AN:

Reasons this chapter was so delayed:
(I mean, besides some IRL shenanigans and Death Stranding.)

It had to be done right.

My original idea, which had doubled this chapter's length, didn't work the way I wanted it to.
Fortunately, fixing it was as easy as snipping out the parts that didn't work and saving them for later.

But I still had to change things to better fit the tone I wanted, and even the original draft of 76 v2 revealed my hand too early and showed too much, so I had to trash a lot of that.
And that left us with this beautiful little monster.

So let's go, shall we?

Chapter 76

Considering how lethargic everyone had become these last few days, Qrow Branwen was amazed at how fast everyone in the house paired up and cleared out to search for their missing Rose, and the similarly absent and not-responding-to-her-calls faunus girl, soon leaving Qrow alone with an irate father, whose rage, burning with an almost physical intensity, perhaps justly, perhaps not, was currently directed at him.

"What the fuck do you mean 'stay calm'...?!" The blonde brawler demanded, his blue eyes shining with a certain spark that the former bandit hadn't seen in a long time, and only once before directed at him. "You think an airship landed in our yard and now my daughter and her friend are missing! I should be out there -" He pointed at Qrow, "- you should be out there! You can cover more ground than all of them!"

Qrow had to cross his arms and bury his hands in order to hide how badly they were shaking, because as much as he'd told everyone after Ruby had awoken and vowed to join him, the things he hadn't told them were what were filling him with a sense of dread and sorrow he'd only experienced once before in his entire life. It took great care to keep his voice from similarly shaking as he spoke up, "Tai, I'm trying to tell you -"

"Tell me WHAT?!" Screamed his friend, "my daughter - Summer's daughter - your niece - is gone! Her weapon is gone! Her friend is nowhere to be found! And in the middle of the night! Out of our fucking home! Don't tell me that they might have just gone out for a day on the town Qrow, she was still bedridden!"

If I ever get my hands on that kid... Qrow thought, venemously, as he shook his head. "Taiyang." He said, slowly. "I told them to look and I told you to stay for a reason..." He braced himself, "now... Shut up, and let me tell you something."

Taiyang blinked, deflating, but only a little. "What?" He finally demanded.

"It's..." He sighed, "gods, it's a long story, but the shortest version is that we have a man on the inside. With her."

Taiyang blinked, head recoiling.

"Yeah." Qrow nodded, "that kid, the one that everyone's bent out of shape about, the one they had a funeral for. It's him. Ozpin saw how close he was to Cinder Fall, knew how idealistic the kid was, and gambled on him being willing to take our side. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Tai. I think he took her." He said, "as much as that woman may have been willing to go to bat for him..." He shook his head, "he would've had to prove his loyalty, and with what he told us about the people he'd met in her inner circle... Specifically the one that took Amber's powers... She's a proud one, Tai, proud and angry." Of course he had to lie - Taiyang just wasn't in the right state of mind to take the full truth.

Even though it was dawning on the Huntsman what Qrow was implying. All of the steam, all of the momentum and anger he'd just been operating on evaporated, as he limply clenched at his heart and fell a step, leaning against the kitchen counter. "Oh gods..." He breathed, voice shaking.

Qrow nodded, dropping the hammer. "If I had to guess, she wanted Ruby dead, so to fix that and get him to prove his loyalty, Salem sent our guy to take her."

All of the air shot out of Taiyang's lungs in one gasp.

"But there's something you need to know about our guy, Taiyang - he's..." Qrow lost his own steam, as he searched for the words. "Good." He settled on, "real good. The things he's managed to do even surprised Ozpin... I don't trust him at all, Tai, I don't - but I at least trust that he's not stupid." He continued, "and through him we've got a fighting chance at actually doing it. Actually finding Salem and killing her, ending this whole thing... He gathered up some of the most powerful and well connected people in Remnant and we had a parlay before the Terrans invaded, everyone set their terms for the alliance - and mine were that they couldn't do what it looks like he's doing."

Taiyang shook his head, "stop it with the Ozpin crap and tell me straight!" He roared, shaking with anger. "What did he promise you that has you convinced Ruby's fine?!"

"I made him - and all the others - swear not to take action against Ruby and Yang, Tai." He said, "direct, concerted, and unprovoked actions. I couldn't outlaw anything reactionary - not with the game they're playing - but anything else - anything else!" He insisted, "and it's off the table." He finally went out and said it, his raspy voice barely able to go above a whisper, despite his best efforts to even just look like he was remaining strong in this. "If he kills her or Yang, the deal's off, Tai." He said, before pushing through with, "and if he betrays me, the others he gathered together will think twice about the value of his word. They'll think - if he betrayed Branwen, what's to stop him from betraying us? - and then the entire alliance he built will fall apart, everything he's worked for will be for nothing, and he - and everyone - will lose their chance to kill Salem. Like I said, Tai. I don't trust him... But he's not stupid. He won't risk that. He won't risk all of this.

"He won't kill Ruby." He stressed, "he won't."

But the problem was, he didn't believe that himself.

When Ruby Rose roused to consciousness, she felt a horrible pain welling up on the back of her head. When she tried to rub what she was certain was a big bruise of some sort, she found that her hands had been locked together.

Eyes snapping open, Ruby found that she was on the floor - but not the warm, familiar carpet of her home, but a cold and unyielding concrete that smelled like humid air. Above her was a dark ceiling, halfway between brown and black, barely lit red by some light washing in from the only door she could see at the top of a stone staircase leading down towards her. Her hands were numb, and her head felt so heavy that she could barely even lift herself up so that she could get a look at her surroundings.

Her heart beating, her fist instinct was to call out for anyone nearby, and no matter how naive it may have been, she obeyed that instinct and let out a tentative, "hello?"

But no one responded.

Gulping through a bone dry throat, and ignoring a rumble in her stomach, Ruby pushed herself to her feet, and carefully plodded her way up the ancient stone stairs, her bare feet chilled by the floor they stepped on. She leaned against the door that led outside, placing her ear against it, but unfortunately it gave her no more idea of where she was, and offered no hints as to whether or not there was anyone nearby.

Ruby felt her lower lip quiver as she backed away from the door and took another look around, but she found nothing. Her room was just a blank, dark, pod with a staircase and a door. The only distinguishing feature was the red light that spilled in from the crack in the door frame, and the sprawling red symbols that painted the door. Ruby stared long and hard at the door, before biting her lip and approaching it again.

Tentatively, she lifted her hand and touched the door, before yanking it back.

Nothing.

She placed her hand firmly on the slab of concrete keeping her locked in here.

Still nothing.

She pushed her shoulder against the door and, with all the strength in her legs, pushed against it as hard as she could.

But still, nothing. Not even shoving her shoulder did anything to help - all that did was cause pain to well up in her shoulder and her head to throb.

"Where am I?" She shuddered, backing a step away from the door.

Which, as though prompted by her words, opened with a loud rocky crunch, letting harsh red light spill into her little dungeon, overwhelming her eyes and briefly blinding her. Ruby lifted her bound hands and covered her eyes, squinting through her fingers and seeing two figures standing in the light, each about the same height as each other, but both shrouded in shadows. One wore a long, flowing dress, and the other, a simple shirt and pants.

Ruby backed up a step, nearly slipping off the stairs, her heart hammering in her chest as fear welled up inside her heart, and her eyes adjusted to the light.

And her heart stopped as her eyes adjusted and she realized she recognized the woman standing in front of her.

Barely able to articulate anything more than a frightened gasp, Ruby tried to distance herself from her, whose eyes were soon burning with the orange, fiery wings of a butterfly. She, however, slipped off of the stone steps, fell to her rear, and was soon tumbling down the stairs and back into her dungeon, head welling up in ever more pain as bruises on her arms and aches in her chest joined the pains everywhere else as a result of her mercifully sweet fall.

Unfortunately it did nothing to wake her up from the nightmare she had suddenly dropped into, and as she laboriously lifted her head back to the door, she watched her descend into the room, followed closely by her ally, a man whose chest was wrapped in dark chainmail, and whose head was encased in some kind of helmet with a T-shaped visor.

When she reached the threshold of the room, she roughly grabbed at the collar of Ruby's thin sleeping shirt, and hauled her up into the air, putting their faces mere inches from each other, Ruby's wide, fear-filled silver orbs locked onto her great orange ones, the latter wreathed in flame and shining with unbridled rage, even as her face wrinkled up into a slasher smile.

Lungs quivering, Ruby was reduced to the kind of fearful whisper of a person so scared to death that they lacked the strength to even speak, as she softly trembled out, "Cinder."

The woman in question's expression melted into one more reflective of what Ruby could see in her eyes, and she snarled before roughly throwing Ruby back onto the ground.

The only place that Yang Xiao Long could think of to look for her sister was the only place off-the-beaten-path that she could have gone. Where Pyrrha and Jaune ran for Patch proper, and Ren and Nora flocked to the island's local air traffic coordinators, Yang had paired up with Weiss to find her once stepmother's gravestone. The blonde brawler prayed beyond hope that this whole thing was just a huge misunderstanding, the result of a massive failure of communication on Ruby and Blake's end, and that she'd find the both of them paying respects to the young Rose's mother in the waning days before their journey across Remnant.

To her unending dismay, she found that it wasn't the case. Summer's grave was empty, clearly having not been even witnessed since its last visit too long ago. A wide-eyed, practically delirious Yang swept a shaking hand through her thick hair and Weiss held her chin, eyes glazing over in thought as she tried to work the problem.

Maybe she's at Ash's grave? She wondered, looking off in the direction she knew it to be. Oh Gods, she didn't go to Beacon, did she? Yang wouldn't have put it past Ruby to try and recover his body where Ecru had failed, forcing herself to forget that she'd considered doing the same, for a time, despite her uncle's warnings against such a thing.

"Perhaps she's at Signal?" Weiss finally supplied, giving Yang a look that clearly conveyed she was grasping at the thinnest of straws. "She had friends there before Beacon, yes? You know her, maybe she finally got stir-crazy and convinced Blake to escort her out of the house so she could catch up with them."

But Yang shook her head, "Signal's been shut down since Vytal. Nobody wants their kids in the firing lines when the Terrans come back." She countered, "so they'd be out in town, and I gave Pyrrha some of their names. If they haven't called us by now..." Yang's voice wavered, and she turned away from Weiss, facing the dense woods that surrounded the gravesite.

Weiss too looked away, "then... Aside from getting lost in the woods, the only other possibility I can think of is that they went to Vale... And there's only one reason she'd do that."

Yang gulped, "she can't be that dumb." She denied, breathlessly, looking up to the roof of the forest, right where the tips of the trees made the dividing line between the earth and the sky. "And Blake wouldn't have let her."

"To visit Ecru then?"

That actually had some merit, but then why wouldn't she have left a note?

Yang felt her heart hammering in her chest, and she had to physically grab her still fleshy arm with her robotic one to stop it from shaking.

Then, something caught her eye on the treeline, something strange.

Yang blinked, eyebrows furrowing as she focused on it, her trembles briefly subsiding as her mind was occupied by the discrepancy in the trees. It almost looked like some branches had been torn off.

"Weiss..." Yang nodded at the treeline, "look."

Weiss turned to face Yang, then followed her gaze, the strange sight of damaged foliage attracting her rapt attention as well, but only briefly, before she said, "anything could have done it, Yang... Were it battle, there would have been more damage."

The brawler sighed, "okay... Let's link back up at the house, tell them we're going to try and shuttle to Vale." She said, defeated.

For her part, Weiss seemed apologetic, but didn't say anything, instead following the morose brawler as the latter led the former back into the woods, in the direction of the damaged foliage. Weiss allowed it, feeling that perhaps some semblance of hope was better than none at all. Entering the forest from the direction of the damaged trees though, changed Weiss' mind, as they found that the damage didn't stop at the top of the treeline, but rather kept going down - from the roof of the forest all the way to the ground, as though something had fallen through the air and managed to hit every tree on the way down.

Now Weiss was frowning, trying to figure out what would cause that kind of damage. A Grimm? A damaged airship? A -

A gasp from Yang stole Weiss' attention. The elder sister's wide violet eyes were pinned to one of the more distant trees, but only for long enough for Weiss to follow them before Yang darted off into the woods - in the direction of a dark ribbon, hanging from a pistol, lodged into one of the thicker branches on one of the taller trees.

Gambol Shroud.

And around it was metal debris - ranging from the deceptively small to the unmissably large. Something big had followed Blake down.

The both of them sprinted off in its direction, both soon descending into a repeated chorus of their faunus friend's name, desperately screaming and shouting, trying to get her attention as they examined the area around them. Some crushed leaves, some bloody grass, and detritus from Blake's apparent fall soon gave them a path to follow. Yang thundered on ahead while Weiss forced herself to slow down and apply what limited tracking knowledge she had to the situation - as much as her every instinct screamed at her to run, doing so could cause her to miss that one single, tiny detail that could either set her on Blake's path, or throw her miles off course.

So to the soundtrack of Yang's ever distant cries, Weiss put her eyes to the forest floor and began tracking, moving only in the direction she could clearly tell Blake had gone. Unfortunately, such a thing wasn't difficult - there was an ample amount of blood, disturbed grass, fallen leaves, and the metal detritus they had found close to Gambol Shroud. Weiss shuddered to think of what had happened to her, even as she was confronted with the reality that she probably already knew - her aura had been broken, she'd been thrown through the sky, and unlike their initiation test, the environment and conditions hadn't been perfect for her to save herself.

Weiss steeled herself for something terrible the further she went.

And terrible she got, when she found her.

"Yang!" Weiss called out, "Yang, she's here!"

Blake was unconscious, dirt and forest debris bunched up around her, dragged along with her as she'd crawled. Mere meters away from her was the crumpled heap of a gigantic jet, like nothing she'd ever seen before - not even from the Terrans. One her arms were extended outwards, the other still at her side - she'd fallen out midway through trying to push herself another few inches. She was deathly pale, blood leaking out from any number of injuries on her body, a clear liquid leaking out from her ears, her breathing was barely audible, only becoming so when Weiss came within inches of her, and even then almost sounded like sandpaper scraping against itself. That she was even alive in the first place was a miracle, but Weiss realized with a terrible feeling in her chest that not only could that change at any second, but there may not be anything she or Yang could do to influence it.

Speaking of, the blonde brawler practically exploded onto scene, arriving with a herald of heavy footfalls and a few snapped branches as she ran into a tree and pushed off of it to cancel her momentum. Her hands snapped to her mouth as she gasped at the sight of her friend, violet eyes wide and tearing up with fear and sorrow. She looked from Weiss to Blake for just a moment before she fell to her knees at Blake's side.

When she reached out to touch the faunus, Weiss intervened - a grimace on her face and her eyes closed guiltily as her hand shot out and grabbed Yang's.

The brawler's eyes went red for a moment as she turned to Weiss, silently demanding an explanation.

"She fell, Yang." Was Weiss' response, as she gingerly knelt down, some small part of her knowing her dress would stain, but the rest of her pushing that thought as far away as possible. "We could hurt her more."

"Then what do we do?!" Yang demanded, looking around, as though a solution would magically present itself. "We can't just leave her!"

"Of course not." Said Weiss, "but our only hope is to go into town and bring a rescue team. EMT's, ones with medical tools that can get her out of here without hurting her further." She said, daintily wrapping her fingers around Blake's wrist - the girl not even stirring from the contact - and feeling for a pulse.

Fortunately, there was one.

Unfortunately, it was so weak that Weiss barely even felt it.

Yang's scroll was already in her hands, but she found what Weiss had predicted - they were so far away from Patch proper that even the short-range wasn't working, and without the CCT, that meant they were effectively alone on an island full of people. The despondent brawler, in a fit of impotent rage, nearly broke it she began to grip it so hard.

Weiss had to take charge, so she did, raising herself to her feet and saying, "you stay with her... I'm..." She couldn't find the right words, "you remember I told you about that... Thing my semblance did, at Beacon?"

Yang looked at her, her mouth agape, her expression all but screaming at her is this really important right now?!

So she cut to the chase, "I'm going to try something." She said, turning to the crashed ship.

There was a lot of metal there, enough for them to fashion a stretcher. But as strong as Yang was, she wouldn't be able to tear it apart - not in such a way that there would be enough left together to make what they needed. Weiss' sword, however, wasn't Ash's, and so she couldn't cut through it.

But she knew what could.

Approaching the ship, she withdrew her sword, her mind falling into the memories of the fall of Beacon. Of the endless Grimm that had assaulted them as they had retreated to the launch pads. Of the thing she had summoned from her Glyphs that had, if only for a moment, cleared the way. She had tried to find ways to bring it back for weeks now, ever since she had awoken in Ruby's home, but it never came.

Now, however, she would give it no choice.

She crouched on the ground, face screwed up in concentration, the tip of her blade digging into the ground in front of her as she summoned a white glyph underneath her.

"Weiss, what the hell are you doing?! We don't have time for this!" She head Yang admonish her.

She didn't blame her, but this was the only idea she had: The only way they could get Blake out of here safely was if they had a means of immobilizing her while they moved her. To do that, they would need a stretcher - and they didn't have enough time to hunt down and gather up wood from the trees around them.

So Weiss did all she could think of, and she focused. She recalled everything she felt that night and, as she had each time these last weeks, she felt something in there responding to her call. It wasn't a presence, or the feeling of her aura, but something different, more abstract. It was an idea, and her thinking of it brought her to its attention, almost as though it regarded her with curiosity.

Obviously, she couldn't communicate with it - but if her thoughts reached it, then that was all she could do. She focused on those horrid images of Blake's state, and pushed it all into one idea: She needed it, and it didn't have a say in the matter.

She was like this for either an eternity or an instant. She felt all the muscles in her back seize, causing her to bend over closer to the ground. She heard Yang yell again, but it sounded like it was a million miles away. The idea struggled against her, as though it either didn't want to, or simply couldn't, respond to her. But she wouldn't let it say no - she thought then of Ruby, of her disappearance and of the fact that Blake was the only one who would have answers.

It didn't get to say no.

And after this battle of wills, Weiss - as was her nature - won out. None but the young Rose could beat her like this, not even Ash. So when her aura, when that idea, buckled underneath her, a physical weight slid off of her shoulders and she felt the idea well up inside of her, before spilling out - and she sensed its arrival. Her head snapped up and she saw it step out of a glyph that spun into existence next to her. A great Arma Gigas, clad in softly wavering white knight's armor. It looked down at her from behind its closed helm, before turning determinedly to the crashed ship and drawing its blade.

Three great swings, and three sheets of metal were torn from the ship, before Weiss felt control slip away and the knight vanished. Weiss slid forward, but caught herself, placing a hand on the grassy ground and bracing herself on it, sweat beading on her forehead. She gasped for air, and only barely heard a muted 'whoa' from her blonde friend, before the brawler rushed towards the ship and examined the sheets she had cut from it.

She picked the sturdiest one and approached Blake as Weiss got back to her feet, slowly steadying herself and forcing her hammering heart to slow.

"Okay... That was the hard part." She gulped, sheathing her blade. "Now we just need to get her down to Patch."

"You actually did it." Cinder murmured, her expression radiating psychotic glee as she loomed over the trembling rookie-Huntress on the floor beneath her. "You actually brought her here... To me." Her voice shook with glee and disbelief, as she turned to face the man who had followed her in.

Ruby fearfully followed her, eyes locking onto the man, noticing that his white, similarly chainmail shirt was streaked with red blood, and felt her heart grip, as she wondered whose blood it was. Her mind filled with macabre images of her family, her team, her friends, of all of them being torn apart by this man's strength as he stole Ruby in the dead of night.

He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms, stiffly moving his gaze from Ruby to Cinder, "she asked me to." He said, voice muffled by the mask. "So I did."

Ruby backed away from Cinder, crawling back while desperately looking over her shoulder, hoping that the door was still open, that maybe she could escape - only to find a literal wall of fire bursting up from the ground mere inches from her back, stopping her wholesale. She shrieked in fear and nearly fell over herself scrambling away from the searing hot flames, and in that moment of panic Cinder planted her foot on Ruby's back and pinned her to the floor, her heel roughly digging into the crimson-haired rookie's spine.

"There's no escaping this, Ruby Rose." She began, as the flames died down, their glow fading away and leaving the room dark and red again. "No escaping what you did to me."

Lips quivering, Ruby tried to look at the new Fall Maiden, but found herself unable to turn her head far enough. "I - I don't - what did I do?" She cried, on the verge of tears.

"You hurt me." Cinder fumed, kneeling down low, burying her heel further into Ruby's back. "And if it weren't for him, you would have scarred me." Not being able to see her was somehow worse than the alternative, as Ruby couldn't see what it was she was doing, prepare for what tortures would come next, resulting in every new pain being a horrendous surprise; all she could see was the man leaning against the wall, his cold mask, the blood of any one of her friends on his shirt. "Let me show you." Cinder growled, a bright light blooming from behind Ruby.

"Wha-" Ruby barely had time to breathe before Cinder's hand clamped down on her face, and she screamed - the agonized, deep, throaty scream of a person in mortal pain. Her throat went raw in seconds, her chest quivered, her voice bounced off of the walls and stained the air, as Cinder's scalding hot hand pressed against Ruby's face and burned her. Her aura did everything it could to protect her, but it did nothing for the excrutiating pain - unbeknownst to Ruby was that keeping her from being injured unintentionally made the pain worse, and drew it out, owing to Cinder being unable as yet to destroy her nerve endings.

Ruby struggled, tried to escape Cinder, but the woman had none of that - dropping to her knee and planting it on Ruby's neck, pinning her to the ground as she scraped her white-hot hand across the left side of Ruby's face.

Out of the corner of her good eye, pressed against the ground though it was, she saw the man briefly look away, but then look back, his movements stiff and twitchy, almost as though he were forcing himself to do it. Her good eye was soon obscured by pained tears, however, blinding her to the other person in the room and leaving her with only pain.

After a six second eternity, Ruby's aura shattered, and just as she felt her skin curdle and roast, Cinder pulled her hand away.

"No..." She whispered, gasping for air as though she'd just run a mile. "Oh no, not that easy." She shook her head, "Aldric -" Ruby felt the pressure on her neck vanish as Cinder stood up; she tried to crawl away, but Cinder's response to that was to kick her in the ribs as she approached the man, 'Aldric'. "Give them to me."

Curled up around her aching chest, there was a pause before Aldric said, "give you what?"

Ruby, her hand shaking violently, tried to feel the damage done to her face as the raging Maiden responded, "the beans!" She hissed, "I want to enjoy this!"

Ruby could hardly control her hand enough to actually touch her face, and it shaking so much only made her chest hurt more, so she focused instead on trying to crawl away again.

"Christ, lady." Aldric responded, "just kill her and get it over with, I've had a day."

"You've had a day?!" Cinder demanded, as Ruby found her fingers unable to find any purchase to crawl along the ground, her grip too weak and her hands shaking too tight. "Should I remind you who took the brunt of that bitch's harm?! Who's dealing with it every day? And you'll deny me this?!"

"Yes." Was Aldric's blunt response. "I will because you're my friend and so was she." Ruby blinked, halting, her body even briefly ceasing its convulsions as her brain tried to process what she'd heard. "And friends do friends favors, and in this instance we're all going to do each other a favor." She heard a rustling as she blinked the tears out of her one good eye and turned her head to face Cinder and 'Aldric', eyebrow furrowed as she looked over him again, trying to figure out how she recognized him. "My favor to you is getting you this closure. My favor to her, is trying to convince you to give her a quick death to spare her pain." But she couldn't find anything familiar about him, and with his face covered, she couldn't even look at that. "And your favor to me, is granting us both that. I was told you wanted to kill her, Cinder, not torture her. So please, just do it, and get it over with. All her faults, she's a good kid, and the least she deserves is a quick death."

Ruby's good eye twitched over to Cinder, who appeared to be calming down a bit, as she took in a deep breath, and let it out slow.

"Fine." Said Cinder, "fine... But my price for a quick death is one thing." A beat, "well... Two." She held her hand up to Aldric, "give me the bean... And take off your mask."

Aldric tilted his head, even as he reached for a yellow belt wrapped around his waist. "Why?" He asked, as Ruby tried to rationalize what in the gods' name beans had to do with this.

"If nothing else, I want her to see the face of the man who took her. I want her to die with that knowledge, and the realization of what you and I will do after this." Cinder said, turning to look over her shoulder and scowl at Ruby. "And if she's as shocked as I hope she will be... It will serve as a good judge for if you keeping it on for the encounter with the rest of Ozpin's allies. What effect it will have." She said, as Aldric pulled out a small bag from the belt, and from it came a green lima bean, which he deposited in Cinder's hand.

Ruby returned to her efforts of escaping - even managing to lunge to her feet and run, having caught her breath.

She made it to the foot of the stairs before Cinder, rolling her glowing eyes, thrust her hand forward. Ruby's bare foot hit the stairs, and promptly slid off as they were covered in a layer of ice. Ruby fell forward, smacking the side of her head on the stairs and filling her darkening vision with stars. She was only barely conscious for what happened next, as Cinder stalked over to her, grabbed her roughly by the arm, and dragged her back into the small chamber she'd been imprisoned in. Cinder then wrenched open Ruby's mouth and shoved the bean in, before forcibly closing it, and holding her lips and her nose shut.

"Swallow." She demanded.

Ruby welled up some small amount of courage to force her one good eye to glare defiantly into Cinder's glowing amber orbs.

"Swallow or choke!" Cinder yelled.

Ruby did no such thing, even as her lungs screamed for air.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Aldric shake his head. "Christ - here!" He waved his hand from side to side, and Ruby suddenly felt something grab ahold of the bean in her mouth and drag it down her throat, pulling it through her esophagus until its descent to her stomach was unavoidable.

Cinder let go of Ruby and stood up, backing away a step as the young Rose coughed and sputtered, falling to her hands and knees and retching, even as her entire body started to tingle and grow warm - and then suddenly, her face felt cold, and her injured eye opened wide, as though Cinder hadn't tried to burn it shut just moments ago. Ruby even felt energized, her aura returning to her, and felt closer to full health than she'd felt after weeks of bedrest back home.

But before she could try anything even resembling an escape attempt, she heard the cracking sound of concrete being manipulated, and her hands were soon encased in rock, binding them behind her back and weighing her down, effectively immobilizing her.

As the glow from Cinder's eyes receded, Ruby turned to glare at her from over her shoulder, trying to mask her fear with anger. Cinder, however, her eyes burned with a rage so white hot that it overshadowed Ruby's by a mile, making any attempt on Ruby's part appear paltry at best.

Cinder looked past Ruby, "do it, or I'll enjoy this until next week, and I'll tell her that you tried to stop me." She warned.

But Aldric shook his head, bringing his hands up to the sides of his mask and pulling it off. "Damn, Hot Stuff, you act like I'm trying to stop you." He said, as Ruby turned to face him, and everything in the world ground to a halt.

He looked just like he had before the Vytal finals - the only difference was a recently healed, thick scar stretching from his scalp, over his right eye, and down to his jaw, and the dried blood that surrounded it.

It was him.

It was Ash.

Ruby's breath quickened, "Ash -" She gasped, trying to rush over to him, only to be grabbed by the hair by Cinder. "Ash! Ash, Please!" He was alive! "Help me!" If he were here, he could help her! It was going to be okay! He could save her! "Please!" She begged, tears streaming freely from her eyes.

Ash grimaced, lowering the mask and dropping it on the ground, before making eye contact with Ruby, who slowed for a moment, realizing there was something different in his eyes. They didn't have the energy, the glow they did back at Beacon - but instead a dull look, like they were dead. Like there was something missing.

"What have you done to him?" Ruby sobbed, feeling a burning sensation build up alongside a pressure in her skull.

"Uh, Cinder?" Ash straightened up, pushing off of the wall, one hand going to the gun on his hip as the room was filled with a bright, silver glow.

"What did you do -" But Ruby's momentum was halted when she felt a heavy blow to the back of her head, and the light, alongside her words and the pressure in her head, died down, leaving nothing but her sobbing.

"Oh yeah, let's intentionally set off the emotion-fueled bomb in an enclosed space." She heard the familiar snide she'd thought lost to her, "brilliant idea, Hot Stuff. A-plus. Would you like to shave her sister next? Play baseball next to a sixty year old nuke?"

"Shut up." She heard Cinder retort, a catch to her voice that suggested she had been worried, for a second. She pulled Ruby up to her knees, and forced her to look at Aldric. "Look at him!" She growled, "I want you to know this before you go! I want you to die with the knowledge that no matter what I decide to do, your friends will hesitate when they see him, and we'll kill them just like we've done you!" She growled, as the crying Rose watched the former champion of Beacon force himself to hold Ruby's eyes.

"Ash..." Ruby quivered. He always had a plan, always. Even if she'd done something to him, there had to be something he'd thought of, some way he had out of it, some way he'd save her.

Cinder let go of Ruby, who still looked right at Ash, even as brief flashes of a world in which he'd whisk her out of here, and take the location of wherever this was to her uncle, and they'd win the war.

She begged him with her eyes, her voice failing her. He was just waiting for the right moment. He had to be! He'd save her!

"Please!"

The last thing Ruby Rose heard were two screams: One of plasma, as a red blade ignited and filled the room with the sound of a plasma torch, and one from Cinder as she gripped her blade in both hands and swung at Ruby's neck.

Taiyang had been at the hospital mere minutes after they got the local call from Yang that they'd found her cat faunus friend, but Qrow - he'd put the pieces together from what Yang had told them. He knew that Aldric wouldn't have crashed his ship and left it there on accident, he was too careful for that kind of stuff. So he let Taiyang rush to the hospital to interrogate Yang and Weiss for what little they knew, while he flew to the forests and searched for the ship.

Bingo... He thought, looking down at the great green rooftop of Patch's thick woodlands from miles above - finding the one mangled, damaged part that had been cleared and torn into wooden pieces by Aldric's ship.

He came down for a landing and paused, inspecting the ship from the outside, habitually reaching for the flask at his hip.

Wonder where he pulled this out of... He thought, taking a long drag from the flask as he looked at the mangled, burned husk of a vessel. Kinda looks familiar... He wiped some of the alcohol off of his chin and circled around it.

The best entrance looked like the canopy on the ship's front entrance - it was wide open and more or less safe, save only some broken glass. He hopped in, and then crouched low, twisting and angling around the bent and twisted metal that turned what had once been a spacious interior into a cramped, almost un-navigable trap. The inside of the ship was dark and cramped, the walls bent and dented at unnatural angles. He had to step down a small set of stairs and enter the similarly mangled passenger's cabin in order to turn around and inspect the pilot's cabin.

And it was in here that he found something.

Right underneath the pilot's seat was a lockbox, of a sterling gray color in stark contrast to the uniform olive drab of the rest of the ship, clearly indicating that it wasn't a part of the ship and had been put in there by someone. It took some work to pry it out, and then, after he climbed back out of the ship, some more to jam his sword into the padlock and snap it open. The contents had remained, for the most part, undamaged, though their exact nature left Qrow a little confused.

A single burlap sack, barely bigger than his hand, and a Terran tablet.

He grabbed the small bag first and opened it up - wherein he found three small lima beans, and nothing else.

Face wrinkled in confusion, he then took the tablet and powered it up.

And what he read, simultaneously gave him hope, and shook him to his core.

He was right: Aldric did have a plan. He'd even accounted for the damn Grimm not working and had left medicine and a cover story for whoever got hurt.

But what made Qrow wish he was back at Taiyang's home, what made him wish he could break into the man's good liquor cabinet, was the clear implication that Aldric genuinely didn't know if it would work.

Worse was that Aldric himself suspected it wouldn't.

It was mercifully quick.

One swing, and Cinder's lightsaber separated Ruby's head from her neck. It slid to the side as her lifeless body lurched forward, the both of them hitting the ground at the same time, with the same heavy whack.

Aldric let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, it coming out in one shaky exhale, as he watched her head roll forward an inch, before coming to a halt, her nerves firing at random, muscles twitching as the life left her.

"Down went Alice after it." But Aldric's throaty whisper, quiet enough already, was interrupted and soon overwhelmed by the heavily breathing Fall Maiden, who, after a moment, roared out again, dropping her blade and then blasting Ruby's corpse with a gout of fire so pure white and so bright that Aldric had to squint his eyes.

Cinder screamed for as long as she blasted Ruby's corpse, even throwing both hands into it, showering the young girl with the physical embodiment of her rage and fury. When she finally ran out of air, the fire petered out, leaving nothing - not even ash - but a red, glowing hot stone floor. Cinder, shoulders hunched forward, heaved for air, eyes aglow with magical energy as she leered down at where Ruby's corpse had just been.

Aldric looked up to her, seeing the literal fire in her eyes begin to fade away, the weight on her shoulders replaced with euphoric glee. She'd just wrought her vengeance, and it felt good to her.

"Better?" Aldric asked, attracting her attention with a snap of the head.

She looked at him like he were a new man, causing him to tilt his head.

"What?" At this, she darted forward, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him towards her - locking her lips with his in a display of passion that startled him.

She lifted one of her hands and grabbed the back of his head, pushing it closer to her until Aldric got the hint and reciprocated, at which point she lowered her hand and wrapped both of her arms around his neck, keeping them locked together until she was finished.

When she was done, she let go of him, backing away a step, arms still wrapped around his neck, breathing heavily, a wicked grin on her victorious face.

Aldric looked into her eyes, his heart beating as his mind raced with the implications.

He gulped, "if this is happening, you're dealing with Neo." He said, cautiously.

She merely grinned predatorily, baring her teeth before she went in again.