Yo! Not a ton to say this week. School is kicking my ass, so if for some reason there's no chapter next week randomly, that will be why. It shouldn't affect scheduling but I figured everyone should know rather than be unpleasantly surprised.

Start Chapter 34

"I… I'm sorry."

"No, no," Roman tries to assure her, but he looks so down that Ruby can't help but feel horrible. "You don't have to feel bad for bein' honest. Nothing wrong with that."

Yes, that's true, but Ruby still feels bad.

After all, Roman had decided to be honest with his feelings. For her. He'd confessed.

To her.

Ruby had… not been able to accept such a confession.

That had absolutely nothing to do with the Roman Torchwick in front of her, and everything to do with the Roman Torchwick she'd known, for her, three years ago, but also nine or so years from now.

Complicated.

Really, this whole thing is complicated.

"Honestly, I'm not really…" Ruby tries to find a term to describe herself. She's not really uninterested in relationships. She gets some of the appeal… some of it. Just… "I don't know. Things are tricky. I've got a lot on my plate right now, and–"

"Ruby, it's fine, really." Roman tries his best to smile for her sake, which feels antithetical to the fact that he must be feeling heartbroken. "You don't need to explain yourself. Sometimes these things don't have to be complicated."

"But I don't want you to think that I don't like you, or something!" Ruby rushes to defend the reason she'd been… defending her reasons. Huh. "I've just… got so much to think about, and relationships of any kind just… aren't really on the docket for thoughts at the moment."

"Yeah, I guess that's fair." Roman comments absently. "You've got that whole mysterious goal of yours to strive towards, right?"

Her eyes widen, and she turns to see Roman looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

"How did you…"

"Uh, Ruby, it's not all that subtle." He laughs. "I've met some people who have good poker faces before; you are not among that number."

Ruby grumbles, but cannot even remotely begin to refute that.

"So, uh… kind of getting off topic, but… now that I'm thinking about it, you kind of give off a certain vibe." Roman coughs into one hand. "Do you… actually like people?"

Ruby is the one to raise an eyebrow at Roman this time. "Uh, yeah?"

"Okay, poorly phrased; I meant to ask more… have you ever shown any actual interest in someone before."

"Like… romantically?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Just curious, honestly."

Ruby isn't quite sure where Roman's going with this, but she tries to remember back to her childhood, or her times hanging out around boys her age when she'd been a kid. Oftentimes, they'd confessed to her that they'd had feelings for her, and Ruby… well, she'd always just assumed that she hadn't liked them back.

But…

She tries to remember any time. Any time at all. A crush on a teacher, or on one of Yang's friends.

…Nope.

"Uh… I can't really say I have." She hums out. "Weird."

"It might not be all that weird." Roman speaks, shifting in his seat. "You might just be ace."

"Ace?"

"Asexual."

Ruby's heard the term. But then, she'd first heard the term when she'd been fourteen, and she'd been in what she hadn't known at the time would be her final year at Signal. Sure, she had some attention from the boys – and the occasional girl – that hadn't been into Yang – which is a very small number of people – but she'd been too busy finalizing the designs on Crescent Rose to care.

"Uh…" Ruby hesitates a while. "I don't know. Maybe?"

Roman just laughs. "Somehow, that answer doesn't surprise me. Stuff's complicated, though. How you feel isn't really up to you, is it?"

Ruby smiles softly. "No, I guess it's not."

There's a silence still stretching between them, and while it's not as awkward as before, Ruby would be hard pressed to call it comfortable.

"…I'm sorry for making things weird between us." Roman mutters.

"No!" Ruby shakes her head, trying to get him to see sense on this. "Admitting how you feel isn't wrong! You're not making things weird, it's just… I really wasn't expecting it is all."

"Ah." Roman laughs. "And here Amber kept teasing me for being too obvious."

Really? Ruby can't help thinking. I didn't notice anything at all.

Another bout of silence.

"Uh… I'm going to go and uh… y'know…" Roman gestures towards the higher sections of the stadium.

Be alone for a while. Roman means but does not say, and Ruby nods her head. "Right. I'll uhm… I'll be seeing you."

"Right." He smiles. It's weak, barely reaching his eyes at all.

"Seeya."

He departs, and once Roman's out of sight, Ruby places her head in her hands, and groans out below her breath.

That… could've gone a lot better.

It probably would've helped to not make things awkward had she not immediately exclaimed 'What!?' when Roman had confessed to her.

She'd just been so… surprised! It hadn't really been Roman's fault. Not truly. It had been the fault of Roman Torchwick, twenty-eight-year-old thief that had beat Ruby to hell and back more than once. Well, that and the fact that she apparently can't really feel attraction, which is something she'll have to think about once everything she's currently dealing with is dealt with.

Ugh. She'd probably made him feel like a complete idiot! She'll have to make it up to him later.

…Or would that just make him feel like Ruby's taking pity on him? Would he feel even worse!? Why must this all be so complicated!?

Jeez. She hopes the others are having an easier time than her.

/

Hawthorne's hulking blade carries with it enough force to send Blake spiraling backwards. She'd gotten Gambol Shroud up in time to tank the hit, but even so, she feels the reverberations as they run down her arm, and winces because of them.

She lands just in front of Eve's cell. She's not going to let them get at her. She refuses. She'd come all this way to protect her student, and now…

Well, she has very few good options.

"Hmph." Hawthorne grunts out, Cracking his neck. "And here I thought you would be an actual challenge to fight."

Blake says nothing. She simply stands back up to her full height, loads a clip of lightning dust rounds into Gambol, and disappears via her semblance.

She's not currently focused on Hawthorne. As much as she'd like to say that she thinks she can handle him in a one on one, she's not terribly certain of that fact. At the moment, her goal is actually to neutralize the guards who'd come with him. If she can do that, then she's confident she can manage to get Eve past him, without actually having to fight him.

After all, whether or not he is likely an incredibly fearsome opponent, his fighting style does not leave room for speed. Even with Eve carried in her arms, Blake could still outrun him.

Or well, she hopes so, at least.

Yet as she goes to bring her blade down on the first guard, Hawthorne is there. She manages a glancing blow, raking the thinnest edge of Gambol down on the guards back, and though he hisses out in pain, and shakes due to the lightning dust, he's not out for the count at all.

Hawthorne reaches for Gambol Shroud, trying, likely, to rip the weapon from her hands. She summons another clone and infuses it with lightning dust.

When Hawthorne touches it, it goes up in a spray of electrical energy. Blake lands a safe distance away, smiling to herself as she sees the guard she'd struck go down, the lighting coursing through him enough to knock him out.

But Hawthorne…

His aura is smoking. There's static still buzzing about his limbs.

But he is undeterred.

"If all you have are simple parlor tricks," The man grunts out beneath his breath, even as he shucks off his furred coat, revealing a black undersuit beneath that seems to be far more fitted for a battle. "Then you'd best surrender now."

She says nothing.

"So far, you have fought ill-prepared rank and file. Those unable to anticipate your arrival. Riff-Raff. I, As I am sure you are already aware, am not like them. I am a veteran of the Faunus Wars. I fought against the strongest warriors your people have ever produced, and I proved myself their superior every time.

His arrogance isn't entirely misplaced. Blake's good, and she's not going to pretend like she's not, but even so, in their first few exchanges, Hawthorne has shown to be on the level of Ironwood, Winter Schnee, or Hazel. His size belies just how fast it is he can move in short, concentrated bursts, and his strength is more than enough to swing that massive blade of his without tiring. His aura reserves, too, are at least as plentiful as Yang's own, perhaps even rivaling Jaune's.

And she knows precious little about him, where he likely knows quite a bit about her.

She knows the stories, of course. General Hawthorne had been perhaps the foremost enemy of the Faunus during their revolution; no human company besides his own had managed to win every single battle they participated in across the war.

His blade, Edict, is almost as famous as he.

The skill with which Hawthorne uses it tells nothing of just how ridiculously heavy it truly is. Blake had felt that when she'd had to parry the blade. It had her aura straining even then, and when she'd had to block it, it had been like someone had taken a hammer directly to the bones in her arm.

Their styles could not be more different.

But other than that, she knows nothing. Not his semblance. Not his true fighting style. Not if she could knock Edict from his hands, and force him into using hand-to-hand.

She knows nothing.

"Come then, child." Hawthorne barks at her, stepping forward casually, like this is all just a game to him. It's bluster, but not entirely unearned. "If you wish to escape from here, you will have to kill me."

Blake had not expected to hear such words. Yet, when she thinks on them, she cannot deny that there is truth within them. Blake doesn't doubt that Hawthorne will chase her and Eve to the ends of the earth. He's acted so far without evidence, but with it? He could likely begin to turn the more moderate parties in Atlas against the faunus.

And he cannot do that if he's dead.

It's a… difficult thing for Blake to think on. She's killed before, whether or not that fact is one she wishes to turn her head from. Seven people. She's ended the lives of seven people. The first…

The first had been a Schnee guard on a transport they'd been hitting. They'd come out of nowhere as the White Fang had been finishing up taking up cargo, and Blake… she'd reacted to her opponents assuming they'd had aura.

She'd gotten behind one, and placed a hand around their throat, using aura to bolster her strength. She'd been in a panic, trying to subdue them as quickly as possible to assist the others, who were being lit up by gunfire.

Their throat had collapsed.

Blake had stood there, numb, incapable of doing anything but watching the life leaving that soldiers eyes, for minutes. She'd been the reason, certainly, that a few of their compatriots had met their own ends. Her lack of action.

Adam had been the one to snap her out of that funk. The one to get her back on her feet, and bring her back to their camp. He'd stayed with her, talked her through her feelings, been there to offer a bin for her to pitch her lunch into whenever she remembered the choking noises that person had uttered as they'd tried to breathe.

The last person she'd killed had been Adam himself.

And that… well, that she hasn't ever really forgiven herself for. It had been necessary, and she knows it, but even so, Adam had once been her most trusted confidant in all the world. Someone with whom she'd shared a childhood, a trauma, and a bed.

And she'd been the one to kill him.

She doesn't want to kill Hawthorne. She'd vowed long ago to only do such a thing when she had no other choice.

But… if Hawthorne truly plans to chase them to the ends of Remnant, or to make examples of the both of them, then it very well might be him or them.

And Blake knows that as much as it will hurt, she'll choose them every time.

Her expression hardens, and it must be obvious even to Hawthorne, because his own face suddenly morphs into an intrigued frown.

"Hm." His stance changes. "The look in your eyes is different now. I'd say you just made the decision to kill me if you have to. Strange, you did not strike me as the type of person for whom that would require any thought at all."

"I have no idea how you got such an impression of me." Blake decides to answer back. "It's not as if I've killed anyone in my efforts against you."

"That we know of." The man scoffed. "But I confess that yes, you have been rather clean in your undermining of the Atlesian economic sector."

She can tell, now, that the man is only saying all of this to rile her up. He'd gotten her talking in the first place by insinuating that she's a killer. And she'd fallen for it.

He's just bought himself another thirty seconds for help to arrive, and for Blake's chances of escape to grow even dimmer.

She growls out under her breath, even as she brings Gambol Shroud back up, And blitzes towards him.

Like before, the initial strike is a feint. Her true targets are the guards around Hawthorne. Unfortunately, the man seems to have expected that, for he does not even bother to block the strike that Blake aims at him. Instead, the clones blade phases straight through the back of his head, and his blade nearly carves Blake in half. She hisses out as she narrowly jumps overtop the blade, having to change her momentum in midair with the ribbon of Gambol.

The guards take pot shots at her now that Hawthorne's no longer in between them. Blake bobs and weaves between their bullets, but even she cannot dodge all of them. She feels them pelt against her aura, and mentally keeps track of the fact that she likely only has 75% or so left.

She's really running out of time. If she wants Eve and herself to have any chance of getting out of this, she needs to start taking some risks.

She shifts Gambol into its gun-form, and fires three electric rounds into the face of one of the guards. His aura is up, but even still the lightning courses across his body, and causes his next few shots to go wide, Giving Blake some breathing room.

She can't afford to break off from Hawthorne for long, however. Already, he's realizing what Blake has; that if he gets his hands on Eve, the battle ends in his favor instantaneously.

He turns towards her cell, and takes a single step in that direction Before Blake is on him, having used a clone alongside yet more lightning dust to distract his guards momentarily.

They're good, and that's a problem. Of course, the fact that the personal guard of the leader of Atlas are strong is not particularly shocking information. But even so, she hadn't quite expected him to bring people on the level of the Ace-Ops with him.

It's clear, now, that he'd wanted to give Blake absolutely no hope of claiming victory. On her own, she might have been able to handle the guards here. By the very skin of her teeth, but she could've handled it.

With him in tandem…

She's fighting a losing battle. That much is obvious.

She needs to start shifting her focus away from winning this fight, and towards how to get the both of them out of this alive. Before she can consider that with any real energy, however, a sharp crack reverberates through the space, echoing off the low ceiling, and Blake bites down as pain flares across her back.

Aura protects one from damage, but in cases like having a high-caliber round fired right into one's back, it doesn't do much at all for the pain.

Blake lands in front of Hawthorne with a slight weakness in her gait, and that's all that it takes for Hawthorne to charge her, sensing that weakness. She gets her blade up in time to deflect his own, but it carves a thick channel in the concrete beside her, and she feels the ground shake from the impact.

She needs to do something!

She buys herself a moment with a lightning clone, which Hawthorne swings through without difficulty, allowing the static to coat his aura, but otherwise leaving him unharmed. Blake loads ice dust into Gambol as she moves back in, and tries a technique she'd used on Roman Torchwick once upon a time.

She instead conjures an ice clone, and tries to get Edict stuck within it. Instead, Hawthorne easily carves through the clone, bisecting it at the waist without issue, and Blake is left midair, a sitting duck for the guards he's with to take potshots at.

She's forced to burn yet more aura to avoid and tank their bullets.

She's down to 50% aura.

…She needs to leave all her cards on the table. She can't afford to hold anything back.

She hears Edict being pulled free from the concrete behind her, but ignores that in favor of firing off three shots of ice dust at the sniper at the other end of the room. One hits his chest, but she hadn't been aiming for him. Instead, the other two shots hit the man's gun, and cause massive crystals of frost to grow upon it, bending and warping the metal.

The man curses, but throws the weapon away, and draws a sword from off of his back.

Good. Far more easily dealt with.

Hawthorne swings at her, this time up and down. Blake gets low, so that her body is almost flush with the ground, before summoning yet another ice clone. She pushes off of the spot as it's left behind, and hears as Edict sinks into it, and the concrete ground.

As she'd thought, that's enough to actually catch it this time.

That'll hold Hawthorne for, maybe, five seconds. He has an obscene amount of strength, which means that Blake can't afford to hesitate. She charges towards the two main guards that Hawthorne had brought with him. There are eight others, but they're regular officers, not Specialists disguised as such. If she can handle the main two, then the others will be far easier to deal with.

She ducks beneath one of their initial blows, even as the other aims a carbine directly at her head. She channels her aura, and allows a few bullets to ping off of it as she gets herself into position. She'd known that the man would expect her to dodge, and his eyes widen when, instead of that, she throws up Gambol's ribbon, wrapping it around the both of them.

It goes high, so that its around their necks, and then Blake pulls. It ties the two of them together, but, more importantly, cuts off their airflow. They struggle for a second before the sound of Hawthorne breaking out of the ice brings Blake back into the there and then.

She curses under her breath, even as she disconnects the ribbon of Gambol then and there. It'll keep those two tied up, and, if she's lucky, it might even result in one or both of them passing out from lack of oxygen.

She turns towards Hawthorne with the blade of Gambol alone, and dodges around his initial strike. She's hemorrhaging aura, forcing herself to move this fast, to be this agile, but it won't matter if she still has aura if she or Eve get captured.

She gets in close, ducks around a mix-up thrown by Hawthorne with his left fist, trying to catch the side of her head. She barely gets by it, before trying to aim for his throat as well, making to strangle him from behind.

Instead, he catches her by the arm, and Blake nearly screams as he uses every ounce of strength in him to compress the bones and muscles within.

"It's over, child." Hawthorne spouts, even as Blake shifts Gambol into its pistol mode, and unloads the last five rounds in the clip into his face.

When the frost kicked up by the bullets dissipates, Blake finds that Hawthorne is still there. Still holding onto her as steadfastly as he had been before. His aura is barely hanging on, but even so, it's held.

And Blake can't reload with a single hand.

She struggles briefly to try and break free of his grip, but Hawthorne's is like steel. Honestly, it feels similar enough to when Penny herself had ahold of her before.

Perhaps that makes his semblance strength-based?

Well… not like knowing that matters, now.

"But my," Hawthorne sneers. "You did put up quite a fight. To incapacitate both of my Specialists, and neutralize my sniper. Here I thought I'd overprepared for a single fighter."

She looks over, where, sure enough, the two specialists that she'd choked out had passed out. They're being assisted by some of the other officers, who are snapping Gambol Shrouds ribbon.

She'd gotten lucky, and yet, even so, it hadn't mattered.

It's over.

She's lost.

…

..

.

And then something strange occurs. Something she hadn't at all expected.

A black and red portal whirls to life as the back of the room.

Instantly, Blake's eyes widen, and Hawthorne's do the same. His grip loosens, and Blake realizes she has a chance, however miniscule, to get out of this.

"Branwen!?" Hawthorne snarls, recognizing the semblance. It's just as Blake had suggested herself, a few days back. Raven's semblance is too iconic, too known. This… this will almost certainly be seen as an act of aggression against Atlas by one of Vale's best agents.

But even so, Blake is not in the position of being able to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She shifts Gambol's form, and then, with everything she has, she brings the blade down on the back of Hawthorne's hand. The man shouts out in pain as his aura snaps, and his grip fails momentarily.

It's enough for Blake to get out of his grasp. She leaves a clone behind, infused with no dust at all, but hopefully it will distract him for a millisecond.

She needs every individual moment.

She blitzes towards Eve's cell, feeling the last modicums of aura within her failing. She has mere moments before this all catches up with her.

"Let's go!" She shouts, and she sees Eve, fearful, barely there, nod her head.

Even so, that brief moment she'd had to take to stop is enough for Hawthorne to catch up to her. He takes ahold of her other wrist, and this time, he uses enough force to snap the bone within Blake's arm. She cries out in agony as her aura fails, and she turns to see the man with fury in his gaze.

"I will not let you go free!"

Blake panics however briefly, kicking out at Hawthorne's stomach and groin with one foot. It's underhanded, but she has no room for honor here.

Despite being hit dead on, the man's grip doesn't falter. His face shows the pain he's feeling, but there's no indication that he plans to yield.

And then, without warning, a blade erupts out of the top of Hawthorn's arm.

Blake gasps, even as Hawthorne hacks out in pain. He's still trying to hold on, but the muscles within his arm have been severed in several places. He physically cannot keep ahold of her.

Blake frees herself, before looking, almost in a daze, at her savior.

And she sees Eve, with a wild look in her eye. She's still got both of her hands wrapped around the blade of one of the two Specialists that Blake had strangled into unconsciousness before. Her eyes are wide, her expression sharp and panicked, but she's there. And…

And within those eyes burns a fire that Blake hasn't seen before.

…She can worry about that later.

"Come on!" She shouts to break Eve out of her own head. The woman snaps to attention, turning towards Blake and nodding her head. Without hesitation, she rips the bloody blade from out of Hawthorne's flesh, even as Blake dropkicks the man back towards his fellows.

She takes ahold of Eve's hand. Her student, as brave as she's been, doesn't have aura. She's still supposed to be in the earliest stages of her training. She's yet to even see a Grimm.

And now, she's one of likely only two faunus to ever wound General Hawthorne.

Blake doesn't have any aura herself at this point, but…

Well, if anyone's going to try and hurt Eve, they're going to have to go through Blake, first.

She drags her towards the portal, and then, when she has enough leverage, she pulls Eve in front of her, and shields her as they cover the final bit of distance. Bullets ping off of the concrete around them. One sinks into the back of Blake's left shoulder. She hisses out in agony, but keeps herself upright.

She can feel pain in just a moment. Once they're through the portal.

Another bullet strikes her, this time along her right arm. She screams out in pain and fervor both as she forces herself to keep going, and then, at the last moment, she jumps through the portal.

She lands hard on her feet, and she trips over Eve, who had tried to turn around, likely to check on her. She falls to the ground, entirely spent.

"Blake!" Eve screams out as the portal closes behind them. "Blake, are you alright!?"

She lets out a shrill laugh as she tries to turn herself over, before realizing that her arms are both screaming in pain. One had taken a bullet, and the other wrist had been snapped by Hawthorne.

She'd also taken a bullet in the shoulder, which is not helping. She'd basically gotten them through the portal through will and adrenaline alone.

And that is very much catching up to her.

Still, for the moment, there's something else on her mind. She turns, and looks up at their savior.

"You… how did you…"

Raven Branwen stares back at her with a complicated expression. It's evident that she understands what Blake's asking in the first place.

How did you make a portal to me in the first place?

It's more than fair. To her knowledge, Raven has to know someone quite well, or at least like them quite a bit, to be able to make a portal to them.

But…

"…You make my daughter happy." Raven says shortly, looking away from her. "That… means something."

…Oh.

Blake's… not really sure what she should say to that.

"Thank you. We would've been–"

"Don't mention it." Raven turns away entirely.

The space they're currently occupying looks, to Blake, at least, to be the backrooms of Amity Coliseum. The parts that civilians are never supposed to see. Support columns and things of that nature. A moment later, another figure pushes their way into their space, seemingly furious.

"Tyrian's getting away!" Yang shouts out, looking to Raven. "What the hell are you doing!?"

Raven sneers. "Did you want to catch Tyrian, or did you want your girlfriend and her student to survive?"

Yang's eyes widen. "Wha–"

And then her gaze locks with Blake's.

If her eyes had been wide before, they are perfect circles now.

"Blake!"

She rushes to her side, cradling her and helping to turn Blake on her back. Blood seeps out onto Yang's hands, even as Blake herself hisses out in pain.

"What– you're injured, how–"

"I'm…" She breathes out harshly. "I'm fine. Hurt. Badly hurt. But I'm going to be okay."

"That…" Yang had clearly been worried that that might not be the case. "What happened?"

"We got ambushed. Hawthorne was there." She tells her, hissing out as Yang accidentally touches her broken wrist. "The fight… didn't go so well for me. We escaped thanks to Raven's semblance."

Yang looks between the three of them – Blake, Eve, and Raven – with an expression of slowly-dawning understanding.

Evidently, she's realizing the problem with that.

"Then…"

"Yeah." Raven still won't look at them. "Hawthorne knows I bailed your girl out. And more than that… he knows my semblance. The limits of it."

"So, he knows I know who she is, as well."

"That…"

Blake closes her eyes, shaking her head from side to side.

"It's about as close to a worst-case scenario as possible, even if we got out of there." She mutters.

"An agent of Vale just helped abet the escape of an Atlesian prisoner."

End Chapter 34

Alright, that was Chapter 34, and the end of Blake's fight! We've just got Weiss' to finish now!

Also that awkward moment when Ruby thinks the most difficult thing any of her teammates are going through right now are having to turn down their teammates advances.

No, Ruby, Blake got shot.

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