Cards of Remnant

by TheMaster4444

Ruby Rose has wanted to be a Hunting Duelist all her life, to train her aura to manifest the monsters in her deck to fight the Grimm. So when she gets an invitation to join her sister at Beacon Duel Academy, she jumps at the chance. But old powers are stirring, and ancient summoning methods not seen in eons are about to clash, with the fate of Remnant in the balance.

45. Time To Say Goodbye - Part 3

Beta-ed by xenosaiyan

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"Yang!" Ruby Rose screamed, her sister engulfed in the scorching metal of her duel runner as they tumbled across the tunnel's floor. Burning golden steel twisted around the defeated duelist, slicing into the muscular girl as she bounced against the train tracks.

Ilia found herself staring after the wreck even as the train's speed in the other direction took her and her opponent further away from the bested blonde. She wasn't grieved like her enemy was, what little interaction she'd had with Yang Xiao-Long back at The Docks hardly made her a fan, but she could certainly say she was surprised.

She knew Neo to be condescending and more than a little lacking in empathy for anyone who wasn't herself or Torchwick, but her actions after the duel's end still caught the chameleon faunus by surprise. Winning the duel and shattering Yang's aura already removed the girl as a threat for the remainder of the operation. Attacking her after the match was already over, causing her to crash? It was sadism lacking in pragmatism, something Ilia had no taste for herself.

"Surrender!"

Ilia whipped back to Ruby, the silver-eyed girl panicked and pale. "You really think that just because you destroyed my monsters, I'm going to give up–"

"The duel anchor can't break unless one of us loses and I need my semblance to reach to her!" Ruby frantically yelled, tears pricking from her eyes. "Please, surrender! Please, she's my sister! I have to save her!"

"Save her? You think she survived–"

"She's not dead!" Ruby screamed, the tears bursting free from her glimmering eyes. "Please! Please, I have to save her! She's my family!"

Ilia's brow furrowed, her eyes flittering aside. "Family, huh?"

Strategically speaking, it was a bad idea. Not only was she far from out of the duel with her Amazoness Fighter still on the field, but if she surrendered, her aura would break from her loss. Ruby would not only be free of the duel anchor binding them, she would be free to summon new monsters to beat down Ilia, jump below to beat up any subordinates Blake and the Schnee had missed, and then join them in assailing Torchwick in the engine car. Sure, that would require leaving her sister behind to die, but that crash didn't look all that livable as it was and Neo was already circling back to finish the job either way. If she decided she couldn't save her sibling and just focused on her mission, she would make the chameleon faunus pay for her foolish mercy.

And yet, when she looked into those silver eyes, how could that desperation be a bluff? Having recently relived the worst day of her life thanks to Nikos and Astral, she couldn't help but think it was the same feeling she'd shown when she'd found out about her parents' deaths. Giselle and her academy friends had met her with hisses and summoned monsters when they'd seen it.

What had she told Nikos that night? That she wasn't normal, wasn't like everybody else, and she shouldn't want to be?

She placed her palm flat over the top of her deck.

It was about time she started taking her own advice. Because Blake had also been right that night, she was repeating her old mistake, keeping her head low to serve the whims of others.

Her aura crackled as she manipulated it to give out and shatter. Amazoness Fighter and her Pendulum Scales exploded into sparks.

No more.

Ilia Amitola: 0 Life Points (Surrender)

Winner: Ruby Rose

The duel anchor fizzled away, Ruby staring at her opponent with disbelieving hope. Ilia took the chance to type in the deactivation code on the hardlight generator behind her. The barrier surrounding the train car crackled down.

And that was it. Her defenses were down. If this was a bluff, if her foe was playing her, then she was dead. She had no way of protecting herself or her troops below.

So it was with no shortage of relief that she watched Ruby dash past her and leap off the train as soon as she could, rose petals flying behind her as she summoned a dragon with white flower wings to rush to her sister.

Ilia didn't have the luxury to watch her go, instead hurrying to the hatch to get below into the train. She still didn't believe the Grimm Invasion nonsense that her opponent had been peddling, but the train would be hitting the mountainside soon. The grunts who made it inside in the chaos of the initial assault on the camp needed to be woken up from whatever state Blake and The Schnee had left them in, helped onto their duel runners, and led out of the range of the resulting explosion.

And on the off-chance Ruby hadn't been trying to fool her, if Adam, Torchwick, and Neo really were planning to unleash the Grimm on Vale, if the scorpion faunus and 'The Lady Rhodes' really were so monstrous as to command it…

Ilia darted back to the portable hardlight dust generator. It might still come in handy.

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Blake hissed as she rose from the floor of the dueling car, her back still throbbing from the explosion of The Phantom Knights of Torn Scales. How long had it been since she'd been through such a punishing duel? Even her three-on-one match back at The Docks didn't compare. Adam was skilled enough on his own, but with Torchwick backing him up, even their middling teamwork only hindered them so much. They always seemed to have an answer, no matter what she and Weiss tried–

"Weiss!" Blake gasped out, her amber eyes darting through the train car until they found her teammate, brokenly muttering on her knees. She crawled over to the other girl, shaking her shoulder for support. "Weiss, are you okay?"

"I don't want to be a monster. I don't want to be a monster," the white-haired girl brokenly murmured, her eyes glazed over like broken sapphires, unable to rise from the floor. "I don't want to be a monster…"

"Weiss?" Blake whispered, paling as her friend repeated her catatonic mantra.

"I'm afraid the Ice Queen has melted, kitty cat," Torchwick smirked, circling his finger in a loopity loop beside his head. "Some folks just can't take the dueling pressure."

"Now you see the truth of who you sided with," Adam sneered. "The lack of will. The weakness–"

"Shut up! Just shut up!" Blake barked, ignoring the hurt all over her body so she could stagger back to her feet. "I am sick of the both of you talking!"

She was sick of her friends being put in danger saving her! Sun at the docks, Pyrrha the night of the investigation, Yang leading up to the dance, even Weiss just earlier in the tag duel, someone always had to come swooping in to save her when she got in over her head. Even if the answer wasn't to run away from them as she'd tried to do on Patch, she'd had enough of others having to suffer because she fumbled her own weight.

"You won't always have a rescuer to come save you."

That was what Ilia had warned her, and it had come true. Dr. Oobleck was dead. Ruby and Yang had battles of their own to deal with and the disappearance of Starving Venom's adrenaline boost didn't bode well for them. Weiss was in no condition to summon a Blue-Eyes to save the day. If anything, the heiress needed rescuing herself.

So Blake would return the favor and do that. For her and everyone in Vale, just like a fairy tale.

"My turn! Draw!" she yelled, ripping a card from the top of her deck and slamming it into Gambol Shroud as soon as she saw it. "I activate Graceful Charity! I draw three cards and discard two! Performapal Ladyange and Bubble Barrier!"

She slid the two cards into her graveyard slot. Bubble Barrier in particular could have been useful to stall her enemies, but she didn't have time. The duel had dragged on long enough as it was. They were going to hit Vale any second. She needed to go on the offensive and end this in one shot!

And she knew exactly who would help do it. The one who'd stood by her since the beginning.

"I activate Shuffle Reborn! When I have no monsters on my field, I can special summon a monster from my graveyard with its effects negated!" Blake shouted, flicking the spell into her duel disk as her most faithful monster burst back from the graveyard. "Swing back into action, Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon!"

A dark purple portal opened up in the floor, her ace soaring up onto the field. Odd-Eyes' scarlet body slammed down onto the steel, its ivory spines flaring for battle (ATK 2500/DEF 2000). The dragon's dual-colored eyes, usually dancing with joy, glared with utter fury at Adam, roaring in the redhead's face.

Secret Six Samurai - Rihan and Legendary Six Samurai - Kizan closed in on their master, but The Blood-Soaked Bull didn't flinch as the dragon's breath roiled over his brand.

"Figures," Adam scoffed. "You always rely on Odd-Eyes when you're in a tight spot. And he always fails you."

"He got me away from you," Blake shot back. "When Performapal Ladyange is in my graveyard and I control an Odd-Eyes monster, I can place it in my Pendulum Zone. Then, I place Performapal Gentrude in my other Pendulum Zone. Then, I activate its Pendulum Effect! Since Ladyange is in my other Pendulum Zone and all monsters I control are Pendulum Monsters, I can add an Odd-Eyes monster from my deck to my hand!"

It happened quickly, her elegantly dressed fairy of light and dapper fiend of darkness rising on either side of her, encased in the glowing pillars of the Pendulum Scales. Blake tore the card she needed from her deck as soon as they were in place, not having any time to lose. Not just because the train could strike Vale at any moment, but because even with Odd-Eyes on the field and flooding her veins with adrenaline, Weiss was murmuring on the floor, a puppet with her strings cut.

Of course, it wouldn't be that easy. Ever since his mask had been blasted off, Adam's presence, the pressure he exerted on the duel, had only intensified. Having his brand unveiled against a member of the family he always wanted to make pay most of all must have been a dream come true for him, fate confirming his narrative of righteous vengeance. Blake had been crippled by his force of will and her own trauma at the start of the duel, only pushing through because of Weiss' support. Even now, she feared that she'd be consumed by it if she slowed down and gave herself a moment to breathe.

She'd known about Adam's brand for years and kept his secret to their youthful nights of passion. Seeing it only made her realize how far he'd fallen from the warrior who'd wanted to make sure no one else ever suffered such injustice again. But Weiss? For Weiss, it was confirmation of every doubt she'd ever had about herself, learning just how thoroughly her family's sins had created The Blood-Soaked Bull and all of his victims.

Which meant it fell to Blake to make sure there were no more.

"I search Performapal Odd-Eyes Unicorn!" she shouted, flashing the card she'd pulled from her deck from Gentrude's effect.

"Unicorn? Oh," Adam rolled his eyes. "So, that's your play. Predictable."

"Didn't I tell you to shut up!" Blake snapped.

"You have no power over me. The pain you deal me is not special. Just like you are not special," Adam replied, more annoyed at her resistance than angry. "To think the kingdoms put you on such a pedestal. 'The Odd-Eyed Bandit'? Their fear of a duelist so pitiful should have been an easy sign of their weakness. I should have seen it sooner. I know every card in your deck and every strategy in your mind."

"Don't be so sure," Blake hissed. "My friends have helped me grow–"

"You're going to use Performapal Springoose's graveyard effect to bounce Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon and Performapal Gentrude back to your hand," Adam bluntly cut in. "After that, you'll set your Unicorn in the Pendulum Scales with Ladyange and Pendulum Summon the Skullcrobat Joker in your Extra Deck and Gentrude and Odd-Eyes from your hand. With Odd-Eyes' double damage effect no longer negated by Shuffle Reborn, you'll attack Kizan and use Performapal Odd-Eyes Unicorn's effect to boost your dragon's attack by Skullcrobat Joker's attack, hoping to deal enough damage to win in a single blow."

Blake went pale, her hand frozen in the middle of reaching for the button on Gambol Shroud that would activate Springoose's effect in her graveyard.

Torchwick whistled. "Damn. Gotta admit, that was impressive. Cold. But impressive."

"It's not a bad combo. Use it. It might even work," Adam taunted her. "If Rihan doesn't have another ability to blow it away. If this buffoon's facedown doesn't stop it in its tracks. You might barely scrape up a win just in time for the train crash to claim you."

"Do you really think 'destiny' is going to let you survive that kind of crash?" Torchwick snarked at his teammate. He groaned and turned to Blake. "Seriously, kitty cat, just surrender. We're too close to Vale for you to derail this thing anyway. Surrender now, you might be able to scoop up the Schnee and get to safety before the big boom and we'll be too busy doing the same to chase you."

"Go on. Run," Adam mocked her, unafraid that she might try to stall out the game so that they all died. "You've always lacked the resolve for anything but the coward's way out."

She ran from him. The last time she was on a train with him, she'd hopped onto Odd-Eyes and ran from him. She'd run from Fusion, and because of that, she only had the same basic tricks he'd taught her when they first figured out Polymerization. And besides that, all she had was the same old Pendulum tricks he'd seen her use for years. While he had researched and mastered Contact Fusion, a summoning style that should have been impossible, to create a monster that could do who knew what.

Her eyes naturally skittered to Weiss, but where once she'd found reassurance, now she only found her friend broken. Even with Odd-Eyes' adrenaline rushing through them both, the Schnee Heiress would not rise, and Blake didn't know what to do.

Adam's glare, wrathful yet cold, seared into her. Her knees shook, her lungs struggling to pant.

What did she do?

Her vision started to swim, the edges growing dark.

What did she do?!

Odd-Eyes called out to her, but she couldn't hear his cries over the sharp shortness of her breath.

What did she do!?

Run.

Take Weiss, and run.

Run!

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"Yang! Yang!"

Yang groaned as a distant voice faintly mingled through her ears. She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids were so heavy. Everything hurt. Everything was so… cold. But everything around her felt so… warm. Something wet trickled down her forehead, dripping into her eye. She hissed and tried to raise her right arm to brush it away…

… except, her arm didn't… come?

"Yang! Yang! Don't worry! I'm coming!"

"R… Ruby?" Yang whimpered.

Her eye cracked open, blinking away what blood it could. Her vision was blurry, barely able to make out the burning scraps of Bumblebee scattered about her. A lump of flesh had been thrown across the train tracks, red smears dotting the ground from it to Yang's right side.

Ruby scampered up before her, Starving Venom Fusion Dragon floating behind. It was the first time Yang had seen her sister's dragon from the front, seen how its fangs dripped venom and its flytrap wings hungered. It was terrifying, in all honesty. But hopefully, that just meant it'd scared Neo off. She didn't want that murderous gremlin anywhere near her sister.

Because…

"R… Ru…by?" Yang croaked, trying to reach up with her left arm, but finding it pinned under her duel runner's chassis. "R… Run…"

… because she couldn't protect her.

Ruby gasped, pressing her hands to her mouth as her silver eyes glimmered. She leaned down towards Yang, tears welling at the peak of her cheeks. She pulled out a card from her deck box, seemingly trying to hand it to her broken sister.

Yang's eyes widened when she saw the card. It was Hot Red Dragon Archfiend! Ruby had gotten it back! Just like she'd stolen Weiss' Blue-Eyes back from the gremlin at the docks, her little sister had saved her ace! She'd saved her pride!

She'd saved her strength.

"No! Stop! Get away from her!"

Yang's head tilted in confusion. Why did Ruby's voice still sound so far away? Her head was still filled with static, but she was right in front of her. She was holding out Hot Red Dragon Archfiend, just waiting for her big sis to yank her left hand out from under Bumblebee and take back her ace.

But suddenly, she withdrew it. Suddenly, Ruby held one corner of Hot Red Dragon Archfiend in each of her hands. Suddenly, she stared down at Yang with silver eyes full of playful, mocking amusement. As if she finally saw just how pathetic her big sister and her striving really were.

As if she'd finally rejected her, like Clear Wing and the Signer Dragons before her.

With a gleeful rip, Ruby tore Hot Red Dragon Archfiend's card in two, the dust within sparkling with a harmless rainbow glitter. She gripped the two pieces and yanked them again, splitting them into four. She tossed three of them into the air, Starving Venom and its flytrap wings each shooting a bolt of plasma at the fragments, obliterating them entirely.

Tears joined the blood leaking down Yang's cheeks as her beloved ace's spirit let out an agonized cry.

"No!" the distant voice wailed. "White Rose Dragon! Roxrose Dragon! Stop her!"

Yang's vision faded back to darkness as Ruby tossed the last piece of Hot Red Dragon Archfiend's card onto the ground, Starving Venom Fusion Dragon angling its flytrap wings to shoot back a pair of incoming fire blasts. All while the glow of molten plasma built between the jaws of its head, a head leering down at the broken blonde before it.

The last thing Yang saw was Ruby smiling as she was about to kill her.

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"Stop!" Ruby screamed, darting between counterfire from Neo's fake Starving Venom as she and her smaller dragons desperately tried to reach her sister. "Get away from her!"

She didn't know why Neo had decided to use her semblance to look like her. She didn't know why she'd decided to use it to disguise her Toon Barrel Dragon as Starving Venom. Hell, she didn't know why she'd decided to circle back to the wreck of Bumblebee instead of getting out of this damn tunnel!

But she did know that she was going to kill her sister. She had, for whatever reason, decided to murder Yang in cold blood. She'd already ripped up Hot Red Dragon Archfiend instead of stealing it. Ruby would not let her do to the duelist what she'd done to the card!

But she couldn't get close enough! Whether it looked like Starving Venom or not, Toon Barrel Dragon still had three cannons. It was more than capable of holding off her monsters and killing Yang at the same time. Ruby didn't even know if White Rose Dragon and Roxrose Dragon were shooting at the right target, or if Neo was using her semblance to make her see her in a completely different spot than she really was. Her duel runner was nowhere in sight after all.

But what else could Ruby do? She didn't have time to summon Black Rose Dragon and its gale could tear down the tunnel and let in the Grimm even if she could. But she couldn't let her sister be murdered. All she could do was move forward!

But she wasn't enough. She couldn't get close enough. And Toon Barrel Dragon was about to fire.

"Yang!" Ruby screeched.

Only for her Signer Mark to suddenly erupt with crimson light. And a portal of swirled red and black to open between Yang and her attempted executioner.

A piercing cry, somewhere between a bird's squawk and a storm's howl, ripped through the tunnel. Lightning and gale-force winds stampeded out from the portal, the tempest tearing through the glass illusions towering over Yang, then turning sharply and smashing into the revealed Neo and her real dragon. The criminal and her cartoonish cannon were sent flying into her duel runner, the confident woman's face warped with confusion as her mismatched eyes whipped up to the spatial gateway.

Only to widen in horror at what emerged.

A dragon, black, sleek, and wiry, flew out from the portal, its head a beak of brightest gold. Talons like a ribcage blossomed from its chest, graceful tail feathers trailing its rear. Its wings, fading to grey from a vibrant red and black, thrust out to either side as it loomed over Neo.

Black Rose Dragon spoke the monster's name in her mind, but Ruby didn't need the confirmation nor her Signer Mark's glow to know what dragon this was. She'd been around her uncle's Blackwings since she was little and the aesthetic was a dead ringer. Even more, when he'd taken to personally training her, her constant eager questions had drawn out an unexpected tidbit.

"My deck isn't exactly 'traditional' Blackwings. My sister was always the prodigy of those. The Master of the Armored Master, they called her. Not sure if it was because her dragon picked her or the dragon picked her because of it, but she was happy to use it to keep our old man from throwing me out for… reasons."

She didn't know how the portal existed, but Ruby knew exactly who the mistress was when she stalked out of it.

She wore traditional Mistralian garb, her robes flowing and loose around her. The duel disk on her arm was as long as a samurai's katana, well-maintained and red as blood. Her hair, dark as the night, trailed behind like her Dragon's tail feathers. Her face was covered by an elaborate Grimm mask, her eyes seeming to glow a furious scarlet behind it.

And on her right arm, blazed the sharp emblem of a dragon's tail.

Most of the world knew nothing of the Crimson Dragon or those who served it. Even still, one epitaph struck terror into the Anima wildlands more than any other.

"The Fallen Signer," Ruby whispered, not sure if it was in awe or fear.

For Neo, it was definitely fear. The pink and brown-eyed criminal scampered back against her duel runner, her Toon monster panting, its strength torn away by Raven's dragon.

The bandit loomed over her, the wind seeming to gather around her as her dragon snarled.

Neo paled. Her hand dove into her coat, frantically searching for something.

She pulled out a metal cylinder with a big red button at the top.

Ruby's eyes widened. "The detonator! Don't let her—"

Click.

BOOM!

Deafening was too meager a word for the sound that stampeded through the tunnel. All the way back to the base at Mt. Glenn, the walls and ceiling were blasted away as every scrap of dust the White Fang had stolen over the last several months exploded.

Ruby rushed over to Yang, throwing herself over her unconscious sister to shield her from the rumble shaken loose by the distant thunder. Her dragons flew above her to protect her from the bigger falling rocks.

Raven's head flicked towards the sisters, her arm rising with authority. Her dragon's wings swooped through the rumble, blowing away even the boulders too large Roxrose and White Rose Dragon to handle.

Neo seized the moment to scramble onto her duel runner and gun the engine, her desperate distraction successful. Her semblance glittered over her and her mount, their visage and sound vanishing.

Ruby barely noticed, too concerned with her sister's broken form as the explosion's rumbling petered out. Blood stained the young girl's palms, and her mind flashed back to when she cradled Perry's lifeless corpse. She jammed her fingers to Yang's throat, her stomach queasy as she spotted the trail of red from where her right arm should have been.

"You have to be okay. You promised," Ruby quivered. "You promised."

But even as she said it, she knew how childish it was. They were underground, in the middle of the mountains between Vale and Mt. Glenn, and Yang needed medical attention now. A bit of field first aid wasn't going to cut it–

"Step aside."

Ruby's head whipped up, but Raven brushed her aside when the young huntress didn't instantly move. Her dragons rushed in to protect her, but the Branwen Tribe leader's much larger Signer Dragon used its tail feathers to wrap up the Rose Dragons.

Raven extended her right arm, her Signer Mark's glow intensifying, spindly tendrils of bright energy beginning to splinter out from the emblem.

A crimson orb of light surrounded Yang, its shine soothing and soft. Cuts dried and scabbed. Burns settled from second-degree to first-degree. Even the stomp where her right arm used to be stopped leaking, the blood forcibly clouting from within. None of the golden-haired girl's wounds vanished, but their edge of immediate danger was cut off. Ruby could only sit there slackjawed.

"Well? Get to it!" Raven barked. "Didn't Qrow teach you field first aid?"

"R–right!" Ruby exclaimed, skittering forward and pulling out gauze from a small medkit on her belt. She did her best to keep her breathing under control as she hustled into the crimson bubble and began wrapping Yang's exposed stump. "Signers have healing powers?"

"Keep your mind on your work." Raven snapped.

"Right. I know," Ruby said. "But if we can, then maybe two of us together can, or us and dad, can do more, maybe put her arm back–"

"Humans are creatures of balance. My body's been dealing with Light Magic upsetting its balance for years and doing this is still not particularly pleasant," Raven pointed out. "You want to see if her body is in any shape to get flooded with a shitton all at once?"

"I don't. I don't want her hurt. I just…" Ruby tightened the gauze to apply firm pressure to her sister's stump. "... I want to help."

The bandit leader went silent for several moments, calmly observing the younger Signer from behind the safety of her Grimm mask.

"Like mother, like daughter," she noted with a resigned sigh. "You ever hear old stories or folktales about 'psychic duelists' who could summon monsters without aura or heal wounds with no semblance? Maybe six times out of ten, it was one of us."

Ruby was surprised that the older woman had lessened the sharpness in her tone but still managed a small smile. "Six times out of ten? What about the four?"

"Signers don't have a monopoly on magic. Hell, our dragons are cut off from their source of power on Remnant, so they're weaker than most mystical monsters native to this world. Some of them are friendly. Some… are not."

Rrrrrraaaaggggghhhhhh!

Ruby's skin roiled as the shrill roar passed through her bones. She looked up at the path back to Mt. Glenn, the decimated tunnel of rock filled with new walls of black. Black with white masks.

Beowolves, Ursa, Boarbatusks, Deathstalkers, King Taijitu, Nevermores, even Golitaths had sensed the path to slaughter open. Scores of Grimm, maybe hundreds had flooded through the entrances that Neo's bombs had created, more charging in every second. Some of the species, Ruby had only seen in her textbooks, filled with exact, haunting descriptions of how each creature sought to swarm over monsters and tear their duelists apart as dessert.

Raven swung her duel disk through the air, a new portal of red and black opening in its wake. "Time to go."

---

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Run! Run! Run! RUN!

'Why not slow down? Catch your breath?'

Blake's panting lungs froze right in the middle of snagging another rush of air. The darkness that was strangling her vision stalled, the shaking in her limbs stilling for a moment as Yang's advice from after their duel before the dance shoved through her head, demanding to be heard.

She didn't know why those words had echoed through her mind now of all times. But she was grateful. It was exactly what she needed to hear.

The cat faunus pivoted her pants into a deep breath, her vision clear and sharp once more. The terror in her gut still raged when she stared back at Adam and Torchwick, but it remained in her gut where it belonged. Her mind was her own.

"I activate Shuffle Reborn's graveyard effect and banish it," she said, Performapal Gentrude warping out of its Pendulum Zone pillar. "Now, I can target one card on my field, shuffle it into the deck, and then draw one card. But I have to banish one card from my hand during the End Phase."

"Grasping for straws? Useless," Adam scoffed. "I know every card in your deck, just like I know you. Just like I know the wretches you've chosen to side with."

"And what about the wretches you've chosen to side with?" Blake challenged, drawing her extra card and pointing it at Torchwick. "A murderous, racist gangster who is, in your own words, 'a conviction-less cur'. That's who you'll have at your side while you build your faunus utopia."

"She's got you there, bullhead," Roman chuckled.

Adam growled. "A means to an end. You were too much of a coward to stand by my side."

Blake glared at him, amber orbs to blue, open eyes to closed.

"You're right. I ran away to Beacon to hide from you. And by doing that instead of going to Sienna and warning her what you were becoming, I left Ilia, Bane… Perry… and everyone at your mercy. Whatever my reasons, I was a coward," she proclaimed. "Just like you."

"What?!" Adam snapped. "What nonsense are you–"

"The scorpion faunus and his mistress press-ganged you into being their muscle. And you were too scared of them to reach out to Sienna for help. Sound familiar?"

"I am making use of them! Their power is my opportunity!"

Blake sighed. It was strange. When she was younger, she'd seen Adam as a dashing protector of their people, everything she wanted to be. As their relationship devolved and she'd stopped scapegoating fusion monsters, she'd built him up as some nightmarish demon. But now? Now, she felt she saw him for what he truly was.

She saw herself. Specifically, she saw herself before the dance, all flames and fury as she pushed herself past all her limits. Too afraid to take a breath lest her fire die, lest she find herself unequal to the task if she took even a second to think about it.

For a brief moment, she wondered if there was something she or Sienna could have said to him at some point over the years, some hitherto unknown words of comfort that might have convinced him to let go of his fearful spite before it was too late, as Yang did her. She remembered Taiyang's warning from Patch, she knew that she might have been the worst possible person to reach out to Adam even if time wasn't of the essence…

… but they'd given Torchwick a chance to do the right thing, hadn't they?

"We were both cowards. But that doesn't matter now," she said, putting every ounce of earnestness she could into her voice. "All that matters is what we choose. Right now."

"Wow, that's sappy," Torchwick rolled his eyes.

Blake ignored him, extending her arm towards Adam, holding out a hand for him to take. "Are you happy, Adam? Do you want to be a monster?"

"Yes." Adam instantly replied, his bright blue eye as cold as ice. "Monsters win, Blake. And I'm done letting you lull me into weakness."

Blake sighed, lowering her offered arm, wishing she could have been surprised by his answer.

But she wasn't, her amber eyes hardening as she let go of the last ounce of care she'd clung to for her first love. She'd said goodbye to him on a train once before, she would do so again. He had chosen to be a monster.

She was done choosing to be a coward.

"Rrrraaaggghhhh!" Odd-Eyes howled, his call finally breaking through her mind where it had floundered in the face of her earlier panic. With Blake's resolve fortified, she heard his call to look to her Extra Deck.

When she looked inside, her eyes widened at one of the cards within, one of the cards she'd forged before the dance. When she last saw it, it was incomplete, but now, it was newly crystalized. She hadn't noticed before in her frenzied state, but Adam's last attack had provided the spark of aura in a high-stress situation to fully crystalize it. It was powerful, but…

"I can't summon this," she pointed out to her Pillar Dragon. "The Unicorn combo is our best bet, even if they know it's coming. Even if by some miracle I got everything on the field for this thing, I don't have the skills to bring it out alone–"

'You are not alone.'

… no. No, she was not.

"Well, gentlemen, it looks like I'll be making the last gamble of this duel!" Blake called out, slipping a card into her open Pendulum Zone. "I complete my Pendulum Scales with Performapal Odd-Eyes Unicorn! Then, I banish Performapal Springoose from my graveyard to activate its special ability! I target two cards among my Pendulum Monsters, or 'Performapal' or Magician' cards in my Pendulum Zones. Those cards return to my hand."

"Yeah, we know, kitty cat," Torchwick snarked. "You old beau spelled out your combo, remember–"

"I return Performapal Ladyange and Performapal Odd-Eyes Unicorn from my Pendulum Zones to my hand!"

"What?!" the gangster squawked. "You're leaving your dragon on the field?"

Adam's glare narrowed. "That means it won't have its special ability. What are you up to?"

"Like I said, a gamble. I activate Performapal Recasting!" Blake announced, sliding the card she'd drawn from Shuffle Reborn's graveyard effect into Gambol Shroud. She flipped around the two Performapals left in her hand and returned them to her deck, her duel disk's systems shuffling them randomly. "This spell allows me to return any number of Performapal monsters from my hand to my deck, shuffle, and then draw the same number of cards, plus one."

"Your ace is stranded on the field with no effect and is going to be banished at the end of the turn, and you're betting everything on an entirely new hand?" Torchwick groaned, an annoyed side-eye at Adam. "Maybe you weren't the crazy one in the relationship after all."

Adam didn't take his eyes off Blake, his fists clenching as she stared back at his icy glare with burning resolve.

"Draw fast," he dared her. "The mountain nears."

"One!" Blake shouted, pulling her first card. Of the three pulls, she needed two very specific monsters to have even a ghost of a chance of pulling off the play she needed.

She looked at her draw, her brow furrowing. It was a useful spell, but there were others in her deck that could do its job. Getting it just limited the margin for error on her remaining pulls.

"Two!" she called, yanking out her second card.

She paled at the sight of it. It was Soul Pendulum. That wasn't one of the monsters she needed! It wasn't even a monster! She was doomed! Weiss was doomed! Vale was doomed–

No! Her fear was her ally, not her master! A duel wasn't over until the last card was played! Until then, she would keep moving forward!

"Three!" she roared, putting every ounce of her will into drawing her final card.

When she saw what she'd pulled… she smirked.

"Who says black cats are bad luck," she joked, sliding Soul Pendulum into her graveyard slot as she slid her final draw into Gambol Shroud's back-row. "I activate Pendulum Call! With this spell, I can discard one card and then add two 'Magician' Pendulum Monsters from my deck to my hand. I choose Xiangke Magician and Xiangsheng Magician, and use them to set the Pendulum Scales!"

Twin pillars of light flashed into being on either side of her. In one, a fearsome magician with a tower shield inscribed with a constellation soared to the peak. In the other, a graceful spellcaster with a flowing orange robe and elegant longbow rose to match him in height.

"Xiangke and Xiangsheng?" Torchwick muttered. "Never heard of those monsters. Hornhead?"

"I… I haven't either," Adam admitted, his eye flickering between them in surprise. "These… are new."

"Here's an old favorite for you. Monster Reborn!" Blake shouted, slamming the first card she'd drawn into her duel disk. The ethereal symbol of the afterlife blazed before her, its energy morphing into a familiar form. "We all know how this one works, right? I target one monster in any graveyard and special summon it to my field."

"Don't explain Monster Reborn when we could go splat any second!" Torchwick snapped.

"Revive!" Blake howled. "Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon!"

The energy of the afterlife solidified into the dark purple dragon, electricity crackling between the mandibles flanking its mouth (ATK 2500/DEF 2000).

"Huh?" Torchwick pouted, cocking an eyebrow in befuddlement. "All that for him? He's got no Overlay Units. He's useless to you! You'd have been better off bringing back that Blue-Eyes Alternative Dragon."

Dark Rebellion let a shrieking battle cry as it flew up side-by-side with Odd-Eyes, one that the unusually joyful dragon returned with an echoing roar at their foes. Unlike the last time the siblings stood on the field together, they were on the same side and all business.

And yet, Blake noted, their eyes did not glow like when they faced off during the first semester. Nor did she feel her mind flooded with magic enough to influence her body.

And she was pretty sure she knew why.

She turned to her teammate, the white-haired girl still on her knees, muttering her desperate plea. There was no sign of magical adrenaline flooding her body, even with her Pillar Dragon's revival.

"Weiss? Weiss!" Blake barked. "Get up, Weiss!"

"I don't want to be a monster. I don't want to be a monster. I don't want to be a monster…"

Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon glanced back at his mistress, mewling as if he was Zwei having just been refused a belly rub.

Adam sneered, a dry chuckle leaving his lips at the heiress's pitiful state. It caused Blake's impatience to dim. She remembered how she'd lost her temper with her friend's emotional turmoil after she saw Banesaw's brand, too wrapped up in her own fears of powerlessness. That would not help any of them now.

"Weiss, get up," she said, softer this time. "If you're looking for absolution, you won't find it on the ground."

"I don't want to be a monster. I don't… I don't want…" the heiress shuddered, her breaths labored and tears dripping down beneath her. "I can't be his monster. But if I fight someone he made, who finds to avenge themselves for my family's crimes, I will be. Everyone The Blood-Soaked Bull has killed is my family's fault–"

"And mine as well," Blake cut in, her voice gentle but precise as she unbalanced her friend's despair. "What Torchwick said before, whether I like it or not, it's the truth. I helped Adam for years. I was his partner, side-by-side on every mission. I watched him murder, and I let him convince me they were 'accidents'. I averted my eyes from the truth. If I hadn't, if I'd held him accountable from the start, maybe we wouldn't be here now."

Weiss's head remained down, but she managed to raise her arm to wipe away her tears. "His sins are not your fault."

"Maybe not. But they are my responsibility," Blake declared, echoing her teammate's resolve from Oobleck's questioning at the campfire.

She held out her arm, offering Weiss her hand as she did Adam.

The heiress tilted her head a fraction, just enough for her to catch a glance of the offered appendage.

"Is there any way?" she pleaded. "Every path I see just leads to isolation, to hurting the wrong people. Maybe there are no right people to hurt. Maybe the path of a huntress is just the path of a monster who happens to work for the kingdoms."

"Maybe it is."

Weiss' head flicked up toward her teammate, her face finally revealed. Her eyes pulsed, bloodshot, her cheeks glistening with tears.

"I wish I had a better answer. But… life is not a fairy tale," Blake confessed. "Even still, why are we here if not to make it better, to do what we think is right?"

"Everyone thinks they're right," Weiss spat, venom stabbing through her despair. "But they're just looking out for themselves."

"Does Ruby?" Blake queried.

Weiss' lip quivered. "I'm not Ruby."

"Neither am I," Blake laughed. "But we're the ones who ran away from our ivory towers. We threw away that peace because we thought we could help people by abandoning the solitude that came with it. Now, we're here. And doing nothing is a choice too. I don't know which path is right or wrong. But I do know we must choose. And…"

She paused. All the months that she'd known the girl before her suddenly slammed into her all at once. Their first meeting in the Beacon courtyard, watching her get obsessed with The Onomatopeia Gang every week, their squabbles at Forever Fall, their duel that changed the fate of Team RWBY… nights of bliss and joy on Patch during the semester break, her voice cheering her on during the promotion exams, their jubilant revelry during the dance.

A year ago, she'd thought the heiress one of the great evils of the world. Yet now…

Blake smiled down at her. "... it'd be pretty lonely fighting without you."

Weiss sniffled, a new round of tears beginning to well in her crystal blue eyes, blurring her scar over the left.

Odd-Eyes and Dark Rebellion purred with satisfaction, their eyes beginning to glow. They stamped their feet into the floor, the reinforced metal of the dueling car, tempered to withstand any monster's strength, bending to their stamping paws.

"If I ever take the wrong path… if I think I'm right and I'm not," Weiss asked. "Save me if you can… and stop me if you must."

"Only if you do the same for me," Blake replied, wriggling her cat ears under her bow. "Of the two of us, I've got more of a personal checkered past."

Weiss managed a tiny, soft smile. "We're teammates. We'll face it together. Unite as one."

She reached up and took Blake's offered hand. With a great heave, the cat faunus hauled the heiress back to her feet.

And the moment they both stood tall, their eyes blazed like suns.

"Woah, what's with the light show?" Torchwick remarked, suddenly on guard. "Bullhead, do those glowing eyes remind you of… you know…"

"Blake does not have power like hers," Adam hissed. "She didn't–"

"Xiangsheng Magician activates its Pendulum Effect!" Blake proclaimed, an unnatural timbre reverberating through her voice as blinding red light raged in her eyes. "One Xyz Monster's Rank is made equal to a Level Five or higher monster on the field!"

"Which means since Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon is Level Seven, Dark Rebellion Xyz Monster becomes Rank Seven!" Weiss finished, her voice equally warped as black stars shined in her once blue eyes.

Xiangsheng Magician pulled back its bowstring and let loose an arrow of starlight. It shattered into shimmering dust, sprinkling over Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon.

"Oh, wow, that's… completely pointless," Torchwick groaned. "Seriously, what is going on?"

"Xiangke Magician activates its Pendulum Effect!"

The magician in the Pendulum Zone twisted its tower shield, stars flowing out from the painted constellation. They streaked through the air, tracing an arcane sigil in blue flame. When it was complete, the new emblem released a new sapphire comet that descended onto Dark Rebellion, embuing it with new power.

"What happened?" Adam demanded. "What did that do?"

"One Xyz Monster on the field can now treat its rank as a level and be used for an Xyz Summon!"

"Be used for a…" Torchwick's eyes widened. "That's… that's not a thing…"

"And impossible!" Adam howled, though with a flicker of doubt flashing through his unbranded eye. "You can't Xyz Summon, Blake! You could never have learned how to do it so quickly!"

He was right, of course. Xyz Summoning was a delicate and precise art even in its most basic forms. And what was about to be attempted was far from basic. It was unheard of. Blake had no idea how to do it alone.

Of course, she had no idea how to Synchro Summon before the dance either.

"Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon!" she shouted.

"Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon!" Weiss yelled.

"Build the Overlay Network! Unite as one!"

A golden galaxy of stars blossomed across the floor of the dueling car. Odd-Eyes and Dark Rebellion morphed into nodes of energy, siphoned into the spiraling heavens.

"Dragon with different-colored eyes! Goodbye to solitude! Goodbye to the peace we always knew! Meet the storm with your black wrath! Xyz Summon!"

Instead of the traditional supernova, a column of blinding lightning erupted from the center of the stars, celestial thunder booming through the train.

Booming throughout all of Remnant.

"The dragon with shining eyes of fury! Rank Seven! Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon!"

---

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"Thanks for getting here early to help set up, Tai," the old doctor said. "You know, I remember when you were just a rebellious punk always trying to run out of here to the next adventure."

"Oh, yeah, that takes me back," Tai chuckled, setting down the heavy privacy screens he'd been carrying to the hospital atrium. "I used to try to leave with a twisted ankle and say it was just a scrape."

"Well to be fair, you did have scrapes too at the time."

Various doctors and nurses skittered about, setting up for the second day of free flu shots for the island. Technically, the hunting duelist security wasn't required to come early and help set up, but Tai liked to practice what he taught, and he always tried to impress to his Signal classes the importance of helping the people they protected with even the small stuff. Not that many of them really listened, what with Grimm Hunting and bounty missions being where the big lien was paid. Even Ruby was more interested in "kicking bad guy butt" than just helping repair a broken fence. The former was more profitable and more romantic.

"Now you're old and sentimental like the rest of us."

"Hey," Tai whined. "I'm not that old. You've still got decades on me, doc."

"No comeback for the sentimental part, I see," the doctor teased. "You sure you're not just here to fight off the empty nest syndrome. Yang and Ruby are all grown up and saving the day themselves now."

"Ha! That they are. That they are…" Tai mused, his pride in his girls mixing with the habitual terror every parent felt when their kids were out in the big scary world where they couldn't protect them. It was like letting her heart walk out of your body and into a pit of Beowolves.

He rubbed the bracer that hid his Signer Mark, acutely aware of the beat of his weathered heart. "But with Zwei with them, they can hopefully avoid repeating some of their old man's mis… takes…"

His voice trailed off as a familiar red and black portal cut through the air beside him. His combat instincts instantly flared up, his body leaping into a combat stance and deploying his duel disk.

"Get back!" he ordered the doctor, the surrounding medical personnel's gazes drawn towards the abnormal gateway. "Everyone! Get back!"

Those who'd been at the hospital the night of Yang's birth, when Qrow had flown through a window and soon been followed by a similar portal and a very angry huntress in labor, knew who that particular semblance belonged to and started corralling the younger staff away.

Tai's eyes narrowed at the portal, his mind whirling. Why would she summon a portal to him? His Signer Mark was flaring, so that meant she had her dragon summoned on the other side, but he couldn't think of any reason she'd come looking for a fight with him after over a decade of ignoring his existence.

Of course, the answer was revealed when a long-haired beauty was thrown through the portal. Except this one was not black-haired, but blonde.

"Yang!" Tai shouted, all thought of Raven forgotten as he leapt forward and caught his daughter, cradling her in his arms.

His eyes widened at the sight of her. Unconscious, covered in dried blood and newly scabbed cuts, and her arm… where was her right arm?

"Oh my gods!" the old doctor exclaimed. "Get the ER on scroll! We need a team here! Stat!"

The medical personnel immediately moved into action, their training and experience allowing them to set about saving lives even through their shock and confusion. Normally, Tai's own would enable him to do the same.

Instead, he was paralyzed with horror, his heartbeat thundering in his ears as he held his heart in his arms. His heart. His daughter. His little girl… and she was hurt so horribly.

What could have done this? He'd trained Yang, he knew her skill, what she could handle. First-year away missions were simple things like shadowing frontier sheriffs or being extra muscle for detectives dealing with petty crooks. What, on a first-year away mission, could have possibly done this?

… unless they weren't on a first-year mission.

He shoved his bubbling anger aside as the doctors wheeled in a gurney. He didn't know all the facts, and it was unimportant for the moment anyway. All that mattered was getting his little girl some help.

And praying that his other little girl wasn't in the same kind of danger.

---

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"Hey! Don't throw her–Eep!"

Ruby didn't even get to finish complaining before Raven grabbed her by the collar and chucked her towards the swirling red and black portal too. The silver-eyed girl squealed as she tumbled through the air.

It felt weird as her legs entered the portal, a cool, air-conditioned space on the other side of the warp. It was serene and comfortable, especially compared to the stale, smoky air that singed the tunnel in the aftermath of the bombs. And that was without mentioning the tidal wave of Grimm steadily approaching.

Still, she couldn't leave. Yang needed to be med evac-ed, but her? She still had a job to do.

She wasn't entirely sure what happened. She tried to use her semblance in a fit of attempting anything she could to keep from going through the portal, but it shouldn't have worked. Speed didn't do anything when you had nothing to push off.

And yet, she felt herself be consumed by her rose petals and the next second, she'd zipped past Raven and onto the train tracks.

"What?" the bandit leader exclaimed, her masked face whipping between her portal and the new position of the girl she'd tried to throw through it. The rogue huntress's Signer Dragon took the chance to pick up the scattered pieces of Bumblebee and toss them through the red and black gateway. "That portal goes to your father! Get back in there and get to safety!"

Ruby scooped up the last shard of Hot Red Dragon Archfiend's torn card from the tunnel floor, rising to her feet and turning toward the onrushing Grimm. "No. Someone needs to bottleneck if Weiss and Blake can't stop the train."

"You can't bottleneck thousands of Grimm!" Raven argued. "Even if you collapsed the tunnel, this many would just burrow the rubble. Why do you think the kingdom sealed them off completely when Mt. Glenn fell?"

"I have Silver Eyes."

"Have you ever used them?"

"Well… uh…" Ruby stammered. "Kind of?"

Raven's snarl was audible even through her mask. "Get. In. The. Portal."

"No!" Ruby shouted. She whirled towards Raven and held out her hand. "Fight with me. Maybe we can stop them."

"You're delusional."

"We're Signers! We have our dragons!" Ruby pleaded. "There are hundreds of thousands of people in Vale. Even if we don't stop them, every second we stall them gives the kingdom's defenses time to save lives–"

"At the cost of ours!" Raven barked. "Stop being obsessed with dying in a fight you can't win and get in the damn portal, Summer!"

Ruby recoiled from the last word. The noise from the oncoming Grimm and the train racing ahead was deafening, yet the entire tunnel felt silent.

Raven didn't seem to realize what she'd said for a second, only to immediately clench her fists and turn away in a huff when she did. "Last chance. Portal out and live, or stay here and die. I assure you, the people you seek to protect would not lay down their lives to protect you."

"They're not supposed to. I'm the hunting duelist," Ruby sighed, pulling back her hand and turning towards the charging Grimm. She gulped in terror, her knees shaking. Yet still, she stood. "This is what I signed up for."

"Like mother, like daughter, like dragon," Raven growled. "All so eager to sacrifice yourselves for nothing."

Ruby heard the portal to her dad, to safety, close, a new one opening to wherever Raven was going.

"Stardust Dragon," she asked. "Do you know where it is?"

Raven paused as she stepped toward her portal. "You won't find it. Like your mother, it is gone from this world."

With that, she marched through the gateway, her dragon following afterward before it closed.

Ruby looked at the Grimm horde and took a deep breath, trying to ignore how utterly it failed to calm her trembling form. She thought she faintly heard the roar of an approaching duel runner, but with the nightmarish creatures in pouncing distance of her, she ignored her wishful thinking. Yang and Raven were gone. Weiss and Blake were trapped on the train. It was just her.

Just her against armageddon.

"Stable mindset. Protect people. Stable mindset. Protect people," she murmured. "Stable–Woah!"

Two things happened at once. First, the cosmic storm world she'd encountered the Queen flashed into existence, overlaid over the real world like a translucent ghost. Except from the looks of things, the current state was more similar to how the mystical realm had appeared back at the dance. Starving Venom was pumping her full of Creation and Destruction Magic, and when she glanced back towards the train, she saw Odd-Eyes and Dark Rebellion doing the same with Blake and Weiss. She imagined her eyes were shining with yellow light, her natural silver orbs glowing at the center.

The second thing was that a duel runner snatched her up.

"Eeeeppp!" Ruby squeaked, her red hood snagged from behind and yanked into the air as a duel runner booked it away from the approaching Grimm. "Hey! What are you–Ilia?"

"You were standing in front of a Grimm horde!" Ilia shouted, the chameleon faunus riding a hi-tech Atlas military duel runner and yanking the other girl onto the seat behind her. "Are you actually insane?! Who stands in front of a giant Grimm horde!?"

"I had a plan!" Ruby protested. "Kind of."

That said, she couldn't say she wasn't grateful for the unexpected rescue. The pair sped down the tunnel, the White Fang operative skillfully ducking and dodging the Beowolves and Nevermore that rushed ahead of the pack. Fortunately, the experimental duel runner's speed was enough to let them break away.

"Commander! Over here! Commander!"

Against the side of the tunnel were about two dozen masked White Fang grunts, new recruits from the recent Vale rallies most likely. They'd used their stolen duel runners to form a perimeter against the wall, an inactive portable hardlight dust generator in its center. They had several Chimera, The Flying Mythical Beasts out, digging into the wall of dirt and rock to try to carve out a crevice to hide in.

"Hit the generator!" Ilia yelled, Grimm far too close for comfort. "Hit the generator! Hit the generator!"

She ollied up and launched her duel runner over the perimeter vehicles. One of the grunts slammed the activation button of the dust generator. A curved barrier of hardlight projected out from the device, slashing from the floor to the ceiling around the ramshackle group.

Ilia curved her runner's landing so that the motorcycle's skid only smacked her and Ruby against the wall instead of outright smashing them to pieces. The silver-eyed girl didn't even bruise through her aura.

Yet, she spotted plentiful scrapes and cuts dotting Ilia's arm and side.

"Your aura's still broken," Ruby muttered, blinking at the other girl. "You drove out to get me from the Grimm without aura–"

"Peter!" Ilia called, gritting her teeth and ignoring Ruby as she shambled off her duel runner and approached a faunus with panda ears sticking out from his head. "How's the digging?"

"We're going as fast as we can, ma'am–human!"

All the grunts whipped towards Ruby, deploying their duel disks.

The silver-eyed girl sheepishly waved. "Uh… hi?"

"Never mind the human!" Ilia barked.

"But, ma'am, her eyes are freaking glowing–"

"There is a horde of Grimm about to come crashing into all of us! At the very least, she's a body to put between us and them!"

"Yeah!" Ruby exclaimed. "I'll protect you guys–"

"Rrrrrrraaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhh!"

A tempestuous roar thundered through the tunnel, suffocating the howls of the Grimm. Ilia and the grunts all whirled around towards its source, the train cars and the hardlight barriers shielding them disintegrated in a gargantuan flash of violet lightning.

But without her ability to see the mystical spectrum, Ruby doubted they could understand what was unfolding as she did.

---

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As the morning sun rose over Vale, Ozpin downed his sixth cup of coffee of the last eight hours. After the summoning of Team RWBY's dragons the day before and the mystical reverberations he'd felt all the way back in the city, he'd found himself incapable of sleeping. He'd tried establishing contact with Barty, but a freak storm (conjured by the near convergence no doubt) over Mt. Glenn had prevented CCT connection. The weather was too treacherous to even send backup, short one of James' battleships, which might have just escalated the situation even further.

Regardless, the tempest had steadily cleared up over the morning, so it would be a simple matter to place a call in an hour or two. Until then, he just had to remain calm and–

Timaeus' card lit up like a light bulb plugged into a mountain of lightning dust.

"Oh–"

---

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"-what now?!" Cinder whined, glaring at Hermos' card, blaring with shining light.

It had been one day. One day! Less than twenty-four hours since those Team RWBY brats and their random magic dragons had triggered her Legendary Dragon lighting up like a firework, and now they were doing it again! Less than one day after they'd last done it at the dance!

What the hell was going on with them?!

---

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Far away from Beacon, beyond an ocean, an elegant woman with skin like ash laid atop dark soil and laughed at the blood-red sky. Beside her, the card of a black dragon blazed like a brilliant star.

"They are ready!" The Queen cackled. "They and the worthy Pillars among them!"

---

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Roman Torchwick considered himself a reasonable man in a world that most of the time refused to give him the same courtesy.

Never had that feeling, that terrifying feeling of sheer smallness, ever felt more certain.

The walls and ceiling of the dueling car had been blown away. Aside from its floor and the engine car, every single part of the train had been incinerated. The racing winds of the vehicle's shearing speed were the least of the forces buffeting the thief, the rush of an angry tempest bearing down on him.

Even with the hurricane-force winds it generated, the dragon before him was obscured in a black storm cloud. Violet electricity crackled through the darkness, illuminating brief flashes of a towering leviathan of black, purple, and red. The only part that was consistently illuminated were its piercing eyes, one scarlet and one turquoise, as they glared down on their prey (ATK 3000/DEF 2500).

Well, those and the eyes of its mistresses. The schoolgirl huntresses were completely hidden by their beast's smog, only the unnatural red and black glows of their eyes haunting their enemies like Grimm waiting to strike from the underbrush.

"This isn't possible," Adam whispered. The Blood-Soaked Bull stepped back, his samurai moving in to shield him as terror warped the terrorist's visage. Torchwick had never realized how young the other man looked, even with his brand. "This is not possible! You can't Xyz Summon, let alone with another Xyz–"

"When Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon is Xyz Summoned using an Xyz Monster as material, every Level Seven or lower monster on your field is destroyed! And you take a thousand points of damage for each of them!"

The dark dragon let out a hellish roar, its sonic force tearing up the dueling car floor and paralyzing Secret Six Samurai - Rihan and Legendary Six Samurai - Kizan. Two swift bolts of purple lightning obliterated the armored warriors, a third already streaking for Adam.

Which meant that, as usual, it was up to Torchwick to clean up the mess.

"Trap card open!" he commanded. "Damage Diet!"

His final facedown flipped up and extended a colorful cartoon ladder. It wasn't strictly a Toon card, but Neo still liked the aesthetic so he'd kept it around despite being a common. He'd side-decked it into his deck when Adam had called in the enemy's presence, anticipating having to deal with Red and her cavalcade of effect damage like he always seemed to.

Fortunately, it looked to be helpful even in his present situation, the cartoon ladder shooting up and intercepting the oncoming lightning bolt. Only the sparks rained down on Torchwick and his ally, a downpour they were easily able to weather.

Roman Torchwick & Adam Taurus: 3200 Life Points

Adam's eye widened at the cartoon ladder that shielded him, looking almost as scared of it as he had been of the dragon bearing down on them. "Damage Diet?!"

"Yeah. You never seen it before? You might want to get your own. It may be common, but it's a handy little number," Torchwick postured, grinning back at the ominous cloud, putting on a confident front while trying to calculate if he could survive a jump from the now open-view train with the aura he had left. "Nice try, ladies, but all the damage you deal this round is now halved. Better luck next turn–"

"THERE IS NO NEXT TURN!"

"Huh?" Torchwick squawked.

The dark dragon spread out its wings within the storm, new extensions expanding the tempest as lightning crackled between them.

"On the turn its effect destroys monsters, Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon can attack three times!"

"Three time…" Torchwick stumbled, the wind blowing away his prized hat as he gaped in abject horror. "That's not… that's not possible."

Attacking multiple times in one Battle Phase was one of the most powerful abilities a monster could possess, allowing a single creature to potentially wipe a duelist out from full life points in a single turn. That meant that forging cards capable of doing so was nigh impossible. The few specimens that succeeded in doing so usually came with some sort of restrictive caveat like "could attack all monsters the opponent controls" or "can make multiple attacks per turn on monsters". Only a scant few of the rarest, most legendary of monsters could just flat-out attack multiple times, and even then their raw power was often pitiful and the absolute maximum number of times they could battle in one turn was twice.

"What the hell are you?" he whimpered, Adam frozen stiff beside him. "What the hell are you?!"

The extensions of the dragon's right side coalesced their lightning to spawn lethal energy spears. The left side soon followed suit, the flash of their creation unveiling the darkness of the storm.

Unveiling the SDC heiress and The Odd-Eyed Bandit. Cold, focused, and fresh out of mercy.

Huntresses at last.

"Battle! Wrath of Rebellion, Sweeping Static Strike!"

Lightning surged down from the left wing, Torchwick and Adam shrieking as their aura crackled under the electrocution.

Roman Torchwick & Adam Taurus: 1700 Life Points

Thunder boomed as the right wing unleashed its tempest, both criminals driven down to their knees.

Roman Torchwick & Adam Taurus: 200 Life Points

The mountainside approached, the train less than half a minute away at its current speed. Torchwick tried to crawl away as violet sparks consumed him, but he knew he'd never escape the explosion of all the dust stored in the engine car even if he survived throwing himself over the side.

The dragon swooped in, its trail of lightning incinerating Belladonna's bow. Two sharp mandibles protruding from its fangs tore up what remained of the dueling car and smashed into its mistresses' foes, shattering what scraps of their aura remained.

Roman Torchwick & Adam Taurus: 0 Life Points

Winner: Weiss Schnee & Blake Belladonna

The engine car slammed into the rockface, a rainbow cataclysm of dust exploding with enough momentum and force to punch through the mountain. It rolled over the train, melting whatever wasn't crushed by the impact as it pushed into the sunshine of a Vale park just after dawn. Morning joggers and homeless squatters alike screamed in terror and ran for the hills as rubble and scrap metal rained down on them.

Which was all fine and dandy, but Roman was personally more curious about how he was still alive to observe all this. Sure, he felt his vision growing dark from the powerplant of electricity that'd gotten shoved through him, Adam was already conked out as far as he could see, but he'd been knocked out enough to know it wasn't the permanent kind of lights out. He should have been incinerated when the train hit the mountain.

Then he noticed the orb of violet electricity surrounding him, three more shielding The Blood-Soaked Bull and their foes. The dragon landed atop all four of them, shielding the quartet as rubble rained down over them.

Torchwick blacked out as they were buried alive, wondering what kind of monster could survive a head-on collision with a mountain without a scratch.

As the terrified screams of "Grimm!" echoed down through the boulders, he could only pray that Neo made it out okay.

---

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"No," Ruby whimpered, sunlight streaming through the open end of the tunnel, the tide of Grimm rampaging right into the heart of Vale. "We failed."

They tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it didn't matter. All their investigating, everything they'd pushed through, Yang losing her arm and her runner, all of it was for nothing.

People were going to die. Beacon would deploy as fast as they could to deal with the threat, but no matter how swiftly they moved, people were going to die. The attack was too sudden, too large, too close to the heart of the kingdom.

If worst came to worst, by nightfall, there would be no more Vale.

"Wh–why'd they go through with the attack?" Peter the panda faunus shrieked. "Didn't they see the Grimm trailing the train?"

Ilia's skin went white, literally white, her eyes wide as she gaped at the hellish tide and Ruby. "This… this was the attack."

"Oh, now you believe me–Ah!" Ruby snapped, jumping back as a Goliath rammed against the hardlight barrier.

With all the fear emanating from the squad of White Fang grunts, it was no surprise that a few of the hundreds of Grimm were attracted to the immediate prey. It was just their luck that one of them was a towering armored juggernaut that even high-light monsters struggled to harm.

"I–it can't get in, right?" Peter stammered.

"Uh… maybe?" Ruby gulped. "They're pretty high capacity. It takes a high-level monster to even make them flicker. It can hold off one Goliath."

Two more Goliaths joined the first, hammering their armored skulls into the barrier as it began to flicker under their relentless assault.

"Everyone get away from the edge!" Ilia ordered, corralling her troops against the wall. "Turn the Chimeras towards the barrier! Any limb that gets through, cut it off!"

The masked grunts leapt to follow her command, readying to defend themselves from the creatures whose faces they wore. Even still, they would never survive. There were too many of them. Die with honor they might, but they would die.

They would… unless Ruby saved them.

She steeled her body and forced herself to stare ahead at the Goliaths. The hardlight wall fizzled and flickered, the generator buzzing as it was steadily overwhelmed.

Ruby clenched her fists, pushing aside her jitters of terror as best she could, silver light gathering in her gaze. "Stable mindset. Stable mindset. Stable mindset. Remember what you want to protect."

Singing Onomatopoeia Gang songs with Weiss and Nora.

Talking books with Blake while Ren made tea.

Introducing Pyrrha to comics with Jaune and Yang–

Yang.

Yang. Bloody.

Yang. Broken.

Yang. With one arm.

'You won't go away like mom?'

'I promise. And if I do, I'll always come back, safe and sound.'

The silver light flickered out from Ruby's eyes, replaced by frightened tears.

'Stardust Dragon. Do you know where it is?'

'You won't find it.'

The Goliath's tusks tore through the hardlight barrier, ripping holes in the holographic walls large enough for Beowolves to leap through.

'Like your mother, it is gone from this world.'

Like she would be.

She would save no one. She would help no one. She would fade into history, just another life lost among the thousands she'd failed that day.

A Beowolf crashed down in front of her and charged for her throat. She raised Crescent Rose and drew her final card.

Only for a familiar roar to split the world once more.

"Rrrrrrraaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhh!"

---

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Civilians scrambled to escape the incoming rush. Local law enforcement desperately put in calls to Beacon, some brave enough to try and hold the line until huntsmen arrived, but most fleeing as fast as their legs could carry them.

All the while more Grimm began to pour out from the tunnel. Most who'd grown up behind the protection of Vale's walls had only ever seen pictures of the terrifying creatures, propaganda flooding their senses so they'd dismiss the demons as dangerous, but nothing their brave hunting duelist protectors couldn't handle. It was necessary to keep negativity down, to ward off invasions. But in the midst of one, it only made fear spread like wildfire, for the demons from nightmare had come to kill them all.

It was the dawn of Vale's final day.

At least until violet lightning ripped through the heavens.

"Rrrrrrraaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhhhh!"

"Leave!"

The hill of rubble at the foot of the tunnel opening erupted, a black and red dragon blasting through the stone, its eyes of scarlet and turquoise surrounding the purple oval jewel in the center of its forehead. At its feet stood two girls, one white-haired, one black-haired. One human, one faunus. Both were well known to the public if the public wasn't panicking.

They pointed defiantly at the swarming black creatures and their dragon flared out its wings. Tempestuous lightning poured out like a waterfall, a sea of purple electricity flooding over the tide of Grimm. Each bolt flashed from one beast to another, from a Beowolf to a Deathstalker to a Nevermore, all of them shrieking as they were incinerated.

In the blink of an eye, every single Grimm under the sun had been annihilated.

Yet, that was only a hundred Grimm at most, the first hundred that had raced to the tip of the horde's spearhead. Thousands more awaited in the tunnel, waiting to come forth, overwhelm the girls and their dragon, and sack the eyesore that was the city of humanity.

But they did not.

From the moment that Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon had roared, no Grimm moved a single centimeter.

---

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Ruby had been terrified. She'd thought she was going to die. If not to the Beowolf dashing for her throat, then to the trio of Goliaths tearing through the hardlight barrier or one of the thousands of other Grimm flooding the tunnel.

But then, the Beowolf running at her suddenly froze, as if its muscles had turned to ice in an instant. And the Goliaths stopped ravaging the hardlight projection, even as it would only take one more tug of their tusks to rip it apart entirely. The sea of black creatures with white body masks that had served as the background of the failing siege had paused, from the tiniest Nevermore chick to the most enormous Deathstalker.

Not until they turned around. And peacefully, orderly, impossibly marched the opposite way down the tunnel, back to Mt. Glenn.

Ruby, Ilia, and every White Fang grunt stood there gaping as they left. Steadily, minute by minute, their imminent death just… walked away.

"Huh?" Ruby squeaked.

"Did… did that just happen?" Peter asked. "I'm not just dead and hallucinating, right?"

"You can't hallucinate if you're dead… yes, it did, Peter. We're alive. Somehow," Ilia replied, though her gaze lingered down the tunnel at the Grimm's rear. "Grimm don't run."

No, they didn't. That was the fundamental rule of the Grimm. Some got old enough to wait for the opportune moment to strike, but once they attacked, they would only stop when they were dead, even if it meant their death. They did not run.

And that could hardly have been called running. It wasn't even a retreat from a losing battle. It was a perfect, orderly withdrawal that would have made any army jealous. As if the order had been given, and they had promptly left as commanded.

"Commanded?" Ruby muttered to herself, the golden glow fading from her eyes and taking any magical adrenaline with it.

Now that she thought about it, she had seen Grimm run away a few times. But only when very specific monsters confronted them: Dark Rebellion Xyz Dragon in the Emerald Forest, all four siblings back at Mt. Glenn. That roar she'd heard, had it come from a combination of the dragons, like Odd-Eyes Wing Dragon?

"Everyone! Masks off!" Ilia ordered her troops. "Take your decks out of your duel disks. "We'll take the Paladin runners closer to the Vale exit, then dump the stolen Atlas gear and anything else that could identify us. We'll go on foot and blend into the crowd."

"How do you know there's going to be a crowd, ma'am?"

"Grimm just popped out in the middle of Vale and then left five seconds later. If there isn't a crowd, something else killed everyone in the city when we weren't looking."

The grunts murmured in agreement on that count. But then one pointed at Ruby.

"What about her?" Peter inquired, pointing at Ruby. "What if she blows our cover when we're trying to get away?"

"Fair point," Ilia conceded. She turned the huntress. "You going to do that?"

She should have, shouldn't she? She was a hunting duelist. She was supposed to stop whatever bad guys were in front of her. Ilia and her crew may not have known about the Grimm invasion, but they were knowingly planning to take part in a terrorist attack. Even outnumbered, she should have tried to incapacitate them. Ilia was wounded and had no aura, and the others were amateurs. If she could use her semblance to avoid their duel anchors, she could summon Black Rose Dragon and blow them all away. It wasn't a sure thing, but maybe she could do it.

But she wouldn't.

"I'm not," she replied, her shoulders drooping, her muscles heavy. Without some sort of magical adrenaline running through her, she was able to feel just how utterly exhausted she was, mentally, physically, and emotionally. "Miraculously, no one has died today. I… I want to keep it that way."

Ilia nodded and looked back to her troops. "You heard her."

"But ma'am, what if she's lying?"

"We'll take the runners and leave her here just in case. It's close enough that she can make it back on foot or on monster, but we'll have a sizable lead," Ilia answered. "Move out!"

"Ma'am!"

The grunts set about getting their Paladin runners upright and ready to move. Ilia went to do the same, but hesitated, lingering near Ruby.

"Your sister?" she asked. "Were you able to save her?"

Ruby nodded. "I… think. At least… as close as I could."

"Good," Ilia said. "When I rode out to grab you, that was Raven Branwen I saw you talking to."

"You know her?"

"We've had to fight off Branwen Tribe attacks on faunus villages a lot in Mistral."

"Makes sense. She's… I don't know what she is to me. Today was the first time I ever met her," Ruby admitted. "Ilia, when Blake summoned Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon when she was with the White Fang, did the Grimm ever act… weird?"

"Around Odd-Eyes? No, just normal Grimm. Trying to kill everyone," Ilia's eyes narrowed. "You think Odd-Eyes, goofy, dancing Odd-Eyes had something to do with this weirdness today?"

"Call it a hunch," Ruby replied.

The first time the Grimm had ever run from Dark Rebellion was in the Emerald Forest, when it and Odd-Eyes' cards had, unknowingly, been in close proximity. Maybe them being so close for the first time had triggered something in the monster spirits?

"Well, I fought beside Blake for years, and I never saw anything like that when she brought out Odd-Eyes," Ilia shrugged. Her head turned and she gazed forlornly down the path to Vale, sunshine flowing in to the dark tunnel. "But she also didn't have a monster that could let her survive ramming through a mountain before. And there were many things I was too afraid to see."

"Years…" Ruby murmured. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Fight. I've been a hunting duelist for a day and I'm exhausted."

Ilia scowled. "Some people don't have a choice but to fight–"

"That's not what I mean. I get choosing to fight, choosing to help because it's the right thing to do," Ruby said. She gazed down at her hand. It was still shaking, long after the last Grimm had left her sight. "I thought I knew what that meant. I was ready to die if I had to. I thought I was ready to kill if I had to. But I didn't think… killing, killing people who weren't 'bad' guys, was the job."

"You're talking about me?" Ilia scoffed. "Still thinking I'm a 'good person'?"

"I mean you did yank me out of the way of a horde of Grimm."

Ilia bit her lip, glaring at the silver-eyed huntress. But she couldn't help but let out a frustrated sigh. "You want black and white morality? Pick a frontier village that can't pay you, plant your flag there anyway, and then fight Grimm and only Grimm for the rest of your life."

Ruby chuckled. "Romantic. But with Weiss and Blake being who they are, I don't think I can avoid being in the spotlight if I'm their team leader. Plus, I have… stuff. Magic. If I can help more people with it, shouldn't I?"

"Different people are going to have different ideas of what that help you 'should' be giving is. And not all of them are going to be 'good and evil' even if they're in conflict with each other," Ilia countered. "You'll have to choose a side, even if it's just to start your own. You will make enemies of 'good people' and give them good reason to hate you. Otherwise, you'll be on no one's side and make enemies of everyone."

"Then how am I supposed to know if I'm doing the right thing, the thing a selfless hero would do?"

The thing her mom would do.

Ilia scoffed. "You know what happens to people like that outside a fairy tale? Either the world walks all over them or they die."

"Commander!" Peter called, revving up his runner. "We're ready."

"Good!" Ilia replied. She glanced back to Ruby one final time. "Fight for yourself. Your life and exactly how you believe the world should be. Speaking from experience, if you don't, no one else will."

She set off to join her troops and drove away on their Paladin Racers.

Leaving Ruby to stew in the tunnel, unsure if the path of the huntress she'd always dreamed of would lead her to the shining light of Vale or the dark ruination of Mt. Glenn.

---

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Blake groaned as Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon vanished from above, all adrenaline leaving her body as she sagged forward with exhaustion. "Ugh. It did not feel this way after Odd-Eyes Wing Dragon at the dance."

"That was hardlight manifestation. Plus, all four of us were present and accounted for then. Yang feels weirdly far away for some reason," Weiss mewled, bending over as she panted for breath. "Not to mention, I'm still not a hundred percent sure, we actually survived. We could be dead and just hallucinating."

"You can't hallucinate if you're dead," Blake sighed. "You're just dead."

The two of them slouched atop a hill of rubble in the middle of one of Vale's parks, Adam and Torchwick lying unconscious amidst the rocks. Blake hurried down to check their pulses, while Weiss took note of the crowds of people coming out of hiding now that the Grimm were gone.

"You'd think they'd at least wait for Professor Goodwitch to show and plug the hole. Who knows when Grimm will come back after…" Weiss's brow furrowed. "What did we do to them?"

"You mean what Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon did to them? Blasting them all with lightning and… and…" Blake frowned, a few crucial seconds of her memory fuzzier than she'd like. "I'm not sure. He couldn't have vaporized all the Grimm in one shot. There were thousands of them."

"So what, they just left? What, did he ask them nicely or something–Blake! Ears!"

"What?"

"Ears!" Weiss exclaimed, pointing at the top of her own head. "Bow! Ears! No bow over ears!"

Blake paled, suddenly realizing that the black bow that'd hidden her cat ears was indeed gone. And while that was lovely for the refreshing breeze rushing over her feline attributes, it was catastrophic given she was in public and her true identity was exposed.

Weiss jumped in front of her, trying to keep the growing crowd of awed onlookers from getting a good look. But there were too many of them and they were spreading too wide. The Schnee heiress couldn't cover every angle.

Maybe Blake could quickly cut off a piece of her clothes for a makeshift bow? If she moved before any of the crowd thought to pull out their scroll and start taking pictures, none of them would be able to identify her for sure–

VROOM!

The huntresses looked up to the sky just as a Vale News Network helicopter zoomed onto the scene. Its side opened up while still airborne, Lisa Lavender and her personal cameraman filming everything in the park.

Blake sagged. "Please send me tuna care packages while I'm in prison."

Weiss pursed her lips in thought. But it didn't take long for an impish smile to spread over her lips. "Or, you could eat them out of prison."

"Are you going to hide a file in the tuna? Because I don't think those actually cut through iron bars."

"No, I'm a Schnee," Weiss declared. "When we can't bury a scandal, we control it."

"Huh?"

"Follow my lead."

Weiss grabbed Blake's hand and scampered to the top of the hill of rubble so that Adam and Torchwick were at their feet. She thrust their joined arms into the air, cutting the most dashing, heroic pose possible for the crowd. And the cameras.

"People of Vale! Have no fear!" Weiss theatrically proclaimed to everyone around. "I, Weiss Schnee, and my teammate, Blake Belladonna, huntresses-in-training of Beacon Academy, have stopped the Grimm and defeated the vile villains who attempted to unleash them! You are safe!"

For a moment, everyone was muttering amongst themselves, pondering how the SDC heiress had gotten there and wondering where they knew the name "Blake Belladonna" from. A scant few gaped in shock, recognizing The Odd-Eyed Bandit and befuddled why she was standing hand in hand with Weiss Schnee of all people.

But then, someone clapped. Blake didn't know who, but someone did. And then another person did. Then another. And another.

The whole crowd, whatever their individual curiosities or viewpoints, had just been shocked and terrified by their first real encounter with Grimm when they'd believed themselves safe. Then, the cause of that terror had gone away with no real harm to them and one of the most well-known girls on Remnant was saying she and another well-known girl had saved them. Who wouldn't give into groupthink and just celebrate being alive?

The day was saved and the people applauded the SDC heiress and The Odd-Eyed Bandit for saving it against all odds. And thanks to the diligent journalism of the Vale News Network, everyone in Vale saw it.

Pretty soon, thanks to the CCT, everyone in the whole world would.

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"Ozpin! You better have a good explanation for this!"

Ozpin smiled his best disarming smile as he leaned back in his ornate office chair, projecting the aura of confident, all-knowing, competence that most wanted to see from 'The Strongest Hunting Duelist On Remnant'. "Councilman, regardless of my explanation, I do believe the results speak for themselves."

The screen projected in front of his desk was split into two halves. On one, the other four members of the Vale Council appeared with various degrees of unsettledness. On the other was the broadcast of Weiss and Blake that had been running all day on every channel, the pair standing heroic and triumphant atop the infamous Roman Torchwick and Blood-Soaked Bull. A few commentators had noted the disturbing sight of Mr. Taurus' SDC brand across his face, but the relief of a nearly averted Grimm invasion left those few drowned out by the multitudes praising the young women as "the very picture of what hunting duelists should be".

"SDC Heiress and Daughter of Menagerie Chieftain Save Kingdom," Ozpin read off. "It is quite an effective headline."

"Forget the headline!" the councilman spat. "You knowingly harbored The Odd-Eyed Bandit, a terrorist, at your school for months! Not only that, you unilaterally decided to offer her a full pardon!"

"I am headmaster of Beacon," Ozpin demurely deflected. "Such responsibility does grant me certain leeway in conducting law enforcement operations under the purview of hunting duelist bounty missions."

He hadn't actually promised Blake a full pardon when she came to Beacon. He hadn't even let her know that he knew who she really was. But it made it easier to back up Ms. Schnee's strategy to protect her teammate if he claimed that he authorized The Odd-Eyed Bandit's legal excusal in advance. Even if he didn't strictly have the authority to have done it on his own.

"Official pardons on this scale cannot be decided upon by you alone, Ozpin. There are a limited number handed out each year and they must each be voted on by the council," a calmer, but still angry councilwoman pointed out. "Not to mention that, regardless of her heroic actions today, Ms. Belladonna has a laundry list of crimes to answer for. And not just in Vale. If we pardon her, we risk insulting the other kingdoms where she's still wanted."

"Perhaps I could help with that matter."

On the other side of Ozpin's desk, standing dutifully at attention as he observed the proceedings as he'd been invited to do, Ironwood stepped forward, looking every bit the inspiring general.

"I can personally assure you that Atlas will take no offense to any legal action Vale chooses to take in regards to Ms. Belladonna," he promised. "In fact, to honor her and Ms. Schnee's heroics in saving an entire kingdom, we would be more than willing to support whatever path you all find fitting for her criminal status."

That calmed the politicians down, furrowed brows and furtive glances showing just how much his word influenced them.

"You can guarantee that Atlas would issue a pardon for the charges against her in your kingdom as well?" one of them inquired.

"If you believe that is the correct course, I'll hop on the CCT and ensure it's done within the week," James smiled.

The hardline resistance in the council visibly crumbled. The truth was that none of them wanted to have Blake arrested at the moment. Not all of them were forward-thinking in regard to faunus rights issues, but all of them wanted to be reelected. And Weiss had weaponized that weakness beautifully.

First and foremost, she'd made sure to frame herself and Blake as the heroes who saved Vale from the biggest potential Grimm catastrophe any of the kingdoms had faced in decades. Ordering one of their arrests would not only invite negativity that risked a relapse of the invasion, but it could severely affect one's popularity with the voters.

Secondly, and almost as important, Weiss had aligned herself with Blake, in public, and for all Remnant to see. She was the heiress of the SDC, and everyone knew Jacques Schnee would want to capitalize on the potential PR goldmine of his daughter holding hands with Ghira Belladonna's after saving an entire kingdom. He would not take kindly to any law-abiding politician jeopardizing his benefit by locking up half that pair. If they didn't want the significant contributions he made towards their election campaigns, perhaps their opponents in the race would.

Yet, potentially offending the other kingdoms so severely, especially with the Vytal Festival only a month away during Vale's hosting year, was still a significant risk in its own right. But if Atlas pardoned Blake too, then what was Mistral to do? Even if their council didn't grant Ms. Belladonna amnesty as well, they could hardly raise a fuss about both the other two major kingdoms deciding she had legally redeemed herself. Especially Atlas, whose booming trade through Argus was of great importance to the Mistral Council's own campaign donors.

Since she'd brought in the much bigger fish of The Blood-Soaked Bull also apprehended to satisfy those hungry for justice, it wasn't long before the members of the Vale Council all nodded.

"We'll draft up the paperwork and put it to a vote in our next session. I think we can all agree that this Breach mess has given us enough on our plates for now," one of the councilman said. "Ozpin, we'll leave directing law enforcement and huntsmen to leave Ms. Belladonna alone to you."

"I shall send out the memos," Ozpin smiled.

"Good. And Ozpin? Don't do anything like this again. You were lucky that no one was hurt. Go around the council like this again, and we may need to rethink your position at the academy."

The council side of the viewscreen clicked off.

"Mr. Taurus and Mr. Torchwick are safely detained on your flagship?" Ozpin doublechecked. "The latter has broken out from Vale's most secure detention facilities. We cannot risk him doing so again."

James nodded. "Don't worry. If they know anything about The Queen's movements, we'll find out. Though, the council was rather adamant that I keep my fleet here until the Vytal Festival in return for temporary custody."

"A necessary evil."

"Evil? I call it sensible."

Ozpin shrugged. "Can you actually ensure a pardon for Ms. Belladonna's Atlas crimes?"

"Shouldn't be hard. I have two seats, and I doubt Akira will be against it. Sleet might even vote for it if Jacques leans on him enough," Ironwood shrugged. "Although, I'm worried about things here. Taurus and Torchwick are worthwhile captures, but I doubt they're the pawns we're looking for. The danger may not have passed, and this propaganda is only just keeping a lid on negativity. With the Vytal Festival approaching… I brought a battalion of Atlesian Knights. I can deploy them to reinforce security."

"Keep them on the ships."

"But if Amber's assailant strikes, with Hermos–"

"A guardian is a symbol of comfort. But an army is a symbol of conflict," Ozpin patiently but firmly explained. "If your troops are deployed as security, the people won't feel safe. They will be wondering what we're expecting to fight if our defenses are so extensive."

Ironwood's eyes flickered to the news report of Weiss and Blake, the people celebrating the pair without end. "I suppose we do have two new guardians. Are you planning for one of them to be Amber's replacement?"

Ozpin frowned. "No. In fact, I believe I have been too liberal with Team RWBY."

"What are you talking about? You were right. Leaving them to their own devices allowed their dragons to become more powerful than we could have dreamed," Ironwood grinned. "Hell, even indulging their whim to test themselves at Mt. Glenn discovered and stopped a White Fang operation we didn't even have a hint about."

Ozpin pursed his lips, deciding it best not to let his ally know that he'd presumed Team RWBY's interest in Mt. Glenn had been indicative of the White Fang's presence. The general might take issue with him having known the enemy's general location and taking such a passive action in response. Sending the scouts before the flagbearer was a matter of course, but one hunting duelist and a team of first-year trainees, however exceptional, was difficult to truly justify as 'scouts'.

"Their recent growth has been what makes me believe keeping them at a more traditional pace may be beneficial," he said. "Best not to add the Fall Maiden's magic to the mix."

"According to eyewitness reports, their current dragon combination unleashed enough lightning to vaporize every Grimm that was coming," Ironwood argued. "We add the Fall Maiden's power to the mix, it'll be able to vaporize anything The Queen can throw at it."

"I personally have doubts that the eyewitnesses were able to see everything that occurred in their panic," Ozpin admitted. "There must have been thousands of Grimm in that tunnel. No monster short of a God Card could kill that many all at once."

And despite how powerful Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon had shown itself to be, it was not a God Card. Not yet, at least.

"Oz, we have a new weapon. A power no one on Remnant has ever seen before, including her," James passionately declared. "We might finally be able to end her with it, to win the war. We can't be passive now!"

"Until such time that Ms. Xiao-Long wakes up, I believe a bit of passiveness is the least we can do."

His words cut through the excited dreams of the general's heart. The towering man's care morphed his face, his gaze glancing down at his own gloved arm. Both he and Ozpin knew what lay beneath the covering.

"Glynda has used her semblance to repair the breach. Dr. Oobleck has been successfully retrieved from Mt. Glenn. And the attack was over so quickly that no civilians were even wounded. Ms. Xiao-Long's injury is regrettable, but if it was the only sacrifice paid today, I'd call it a bargain." Ironwood closed his gloved hand, empathy and memories filling his eyes. "Besides, what she's suffered does not mean she's broken."

"No, it does not," Ozpin concurred on that final point. "I don't suppose you could arrange–"

"I called Dr. Polendina the moment I heard what'd happened to her," the general assured him. "He'll need measurements from her stump to ensure it fits properly, but as soon as those come through from Patch, he'll have a prosthetic whipped up in no time. She'll still have a long road to recovery but with any luck, it'll be ready to support her when she returns to school."

"If she returns to school."

Ozpin tapped the holographic screen the council had occupied. Two Beacon student ID photos flashed up, along with two dreaded messages.

Notice of Withdrawal - Xiao-Long, Yang.

Notice of Withdrawal - Rose, Ruby.

Ironwood groaned, his face falling into his palm. "Damnit, Tai."

Ozpin rose from his seat, snatched up The Long Memory, and strode around his desk, heading for the elevator.

He had to pay a visit to Patch.

---

Mountain Glenn Arc: End.

Woohoo! Seven Chapters of hopefully badass-as-heck action, heart-pounding stakes, and a few surprises. With any luck, this arc was epic as I'd planned it to be. Where the Investigation Arc was Team RWBY's first taste of what being real huntresses is like, this arc shoves them facefirst into just how terrifying the reality of their profession can be. "Time to say goodbye to the things we loved and the innocence of youth" is pretty much the theme for all their character arcs, whether those arcs end in crushing defeat or hard-earned triumph.

Like I mentioned at the end of Part 1, I've been waiting to write these duels for some time, especially Yang vs. Neo and Weiss & Blake vs. Torchwick & Adam, which each serve as the culmination of the girls' arcs in the story so far. Yang's taken some big humblings throughout my stories, but this one might just be the most brutal I've ever dealt her. Meanwhile, each section of the tag-duel had at least one moment I was chomping at the bits to write, none more so than Blake's final turn, her and Weiss uniting, and the unleashing of Odd-Eyes Rebellion Dragon.

Alrighty, that's the climax of the Volume. Next time will be mostly aftermath and wrapup.

Next Time on Cards of Remnant!

"Dad, please!"

"I should have known better than to trust you."

"You have every right to be angry with me, but this is not your choice to make."

"Those meddling brats had ruined everything!"

"I met The Queen."

"Do you still want to be a huntress?"

Next Time on Cards of Remnant: A Cracked Vale - End of Volume 2

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Go Forth and Conquer!