"This is Ruby! We need a medical team in the vault now! No, we need a lot of medical teams! Everyone is hurt very badly! E-everyone is down! Harriet is down! Vine is down! Elm is down! Marrow is down! Blake is down! Amaranth is down!"

Ironwood heard the urgent call. He opened his scroll and checked the status of everyone. Everyone who was in the Relic vault had no Aura left, save for Penny and Piper who seemed to be fine. There was a malfunction on Clover and Pietro's vitals. Ruby's call was on an open channel, trying to reach anyone she could. He hadn't explained the vaults to everyone yet, so the medical teams wouldn't know where to go. He opened the channel to Jinn.

"The vault has been attacked. They need medical teams, and I need you to guide those teams there. Be quick about it. Some of the injured may not have time to waste."

Jinn nodded. "Yes sir. But all the medical personnel are helping the evacuation or on standby with the rest of the city defense forces."

"Atlas General." Ironwood said quickly. "Any and every doctor and nurse you can get."

"On it!" She started running before even closing her scroll.

Turning back to the recording equipment in front of him, Ironwood decided he needed to know more from Ruby. He switched over to her, making sure the line was as open as possible. "Ruby, I need your report on what happened. Was the vault attacked?"

There was silence for a moment, then Ruby came back, pulled into focus by his voice. "Yes sir! Cinder is here!"

"She is still attacking?"

"...No. She's... Cinder has been defeated. She won't be a problem anymore." Her voice sounded sad, like there was tragedy involved in defeating Cinder. "Sir, Clover is gone."

So that was that. Clover was dead. Judging by the vital feed, so was Pietro. But in trade, Cinder Fall was defeated, and it sounded like it was total defeat at that. He knew how to put two and two together. If Cinder attacked the vault and everyone was hurt so badly, Clover and Pietro were dead, and Cinder was out of the picture, but Penny was seemingly untouched. Pietro must have been forced to use the Cradle for his daughter. Ironwood understood that technically the old man had had a choice, but as a father there was no question. Clover must have then used the Cradle, somehow managing to force Cinder inside.

He nodded. "I understand. Then Cinder Fall is out of the picture for good. Thank you. Hold tight. Help is on the way." He switched to a more private channel, reaching Winter. "Status report on Fria."

There was, again, a few moments of silence before a response. "Sir, she won't survive putting her back in stasis. She is at the end right now. It could be seconds, it could be minutes, but I wouldn't think an hour."

Another, older, frailer voice came through. "Thank you for your concern." There was some sarcasm in that sentence, but Fria knew what the situation was better than most.

He saw that Jinn was trying to message him again. "I'll leave you two be." He switched channels back to Jinn. "What do you need?"

Jinn was still running. "Sir, the elevator into the vault has collapsed. I need a way to get the medical team down there or get everyone out."

There weren't many options in that case, but he could think of a couple. "I'll see to it." Managing everything was a tiring process indeed. He opened a channel to Raven and Pelka. "I need you both at the vault ferrying the injured out of there. The elevator is down, so the medical teams won't be able to reach them down there."

Raven responded immediately. "You want me to leave Winter alone here?"

"Cinder has been taken care of. Those people need urgent care."

"On it, sir." Pelka answered.

A moment later, Raven relented. "I understand."

Standing outside the room where Winter was caring for Fria, Raven closed her scroll and put it away. She gave the door next to her a solid thump, telling Winter that she needed to talk to her. That probably wasn't the protocol for it, but it was Raven's protocol and if Winter didn't like it she could come and tell Raven herself.

Winter opened the door and quickly stepped outside, closing the door again before saying anything. "You'll startle her, doing that."

"I'll be back, but right now I need to go to the vault and get people out. They're trapped down there, and a lot of them are hurt pretty bad apparently."

Winter was taken aback, but quickly nodded. "Okay, yes, go. I'll be fine." She quickly realized she meant to say that both she and Fria would be fine, but then she realized that there was very little chance Fria would be fine. She shook her head, shaking off the thought.

Raven quickly wrapped her arms around Winter, giving her a tight hug, then rushed off down the hall. Winter stood stock still, frozen in place. She had absolutely no warning that Raven had been about to hug her, and had no clue whatsoever why Raven hugged her. After a few awkward seconds standing alone in the hall, Winter managed to finally rationalize that Raven's intention was to get exactly this reaction from her. There was no way it was anything other than an attempt to mess with her.

Running through the halls of Atlas Academy, Raven made her way to the vault. She was a little grumpy, but she needed to do what she did. In the event Salem targeted the Winter Maiden some other way, Raven needed to get back there quick. Whether it was Fria or Winter, she needed to be there quick to take that power if things went bad. She didn't exactly have an emotional bond with Winter, but she knew how to make one. She just had to open herself up to caring about the woman. But, of course, that meant caring about someone she neither wanted to care about, nor had any interest in caring about. If she dwelled on Winter too long, she could pull it off, potentially. She'd never actually tried it before. In the end, it was worth the effort if it kept Salem from getting the Winter Maiden under her control.

She reached the door to the vault. It had been blown open in a manner that she was sure meant Cinder had been through. Looking through the door, she saw the huge room opened up below her. There was definitely no quick way for anyone to get up or down. Anyone but her, that is.

Pelka appeared beside her, with her wings slowly beating behind her like they were preparing for flight. "Rescue work?"

That was right. There was someone else who could fly down there. "Yes, we need to start carrying people up." Raven grimaced. She spotted a few people moving around, but not many. It looked like there were far more people who weren't moving at all. "It might be hard to move them without causing more damage."

"Easy enough." Pelka said. When it looked like Raven didn't buy that, she shrugged. "Open one of your portals down there."

Raven shook her head. "I don't have a connection to anyone down there."

"Then you go down there and open a connection to me."

"Wha-" Raven glared at her. "My step-daughter is down there, and I don't have a connection to her. Why would I have a connection to someone I don't even know?"

"Well who do you have a connection to then?"

"My brother, my daughter, my husband-"

"Then make a connection to one of them and get them to come through, one of you goes down there, you make a portal, we carry people through. Done!"

"Qrow and Yang are busy defending the city from Grimm."

"The Grimm aren't here yet, and if they're in the same place, you can just send whichever one you pick back there when we're done."

Raven went silent for a moment, staring at Pelka like there was something growing out of her head. There were, actually, horns. She sighed, turned, and opened a swirling red and black portal. Pulling up her scroll, Raven called Yang. "We need you over here quickly. Your friends are hurt."

Without answering, Yang stepped through the portal, appearing beside them. "What do we need to do?"

Pelka pointed down through the door in front of them. "Get down there quick."

Yang looked to Raven, who gave her a nod. She shrugged and jumped through the door. Down below, Ruby heard the sound of Ember Celica a moment before Yang landed beside her. She looked up, glad to see Yang, and was quickly pulled into a hug by her sister. Before either of them could say a word, another portal appeared beside them. Pelka stepped through and rushed over to the first injured person she saw, which was Harriet.

Ruby looked up at the doorway above, seeing Raven standing up there and looking down at them. She turned to Yang. "This is a... creative solution."

"I'm just holding the door open." Yang looked around, seeing that the Ace Ops were in very bad condition. Penny was kneeling, barefoot, beside Blake.

Ruby grabbed Yang's arm, sensing she was about to run to her partner's side. "Blake's in very bad shape, but others are far worse."

Yang gave her a nod, then went to Blake's side. She stood there, looking down at Blake, stunned for a moment. At first, she looked dead. After a few moments, Yang noticed the rise and fall of her chest. It was a shuddering breath, pained, but it was breath. Yang looked around, seeing everyone else that was down. Her eyes landed on Kali, who was leaning against the wall of the Flute containment chamber.

Kneeling down next to Kali, whose eyes were fixed on Blake, Yang put a hand on her shoulder. "Blake is strong, she'll pull through this. Can you move?" Kali didn't respond, so Yang shook her gently. Kali winced and looked up at her, like she'd only just now noticed Yang was there. Yang repeated her question. "Can you move on your own?"

Kali just nodded, not saying anything. Yang helped her up and walked her to the portal, sending her through. Next she spotted Maria. The old woman was covered in cuts and more than a few bruises, but she was still standing. Yang pointed her at the portal and then set about checking everyone who was down.

Ruby called Yang over from the Flute containment chamber. "Piper is in here. She's unconscious, but I don't think she's hurt. I think Marrow didn't get hurt too badly either."

"Okay." Yang nodded, then looked around, spotting Marrow quickly. "You take her and carry her through. I'll get Marrow." Yang waved Pelka away from Harriet and over to Marrow. "We're getting the ones who aren't hurt as badly out of the way so the doctors can focus on the rest."

Ruby came out of the containment chamber hauling Piper just as Yang had set Pelka up with Marrow. They were all back through a moment later, and Yang found herself in the unenviable position of checking on Vine and Elm. They looked already dead to her. She knelt beside Vine and went to check his pulse. Facedown on the floor, bleeding from an absurd number of injuries, he swatted her hand away almost reflexively.

Yang held her hands out, keeping her distance from him. "Hey, hey, you're alright. We're gonna get you out of here."

"I'll just... wait then." He sounded like he was at death's door, but at least he hadn't gone through it. Talking must have been incredibly painful.

"Okay, stay put. Don't move and don't try to talk. I'll let them know you're responsive when they get here."

"My team..."

"If you're gonna keep talking, I'll have to punch your lights out." When he didn't say anything else, she took a deep breath. "Marrow's just knocked out, I think. I haven't checked Harriet and Elm yet, but they look pretty bad. Elm looks worse of the two, maybe as bad as you."

He coughed, then lifted his head just barely an inch. "The trainees..."

Yang nodded. Naturally he was worried about them too. She put her hand on his head and gently pushed him back down. "Don't move. Ruby is banged up a bit, but she'll be fine. Blake is really bad, but I think she'll pull through too." She looked over and spotted Amaranth laying on the floor not far from Blake. "Amaranth... I don't know. I'll go check. You stay put. I mean it."

"Yang! Jinn's got the doctors! Two minutes out!"

Yang heard her mother's voice shout down to her and made a mental note. Two minutes was a lot of time for things to go wrong. She worried for everyone she couldn't move. Some of them might not have another two minutes. She went to Amaranth's side to check her over. The girl had several deep wounds, and her arms were burned badly. After a few moments of trying to see the injuries through the blood, Yang realized most of the wounds were on her extremities, leaving her body mostly untouched. The parts that had been hit were pretty bad, but at this point two puncture wounds on her torso was a low number and made her as close to least concern as they had left.

Amaranth opened her eyes, coughing badly. "Oh, hey, it's Ruby's sister."

"Oh, hey, you're alive. That's a mood booster." Yang said, patting her on the head. "You've been hurt pretty bad, but the doctors are almost here. Just gotta hold out a couple minutes more. Try not to move for now."

"I tried to protect Ruby."

Yang looked away. It was a little hard for her to think of someone looking like that because they'd been trying to protect Ruby. "I... thank you. She's... she's in better condition than you, anyway."

"She still pretty?"

That caught Yang off guard completely. "Uh... you know..." She shrugged it off. "I'm her older sister, I have to say she's always pretty. Look, are you gonna be fine if I go to check on Elm?" Amaranth nodded. Yang gave her shoulder a pat then got up, moving over to Elm.

The big woman had been hit with so many things, Yang wasn't even sure where to start. After a few moments with her hands just hovering over Elm, Yang realized she couldn't even see breathing. Alarmed, she pushed her fingers to Elm's neck, looking for any sign she was still alive. There was something, but Yang couldn't tell if it was Elm's pulse or her own heart going into overdrive at the realization that someone she knew might be laying dead right in front of her. She didn't know what to do in this situation.

Time must have passed without Yang noticing, as there were suddenly doctors and nurses around her. They very cautiously moved Elm onto a stretcher, and it wasn't until they started hooking something up to her that Yang thought she might still be alive. Almost as quickly as they'd come, they got everyone onto the stretchers and back through the portal floating in the air nearby. Then they were gone, leaving Yang alone in the vault with her thoughts.

And Raven. Raven landed next to Yang and sat down next to her. "The doctors are really interested in whatever happened to Penny. That girl is hundred percent human now. She's unharmed, but they want to check her out anyway." She stopped and looked over her daughter. "Are you okay?"

Yang snapped out of her daze, looking around the room again. She looked away from Raven, wiping her face with her left hand. Her eyes landed on something laying on the floor nearby. She reached over and grabbed it, pulling it back to her and holding it up in front of the two of them. Yang stared at it for a few moments of silence. It was a remnant of the battle that had taken place here, a piece of the aftermath.

"This... is Cinder's arm."

Raven cocked her head to the side, then smiled. "For me? You shouldn't have."

"Don't even start with that." Yang threw the arm aside. She looked over to where the Cradle was still standing on its end. "Cinder is in there." She shook her head, pulling her legs up and hugging them to her chest. "And after another battle, here we are. Just me and you, in a vault."

"...Yeah..." Raven let out a long sigh. "Well, things are different this time. I'm not your enemy anymore."

Yang looked over at her mother, who seemed to be sitting with a rather mellow posture. She barely looked threatening, if you didn't know her, and ignored the weapon and armor. "You aren't. Why is that, again?"

Raven was silent for a while, stretching out her answer for as long as she could, but her body language told Yang that she was going to answer. "Right..." It wasn't like they'd parted ways cordially back at Haven. Raven had been back for a while now, but they hadn't actually sat down to talk. On some level, they had both been hoping to just act like nothing happened, but considering what had happened... they couldn't ignore it. Raven started slowly, picking up a little speed as she went. "I went back to Tai. We talked. For quite a while, actually. I guess I just... had nowhere else to go, so I went there. He wouldn't let me go until we had a proper conversation."

"Even if he wanted to stop you from leaving, I doubt he could."

"Well, yes, but..." Raven started looking around, trying to avoid eye contact for some reason. "It's not like it was some kind of marriage of convenience or anything, and you weren't exactly a mistake. You know that, right?"

"Excuse me?" Yang had never thought that it might be the case that she was the result of some indiscretion on the part of her parents, not even once. She found it odd that Raven felt it necessary to say. "I assumed you had me because you wanted to have me." In retrospect, she realized why that might not seem like a given.

"Right, so I think I should explain to you what I explained to Tai." Raven glanced back at Yang to see her raise an eyebrow in curiosity. Raven shook her head and looked away again. "As far as I know, I was the last person to see Summer alive."

It took Yang a moment, but then she caught on. "She went out on a mission... with you."

"Yes. So, yes, I was still around at the time, which means..."

"Which means when you left Dad and me, Summer still knew where you were, even when she was with Dad, which means that you... were perfectly fine with stepping out of the picture so she could be with him."

"Well, that's one way to put it. More accurately..." She was having trouble spitting it out, and Yang was starting to feel like giving her a punch to spur her on. Raven beat her to it, however, and finished her sentence. "We agreed to it before I married Tai. Me and Summer, that is. She was supposed to be the one who stayed with him, and I would go on and work in the field for Ozpin. Tai didn't know anything about any of this, and it was working just like we planned for a time. But then..."

"She went on missions anyway."

"One mission." Raven corrected. "She'd done a few others, and so did Tai, just normal stuff for us, but this one was a bit different. I needed the kind of help that no one else could give me."

"Ah." Yang knew where this was going. "Silver eyes."

"No."

Yang looked up, surprised. "No? Not the silver eyes?" Raven idly held out her hand, palm facing upwards. An ice crystal formed in the air over her hand. Yang stared at it for a few seconds, almost mesmerized, but then it struck her. "Summer was a Maiden."

"We both were." Raven confirmed. "We were both Maidens since before we entered Beacon."

"But then... what you told me at Haven." Yang was starting to get confused by the timeline of events. "You told me the Spring Maiden came to you. You said she asked for you to put her out of her misery."

"And that's true... in a sense." Raven looked back, finally properly looking at her daughter. After a moment of silence, she pulled her legs up to her body and matched Yang's posture. "In the middle of that mission, I tried to open a portal to Summer and it just... didn't open. She was just gone. She was always stronger than me. She was the best of us, by a long shot, and if something had killed her so quickly, without me hearing anything about it... I was scared. I ran home, like a scared little girl. Because that's what I was. And over time, I came to the conclusion that I needed to be stronger, I needed to be... cold. Uncaring. I would have to be somebody else instead if I wanted to survive. So I killed that scared little girl, and I buried her as deep inside me as I could."

Yang just stared at her. All she could think of to say was "Wow." After a few more seconds, she added more. "I didn't think you could get any edgier."

"Yeah, well, I thought I'd buried that part of me so deep she'd never come back up, but she did. Down in the vault at Haven, when you showed up. I was weak, I was hurt... I'm not even sure I'd have been able to beat you if we fought then. So I was scared, and I ran back home to Tai, the only place left where I thought I might be safe. And Tai just took me back, without question, like I knew he would. I thought that was a sign of weakness, and yet, that's what I wanted and needed the most right then."

"Dad does like to take in pathetic pitiful things." Yang chided her mother.

Raven straightened up. "Okay, that's enough touchy feely sharing for now." She stood up and started walking away. "You can find your own way out of here."

Ironwood stepped off the transport that had brought him back to Atlas from Amity. He checked his scroll for any updates. It looked like most of those injured in the vault were stable now. It was three of the Ace Ops and Blake that were still in critical condition, all four being worked on actively. He entered the hospital, making his way to where the rest were, hoping to get a clear picture of what had happened.

Oscar met him at the entrance to the area of the hospital where they were being kept. "General, I'm sorry, we wer-"

Ironwood held his hand up to stop Oscar. "You did the best you could, given the circumstances. I'm just glad it wasn't much worse."

Oscar nodded. "It could have been. You should talk to Ruby. She saw the end of the fight."

Ironwood gave him a firm pat on the shoulder and moved on, heading for where Ruby was sitting in a waiting room. The general went in and sat next to her. "I'm told you know what happened at the end there."

Ruby almost jumped out of her seat, but stopped when she saw it was just Ironwood. "Oh, sir, uh, yes, I..." She stopped and forced herself to relax. "Cinder destroyed Penny. I guess Penny's father put her in the Cradle. And then Clover put Cinder in it. That... that's about all I can give as a report, honestly."

He already understood that was the case, so he pressed for further information. "And Penny? How is she?"

"Oh..." Ruby glanced over to another room, probably where Penny was being tended to. "She's... human, I think. The Cradle can do that, apparently."

"I think we've only scratched the surface of what some of these Relics are capable of." Ironwood concluded thoughtfully. He looked down at Ruby. She was still up, though definitely injured. He needed people he could rely on in the coming hours, and he was glad she was still able to stand and fight. "You'll be ready when Salem gets here, right?"

Ruby's head snapped back over to look at him, partly surprised, but partly at attention. "Huh? Oh, yes sir. I just need a moment... right, Cinder was nothing compared to Salem."

"I expect that will be the case." Ironwood got up, straightening out his uniform. "When you're done here, I want you to gather everyone who can still fight and bring them to my office."

"Yes sir." Ruby gave her inaccurate salute.