(A/N) This is technically still Monday, right? Yeah, this chapter needed a bit more than just a face-lift from the first draft and I couldn't get it done before I had to do stuff in town, so that's why you're getting it later at night. Still technically on time, though! Anyways, here's a join code for my Discord: 3jf9w8u enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Six

The Green Mountain Gals

/-\ Ruby Xiao Long /-\

I took a deep breath in, concentrating on the stick in my hand.

Resilient, she said to make it. Unbreakable, inflexible, strong. My aura flowed into the small object, just as I commanded it to. I opened my eyes and saw the stick glow with a faint red light. Did I do it? I wondered.

Blake reached up and snapped the stick in half, making me slump. "I thought I had it that time…"

"You were close," Blake said. "It was a little more difficult to break than it should've been. You're almost there."

I rolled my eyes, grabbing another stick from the pile next to me. "Almost through the first lesson…"

She hummed. "It usually takes a day or two to get past this. Once you do, though, you're pretty much ready to start experimenting on your own. Just don't do dangerous things yet – you're still practically a civilian."

"Dangerous things like getting mugged?" The second the words left my mouth, I froze, mirroring Blake a moment later. We stared at each other, neither willing to move a single muscle as we sat on the bed of pine needles only a few hundred feet from Qrow's cabin.

Eventually, she sighed. "I… tried to get him to leave," she said, pulling her knees up to her chest. "When he didn't and I knew you could get hurt… old habits just kicked in. I don't regret making sure you were alright, but… I don't want to do that sort of thing anymore; not to people." She screwed her eyes shut. "I- Gods, that- I need to leave, sorry."

She bolted off into the bushes and I followed without a second thought. She didn't make it far and I found her hunched over behind a bush, expelling the contents of her stomach. I reached over and held her hair back as she retched. There wasn't all that much, thankfully, none of us really had a filling meal this morning on account of how little there was in the pantry.

Eventually, she groaned and retreated from the new pile of bile on the ground. "Ugh… thanks…" she said. "Sorry about that…"

"Don't mention it. What happened?"

"…Bad memories is all…" she said with a shake of her head. "I'd really appreciate it if we left it at that."

How bad of memories are they if they made you literally puke? I wondered. Then I thought back to the rest of the conversation; about her so-called old habits. I decided that I really didn't want to know. "Okay."

After a few more minutes of just sitting there, she stood back up. "C'mon, let's… let's get back to it."

Wordlessly, I agreed. Over the next hour or so, I'd push my aura into the stick, only for Blake to break it. Every time, she offered a hint, and I could tell she was trying really hard to not be discouraging. After that hour, though, the stick finally didn't yield to her deceptively strong hands. She smiled, said I did a good job, and to practice doing that for a few hours on my own before walking away. I had no idea what she was doing, but I decided that it was time I headed back inside. Even under the cover of the trees, I could feel my skin start to heat up as the sun rose higher and higher. As she walked away, however, my thoughts drifted back to that park in Chicago once more. Could I be like her one day? I wondered. I didn't so much admire the ease at which she'd put him in the hospital, but her skill? Her speed? Those, I'd like.

However, I knew the topic was much too fresh to bring up. As such, I took a bundle of sticks with me inside the cabin to practice with, just as she'd told me to. Only now did I bother to actually look at the place, being too tired to do so yesterday. It was a small, single story, mostly square from the front – though the entryway and the TV room bulged out a bit – house painted brown with forest green shutters. A single story garage was attached to the left of the front door, connected via a short breezeway, in front of which sat an old Jeep under a tarp. I walked up the porch and into the cabin proper, kicking off my shoes right next to Yang's.

Only a few steps in, I saw her at the dining room table, simply sitting there picking at a bag of chips. Letting out a silent sigh, I pulled up a chair next to her. "...how you doin'?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

She barely responded to my question at first, staring off into the distance. After a moment – and a nudge under the table – she finally snapped out of it. "We're never going to see him again, are we?" Yang asked.

"You know the answer to that, sis."

Mutely nodding, she simply shoved another chip into her mouth. When it became obvious she wasn't going to say anything more on the subject, I turned to my little bundle of sticks and began practicing. It still took quite a bit of effort and concentration to move my aura around, but I at least knew what I was looking for now. By the time I'd opened my eyes, the otherwise unassuming stick glowed a faint red light.

"Woah," I heard from beside me. The suddenness of the interruption broke my concentration, my aura flowing back into me. "That's weird – is that your aura thingy?"

I looked over to Yang, seeing her previous melancholy completely erased by… apprehension? It was a bit hard to tell. "Yeah," I answered. "It's harder than it looks."

"Makes sense. Back in the hospital, she said it was like waking up to suddenly having another arm or something. What are you actually doing?"

I concentrated again, pushing aura back into the stick. "Making… the stick… not breakable."

"...Huh. Kinda weird, but whatever." She popped another chip into her mouth. "Hey, uhh, Rubes? Do you think I can… y'know… borrow a twenty or something? I know you don't have much, but I really wanna take Jaune to dinner and a movie. It's just that… we probably won't be able to do this again for a really long time and he came all the way out here, and I just…" she groaned. "I hate asking, but I left most of my money at home."

"Just… go Dutch with… him," I suggested.

She sighed. "I already am. That's the only way this can work at all."

It only took a moment for me to decide on a course of action, even if the interruption once again set back my progress. "Fine, go ahead. My wallet's on my dresser. We'll call it even for the ammo you bought me."

"Thanks, Ruby. I will pay you back for this, though," she said, walking into our soon-to-be-shared room. I turned my attention back towards my stick. This time, I tried to keep the aura inside while I was thinking about other things… to almost no success. Even basic, inconsequential thoughts were enough to break my concentration. Yang shutting the door, of course, also being enough to break it, even if she didn't slam it.

She sat back down and sighed, seemingly back into her melancholy. I put the stick down. "Okay, what's up?"

"Nothing," she muttered. I stared at her, unblinkingly. After a while, she finally gave up. "Okay, fine, it's just… stupid."

"Well, the stupid thing is clearly bothering you."

She nodded, eating another chip. "...yeah. It's just… I realized we've got Raven's old room," she said. "It's just bringing up stuff I thought I was over already. And I feel like shit for thinking about that when… when we still have so many other things to worry about. Like, I've gotta get a job again, we have to figure out where to go to school, w- we have to p- plan Dad's funeral, t- there's your aura thing… there's just so many better things to spend my energy worrying about, but I'm stuck on that!"

I sighed. "Well, maybe it would help if you talked through it? I know talking about her isn't… comfortable for you, but maybe that's the point? You clearly didn't get over it if you're worrying now, so how's about we just talk about it for a bit and see if it helps?"

For a moment, I was worried she'd just refuse and keep stewing like she always did, but then she nodded. "I just… I don't know what to think about her. I'm angry, but I'm also just… confused. I wanna know why she left. I mean, I know I was an accident, but she didn't leave right away… did she think she could roll with the punches but then she just couldn't? Was I just hard to deal with as a baby? Do I even want to see her and ask or do I just want to punch her in the face?" She shook her head. "I don't know, but I've brought down the mood enough. Thanks for listening, but I'm going for a walk."

Before I could say anything, she was already putting on her shoes and heading out the door. I simply sat there, watching her walk out the door just like that. I briefly entertained the idea of going after her, but she'd probably shoo me off or something. She'll be fine, I thought. She just needs a little space, now that she can't punch her problems away at that club. Sighing, I returned my attention to the sticks on the table. I tried to do the exercises for almost fifteen minutes, but I just couldn't concentrate.

Eventually, I stood up, got a glass of water from the fridge, and plopped down onto the couch. The TV wasn't actually hooked up to anything but an old Atari 2600. The thing looked more like a radio than a game console and I had exactly zero faith I could figure out how to use it, so I pulled out my phone instead. After a while of scrolling through the Forgotten Weapons forums, I remembered the conversation we'd all had at the park in Chicago – before the attempted mugging.

A few flicks and a login, and my old account in the Open Railgun Project was once again active. It had been a fun thing to contribute to with Mom, back when… she was around. Even if she wasn't into weapons like I was, she loved the electronics portion of it. It was our little thing that we did every once in a while – see if we could actually contribute to the project in some middlingly meaningful way. And we did – though we were far from the biggest contributors, we did regularly post, though under the same account.

Even if I probably wouldn't be able to do anything now that the actual subject matter expert was… no longer with me, I still went to the technical pages to see what was new. The first thing that caught my eye was that they had made a decent amount of progress – someone had built an actual prototype within the last week or so. I watched their video in full, and even though it was humongous, unwieldy, and could only fire four shots from a charge, it… worked. I checked their sources and nearly squealed when the username Roselovers99 was listed – that was us! We helped!

There were a bunch of other contributors listed, but at the end of the video, the shooter called out a special thanks to someone by the name of RedLikeRoses1974. I found it ironic that another rose-named person helped this guy so much, and I decided to check them out. They were apparently new, only having started posting about a month ago, but they did so frequently. It also appeared that they had access to some kind of high-grade machinery, as they routinely did small-scale prototyping or design work for very intricate components.

I laid down on the couch, now fully invested in catching up with what I'd missed. Clearly, it was a lot…

/-\ Blake Belladonna /-\

I was on my feet before I even opened my eyes, heart thumping in my chest as I settled into a fighting stance.

My eyes scanned the dark room, but found absolutely nothing threatening. It was just an average, if a bit small, room. Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm myself. It was just a nightmare, I thought, its contents already forgotten. Still, it took more time than I'd like for my heart rate to return to sane levels. I looked at my bed, the sheets haphazardly thrown off in my haste to escape my brain's nightly prison, and shook my head. Any chance of sleep was well and truly dead; at least for a few hours. Looking at the clock, I saw it was already about four-thirty – as good a time to get up as any, I supposed. With that thought, I threw on a shirt and exited my room, my hand still a little jittery at my side. My first stop was the kitchen, and so I headed that way. But then some strange noises reached my ears coming from the master bedroo-

I blinked, registering a lustful moan. Quiet, but easily perceptible to my Faunus ears. Letting out an annoyed groan, I continued to the kitchen. Even after shopping only three days ago – the day after we'd arrived – the shelves were already mostly empty. Jaune and Qrow hadn't gotten all that much to begin with, what with money being quite tight, and having two aura users in the house certainly didn't help.

So I poured myself a small bowl of cereal and resolved to help. As I ate my meager meal, though, my thoughts began to drift back to what I heard from the bedroom. Those noises brought back things I'd wish I'd just forget already. I'd never see Yang again – my Yang – so there was no point in thinking about her. There was no point in indulging in the fantasies that had occasionally gripped me all the way up to the Doubles Round of the Tournament. Letting out a sigh, I tried to focus on eating my cereal. It even worked.. for all of ten seconds.

She's not even your Yang, you idiot, I thought. And besides, she's very much taken. Happily, by the sounds of it. No matter how many times I told myself to stop being stupid, I just couldn't get over it. By the time I was finished with my food, I was well and truly sick of it. I marched back to my room, got more completely dressed, and headed outside – grabbing a medium-sized knife and some towels from the kitchen on the way.

I slid down the slope at the back of the house, escaping further into the woods of this steadily-less-mysterious Vermont not-kingdom. It wasn't long until I found what I was looking for – an animal path. I climbed the nearest tree as silent as I could and simply waited. While I did so, my eyes were drawn back up to the moon, still high in the sky. I'd grown accustomed to its strange whole-ness by now – and even the occasional satellite passing overhead, though that was quite the surprise too – and simply… enjoyed its beauty. I'd read about people actually walking on its surface, too. It was something just about everyone on Remnant dreamed about as a kid… before we realized the realities of dust technology.

It wasn't long before my ears picked up the heavy footfalls of something big. Well, big for a mundane animal – it would've been quite small for a Grimm. I froze, but not in fear; simply old instincts honed during my years with the White Fang taking hold once more. For just today, the huntress would become a normal, everyday hunter. When the lumbering but oblivious animal stumbled along the path, its snout sniffing, I was confused for a moment. Its fur was as black as any Ursa, and yet it was a simple bear. I mentally shrugged, recalling a theory that black bears back home had evolved to look like Grimm as a defense mechanism. Given said monsters aren't here on Earth, I suppose that particular hypothesis was wrong.

Regardless, it did not change what I was about to do. As silently as I could, I leaped off the branch. The bear looked up at the last moment, but I adjusted my aim to still be mostly fatal. I landed with my full weight on the aura-reinforced knife, the blade penetrating through the bear's skull. With another few stabs, the bear was well and truly dead, its red essence of life leaking out onto the ground.

I sighed – the hard part was done, but now the disgusting part was to come. I dragged the animal off the trail – towards a slight incline – and began the field dressing process. It wasn't quick nor was it clean, but after about twenty minutes, it was done. I sighed in relief, using the towels to wipe off my hands and knife. Then I began the walk back, dragging the three-hundred-pound animal behind me. Even though the search for the trail had only taken me ten minutes, it was at least half-an-hour before I returned. By then, the sun was already up, if just barely. I shook my head, knowing just who would've made an insufferably stupid pun there.

Dragging the carcass up to the side of the garage, I unwound the hose and began properly cleaning the bear's inside of any remaining filth and/or bits of plant matter that were picked up from the drag. I also gave my hands a more thorough washing than a towel could manage. It was in the middle of this second process that Yang came out from the house with a shotgun. I silently waved, acknowledging her presence.

"...what the actual fuck…" she muttered, too quietly for a normal person to hear. "U- umm, Blake? What'cha doin'?"

"Making breakfast."

She simply stared at me. "It's… it's a bear."

"So I've noticed."

"Why did you kill a bear?"

"Because we don't have much food left or money to buy more food?" She knew the situation, why was she asking me?

She groaned. "Okay, why a bear specifically?"

"Because it was the first thing I saw," I said. By now, I'd finished hosing the thing off. I dragged the carcass over to the driveway and then dropped it right beside there. Going inside, I passed a very confused-looking Ruby and went into the garage, opening the door and dragging out a tarp along with a plastic fold-out table. I went back inside and got some soap to clean everything with and got to work.

When I was mid-way through, Qrow joined us outside. He took one look at the situation and let out a deep sigh. "Kid, I know you don't know any better, but don't do this again, kay?"

I blinked. "Why not?"

"Because while I'm not a game warden, I know that killing bears is pretty goddamn illegal unless it's self-defense," he said. "Also, it's kinda weird."

I stopped what I was doing for just a moment. "That's… stupid. We're out in the middle of nowhere; at least as close as you can get on this planet. Why is it illegal? People need to eat."

He scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, but… we have other ways of keeping people fed. I was actually gonna head up to the Salvation Army this afternoon for some food." He glanced at the bear. "Guess I won't need to take as much as I thought."

"Well, more food for this charity place, then," I said. "Besides, bear isn't bad. We need to cook it all the way through and it'll be tough by default, but it's also a little sweet, too. You could certainly do worse than this."

The others simply looked at me, then each other. They then wished me luck and left me alone. I got to work skinning and then properly processing the animal. Occasionally, I'd go inside to get a different knife from the kitchen to better suit the specific process I was performing. Even with my aura speeding up the process, I still wasn't a hunter by trade. As such, it took until lunchtime to actually finish packing everything away, and then another hour to clean up.

Afterwards, I took a big steak for myself and fried it up in some butter. Didn't end up being the best bear steak I'd ever had, but after three hours of stomach grumbling, it certainly hit the spot. Ruby looked at me weirdly the entire time I was eating it, though. I hope I didn't upset her by doing this.

At least the freezer's full, I thought. But as I was finishing up, I thought back to Qrow telling me it was illegal to hunt bear in these lands. After finishing, I borrowed Yang's primitive scroll and – after a bit of finicking – found a public library in the next town over. It was quite a run, so I couldn't go today. However, I'd make it a point to do so, if just to start understanding more about the world I was in. A little history wouldn't hurt, either, I thought.

After all, I was really curious to see what a world without the racism that having two species try – and fail – to coexist would produce…

/-\ Yang Xiao Long /-\

Jaune and I sat under the cover of a tree, each of us enjoying a bowl of bear stew.

I still had trouble believing that Blake just woke up one morning and decided to go kill a bear – much less how she did it with that dinky little kitchen knife – but that's apparently what happened. It had been a week since then, and the novel experience of eating a bear had already well and truly worn off. Sure, the meat wasn't bad, but I really just wanted plain old beef right about now.

But that wasn't very important in the grand scheme of things. Today was the last day Jaune would be here; this would be his last meal with us, actually. It had been almost two weeks since… the battle, and it was time for him to go home. We had one final plan before Jaune's evening flight to Minneapolis; we were going to go shooting, all of us, at a range to the south of Boston – apparently they had an M2 (whatever that was) that Ruby wanted to try out. After we'd finished everything up and dropped Jaune off at the airport, we'd mail him his rifle since obviously he couldn't bring that on a plane.

For now, though, it was just me and him, eating out in the woods behind the cabin. Despite the food being less-than-stellar, it was… nice, just sitting here with him. We talked about various things; what Jaune was going to do after he got back home, what schools Ruby and I were looking at, Qrow's attempts to teach Blake some basic things about Earth, etcetera. As the time went on, though, Jaune seemed more and more nervous. Finally, I had enough. "Alright, spill," I said. "Something's bugging you."

"Am I that obvious?" He paused for a moment and I gave him an expectant look. "It's… I want Blake to unlock my aura too," he said. "I mean, she took down a bear, by herself, with a knife. Not even a big one!" he shouted. "I want that too. Not because I wanna be a soldier or something, but what if the aliens attack my family, too? Not to be an ass, but you know exactly how lucky we were to get off as good as we did. I can't rely on luck when my family's life is on the line."

My fists clenched. "My Dad died because of that. We weren't lucky, we had to fight for every second!"

"If Qrow didn't show up right when he did, none of us would've lived through that!" he shouted. "Think about it. They had us cornered. We couldn't move a muscle without getting it shot off, then he comes barreling in with his car and completely flips the table. Suddenly, we could move and they were off-balance. Tai was a good man and it sucks that he died, but there was nothing anyone could've done about it." His gaze trailed off into the distance. "I just… I don't want to go through the same things you're going through. I don't know if I can, and I really don't want to find out."

"But!" I closed my mouth, the heat from earlier dying as his last few words finally registered. "I…" I sighed. I truly began to consider his words. What if we met them again? I wondered. I dredged the battle up from the deep recesses where I'd shoved it; I remembered the fear I felt as they closed in on me, completely helpless and out of options. I remember just knowing that none of us were going to make it out, and being fully willing to sacrifice myself so the others might be able to live. Might. Slowly, I found myself agreeing with Jaune more and more. I got up, holding a hand out for Jaune to grab. "C'mon, let's go find Blake. I want her to unlock mine too."

"No need," a new feminine voice said from behind me.

I flinched, whipping around to see Blake's sweater-clad and bare-eared form standing against a nearby tree. One thing that caught my attention, though, was just how awful she looked. The entire time I'd known her, she almost looked like a perfect supermodel. Even covered in the blood of a bear, she didn't have a scratch on her. Now, her eyes had bags, her hair was disheveled, and for some reason, she had her weapon strung around her back with a length of rope. "Jesus, Blake, you scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry," she said, shrugging. "In more ways than one."

For a moment, I was confused – what else would she be sorry for? Then it hit me. "You… aren't gonna unlock our auras?"

"Correct."

"Why the hell not?!" I shouted. "You heard everything we said, right? We just wanna protect ourselves and the ones we love from those bastards!"

She let out a sigh. "I know your heart is in the right place, but what about everyone else's?" she asked, kicking off the tree and walking over to us across the pine needle-covered soil. "Aura, by its nature, can be unlocked by those skilled enough to do so. I would one-hundred-percent expect Jaune to unlock the auras of his family the moment he could do so. From there, it will spread to everyone else, slowly but surely. Aura itself isn't a bad thing, but after just a single trip to the library in the next town…" She shivered. "I didn't know it was possible to fight so many wars; you've fought so many, most don't even have special names – just a list of belligerents. I want you two to just imagine the kinds of horrors that could be inflicted by a nation with an entire army of aura users. On top of that, what new terrible ideologies would people come up with? Would some insane person on the level of Hitler suddenly decide that everyone without aura needed to die? What if one part of the world gets aura faster than the other parts and forcibly conquers the others because there isn't a way to stop them?" she said, hands shaking at her side. "I get your concerns, I really do. In a vacuum, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I won't pretend to be an expert on your history, but even that single trip was enough to convince me that aura is one Djinn that I just can't let out of the lamp."

I stared at her, gaping at her haggard expression. It all made sense now. Though I wasn't into history myself, even half-paying-attention through history class meant I knew there was some fucked up shit in there. But still, there was one problem with her outlook. "You already unlocked Ruby's, though. Cat's already out of the bag."

She shook her head. "I unlocked one person's aura," she said. "And I don't regret it. She was in danger of losing her arm. But at the same time, she is only one person. I can keep an eye on her. I can explain why she cannot, under any circumstances, spread aura. I can make sure the practice dies with us two."

My eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening her?"

Her own eyes widened. "No, no! She hasn't done anything wrong, I'd- I'd never," she said. "But I can't unlock yours – especially not Jaune's. Nothing against you, but you'll be a thousand miles away tomorrow. I just can't." She sighed again. "Our own history books on Remnant don't reach far back enough to a time before aura, if there even was one. Maybe we went through the same thing I'm afraid of, maybe we didn't. I don't know. But regardless, millions, if not… b- billions… of lives depend on me staying strong and doing the right thing." She stopped her pacing, looking me straight in the eyes, ears flat against her head. "Yang Xiao Long, I refuse your request to unlock your aura." She looked my boyfriend straight in the eyes. "Jaune Arc, I refuse your request to unlock your aura."

"Staying strong?!" Jaune shouted. "Blake, how much have you actually read? My great grandad fought the Nazis! People like that? They're gone, because of him and millions of others! If you don't want me spreading aura, then fine, I won't, Arc's word on it – hell, I'll write out a contract and sign it in blood if you want! But this? I need this. I need to be strong enough to protect the people I love. You understand that, right?"

She took another long look at him, clearly considering his words. "At the end of the day…" she started. "A contract is just paper." Before we could respond, she marched away, towards the house. "C'mon, we're just about ready to leave."

For a while, Jaune and I simply stood by, wondering what the fuck just happened. However, Ruby did, eventually, come to get us. She seemed excited to go shooting, but neither of us really felt like it anymore. Of course, we didn't want to bring down Ruby's mood, so we tried to go along with it. She babbled on about the gun Qrow had given her – apparently an AR-18 that my grandparents brought over from Ireland – though she did so in an oddly awkward way for her, as if it was slightly uncomfortable.

When we got back to the cabin, Qrow and Blake were pushing his old Jeep into the garage – he said there was a hailstorm coming. He also asked me to help him get it running again after we got back, to which I agreed. Soon after, we set off down the road.

The first two hours of the drive were boring and awkward. Blake refused to meet our eyes and Jaune couldn't stop glaring a hole in her forehead. Ruby seemed completely oblivious, but Qrow was clearly aware that something had happened, despite not knowing what it was. The only saving grace was that my sister just couldn't keep her mouth shut about this mythical M2 at the shooting range we were headed to – Jaune was excited about it, too, it being the one thing that tore him away from his newfound hatred of our guest. My sister got so excited that she started bouncing around in the seat. By the time we'd reached Boston, her energy levels were simply through the roof – so much so, that Qrow was getting visibly annoyed. Instead of continuing on the highway, he pulled off into the city, much to our confusion.

He said Ruby was about to reach critical mass and that she needed to go run thirty miles or something. We all agreed, despite her pleas that we just go to the gun range already. The rest of us, also, were glad for a chance to stretch our legs a little sooner than planned. After a few minutes' drive, Qrow pulled us up to a park by the river. As we all filed out of the truck, he told Ruby to do a couple laps around the thing. It wasn't a huge park – a triangle that was probably about five-hundred feet on its longest end – but it would still take her a while to run the thing.

Ruby huffed and got started. The rest of us, however, took the opportunity to stand around on the shaded and carefully manicured grasses; Blake standing far away from Jaune. We were far from alone, with several people strewn throughout either on laptops or with textbooks cracked open. "Lotta students here, huh?" I asked.

Qrow shrugged. "Eh, we're right at the edge of Harvard. Comes with the territory."

Blake blinked. "Haar-vaard?"

For just a moment, I blanked, completely forgetting she was literally from another planet. "Oh, it's, umm… a college. A really, really famous one."

"And expensive as hell, too," Qrow said. He looked about ready to continue, but Ruby had already completed a lap, whizzing by us for her second. Both of us simply looked at her just zooming at a dead sprint across the entire park. She was even drawing attention from some of the others. "That's… not normal," Qrow said.

"Not for civilians," Blake said, facepalming. "Guess I need to teach her how to not do that now. She's using her aura to make herself go faster and she'll eventually hurt herself if she overdoes it and can't stop in time. I don't know what I expected – she had a speed semblance back on Remnant."

I groaned. "Of course she did." Even though she was very firm on not unlocking our auras only a couple hours ago, that doesn't mean we didn't have various conversations about what aura was over the past few days already. Though Jaune's counterpart hadn't found his yet, I thought my own semblance of being able to dish back damage twice as hard sounded pretty cool – if a bit painful than I'd like.

For the next few minutes, we watched Ruby zoom around the edge of the park. It wasn't long before she slid to a stop in front of us. "There. Two laps. Can we get going now?" she asked. She breathed deeply and often, but still didn't seem anywhere near as exhausted as she should be. Sure, she had a habit of occasionally running around the yard for a bit when she got excited, but she never did any serious training.

Before we could answer, however, a familiar boom rattled our bones and assaulted our ears. It was the same sound that announced the Saucer's fight with the two fighter jets over our house.

We froze, gazes slowly trailing upwards. There, darting between clouds, was a much, much larger saucer – it wasn't even saucer shaped! This one was boxy and many times the size of the saucer we encountered, though shared its purple hull plating. Chasing it were dozens of single-engined jets, each firing missiles and guns. Green streaks of those alien guns fired back, striking one jet and then another in rapid succession. A much more familiar saucer darted out of the clouds, then, and began attacking the fighters, downing many. However, the jets swarmed the alien crafts like angry bees, stinging repeatedly. The boxy saucer began to slow, then list. After many more explosions racked its hull, it fell from the sky. It may have taken half the attacking jets with it, but it still fell. The other saucer wasn't far behind.

I'm certain all five of us watched with bated breath as it plummeted down into the city of Boston. An enormous purple fireball boomed up from the first crash site, the explosion audible even from our position across the river. Its light was only blocked out by the shadow of the falling smaller craft, which landed half in the river and half on the street.

I was only still for a few moments before Blake's form whizzed by in front of my eyes, darting for the truck. By the time my head had turned to her new location, she was already ripping open the door and retrieving her weapon. I ran over to her, opening the tailgate of the truck to retrieve our guns; mine being a spare shotgun that Qrow had in the basement.

"Don't do this," Blake said, inserting her single magazine into Gambol Shroud. "I'm trained for this. You're not. Keep the civilians safe." Without any further explanation or preamble, she darted off again.

I simply pumped my shotgun and tossed Jaune's cased-up weapon to him as he approached. These fuckers killed my Dad and destroyed my home. I thought, looking over to her running at the emerging Greys like a speeding bullet.

She took a smaller sword out of her big one and turned it into a scythe-looking thing. Before the aliens knew it, one of them had already been decapitated as it swung on a ludicrously long ribbon.

Like hell I'm gonna let you have all the fun.

/-\ Sergeant Bjorn Olssen /-\

"Strike Six, report to the armory for immediate deployment! Repeat, Strike Six to the armory!"

It had been only a few minutes since the call went out, and the last one of us was through the door. We were short on manpower ever since that last Op in Sweden, so we had a couple of those green-striped Shenbots with us. Just ten minutes after the alarm had sounded, we were dusting off.

"Operation Cool Banshee is a go!" Bradford said over the intercom as our dropship accelerated to ludicrous speeds. "We've received word that the United States Air Force managed to down an alien Abductor and an escorting Fighter. Unfortunately, they went down in a heavily populated area – specifically, Cambridge, Massachusetts, right in the middle of Harvard University. This'll be a bad one, Strike Six, there will be kids everywhere. If the second Skyranger was ready, we'd send it too. But it's not, so you're it. The National Guard is cordoning off the campus as we speak – treat this as a Terror Mission, priority one is getting those civilians out of harm's way. Central out."

We looked at each other – the exhausted members of our team. For just a moment, there was despair – that we were it. But then resolve took its place in our eyes.

We were XCOM.

We were Humanity's sword and its shield.

And we would kick alien ass, or die trying.

(A/N) So there's a couple things that I think need addressing in this chapter. The first is that Blake has a woefully inadequate view of Terran history, as Jaune alluded to. She basically picked out a history textbook the library had, skimmed the table of contents, saw something called "World War Two" and proceeded to do the Ratatouille meme where the guy opens the envelope, and then she just had a several-hour-long mental breakdown. Because of course the catgirl's gonna be the single biggest ball of anxiety and panic on the planet. Still, I think she articulates her reasons for not proliferating aura pretty well, even in her state, so I don't need to elaborate there.

The second is the air battle at the end. Remember: XCOM can (somehow) cover an entire continent in lore with just 4 fucking fighters. I don't know why anyone would think this is even a remotely good idea (other than gameplay reasons), but the USAF certainly doesn't agree. Therefore, they have literal hordes of F-16s and F-15s. Sure, they're not as good as a Raven, but they clearly got the job done. Except… well, pretty shittily. I'm running with the idea that all the alien craft are super stealthy (better than the F-22 stealthy), so the mundane Human aircraft can't really get radar locks on them… which means no BVR, which means the USAF is fighting with two hands and a foot tied behind their backs. Hence why the losses were so bad.

Anyways, that's about all I had! Tune in next Monday (or maybe sooner if I get past the hump I'm in with the current chapters) for more!