The first grimm reached Beacon's perimeter defenses. Those defenses engaged automatically and obliterated the grimm before it took more than a few steps.

Three more drew into range, causing more of the automated guns to respond and shred those grimm almost as quickly.

Then four more came.

Then seven.

Then eleven.

And then discrete numbers and individual counting became impossible. This was not individual action anymore. It was an avalanche.

Guns struggle to stop avalanches.

Raven sat in her tent in a meditative posture, her brow creased in deep concentration.

This wasn't right.

She could feel the anchors for her semblance, feel the Auras of the people she had attachments to. She couldn't tell their locations except in the vaguest sense–general directions, impressions of nearness or distance–but she could usually tell when they were close to each other.

Two of them were damn near overlapping. And both were flickering, the way they did when in distress.

Raven's mind went back to the visit from that behemoth of a man, on an errand for his immortal mistress.

Salem needs one of your people for a job. Short-term, medium risk.

And why should I do what Salem wants? I have no desire to be part of her war.

You can serve her now or serve her later. She has designs for Anima which demand proxies. Deny us now, and you'll be pressed to be her proxy later. Or... send one of your warriors now, and Salem will overlook you when her gaze turns to Anima.

As if she trusted Salem to keep her word! What use did an immortal witch have for honor or reputation? But maybe Raven could buy some time by agreeing, figure out her next plan, guide the Tribe out of the danger zone...

So she'd sent Vernal with a flimsy cover, and Vernal had been forwarded on to Vale for some mysterious task.

Vale was a big place, after all. What were the odds that Vernal would run into Raven's daughter?

Raven scowled. Qrow must be in Vale, for such an unlikely and unfortunate thing to happen.

Because it had happened. The longer this went, the more certain Raven was. Not only were Yang and Vernal in the same place, Raven could feel them flickering in concert, like they were...

...fighting each other.

Raven was on her feet before her thoughts caught up.

Her sword was in her hand a moment later.

She concentrated mightily, giving no chance for objection or stray thoughts of any kind. This would take terrific precision.

There...

There...

There.

She sliced through the air, carving a hole in time and space. With her off-hand, she reached through the blood-red portal she'd carved, grabbed firmly, and pulled.

Vernal didn't resist her, allowing herself to be yanked back through. The instant Vernal cleared the portal's threshold, Raven sealed it behind her.

Vernal blinked at her sudden change of circumstance, but stowed her weapons in her leader's presence. "Thanks, ma'am? I think?"

Raven huffed. "I didn't do that for you."

Vernal kept her reaction to that guarded. A useful skill; Raven had trained her well in that regard. "So you pulled me out for Yang's sake?"

"She gets one save," said Raven. "One save for the blood we share. That's all. Anything else she has to earn."

Vernal nodded, though whether she was signaling agreement or merely understanding went unsaid. "Yes, ma'am. But the... group I was supporting-they'll know you betrayed them, won't they?"

"Not if my daughter's actually any good," said Raven. "If she's worth saving, she'll win the fight, and this act won't get back to the enemy."

They were good words. Raven might even believe them. And yet...

"We're breaking camp," she said. "Go tell the rest of the tribe. We're moving on early."

"We moved the camp when you sent me to Vale," Vernal pointed out.

"And we're moving the camp again, unless you're... protesting otherwise," said Raven, ostentatiously fingering Omen's hilt.

"Yes, ma'am," said Vernal, bending instantly.

When her subordinate was gone, Raven turned away and closed her eyes. She could feel Yang, could feel how she was still in combat, still fighting.

"That's my girl," Raven whispered, and five different emotions colored her voice.

Yang didn't know why her opponent suddenly disappeared, but she wasn't about to let the moment pass her by. She fired her gauntlets and leapt into action.

Punching Mercury hard enough to slam him against a wall and break his offensive on Weiss.

"Go help Blake," said Yang. "I've got this one."

Weiss didn't question; she felt as much urgency as Yang did. Off she sprang, leaving Mercury to Yang.

Mercury lifted himself away from the wall and cracked his neck. "Sucker punch, huh? And here I thought all you do-gooders were too squeaky clean for that."

"This isn't a tournament match," said Yang.

Mercury smirked. "You got that right, Blondie."

He struck like a cobra.

With half a second to herself, Weiss separated from all three of the duels that were going on, concentrated, and knelt, stabbing her sword into the floor.

A wise Huntress used her environment, after all.

Glyphs appeared on the walls all around the fighting, while another, much more complex glyph appeared below Weiss, one shaped like a ticking clock.

The hands struck twelve.

Weiss's eyes flashed.

Then she flashed.

Accelerated by her glyphs, further accelerated by time dilation, Weiss tore up and down the hallway at speeds that made bullets look pedestrian. Five circuits she made up and down, every bounce giving her a strike, every strike landing cleanly against distracted foes.

As Weiss touched down at the end of her fifth circuit, with the time dilation fading from her, she knelt again and spun her sword's rotor.

The glyphs behind her opponents turn red.

Her teammates understood, and each of them took a position placing their opponent between them and the glyph.

Each glyph detonated.

Almost before the explosions had finished, Penny stepped in with a low punch to Emerald's solar plexus. Emerald's Aura shattered as her body doubled over breathlessly.

Emerald's weapon dropped from her hands as she collapsed and lay still on the floor but for the occasional writhe. Penny kicked the weapons away from her and rushed to help Blake.

Good. That freed Weiss to help Yang.

All as it should be.

"Dammit! Garnet, can you hear me?"

"Yeah," said Ruby with a shake of her head. "Yeah, I can hear you."

"Are you all right?"

Ruby looked around, trying to make sense of her situation. That's right, she'd been coming aboard Benefactor when something…

She looked around and saw that she'd made it into the hangar, but not cleanly. Yes—there it was. "Someone put a proximity mine on the hanger doors," she said over comms. "I tripped it when I flew into the hangar."

"Sit tight, I'll have another ship extract you."

Ruby shook her head. "There are still crewmen aboard Benefactor who haven't gotten word. I need to at least get to the bridge to pass the abandon ship order."

"Ruby," said the General urgently, and Ruby realized how panicked he must be to use her true name over comms like this, "we've got to get you out of there. We can't afford to lose you."

"Then send me some support," said Ruby. "Because I'm going to the bridge."

She cut off the General mid-word. She didn't have to go back through the Manta's bay door to get out; the ship's nose had been blown off by the charge, with only twisted and burning metal showing where the rest of the ship had been. Ruby was able to climb forward out of the cockpit and hop to the deck.

She checked her Aura. The ship had taken the brunt of the blast, but it still would have killed a normal person; it had cost her maybe 20%. Less than ideal. She'd regenerate some before she got to the bridge, but she would have to make every bit count once she got there.

If she didn't, everyone on board this ship was going to die.

And it would all be her fault.

Hands tightening on her swords, Ruby set off at a trot, heading for the bridge of Benefactor.

"Garnet? Garnet!"

No reply.

Ironwood put the transceiver down and tried to re-engage with the rest of the battle.

He saw Amity Coliseum listing, saw the reports that Benefactor's weapons were disabled, was still getting negatives from stadium security about where the intruders might be…

"Sir, new grimm contacts," called one of the sensor operators.

"What bearings?" said the Officer of the Deck.

"From 015 to 075."

"Make some sense, that's every easterly bearing!"

"Yes, sir, it is!"

Ironwood's attention was drawn inexorably to the grimm finder, and then to the visual sensors.

The skies to the east were blackening with flying grimm. The forest below them was trembling from the stampede passing through.

This wasn't the occasional grimm incursion that managed to avoid or bypass Vale's famous defensive lines in the mountains. This was enough grimm to swamp those defenses without losing momentum.

How many more were behind them?

"Have Beacon sound its grimm alarm and prepare for incoming," said Ironwood. "Deploy all Atlesian Knights and Paladins. Scramble all Vale Defense Forces. And have Generosity come up from Vale City, we need it here."

"Yes sir," said Commodore Taenite, the situation too urgent for a full verbatim repeat-back.

"Keep them off of Amity!" Ironwood added as he saw the Coliseum losing more altitude. If they couldn't even find the intruders, how were engineers supposed to get to where they could do emergency repairs? And if they couldn't, they'd need to set Amity down somewhere safe... which they couldn't do if its propulsion was compromised.

With chaos erupting all around him, Ironwood found clarity.

Blake gasped for air as she parried another set of strokes. Blush wasn't as dangerous as Wilt, but a scabbard was still sword-shaped and could be used in the same styles, and Adam was still a monstrous opponent, especially with his rage running so hot. If Blake had an opening to check her Aura, she would have guessed it to be in the mid 40s and dropping fast.

Her only consolation was the knowledge that none of her teammates would have been able to evade Adam's wrath for this long. Anyone else in BXPS would have been cut down already, and Adam would be seeking more blood. Only she could stall him alone like this.

To her cost.

Adam lunged in with a lateral swing. Blake ducked backwards to step outside its range, but Adam read it before she'd even finished, and flipped Blush around to fire the rifle at her. She had to semblance away to dodge, more Aura burned without taking any from him, he knew her too well, useless, useless…

"We both know you'll never beat me by running away," Adam gloated.

Blake noticed something in the corner of her eye, but forced herself to hold her stare-down with Adam to avoid spoiling it. "Then it's a good thing I don't have to," she said.

Before Adam could react, twin Gravity bullets from Penny hit him and erupted with force, blasting him into the wall.

Blake followed up with rapid-fire slashes, capitalizing on the opening while Penny closed the distance as well. She had a moment of elation—a moment that died when Adam grabbed her wrist and threw her into the oncoming Penny.

If they'd have been similar mass, this might have knocked them both down; as it was, Penny didn't even slow, and Blake painfully bounced off the gynoid-shaped freight train, Aura flickering madly.

Sucking in air, Blake forced her eyes up as Penny engaged Adam. He underestimated her strength for the first couple of blows; she overpowered him and dealt telling hits against his Aura. At the same time, though, Blake could see Blush glowing red, angrier and angrier with every exchange. It was sword enough for Adam's semblance to work, and he hadn't needed to use it against Blake; he had a whole fight's worth of energy banked…

And then he noticed, and Blake noticed him notice: Penny was doing all of this with Adam's sword still impaling her.

If he could retrieve it, his threat would be redoubled.

But how could Blake stop him? They'd practiced together so often, he knew her tendencies…

...just like she knew his.

She ejected her magazine and slapped in a multi-pack, a mixed magazine of the very finest Dust specialty rounds Weiss could offer her teammates.

And she saw – saw what he was doing before he was doing it, present and future colliding and smearing across her senses.

Down diagonal slash. Counter: Stone round to the elbow, restricting range of motion, stealing reach and power.

Follow-up kick. Counter: Lightning round to the knee to affect nerves and throw off balance, blunting the blow.

Counter-cyclical slash into Moonslice. Counter: Ice round beneath the plant foot, sending the attack off target and blowing a hole clean out of Amity to the open beyond.

His shocked expression fell on her.

Fire round to the face to fill his world with dazzle.

And with Adam dazed and disoriented, Penny unleashed a brutal whirling combo on him, slash after slash tearing chunks out of his Aura, and when he tried to regain his footing and riposte, a Wind Dust bullet from Blake sent him spinning and amplified his vulnerability. Penny pounced: she stood him up with a kick and slammed a pommel against his chest. Adam staggered back against the wall, Aura threatening to puff away from him.

"You are beaten," said Penny.

"Am I?" said Adam. An unnatural smile was coming over his face.

"Please surrender now," said Penny. And Blake knew, with cursed insight, that Penny was numb to the danger. She was too pure. She was literally unable to conceive of Adam's level of spite, could not grasp the concept.

But Blake could. All too easily.

She saw Adam's hand moving for the inside of his jacket. Knew below thought what he kept there.

Detonator. He'd kill them all, and he'd smile doing it.

She had one round left.

Adam's hand lunged for the pocket inside his jacket.

Blake's ice round got there first.

Even before it arrived, she knew it wouldn't hold him, wouldn't hold an Aura user who could flex and break ice, even if their Aura was nearly spent.

So she chased her bullet, and even as he broke free, she was shifting Gambol to sword form.

All her weight and strength and skill, focused on the point of her sword.

She pinned Adam's arm to his chest and his chest to the wall.

His head rocked back. His mask still covered his face, but her follow-through carried her to point blank; she could see his eyes through the mask, see how they'd popped open in shock.

"Traitor," he whispered, his hot breath washing over her face.

"You lost your way," she said, and she could put no strength behind the words.

"Whatever happens to the Faunus now," he said as blood trickled from his mouth, "it's all your fault."

"The future is what we all make of it," said Blake. "Not just you or me."

"Then we're doomed," said Adam, and his head began to droop.

Blake kept one hand on Gambol to keep it in place, but with her off hand she reached up to Adam's face.

"Why?" he said as her fingers grasped his mask.

"I don't want my last memories of you to be of a monster," she said. "I want to remember the man."

She peeled the mask away from his face as the words slowly worked their way through Adam's dying brain. At length, as his eyes slid out of focus, Adam huffed. "Then you're a fool," he said, and breathed his last.

"And that's what made us enemies," Blake said quietly. She reached up to his face, running one finger across the SDC brand over his left eye, before closing his eyes and letting him drop to the floor.

There is great value in slaying one's own demons. She remembered Ozpin's words in that moment.

She wasn't sure if she believed him. But she was sure that Adam wouldn't hurt anyone ever again. That had to count for something.

Behind her, she heard shattering sounds, followed by angry Yang noises and answering mumbles from Mercury. She had to assume that the rest of the battle was over. And not a moment too soon.

She wiped her blade clean on Adam's clothes, then turned to take in the rest. Weiss had pinned Mercury's hands in a glyph while Yang bound him more securely; one of his prosthetic legs was in shambles, ruined pieces of it strewn across the hallway. And there was Penny, looking on with an expression of pride.

"That is a job very well done," she said. "Oh, Blake, by the way, do you think you could remove this sword? The angle makes it difficult for me to extract it safely."

It took her teammates a moment to fully appreciate what that request meant. "You fought that entire battle while impaled?!" shrieked Weiss.

"From an early stage, yes," said Penny. "Once Blake removes the sword I will re-enable my alert system and do a more thorough damage inspection."

Blake complied with shaking hands. No one knew the curve of Adam's sword better than she did, after all. That didn't make it easy: Adam's sword was still full of his Aura, full enough to make her feel unwell handling it. It was vibrating with the effects of his semblance still, too, full of stored energy with nowhere to go.

Still, she got it out of Penny's body without (she hoped) causing additional damage. Penny nodded in affirmation. "Re-enabling alert system," she said.

She blinked, and her eyes seemed to spin for a moment. "Oh," she said.

And her knees gave out.

"Abandon ship. All hands, abandon ship."

As the fateful order blared on intra-ship comms, Commodore Taenite looked at Ironwood. "Respectfully, sir," said Taenite, "if anyone is to go down with this ship, it should be me."

"Courteously, Commodore," said Ironwood, "you're not a qualified pilot—but I am. Only one of us needs to be aboard, and it should be the one who can make this maneuver work."

Taenite still looked distraught, so Ironwood clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll need you to take charge of the defense on the ground," he said. "Especially of the sailors who make it out of here. The Fleet is more than its ships, you know."

"Yes, sir," said Taenite. Breaking decorum, he saluted even though they were indoors. Ironwood returned it, then snapped to. Taenite set off with purpose. "Everyone out, no lingering! I'm aboard the last pod, and you'll get on ahead of me if I have to drag you there!"

Ironwood half-smiled as his subordinate took to his new charge. He might make a good General, some day.

Ironwood would never know.

He felt fear grip his heart, felt the weight of what he was about to do settling on his shoulders, threatening to crush him. It's hard enough to do something that might kill you; it's harder to do something that will certainly kill you.

He tapped his semblance. Normally he used it in small doses, a hit here and there to concentrate in critical moments or rein in his wildest emotions. This time he'd descend into it fully. He'd stay in that state for... well.

For as long as he had left.

He flexed his Aura and felt his doubts, his fears, his uncertainties all drift away from him. Alarms were blaring, but he was not alarmed. He had purpose.

He moved to the pilot's seat. Under normal operations, a ship this size had a pilot to control its course and altitude, and a copilot to control its pitch, roll, and trim, both operating under the Officer of the Deck's direction.

Ironwood was collapsing all three of those roles into himself. The ship was technically capable of supporting that, but reasons to do it were few. He had reason, now.

He took the controls and put the Magnanimous in motion, dropping in altitude while keeping its pitch steady. He looked out across the bow as his objective started to fill his vision. Match its course, match its forward speed, match its descent, parallel it as he came alongside... close, close... even a difference of a few knots was fatal with this much mass in play... closer, closer... there.

Ironwood glanced at the copilot's screen. The last escape pod was away. The crew was off. Good. He returned his gaze to the front, to where Amity was filling his vision to starboard. He'd pulled the Magnanimous just to the damaged side of Amity, matching its course, speed, and rate of descent.

The pilots in Amity were trying to bring it down on the plain where Beacon sat, but not directly down on Beacon's grounds. It was unclear if they'd make it, and a miss would be cataclysmic.

To be sure, they needed more lift.

Magnanimous could be a source of lift.

As long as you were willing to throw away Magnanimous.

Fully submerged in Mettle, Ironwood was willing to do just that.

He feathered the controls to slide laterally, pushing Magnanimous up against Amity right below the main concourse on its damaged side.

Even expecting it, Ironwood was jarred by the impact as the two colossal machines came in contact. He was, essentially, performing a controlled crash… "controlled" in only the loosest sense...

The copilot's console lit up, showing the points where Magnanimous' hard light shielding was sparking under Amity's weight. Well within tolerance. He could give more.

He pulled up on the planes.

Altitude control on Magnanimous wasn't actually accomplished with planes or other control surfaces altering airflow over the ship; it maneuvered by moving Gravity Dust around, through the long vanes extending from the stern, or up and down the hull depending upon need. At Ironwood's command, Gravity Dust was pulled from the vanes, where it'd been dispersed, and concentrated under the primary hull, amplifying its effects; some of the Dust was activated for more power.

Magnanimous shook all around Ironwood. The shield markers on the copilot console lit up much more brightly. The hull groaned under the stress, more weight than it was ever supposed to support bearing down on it.

Ironwood only had eyes for the target landing zone.

Magnanimous started to slip, shifting under the unevenly-distributed pressure. Ironwood reacted: five degree up-angle, trim to starboard, more power forward—a little more-

The slip stopped.

Shield indicators were changing color under duress. There was only so much pressure they could absorb; holding up even a fraction of Amity's weight put the ship under tremendous strain. Ironwood eased off the planes a little, reducing the burden of trying to hold up the vastly larger Coliseum.

Their combined rate of descent notably increased.

Ironwood looked down at his instruments, up to his visual on the landing zone, down at his instruments again, up again. Mental math whizzed by, calculus-level equations computed wholly with feel and intuition.

He knew what he had to do.

The world had seen an Atlesian ship attack Amity. Now they would see an Atlesian ship break itself protecting Amity.

There were no obstacles.

Mettle burning brightly in his eyes, Ironwood pulled up on the planes once more.

On the grimm came, more and more, of types common and exotic, young and old, large and small.

Beacon's automated defenses were strong, but not this strong. No automated defenses were set up to cope with an invasion of this magnitude.

The line held, the line held, right up until it didn't, right up until the first couple of grimm got to the base of one of the perimeter turrets. Its final point defense, shrapnel charges built into its base, sent metal scything out in a semicircle, cutting through the grimm that had reached it. But those charges were one use only. When a couple of enterprising Beowolfs reached the base again, nothing stopped them. Instead, they were free to hack, slash, and tear at the base of the turret.

The damage made the turret perform worse, and the Beowolfs were joined by a boarbatusk that smashed into its base with a spin. That threw off its aim, allowing a lumbering Ursa Major to lope into the base of the turret and smash it fully from its mount.

The defenses were breached.

The tide rushed in.

Ozpin saw the waves coming, knew the perimeter defenses were struggling. Possibilities raced through his ancient mind.

He could sound the withdrawal. He could order a delaying action. He could throw everything into this fight. He could do many things.

What made sense? What could he afford to do?

He heard over comms how Atlas was trying to land Amity on the Beacon plain. If he withdrew, everyone in the Coliseum would die.

If he withdrew, he would surrender the Vault to the enemy. He was confident there, confident the Vault would resist those malign intentions…

Except that he didn't have a replacement in line for Amber.

Glynda had assembled the Aura transfer machine, but none of his potential maidens were read in. He couldn't spring something like this on them, not a choice this monumental.

Withdrawal would abandon not just the Vault, but Amber to the enemy's tender mercies.

Moving Amber would likely kill her. And even if he did somehow evacuate Amber without her immediate death, that wouldn't save the tens of thousands of people inside Amity.

No. The tower must not fall.

"To all Huntsmen, students, and faculty," he said over Beacon's announcing circuit, "the battle has come. Grimm are advancing on the school. We will resist. Faculty will go to prepared positions as we have drilled. Students, call your weapons and join your teachers."

Ozpin pulled up screen after screen so that he could see what was going on at the perimeter, across campus, and elsewhere. He could see the air battle developing as Mantas and Bullheads fought the myriad aerial Grimm; could see the perimeter defenses start to fall, which should have meant the next wave of defenses should be engaging, the Atlesian Knights that had been set up to patrol.

Where were they?

As Ozpin scanned through the feeds, he saw one formation of Atlesian Knights: still in perfect parade formation, other than the fact that they were face-down on the ground.

Ozpin was too busy to wonder how that had happened or what it meant, beyond this simple fact: The AKs would not be helping with this battle.

Watts was laughing as he looked at several screens; it was as self-satisfied a sound as Tyrian had ever heard him make. "What's so funny?"

"Call me Nemesis," said Watts, "for I have come to punish the mighty for their hubris." He slid an image over so that Tyrian could see. On it, Atlesian Knights were collapsing like dolls without any force being applied to them.

"All those tin soldiers Atlas was so proud of," Watts said, "wiped away with the push of a button."

"That must have been some button," said Tyrian.

Watts laughed. "It's not, that's what's so funny! When I was regrettably discovered and inconvenienced a decade ago, Ironwood saw the beginnings of my attempts to hack early model AKs. He responded by having future generations built with safeguards to block me out.

"One such safeguard," he said, his smile causing his mustache to curl, "was a failsafe that would deactivate the AKs if they detected something that looked like a software attack."

Tyrian looked from Watts to the picture. "It looks like it worked," said Tyrian.

"It worked for me, you mean," said Watts. "I didn't have to even try to beat the new and improved security in the AKs. I didn't have to waste years trying to figure out how to break their security and subvert them. All I had to do was threaten to do so, and they all shut down on their own! Never trust technology to defend itself.

"Now," Watts said as his expression soured, "to turn my attentions to how these fools are still communicating with the CCT in my grasp…"

Tyrian's question was cut off by a new voice was coming over the speakers all around them.

"Abandon ship. Abandon ship. Enemies have hijacked the ship, and we can't stop them while the crew is aboard. All hands, abandon ship."

"No," said Watts, "we still have use for this ship!"

And, Tyrian knew, they'd been counting on the presence of its crew to give the other ships pause in attacking it. But he thought that only distantly, because there was something odd about the voice, he hadn't just heard it on the overhead...

He rotated on the spot until he turned completely around, and there, by the entrance to the bridge, he saw her.

"Well, Miss Rose!" he crooned as delight filled him. "So you do miss us after all."

"I don't know your plans for this ship," said Ruby as she put the transceiver down. "But I'm putting a stop to them."

Tyrian laughed until disgust killed it. "Such heroic nonsense," he hissed.

"Can I count on you to take care of that?" said Watts.

"You wound me, doctor," said Tyrian, "implying that there's a question."

"Well, pardon me, then," said Watts, and he turned his back on Ruby.

Ruby's face twisted in anger, and she lashed out with one of her whip swords at Watts. Tyrian snared it in his blades and twisted, pulling Ruby almost all the way into him.

"A cheap shot!" chided Tyrian. "What are they teaching you up in Atlas?"

But even as he spoke, the tip of his tail rose over his shoulder, twitching with excitement and the need to plunge into soft flesh.

Crash.

An explosion of glass filled the room, some of the spalling plinking against Tyrian's back; when he instinctively looked behind him to understand what and why, Ruby yanked her weapons free and withdrew a couple of paces.

"Hands off the console, buddy."

Qrow had burst into the bridge, and the barrels of his weapon were pointed at Watts. "I don't think you want to fire that in here," said Watts. "This place doesn't react well to bullets."

"I'm gonna see how well you react to bullets if you don't put your hands up," said Qrow.

"As you wish," said Watts, and sure enough he raised his hands.

Which made Tyrian giggle.

Before Qrow or Ruby, killjoys that they were, could ask why, Watts wiggled his fingers in the air.

The ship rolled thirty degrees to port, sending the meddlers stumbling across the bridge. Watts and Tyrian were prepared: Watts scrambled for the viewport Qrow had entered through, while Tyrian sprang for Ruby.

And came up short.

And then was thrown against a bulkhead.

"You go for Mustache," Qrow was yelling at Ruby. "I've got Scorpio here."

"Yes, sir," said Ruby, and even though Tyrian fired in her path, he probably didn't hit her more than once or twice before she was out of the bridge and onto the bow of the ship.

"Still trying to protect the littlest Rose?" Tyrian said with dark humor as the ship righted itself. "You don't get it. You've already failed. Her fate was sealed the moment my Queen learned of her existence."

"Maybe, but you won't be there to see it," said Qrow, readying his scythe. "You're never gonna hurt her again."

Tyrian felt a thrill shooting through his nerves. "Oh, I do love how your threats have power behind them! You truly mean them, and you're capable of following through! Do you know how rarely I find someone with both those qualities? We really are two of a kind, you and I."

That last bit, if nothing else, visibly angered Qrow. "You talk too much," he said, and lunged.

Tyrian met Qrow's blade with his own in a shower of sparks and Aura.

"Following me?"

Ruby looked around and saw Watts standing further up the broad flat of the ship's weatherdeck. He looked annoyingly unconcerned.

"You'd think by now you'd know better about following strangers," he said with a smirk.

"At least I'll never think you're anything but an enemy," Ruby said, and she rushed down the deck at Watts.

Watts drew what looked like an old-timey revolver that had been rebuilt and over-engineered. He leveled the revolver at her as she made her approach, but then unexpectedly altered his aim to port…

…just as the ship rolled to port.

Ruby stumbled in the direction of the roll, directly into Watts' line of sight. Even deflecting the bullet with her sword felt jarring; the power of that pistol felt greater than that of most rifles.

"You're in my domain, now," said Watts, raising his offhand. Illuminated rings were on each finger. He twiddled his fingers and the ship leveled out its roll, but then entered a zero-point spin to starboard.

As Ruby tried to keep her footing against the surprise maneuver, Watts took aim at her again.

"How bad is it?"

Penny tried to clear away enough alarms that Thesaurus could feed Vocal a response. "Secondary power storage is destroyed," said Penny. "Primary power storage is damaged. There appears to be a power leak. What charge remains is draining rapidly."

"Then it's a good thing we're done here," said Yang with a grunt as she finished restraining Emerald and Mercury.

"I don't think we are," said Weiss.

Penny followed Weiss with her eyes as Weiss approached the hole Adam's Moonslice had torn in Amity's hull. Looking out, she could see the green of the forest below moving past, but could not see horizon nor sky.

The view confirmed what her gyro was telling her: Amity was listing in a manner inconsistent with level flight.

Before she could voice this, there was a screech as a Griffin flew by the open wound.

Weiss stumbled back with a shriek of surprise. "How did a grimm get so far into the Kingdom?!"

"Not just a grimm," said Yang.

As her teammate's faces filled with alarm, Penny heard a new announcement over Amity's PA.

"Incoming grimm attack. Threat level: Nine."

Cinder sat in her perch with annoyance that grew with every passing minute.

She hadn't gotten any word from her underlings, but Amity hadn't exploded yet, so she had to believe that they'd failed. Which was fine in the end, they'd done enough to spark the grimm invasion they needed, but it would have been reassuring if that part had gone to plan.

Similarly, Watts and Tyrian's battleship was supposed to have either kept shooting at Amity or rammed into it by now, but instead the ship was swinging this way and that like its controls were in the middle of a drunkard's wrestling match. Again: not essential, but concerning.

Most concerning of all was that Ozpin wasn't moving.

She could see him plain as day on the top floor of the Emerald Tower. She watched him bustle about, on his scroll, talking, looking at screens. If she had to guess, she supposed he was coordinating the defense of Beacon: a defense that would surely fail under the enormous pressure being put upon it, but which might take a long time to do so.

Even more important was what he was not doing.

Cinder had been promised. She'd been promised that, at the moment of crisis, Ozpin would think big picture. If he was to lose Beacon, and the physical location of the Vault, he would take steps to ensure he didn't lose the key to the Vault as well.

He would bring his Maiden candidate to wherever the failing Maiden was and do what he thought necessary... and Cinder would be there to take full advantage.

Except he wasn't doing that.

Had Salem misread her ancient enemy? Was some confounding factor at work? Cinder couldn't tell, and it was causing her temper to rise the longer he refused to play his role.

Cinder twitched her fingers and dust in the air fused into an obsidian-black blade.

If he wouldn't play his part, Cinder had no use for him.

And things that weren't useful to Cinder had no right to exist.

The initial hole that had been punched in Beacon's defenses widened rapidly as the grimm exploited and spread it. When their vanguard charged deeper onto the Beacon campus, they met immediate pushback.

The first few student teams rallied around the first professor in the field, Professor Peach, who took station in the easternmost part of campus. Establishing a strongpoint in the furthest flung classrooms, they held back one, two, three waves of grimm. As the fourth came, and the number and size of grimm in it showed that holding the position was impossible, she led a fighting withdrawal out of the schoolhouse and back towards the guest dormitories. The guest dormitories, though, were empty, with all of the visiting students already up in Amity.

Two more student teams and three more professors, collecting their wits and rallying to the call, set up the next defensive line and covered Peach's retreat, but with every moment the breach of the perimeter defenses got bigger, and more and more grimm poured onto campus.

Frantic calls went out for the Paladins and AKs that should have been manning the perimeter, but there was no response.

There was no call for air support, because a single glance upwards revealed the desperate fight of Bullheads and Mantas against enough airborne grimm to fill the sky like sand in a Vacuan storm. One of the battleships that should have been helping in the fight was pinned beneath Amity; a second was swinging through the air out of control like a whirligig in a wind tunnel. No salvation would come from above.

And so the defenders traded Aura and ground for Grimm casualties and time.

It wasn't a trade they could make indefinitely.

And the grimm kept coming.

Next time: Beacon