dragons can't get rid of something more powerful than the one who made them, so Frieza's out of the question."

"The Namek dragon also isn't like the Earth dragon," Piccolo added. "It can return people who have died before, but it can only revive one person per wish. One wish brings me and Kami back, Shenron brings the rest. Then Porunga can send everyone home."

Oscar stepped forward. "If Frieza's victims return, does this also undo the damage he's caused? If the population of Mistral is returned to life in a crater on a barren waste, with no means of defense or shelter…"

Yang nodded. "Yeah, they'll be served up to the Grimm on a platter."

Bulma considered. "Okay, let's assume undoing his damage doesn't also mean reviving people. That's all wishes accounted for."

"I-We…!" Jaune blurted suddenly, glancing between an alert Ren and a wincing Nora who clutched his hand.

Krillin nodded. "Go on. All voices heard here."

Nora was the one to speak, her voice quivering. "The wish… to bring people back… Can it… Is there a way to include anyone Salem or her people…?"

Goku hummed. "Piccolo, you know this stuff… How many sets of people can we lump together in one wish?"

"You mean, can we ask Shenron to 'revive anyone killed by Frieza, this Salem or their men in the past year?' " he suggested, refining the wording. "That wish should work, it's more a matter of numbers than specificity. If we asked Shenron to revive anyone slain by evil within a year, we'd likely run into problems."

Ruby looked to her teammates, and saw Jaune, Ren and Nora glance at each other with huge eyes as their hearts hammered.

"Ren…!" Nora gasped, hugging him close as she stared up into his face. "We could… She…"

Weiss said it quietly as she nearly covered her mouth. "Pyrrha… Penny…!"

Ren sighed as he looked to the sky. "Why the past year?"

The air went out of the room. "Huh?" Ruby asked.

Ren repeated himself. "Can the revival specify more than one year?"

Piccolo was quiet. "No. Not for mass revival. That needs to be done within the year of the wish. After that, only a wish for one specific person can do it."

Qrow sighed explosively. "What I tell ya? Stupid, convoluted rules… Feh… magic..."

Nora's voice filled with panic as she clutched Ren. "But the Fall of Beacon was in September… We're almost at the end of July!"

There was a ripple of discomfort as worry filled the veterans of Beacon, but Bulma was quick to stand tall.

"Hey, hey, kids, relax!" she ordered with a chipper smile. "Don't worry about it… If it comes to that, we'll make it happen once this mess is over. If they mean that much to you, they mean that to us too!"

The Earthlings shared in her smile as Jaune looked at her with astonishment. "You'd do that?"

Krillin nodded. "We do kinda owe you guys for this… whole thing."

Vegeta sighed. "There's another problem you haven't factored in."

Bulma scowled. "And just what would that be?"

Vegeta closed his eyes. "We left Namek with Frieza's forces decimated, the Ginyu Force gone… The green brat will survive for a time, but I'd give it no more than a month before the news finally reaches Frieza's father that he's vanished from the face of the galaxy."

There was a stir, and even Goku shot to his feet in surprise. "Frieza has a DAD?!"

Vegeta nodded. "King Cold retired from commanding the Empire and handed Frieza the reins, but the word is he's nearly as strong as Frieza himself. If the brat manages to survive the initial sweep of the planet, Cold will likely just destroy it out of spite."

There was silence as the implications settled in. King Kai spoke at last. "I fear Vegeta is correct… Retribution for the loss of Frieza would be swift and brutal. Namek will almost certainly be crushed!"

"That's not enough time," Goku said gravely. "King Kai, tell Dende to take their Dragonballs aboard the ship I came to Namek in. The ship should be able to find its way home to Earth."

Krillin took a breath in surprise. "Good thinking, Goku! That'll buy us the time we need!"

Vegeta grunted. "Not as much as you think, fools!"

"What? Why?"

The Saiyan rolled his eyes. "Because between the Frieza world I stopped at before Namek, and the call for the Ginyu force, it's not going to take long for them to assume I had something to do with it. They're going to tear the galaxy apart to find where I've gone to ground and destroy any place I made contact with. Frieza was only on Namek in the first place after they listened in on my time on Earth and heard about the Dragonballs."

"Wow," Yang said, eyes reddening, "Blake was right, you are the WORST! This whole thing is your fault!"

"Tcheh!" Vegeta spat, turning away from her.

Ruby stepped forward and put a hand on Yang's shoulder as she built up a head of steam, growling. "That doesn't matter right now," she said firmly. "So that's out of our hands, we can only hope… Dende learns fast. But what's next? What if we can't stop Frieza before this? We can't wish his life away, but a wish brought him here right?"

Bulma's eyes lit up. "Wait, yeah! We wish him some other place and just wait a year for the Dragonballs to be ready again! I can stick it out that long here if he's gone!"

Weiss soured. "So… pawn him off to terrorize some other people?"

Bulma's smile froze in place as the words hit her. "O-or we wish him next to a black hole or something?"

"Save your brainpower on a real conundrum, woman," Vegeta ordered, "because the clear solution is to grant my immortal body. Then I'll dispose of that bastard with my own two hands. You'll all pay dearly if I'm denied my vengeance!"

Nearly every occupant in the room was losing patience with the Prince and his interruptions, but Bulma's smile dripped with smugness as her knuckles dug into her hips. "Sure thing, your highness," she said, giving a curtsey with a skirt she wasn't wearing, "but just to be extra sure, we'll wish that you and Goku get it."

Vegeta's eyes all but bulged out his skull. "Y-you… impertinent sow…!" He couldn't argue with that.

Meanwhile, Goku's eyes only blinked. "Huh. I mean, living forever sure would be something… but I'd sure like to explore Otherworld with you guys some day…"

"Aww…" Bulma cooed with a smile. To this day she was surprised by how accidentally wholesome he could be.

"Plus it just feels… well… wrong, y'know?" Goku continued. "Call me crazy, but what's the challenge in a fight you can't lose?"

Bulma spun around so fast she slipped on the lacquered wood and stretched the collar of Krillin's skin tight black shirt as she grabbed it to keep from landing on her face.

Nora tilted her head. "He's kidding, right?"

The adopted Saiyan shook his head. "No… I don't really like all these ideas where we just get rid of Frieza with magic stuff. Ever since I heard of the guy I've wanted a shot at him! It'd be a shame not to try my strength."

"GOKU-THIS-ISN'T-SOME-TOURNAMENT!" Bulma squawked, her head swinging up like a striking serpent as he recoiled like a mouse. "We're talking about survival here! If you get us all KILLED because you want to ask him his diet and exercise plan, I'll—!"

"I know I know, but cut me a break, Bulma!" Goku pled, his hands out in warding. "It's not like there are many others like Frieza out there, I'm passing up a chance that might never come again!"

"Garghh!" Bulma cried. "You are hopeless!"

But Krillin blinked as he thought about it. "But hold on, who would teach Dende? Namek was pretty empty last I checked. Do Namekians have books on tape for this stuff?"

"Not necessary," King Kai told him. "I hope you appreciate this, Goku, because I've been playing 'switchboard' between Dende and Kami for half a day now, and it's MURDER on my concentration!"

Before they could even react to this strategy, Piccolo chimed in again.

"MY psychic link with the old man has helped make it possible, Kai, spare me the woes while you're routing their thoughts through MY head too."

"Hey, YOU get to come back to life after this! I COULD hang the whole thing if you want, makes no difference to me!"

"W-wait!"

"Please don't!"

"We beg of you!"

They could almost hear the smile on the North Kai's face. "Now now, I wouldn't leave you folks high and dry… Seems the people of Remnant have a greater sense of respect than Earth."

There was a collective sigh of relief as he said it. "Now we have the more important stuff out of the way, it's time we discussed the wish that brought you here, Goku. It's a most curious thing, so here's the wishmaker himself! You have the floor, kiddo…"

"G-Gohan, Krillin!"

"Dende…!" Gohan remarked.

Vegeta scowled as the pair beamed into the sky. Ruby and Nora barely suppressed squeals of joy at the young, polite voice, while the adults in the room had a markedly different reaction.

"Crap," Qrow muttered, "he's not a kid, he's a toddler… we're staking Remnant on this…?"

"I-I'm so sorry!" Dende continued. "I didn't mean to wish you all away, just Frieza! I-I-I was AFRAID… and then… the Grand Elder…"

Krillin waved his hand dismissively. "Nah, kid, if anything you probably saved all our skins. If what happened in Mistral was any indicator, he'd have ripped through all of us back there."

"But… people there were hurt," Dende argued sadly. "I'd never wish the fate of my people onto others! They're suffering, and it's all my fault…!"

Ruby couldn't help it. "We're going to be okay," she told him, confidently. "Nobody here blames you."

"Ha!" Vegeta barked, causing her and others to scowl.

"Nobody from REMNANT blames you," she amended. "But… what was it you wished for, exactly? Why Remnant?"

"And why us?!" Yang asked. "This goes beyond chance, right? Gohan's dad showed up here at our home, he wound up with Ruby, she found Blake, him with Weiss, and Krillin… Do I need to spell it out?"

"The wish singled out Team RWBY," Ren surmised.

There was a quiet agreement as they all considered it. The pattern was too clear.

King Kai explained. "The wish itself —in Namekian, mind you— was, 'I wish they would all go back to where the humans came from…' "

There was a silence… which Bulma broke.

"That's IT?! That doesn't explain anything!"

"Doesn't it, though?" Ozpin asked. "The wording is vague, mangled even… plainly worded not for intent but out of panic."

Qrow sighed. "So it's some kind of monkey's paw deal; there was enough wiggle room in that wish for your dragon to screw everyone equally."

"N-no!" Dende shouted, plainly offended. "Porunga is not a trickster or some demon djinn, The Eternal Dragon is a reflection of its maker! The Grand Elder is… was the world's protector."

"Mmhmm," King Kai agreed. "What the boy says is correct. A Namekian dragon harbors no ill will for the wishmaker, and holds no loyalties besides. It's bound by the wording of the wish, but it will labor to fulfill the wish as intended."

Bulma hummed. "Now you mention it, Shenron's second-guessed us before to be certain the wish will do what we want… He's scary as all get-out, but all he's ever pressured us to do is finish up so he can go back to sleep."

"Far be it from me to know what's in a dragon's noggin," the Kai continued, "but had Porunga hesitated a moment more, his wishmaker, Dende, would have been killed. He had no time to ask the boy to elaborate, and instead interpreted the wish in the way he saw as the best possible outcome."

"Okay, but…" Yang started again. "Why us?"

"Well, we were on world-saving quests," Blake offered.

Yang shook her head. "The only world I was saving was Ruby's. You and her were trying to save others."

"Ah, yes," King Kai sighed knowingly, "but I think it's clear that you four harbor an unbreakable bond. Your fates are bound together in sisterhood. Doesn't take a Kai to see that, much less a dragon… was he wrong?" he finished, audibly preening.

Weiss blinked. "It… was pretty incredible we all showed up at Haven."

"Right when we most needed each other," Blake added, catching Yang's eye.

"Yeah, but screw Vacuo, right?" Sun snapped bitterly. "Dragon sure wasn't fussed about dropping Frieza there."

Blake turned to offer comfort, but neither she nor any of the others had anything for him.

"If you want my theory," King Kai started helpfully, "Your Vacuo is the least populated place on the planet, short of the island continent you started at… and that might have put the whole plan in jeopardy. Frieza was certain to act rashly, but at least if he knew he was in a civilized world and not a barren waste, he might turn to subjugation rather than destroy the planet on the spot. They say 'live free or die,' buuuut…"

"Yeah, great…" Sun muttered.

"It's not much, I know, but I'm certain it wasn't malicious."

"Okay, I'm at my limit!" Bulma cried suddenly, standing to full height. "Is nobody noticing the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room?! 'Where the humans came from?' The fact that two planets on opposite sides of the Universe have people who call themselves human, look like humans? It was weird enough seeing how many aliens out there are bipeds, but this has been a long time coming!"

She stomped in front of the injured Saiyan. "Goku! You're an alien from another planet, and nobody noticed until your brother came and kidnapped your SON, who I remind you… is HALF… HUMAN…!"

Goku stammered. "I-I… don't know what you're trying to say, Bulma…"

"ALIENS AND HUMANS CAN'T HAVE BABIES, GOKU!"

"B-But… clearly they can, see?" he said, hands on Gohan's bewildered shoulders.

"Ignorant female," Vegeta snapped. "Saiyans have potent, powerful genetic material, hybrids are hardly unheard of."

"That's BUNK!" Bulma told him. "No amount of 'potency' can make two species crossbreed! Even offshoots from the same branch of the phylogenetic tree often can't mix beyond a single generation! That's not how genetics works! It's not enough for them to look similar either, though THAT is a mess all in itself!"

"If you're suggesting what I THINK you are, Earth woman..." Vegeta seethed.

She marched her way over to Blake. "Look at secondary characteristics!" she ordered pointing at Blake's chest as her face pinkened, and then cupped her own chest in both hands. "Boobs!"

There was a collective discomfort.

"B-boobs…?" Ruby dared.

Bulma nodded. "Mammals are named for mammaries, which is specific and unique enough as evolution goes, but then primates came along and they moved from the abdominal area up to the pectoral region! Assuming you ladies have the same gear under the hood…"

Yang snorted. "Sure, I mean, you Earth girls have toothy tentacles down there too, right? Gotta keep the boys on their toes…"

Ruby and Weiss snickered, while Sun went white, leaning over to Jaune. "Dude, she's… she's joking, right?"

Jaune's eyes furrowed as he blinked. "Why would you ask me?"

Bulma huffed. "Look, what I'm saying is this doesn't HAPPEN! There's convergent evolution, and then there's whatever this is! This place has gravity similar to Earth, but the SAIYAN home world has ten times the gravity! Saiyans shouldn't be even vaguely human-shaped, they should have evolved with elephant feet and look like living pancakes!"

Nora hummed. "I mean… there are some differences… like, no offense, but now you guys are all here to compare… anyone else notice their heads are way bigger than their faces? The features are sharper, the eyes are different…"

"We noticed, yes, thank you Nora," Jaune said curtly, leaving her to pout.

Bulma sighed. "Look, I don't know how it happened, but I think the Namek dragon figured it out: the humans and Saiyans came from here… all of us."

Vegeta growled. "Preposterous! That's too far, girl! You disgrace my Saiyan heritage to suggest our descent from these… these… space rats!"

"Tell us how you really feel…" Yang sighed.

Oobleck had been silent a while, but he scratched his chin as he considered it. "Her hypothesis fits the evidence," he remarked. "The history of Remnant is so fraught with conflict, of fallen empires and lost knowledge… why, the very name, 'Remnant,' is an admission of our loss, of the missing pages at the start of humanity's story. The room for such incredible things, however remote, is vast."

"I'd need to do some digging into their histories," King Kai admitted, "I can't say I usually look into the origin of species, the answer is usually the same old thing. Remnant isn't my turf either, so signal is fuzzy…"

Bulma sighed. "Well what are we waiting for then?" She strode to the coffee table and the levitating lantern, snatching it by its handle. Qrow and Oscar both stood bolt upright. Taiyang froze, staring at the unearthly blue glow. "Relic of Knowledge, right? Alright then… How'd all this come about anyway?"

The air seemed to go out of the room, there was a wait for something to happen. But when it didn't, Oscar sighed.

"The Relic can only tell of knowledge humans know, I'm afraid that's not how it wor—"

But then the lamp's blue glow flashed like an explosion, and for all occupants of the room, and even the Kai whose mind touched theirs, the world snapped into utter blackness.

Ruby started in the dark, she fumbled, stumbled and tried to find something… anything. "Guys?!" She called. "Gohan? Weiss? Dad? Anyone?!"

And then, like flame spreading to paper, a sunset sky tore into being. She found herself standing upon a verdant hill overlooking a vast forest. As she turned, her eyes found a city below, a gleaming, golden metropolis unlike any Kingdom she had ever seen. Buildings floated like balloons, held aloft by massive purple crystals and latticed together. Tiny vehicles flitted between them all. No walls, almost nothing sat upon the ground. Even the crops sat upon huge, floating ovals. The city of Atlas felt like a proof of concept compared to a paradise like this.

Was this the past, or the future? She stared up to find the moon, and an impossible sight.

The moon was intact! One, single, perfect sphere, cratered but whole, only marred by a series of dark veins lined with twinkling, unnatural looking lights on one spot.

"Well?" a gruff voice said. "You're the one who called us, aren't you?"

She whirled around. She wasn't sure what she was seeing at first, two figures against the sunset. But slowly, she discerned their form.

Barely taller than her stood a purple-skinned… She tried to parse its features, and couldn't get it out of her head… was it a cat?

Not a cat like a faunus either, the face was inhuman, the eyes yellow, huge ears adding to its overall height. Lithe, but powerfully built, it wore an odd sort of ornamental collar or regalia, and apart from its turquoise pants it wore numerous gold cuffs and clasps.

Behind it towered a man with ears like an elf's, and a serene pale blue face under the most outrageous white coiff she'd ever seen, and it fought for attention with the cyan hoop floating around his neck. Burgundy robes with wide shoulders adorned the rest of him, and he carried a staff with what looked like a black ringed planet at its top.

"I-I, I'm sorry, I didn't call for—"

"I didn't know…" a small voice answered from behind Ruby. "I know who we… who I hoped would answer…"

It was then that Ruby realized. She stepped to the side and neither of the beings followed her movements. They continued to watch the figure in black behind her.

Ruby was taken aback by the image of the pale, red eyed girl who had been standing opposite the beings. Her white hair flowed in a river behind her. Her face was youthful, ever so slightly chubby, and the disappointed pout on her face completed the look.

"...But you're not him. You're not my father."

A/N: So begins the next phase of the story, and we start getting answers to the burning questions raised up till now.

This was the longest chapter of the story to date, and I'm sorry it's so exposition heavy, but I hope you can understand that there was a LOT of ground to cover here.

Let me start not in order, but with the most contentious point:

*WARNING: The portion listed below is largely a rant related to current RWBY canon as of Volume 8 Chapter 7… Please skip to the next underlined text if you don't want to engage*

Yes, I provide a similar dilemma over Ozpin's handling of the Mountain Glenn incident to that of Mantle in canon RWBY per Volume 7-8. Yes, I side with RWBY in this matter, and in both cases I consider their actions entirely defensible and in character. In fact I really couldn't say these were the characters I loved if they didn't labor to save everyone. My problem with Ironwood, and indeed with Ozpin in this story, isn't the failure to save every life, but the unwillingness to even try. Both attempt to file these human lives under "acceptable losses" and move on.

There are a great many rational, reasoned arguments defending this in a very sterile, Vulkan risk assessment manner and I'm not going to say you won't REASON your way into a "needs of the many" solution and not be rationally supported… I believe Mass Effect once called it "Ruthless Calculus." But let's not forget that Spock wasn't the final word on that in Star Trek. Later films turned that around by design when Kirk and the crew risked everything to rescue Spock, the many at risk for the one. And in general Star Trek always held that there was a value to the irrational, emotional and reckless behavior of humans. For being such a series grounded in science, it believed humanity was worth being in error, at least to a point, and that it was possible to prevail despite the vast odds. MHA practically enshrines recklessness as a virtue.

My annoyance really stems in those condemning RWBY for their actions and calling them childish or irresponsible, lionizing Ironwood, and at times being so callous and dismissive as to call Mantle "Atlas' slum" as if to justify there being some greater elitist purpose to letting them die.

It smacks to me of not really understanding this kind of story or RWBY's role in it. Ironwood is the Tin Man without a heart, and RWBY represents that heart, all the while holding up the notion that your feelings DO in fact matter, however you might try to deny them. However you can justify betraying thousands on a logical level, your heart and your mind will be in conflict.

Indeed, RWBY's central point is encapsulated in Ruby's first conversation with Blake: the most idealistic of the group engaging with the experienced realist.

"Life isn't a fairytale…"

"Well that's why we're here… to make it better…"

The story is about Ruby Rose being a light in a dark world and refusing to be dimmed by it, of having her face GROUND into the ashes of a bleak and bloody world, STILL capable of finding the hidden beauty and goodness hidden at its core, and bringing that out in others.

And frankly If you still condemn them, then at least be consistent:

Avatar Aang risked the world when he avoided opportunities to kill Ozai out of obligation to his pacifism. Luke Skywalker abandoned his training to save his friends. Steven Universe refused to use a lethal weapon against his enemies despite literally being a handful of people against an intergalactic empire with enormous power and resources. Steve Rogers famously said "we don't trade lives" when offered the chance to destroy an Infinity Stone and render Thanos' goals impossible, at the cost of a friend and ally, and before that refused to agree to a peace deal that would force him to ignore others in need unless specifically permitted to by a committee.

Jeez, even Nick Fury refused to nuke New York to stop the invasion in the first Avengers film.

Even the God Damn BATMAN was once in the exact same situation as RWBY, with Metropolis in the line of fire while Darkseid was inbound to take a piece of the Anti-Life Equation… and he refused to abandon the people no different from RWBY, even at the risk of something that might end all life. So I have no patience for anyone calling RWBY's call a matter of "inexperience," unless you want to take that up with BATMAN.

Simon The Digger, Harry Potter, Izuku Midoriya… the list goes on and on of beloved characters who'd have done no differently. You can argue how realistic they are, argue they're principled but mistaken if you like… but be consistent. Don't single RWBY out, or lie to my face. I'm utterly sick of that, and I almost wish the writers hadn't bothered with this dilemma given how obnoxious the counterculture became as a result.

And really, when we're talking about FANTASY, a genre STAKED upon defiance of realism and the power of virtue and idealism… shouldn't that be the ONE PLACE we're allowed to believe that what SHOULD happen is what WOULD happen, even in the face of the impossible? Shouldn't it be the ONE PLACE where listening to your heart and holding true to your creed reaps the ultimate reward?

HAD to get that off my chest… I'm sorry… but also be warned, I am NOT interested in ANY debate on this topic, and if you try in comments or otherwise, I will BLACKLIST YOU from review responses and barr you from the Discord server. I know that's not fair, I don't care, I've heard enough arguments for why Ruby Rose is a dangerous, selfish egotist with delusions of her own self importance and how she needs to learn to conform and be a good footsoldier because she doesn't know what she's doing… you know, because THAT'S a role-model: someone who doesn't stand up for what they believe is right.

*WE NOW RETURN TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED NOTES*

Ah, and the next contentious thing: the Dragonballs.

I won't lie, when I started this story, I wanted to permanently remove the Dragonballs from the mix and have some real stakes for once. But (as some have even guessed) there was at least one loophole remaining… Dende.

Toriyama REALLY made it nigh impossible for any threat to truly make a situation impossibly bleak. As good as the Cell Saga was, Porunga still existed as a safety net, and clearly the end of Kami didn't stop Earth from getting another… IMPROVED set. I don't need to tell you that the Buu Saga went as hard as possible, but once Porunga was invoked, even the purging and annihilation of Earth was rendered a momentary inconvenience.

Sometimes I don't think Toriyama can help himself. He introduced erasure and upped the stakes in Super with whole Universes, Afterlife and all, being removed… but also created the Super Dragonballs, which despite the difficulty of moving them… HAVE no stipulations, and can literally even undo GOD HIMSELF willing eleven Universes out of existence...

I couldn't just have the heroes NOT TRY to mend the situation… and there was an idea that maybe the dragons' influence couldn't extend to Remnant, but that would contradict them all being sent there in the first place, and you guys would have rightfully called that for the arbitrary "author fiat" nonsense it is.

I don't like to ignore options that characters would use to get what they want just so the story operates the way I want it to, and King Kai communing with the dead to teach Dende how to revive Porunga just sounds like what they'd do if they had no other choice. So here we are. I recognized this a long time ago, and I've since accounted for it all.

I know… it is all but a SIN to even FLIRT with the notion of resurrecting Pyrrha given how bitter and meaningful it's become, but it would be utterly out of character for JNR (or any of them really) to not go HARD for this opportunity. They'd do ANYTHING to have their friend back.

Now, I haven't made it EASY… King Cold and the remaining Frieza Force are breathing down their necks and have become a de facto Sword of Damocles. Time is not on their side… and I promise that before this is over, it will not only be technically possible that their efforts will be for naught, that Frieza or Salem could have the last laugh while it all burns… It's going to be virtually guaranteed.

My solemn promise is that this story WILL have real tragedies that mean something, and real stakes, especially by the end. Things will be lost that can never be reclaimed, not with any number of wishes or with any amount of effort. A story like this will either end in utter tragedy, or a victory that is bittersweet. There is no version of this where everything is gained, nothing is lost, and everyone goes back home a few friends, powers and sets of Dragonballs richer for it.

"Happily Ever After" can only mean so much, if not tempered and contextualized by sadness...

Back to chronological…

I know some people wondered if Frieza would stick to the forms he ascended to, but I like to think he either casually prefers his first form or Final, and he reserves Final to retain that air of mystique and always have his foes at a disadvantage concerning his capabilities.

And… Ginyu. Yep! Some of you wondered just where she went.

I'll be referring to Ginyu as a she while in that body; no I'm not making some kind of statement about trans persons, nor suggesting that one's body parts dictate their gender. Gun to my head, for the purposes of this Universe, I'll say the soul is influenced by the body, and the BODY can be made strangely or be wired to be mentally one gender and physically another. A soul is a soul. This will also constitute why Ginyu could receive the Maiden powers in the first place.

Anyway, yeah, Ginyu was always going to feature in Act II, and her introduction prior was mainly foreshadowing. I could've left it a total surprise, but I like to prove that I'm not just making the story up as I go.

Oh, and yes… I said this earlier, but when Ki users have Maiden powers… the effect is dramatically increased. Usually magic and Ki are separate, but in this case the magic is BOUND to their spirit, and the lines blur. Raven's magic was able to have a pronounced enough effect that Krillin at half strength was having trouble. With proper control, that advantage multiplies. (Again… magic is the only real advantage RWBY has; I know this is reaching a bit, but I promise it's worth it…)

It intrigued me in Volume 8 how oddly hostile Cinder was to Emerald upon first seeing her, and how similar that nearly was to this. But HERE Cinder is legitimately furious with her disciples for humiliating her, bordering on abandoning them outright. Of course, she has no room to talk. I was glad to see people in reviews speculating that she survived, because I was legitimately concerned her Team Rocket routine looked too lethal to believe. Nope, we're not done with her. Not the least because I need to show-up that disappointment of an origin story in V8… (Eight years, and it's literally just the Cinderella story played straight, except murder?! At least shroud the references a little! Is her obsession with power WHOLLY implied? Because there's a difference between being subtle and outright not addressing it...)

Poor, poor Weiss… I hope it wasn't overdoing it, but while a number of them lost friends, Weiss lost her most adored family member. The scene in the wreck, and specifically her moment with Blake, was something I yearned to write down for a while. The callback to "Black and White" was half the reason I wrote it, and seeing her vulnerability bleeding out like this is so different to how guarded she's been in the past. To the point that Vegeta actually threatens to make good on his threats from before.

The subsequent, somber process of caring for their dead and honoring them is virtually a centerpiece for this chapter. If there was one thing I think we all missed between Volumes 3 and 4, it was getting that first visceral reaction of our characters regarding Pyrrha. With Jaune it was like they tried to show him mourning before it had happened, and Ren and Nora didn't get squat. It's why everyone felt it needed closure.

Here, everyone gets to reflect, commiserate even. I'm continually surprised at just how much good material I have for Raven, and her having a bonding experience with Weiss is definitely one of them, as she respects that Weiss would take on such a burden for someone she loved. Her relating to Vegeta, her nervousness to see Taiyang again, her almost goading Ozpin as she anticipates him and tries to keep him from leading them down the same tired path again. And there will be more, trust me…

And of course, Weiss sings "Path To Isolation's" intro in memoriam before vowing to kill Frieza herself. I WAS going to write something original, maybe a lullaby from when she was a child with Winter… but the problem there is always that nobody can know the melody, so it just comes off as weird poetry. Here, the song is actually pretty fitting, and you all know the song.

Stepping back, Ruby and Tai have a moment, which I wanted to be tender for his relief, but STERN once he caves to his anger and finally reveals his whole deal with Qrow after clocking him in the face. Summer's fate isn't wholly unveiled, but basically we know what happened. Qrow wasn't supposed to come, and when Taiyang failed to stop Summer, Qrow's luck was blamed for the granular details. It's easy to see how even Qrow isn't certain if he really did make the difference that lost Ruby her mother. But Ruby is wholly unwilling to put that blame on him. It also made sense to me that Taiyang couldn't bear to teach Ruby to fight, knowing she might one day follow Summer's footsteps too closely. We know Qrow was her trainer, and this accounts for her lack in the family brawling skills.

We ALSO get the hero of ONE story finally shaking hands with the hero of the OTHER story… Goku and Ruby Rose.

I agonized over the dialogue here. Ruby is natural enough to write for, but Goku… Goku takes *passes,* at least mental passes. Goku's character has undergone a great deal of flanderization over the years, and it's all too easy to fall into the same trap as Dragonball Super, exaggerating his personality until he's little more than a manchild who enjoys getting his butt kicked. It's important to allow him to BE humorous without being infantile, but also be serious and competent when it's called for. He's not an idiot who can't plan.

Their interaction is a short meeting, but significant nonetheless.

Then we have Salem chewing out her crew with the little wrinkle that those most at fault are being suspended from the ceiling by (basically) a shoggoth, and it's a maelstrom of finger pointing and threats. Cinder nearly loses her soul… and no, that wouldn't work on Frieza, but there's a reason I note this ability. The plan to meet with Frieza is hatched, while a little reference is made to a competing Dust company called "Rosenrot Ventures."

It's just for flavor, but this is actually a reference to another Grimm fable, "Snow White and Rose Red." Just as Weiss Schnee is German for Snow White, "Rosenrot" is German for "Rose Red," and the story did in fact relate to a dwarf and a mine. The Snow White in this story is unrelated to the one Weiss is based on, but the SDC having a (very minor) rival in this vein seems appropriate to me. Actually, there's some speculation that Ruby and Weiss being partners is a roundabout reference to this other fable, since Snow White and Rose Red were sisters.

So Watts gets sent into the snake pit, and that nearly ends how you'd expect. But, lucky for him, Dahlia mentioned Salem before, and this is enough to stir Frieza's curiosity. The scene that follows is all a power game. While Tyrian stares daggers at the interlopers and the others behold in fear, Salem tries appealing to Frieza's ego, not fool enough to challenge his power outright.

Frieza doesn't buy it, and their wits and values clash until Salem broaches a sore topic, and he decides this is yet another warlord with delusions of grandeur. But she is entirely unharmed by Frieza's attack… PROVING her claim to immortality? It would be enough to give him pause anyway… or to pull out the big guns and REALLY lay into her.

The scene at the crater is relatively brief, except for a detail I hadn't planned: Oscar's motivation for coming to Mistral. Poor kid really got thrown into the mix in this version, and I knew at some point that I'd need to fix a fundamental flaw with his character.

Volume 4 really messed this up. Literally we went from Oscar demanding Ozpin to get out of his head to him starting on his journey, and we never learn just how Ozpin convinced him. It's a MAJOR hole in his development and initially made him little more than a prop, a skin suit for Ozpin, and he ceased to feel relevant until Volume 6 finally gave him a reason to exist and a chance to be independent.

I actually wasn't sure what to do, but sometimes characters manage to write themselves when you put words to canvas and let THEM tell you, and it became clear as I let Oscar talk through me. Oscar had never seen Ozpin as anything but a virus before that. He didn't know what was at stake, or what he was being asked to take part in. What he found, once he was curious enough to ask, was nothing less than the Joseph Campbell call to adventure. He was Luke Skywalker, and Ozpin was his very own Obi-Wan Kenobi. Gandalf to his Frodo. He only needed to glimpse the truth in his dreams to see the situation in different terms.

Oh, and there's a pretty corny Borderlands 3 reference in there. I dubbed Oscar's aunt "Moserah" because if you look up her actress in imdb, it turns out Oscar's aunt would end up voicing the mech pilot Vault Hunter from the game —and my personal main— Moze, which you learn is short for "Moserah."

And after a bit begins… THE SCENE…

Holy CRAP, it was inevitable, but wow. This is the cost of finally getting an ensemble cast into one room, having them sum up the situation and PLAN.

All these characters bouncing off each other, and meanwhile I need to track all their motives, their objections, figure who will find another annoying or agreeable, and ensure none of them are lost in the shuffle and add nothing to the conversation. I have to remember which characters know about Relics, Maidens or Dragonballs, and who will be blown away by this information. Which characters have something in common that will form the basis for a friendship? Or in the case of Bulma and Oobleck, will they have a lot in common but have very different means of having gotten there to the point of contention?

This is the sort of scene that I think convinces other crossover writers to stick to one character, or that gets summarized rather than acted out… but apart from not re-explaining Ozpin and the Maidens, I didn't skip a thing. These are those moments, man, the first impressions that leave an impact like those on the Helicarrier in the first Avengers movie. You can't skip this stuff, it's the basis for everything that comes after.

I wanted to make it clear that Vegeta isn't making friends here. I think too many stories will forget at this stage that he's not redeemed, and push his buttons while he sits there and grumbles with idle threats.

Not only do I make him border on obnoxious to the others, but I keep a running tally of the times he's disrespected. Eventually he snaps and tries to kill Nora for laughing at him. Multiple times he insists on running the show.

And FINALLY King Kai finds them, bidden by the flares of battle after searching far and wide. RWBY and co get their first glimpse of life after death, a few reassurances, a few horrific realities. The plan is set in motion, fragile though it might be. And at last Bulma challenges the problem staring them all in the face from the start: two species called "humans."

The conclusion she reaches seems impossible… that Remnant is the wellspring that birthed the Saiyans AND humanity on Earth. But how could that be so?

She asks the Relic… which shouldn't be able to answer this… but in moments Ruby glimpses a Remnant she's never seen before, and two familiar beings whose presence assures something extremely important happened, but what?

And they're speaking with an early iteration of Salem, who called to them somehow as they passed near the planet… hoping to find her "father…"

Yes my friends… So… so many answers are coming next chapter. Don't miss it!

Time for comments!

Xero619: Thanks man!

Bertoti: Also thanks! And… yeah, I forgot to add Aura effects in. Honestly it makes virtually no difference against Frieza here, but I snapped my fingers in frustration when I read your review.

Also… urghh…! Vegeta and Weiss… romantically? I thought implying Krillin and Yang as an option early on was borderline, but there is NO way THAT is kosher, I'm sorry.

As for Vegeta and Bulma… wait and see.

ssjzohan: Thanks, good to hear from you.

Son Kenshin: I always underestimate how impactful some elements can be…

Mr.J316: Always nice to be appreciated, and to hear that pulling your punches for maximum effect is as tried and true as ever. Though I thought RWBY was the one with "Keep moving forward" as a creed…

Sabo88: Well you called that one. Yep, nothing like being exhausted for a good reason.

c14Guest: Interesting idea, though I'm not sure how he'd find out about her ability.

Kage-kitsune9001: Don't hold your breath waiting for that one. We're in falling action territory right now.

Alex Bloodbane: Funny how that works, those characters you love to hate? Of course I don't even feel that for Frieza, I almost embody his sadism at times. Cruelty requires creativity if it's meant to have an impact. You need to relish your work…

X3runner: Nah, Ruby knows Gohan too well to be as deluded as Chichi. It's really more that she'll feel it isn't right that he NEEDS to do this, that so much could fall to him.

Ozpin was NOT trying to provoke Frieza back there, he literally just couldn't help himself. It's not every century you meet such a brazen, unapologetic villain as Frieza, and his blood boiled for the pleasure he takes in hurting the weak.

Also there is no Jinn in this version, and the Relic doesn't stop time. There will be no equivalent to the Time Chamber in this story.

c14lwarrior6: I don't take pleasure in thinning the numbers, but I do recognize it's sorta necessary, yeah. In canon, RWBY manages this by sending the ancillary dudes elsewhere to achieve things in other Kingdoms, but honestly I don't see Ren or Nora surviving Volume 8, because despite this… they still roll with a posse of eight characters, plus the adult tag-alongs.

I'm glad you think the story is focused now, but as you can see here… there's still a LOT of characters milling around.

Scott Kanouse: Yeah, the shield really doesn't scale enough to be useful at Z level. It staved off the worst of Cinder's hit on Vegeta, but that was at low power to begin with. The shield is basically attuned specifically to ward off Grimm. Not EXCLUSIVELY, but that's what it's most effective against.

SuperSaiyajin4Vegeta: Maidens are MAGIC, and you can't sense magic. Glad you liked my human perspective for the battle.

Aburg76: What an oddly appropriate comment to a chapter from so long ago…

G119: Honestly, Ginyu's poses might be more flattering now than they ever were before…

Your words just tickle me pink here, too damn nice. I only hope I can live up to all the hype that's built up now. There's still a whole story to tell here.

BooplkanThePrimarch: Heh, I get it. Thanks man.

c14John: I tend to mix the BEST of Faulconer (and only the best) with Kai and RWBY obviously, with splashes of Nier Automata, Rozen Maiden and a couple very select Van Halen tracks…

So baby dryyyyyy your eyes… save all the tears you've cried… oh that's what Dreams… are made ooooooof…

c14Guest: What is the relevance? Yeah, Shin isn't worried about Frieza, that's beneath his notice. Salem though… maybe… if he understood what she truly is…

c14gogeta: Add WHAT concept? You just listed elements that appear in DBZ where called for. If it's called for, it's called for.

c14Matthew: Thanks dude, glad you're having a good time.

G119: Like I told the other guy, Maidens are magic, they don't have Divine Energy.

Also, really? You don't know how an energy class wholly superior to mortal energy would weigh in? I think that multiplier would easily eclipse the SSJ 50x

I'dMakeANameButIDon'tWantTo: This was easily the most interesting review given the very middling take on the early chapters. I'd be interested to hear exactly what parts you disliked or considered too busy. Given you came out the other side of 14 onboard, your input is particularly intriguing.