Disclaimer: RWBY belongs to Monty Oum and Rooster Teeth and Bleach belongs to Tite Kubo. I own nothing of either of them and make no profit from them. I am only playing in the worlds they gave us.

Three months between updates again. Not what I wanted to happen and I won't bore you with the gory details of the carnage inside my head that caused it.

So, here it is. Hope you enjoy it.

A Chance Encounter

Chapter 23

Two flights of six Atlesian Manta attack craft, distanced a couple of miles apart, flew low over the Emerald Forest in the predawn darkness, taking a wide, looping arc towards their target. In the lead ship of the left hand formation was the strike commander, Specialist Winter Schnee. She had an unsettled feeling deep in the pit of her stomach but it wasn't due to the mission at hand, its cause was all of the information that had been imparted to her by General Ironwood during the previous two days.

The fairy tales she had read as a child apparently were not just imaginative works of fiction, but in most cases hard facts, true moments of Remnant's history. If anyone else other than the General had tried to tell her such a fantastical story she would have considered them insane or run them off for wasting her time. But General Ironwood was not a man given to spinning fantasy tales or playing pranks on his officers. The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice had been deadly serious.

She had been virtually rendered speechless, and may well have actually been so if she hadn't been required to gather herself and turn her attention almost immediately to the particulars of this mission. It had given her something else to focus on but once the planning and preparation was complete, her incredulity returned. It left her with a restless evening and very little sleep as her mind refused to do anything other than sift through the things she had been told.

Being tired and distracted was not a good thing for a mission in progress but there wasn't much that she could do about it now. Even worse was knowing how involved her sister had been in some of the events that had taken place. She was only a first year student, barely more than a semester into her schooling and she had already been involved in altercations with the White Fang and one of the most notorious criminals on Remnant in Roman Torchwick. Speaking of whom, she would really like to know how he had managed to get his hands on as many Paladins as he had. That just screamed of an inside job.

Unfortunately she hadn't even had a chance to visit her sister and she had wanted to see and hear for herself how the girl was doing. The altercations with Torchwick and the White Fang were distressing enough, but she also wanted to know more about this advanced combat class she was in, especially in light of what the General had told her about the instructors. As if the revelation about the truth of childhood fairy tales wasn't enough of a shock, then there was the story behind those two and she wasn't quite sure if she was prepared to believe it or not.

Despite what the General had already told her, she went and looked up the information on the two herself. Given her role and position she certainly had access to the same information that her commanding officer did when it came to checking the credentials and records of Huntsmen and Huntresses. She found herself duly, if not grudgingly impressed with what she found. Verified records of them disposing of a great number of old Grimm that had been known about and also dispatching large groups of marauding Grimm that would swarm and overwhelm communities outside of the relative safety of the major cities.

She had know a few Huntsmen and Huntresses who had been foolish enough to try and take on seemingly impossible odds like that and nearly every one of them had ended up dead and the ones who didn't came back impaired both physically and mentally and were never the same again. Quite frankly, the level of power and skill needed for just two people to rack up the record they had was, fittingly, nothing short of otherworldly. It had sent a chill down her spine and it was a bit off putting.

That, along with the General's personal reservations had made her worry if it was a good thing for Weiss to be in their presence and being taught by them. True, she hadn't had the time to look into it further and she would have liked to speak with either Headmaster Ozpin or Professor Goodwitch about them. Ideally wanted to see them in action and speak to them herself but all of that would have to wait since there were much more pressing and dire matters to be dealt with at the moment.

She could only shudder at the chaos that would have ensued if the plan she had been told of had remained undiscovered and allowed to come to fruition unchecked. True, a great many things could still go wrong and Cinder Fall could still achieve what she set out to do at Salem's behest. She had been assured that the woman would not be able to acquire the other half of the Fall Maiden's power and that she would no longer be able to sow the level of mistrust between kingdoms that she had sought. But even if that was true there was still a great amount of damage that she could possibly do and her sister was likely to be right in the middle of it.

She really wished that she'd had more time to digest everything she had been told, but when a mission came calling it didn't particularly care if you were having a bad day. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. There was no value in worrying about anything outside of this mission for the time being, She had enough to concern herself with here without worrying about something that she was in no position to do anything about. She couldn't be in two places at once after all.

"One minute to our drop point," the pilot's voice sounded in her earpiece.

"Roger that," she acknowledged.

The two attack groups were made up of six ships apiece. The first three ships in each was filled with robot troops with the Specialist in the lead ship. The other three ships in each held Human troops. The plan was to come in from either side of the camp and drop the robots and Specialists without landing, since they could all make it to the ground unharmed. They would occupy the enemy while the other ships would land their troops either by touching down if there was room, or by dropping ropes and rappelling down.

"Thirty seconds," the pilot warned.

She stood and took her place by the door, the Knight's also rising and ready to follow. When the pilot gave her the word she would open the door and out they would go. She was counting the time down in her head and could feel the ship decelerating hard just before the five second mark. Suddenly something slammed hard into the top of the Manta and she recognized the screech of a Giant Nevermore. She and the robot troops where trying to maintain their footing when they were all knocked about as the Manta slammed hard through several tree branches and into the ground.

Her Aura absorbed most of the damage as she was bounced about and half buried under the robots, but she still took a pretty good battering. They had landed nose down and slanted to one side but the door was clear of the ground. She ordered the Knights out to attack, at least one of them got snatched up on exit, and followed them out. Several of the Knights were firing on the Nevermore which was above them and trying to take position to fire its feathers down at them. The rest were firing away at Griffons that were either swooping in through the canopy were they could, or running at them after dropping down out of the trees where they had been perched.

She heard the sounds of a Manta's guns firing as it flashed overhead. She reached up to tap her earpiece to ask for a situation report but it was gone, no doubt knocked out as she tumbled around inside the ship. A Griffon plowed through a Knight and lunged at her and she met it by ramming her sword into its mouth and up into its skull. With a moment to look around she thought she saw another Manta down some distance away through the trees to her right, and off to her left she thought she could see smoke. So far, the only enemy she saw was Grimm, not a sign of any White Fang.

She needed to get to any other troops who were down here and get to the camp. A moment of well practised concentration was all she needed to summon a giant Alpha Beowolf and it immediately began smashing and slashing Grimm with it huge paws. Its sudden appearance startled the Grimm and gave her and the remaining robots a few precious seconds to take a few more of them out and get moving through the trees towards the wreck on their right and onward towards the camp.

Between the mission briefing and the other information she had been given about the planned attack on the Vytal Festival, it had been expected that they would run into some Grimm here, but that was all that they had seen thus far and they hadn't taken any weapons fire. She knew that her position couldn't be far enough away from the camp that they wouldn't have at least run into some perimeter guards or a group camped around a parked Bullhead. She had gone over the details of Qrow's report and while she may not like the man, she knew that he was very good at his job and the layout he had given for the camp and its perimeter would be correct.

After several minutes of fighting their way to it, they arrived at the crash scene and she noted the location was one of the small clearings that Qrow reported as a parking spot for a Bullhead. There was no Bullhead there, just the crashed Manta, three remaining Knight's from its compliment, and half a dozen Beowolves that were about to overrun them. They dispatched those and her summon held off the pursuing Griffons. Several attacked it at once which gave them enough of a breather to concentrate their fire on them and take them out just as they succeeded in taking it out.

She was used to plans not surviving contact with the enemy, it was almost a given in any combat situation that there would be something that wasn't going to go the way you anticipated or hoped. Her gut was telling her that this was going to be one of those instances when things went really wrong. Wrong or not she still had an objective so she ordered her contingent of Knights to move on toward the camp and against the Grimm she could hear coming through the trees.

Vale

It was a beautiful morning over the city and everyone was eagerly awaiting the opening of the tournament and thus the official kick off to the Vytal Festival. All of the restaurants and cafes were doing heavy business for the breakfast crowd and by mid morning the air terminal was filling up with people making the trip up to Beacon and the Amity Arena and a steady flow of transport craft were making the trip back and forth.

Many of the students were up and about, wandering through the grounds as the booths began to open, hoping to walk off a little nervous energy. Some got in some last minute sparring while others sat quietly and gathered their thoughts or conversed with their friends or with family who had already made the trip up. Everyone was in an upbeat mood just as you would expect them to be for an event like the Vytal Festival.

Some of them were gathered in an area not far from the air transit landing area watching the live, on site broadcast of the Vale News Network's morning show. They were discussing the festival and the tournament and showing live shots and spot interviews from various sites around the city. They were discussing the itinerary of all of the events for the festival and talking about the various celebrities and dignitaries that would be attending the opening ceremonies at Amity Arena.

Teams RWBY and JNPR weren't in the midst of the audience, but weren't far away. It was a nice distraction from their jumbled thoughts and concerns from the last couple of days after hearing about what was going on from Ichigo and Yoruichi. After getting back to their dorms on the day they were told, they all gathered and were up until late into the night discussing it and coming to terms with this new reality, all while still knowing that they hadn't heard the whole story yet. Learning these unknown truths of their world was a ground shaker for all of them and they knew that there was a lot more to come. Cinder's plan however was a more immediate concern and being ready for the eventualities of that was foremost in their minds.

Even so, it was a surprise when a booming sound echoed out across the water from the direction of the city, followed by a large plume of black smoke. Pretty much everyone outside on the campus turned to look, wondering what was going on. One of the big TV screens that was part of the news show's set changed to a view of the air terminal downtown and through the sound of people screaming and sirens going off, a reporter was frantically telling of an explosion inside the terminal. Gunshots rang out and the reporter and her camera operator hit the floor, a wild swing of the camera showing two clearly uniformed members of the White Fang firing rifles into the building.

"It's starting already?" Nora asked, incredulously.

"If it's not then this is a hell of a coincidence," Yang groused.

There was a closer sound of a small explosion and a personnel transport that was coming in to dock rose up over the edge of the cliff side docking station, trailing smoke from its rear. Like a breaching whale it rose up, rolled to the left and came down on its side with a ground shaking thud and the sound of tortured metal.

"We have to get these people away from here," Ruby said. "Get them going back towards the school."

They fanned out and started trying to get people to move the right way. Some were inclined to gawk, while some were panicky and trying to go three different directions at once. The more sensible ones moved and many helped to herd people away from the landing area. At some points it was an exercise in trying not to get swallowed by the crowd and in trying to make one's self heard above the din. As it was they were getting pushed and pulled all over the place and were hard pressed to keep even their own partner in sight.

The situation would get worse however several minutes later when the Grimm attack warning sirens went off and a full on panic ensued. It was only by virtue of the fact that they were stronger and more agile than most of the people around them that kept them from getting trampled in the rush. As it was they all got bounced around pretty good.

At the moment that the Grimm alarm sounded, Tensa and Shiro were already out and on their way to the edges of the city to confront the Grimm while Ichigo kept his eyes open for airborne Grimm and the White Fang transports that would most likely be approaching under their cover, and he was hoping to intercept Adam Taurus. Yoruichi was headed for Ozpin and the front of the school, the most likely place to find Cinder when she made her move.

Many of the students that were around began calling for their rocket lockers to bring their weapons and the teachers were attempting to marshal them together as a force. General Ironwood was in the process of launching and directing his forces, both human and robotic, to areas that would be in the path of the incoming Grimm that they had picked up on radar. It would be a fairly even split between Beacon and the city at large. His large ships were moving into positions to better intercept what was coming.

Qrow was already in Vale with Yang and Ruby's father. He had spent the night at Taiyang's, filling him in on what was going on and they came to the city early in the morning. They were at the transit terminal when the attack hit and were actually the one's who took out the White Fang shooters that were firing on the crowd after the explosion. As much as they might want to get up to Beacon, they were going to be needed in Vale just as badly.

Elsewhere on Campus

It was all that Cinder could do to not let flames erupt around her body and scorch everything around her. Not that it would really matter if she did at this point, since things seemed to have already gone to hell in a hand basket thanks to a certain bull Faunus. It was bad enough that she no longer had use of the virus that Watts had engineered, but at least if she had been given the time to continue the plan on her timeline she could have still managed to sow a great deal of chaos and negativity and she might have even still been able to find a way to make it look like Atlas had turned on Vale.

Now, thanks to Adam's paranoid impulsiveness those possibilities were lost, or at least the angle with Atlas was unless some opportunity managed to miraculously land in her lap. His attack should at least be able to generate enough negativity and fear, but it would be far from what she could have managed if he had just waited and not decided to do his own thing. He had been hard enough to deal with before that vigilante humiliated him but in the aftermath of that he had been pretty much impossible to manage.

"So what's the plan now?" Mercury asked.

"We work with what we've got," she answered. "The Grimm will still swarm Beacon and the city, the White Fang will still be viewed as the one's to blame for the attack, and I can still go and retrieve the rest of the Fall Maiden's power. We may not be able to make it look like Atlas has turned on Vale now, but they will still get a black eye out of this. They wanted to provide security for the Vytal Festival and yet they were unable to prevent an attack upon it. It's not everything we wanted but it will have to be enough." She regarded Neo, standing off to the side in her disguise. "Unless... Neo, there are quite a few Manta's ferrying troops down here from Ironwood's ships. If you can hijack one or sneak your way on to one you might be able to get aboard the General's flagship and get to Roman. Even if the virus won't work on their systems you can still turn the ship against the others."

Neo cocked her head to the side and placed a finger at the corner of her mouth, thinking about it. Then she scowled and gave Cinder the finger. The three of them were shocked and it was Cinder who recovered first.

"You little bitch!" she growled, striking out at the girl only to be rewarded with the sound of shattering glass and a now empty space before her where she once stood. She was left shaking in rage and turned on her remaining underlings.

"Go out and look for opportunities to cause more chaos," she ground out. "If a chance presents itself to make Atlas look bad, then take it. And if you find that little bitch, kill her!"

They went off into the grounds and she headed for the school to go and take what was hers.

"Somebody's in a mood," Yoruichi commented to herself as she watched from the rooftop. She hadn't figured on Neo ever sticking around just to flip Cinder off, she had thought that as soon as the shit eventually hit the fan that she would just disappear unnoticed. It was a nice touch though, the look on Cinder's face had been priceless.

Keeping to the rooftops, she followed along as Cinder made her way across the campus. She didn't really need to follow her, she knew where she was going but it wouldn't hurt to tag along and make sure she didn't cause any extra mayhem along the way. She would have been waiting for her there but she found her on the way and decided to shadow her. As she did, she let her senses range and tabbed the general location of her students, it would probably be the last chance she had to do so for a while. They had been scattered all over by the crowd but they all still had their full compliment of Aura. She just hoped none of them ran into something they couldn't handle.

The Grimm, both airborne and on the ground were close enough now that she could hear their shrieks and growls and within that she could just discern the sound of several Bullheads. Again she found herself wondering if her humiliating attack on Adam had been wise, it was likely one of the big reasons he jumped the gun and attacked without coordination with Cinder. She could only hope that with the thinning of the herd that Tensa and Shiro had been doing, and with less negativity and bad feelings in the air than what Cinder had been wanting to generate, that the number of Grimm would be far less than what it might have otherwise been.

It also seemed pretty clear that since this attack was happening, that General Ironwood's attack force that he had sent out had failed for whatever reason. Either the White Fang had already moved out of their camp to launch the attack before they arrived, or the attack force had simply failed to stop them. She knew that the group was being led by Winter Schnee and she hoped that the woman made it back in one piece. Weiss would be devastated if anything happened to her.

"Time to screw with their landing strategy," Ichigo smirked as he drew his smaller blade and flicked it towards the sky.

"Mondschein Regen!" (Moonlight Rain)

Hundreds of electric blue crescents of spirit energy, like miniature Getsuga's, shot across the sky to meet the oncoming invaders, shredding Grimm in their wake and taking down at least three Bullheads and damaging a couple more. The rest of the Grimm and Bullheads scattered, taking them out of their original attack vectors and changing their landing spots.

Ground based Grimm were starting to arrive and he pulled his large blade in order to meet them. A Griffon came swooping at him and he surprised it by leaping up to meet it and sliced through it lengthwise before it could move or defend itself. Upon landing he sliced through the torso of a Beowolf on his right, and cut through the throat of another on his left with a backhanded slash of the Tensa's blade.

Most of the students that he had seen out on the grounds earlier had taken up the defence, many of whom he recognized as some of the top teams favoured for the tournament and they fought like it. While most were still early on in their training they were doing a pretty admirable job of taking on the Grimm and protecting the non combatants that were still in the area. There were still too many of those for his liking, people that had either frozen at the site and sound of the attack, or others who had lingered too long and were now in a panic to try and find safety.

He feared that it was going to become a different situation when the White Fang got organized after their landings and pressed forward. The students might know very well that part of their futures as Huntsmen and Huntresses would involve confrontations with enemies other than the Grimm. But how many were prepared to have to fight, for real and not just in a classroom spar, against other Humans and Faunus? There would be no buzzers going off when one's Aura got low or they were knocked out of the ring. This was the real deal painted blood red in killer intent.

He would try to save them that horror if he could. He would concentrate as much as he could on taking down the terrorists and hit any hot spots that he could. But he also wanted to keep his eyes open for his own particular students and especially for Adam Taurus. Those kids were talented and they had been absorbing everything they were being taught, but they weren't a match for someone as experienced and as bloodthirsty as the White Fang's Mad Bull.

"Normally I don't mind a little chaos but this is ridiculous," Yang cracked as she dispatched an Ursa with a head shattering punch. She had been trying to shoot it when a panicked civilian blundered into her and almost got them both turned into Grimm chow. The shot missed of course and at the last second she had been able to regain her footing and drive her fist into the side of the Ursa's head as it snapped at her.

"At least the crowd is finally thinning out and we have more room to fight," Blake said as she sliced into a Creep with the sheath of Gambol Shroud. She didn't say what they both knew, which was that part of the reason the crowd was lessened was due to people being killed by the Grimm. Thankfully most had or were making it to cover in the school buildings.

"Can you see Ruby anywhere?" Yang asked. "Or Weiss?"

"I haven't seen them since we got caught up in the crowd," she answered. "I think all or part of JNPR are off to our right somewhere though."

One of the great things about Aura is that it gave you a heightened sixth sense and even a Huntress in training had better and faster reflexes than the average person. Thus, in the split second when Yang heard a shot ring out and her senses flared, she was able to do a half turn to her right and raise her gauntlet to deflect the shot.

"I wondered when the two of you would show up," she said to a now suddenly bewildered looking Emerald and Mercury.

"Don't look so surprised," Blake said. "We know why you're here and what you've been doing."

"How in the hell...?" Emerald wondered as she looked at Mercury.

He stared back for a moment then scowled. "Neo."

"Actually you'd already been found out before she ever said anything," Yang told them.

"Think we should tell them?" Blake said with a smirk.

Yang shook her head. "Nah, let them figure it out for themselves."

"We need to warn Cinder!" Emerald exclaimed.

"What the hell good would that do now?" Mercury shot back.

"Don't worry, if she doesn't know already she soon will," Yang told them. "I just wish I could be there to see her get her ass handed to her."

"What, you think Ozpin can take her out?!" Emerald all but snarled. "He's powerless against her."

"You'd be wrong about that," Blake said. "But we never said it would be Ozpin."

"So, are we going to stand here talking all day or are we going to throw down?" Yang asked, cracking her knuckles.

She and Mercury had the same thought and opened fire at the same time. He was firing low at her feet and lower legs, making her keep moving and making sure that he didn't upset his own balance since her shots coming back were a lot higher and could easily overbalance him with their impact if he raised a leg too high. He found that being forced to move didn't affect her aim as badly as he had hoped and he had to bend and twist to keep from taking a solid blow.

After trading several shots neither of them had made any significant hits. He suddenly kicked a shot high with his right foot but she ducked and sent a shot back from each hand, one missing and the other hammering the inside of his exposed left thigh. He hit the ground and immediately rolled as two more shots followed up but fortunately missed him. When he got up he expected another shot but she was reloading. He took the opportunity to shake out his leg a bit. His Aura had prevented any damage but the impact had still stung a bit.

This time, rather than shooting at each other, they closed in on each and started trading blows, his feet versus her fists. He had trained in a number of different kickboxing styles both for this purpose and to be able to use his chosen weapon to its greatest effect. Evidently the blonde had done some of that same training because while she was better with her fists, she was no slouch with her feet and could at least hold her own.

They were slowly chipping away at each other's Aura but had yet to do any significant damage. At one point as she was throwing a punch he kicked out and shot at her plant foot, making a solid hit but not before she was able to punch at his chest and fire her gauntlet. She went down with the hit to her leg and he was sent flying back and to the ground with his Aura flaring and the wind driven out of his lungs.

He was starting to get pissed. He shouldn't be having this much trouble with her. While he hadn't gone to combat school, he had undergone training more gruelling than anything they could dish out at the hands of his sadistic and abusive father. He had trained himself hard ever since and had way more experience out in the field than these first years. He was used to fighting for his life and he wasn't afraid to hurt people and spill blood.

She was hobbled and he was sucking wind, but he went all out to press the attack, kicking, spinning, kicking as fast as he could despite the difficulty of catching his breath. Unable to move properly at the moment, she took several hits and had to do go purely on the defensive. He managed to take her legs out from under her completely and sent her tumbling to the ground under a heavy barrage that had her Aura crackling and flaring, the last pair of shots striking the back of her head and stunning her. He had her now and it was time to splatter that pretty blonde head all over the ground.

Emerald began pumping out shots and Blake deflected them all, the sheath half of Gambol Shroud a blur before her as she twirled it. It reminder her of the attack on the train with Adam as they fought the security robots, only this time the rate of fire was slower and less voluminous. As she closed in Emerald switched her guns to their sickle mode and began flailing away at her. She was good and it had been a while since Blake had faced not only a dual wielder, but one of this skill level. She was a bit rusty at this kind of fight.

She concentrated on her defence and waited for any openings to appear. They were few and she wasn't able to do a lot with them, but it it didn't take long for her to start knocking off the rust and begin to find the familiar rhythm from the hours of training she had done in the past against opponents like this. As she caught up to the flow of the fight the momentum swung back and forth between them, neither of them able to gain a clear or lengthy advantage and only doing minimal damage to each other's Aura.

She activated a clone and jumped back and pumped a trio of shots at the green haired girl. The move took her by surprise but she quickly recovered and swung out the sickle in her left hand... which revealed her weapon's third function of a kusarigama. The chained blade wrapped around the sheath in her right hand and they engaged in a one armed tug of war. She fired a couple of shots back and Emerald turned sideways and avoided them.

The fake student countered by transforming her second weapon and hurled it at her feet, hoping to snare her left leg. She jumped up to avoid it and transformed her katana into its kusarigama form and swung it back, snaring Emerald's right arm and leaving her unable to pull back her weapon. Now they were in a tug of war with both arms and it was becoming a test of strength which was turning out to be pretty even.

Blake suddenly took a pair of quick steps forward while pulling back on her kusarigama. The tension on her sheath slackened and she was able to twist it out of Emerald's hold. The move had pulled Emerald forward and off balance and the sudden loss of tension on her left hand weapon caused her to stumble forward. Blake swung the sheath and caught her across the chest and left shoulder, causing her Aura to flare and absorb the blow that would have struck a mortal wound otherwise.

Emerald's stumble and fall allowed her to slip her arm out of Blake's kusarigama and she took the opportunity to pull hers back to the pistol's sickle forms. She was not a happy camper. Their inability to gain much intelligence on the members of Team RWBY and Team JNPR before they joined the advanced class had left them with a significant deficit of information and a poor grasp on the skills they all had.

She knew that her opponent had been in the White Fang and trained at the side of Adam Taurus and that she had gone on missions with him so she would have had to be able to hold her own. However, her speed and footwork didn't look like something she would have learned out in the woods in a hideout camp somewhere, she didn't look like a first year who hadn't even completed two full semesters yet.

This was going to take too long and with the Grimm here and the White Fang looking for anything human they could shoot, getting caught up in a lengthy battle that took all of your focus was a recipe for eventual disaster.

Back on her feet, she began to circle to her right as if looking for an opening to present itself and Blake followed the pattern. Once she was positioned so that the fight between Mercury and the blonde was behind her, she waited for the moment she knew would come when Blake's eyes would stray for just a second to see how her friend was faring. A moment of concentration was all it took to show Blake a vision of the blonde taking a mortal hit.

"Yang!" Blake cried out in alarm.

Emerald opened fire while charging at her, hammering her with bullets and then striking her with lightning quick slashes from her sickles. Blake was put back on her heels, unable to regain her footing and put up a proper defence. Her Aura was hacked down to nothing in no time and she was sent to the ground in agony with a nasty slice down across her left collarbone. The blade had cut deep and right into the bone. It caused her to drop her katana and pistol and Emerald was just beyond the reach of her sheath. The green haired girl gave her a feral grin as she reloaded her pistols.

Cinder worked her way through the panicked crowd with a patience that belied the seething rage that boiled within her. If she were to run into Adam Taurus right now on her way to claim the rest of the Fall Maiden's power, she just might delay her quest long enough to slow roast the flesh off of the bull Faunus's bones. She would have loved to take her frustrations out on the people around her but she needed to get to her destination without getting caught up in battle with someone trying to stop her.

Once she had that power though she would go looking for the terrorist and give him a final and painful payment for causing her so many headaches and for taking matters into his own hands. He wouldn't have even have had a chance to launch an attack like this if it wasn't for her plan and the resources she had given to him.

She knew well of his reputation and his demeanour, she had done her homework before going and making her first attempt at recruiting him and his organization. But apparently he wasn't quite everything he was cracked up to be if he hadn't even been able to track down and neutralize a vigilante that had been harassing and humiliating his followers and had allowed it to drive him to distraction. He had been hard enough to deal with as it was, but after he got attacked and humiliated for all the world to see, he became impossible.

Well, what was done was done and he could have his moment in the sun as he gloriously and indiscriminately hacked down a bunch of kids and helpless civilians and bathed in their blood. He might even find himself moving ahead of the president of the Schnee Dust Company for the title of most hated man in the world. Of course, he'd wear it like a badge of honour. But, when she was done with her task...

She strongly suspected that Ozpin would be her only obstacle. Secrecy was a better option for him to hide the damaged Maiden than surrounding her with a small army and she was confident that she could take down the tired old wizard. Oh the sweet irony, the wizard who had gifted the Maidens with their power for their compassion and kindness, being cut down by one of them who had neither of those traits. He was about to be reaped by what he had sown.

As she broke through the now much more sparse crowd upon nearing the front of the school, she saw Ozpin standing at the top of the steps in front of the doors, hands atop his ever present cane and his eyes were already upon her. That gave her pause for a moment. He had to have known at some point that someone would be coming for the rest of the Fall Maiden's power, but was this attack enough to make him believe that the time was now?

Or, had he known that someone was already here, that she was already here? Had Lionheart opened his big cowardly mouth? Had it been Neo in some vain attempt to get them to go easy on Torchwick? That didn't sound exactly right and if Ozpin already knew, why hadn't he done anything to stop her? Had he been responsible for the failure of the virus? Watts had bragged and preened over the perfection of his creation, swearing that no one would be able to find it let alone undo it once it was embedded in the CCT system's programming.

She put a halt to her musings and the swell of panic that had begun. It didn't matter now, it was too late for them to do anything to stop her. The grand aims of her plan may have become something less than they were, but there would still be mayhem, there would be a higher level of distrust towards General Ironwood and thus Atlas for failing to protect Beacon and Vale, and she would still obtain the rest of the Maiden's power. Her power. She would rip it from that pathetic husk that Ozpin sought to protect and she would reduce him to so much ash on the steps of his own school.

Nothing would stop her now and she would obliterate anyone or anything that tried.

She let her power flare up around her, let the power of the Maiden loose and bear her aloft on the wind and in a sheath of flame. She surged forward, charging the old wizard as he just continued to stand there leaning on his cane, virtually expressionless. If he had resigned himself to his fate, then so be it. She would give him his end.

"Bakudo number 81, Danku."

The female voice barely registered in her ears and upon her consciousness before she suddenly slammed hard into an invisible barrier, her flames bursting around her and billowing off the unseen surface. Her face was gracelessly mashed against it, and her Aura flared briefly preventing her now bent nose from actually breaking. After hanging there for a moment she slid off and landed on her butt. She looked up to see Ozpin regarding her with a slightly mirthful look.

"There are occasions in life Ms. Fall where we discover that sometimes we are the windshield, and sometimes we are the bug."

Flames erupted around her as her anger soared. "Are you calling me a bug old man?!" she ground out.

"Yes, I do believe that is what I was inferring," he returned, making her eyes go wide.

"An annoying little glow bug I think," came a female voice from off to her right.

She turned to see one of the new teachers standing there. She was dressed in her usual form fitting black pants but was without the orange and white jacket to cover the sleeveless and backless shirt she wore.

"Or better yet," Yoruichi continued. "One of my students referred to her as a magic girl wannabe." Exactly two and a half seconds later she began to laugh hysterically. "Oh my god, you should see the look on your face! I knew it would be priceless!"

Cinder literally growled and sent a torrent of fire towards her but it splashed back all around her, the barrier still being in place. That only made the were-cat laugh harder.

"You think this is funny?!" Cinder roared. "You think that I'm some kind of joke?!"

"Actually, no," Yoruichi answered, suddenly serious again. "A joke would be funny. You my dear are pathetically arrogant and so full of yourself that you think no one can touch you and that you have everyone fooled."

Cinder's eyes went wide at the sudden realization.

"For a while, you did," Ozpin said. "Much to my shame we did not become aware that there was anything out of place with you and your team until Yoruichi and Ichigo came to the school. They have rather unique abilities that alerted them to your presence almost immediately and they were able to figure out what you were up to in a short period of time."

Cinder rose back to her feet, the power of the Maiden flaring around her eyes. "It doesn't matter," she snarled. "Because I'm still going to burn through the two of you and take the rest of my power."

Yoruichi waved her hand and the barrier shattered and fell apart like glass. She stared the woman in the eyes for a moment before her hand shot out and grabbed her face in an iron grip, emulating what Ichigo had done to Aizen. "That power isn't yours and it never was. You won't be taking it."

In the blink of an eye they were gone.

Weiss had never been terribly fond of crowds. Singing before one was one thing, but being jostled and knocked about in the midst of one, and a panicked one at that was something she could do without. At least in their panicked state no one had decided to let their hands wander to places they didn't belong. The last time she had been in a crowd of any size had been at one of her father's phony philanthropic events.

In the crowded meet and greet after she had given a short concert, some old pervert had slid his hand up her skirt and since the man was a close associate of her father she'd had no option at the time but to bite her tongue and try not to cringe in revulsion and draw attention. She never told her father about it, he never would have believed her anyway and he most likely wouldn't have cared and would have berated her for saying anything. It took her a month to rid herself of the feel of the phantom sensation of the degenerate's hand sliding up her backside and longer than that to stop nearly gagging every time she thought about it.

It had been a chore for her not to start yelling at people for banging her around and her size didn't make it easy to withstand the onslaught and she was swept away from the others a little too easily for her liking. Ironically it was the arrival of the Grimm that gave her a little breathing room as instead of directionless panic, people were now running all out in a more straight line panic to get away from the monsters bearing down on them. Still, she had needed to fight against the tide just to get between them and an Ursa so she could take it out before it bowled into them.

Luck hadn't been on her side though and she wasn't allowed the time to catch her breath or orient herself as to just exactly where she was at the moment. The Ursa had been followed by a pair of Beowolves that she'd had to dance her way around to kill, and then she was nearly bowled over by a Boarbatusk as it literally rolled into the fight. She took far less time to kill this one than than she had in Professor Port's class. Another Ursa lumbered in, this one seemingly older and thus smarter than any of the other Grimm she had just dispatched.

She used her glyphs to skate around the beast in short bursts, forcing it to twist and turn to try and strike at her. She narrowly avoided a couple of swats from its massive paws before she was able to use the last of Myrtenaster's ice dust to freeze its back feet to the ground, though it likely wouldn't last last long. She threw an Aura ball in its face, hoping to blind it but only got half the result she wanted, freezing just its left eyeball and prompting the beast to forget about her for a second and paw at its face.

Together, that was enough since it created just enough of a blind spot and she rushed forward and jabbed her blade, now sheathed in fire, into the middle of its chest. It flailed at her in its death throes as she scooted back out of the way... not quite fast enough and her Aura took a significant hit as she was sent tumbling by a clubbing blow to her left shoulder. Thankfully there weren't anymore Grimm lined up to attack her and she could catch her breath and reload Myrtenaster's depleted cylinders.

She was wondering where the others were and how they were faring when she caught sight of a cascade of blue crescents shooting across the sky and obliterating dozens of Griffons and Nevermores. She had been dimly aware of the same thing happening earlier but she was too busy trying to survive the crowd to really see it.

"Ichigo no doubt," she said to herself.

She stood and checked her surroundings. No Grimm or people nearby at the moment and her fights had pushed her even further away from where the majority of the action seemed to be. She was pretty close to the cafeteria so she decided to see if there was anything going on there or anyone who might be in need of help.

As she came around the corner of the building she could see that most of the windows that lined the one wall of the cafeteria had been broken and it looked like something had crashed into the partition between a couple of them and damaged the wall. Since there was no wreckage laying there she figured it must have been a Grimm.

A shriek from above made her jump back as a wounded Griffon, it was missing part of one wing, slammed into the ground in front of her. It snapped at her and she took the quickest avenue of escape which was to jump into the building through one of the broken windows. It turned and tried to follow, snapping at her again but she met it with a lunge and speared her blade, now coated with frost, upward into its mouth and froze its head from the inside out.

She took a few steps back and a moment later the beast began to vaporize. She heard a pained grunt and a gurgling sound to her right and turned... to see a Haven student breathing his last with a sword stabbed through his chest. A sword that was in the hand of Adam Taurus.

And he was looking right at her.

AN: Before anyone takes me to task for whether or not the name of the technique I gave Ichigo is correct, know that I went to five different translation sites and got three different results. Happens almost every time I ever look for a translation for something. I went with the one I used here and that's the way it's going to stay.

If you would be so kind, leave me a review and let me know what you think.

As always, trolls and idiots need not bother commenting so don't waste your time or mine. You'll just get ignored, deleted, and/or blocked for it.

Also, are there no authors out there that are willing to take their own stab at a Bleach/RWBY crossover? There aren't many and very few are actually actively updating. At the risk of being needlessly offensive I won't comment on quality. That's up to each individual to decide.

Oh, and before I forget, I'm well into the first chapter of A Hollow Encounter, the Ruby/Vasto Lorde Ichigo story I mentioned before. I have no idea when it will actually appear and I haven't even decided yet on just exactly what method I'm going to take with the telling of the story. It might be a series of scenes rather than a linear telling.