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Chapter Text

"Greetings, fiction fans, and welcome to the long-awaited sequel to RWBY: The Last Airbender, appropriately titled Book 2: The Second One! I'm Shiro Shinobi, and joining me all the way from Vale's prestigious Beacon Academy is none other than Professor Bartholomew Oobleck!"

"That's Doctor Oobleck! And yes Shiro I'm absolutely delighted to be here with you today for the recap of the previous story so let's not waste any time and dive right into it shall we? Last time in this outlandish crossover between these two popular American-made yet anime-influenced productions we found Avatar Aang searching desperately for a way to end the hundred-year-long war with the Fire Nation without being forced to take the life of their leader Fire Lord Ozai for all life is sacred to the airbending monks who raised him. After even the advice of his own past lives failed to console him Aang discovered the last living lion turtle and upon presenting it with his dilemma he was promptly whisked away to an entirely different world known only as - Remnant."

"Indeed! Remnant, a world home to soulless monsters called Grimm and the Huntsmen and Huntresses who slay them, is where the Avatar met Team RWBY, a group of four Huntresses-in-training who would ultimately aid him in his quest! Ruby Rose, the young, enthusiastic team leader; Weiss Schnee, the abrasive heiress to the Schnee Dust Company; Blake Belladonna, the stealthy Faunus with a troubled past; and Yang Xiao Long, Ruby's half-sister, who burns with a fiery determination! After some comedic shenanigans, Team RWBY was launched into the Emerald Forest alongside Aang, tasked with protecting him from the bloodthirsty Grimm who dwelt within!"

"Aang had a run-in with a mysterious multicolored femme fatale known to the fandom as Neopolitan before finally encountering the Grimm and confirming for himself that these monsters lack even a simple animalistic soul. Following this however he met a strange man-shaped Grimm entity that displayed human-level intelligence and waterbending abilities and was eventually revealed to the readers to be the corrupted remains of the villain Unalaq from Avatar's sequel series The Legend of Korra, although because Korra's storyline takes place seventy years after Aang's the Avatar himself did not recognize the fiend and he remained something of a mystery in-universe even after his defeat."

"The monstrous Grimmlock proved impossible to destroy by conventional means, despite the fact that weaponry and intrinsic powers in the world of Remnant tend to take very unconventional forms! With Team RWBY unable to vanquish the villain, Aang attempted to purge the darkness from Unalaq's soul using his newly-acquired power of Aura! In Remnant, all beings possessing a soul are capable of manifesting an Aura, which allows them to shield against damage from lethal attacks, heal wounds more quickly, and trigger the additional powers of Dust, a natural substance mined from the earth with a plethora of seemingly magical abilities!"

"As Aang's spiritual energy battled the darkness within Grimmlock all other Grimm in the area were drawn to the pure hatred emanating from the corrupted waterbender and Team RWBY was forced to hold them off to further protect the young Avatar. Things looked grim in more ways than one but eventually Aang's light overcame the darkness and Grimmlock disappeared completely with the surge of positive spiritual energy driving away the remaining Grimm. Aang was then transported back to his own world and in an even more impressive battle he subdued the Fire Lord and used his new ability to bend the energy within a person's soul to take away Ozai's firebending powers thereby rendering him unable to coerce people by force thus ending the war and bringing a new age of peace to his world."

"Right you are, Doctor! But Aang's short time in Remnant left Team RWBY, as well as readers of the story, wondering if the two worlds would ever collide again! Now, the wait is over!"

紅 白黑黃 降卋神通
RWBY: The Last Airbender

第二個
Book 2: The Second One

Water. Earth. Fire. Air.

Red. White. Black. Yellow.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.

A hundred years passed and my brother Sokka and I discovered the new Avatar, an airbender named Aang. Although his airbending skills were great, he had a lot to learn before he was ready to save anyone. But from the day I first met him, I believed Aang would save the world. And you know what?

I was right. With the help of his friends, Aang defeated Fire Lord Ozai and ended the Hundred Year War. Zuko, Ozai's son and our ally, became the new Fire Lord. Together with Earth King Kuei, Aang and Zuko promised to return the four nations to harmony.

But even with friends working hard all over the world, maintaining balance was a neverending struggle. The sovereignty of the Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom, lingering support for Ozai in the Fire Nation, the rift between humans and spirits, the clashing of tradition and innovation - these were all sources of conflict even after the war.

It is the duty of the Avatar to lead the world down the right path. Along with those he regards as his new family - Sokka, Zuko, Toph, Appa and Momo, and of course his loving girlfriend - Aang has continued to fulfill his destiny, and stands as a beacon of light in the darkness, a symbol of peace for the four nations of the world.

But one day the question arose . . . what does an Avatar do when he finds himself with more than one world to worry about?

For in some worlds, even the most brilliant lights eventually flicker and die. And when they are gone, darkness will return . . .

With the sun roughly halfway over the horizon, the dawn sky was a burning sheet of orange, unbroken due to the absence of cloud cover. Appearing first as just a mild disturbance, almost imperceptible in the intense light, a Satomobile cut its way across the barren landscape, kicking up a powerful tail of dust. Highlighted by the sun, the car drove - and drove. Its driver, for the time, remained stoic, while the fire ferret in the passenger's seat slept through the engine's roar, its tail curled over its head.

Eventually, a figure became visible before the vehicle, and it slowed its pace. By the time the car reached the woman - standing, ever so importantly, in the middle of nowhere - it had decelerated to a crawl, and finally turned off to the side before stopping.

The woman opened the driver's side door, and the driver stepped out, removing the helmet that had been obscuring his boyish face. The two smiled at each other.

"Zhu Li," Bolin said, offering her a hand, which she shook. "It's been a while. How was the honeymoon?"

Zhu Li rolled her eyes, but maintained her smile. "As good as I could have expected. The Fire Nation has some breathtaking scenery, but also a lot of . . ." She glanced backward over her shoulder. "Distractions."

Some distance behind her, a man flitted this way and that over a ring of bizarre-looking machines arranged in a completely unremarkable location in the larger, aforementioned middle of nowhere. Despite the size and complexity of the machines, there seemed to be no one else around, leaving Bolin to wonder how the metallic behemoths had been transported.

With a light purring noise, Pabu climbed out of the Satomobile and onto Bolin's shoulder. Zhu Li reached up and scratched the fire ferret behind the ear while Bolin tried, vainly, to extract some kind of meaning out of the appearance of Varrick's devices. As usual, the man himself interfered before this could be accomplished.

"There you are, kid! Great to see ya! How's the gang these days?"

Bolin reflected. "Opal's good. Mako's -"

"Okay, don't need the life story," said Varrick, grabbing Bolin and Zhu Li by the arms and dragging them toward the odd machines.

"Is this all just measurement equipment?" Bolin asked as they skidded to a halt.

"Yeah," said Varrick, "well, I don't know what all I need to measure, so, y'know, better safe than sorry."

Leaning over one of the devices and stroking his chin, Bolin's expression changed from curious to concerned. "If that's what I think it is, then I don't know about safe . . ."

Embedded within the machine was a cylinder containing a severed portion of a woody, green vine. Purplish light was emanating from the vine, and innumerable wires were connected to the cylinder, snaking every which way. The machine was emitting a low humming sound.

Zhu Li put a hand on Bolin's unoccupied shoulder. "I wasn't happy about it either, but admittedly it was the only way to get enough power to properly analyze this sample."

"And the infamous sample is . . . ?" Bolin inquired.

Varrick swooped into position behind them, and they turned to look. Held in his hand was a yellow crystal, as large as the man's torso but apparently not weighing much; the way that light played within it gave it an otherworldly quality. Varrick thrust the gem into Bolin's grasp, then returned to his erratic examination of the ring of devices. Bolin lifted the sample and peered at it from different angles, and Pabu imitated him. Neither could find their faces reflected amongst the visual chaos, and they shot each other a look of uncertainty.

"We're gonna have to boost the power to a hundred and five percent," came Varrick's voice. Bolin turned to find him on the other side of the ring, where one of the machines appeared to have a control panel built into it. "We'll have a limited window here, so when you're done gawking at the thing, we should get started." The mechanical hum increased in volume as Varrick eased a lever upward.

"I don't understand," Bolin said. "Korra and Asami found this in the Spirit World?"

"Yeah, but a really weird part of the Spirit World," Varrick nodded, pressing buttons.

"I'm pretty sure all of the Spirit World is a really weird part," said Bolin.

Zhu Li attempted a better explanation. "According to the spirits in the area, this crystal is not typical of their world, and such otherworldly artifacts habitually show up in that particular location. In short, not even the spirits know what it is."

"Which means," Varrick shouted over the increasing bass hum, "we'll be deviating a bit from standard analysis procedures today! That's where you come in!"

This much Bolin had been informed of already. "Pabu," he said, "this could be dangerous. Wait with Zhu Li, okay?" After a scratch beneath the chin, Pabu happily hopped over to Zhu Li's shoulder, and she walked around to join her husband while Bolin carried the crystal into the center of the circle of machinery. Setting it down, he took a few steps back, and then a proper stance.

One of the machines gave off a loud bang and a plume of black smoke, followed by a sizzling crackle and a spark of electricity. Bolin turned to Varrick and yelled, "Are you sure this is safe?!"

"Don't worry, kid! If you do exactly what I tell you, everything will be fine!"

"I don't know how you can say that!" Zhu Li interjected. "Although I will admit that the possibility of a resonance cascade scenario is extremely unlikely!"

"A what?!" Bolin bellowed.

"Never mind!" said Varrick as another machine sparked. "Just do the thing!"

Taking a deep breath amidst all the noise, Bolin simultaneously stomped his foot and spread his hands apart, and the ground underneath the yellow crystal was within seconds melted into a pool of glowing red lava. The typical burst of heat washed over the earthbender, but he was more concerned with the purple arcs of electricity that sprouted from each machine and met in the center, writhing all over the surface of the crystal.

"Is that supposed to happen?!" he asked urgently.

"It's probably not a problem!" Varrick replied, frantically pressing buttons. "Probably!"

The crystal sparked, and then a solid shaft of purple light shot skyward out of it. The blast was all too reminiscent of those produced by Kuvira's spirit energy cannon.

"Oh dear!" cried Zhu Li. "Bolin, get away from the beam!"

Bolin wasted no time in producing a slanted pillar of earth beneath his feet that launched him away from the increasingly bright column of energy. He landed heavily as the beam began to give off a high-pitched whine.

"Shutting down!" Varrick yelled, yanking at levers. When nothing changed, he corrected himself, "Attempting shut down . . . It's not . . . i-it's not - it's not shutting down! It's -"

Purple explosions began manifesting in the air around the beam. Bizarrely, it began raining black, animal-like figures - they would fall out of one explosion and then disappear into another before they hit the ground. Zhu Li pulled Varrick away from the control panel, and then everything went black for Bolin.

After a moment, he realized that he could still hear himself breathing, which suggested he was actually still conscious. But no matter how much he tried opening and closing his eyes, all he saw was darkness.

Then there was a purple flash of light, and he could once more see the malfunctioning machinery. It appeared that Varrick, Zhu Li, and Pabu were unharmed -

A second flash, and suddenly Bolin was standing in the Spirit World. He recognized the location as the site of the new spirit portal that led to Republic City, though he did not recognize the two oblong spirits in front of him. But Republic City was so far away -

Flash, now he had no idea where he was. Some kind of forest, and all the leaves were red - it seemed to be autumn, because they were falling. Standing before him in a semicircle were several unpleasant-looking - spirits? Animals? He had never seen anything like them before. They vaguely resembled wolves, but stood on their hind legs in a hunchbacked position, and their fur was entirely black. On their heads were strange, bony masks or helmets of some kind, and their eyes glowed fiery red from beneath these. They sniffed at him and one another uncertainly, and then one approached him and raised its claw to strike.

Flash. He was back again. With a monstrous noise, all of the machines exploded, and the beam of energy finally ceased, leaving just a large crater in the ground where the crystal had been. There was no trace of the yellow gem remaining, nor any of the black creatures.

As Bolin jogged over to where Varrick and Zhu Li sat on the ground, Zhu Li slapped Varrick on the back of the head.

"I told you it was too dangerous!"

Varrick frowned at the smoking heap of charred metal and earth. "I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one . . ."

As Bolin helped them to their feet, Pabu climbed back onto his shoulders. Varrick brushed the dust off of himself and then did the same for his wife, who seemed to take it as something of an apology. Finishing this, he suddenly narrowed his eyes at the nearest of the machines, and then darted over to it. A singed slip of paper was hanging from a slit in the machine's side; Varrick swiped it up and held it close to his face as he bounded back over to the others.

Lowering the paper and grinning widely, he said, "Ha! We're in the clear!" He shoved the printout toward Bolin, who took it from his hand as he continued, "According to these readings, the secondary effects of this cascade won't be felt for some seventy-odd years! That's plenty of time for Korra to come up with a solution. If she and Asami aren't too, y'know - busy." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

The information on the paper swam before Bolin's gaze, eluding the formation of any meaning. But one thing did stand out to him.

"What's this minus sign here?"

"Hwhuh?" Varrick asked, snatching the paper back. After a close examination he said, "Well I'll be a hog monkey's uncle, you're right! It's seventy-some years in the past, not the future."

"In the past?!" exclaimed Bolin. "How is that even possible?!"

Varrick jabbed the paper with his finger and reprimanded, "You just showed me how!"

The earthbender looked one way and another as unpleasant possibilities flocked through his mind. "But if the past gets changed, doesn't that mean we could all just disappear?!"

"Of course not!" said Varrick with a dismissive wave. "If that were going to will have already happened, it would've already . . ." He thought for a moment. "Happened!"

"But - but - when I was getting zapped around back there, I could've just gotten trapped in the past!" Bolin's eyes widened. "Wait a minute! How do I know you're really Varrick, and not some great-great-ancestor of Varrick who's also named Varrick?!" He pointed at Zhu Li, his finger an inch from her nose. "And how do I know you're the regular Zhu Li, and not some alternate dimension Zhu Li?!" Then he gasped, and removed Pabu from his shoulders, holding him at arm's length. "Are you even Pabu?!"

The fire ferret tilted his head and let out a short squeak.

Once more, Zhu Li placed a hand on Bolin's shoulder. Affecting a motherly tone, she said, "Bolin, settle down. This isn't the past, and if there are alternate versions of us . . ." She glanced down uncertainly for a moment, but then smiled back up at him. "Well, I'm sure we'd still be friends."

Bolin gave a relieved sigh and held Pabu close to his chest.

"Besides . . ." Zhu Li added, wrapping her arms around her husband, who responded with a toothy smile. "If anything, this event should be a reminder that -" she kissed him lightly on the cheek - "there's only one Varrick."

Bolin rubbed Pabu on the head as he tried to think more calmly about the possibilities of the resonance cascade. Seventy years ago . . . Avatar Aang's time. What kind of craziness was about to have already been unleashed back then?

Chapter Text

When the first of the fireworks went off with a distant poom, Iroh jerked in his chair, having just been on the cusp of sleep. Yawning and stretching, he slowly pulled himself to his feet and strolled over to the window, where he peered up at the marvelous display of colors crackling in the sky. Red, white, black, yellow . . . (How did one make a black firework, exactly?)

He spotted Appa skirting below the explosions, and reflected on how familiar the bison's shape had become after all those long days and nights spent pursuing it around the world. But, while misguided, Iroh did not consider the time to have been wasted. His nephew's journey had been a difficult one, but he had finally found his place in the world, and the thought caused the old man's eyes to well up with pride as the light of the fireworks twinkled within them.

The front doors flew open, and Iroh collected himself as he turned toward them. An unfamiliar man stumbled into the shop, and after scanning the room twice over, threw himself into a seat, facing away from Iroh. The man had a white shirt and a tattered red cape, and strapped to his back was a positively enormous sword-thing. The weapon had a small, round window of sorts at the base of the blade displaying several interlocking metal gears.

Holding his sleeves together as usual, Iroh calmly approached the stranger, and as he neared he was assaulted by a strong smell of alcohol. Nonetheless he reached the table and smiled down at the man, who glanced at him somewhat vacantly. From the depths of his retirement, Iroh would have to call the man young, but his chin was adorned with stubble; his age was difficult to determine, but he was very fit and had a worldly air about him.

"Hello," Iroh said. "Business hours are over, but - I don't mind a little company."

The stranger squinted at him and replied, "You would if you knew me." Not unlike Iroh's, his voice had something of a rasp to it, but it was lower and colder.

Iroh just smiled more widely. "Can I get you anything? Today's special is ginseng."

The man produced a flask from his hip and unscrewed the lid. "I'm covered," he said, and took a long swig.

The next round of fireworks boomed outside, and the man started, choking a little on his drink. Iroh turned his head to admire the lights, but remained standing where he was.

The stranger stowed his flask and leaned over the table, and from his periphery the man's hunched posture momentarily reminded Iroh of some manner of scheming bird.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" said the Dragon of the West in reference to the fireworks.

The traveler snorted. "Just a lotta noise. What are they celebrating, anyway?"

"Perhaps you haven't heard," Iroh said, looking back at him. "The war is over."

"The war?" mumbled the stranger. "The war's just beginning."

Iroh stroked his beard pensively.

After a while, the man looked up at him as though seeing him for the first time. "Hey - I have a question," he said with a bit of a slur.

"Ask away," said Iroh, "and I may have an answer to go along with it."

The stranger took a while to digest this response before continuing. Turning his head one way and the other, he asked, "Where am I?"

"You are in the Jasmine Dragon," Iroh said proudly. "My tea shop."

"Right . . ." The man stared out the window. "And where's that at?"

"On the west side of Mineral Avenue. In the Upper Ring." When the traveler's expression did not change, Iroh continued, "Of the great city of Ba Sing Se."

"Never heard of it."

"Really?" said Iroh with interest. "I have seen much of the world, but never in my travels have I met anyone who has not heard the name of Ba Sing Se, the Impenetrable City." He smiled down at the man. "You learn something new every day."

"Impenetrable," the man scoffed. "That's just asking for trouble."

"The city is surrounded by a series of immense walls," Iroh explained. "Naturally, the Outer Wall is the most impressive. It stands a full six hundred feet tall."

"Hmm." The traveler was not completely swayed. "I guess that'll keep a few things out."

"Including me, on one occasion," said Iroh with a wide grin.

The stranger furrowed his brow. He was clearly intoxicated beyond normal cognitive function, but while their choice in beverages differed, Iroh saw something of himself in the man: wisdom concealed by a front of careless indulgence. In fact -

The door opened again, but slowly this time. Halfway through slipping in, another unknown man froze at the sight of the shop's two occupants. This one was more obviously muscular and clad in more typical Earth Kingdom garb, but he was only just arriving at adulthood. After a moment he cursed under his breath, pulled himself fully into the room, and drew a pair of dual swords.

"Alright, geezers," he said gruffly, "hands where I can see 'em!" He brandished one of the swords awkwardly.

"Watch who you're calling a geezer," said the seated traveler without a hint of fear.

"Shut it, Gramps!" the offender replied, pointing with his other blade. "I'm just here for the money. You old-timers stay right there and I won't have to cut your lifespans short by a few minutes!"

Iroh made to move toward the intruder, but the other stranger pushed past him. First taking another drink from his flask, he drew his own sword, which proceeded to elongate mechanically until its height nearly matched that of its wielder.

The would-be robber's face paled. "Uh . . . Your fancy sword don't scare me!"

The caped man flicked his wrist, and the gears in his weapon began churning. The sword separated at several points, lengthening further to form the curved blade of a gigantic scythe. The handle folded and expanded, completing the transformation. The robber's knees trembled as the scythe's owner gripped it with his other hand.

"How 'bout now?" he asked smugly.

Smiling, Iroh positioned himself between the two men. "Please," he said calmly, holding up a hand at each, "there is no need for such drama." Equally calmly, he approached the burglar.

The man threw a clumsy sword strike at Iroh, who sidestepped it and raised his hand, twirling the sword out of the robber's grasp with such grace that it appeared to have been rehearsed. When the second blade attempted to strike, it met its counterpart, and after the two fumbled for a few seconds it clattered to the floor. The disarmed man hesitated for a moment before throwing a wide punch, and in ducking under this Iroh managed to pick up the fallen sword.

Standing up straight, the Dragon of the West examined the blades carefully. "You should meet my nephew," he said conversationally. "He could teach you how to use these weapons more effectively."

The robber grunted in anger and lunged at Iroh again. After another sidestep, Iroh smacked the man in the back with the bottom of one of his sword handles, and he fell over and hit the floor with a loud thud.

The traveler with the scythe spectated in bemusement as Iroh placed the dual swords on a table and bent to offer the intruder a hand. Reluctantly, the thug allowed himself to be helped back to his feet, and then hung his head in embarrassment.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Iroh asked the young man. "It's on the house."

There was an awkward pause that was only ended by the sound of the scythe shifting back into its compact form. Its owner stowed it and, brushing past the other two men, exited the tea shop without a word.

Iroh and the once-robber turned to watch him go, but the Earth Kingdom man let out a small gasp of pain and rubbed his neck in response.

"I apologize if I injured you," said Iroh. "I know an excellent masseur. Would you like me to make you an appointment?"

Employing her typical bouncing, dance-like walk cycle, Nora rounded the corner, Ren bringing up the rear with his arms full of tournament snacks, which were of course mostly for her. Immediately, however, Nora spotted Pyrrha sitting against the wall some ways down and Jaune standing before her - they were clearly having a moment. Ugh, finally - and she had a front-row seat too - no wait, she and Ren should get out of the way - scoot back around the wall and listen? Then again, did she really want to hear that? Either way, time to bolt -

"Uh - come on, Ren, let's go back to the fairgrounds! I'll win you another stuffed animal!"

Ren was familiar enough with Nora to know that she was being purposeful rather than impulsive, but this only left him confused as she dragged him along by the arm, retracing their steps. Somehow he managed not to spill the popcorn.

Nora may not have had Ruby's Semblance, but when properly motivated her top speed was impressive. Her focus was less so, as was demonstrated by their collision with two unfamiliar girls, and the speed rolled the four of them along some distance afterward. Defying all odds and conventional wisdom, Ren's snacks were all still intact when he slid to a stop on his behind.

"Oh sorry, sorry!" Nora spouted, waving her arms from her prone position. "We were trying to avoid an awkward moment!"

"I don't think it worked," said one of the strangers in a voice that was somehow simultaneously dull and sarcastic.

As Nora pushed herself to her knees, she scanned the disparaging speaker and her companion. The former wore something that Nora would describe as a red kimono, while the latter's clothes were closer to pink and left her midriff exposed but ultimately appeared to be of the same - clearly foreign - origins. The pink-clad girl performed a backwards roll that seemed to naturally return her to her feet before lowering her hand to help up her friend. Nora, as well, popped back up and yanked Ren along with her.

"Are you all right?" Ren asked the strangers.

"Oh, we're fine!" assured the second girl, whose tone was infinitely more cheery than her comrade's. As she looked toward Ren, her eyes suddenly widened and she let out a sort of slow gasp, staring at the cotton candy held in his hand next to the popcorn bucket.

"What . . . is . . . that?" she asked.

"Um . . ." said Ren in perplexity. "Cotton candy?"

"Cotton . . . candy?" The girl's eyes remained locked on the dental nightmare while those of her colleague rolled in reaction.

Nora raised an eyebrow and half-closed the opposite eye. "What, don't tell me you've never heard of cotton candy before?"

The entranced girl, probably involuntarily, drifted closer to the fairground food item. "Never in my life," she said dreamily, "did I imagine anything so incredible could possibly exist . . . And it's pink!"

"I hate pink," said the other girl flatly.

Ren and Nora shared a look.

"Where did you get something like this?" the girl in pink asked, her nose inching ever closer to the blob of fluff.

"Doy," said Nora, "the fairgrounds! We can show you where, I guess?"

"Oh, yes, that would be wonderful!"

"Speaking of where -" began the other girl, but she was cut off by Nora grabbing the two of them by the wrists and pulling them along. Ren grinned slightly, shaking his head, and started slowly after them, sipping from the drink in his left hand.

Though the sun was setting, the fairgrounds were still crowded - matches often went on after dark. Amity Colosseum floated miles overhead as fairgoers perused the many booths peddling food, wares, and entertainment.

The three girls came to a skidding halt in the middle of it all, and Nora's head darted, birdlike, every which way as the strangers recovered their balance.

"Okay, I think the cotton candy waaaaas . . ."

Ren strolled up behind them. "Over there, Nora," he said, pointing. "Although, personally, I would suggest a healthy herbal -"

His mind's eye traced the outlines of where the girls had just stood, now empty but for thin air. Sighing slightly, he moved to catch up with them again, ever the tortoise to Nora's hare.

"Step right up, folks!"

A rotund man in a gaudy purple-and-orange suit gesticulated as he spoke to no one in particular. He stood near a tall machine with a round bell on top and a large button jutting out horizontally at the bottom.

"Step right up! Ring the bell and -" As the man's roving gaze fell on Nora, he gagged on his words and leaped backwards, landing in front of the machine with his arms held out protectively. "No," he yelped, "please! This is my last machine!"

Nora shot him a predatory expression, but kept going.

They passed several more professional attention-grabbers as they continued, each urging them to try a different game or product. The last of these on the way to the cotton candy cart stood inside a booth whose back wall was covered with balloons, different colors of which formed concentric circles.

"Step right up!" the woman cried, leaning dangerously over the counter toward them. "Pop the balloons and win a prize!" She gestured to the many plush toys hanging along a rope overhead.

Nora heard the pink-clad girl's voice behind her. "Mai, you should try that one!"

"Do I have to?" came the reply.

As Nora pirouetted to face them, the game woman reached beneath the counter and said, "Go on ahead! Six darts for three tickets!"

"I don't have any tickets," Mai said, with a hint of relief pushing through her deadpan.

Before the attendant could respond, Nora dug her hand into Ren's pocket, whipped out a trio of tickets, and slapped them on the counter.

The attendant and Mai's friend both smiled widely, and Mai breathed a resigned sigh and picked up one of the darts, testing its weight in her hand.

"Try to get as close to the center as you can," the attendant explained, gesturing at the balloons. "The green ones are worth -"

The dart went whizzing past her hand, popping the balloon in the centermost part of the display. She blinked several times before finding her voice again.

"Well! How lucky! Uh, now, if you can get two more red -"

The remaining five darts zipped through the air all at once and destroyed the other five red balloons that had encircled the popped bull's-eye. The attendant hung her head and pointed up at the stuffed animals.

"Take whatever you want."

Mai's companion let out a delighted little laugh and clapped her hands. Then, as though it were the obvious thing to do, she placed said hands on the counter and lifted herself into a handstand, before subsequently wrapping her legs around the rope holding the plushies and hanging there along with them while she browsed for the one she wanted.

"Look, Mai, this one looks like Bosco!"

"Who?"

"The Earth King's silly pet bear, remember?"

"Ugh, don't remind me."

Nora's attention was yanked away from the eccentric strangers when Ren inclined his head toward her and asked, "Nora, do those two seem . . . familiar to you?"

"Familiar?" Nora repeated confusedly. "We just met them!"

"No," Ren insisted, "I mean, don't they remind you a little of . . . us?"

Nora raised an eyebrow and turned back to the two girls just as the pink-clothed one held out the stuffed bear. From her inverted position, she brought the toy nose-to-nose with Mai's less-than-thrilled face and said lightly, "Boop."

Nora turned back to Ren and whispered, "Uh, I hate to break it to you, Ren, but - you're a guy."

Ren shook his head, smiling slightly. "Never mind."

The clockwork ticked and tocked around Professor Ozpin as he pondered matters far more complex and far less orderly than the meticulously interlocking gears. This could have described him on almost any night, but as the hourly chime enveloped him, he snapped out of a much more distracted reverie than the usual, and proceeded to rise from his chair and walk toward one of the elevators. Due to the absentminded manner in which he boarded it, it took him a moment to realize that something was amiss.

He had passed through the automated sliding doors, but he was not in an elevator. The room was larger (though not particularly large), unlit, and appeared to be composed of old-fashioned brickwork. Were it not for the light still coming from Ozpin's office on the other side of the doorway, he would hardly have been able to make out the vertical and horizontal bars of metal dividing the room in half.

Ozpin looked slowly from the doorway to the prison cell and back several times before muttering to himself, "Fascinating."

In response to his voice, something stirred on the other side of the bars, but only slightly.

As Ozpin's eyes adjusted to the darkness, he was able to make out the figure of a man. He was clothed in what most people would probably describe as brown rags, and his untidy black hair hid the details of his face. A long, thin beard hung from his chin, and he slouched against the back wall, a dirty white sheet spread out beneath him.

The cell had no windows.

Ozpin took a few steps closer to the bars, but the prisoner did not react. After several silent seconds of thought, Ozpin said politely, "Excuse me, but could you tell me where we are right now?"

The headmaster caught a glimpse of the prisoner's piercing golden eyes before they retreated further than before behind his mane of unkempt hair. Ozpin, having left his cup and kettle in his office, shifted his cane from his side to directly in front of him, cupping both hands over the top. He was wary of attempting to extract information from someone without a mug to sip from during the awkward pauses, but it was unclear what would happen to this room if he attempted to return to the clock tower.

Deciding to push further, he spoke a little more loudly, "Excuse me, sir? I don't mean to intrude, but something strange appears to have happened to the doorway -"

The stranger dragged himself from the far wall and slunk over to the metal bars, glaring up at Ozpin from a halfhearted lotus position. "Who are you supposed to be?" he hissed.

"My name is Professor Ozpin," said Professor Ozpin. "I -"

"Tell His Highness that sending in the court jester will earn him no favors from me." With that, the prisoner turned around and leaned his back against the bars.

Ozpin looked more amused than insulted. He stood in silence for some time, staring at the man's filthy robes, until, stricken with a sudden thought, his eyes widened a bit and he asked, "By any chance, would you be familiar with a figure called the Avatar?"

The prisoner's head turned over his shoulder and he gave Ozpin a look that an irritated older sibling might give the younger upon being asked if he knew that one plus one was two.

"I'll take that as a yes," said Ozpin with a slight grin.

"What is the meaning of this?" the man demanded as he turned around again. "Is he trying to drive me out of my mind, like he did my daughter?"

Ozpin cocked his head. "Are you referring to the Avatar, or - ?"

"Bah! Begone, fool! He should know by now there is nothing more he can take from me."

"Mmm." Ozpin looked the prisoner over carefully before continuing. "If I'm not very much mistaken . . . you are the Fire Lord."

Ozai looked to the side, his face clenching up with anger. "You are mistaken. I was the Fire Lord."

"So Aang was able to defeat you, then. And without taking your life."

Ozai tried to spit at Ozpin's shoes, but all that came out was dust. "What do you call this life," he said, gesturing around his cell, "if not taken?"

"A fair point," conceded Ozpin. "Though the word 'spared' comes to mind."

"Spared," Ozai growled. His eyes narrowed as he looked Ozpin over attentively for the first time. Slowly, quietly, he asked, "What are you? A spirit?"

"I am headmaster of a school. Though recently I've been accused of wielding too much power."

A single, bark-like laugh escaped Ozai's lungs, echoing in the dark cell. "The Avatar can fix that for you," he said.

"Oh?"

Ozai narrowed his eyes once more. "You claim to know him, yet you act surprised about his story. My story."

"I only met Aang for a short time." Ozpin hesitated, but then added, "He came to my world seeking a way to defeat you without ending your life."

Ozai threw himself to his feet and clutched the bars of his cell in anger. "So it was you! You gave him the power that took away my divine right! Fire Lord - my lordship in the hands of my traitorous son, and my fire, my power, my birthright - gone!" His knuckles were white, his face contorted. "You're the reason I'm in here!"

"Former Fire Lord," said Ozpin, his voice hardening in a way that made even Ozai falter, "you are in there because you planned to commit genocide. Moreover, you are in there because you still admit to no responsibility for that."

"Responsibility?" Ozai hissed. "Of course I was responsible. I would have been responsible for the triumph of the strong over the weak, and therefore the betterment of the world. Instead, thanks to you, the weak triumphed, and the world weakened as a result."

Ozpin's hand twitched over the trigger handle on his cane. The headmaster took a deep breath before speaking again. "If you believe what you've lost to be your divine right, then I have but one question for you."

"And what, fool, is that?"

Ozpin, notably taller than Ozai, stared down at him over his spectacles and said, "What have you done to revoke that right?"

"I didn't do anything," said Ozai evenly. "It was the boy."

"The Avatar," said Ozpin. "I don't know much about your world, but from what I understand, surely he, if anyone, would be the vessel of divine intervention?"

"He is weak, and undeserving of his -"

"Enough."

"You dare silence - ?!"

"I dare," said Ozpin simply, and his brow furrowed. "Your world has the potential to be something that mine never can. But it's because of men like you . . ." He trailed off, sighing wearily at the floor. Abruptly, he turned and walked toward the doorway, on the other side of which his office could still be seen. Ozai appeared to notice this anomaly for the first time, and his own brow furrowed in confusion instead of anger.

Ozpin stopped just before the doorway and spoke to Ozai without turning around. "Divine or not, a true right to power is earned. I can't restore your throne, but there's a fair chance I could restore your firebending." He turned then, and for the first time Ozai did not look angry, smug, or spiteful, but rather - awestruck. Ozpin hid his satisfaction at having produced the reaction that he had intended. Looking the warlord in the eyes, he concluded, "If one day you are deserving of the power you crave . . ." He took hold of the iron door on the cell's side of the doorway. "Then perhaps we'll meet again."

The slamming sound of the door echoed through Ozpin's office, but when he turned to look back, he saw only the more familiar doors of the elevator. He spun fully toward them and they opened in response, revealing the elevator's normal contents - no bricks, no bars, no dethroned tyrant of another world.

Ozpin sighed, letting his heartbeat synchronize with the ticking of the tower again.

Turning back around, he walked over to his desk and poured himself a drink.

As students' faces flashed by on the holographic screen in front of him, he heard Professor Oobleck's voice through the wireless transmission.

"Alright, it's now time to begin the randomization process for our next fight!"

Ozpin circled the desk and settled back into his chair as Professor Port spoke next.

"It looks like our first contender is . . . Penny Polendina from Atlas!"

Ozpin sipped from his mug.

"And her opponent will be . . ." Port continued. "Pyrrha Nikos from Beacon!"

The path was neatly cut, but the trees around it had not been thinned, and they towered overhead, threatening to form a ceiling as oppressive as their walls. Nonetheless it was an ostensibly peaceful locale, but such were the Grimm's bread and butter.

Bob yanked his double-ended spear out of the corpse of the last Beowolf, panting hard. Last of the first wave, at least - he was sure there were more on the way. He ran a hand over the claw marks on his chestplate and glanced back along the path. The village was not quite visible from this distance, but it was close. Much too close.

Bob was a muscular fellow with dark skin, incongruously bubblegum-pink hair, and rather small and squinty emerald eyes. After catching his breath, he began a cautious stride further down the path, head darting this way and that. The path started to bend, and he slowed in response.

From somewhere ahead, he heard another Beowolf snarl. Grimm were often unsubtle, but it seemed to be reacting to something other than him. Bob broke into a sprint, hoping to surprise the beast as he rounded the bend.

Instead he was surprised by what he saw, for at first glance it looked like two Grimm fighting one another. The concept was so preposterous that Bob quickly registered the details setting the second creature apart from its Beowolf assailant.

It was a humanoid figure, but this shape was somewhat disguised by a black cloak with long, ragged strips for edges. Where the face should lurk in the hood, a mask guarded it from view: one side mostly dark with a single eyehole, the other white with a swirling gray design resembling a cloud of smoke. And indeed, smoke seemed to flow from underneath the cloak. But for all the mystique the costume created, the wearer was being attacked by the Grimm, and was therefore obviously human.

Another wolf lunged at Bob from the tree line, and after disposing of it with three solid strikes, he spun into a kneeling position and held his spear over his shoulder. The cloaked figure was dodging the Beowolf's claw swipes, backing slowly toward the trees; Bob aimed at the wolf and fired the blade of his spear off at it, scoring a debilitating hit to the torso.

A loud roar came from the trees behind the masked figure, and the figure barely managed to roll out of the way of the charging Ursa, which then tumbled over its own head due to the missed strike. It and the cloaked person both quickly recovered, and Bob spun his spear around to brandish its still-attached blade, preparing to leap forward.

Before he could, there was a sizzling sound the likes of which Bob had never heard before, and then a muted thunderclap accompanied by a bright blue flash of lightning. After blinking several times to clear his vision, Bob realized that the lightning had not come from the cloudless sky, but had shot from the figure to the Ursa, and had left the beast with a burning hole in its belly and as comical a look of surprise on its face as such a Grimm could manage. The hole in the creature began to release black smog - it was dead, and it fell over backwards.

Bob squinted harder than usual at the figure, searching for the weapon that had made such an efficient use of Dust. With the bolt gone, a few lingering sparks caught Bob's eye, but there was no weapon. Only two outstretched fingers. With rather long nails.

Huh.

The Beowolf embedded with Bob's spearhead stirred, not quite dead; distracted by this, both Bob and the cloaked person were caught off guard by another Ursa, which lunged at the latter. The figure avoided the brunt of the bear's arm swing, but its mask was knocked off and clattered to the ground. The figure was a girl, and a young one at that. Before Bob could take in more detail, a second burly arm smashed the girl against a tree, and Bob ran forward to prevent it from finishing the job.

It had taken over an hour to exterminate the particular group of Grimm, and nearly as long to carry the unconscious girl back to his house. She had stirred a few times, but never properly awoken. But apart from the goose egg where her head had met the tree, she seemed mostly fine - Bob guessed that it was exhaustion keeping her out.

She was a pretty little thing - light skin, black hair, golden eyes, vaguely foreign features. She lay on the bed while he leaned his chair back on only two of its legs, pondering her identity with a fresh cup of tea.

She was finally roused when he began to fiddle with the radio. Glancing over at the movement, Bob noticed that her brow furrowed in confusion even before she opened her eyes. And when she did, she sat up slowly, staring at the radio as though it were a three-headed frog.

" 'S an old junker, I know," Bob said with a nod at the machine, which was emitting very distorted music. "I'm waitin' t'see if they get that cross-continent thingermajigger up, then I'll get me a shiny new gadget fer that."

The girl only shifted her expression of confusion to Bob himself. There was something about her gaze that was - menacing, if Bob had to pick a word. He tried to convince himself that this little girl could not be giving off such a vibe, but he had always been able to rely on his gut. Internally cautious, he kept his voice jovial.

"Don' worry, missy, I won' hurtcha. Don' know how much ya remember, but ya got caught in the middle of a pack o' Grimm. Got bonked on the head, so I broughtcha back here. Ya did alright though, survivin'."

The girl seemed to consider him for a moment, and then her face softened - a little too much, if he was honest. But maybe he was imagining things.

"I remember," she said, a little dismissively. Then as an afterthought she added, overly sweetly, "Thank you for saving me."

" 'S my pleasure," said Bob.

There was an awkward silence as the girl examined Bob's derelict house. If not menacing, she at least looked like a sharp cookie. Bob preferred to appear friendly and bumbling, but his years of fighting the Grimm had left him sharper than most, and he could tell that this girl was not merely looking, she was analyzing. And though she hid it well, she was not liking what she saw.

Bob picked up the steaming kettle and held it toward her. "Tea?" he offered.

"No, thank you," she said, holding up a hand. There were those long nails again. Pointy.

After replacing the kettle and sipping from his own cup, Bob said, "So, I don' mean to pry, but that was pretty crazy whatcha did t' that Ursa, huh?"

The change from "sharp cookie" to "dangerous lunatic" was immediate: the girl's eyes widened so much that the skin under them wrinkled, and after a moment of pure shock her face contorted into a scowl, no longer trying to hide her contempt.

"What do you know about that?" she hissed.

"Whoa, hey now," said Bob, setting down his teacup and planting his chair fully on the floor. "I didn' mean t' touch a nerve. You don' hafta -"

"Who are you?" the girl demanded. "Where am I? Did she send you?!"

"I think there's been a misunderstandin' -"

When he heard the sizzle, he knew it would end badly. He reached for his spear, but it was no good - just like the Ursa, the blue bolt struck him square in the chest.

His Aura, still low from fighting the Grimm and hauling the poor girl home, did not so much empty as it did crack. Nevertheless it staved off the physical injuries enough that he would have easily survived - had the electric current not passed directly through his heart, confusing its rhythm enough to stop it completely.

Of course, there was also the matter of the blue explosion that the girl used to propel herself out the door, which promptly set his house ablaze and eventually consumed his body along with it.

Unfortunately for Bob's village, he had been their most competent Grimm combatant, and naturally their grief over his loss drew more Grimm to them. But the girl could not have predicted that part.

Azula fled from the strange village back into the woods, as far away as her legs would carry her. Her hands, meanwhile, clutched her head. She had left the mask in the house, but the cloak still flapped behind her.

Filthy peasant. It was a trick. It wasn't real. Forget about it.

"But how did he know?"

Shut up.

"How did he know unless she told him?"

It doesn't matter. Shut up.

She tripped over a root, and her hands landed in water. It was just a small puddle, but as it rippled after the impact, Azula saw not her own reflection materialize, but the image of that - that thing, that lie, Noriko.

"If what you say is true . . . if I really am your mother . . . then I'm sorry I didn't love you enough."

"Shut up." Azula's eyes clenched shut.

While they were closed, a strange sensation came over her, and it seemed through her eyelids that lights were flashing on and off around her. Assuming it to be the work of the voice, she kept them closed tightly, but the odd feeling was only increasing - and more oddly still, it was a feeling of . . . power. Like a great fire coursing through her. Was she actually burning herself alive?

As the light faded, she dared to open her eyes, and saw them reflected in the puddle along with the rest of her face. She breathed a small sigh of relief, but then . . .

"She's still after you."

Azula shook her head vigorously, then said aloud, "Shut up! I got rid of you! I know my destiny now!"

"Have you found your destiny, or have you abandoned it? Have you given up?"

Azula raised her fist, shouted "Shut UP!" and brought it slamming down on the puddle.

Unexpectedly, her hand met ice instead of water, which shattered before her.

Her troubled mind snapping back into combat mode, she whirled around and scanned for the waterbender who had frozen the puddle. She looked everywhere time and again, but there was no one else there.

Until there was. Emerging from the shadows of the forest, more of the black wolves encircled her. Whatever these things were, they were oddly persistent - most animals learned to fear her in short order.

"Perhaps she sent them."

Azula's lip trembled. With another great cry of "Shut up!" she swept her hand in an arc, intending to send flames toward the wolf-things. But instead of a simple stream of blue fire, the ground beneath each wolf lit up with a glowing, blue, circular pattern, and a second later each beast was engulfed in a truly magnificent eruption of flame and disintegrated completely.

Azula blinked, her expression puzzled but for once not angry.

Did I do that?

Turning back to the cracked ice, she waved her hand over it and released a small burst of heat, melting it back into water. Staring at her reflection again, she concentrated on the feeling of power that had flowed through her.

Her eyes lit themselves on fire.

There was no pain, though. She could see as well as ever, and what she saw was a strange, blue, flame-like effect surrounding her eyes, streaming out sideways to form a teardrop-like shape. As she focused on it, it intensified, and so did the energy burning within her.

"I've given you a gift."

What?

"You've strayed from your path. Zuko is weak, was always weak. You were meant to rule."

But . . .

Azula lifted her head and looked around at the trees, which had caught fire after her attack on the wolves. But her eyes were unfocused, the lines underneath pronounced. She hugged herself, becoming just a mass of black cloak below the neck.

But I felt so free.

"How do you feel now?"

. . . Powerful. But - strange.

"You're in a strange land. A land ripe for conquer. Forget about Zuko and the nation that betrayed you. Build a new Fire Nation. One that will never succumb to weakness."

A new . . . Fire Nation?

"One that will be perfect. Like you."

Perfect . . . ?

A flaming branch broke from its tree and landed in front of her, returning her focus to her surroundings. Eyes sharp again, Azula waved her hand before her and, with an unspoken command, extinguished the entirety of what had been about to become a raging wildfire. Finally she began to consider the full possibilities of the strange new power that she now possessed, and her face curled into a horrifying smile.

"Perfect."

Chapter Text

The noon sun shone on the Beifong Metalbending Academy, located just outside the newly independent city of Yu Dao in the Earth Kingdom. The typical gaggle of prospective students crowding the doors and windows was absent; only the winged boar suit composed of repurposed Fire Nation armor occupied the grounds. Even the normal shouts of instruction, inquiry, pain, and - occasionally - success failed to emanate from either of the two buildings. Passersby would have assumed that the school was empty.

Inside the older building (previously a firebending dojo), seven figures stood, six of them moving occasionally. Three of these six were composed of iron, and were more or less visual duplicates of the other three. The odd figure out faced away from the group, arms folded, black hair partially covering her milky white eyes. As her three so-called advanced students worked on their metallic self-portraits, she monitored their progress through the minute vibrations that their actions created in the floor.

Penga, who was even shorter, younger, and most decidedly more feminine than Toph, had essentially finished her sculpture a good hour ago, and had spent that hour making it "try on" innumerable styles of metal shoes, each pair fashioned from the last.

Ho Tun was at least a head taller than Toph and probably three times as wide, though he had left a few pounds off of his statue (proportionally speaking). Despite his size he perpetually sported a nervous expression, and had spent a quarter hour or so trying and failing to remove it from his iron double.

The third student shared Ho Tun's height but none of his girth, and his perennial expression was one of irritation rather than worry. His eyes appeared slightly sunken (which may or may not have been affected through the use of makeup), and he preferred to be addressed only as "the Dark One." Before him stood an only vaguely person-shaped chunk of metal.

Without turning around, Toph threw her arm backward and pointed directly at the twisted heap. "Dark One! Your fellow lily livers are almost done! You'd better pick up the pace!"

A melodramatic sigh escaped the student's lungs before he replied. "But Sifu Toph, how can this hard shell possibly convey the emptiness within?"

"I don't know," said Toph, "but your empty head better figure it out, or else your empty stomach will stay that way!"

For the umpteenth time, the Dark One gazed upon his reflection in the mirror. The identical mirrors that Ho Tun and Penga had been using now leaned against the far wall, reflecting sunlight onto the ceiling. Naturally, they were framed with a bendable iron alloy, and next to them were piled a great many other metallic and partially-metallic objects, grouped somewhat by type but mostly left in disarray. A careful eye might have guessed that the statues under construction had been cobbled together from severed portions of these random items.

Toph's head rose slightly. "Too late. Looks like you'll be working through lunch."

Before the students could inquire about this comment, a blue-clad figure slid into the room through the open doors.

"Heeeeeeeere's Sokka!"

Toph's expression said it all, but because it was Sokka she added flatly, "What was that?"

Sokka raised his arms in a wide shrug and said, still grinning, "Just thought I'd spice up my entrance."

"I tried to stop him!" came Katara's voice from outside.

"You should've tried harder!" Toph replied.

Sokka threw his arm around Toph's shoulders, and she finally broke into a smile. "Good to not see you, anyway," she said.

"Aaaaaaaah!" Sokka vocalized his appreciation of the joke, pointing at her. Turning his head to look backwards over hers, he waved at her three students. "Penga, Ho Tun, Darky . . ."

The Dark One glowered at him. With a purring squawk, a lemur flew in through the window and alighted on the Dark One's head. He chose to ignore this.

Penga rushed over to Sokka and clung to his arm, sandwiching him between Toph and herself. He chose to ignore this.

Through the doorway came Katara, carrying a large basket full of foodstuffs. Following, and then overtaking her came three more baskets, each riding on a ball of swirling wind. A fourth air scooter carried Aang himself into the room, and when he settled in the middle of the floating wickerwork, all four spheres dispersed, gently lowering the baskets to the floor.

"Who's hungry?" said the Avatar with a smile.

"You'd better have more than just tofu in there, Twinkletoes," Toph responded.

"Don't worry," said Sokka, patting her shoulder, "I've gotcha covered."

"Well," said Toph, pointing first across him at Penga and then behind herself, "Penga and Ho Tun can join us, but the Dark One has neglected to -"

There was a terrible, drawn-out metallic squeal, and everyone turned to watch the Dark One furiously dragging his hands down through the air as though it were molasses, and the metal before him, in response, rearranging itself into a perfect facsimile of him doing so, face contorted and fingers gnarled. Momo, startled, took off from his head and hovered just under the ceiling.

When the noise faded, Toph stomped her foot to get a better look at the sculpture. "Huh. Not bad. What do you eye people think?"

"It's great!" said Aang genuinely.

Sokka walked over and circled the statue, stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Pretty good likeness, I have to say."

Penga placed one hand on her chest and held the other up dramatically. "O cruel fate, how boldly you flaunt my tortured soul!" she said in a spot-on impression of the Dark One, causing everyone but him to burst into laughter.

After it subsided, the next sound was a loud growl from the vast depths of Ho Tun's stomach. Looking sheepish, he said, "I, uh . . . might've slept through breakfast."

"Then we'd better dig in!" said Aang. "If that's okay with Sifu Toph."

Toph made sliding motions with her hands and feet, and one by one the metal statues slid themselves into place along the far wall. When this was complete, she folded out of her stance and said, "Let's eat."

Jaune unsheathed his sword and prompted the sheath to expand into its shield form. Then he undid both actions and repeated them again. And again.

The Vytal Festival Tournament. Sure to be a defining moment in his career as a Huntsman, if not his entire life. But he had no reason to be nervous. Nope. None at all.

Oh, who was he kidding? He was a wreck.

Still though, all of his teammates were amazing. Overall they stood a pretty good chance. And if nothing else, he was a heck of a lot better than when he started. Okay, not saying much, but.

Stowing the sword for the dozenth time, Jaune took a deep breath. He quickly realized this to be a mistake as his nostrils filled with the sweaty smell of the locker room - or maybe it was his own perspiration. Either way, he shook his head to clear it.

Spotting a full-body mirror off to his right, he decided to check his armor again and made toward it. As he walked - somewhere between a saunter and a trudge - he saw the door open in his periphery and, turning his head slightly, watched Pyrrha enter the room, returning her slight smile when she met his eye.

"Sokka, you've got sauce all over your face," said Katara.

Sokka ran his tongue all around the edges of his mouth.

"You've still got a little . . ."

"Where?"

"There."

"Here?"

"No, here."

"There?"

"Ugh, just let me get it." Katara drew the water from her pouch out into the air in front of her.

"No!" Sokka squeaked, leaping to his feet. "I've had enough of your waterbending face-scrubs to last a lifetime! I'll get it myself."

Katara stowed her water with a "Hmph" as Sokka strode over to the mirror that still stood where the Dark One had been creating art.

Jaune arrived at the mirror, and in his distracted state it took him a moment to realize that something was wrong. His reflection had walked up to meet him, true, but it looked like it belonged to someone else. The skin and hair were both darker, with only the blue eyes remaining about the same color. The clothing was blue, but the pants a darker shade than his jeans, and the top of the outfit was completely different, lacking his white armor pieces and black-and-red undershirt. The gloves were fingerless like his, but black instead of brown, and the hair was done up in some weird style with the sides shaven and the back pulled into a ponytail. His sword was also missing, though it looked like there might be some kind of weapon strapped to the stranger's back.

There was a little sauce on one side of this guy's face.

Sokka arrived at the mirror to find an unfamiliar figure looking back at him. Though of similar height, age, and build, this guy looked nothing like him. His skin was unnaturally pale and his hair was best described as yellow. He wore a few white armor pieces over some strange clothes, but they hardly covered enough of him to provide effective protection. There was a sword on his hip, causing Sokka to once more long for his lost meteor sword. But there were probably more important things to think about at the moment.

Watching the not-reflection carefully, Sokka raised his arm.

Watching the not-reflection carefully, Jaune raised his arm.

Abruptly, Sokka shook the raised arm up and down repeatedly. That should fool him.

Abruptly, Jaune shook the raised arm up and down repeatedly. That should fool him.

Determined to outwit the reflection-man, Sokka raised the other arm.

Determined to outwit the reflection-man, Jaune raised the other arm.

Sokka performed three jumping jacks before launching a pair of punches accompanied by a shout of "Wack-A-Pow!"

Jaune performed three jumping jacks before launching a pair of punches accompanied by a shout of "Wack-A-Pow!"

Defeated, Sokka dropped his arms.

Defeated, Jaune dropped his arms.

Turning back to the luncheoning group, Sokka said, "Toph, there's something wrong with your mirror!"

"What d'you mean?"

"Come look for yourself!"

"Sokka. If I have to tell you one more time -"

"Sorry. But this mirror makes me look like some pale-faced scrawny guy!"

"You're calling me scrawny?" protested an unfamiliar voice.

Toph felt everyone in the room freeze at the same time, but she was the most surprised of all. She had heard the voice, loud and clear, but it sounded unlike anyone she knew and, bizarrely, seemed to have emanated from the mirror itself. She briefly entertained the idea that Sokka had learned some strange new voice trick, but this all seemed too elaborate to be a prank.

Were she of a weaker constitution, her heart may well have stopped when she felt the footstep of someone new entering the room from - seemingly - inside of the mirror.

Jaune stepped cautiously fully through the mirror - it felt as though it were not there at all, like he was just walking through a hole in the wall. On the other side, he found himself not only next to the boy - man? - guy who had replaced his reflection, but before a sizeable group of people sitting on the floor of what looked to be some kind of old-fashioned training room and eating out of several large picnic baskets.

"What's happening?" demanded the smallest girl of the group. "Somebody tell me!"

"The mirror people are invading!" cried the largest of the males, looking horrified. "We're doomed!"

"What wayward specter hath brought the fog of mystery upon our noble school?" said an emo-looking kid, with a theatrical hand flourish.

The second-smallest girl punched the ground in her seated position, and in response the three who had spoken fell over as though bumped by something from underneath. Then the ground-punching girl said, "Sokka, am I crazy or did someone just walk out of the mirror?"

"You're not crazy!" replied the reflection-guy. "At least, not any more than before."

Sokka, as he was apparently called, leaned toward Jaune and, with one finger, poked his arm as though to check its solidity, withdrawing it quickly as he might from a hot stovetop. Jaune, meanwhile, had been in a shock-induced trance, and literally jumped out of it in response to the poke, letting out a tiny squeal in the process.

As the seated people began to rise, all staring at him, Jaune turned his head partially back toward the mirror, keeping his eyes on the group. "Pyrrha?" he called with a cracking voice. "A little help?"

When nothing happened for a moment, he began turning fully to investigate - just in time for Pyrrha's spear to once again catch his hood, carrying and pinning him to the far wall, between some metal statues.

"That's not what I meant!" Jaune screeched, his face briefly red.

"I'm sorry!" came Pyrrha's usual response. Then another pause as, Jaune assumed while he tugged ineffectually at the spear, Pyrrha realized that this was not a usual situation. ". . . Jaune?"

As the others approached Sokka and the reflection-guy, somebody else stepped out of the mirror. A girl this time. Her outfit was a bit skimpy - well, no, not quite that: it showed a fair amount of skin, but it also reminded Sokka a lot of Fire Nation regalia, and the girl carried herself with a similar air of honor. Her waist-length hair was the same red as leaves in the fall, which was not a color that Sokka had seen on hair before.

The girl - their exchange of names had dubbed her "Pyrrha" and the guy "Jaune" - returned the amazed gazes of Sokka's group before glancing back at Jaune, still proving unable to free himself from the wall. Pyrrha then raised her hand in Jaune's direction, and with the precision of animal instinct the spear shot backwards out of the wall directly toward the upturned palm; Pyrrha caught the weapon before Sokka and the others even had time to hop in surprise at the sudden movement. Jaune, meanwhile, fell to the floor, and the impact caused the three metal statues to tumble over, burying him beneath them.

The unfortunate boy's arm slithered out of the top of the pile of statues and gave a thumbs-up gesture. "Thanks, Pyrrha . . ." he said groggily.

Pyrrha looked uncertainly from Jaune to the others several times before once more raising her hand in Jaune's direction. This time, all three metal statues rose into the air to free him.

"She's metalbending!" cried Ho Tun, pointing with one hand and holding the other against his cheek in astonishment.

"How's she doing that?!" Penga squealed, referring, Sokka assumed, to the fact that Pyrrha had not made any proper bending motions in order to lift the statues - merely a lazy wave of one hand.

"Two . . ." said the Dark One, counting down on his fingers. "One . . ."

Right on his cue, Toph stomped her foot and knocked the three students over again. This time she had nothing to say afterward - being blind, she was not staring at Pyrrha, but Sokka got the impression that she was focusing intently on her with her seismic sense.

Pyrrha, meanwhile, had moved over to Jaune and bent, offering him a hand while still keeping the statues aloft with the other. As she helped him up, Sokka noticed something . . . A lingering touch; a longing glance . . . A greater-than-ordinary satisfaction in her expression when he, slightly more sincerely this time, thanked her again . . . Sokka fancied himself a good reader of people, and to one with his expertise, this girl was an open book. A book that, if Sokka had to title, he suddenly decided would be called Ninjas of Love.

Jaune leaned backwards and pushed his hands against his back, producing a worrying cracking sound. Then he set his gaze back upon Team Avatar and the Beifong students - the latter of whom could probably relate to his physical misfortune as they collected themselves again - as Pyrrha waved the statues back into their positions along the wall. Then she joined Jaune and the others in the staring contest.

Aang was still at a loss for words. He had been through some strange scenarios, but they usually involved spirits; these two oddballs seemed by all accounts to be human, and to have just as little an idea of what was going on as he and the others did. But something nagged at the back of his mind. Something about this situation seemed . . . not familiar, but he felt as though he should be making a connection between this and . . . something . . .

But for now, well - he was the great bridge between worlds, right? He should be able to handle this.

He cleared his throat. "Hello, mirror people! I'm Aang. How do you do?"

"Yeah," Toph broke in, her arm snapping up to point at the female of the pair, "how do you do that? You were metalbending with like zero effort."

"Metal bending?" the girl asked. "I don't think I bent any of the statues . . ." She had a kind of slow, articulate way of speaking that Aang found rather soothing. After a pause, she added, "My Semblance is Polarity."

This statement was met with more dumbfounded staring. Finally Sokka snapped his fingers and said, "I've got it! She's speaking backwards, like when you hold up writing to a mirror!"

"And what about all the words they said before that?" Katara pointed out argumentatively.

Aang was wracking his brain; while the mirror girl's last sentence had just sounded like a series of random syllables to him, something about the first part seemed oddly familiar . . .

"Wait a minute, Jaune," the girl said to her companion. "Maybe we've finally discovered your Semblance!"

"So my Semblance is to turn mirrors into rooms full of people we don't know?" the guy responded doubtfully.

Semblance, Aang thought. Semblance. Where have I heard that word before?

"Maybe it's a sort of portal to another location," the girl continued, "and you just have to learn to control it."

Aang butted in again. "Well, if you guys need to figure out where you are, Sokka has all kinds of maps and stuff! Have you ever heard of Yu Dao?"

"No," said the guy.

"Or the Beifong Metalbening Academy?" Toph suggested.

"No," said the girl.

Toph blew at her bangs in annoyance, clearly feeling that her school deserved more recognition. At this point, Momo, who had been occupied with everyone's abandoned food, took brief flight and landed on Aang's shoulder, presumably with a full stomach.

"What the heck is that?" the mirror guy asked, pointing at Momo.

"He's Momo, my flying lemur," Aang said as he grinned and scratched Momo's head. "Anyway, why don't you guys come outside and meet Appa? The maps are still on his saddle, and maybe you can get your bearings straight?"

"Appa?" the girl repeated curiously.

As they all siphoned out of the doorway, Sokka, standing behind Jaune, silently put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. When he looked back, Sokka held a finger up to his mouth, and Jaune, though confused, took the hint and hung back noiselessly. Sokka watched the others depart attentively, and waited a while after they had all exited the building. Slowly, he spun Jaune to face him, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth to speak.

Then in an apparent burst of frustration, he grabbed Jaune by the shoulders and shook him violently, shouting at the top of his lungs, "SHE'S INTO YOU! WHY DON'T YOU SEE IT?!"

When Jaune's expression grew even more confused, Sokka raised one hand and slapped him across the face with all the strength he could muster, and then brought his arm back for a backhand against the other cheek.

"WAKE UP!"

Jaune woke up.

The smell informed him that he was back in the locker room. Opening his eyes as he gingerly sat up, he found Pyrrha standing over him.

He grumbled and asked, "What happened?"

"Well," she said, "that boy wasn't getting through your Aura, so I think you passed out more from the shock . . ."

"Wait," said Jaune, "that wasn't all a dream?"

"No." Pyrrha shook her head, then gestured to the mirror. "I brought you back through the mirror, but - I think it - closed back up."

Jaune leaned around her, and his own face stared back at him from the reflective surface. There was no sign of those strange strangers.

"Well," he said. "That was . . . freaky." Jaune looked down at his own body, seated on the locker room bench, marveling at nothing. Then he looked back up. "Uh - maybe it'd be best if we - didn't tell anyone about - that. At least for now."

Pyrrha nodded uncertainly, also looking at Jaune in apparent deep contemplation.

"But man," Jaune added, "what was that guy's problem? I think he was trying to tell me something, but I can't . . . Do you remember?"

Pyrrha blushed and looked away. "Oh, um . . . well . . ."

Naturally, at that moment Nora stormed into the room and screamed, "What are you guys doing?! You're gonna miss Team RWBY's first match!" And before either of them could reply, Nora grabbed each at the waist, lifted them over her head, and carried them away at the speed of a gale force wind.

"NNOOOOOOOOOO!" Sokka wailed, clawing at the once-again-solid mirror as he slowly slid to the floor, where he continued weeping and muttering.

"Come on, Sokka," said Katara, and she and Aang lifted him from either side and carried him arm-over-shoulder away from the mirror. "We have to leave now if we want to meet with Zuko on time."

"See ya later, guys!" said Aang, waving at Toph's students.

"I expect two more sculptures each when I get back!" Toph added.

In one synchronized, despondent voice, the three of them replied, "Yes, Sifu Toph."

The armored blimp approached with grandeur, as something of its size was wont to do. As it loomed closer, Aang had to dispel a slight shiver - even after several years of relative peace, the sight of the giant red airship still dragged up unpleasant memories. But the Avatar let them depart from his mind like leaves on the wind, and his smile returned, as wide as ever.

When, after landing procedures had been completed, Zuko finally appeared on the exit ramp, flanked by a male and a female guard, Appa let out a low groan of recognition from where he lay behind the group. Glancing back, Aang saw that Momo for once reacted with less enthusiasm, only shifting slightly where he napped, curled up, on Appa's back.

"Greetings, Fire Lord," said Aang, bowing respectfully as Zuko neared the end of the ramp.

"Only one airship, huh?" said Sokka much less formally. "Your old man would be so ashamed. I can hear him now - 'Blah blah blah power, blah blah blah weak!' "

"Sokka, you barely even met him," Katara scolded.

Shrugging, Sokka pointed his thumb at Aang and said, "I'm impersonating Aang's impersonation."

Aang's eyes snapped to Zuko's and his wide smile turned to one of embarrassment. Letting out a nervous laugh and rubbing the back of his neck, he said, "So, Zuko - what did you want to talk to us about?"

Zuko looked down and to the side in consideration, then back up at Aang. "It's a little complicated. There have been reports of dark spirit attacks throughout the Fire Nation . . ."

Aang cocked his head. "The Kemurikage?"

"I thought so at first," Zuko continued. "But it seems these new reports are something different. For a while, it was all just rumors, but . . ." He shared a look with the guard on his right. "I've seen - injuries. I'm concerned for the safety of my people."

Aang mulled this over. "Spirits don't attack for no reason. Do the reports have anything in common?"

"Actually," Zuko said, "there is one thing. The stories always say the dark spirits are driven off by another spirit who comes to the people's aid. They call him the Crow Spirit. Supposedly, he can take the form of a man, and he battles the dark spirits with a weapon that also changes shape. And . . ." The Fire Lord shifted awkwardly, glancing once more at the male guard, who stifled a laugh. "Well, after the people are saved, they thank the Crow Spirit, and, according to the stories, he asks to be rewarded with gifts of . . ." Zuko's gaze shifted between all of his old friends before he concluded. ". . . Alcohol."

A tumbleweed took the opportunity to fulfill its destiny before Sokka commented dryly, "Spirits hitting the sauce. Now I've heard everything."

"Well," Toph chimed in, "that's - neat and all, but I have a school to run, Zuko. Do you really need all of us?"

"Some reports have started coming in from the colonies, so the Earth Kingdom may be at risk too," Zuko replied. "I'm starting to fear the whole world might be in danger."

Sokka zipped over and clapped Zuko on the back before holding up his other hand dramatically and declaring, "And what better reason to reunite Team Avatar?! Whaddaya say, guys - ready to save the world again?!"

Aang and Katara shared a worried look. Dark spirits attacking, the whole world possibly in jeopardy - not exactly a cause for celebration.

Weiss drifted slowly out of sleep to the sounds of birds chirping. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the morning sun streaming in through the window, gently warming her face. A face toward which leaned that of Ruby, her whistle in hand betwixt the two. Silently, Ruby sucked in a huge breath, and -

Weiss's hand shot up at the moment of truth, shoving the whistle fully into Ruby's mouth, reducing its expected blare to a brief yelp, followed by a "Blaw" from Ruby as her tongue extruded with the whistle hanging on by a thread of saliva. This being the sight to which Weiss first opened her eyes, she immediately closed them again, her short-lived feeling of satisfaction similarly replaced with regret.

Finding herself still too tired to think of a sarcastic comment, Weiss went with a resigned, "Good morning, Ruby."

"Gooood morning, Weiss!" Weiss took the reply to mean that Ruby had resolved the whistle situation, and opened her eyes again. The whistle was indeed gone, though she avoided looking down at the floor for fear it had simply fallen there. Ruby continued, "How are you feeling today? Vitals in check? Aura full? No bed sores?" Ruby bustled around Weiss, poking at different parts of her to no real effect, and lastly holding her wrist to check her pulse, during which Ruby stared at her own wrist despite her distinct lack of a watch.

"I'm fine, Ruby," Weiss said as she pulled her hand away. "It's not like we all haven't been hit with worse."

"I don't know, a volcano to the face? To the everywhere, actually. I don't think we've done that one before."

"It was hardly a volcano," said Weiss as she slowly sat up and swung her legs off the bed.

"Well, anyway, as team leader it's my job to get you back in tip-top condition!"

"I'm fine," Weiss repeated. "Besides, it's just Yang moving forward in the tournament."

"Yeah, but you never know -"

"Ruby!" Yang's voice came through the open window, and Ruby swept over to look down from it. "Is Weiss awake yet?!"

"Yeah!"

"You guys need to come down here! We found a thing!"

"Okay! What kind of thing?!"

"I don't know! Some weird swirly thing! With colors! Floating there! It's - Just get down here!"

"I'll meet you there," said Weiss as Ruby turned back to her. "Let me at least get dressed first."

Zuko sat hunched over a small desk in a small room inside the airship, scribbling at a paper by candlelight. This deep in the heart of the beast, one could almost forget that the room was floating miles in the air and not rooted safely to the earth. Though its design was procured under unsavory circumstances, there was no doubting the engineering genius of that fellow calling himself the Mechanist, not to mention -

Muffled voices from the other side of the metal door were followed by it swinging open and Sokka striding in. Or at least, attempting to stride in, before being restrained mid-stride by a guard.

"There you are!" Sokka said to Zuko, ignoring the guard but for his iron grip.

"I'm sorry, My Lord!" said the guard. "He -"

Zuko, without looking back, raised a hand and said wearily, "Let him in."

The guard dutifully let go of Sokka's shoulder, allowing him to complete his stride up to the left side of Zuko's chair.

"I thought you'd be in the control room," Sokka spoke as he moved. "I may have just revolutionized air travel; no need to thank me." Leaning against Zuko's desk with one hand, he added, "Although you may -" he leaned in close to Zuko's face with one eye wide - "if you'd like."

Zuko sighed. "If you're asking whether or not I'm back together with Mai, the answer is no."

"Ah, don't worry," said Sokka, pulling himself into a sitting position on the desk. "Before you know it, you'll hear the pitter-patter of little princes and princesses complaining about how awful the decorations are in the palace and agonizing over how they need to regain their honor." Casually, Sokka picked up the piece of parchment that Zuko had been writing on and held it in front of his face, but Zuko snatched it back a moment later and stuffed it in a drawer.

"I don't know, Sokka. Being the Fire Lord's girlfriend can't be easy. And me in particular . . ."

"Better you than your dad," Sokka shrugged. "Really, it's no wonder your mom was so hard to find. How's she doing, by the way?"

"Better, I guess," said Zuko, his eyes jumping around the room as though searching for a more solid answer. "Kiyi's starting to warm back up to her . . ."

"Oh yeah, Aang said Kiyi found out she's a firebender! Nice! Have you done any, y'know -" Sokka hopped off the desk and attempted some makeshift firebending moves, several of which Zuko had to duck around due to the proportions of the room. Sokka concluded by imitating Aang's bow and said, "Sifu Hotman."

Zuko cracked a tiny smile in spite of himself. "She wants me to train her, yeah, but there hasn't been a lot of time . . ." He frowned again. Sokka resumed his pretend bending for some reason, and Zuko wracked his brain for a way to stop him. "So, what about you and Suki?"

Sokka came out of a spinning move and ended up in a teakettle pose. "Yeah, y'know, it's hard," he said, touching his chin thoughtfully. "We're on different sides of the world a lot, but I think we're doing okay. She always seems happy to see me, at least."

"And Aang and Katara are still -"

"Maximum oogie-osity," Sokka confirmed, dangling his tongue in disgust.

The door had been left open a crack, and this time the voices from outside were less muffled as a result. Zuko caught the guard who had restrained Sokka saying, "The Fire Lord is in a very important meeting about his interpersonal relationships!"

"This is urgent! I think!" was the response.

Sokka shot Zuko a questioning look and the Fire Lord nodded; Sokka pulled the door all the way open, and both guards turned to look inside. The new arrival had the most incredible sideburns.

"My Lord!" said the sideburn guard with a bow. "A matter of some urgency has arisen!"

"What is it, General Mak?" Zuko asked.

The General fidgeted in place. "Well, Your Lordship, there is a . . . That is to say, a strange thing has . . . Um, our men have sighted a kind of . . ."

A mild gust from behind General Mak heralded the arrival of Aang, who without preamble said, "Sokka, Zuko! Come look at the weird swirly colory thing!"

"It's like if a black hole and a rainbow had babies that were octopuses!" squealed Ruby.

"Octopi," Blake corrected.

The thing hung there in midair, pulsing and undulating. Its colors and movements were mesmerizing, but revealed nothing of its nature. It had certainly never been here before - Team RWBY had crossed this particular pathway dozens of times.

"We should probably find a teacher," Weiss said.

"I wanna touch it . . ." said Yang dreamily, reaching out slightly.

"Are you dense?!" Weiss cried, pushing Yang's hand down. "You could lose an arm!"

"I think I see something in there . . ." said Ruby, squinting at the thing and leaning forward.

"Look," huffed Weiss, "will both of you just -"

Ruby suddenly lost her balance and fell forward, but halfway to the ground she was lifted into the air and sucked into the center of the colorful thing, where her image appeared to shrink until it vanished completely.

"Ruby!" Yang shouted, and without hesitation she jumped in after her, meeting the same fate.

Blake and Weiss looked at each other in exasperation. Shrugging, Blake said, "I guess we're doing this," and walked forward. She too was pulled in and seemingly shrunken.

Weiss pouted and stamped her foot. "Dunces, all of you! And now I suppose you expect me to -"

Something shoved Weiss roughly in the back. It felt like a hand, but by the time the multicolored mass had spun her around, she could no longer see anything of Beacon's grounds - just more kaleidoscopic visions.

I swear on my family's name, Weiss thought as she fell upward toward a twirling Blake, I'll get back at whoever just did that.

As Aang stared into the thing, it seemed that, in the middle of its otherwise random appearance, a figure began to form. Then another, and another, and one more. Four figures. Four . . . girls? And about the color scheme of their clothes . . .

In an instant, it all came rushing back to him. Remnant, Beacon Academy - Semblances - Professor Ozpin, the Grimm, the sort-of-Grimm man thing, and - the girls.

Turning back to his friends, Aang said, "Okay, so this is gonna sound a little crazy, but see those people spinning inside there?"

"They're getting closer . . ." remarked Katara.

"Well, I actually know them," said Aang. After thinking for a moment, he continued, "Remember when I said it was a giant lion turtle who taught me how to take away people's bending?"

"Vaguely," said Sokka.

"Well, that was true, but it wasn't exactly the whole story. See, the lion turtle actually sent me to a completely different world. I had kind of a mini-adventure there, and I picked up the whole energybending thing, but, anyway, the point is -"

One by one, the four girls tumbled out of the portal, each landing on top of the last with a loud thud. As they climbed over each other and attempted to return to their feet, Aang gestured at them with an upturned hand.

"Everyone," he said with another big smile, "meet Team RWBY."

Chapter Text

Leaving her signature trail of fluttering red rose petals, Ruby bolted over to Aang and clung to his arm.

"Aaaaaaaaaang! Hi."

Yang trotted over and put her arm around his shoulders. "Hey, Arrowhead, how are ya? You're like, so much older-looking! So I guess you beat that whatsisguy, right?"

"Who, the Fire Lord?" Aang asked from his sandwiched position. "Yeah, that was uh . . . that was something."

Weiss and Blake approached with less enthusiasm, but small smiles. Aang grinned around at Team RWBY, and then his panning gaze fell on Katara - arms folded, eyes narrowed at the two sisters embracing him. With the grace of a master airbender, Aang slipped out from between them and wrapped his arms around Katara, whose stance did not change in the slightest.

"Um, so, let me introduce you!" he said. "This is my girlfriend, Katara . . ."

"Charmed," she spat.

"That's her brother Sokka . . ."

Sokka bowed with one hand on his chest and the other held up regally. "Warrior, strategist, inventor, artist, meat lover - but to make it easy to remember, just think of me as the guy with the boomerang."

Aang continued, "That's Toph . . ." When Toph nudged him with a tremor through the ground, he added melodramatically, "The greatest earthbender of all time!"

Toph shot Team RWBY a finger pistol and said simply, "Yo." Then she burped.

"And," Aang pointed over Katara's head, "that's Zuko, the new Fire Lord. A good one."

Zuko nodded at the otherworldly girls. Ruby gave him a wave and a nervous grin back.

"Guys," said Aang, pulling away from the still-unchanged Katara in order to gesture as he spoke, "this is Ruby, Yang, Weiss, and Blake. They're from another world."

"Right," said Katara, looking Yang up and down. "Evidently one with a different sense of . . . privacy."

Blake pointed her thumb at Yang and said, "Yang always dresses like this."

"I think that was my point," sizzled the waterbender.

"Aw, come on, Katara!" Yang said cheerily. "It wasn't like that. Honestly, Aang was only there for, what, two days?" She looked to her teammates for confirmation, only to find herself suddenly face-to-face with Sokka.

"So you're single then?" he said, grinning broadly.

Toph raised a finger, and a thin wall of rock sprouted from the ground, rising to divide Sokka and Yang. Toph then slowly dragged the finger, thereby the wall, thereby Sokka, away from Yang. After a long, awkward pause, she lowered her hand and said, presumably to Yang, "You're welcome." Then the awkwardness decided it had left too early.

As Yang ran a hand pensively through her hair, Weiss was sizing up Aang's companions silently, and Ruby was peering distractedly behind them.

Potentially in response to her stares, Momo took off from his perch on one of Appa's horns and landed on Aang's shoulder, returning Ruby's gaze. Once again using her Semblance despite the minuscule distance, she was instantly before Aang, reaching toward the lemur tentatively. Momo leaned forward, sniffed her hand, and eventually pressed his head into her fingers, causing her to squeal with delight and scratch him enthusiastically.

"That's Momo," Aang said brightly. He pointed behind him and added, "And that's Appa. Say hi, buddy!"

Appa let out a long bellow, but did not climb to his feet, apparently content where he was. Weiss seemed a little startled by him.

Ruby plucked Momo from Aang's shoulder and cradled him, and the lemur produced his distinctive chittering noises.

"Sooooo . . ." said Sokka, having stepped out from behind Toph's wall. "What are you girls doing here? You know, in this world? And how does that whole thing work, anyway? What about the Spirit World?"

"There's a Spirit World?" Yang asked.

"Wait," said Ruby, still petting Momo, "you mean, like, ghosts?"

"No, no," said Sokka, shaking his head and hands. "Spirits aren't ghosts, they're . . . uh, what are spirits, Aang?"

Aang scratched his head. "Um . . . they're . . . spiritual beings?"

"Thank you for the clarification," said Weiss with the usual bite in her voice. Then she softened and said more playfully to Aang, "Still not too bright, I see."

Aang grinned and shrugged.

Toph nudged Aang with her elbow and said, "So, are these ones related to the ones from the mirror?"

"Well," Aang said, "they mentioned Semblances, so they must've been from Remnant, but I didn't realize it at the time -"

"Remnant?" Toph asked.

"That's the name of our world," said Weiss informatively.

"Huh," said Sokka, "I guess we need a name for ours." He turned to his companions and said, "Whaddaya think, guys? We need something bold, something striking, but at the same time something relatable, that rolls off the tongue . . ."

"Why don't we just call it Earth?" said Toph.

Sokka folded his arms and adopted a mocking tone. "Why don't we just call it Water?"

"No, really, think about it," Toph continued. "We say things like 'What on earth,' and, I mean, as far as we know the world's basically a giant rock."

"With a bunch of water on it!" Sokka protested.

"And air," Aang added lightly. "But Toph has a point."

Sokka grumbled. "Fine, but I get to name the next world. I'm thinking -" he spread his hands as though revealing the secrets of the universe - "Soktopia!"

Yang touched her chin thoughtfully. "Sounds like a place where everybody's lost socks end up."

"Ooh," said Sokka, "I hope so; I've lost so many socks over the years . . ."

"Anyway," said Katara, finally falling out of her petulant stance to push Sokka aside by the face, "I think what my brother was trying to ask earlier is - did you four come to our world on some sort of important mission?"

"No," said Ruby, without looking away from Momo, "we just fell through a magical rainbow thingy."

"I was pushed!" said Weiss, turning back toward the portal. "And I'd very much like t -"

She choked on her words as she saw that the portal was no longer behind them. Everyone began looking around (except for Ruby, still distracted by Momo), but the bizarre light formation was nowhere to be seen. Weiss began muttering, "No, no, no . . . !"

Sokka scratched his ear and said, "Uh, I'd say you could go back through the mirror, but it closed up too . . ."

"What is this about a mirror?" Zuko asked.

"Back at Toph's school," Sokka said, pointing a thumb at Toph, "there were these other two weirdos who just walked right out of a mirror. We were gonna tell you, but, y'know, then all this happened." He indicated the "all this" by tracing an hourglass shape with his hands in Team RWBY's direction, causing Blake to glance away and Yang to emit a small snort. With Ruby nuzzling Momo's nose and Weiss's head still darting around fretfully, Sokka then tapped the side of his chin and asked himself, "What were their names again? Joan and Pyro? Jean and Peru? Jan and Peter?"

"Jaune and Pyrrha?" Blake offered.

"No, that wasn't it," said Sokka.

"Wait," said Yang, "are Jaune and Pyrrha here with you guys?"

"They went back through the mirror," said Katara. "They might still be here if Sokka didn't practically attack one of them -"

Sokka rounded on her tearfully and shouted, "She's crazy about him and he's totally blind! Sorry Toph. They need to be together!"

"Definitely Jaune and Pyrrha," said Yang with a nod.

Weiss cut in with passion to match Sokka's. "Is nobody going to talk about how we can't get back to Remnant?!"

"Well," said Blake, "if Jaune and Pyrrha were here, then it sounds like multiple portals are opening and closing. All we have to do is find another one."

Weiss opened her mouth to complain again, but, her eyes falling on Zuko's blimp (around which the royal guards were milling awkwardly), she closed it, looking pensive.

"Besides," said Yang, "we just got here! There's gotta be something cool we can do with these guys before we leave." She turned to Aang, who broke into another wide grin.

"I have an idea," he said, and he turned back toward Appa and took off.

One by one, the rest of the group began to follow, until only Zuko and Weiss were left standing awkwardly behind. At the same time, each of them raised a hand toward the departing group and began to speak - Weiss of portals and the tournament and Zuko of the reported spirit attacks - but, glancing sideways at one another, they both stopped.

There followed repeated mutually-thwarted attempts to steal more glances at one another, neither sure what to say.

Zuko coughed.

Then, finally, he looked at her and said, "Nice scar."

Azula was silent and immobile for far longer than she needed to be, just to make sure the peasant understood his place. She did not need to see the man to tell that he was perspiring; that his heartbeats were heavy and frequent. Finally, like a conductor bringing a long-held fermata to its end, she broke the tension.

"It is adequate," she said.

The man's sigh of relief was audible. He performed the traditional Fire Nation bow - actually getting it right this time - and she waved him away.

Azula closed her eyes, and reopened them to once again reveal the blue flaming effect that still caused her no pain. A light breeze danced around her as she rose off the ground, floating slowly forward toward her newly-constructed throne.

It was a first draft, to be sure, but as she had said - adequate. It was certainly large enough to allow her to sit well over the head of the village's tallest member, and the palanquin-like tent overhead did an adequate job of recreating the atmosphere of the throne room back home. As did the surrounding fire pit, which, once she was seated, Azula brought to life with a mere snap of her fingers. The firewall flared briefly red before heating up to her signature shade of blue.

Though outwardly showing it no more than she had expressed any of her thoughts to the throne-builder before speaking, Azula still had to marvel at how easily she could firebend with the "gift." It was both similar to and very different from the effects of Sozin's Comet: where that had massively amplified each burst of fire but left unchanged the bending forms required for a given type of maneuver, this was more of a lessening of the effort required for control coupled with a smaller but significant boost to firepower.

And of course . . . Azula thought, and she pointed two fingers at the ground next to her throne. The paved road cracked at their scrutiny, and from the center of the web rose a solitary green vine, which continued growing until it reached just above the Fire Princess's outstretched hand. Just as swiftly, a bloodred fruit bulged into existence on the end of the vine, sinking neatly into the conjuring hand, which lightly broke it off at the stem. Immediately afterward, the remaining vine withered and shrank until it collapsed into a tiny pile of brown dust.

Azula examined the fruit. I can't even identify it, and yet I created it. How bizarre. She took a bite.

Hmm.

It is adequate.

Her continued consumption of the fruit was interrupted when, to her just-visible irritation, someone approached her throne. Though acting wary of the firewall, the peasant lowered herself to her knees and bowed her hands to the ground, again showing proper form for the first time in a while. How long did it take one dirty little village to learn a few simple bows?

"My humblest apologies for the interruption, Phoenix Queen," said the girl.

Girl? Azula gave herself pause for thought. She's well older than me.

"Old enough to be your mo -"

Azula crushed the remains of the fruit in her hand.

"What do you want?"

The girl - woman - flinched at the harsh tone.

"It's - it's my sister, O Queen," she said. "She - she hasn't come back yet. That is - the gates have already closed, and she's still, um -"

"The gates close at sundown," Azula snapped. "Do you want a village full of Grimm? Because I can certainly arrange it."

"N - no . . . of course not - My Queen. But, um . . ." Through the frolicking blue flames, Azula saw the tears form in the peasant's eyes.

That's quite enough of that.

"A sign of weakness to be sure."

Go. Away.

"Compose yourself," Azula said aloud. "I'm not heartless. Take whoever you like and form a search party. Tell the gatekeeper I said to let you out."

The peasant wiped her eyes and stammered, "Oh, th-thank you, Great Phoenix Queen . . ."

Azula used a puff of blue fire to dissolve the squished fruit in her hand. "Hurry along now. The Grimm won't wait for you."

The woman bowed her head, turned, and ran off.

Azula waited several moments before turning to the guard who had been standing silently to the left of her throne the whole time.

"Remind the gatekeeper," she instructed him with a cold expression, "that I never said to let them back in."

"Aang," said Katara, "are you sure we should be doing this?"

"No, this is awesome!" said Ruby. "Weiss, hold Crescent Rose!"

"What? Oof!" Weiss caught Ruby's folded weapon and was knocked to the ground by the impact.

"Alright!" said Sokka, one arm holding Momo up like a flag as he stood just to the side of Ruby and Aang. "Super airbending running speed versus whatever the flower petal thing is. First one to reach Appa wins!"

Aang had persuaded Appa to move further away, where he now stood looking back at the group absently. Aang and Ruby both half-crouched into preparatory stances.

"On the count of three," Sokka said. "One . . ."

Blake, who had ended up next to Toph, pointed at Aang and whispered to her, "So he's the protector of your world?"

"When you put it like that," Toph answered, "our world is pretty cool."

"Two . . ."

"Gooooo Ruby!" Yang shouted.

"Go Aang," said Katara unenthusiastically. But then she smiled.

"Three!"

Weiss had just gotten to her feet when she was knocked down again by the burst of air and rose petals.

They were even for a few seconds, eying one another to monitor the difference. Ruby started to pull ahead, and in response Aang, without missing a beat, formed and mounted an air scooter, which shot him into the lead. The immobile Appa rushing toward them, Ruby made a last-ditch effort and heaved her body forward with a spinning motion; her red cape wrapped around her and obscured her figure, giving her the appearance of a cigar-shaped flying drill, which tore through the air and surpassed the young Avatar once again.

Despite her speed and drill-shape, Appa barely reacted when Ruby smacked into his side, her face burying itself in his thick white fur. And despite having lost the race, Aang was laughing loudly when he rocketed past them, and continued until he had returned (via air-jumping over Appa's back) to help Ruby up. Their friends also made varying kinds of cheering noises from back at the starting line, and started moving toward them at differing rates of speed.

"Wow, you can really get going there," Aang said to Ruby.

"Yeah," she replied with a sort of embarrassed swagger. "It's hard to keep up for long though."

Sokka arrived first, followed shortly after by Yang; Weiss and Zuko walked the most slowly, apparently having a private conversation.

"Alright," said Sokka, "one point to, uh - what was your fancy group name thing?"

"Team RWBY!" said Ruby.

"Ah," Sokka chirped, "like Team Avatar!" He rounded on Katara and Toph and said, "I told you it was a good name!"

"Wait," said Yang, "so 'A' for Aang, 'V' for . . ." She slowly pointed her finger around the group, but found nobody whose name began with the letter. "No . . ."

"Eh - vee?" Sokka asked with a raised eyebrow.

"See," Yang explained, "it's not just like 'Team Ruby' because Ruby's the leader; it's spelled with a 'W' because it's the first letters of all our names. 'R-W-B-Y;' Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang."

Team Avatar appeared completely perplexed by this rundown.

"Are-double-you-bee-why?" Aang recited.

"I don't get it," said Toph.

"Here." Ruby pulled out her scroll, tapped at it, and held it in front of Aang's face. "RWBY" was displayed on the screen, with the face of each girl above the corresponding letter. "See?"

Sokka snaked over next to Aang, staring at the scroll intently. "What is that thing?"

"They have all these crazy machines in their world," Aang explained. "But anyway, I - I guess they use a different writing system?" As Ruby stowed the scroll (to Sokka's dismay), Aang flipped out his staff and started drawing lines in the dirt before him:

安
昂

"That's how we write my name," he said.

"Looks complicated," said Yang.

"It kinda looks like a chicken and a monkey," said Ruby, squinting.

"Or Neptune dancing," Blake mumbled.

A white high-heeled boot stomped down on top of the carved characters. "You'll be happy to know," said Weiss to her surrounding teammates, "that while our valiant leaders were goofing off, the Fire Lord and I have come up with a solution to our problem."

"Problem?" Ruby asked.

Weiss leaned in close to Ruby's face. "Getting - back - home?"

"Oh, that."

Zuko pointed a finger skyward and said, "We'll scout from the air. Another one of those . . . rainbow . . . holes - should be easy enough to spot."

"If we can't find one," said Aang to Team RWBY, "you could try meditation. I cross over into the Spirit World by meditating all the time!"

"But your body stays here, Aang," Katara pointed out. "They probably want to bring theirs along."

"Yyyeah," said Blake, "besides, I can't see Yang and Ruby meditating."

"What?!" Ruby protested. "I can too, watch!"

In her standing position, Ruby closed her eyes, held her hands up on either side of her head, and formed the right and left into "rock on" and "A-okay" signs respectively. Then she quickly sucked in a breath and hummed, "Oum . . ."

Not five seconds later, a moth beetle buzzed past her ear, and one eye snapped open in response. As the bug passed in front of her face, she blew at it, but this only appeared to entice the insect, as it then landed on the end of her nose. She quickly devolved into increasingly hectic attempts to swat at it, which it weaved through lazily; when she finally stopped to catch her breath, it returned to her nose immediately.

This rather adorable scene was suddenly interrupted by a distant, panicked shout; everybody turned toward the source of the sound, even Momo, who had returned to Appa's back, and lastly Appa himself.

Some ways away, something was rapidly approaching. Two somethings - the larger in pursuit of the smaller. The smaller was a man, and not a particularly small one, dressed in standard Earth Kingdom garb. His pursuer was, quite simply, a giant scorpion - a match for Appa in size, sporting a black and white color scheme but for the glowing yellow end of its stinger. The man ran at full tilt and shouted incoherently again as he ducked under a swipe from one of the arachnid's front claws.

"Death Stalker!" Yang cried, pumping her arms to activate her gauntlets.

Ruby held Crescent Rose in front of her and it unfolded before Sokka, whose expression performed a synchronized transformation to open-mouthed amazement in the background. After Ruby used a blast from the scythe to propel herself toward the scorpion, Sokka pulled out his comparatively tiny boomerang and stared at it sadly.

Team RWBY went to work. As usual, it was visual poetry, and would have been accompanied by equally incredible music were it not for certain pitfalls of reality. Sokka fell to his knees in awe as he watched the battle unfold, and amazed stares were in no short supply among his comrades, though Aang's look was more of pained realization; he failed to acknowledge the fleeing Earth Kingdom man as he ran up and hid behind the considerably shorter Avatar.

When, in under a minute, the last severed piece of the monster fell to the ground and Team RWBY returned to the larger group, Sokka, still kneeling, clasped his hands together and whimpered, "Can I marry all of you?"

Ruby blushed heavily in flattery, and her team reacted with less extreme versions of the same response.

"Uh, don't know if I'd go that far," said the Earth Kingdom man, emerging from behind Aang with a large smile, "but thank you, thank you for saving me, uh, magical monster-slaying ladies!" Then he jumped as though startled, startling everyone else. "Oh! But, uh, there were more, uh, more monsters heading for my village! Uh, do you think you could help, uh, more? Please!"

"It's what we do," said Yang with a nod.

"Aang?" Katara had noticed that Aang had remained immobile, staring at the remains of the Death Stalker, which were dissolving into black smoke. "What's wrong?"

Slowly, Aang's gaze shifted to her, before moving on to Zuko. When the Fire Lord realized this and returned the eye contact, Aang said dourly, "They're not dark spirits."

Chapter Text

Riding on Appa's back as he soared miles above the landscape would have seemed a more novel experience for Team RWBY had they not been so accustomed to being thrown about during their battles, be it by the force of their opponents' weapons or their own. Seeing the bulky bison hang in the air as though gravity had left the building for a smoke was bizarre, but many a metallic ship, often of a much larger size, had pulled off the same trick back in their world. Normally, Ruby would be asking hundreds of questions about sky bison and how to care for them (and probably where to purchase one), but the heavy sense of dread hovering over the group was keeping her silent.

Weiss, on the other hand, had taken upon herself the burden of introducing Aang's companions to the concept of the Grimm.

"For the most part, they look like different animals," she explained, grateful that she was managing not to sound pompous in her lecture. "But it's easy to tell them apart from real animals. They're always primarily black, with varying amounts of white armor and spikes. Their eyes glow red, and they usually have red markings on their armor. As they get older, they grow more spikes, and they get bigger and smarter. We don't know much more about them, because their bodies dissolve shortly after they die, so they're hard to study. What we do know is, they only attack humans and -" she glanced at Blake - "things we build. Machines. They'll fight back if animals attack them, but otherwise they ignore anything but us."

Sokka frowned thoughtfully. "But why do they -"

"We don't know," said Blake, shaking her head. "It's just what they do."

After a pause, Weiss continued, "The one big thing we know about them is they don't have souls."

The otherworlders looked startled at this, except of course for Aang, who remained sitting on the front of Appa's saddle, holding the reigns in silence. Momo had mounted Aang's shoulder when the flight began, but the Avatar had ignored the lemur's nudges for attention, so he was now curled up in Ruby's lap, and she stroked his back lightly every now and then.

"What do you mean?" Katara asked.

To answer, Weiss conjured a glyph in the middle of the saddle, causing Sokka, Katara, and Zuko to lean back in surprise.

"In our world," said Weiss, "we can manifest our soul as power - energy. We call this Aura. We mostly use Aura to defend against attacks and empower our weapons, but every individual also has a unique Aura power called a Semblance." She pointed down at the glyph. "Mine . . . has a variety of uses." The glyph vanished. "The Grimm can't use Aura because they have no souls."

"It's true," said Aang without turning around, though his friends turned toward him. "I looked inside one, and there was nothing." He spoke as though he meant to add more, but apparently decided against it, leaving just the whistling of the wind again.

After a while, Blake said, "Our world is basically overrun with them. Our people have - problems - among each other, but our biggest problem is the Grimm."

"It's only because of Dust that we've lasted this long," added Weiss.

"Dust?" Zuko asked, confused.

"What, do you throw it in their eyes or something?" suggested Sokka.

Weiss and Blake shared a look, and Weiss said, "We call it Dust. It's a mineral, with frankly amazing properties. Combined with our Aura, it lets us use elemental powers, kind of like your - bending?"

The benders nodded, clinging to something familiar amidst all the new information.

"The other important thing to know," Weiss went on, "is the Grimm are drawn to negative emotion. Sadness, anger, fear, anything like that. They can sense it."

As she elaborated on this point, Aang, Ruby, and Yang all remained uncharacteristically somber and silent; Yang stared back at the zeppelin that followed them through the air, apparently deep in thought.

"Hope!" called Mommy. "Don't wander too far!"

"Let her play, Ying," said Daddy. "Kids need to have their adventures."

Hope ignored them both and kept walking. Mommy and Daddy were doing laundry because it was so important. Why did grown-ups only want to do boring things? Hope had a better idea. She wanted to go see the piggy cows and the piggy sheeps and the piggy deers and the piggy chickens. They were cute. That was important.

As she ran toward the farm, grown-ups got out of her way because they knew better. Most of them said hi to her and smiled and stuff. One guy dropped a box and it sounded like breakable stuff.

"Sorry!" Hope said without stopping.

Some other guys were playing earth ball in the road. Hope ducked under the ball, and the other guy got hit in the face. It was pretty funny.

When she got close to the farm, all the piggies started oinking and mooing and baaing and cock-a-doodle-dooing and whatever deers do. Lee was sitting on the fence scratching his swords, and the piggy noises made him look at her.

"Oh," he said, "it's just you." He hopped off the fence.

Hope wanted to pet the piggies, but she went over to Lee because he would of made her anyway. How come nobody knew what was important?

"Hi Lee. Where's the piggy food?"

"Same place as always," he said like she was a moron. Lee was annoying. He was waaaaaay older than her, but still a kid. Sometimes he was boring like a grown-up, but he always let her feed the piggies.

After she got some food and came back, Lee was doing his sword dance. Whatever. Hope held out the food for the piggies and they all pushed each other trying to get it. She giggled at their cuteness.

Lee finished his stupid dance and came over by her. "Hey Hope, can you read yet?"

"Duh!"

Lee held up his sword. "What does this say?"

Hope squinted at the scratched-on characters. "Um . . . 'Sword of Piggy Boy?' "

"Close." He looked at the sword like it was important. " 'Never give up without a fight.' "

"I knew that."

"Sure you did."

"Whatever."

Hope went and got more piggy food. When she came back, all the piggies were over at the far-away side of the fence trying to get out, and something was standing by Lee.

It wasn't cute.

"Hope, get in the house!"

"What is that?"

Lee blocked the ugly thing's hand with one of his stupid swords. "Get inside!"

It looked kinda like a wolf bat, but bigger and taller and all black and with a white hat.

Hope wasn't scared, but she dropped the piggy food and ran in the house because otherwise Lee would of been a brat about it.

She wasn't cleaning that up.

Behind her Lee's swords made schinky noises. She closed the door, but she could still hear them a little. The wolf not-bat did a howl.

Hope wasn't scared, but she went under the table because Mommy would of told her to hide. Mommy worried too much. Hope wished Mommy was here so she could of told her not to worry so much.

It sounded like something broke outside.

Hope wasn't scared. She was bored. She decided to play animals and pretended to be a turtle duck and curled up into a ball.

Something scraped on the wall from outside. It was really loud.

Hope wasn't scared. She was so bored that she started crying from how boring it was.

Then she heard the door fly open.

She had been sleeping well lately.

On one hand, there were the Grimm, those ravenous monsters (privately, she had begun to admire their tenacity, despite their crudeness); on the other, her particular methods of security left her, in theory, as safe from them as anyone could be in this world. Those same methods, of course, left some of the peasants a bit perturbed, but she was proving persuasive enough that there were always others to stand between her and the wilier ones. When she was awake, the protests were little more than tea leaves in a wildfire, but more than one hole in her ancestry had been carved while its occupant was suspended helplessly in the land of dreams. Nonetheless, all of this was secondary to the true reason for her concern.

The voice.

At its most insistent, it had often rambled her to sleep, but she had never felt truly rested in its presence. Then she had finally gotten rid of it, and, despite camping in rags like a lowly worm, she had rediscovered what it meant to get a good night's rest.

Now it was back, but she was still sleeping well. It was suspicious to say the least.

"You once had allies, but now you can't even trust your own mind."

And whose fault is that?

"My point exactly."

All of this circular thinking was starting to make her dizzy.

Physically dizzy. Is that even possible?

"It would appear so."

Azula distracted herself by conjuring a puff of blue fire in her hand. With its light, she checked the room for intruders - again.

"Under the bed, in the closet - isn't that where children look for monsters?"

There's pride and then there's folly.

"And which is this?"

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. Neither.

Calling her a child was a natural bridge to a comment about her mother, but the voice bit its tongue, metaphorically speaking. Azula tried to empty her mind to avoid provoking it again. With a wordless thought, she snuffed out the flame in her hand.

A shadow temporarily blocked out the light of the moon - one of the guards on patrol around her quarters. In the near-total darkness, she crawled back into bed.

Sounding, as usual, all-too self-satisfied, the voice whispered to her again.

"Sleep well, Princess."

"We should be getting there any minute now," said Sokka, glancing over the top of his map at Aang. Aang said nothing, staring at the ground below.

On cue, the first buildings of the village became visible on the horizon. Sokka stowed the map as everybody turned their attention forward.

For a few achingly long brief moments, the village's growing visibility refused to yield the kinds of details they sought. It was a small village, but big enough to call home. Indeed, most of the buildings were houses. There seemed to be no movement . . . anywhere . . .

Maybe they're all just taking naps inside? Sokka thought to himself. But then - a figure! Multiple figures - er - but what was with the - oh -

"No . . ." Aang breathed. "No . . ."

Each person to be seen in the village lay on the ground, cradled in a lopsided, red pool stark against the brown earth. It was as though the villagers had found a garden of giant, misshaped roses, and each lain to sleep atop one. As Appa drifted closer, decorative rocks became visible throughout the garden - evidence of earthbenders having fought back. But now, none of the rocks moved.

Rosebuds, not fully in bloom, were provided by some of the less substantial cases of partial figures. And upon closer inspection, these outnumbered the complete flowers.

Aang just kept repeating "No" like a slow heartbeat as everyone else looked on in silence.

Blake was acutely aware of her own heartbeat as her eyes studied each of the others' reactions in turn. Katara had covered her mouth with both hands, and tears already flooded her eyes. Zuko was as immobile as a statue, his expression frozen somewhere between disbelief and the first sparks of rising fury. Toph's milky eyes pointed down at her feet, her frown shifting almost imperceptibly between puzzlement and understanding, back and forth, again and again. But then Blake's gaze fell on her own team, and her heart seemed to stop.

The fact was that she had not only grown up outside of Remnant's kingdoms - essentially in Grimm territory - but had also spent most of her life as a member of what even she now had to admit had become a terrorist organization, and the village below was not the worst thing that she had ever seen. But as she soaked in the concerned faces of the first people she had opened up to since her departure from the White Fang - Yang, her headstrong partner whom she had almost never seen this quiet; Weiss, who like ice was stubborn but ultimately fragile; and especially Ruby, who after all their adventures was still such an innocent little girl - she was awash with an all-consuming desire to protect them. It made little sense; all of them were well aware of what the Grimm did, whereas Aang and his companions were facing something new to them. But, rational or not, Blake felt as though Team Avatar needed to go through this experience to understand what they were up against, whereas her team -

"My Lord!"

The voice snapped most of them out of their respective trances, and their heads toward its source. A man with the most incredible sideburns was hanging precariously from a rope by one hand, the rope in turn dangling down from the royal Fire Nation blimp.

The man continued uncertainly, "What uh-are your orders?"

Zuko, with effort, collected himself and spoke evenly.

"Establish a perimeter. If anyone sees anything strange whatsoever, keep at least two eyes on it and report to me immediately. Engage if necessary, but if you're outmatched, then fall back."

"We'll go with you," Blake said quickly. Before her teammates could inquire or protest, she added, "We know what to look for."

Weiss nodded. Yang still gave Blake a questioning look, and in response, Blake performed the smallest inclination of her head toward Ruby that she could manage. From what she could read of Yang's expression, the message was received, and Ruby, if she had noticed, did not indicate it. For some reason that she could only attribute to instinct, Blake was most afraid of Ruby's reaction to seeing such mortality up close.

She hoped that they were not too close already.

Though once again feeling refreshed - or perhaps because of it - Azula awoke already knowing that something was wrong.

It was too quiet.

She took the appropriate precautions: first listening intensely for any hint of a presence in the room with her, then snapping open her eyes and scanning everywhere quickly (but not so quickly as to miss what she was looking at).

"Don't forget to look under the bed."

Azula was infuriated at having to give the voice what it wanted, but again, it was not worth missing a concealed assassin. But there was nobody there.

Deeming the room secure, she cautiously approached the window, glancing to the left and right, above and below, for anyone pressed against the outer wall just outside the glass. There was no one there.

Then she began to register what she was seeing of the village.

It was completely in ruin, but not in any way that made an iota of sense.

The Grimm did not discriminate; she would have been attacked along with everyone else. And should the peasants have come to blows, they would surely not have completely wiped themselves out before rousing her. Furthermore, she doubted that she would have been able to sleep through the inherent noise of any such combative scenario.

No; as baffling as it was, the village looked not like the remnants of a battlefield, but like a ghost town. A very old ghost town. The inhabitants all could have fled in the night, but that did not account for the years of aging that all of the buildings appeared to have experienced. In fact, many of them were so overgrown with vegetation that she would not have recognized them as buildings had she not seen them in their prime only yesterday.

Before she could form an articulated opinion about this mysterious occurrence, the voice intimated again.

"I've given you another gift."

What?

"That pathetic village was unworthy of your rule. You need a far grander nation."

But what happened?

"I've sped things along."

Azula stared at the rotting houses, confused and angry at her confusion. What do you mean?

"Much time has now passed in this world, but you did not experience it. This village succumbed to weakness without you, but the rest of this world is ripe for conquer."

That's what you said before.

"I speak only the truth."

In her irritation at the voice, Azula realized that her eyes were burning again. It was still only energy, not pain. With an upward wave of her hand, Azula dissolved the now-ancient wall before her into ash in a brief flash of blue.

She stepped outside.

Toph heaved herself off of Appa's back and landed in a perfectly stable horse stance, but a second later she fell over backward in shock, unconsciously lifting her feet just off of the ground to dull the sensation.

She could feel it, everywhere. Oozing across the earth. Trickling out of - things, dripping down from - places. Caking in the heat of the sun. Its presence was overwhelming.

The scent of it was in the air, too. She half-expected Sokka to pinch his nose and make some overly-expressive comment about the smell, but everyone stayed silent. Everything was silent. The heartbeats of everybody around her were fast, but outside of their group, the entire village was completely, utterly still.

Except for the oozing, the trickling, the caking, and the drip, drip, drip, drip . . .

Zuko had always lived with conflicting emotions, but there seemed to be no end to the number of ways that they could combine to create tempests of turmoil that were new to him.

Guilt was a factor. As an Earth Kingdom village, the scene around him reminded him all too much of the horrors that his country, and sometimes he personally, had inflicted upon the world for an entire century. Of course, the wrath of the Fire Nation tended to be more . . . dry, but the contrast only served to sharpen his awareness.

The alien nature of the Grimm tossed in a number of different ingredients, including a kinship with the other three nations that he had never quite felt before and a good old-fashioned fear of the unknown. And from a darker region of his soul whispered a bizarre kind of regret: the idea that, had he not gained the perspective to feel this much compassion for these people, he would not have to suffer so at the sight of their demise.

But boiling through everything else was the all-too-familiar anger. Anger at the ruthlessness and pointlessness of this particular display of cruelty. Anger that - judging by a certain freshness - they were only minutes late, and the whole of the massacre might have been averted. Anger that, given what they knew of the nature of the cross-world portals, there was conceivably almost nothing that could be done, at least in the short term, to prevent something like this from happening again.

The water was only beginning to boil, and outwardly he probably appeared numb, which was certainly how the others looked to him. But the last component of his current emotional storm was a fear of what he himself might do if he lost control of it.

Then he heard Katara gasp. Loudly.

Turning toward the sound, he saw that she stood over what looked to be a husband and wife. Sokka approached her, and Zuko followed. Katara, it seemed, was too distraught to speak, and she began looking around frantically, moving from house to house.

Sokka examined the couple uncertainly. Quietly, he said to Zuko, "They look familiar . . ."

Zuko tried to study their faces, but the blank, open eyes unnerved him. He did not recognize what features he could take in, though.

"Oh," said Sokka, "that's right; we helped them cross the Serpent's Pass . . . and then they had a . . ." His eyes widened. "Oh no . . ."

"What?" Zuko feared the answer.

"They had a baby."

Zuko's brow furrowed, and he took off after Katara.

Dully, Sokka watched his sister and the Fire Lord move further into the village. He was at a loss for what to do with himself; no amount of humor could defuse this situation, not that he felt much like it anyway. Strategy was also rather useless when your enemy could jump out of random holes in thin air at any time. Maybe if there was some kind of pattern to the portals - some way of predicting where and when the next one would appear - but even then, as this village demonstrated, they might not get there in time.

Sokka looked back toward Aang, and his vague notions of planning were put on hold.

Aang stood, eyes and fists clenched tightly, tears streaming down his face, his whole body trembling. His pain was palpable, but more disturbing was that every few seconds, his arrow tattoos would pulse with a brief flash of white light; whenever this happened, his falling tears would be momentarily suspended in midair, and small pebbles would leap around his feet like popcorn.

Sokka recognized the danger immediately: usually, the Avatar State would either remain on continuously, or it would just pulse once when Aang was really in control of it. Sokka had never seen this flashing behavior before, and chances were infinitesimal that it was a good thing.

Normally, Katara was Aang's rock, but after Weiss's rundown of the Grimm and what they had already seen of the village, Sokka had no confidence that anyone (besides the man who had sent them here) had survived, which meant that - well - it was up to him.

He approached cautiously. "Aang?"

Aang gave no sign of having heard him.

Slowly, very slowly, Sokka took the last few steps toward him. Then, slowly, very slowly, he reached up and gently placed his hand on Aang's shoulder.

Aang's head snapped toward him, eyes open and burning white, and at the same time the earth underneath their feet cracked loudly, forming a spiderweb pattern. Sokka had to grip Aang's shoulder more tightly to keep his balance, but he forced himself to look into those glowing eyes the whole time, hoping that his own eyes displayed sympathy.

Slowly, very slowly, the glow faded from Aang's body, and his face fell from sorrowful fury to just sorrow.

Imitating what he had seen Katara do so many times, Sokka pulled Aang into a hug, unable to think of any words to add to it.

The almighty Avatar wept into his shoulder.

As Zuko pursued Katara toward the far end of the village - she was approaching blind panic - his stomach began to knot, and it took him a moment to realize why.

This village was starting to look familiar.

He tried to deny it - things seemed a little different, after all, and just because that particular body over there was armed with a pair of hammers did not necessarily mean -

But no. They were coming up on the farm, and the difference was that the town had expanded a little closer to it. New buildings here. Same farm there.

Zuko seemed to have lost control of his body, watching vacantly as his field of vision moved closer to the now-empty pig fence.

No noise. They had been so loud before. No animals remained.

Allegedly, the Grimm had no quarrel with animals, so it would seem that the large break in the wooden fencing had been incidental, and the livestock had fled out of it in unnecessary fear. Nevertheless, their absence seemed - ominous.

Katara had stopped in front of the house. The house which had a large gash along the wall. She stood, staring at the doorway. The door was ajar, but only just; Zuko could not make out the interior. Katara seemed to have frozen.

Just as Zuko caught up with her, though, she barged into the home.

He followed.

Sokka was not sure for how long he silently comforted his friend - or tried to comfort him - but he suddenly became aware of Toph standing next to them, and it seemed that Aang did as well, because he made an effort to recover. But still, for a while, none of them could find any words.

Toph was rarely stealthy - Aang was "Twinkletoes," after all. Sokka dwelt on this for a moment before realizing that his mind was trying to distract him. Focus, he told himself. Somebody needs to be the voice of reason here.

Aang pulled out of the embrace, but Sokka kept hold of his shoulders. Looking him in the eyes, he tried to imagine what was going through Aang's head.

Happening upon a certain notion, he decided that it needed to be voiced. Sokka inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and then spoke.

"It's not just - this, is it?" he asked. Both Aang and Toph responded only with tiny facial expressions of confusion. Sokka elaborated, "You still don't want to - kill these things, do you? The Grimm?"

Aang's eyes rippled like a mirage as he considered Sokka's question. Finally, he said smally, "I don't know."

Toph opened her mouth, then closed it again. Aang pulled away from Sokka, turning around and looking up at the sky.

Sokka kept his voice even. "I don't know either, Aang. We've faced some pretty bad stuff and you've always found a way. Every time I think it can't work, you make it work. Un-bending Ozai, that whole promise fiasco with Zuko - even when Katara went to find the guy who . . ."

Aang turned back to face him. "But what about General Old Iron? Or the Fire Navy at the North Pole? There have been times when the only solution was . . ." Aang held out his hands and looked down at them, then looked back up. "For me to become a monster."

Toph broke in, "You said yourself they don't have souls. Whatever that really means. It -" She touched Aang's forearm lightly. "It almost sounds like they were specifically designed to mess with you."

Aang sighed. "My people said all life is sacred, but they never met the Grimm." After a contemplative pause, he continued, "There's really only one person who I can talk to about Air Nomad philosophy." Turning toward Toph, he returned her gesture, resulting in them locking arms in a similar manner to a Water Tribe handshake. His voice wobbling again, Aang asked, "Can you make sure everyone gets a proper burial?"

There was a long silence before Toph croaked, "Okay."

Katara entered the house.

Images lunged at her like monsters, hazy and jumbled. A cracked window. A spilled bag of feed. A shattered table. An engraved sword.

A boy. A girl.

Red.

So much red.

An earthquake. Zuko.

Zuko thundered over to the boy. He searched for a sign. A breath, a pulse.

The thunder had deafened her, but she could tell there was no sign.

Katara walked - drifted - fell over to the girl. The little girl. The tiny little girl. The baby she had helped deliver.

Hope.

Her vision swam; her head swirled. Through it all, she could still see her arms shaking. Trembling as she reached down toward her.

She reached and reached forever, but came no closer. She pushed, but something that was nothing pushed back.

Her tears fell through freely, but still she could not breach the nothing.

The girl lay before her, uncaring. So tiny.

So much red.

A red pillar of fire erupted before Aang, but only persisted for a moment. In extinguishing, it revealed the tall, white-haired, full-bearded figure of Avatar Roku.

Roku's default expression was sympathetic - in hindsight, this could probably be explained by their meetings always being in regard to rather grave matters - but this time, he could not even manage an introductory smile. Neither could Aang.

"Hello, Aang," Roku said. It was a simple statement that his distinctive voice subtly infused with a cacophony of emotions.

Aang's own voice was more stable than it had been in the physical world, but in truth the words were spilling out of him. "I don't know what to do, Roku. None of this makes any sense. All life is supposed to be sacred, but all they do is kill other life. And I'm supposed to be the bridge between the human and spirit worlds, but it seems like nobody even knew about Remnant."

"It is true. No Avatar before you has ever visited this third world, or even heard tell of it. Nor has our world ever beheld such insatiable malice as that of these Creatures of Grimm."

Aang hung his spiritual head. "I wish I knew what they really were; where they come from . . . But if all of Remnant can't figure it out . . ."

When at last he looked back up, Roku spoke again, his gaze steely. "It may be best not to dwell on questions whose answers remain elusive. If one thing can be said of the Grimm, it is that they are decisive. But the world that I once walked has transformed into something new, and on these matters you have proven yourself to be a wiser man than I." The elder Avatar's countenance softened, though it was still not quite a smile. "You wish to speak with Avatar Yangchen."

Aang shrugged. "She's the only other airbender I know."

"All of your past lives are here to aid you. But it is you, Aang, in whom I have confidence."

Roku was enveloped in flames once more, but when they cleared, he had been replaced not by Yangchen the airbender, but by the waterbender Kuruk.

"Pardon the interruption, young Avatar," Kuruk said. "These monsters plaguing you - some take the form of black wolves with white masks and red eyes, is that correct?"

Aang blinked. "Uh, yes . . ."

Kuruk glanced aside thoughtfully. "I believe I have seen one of these creatures before," he explained. Then, looking at Aang meaningfully, he added, "Or at least . . . its face."

Chapter Text

The noise from the spectators was continuous, like that of the ocean or a raging storm. Mai and Ty Lee sat high in the stands of the flying colosseum - not that one could tell that it was flying from inside, save for the proximity of the clouds, but the trip up had involved an airship that, despite putting even the most advanced Fire Nation technology to shame, was apparently commonplace in these parts. Continuing this theme, the voices of the two announcers were amplified over the rumble of the crowd by some manner of mechanical witchcraft.

"Alright, it's now time to begin the randomization process for our next fight!"

And those screens that seemed to be composed of nothing but light. Naturally, Ty Lee was still marveling at it all while Mai had lost what little interest she had mustered up long ago, her thoughts dwelling more on how comfortable the red chairs of the lowest few rows looked compared to their simpler bleachers.

"It looks like our first contender is . . . Penny Polendina from Atlas!"

The sea of sound from the crowd briefly rose into a tidal wave.

"And her opponent will be . . . Pyrrha Nikos from Beacon!"

The second wave was quite a bit larger than the first. Ty Lee stood and cheered along with them while Mai checked her nails.

"This is going to be so exciting!" Ty Lee proclaimed as she plopped back down onto her seat. "Who do you think will win?"

Mai spared a glance down into the ring, but the distance made it hard to assess the two girls standing there. One was a redhead and one had actual red hair, rather than the redhead's orange. Of course there were countless audience members surrounding them who sported even stranger hair colors - apparently a feature of this world. As for the soon-to-be combatants, the orange-haired one, clad in a mix of white, gray, black, and green topped off with a pink bow, looked as though she shared Ty Lee's enthusiasm, whereas the red-haired, golden-armored girl, despite actually being armed, appeared uncertain about herself.

"If I have to pick," said Mai, "I'd say the one with the bow."

"Are you crazy?!" exclaimed the guy sitting next to Mai. "Pyrrha Nikos is a legend! She can't lose!" After his protest, he did a double-take toward Mai, slicked back his hair, and held out his hand for a shake. "Hey. I'm Chartreuse."

"I'm not interested."

"Mai, be nice!" said Ty Lee. She reached over Mai and shook the guy's hand. "She's Mai . . . I'm Ty Lee."

"Fighters, are you ready?" one of the announcer's voices interrupted.

There was little actual response from the fighters; the one with the bow nodded toward her opponent.

"They both have such strong auras," said Ty Lee. "I can't imagine either of them losing."

"I don't believe in auras," said Mai.

The Chartreuse guy did a third take at that. "You don't - what?"

"Three . . . two . . . one . . ."

"How can you - not - What?"

Mai ignored the guy's spluttering as the roar of the crowd rose again.

The announcer leaned forward in his booth. "Begin!"

Somehow, an army of swords sprouted into existence behind the innocent-looking girl with the bow, and in response to her bending-like hand movements, they began to snake through the air in complicated patterns, flying toward the other fighter after a few seconds of showing off.

"Maybe this will be interesting after all," said Mai.

Katara stood before an extensive field of cultivated sunflowers. Scanning the sea of yellow, she noticed a faint white light glinting off of a few specimens. Reservedly, she proceeded toward the glow, gently moving flowers out of her way.

Aang was in his lotus position, his hands balled up and pressed together. Katara lowered herself to her knees and sat back, absently removing the water from her pouch and transforming it into a block of ice for her to lean against. Slowly, she slid her hand over one of Aang's fists and unfolded it, entwining their fingers together. It was subtle, but Aang's muscles seemed to loosen at her touch, though he remained otherwise immobile.

The sunflowers swayed ever so slightly overhead as Katara peered upward through them.

The tree was just as Aang remembered it. Gnarled, leafless branches veiled in smog. At the bottom, a hole leading underneath the roots. The earth was carved into a stairway, but visibility faded a short way down. Of course, inside, there would be some light. Just enough to see one another's faces clearly.

Aang breathed deeply, despite not being physically present. "Done this before," he muttered to himself. "Done this before . . ." He had been rather concerned about the task before him given what he had seen in that village, but for some reason he was suddenly feeling soothed.

He descended the stairs into the lair of Koh the Face Stealer.

Expectably, the spirit was initially hidden in the shadows. Aang walked to the center of the cave and stood silently, waiting for the reveal. The clicking of the centipede's legs and segmented body was just barely audible, but it was everywhere, making it impossible to predict where Koh's first face would appear. Breaking tradition, however, the spirit sunk slowly into view directly in front of the Avatar. He wore his Noh face, and on it, a smile.

"Well, well," the spirit said. "The Avatar. You've returned once more." His voice was at once suave and rumbling.

"Hello, Koh." Aang spoke flatly - it was not necessary for his tone to lack emotion, but it helped him concentrate.

Koh's body, dangling once again from the large central stalactite, slithered around the Avatar. The whole experience was a repeat of their first encounter. "Your world must be a dangerous place if you're visiting me again."

"Actually . . ." said Aang carefully. "I wanted to ask you about a different world."

"A different world," said Koh. His two eyelid-like membranes flicked closed and open again, and he showed an unfamiliar female face. "I take it you don't mean this one?"

"It's called Remnant," Aang said, and hardening his features he turned to see if Koh would react to the name. The woman's face was as blank as Aang's. "Avatar Kuruk -" at that name Koh switched to his blue oni face - "said you might have a face from that world. The face of . . . a Grimm."

After a short pause, Koh revealed the unmistakable mask of a Beowolf. "You mean this face?" he asked, clearly knowing the answer.

The glowing red eyes bored into Aang's soul, but he continued dully. "Yes. How much do you know about the Grimm? Can you tell me what they are?"

The front of Koh's body rose toward the ceiling. "I know more than you, I'm sure. But, little Avatar, here's the problem." The spirit crawled around the wall of his lair and settled entirely on the floor, looking at Aang with the visage of a gray-haired man. "Last time we spoke, I left empty-handed, so to speak. So, child . . ." The face of a boarcupine lunged out, stopping an inch from Aang's nose. "I'll tell you what I know - for a price."

"Um . . ." Aang focused on the boar's eyes. "I kind of need my face."

"Oh, of course you do," said a wrinkled old woman's features as they drifted away from the Avatar's. "But surely you can offer me something?"

"Well . . ." It was difficult for Aang to think while maintaining his composure. "I don't really have any spare faces lying around . . ."

"Hmmmm," droned the Noh mask. "Then what are we to do?"

Aang was silent for a while as the centipede body undulated around him. Finally, he decided to play the one card that he had. "Uh, did you know I met your mother?"

The blue ogre was back at his nose in an instant. "What?!"

"The Mother of Faces," said Aang cautiously. "She said you were her son."

Koh scuttled about the walls again. Stopping, but not looking toward Aang, he said, "I tire of your presence, Avatar! Leave!"

Aang stood firm. "I'm not going anywhere until I find out about the Grimm."

Koh rushed at him again, and the face he sported had the same third-eye tattoo on its forehead as the mysterious assassin whom Sokka had dubbed Combustion Man. "Then I'll make you!" the spirit roared. Aang somehow doubted that Koh would have inherited the unique firebending powers associated with the tattoo merely by stealing the bender's face, but that was clearly the implied threat.

The Avatar stared at the tattoo for a moment before responding. "Go ahead, blast my face off. I'll find your mother, get a new one, maybe bring her back here . . ."

Koh returned to his oni face and his angry scuttling. "Humans . . ." the spirit fumed. "It's no wonder the Grimm slaughter you."

"So you do know about them."

The centipede spoke while circling Aang from above. "I can't give you the peace you seek. The Grimm are your antithesis. The only way the two of you can interact is annihilation." The Noh mask came back out as Koh settled, glaring down at the Avatar. "Humans take from around them and leave the world in ruin. The Grimm leave all but their victims untouched in their crusade against you." The mask smirked briefly. "I would call that balance."

"But why do they kill us?"

"It's not about why," a spider-like face answered, then looked away. "You're not like most humans. You want to preserve all life." The compliment caught Aang off guard, but his momentary falter of expression only gave Koh time to snap toward him slightly before it was corrected. The spirit went on, "So you want me to tell you that they don't count. That it's okay to kill them. That it's not really killing."

After a pause, Aang said sadly, "They don't have souls . . ."

"Undoubtedly they are strange things," said what appeared to be a woman with batlike ears on her head. "But this is a waste of time. You're seeking moral guidance -" the original Noh face descended before him - "from a thief." An old man with a long beard blinked out. "You are the keeper of balance. Look below the surface, Avatar - you've known what you must do all along." Slowly, Koh turned away again.

"I just want to know . . ." Aang's head drooped slightly, and in a moment of self-pity, he allowed his face to fall as a tear ran down his spiritual cheek. "If I'll be able to live with myself afterward."

The Noh mask swept in to meet his eyes, but Aang's frown remained in his possession. The spirit stared at the Avatar silently for a very, very long time, his whole body completely immobile.

When Koh finally lifted himself out of view again, Aang wiped his tears away and reorganized his blank expression, though his face should have been truly blank at that point. Unable to fathom the spirit's inaction, Aang merely waited.

Wearing the Beowolf's visage once more, Koh said, seemingly out of nowhere, "Just as there are four elements, there are four worlds. Your mortal world is the world of earth, and so have you named it. You have endured eons of hardships, but still you stand strong. Your - new friends hail from the world of fire. There, powerful lights burn brightly, only to eventually flicker and die, leaving darkness to thrive in the void. This Spirit World is the world of air. Here, we are free from physical bonds, and all things are fluid."

When the centipede did not continue, Aang prompted, "So the world of water is . . . ?"

The Noh mask looked at him. "Water is the element of change. Despite what most spirits will tell you, change is not inherently negative. It is, however, violent." The ogre popped out again. "Change will always be resisted, and without someone to keep balance, this struggle can become too much for a world to bear."

The Avatar considered this as Koh's blue-nosed monkey face was displayed. "Is that where the Grimm come from? A broken world?"

"Yet again, you ask the wrong questions. As we prattle away, the world of fire is slowly burning itself to cinders. And now, it seems your world has caught fire." The Grimm mask returned.

Aang breathed deeply through his nose, then asked quietly, "What are they?"

"They are," said Koh simply. "They are life, but death. Material, but void. Hatred, but numbness. The beginning, and the end." The spirit switched to his owl-like face. "Wan Shi Tong believes them to be embodiments of nothingness - remnants of the void that was filled when the worlds came to be. But even He Who Knows Ten Thousand Things can be a little . . ." He looked off to the side. "Well, stupid."

The centipede moved back down to Aang's eye level and yet again donned the Beowolf. "Do you know how I acquired this face?" he asked quietly. "My mother made it for me."

"You mean - you didn't steal it from - ?"

"The Grimm are agents of anonymity. I cannot take from them. They may snap and snarl, but inside they feel nothing. Even in death." The Noh mask. "It's not my place to tell you right from wrong. But, young Avatar . . ." The spirit retreated entirely into the darkness at the top of his cave. "I would prefer a world full of faces that I can steal."

As the white light faded from Aang's eyes, he once again saw the stems of the sunflowers - but he also felt someone's hand clenching his own. He knew who it was without needing to look.

"Did -" Katara's voice broke, so she cleared her throat and started again. "Did you talk to Avatar Roku?"

"I went to see Koh," Aang said in a monotone.

Katara was surprised at this. "That thing that steals faces?"

"Avatar Kuruk thought he might know something about the Grimm."

She squeezed his hand harder. "Did he?"

"Sort of . . ."

A light breeze danced by, stopping briefly to play with Katara's hair loopies. She and Aang sat in silence for a while, and nothing more chose to disturb them.

Aang sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter what they are. All that matters is what they do. They won't stop, and unlike Ozai they don't have a soul I can bend."

Katara leaned her head against his. "It's all so . . . strange. It's like a nightmare, but I've never felt more awake." Simultaneously, they embraced. "But Aang, I want you to know . . . No matter what happens, no matter what you have to do, I'll always love you, and you know why?" Finally they turned their heads to look into each other's eyes. "Because even if you're forced to do something horrible, you're doing it for the right reason. That's why it's so hard for you to be the Avatar - and why you're so good at it."

It was unclear which of them teared up first, but they both had to close their eyes to stem the worst of it, and they made an unspoken decision to lean their foreheads together for mutual support.

"I can't say the same about myself," said Katara darkly. "When I saw Hope there . . . I wanted to take up her blood and use it to rip every last one of them to shreds." She raised her head, rolling Aang's up as well, and as their noses touched, their eyes reopened, the tears flowing freely. "But then I . . . I saw myself, doing that, and - I saw her there, watching me . . ." She looked away, and Aang pulled her into a tight hug. She sobbed into his shoulder a few times, but eventually lifted her head back up and continued. "We have to - end them, but - it's not for revenge."

"No," Aang said, gripping her with all his strength. "It's not for revenge. Revenge spreads like a plague. I just want the violence to stop."

"Me too . . ."

They both let their feelings crescendo, safe in one another's arms. As their tears seeped into the ground to be absorbed by the roots of the sunflowers, a hummingsquirrel appeared overhead, hovering before one of the flowers to gather seeds. When its cheeks were bulging with its bounty, it darted out of view.

Still leaning against her, Aang said, "We'll get through this, Katara. They might be gone, but they taught me not to abandon hope." He pulled back and held Katara's cheek with his hand in order to look her in the eyes again. "The best way to honor their memory is to live by that lesson."

Zuko knelt before the Earth Kingdom boy's grave, carefully using the inscribed sword to copy its adage onto the headstone. He still had yet to locate the blade's counterpart. Behind him, Toph worked with equal melancholy, opening more holes in the earth and - filling them.

When the Fire Lord finished carving the final character, he sheathed the sword in his belt and sighed, closing his eyes. A single rose petal drifted by carried on the wind, and then, his voice hoarse, Zuko began to sing.

"Leaves from the vine . . . Falling so slow . . ."

Toph froze, listening.

"Like fragile . . . tiny shells . . . Drifting in the foam . . ."

Zuko wiped the tears from his face, but they were immediately replaced.

"Little soldier boy . . . Come marching home . . ."

Aang and Katara approached quietly from the direction of the sunflower field, and stood next to Toph when they arrived.

"Brave soldier boy . . ." Zuko concluded. "Comes marching . . . home . . ."

The world seemed to pause in reverence, and even when Sokka emerged from the village proper, he merely joined Aang, Katara, and Toph in standing silently. Finally, Zuko rose to his feet, turned to find the group watching him somberly, and walked up to them as well, drying his eyes on his sleeve.

"So . . ." said Sokka hollowly. "What do we do now, Aang?"

Zuko looked to the Avatar along with everyone else, and was once again reminded of how young the boy was. But Aang's answer reminded him that he was still probably the wisest man whom Zuko knew, next to Uncle Iroh.

Looking off into the horizon, Aang said, "We keep moving forward."

Chapter Text

Appa divulged a soft moan as Aang and the others returned to the edge of the village where the bison and the royal zeppelin were parked. Aang, upon reaching Appa, placed a hand gently on his head and ran it through his fur. The familiar sensation was calming for both of them.

Not far away, one party of Fire Nation soldiers also approached, headed by Weiss, Blake, and General Mak. Zuko turned to meet them, and when they had properly regrouped, his subjects stood at attention and the general performed the Fire Nation bow.

"Fire Lord Zuko," Mak said. "We have found no sign of -"

He was interrupted by a loud cry from beyond the horizon. Everyone turned to look.

At first, all that could be seen was a small cloud of dust. Then the diminutive figure of Momo flapping hastily toward them became visible. Shortly after this, more soldiers - many of them clearly having abandoned dignity and running for their lives. Those furthest behind were maintaining better form, launching repeated orange flashes back at the writhing black mass in pursuit of them. As it closed in, gaps in the mass became clear, white and red hues glinted, and it was revealed to be not one indistinct body, but an entire horde of creatures all but trampling one another in a mad dash.

Among the torrent, the easily-differentiated forms of Ruby and Yang shot this way and that, attacking in whichever random direction they could manage.

Ruby's voice came carried on the wind accompanied by many beastly snarls. "We found the Grimm!"

Everybody, including Appa, fell into more stable stances, and Weiss and Blake drew their weapons. Sokka looked left and right at his companions before remarking, "Attracted to negative emotions. Right."

"Before we get into this," said Blake, turning toward Toph, "one question. Are you - actually blind?"

"I can see fine," Toph replied, "just not with my eyes. All that stampeding they're doing, you feel that in the ground? That's how I see. I can feel each one of 'em running, General Mak over there shaking in his boots, and your heart pounding in your ears."

Weiss's eyes widened at this, while Blake's only narrowed. Toph made no further comment, but she grinned slyly.

"Don't worry about us," Sokka cut in. "We can fight. This is just a bit more - inconceivably horrifying than we're used to."

"Nice pep talk," muttered Toph.

Sokka ignored her and turned to Aang. "Now just to make sure . . ."

Aang stared coldly at the Grimm horde. In a voice no warmer but loud enough for everyone around to hear, he said, "Do whatever you have to to stop them. And watch each other's backs."

"With all due respect, Avatar," said General Mak, "we only take orders from the Fire Lord."

Without looking and in complete deadpan, Zuko said, "Do what he says."

Unfazed, Mak turned to his troops, raised a fist, and shouted, "You heard him, men! Let's show these beasts the might of the Fire Nation!"

At that, the soldiers formed up in a row in front of the others. Aang pulled his glider into position behind him. Weiss held her rapier close to her face. Toph cracked her knuckles. Sokka gulped.

Momo sailed overhead, passing them all by. The soldiers already in combat with the Grimm drew near. Appa growled again, and then opened his mouth and roared powerfully.

Whether by incidence or design, the oncoming soldiers parted before them, and Mak took it as a cue.

"Ready . . . fire!"

"So I ask you . . . when the first shots are fired . . . who do you think you can trust?"

The broadcast cut to static.

"A bit melodramatic, wasn't it?" said Mai.

Looking around nervously, Ty Lee said, "I don't think that was part of the show, Mai . . ."

As if responding to her comment, a loud siren let out a long blare over the stadium. An inappropriately serene female voice came over the speakers, "Alert. Incoming Grimm attack. Threat level: nine. Please seek shelter in a calm, orderly manner."

Mai had no time for a sarcastic remark before the people around them exploded into a frenzy. Some attempted to form lines in the designated walking spaces while others went as far as clambering over their heads. The two Fire Nation girls sat in the middle of the chaos, unsure what to do. Ty Lee stared down at the pieces of the girl-machine, her eyes wide.

The speakers squeaked briefly, and this time a male voice spoke, also calm but in a less disturbing way. "Ladies and gentlemen. Please. There is no need for panic."

Immediately after this, a terrible screech came from overhead, and Mai and Ty Lee looked up to see a gigantic black bird standing on top of what appeared to be another light trick that was acting as a roof for the stadium. The bird flapped, stomped its feet on the hard light, and pecked at it, sending tremors through the colosseum that were perceptible even over the vibrations of the scrambling crowd.

It screamed again.

"Mai?" Ty Lee's voice trembled along with the floor. "What do we do?"

Mai glared up at the bird with distaste. "We survive."

The combined din of fire blasts, gunshots, Grimm crying out threateningly, and Grimm squealing as they were slain was ceaseless. With enemies everywhere, the combatants had little control of where they ended up over time, forced merely to attack whatever came at them.

From overhead, where Aang soared with his glider, it was utter chaos; trying to observe the whole of the battle was simply disorienting. Whenever his eye found someone to follow, though, they did seem to be surviving.

Behind him, a series of screeches; he glanced back at the group of winged horse-things pursuing him. Just as he turned forward, Appa thundered by, and Aang looked back again to watch the bison bowl through the creatures, scattering them. One recovered and followed Aang diligently.

The Avatar flew toward a black bird several times larger than the horses. When he caught the bird's attention, it flapped around in his direction and paused. Then, with a strong beat of both wings, it sent a hailstorm of feathers speeding toward him.

His brow furrowed, Aang easily weaved his glider this way and that through the onslaught of projectiles. Judging by the screams, a few of them may have stricken the Griffon, but it was still not deterred.

As the giant Nevermore dove at him, Aang's eyes and tattoos pulsed white, just for a moment. Then he pulled his glider into a spin, still moving up toward the bird.

Aang's twirling speed became fast enough to create a funnel of wind that trailed behind him. As this grew in size and strength, the persistent Griffon attempted to slow down, but was unable to escape being sucked inside the vortex.

Closing in on the Nevermore, Aang suddenly threw himself into a backward flip and folded up his glider. Pointing the staff into the center of his end of the wind funnel, he swung the entire cyclone underneath him and up at the bird just in time to slam the smaller Grimm into the larger's chin. The dispersing wind then sent the two of them hurtling wildly through the air, whereas Aang popped his glider's wings back out and continued on his way.

"Did he just use a tornado as a whip?" said Blake, looking up at Aang from the ground.

"I love these guys," Yang replied, nonchalantly backhanding a Beowolf behind her.

A pair of Boarbatusks came rolling toward the two girls at high speed, and they fell back into combat stances. The first boar aimed at Blake, who cloned herself and stood on her own shoulders just before impact. The clone dissolved and the hog rolled right on through, and Blake somersaulted backwards after it. Yang, an instant later, smashed her fist into the ground before the second Grimm, sending it straight up into the air in front of her, spinning even faster than before. With her other hand, she punched the beast back in the direction it had come.

Before the balled-up monster hit the ground again, the ground rose up and hit it instead.

Toph stood nearby, situated in that particular stance of hers that reminded Yang of a praying mantis. Grinning, Yang once again punched the Boarbatusk toward her, and Toph, with a similar grin and punching motion, batted it back with her plate of earth.

As the volley continued, another Beowolf - or the same one - barked behind Yang, but as she glanced backward, Toph stomped a foot and jerked the ground beneath the wolf up sharply, sending it shooting into the sky like a firework.

As they increased the strength of their blows to the Boarbatusk, hitting it back and forth faster, a pained yelp came from overhead, and Yang looked up to see the follow-through of a swing from Aang's staff that had knocked the Beowolf back down toward them.

Smiling wider, she shouted to Toph, "Finisher!" Then she pointed both fists down and blasted herself into the air.

Toph bent her earth panel into a ramp that caught the boar and rolled it into place under the falling wolf. Yang rose past the same wolf, reached upward, and propelled herself downward with another double shot. Then, at the same time, she delivered a downward haymaker to the wolf and Toph stomped up a stone platform under the boar, and the two Grimm exploded into giblets from the sandwiching forces.

As the smoking monster chunks rained around the platform, Yang landed heavily atop it on both feet. Standing up, she cocked her gauntlets, spewing empty shells around her, and pulled a pair of new magazines off of her belt.

Hearing a menacing hissing behind her, she tossed the magazines lightly and spun around, catching them in her gauntlets and raising her fists at the white head of the King Taijitu.

The snake, in its way, reared up slowly, preparing for a quick strike, but as it did so Yang caught another movement in her periphery. Looking right, then left, she saw that the spent shells had floated into the air around her. Turning her head back toward Toph, she confirmed her suspicions: Toph's hands were spread out toward the snake, at an angle lined up with the used Dust casings.

Toph quickly cocked both hands very much as Yang would her gauntlets, and the shells all spun themselves to face toward the snake. Then she threw a punch, and the bullets peppered the Grimm's face, causing it to hiss and squeal in agony.

"I love these guys," Yang repeated to herself, and then launched herself toward the Taijitu.

Sokka's first ingenious plan was to keep his emotions so positive that he would become invisible to the Grimm. This turned out, after seeing the village and his friends so broken by it, and in the heat of battle with toothy monsters of pure evil lunging at him, and lacking any bending or whatever miraculous powers of pure awesomeness Team RWBY wielded, the name of which they had mentioned but he was understandably having trouble remembering at the moment, to be more easily said than done. Besides that, he quickly got the impression that the sometimes-many-more-than-two eyes of the Grimm were more than merely decorative, which in retrospect he probably could have just asked one of those girls about.

Well, too late now.

As the Beowolf repeatedly slashed at him with one hand and then the other, he ducked, leaned, and blocked strikes with his warrior's club.

"I - could really - use - a - space sword - right about now!" he told the beast between blows. It offered no opinion on the matter.

Noticing something else running toward him - a couple of weird-looking Grimm with only two legs - Sokka managed to whip out his boomerang and send it in their direction before returning his attention to the Beowolf's ministrations.

As the Boarbatusk built up kinetic energy for another spinning attack, Blake watched two Creeps dash by behind it. When the pig tumbled toward her, she kicked it back with all her might, sending it just in front of the Creeps, both of which tripped over it in sequence. Just after this, a small blue boomerang flew into view and bounced off of one of the Creeps' heads, slightly stunning it further and sailing straight upward.

Blake propelled herself forward off of a shadow clone and the rolling Boarbatusk swerved back in her direction. With a flurry of slices from Gambol Shroud, Blake kept the first Creep occupied, and just when the second got back up, the boomerang fell down and she kicked it into the Grimm's face; once again, it ricocheted off the bony armor, but Blake continued to work its trajectory into her routine, striking the Creeps with a furious barrage until they both slumped over dead. At this point the Boarbatusk leaped out of its spin and attempted to land on her, and she neatly impaled its vulnerable underbelly on her katana's sheath.

Her bow twitched as her second ears picked up a noise from behind, and she called upon the Dust stored inside her weapon. Flipping out of another clone, she left the Boarbatusk flopping to the ground and landed on top of the Griffon swooping in. The clone, composed of fire, then exploded forcefully; she dug her sword into the monster's hide as it careened skyward.

The explosion also sent the boomerang flying sideways.

An explosion distracted both Sokka and the Beowolf, and he turned his head just in time to allow him to catch his returning boomerang. Seeing the smoking Grimm corpses lying in a burnt crater in the ground, he looked down at the weapon and said, "Whoa! Nice job Boomerang!"

The wolf growled at him, and he grinned and tossed the boomerang showily.

It was promptly batted off to the side by the wolf's claw.

Sokka slumped forward. "Aww . . ."

The monster dove at him, and he threw himself out of the way in the direction of the deflected boomerang.

As several Creeps and Beowolves dropped dead at once to reveal Weiss standing in the middle, she paused to catch her breath. A nearby Death Stalker spotted her and scuttled around to face her. She closed her eyes for just a second; when she opened them, a white glyph appeared behind her. She quickly hopped backwards onto it and then jumped off, clearing the circle of corpses and staring down the approaching scorpion.

Weiss spun her weapon's revolving chamber, then spun around herself and thrust the rapier into the ground. Before her, the earth became coated in a sheet of ice, which extended underneath the legs of the Death Stalker, causing them to slip repeatedly and slow its progress.

Katara surfed by on her supply of water, and, passing the scorpion, melted the ice beneath it and pulled the water out like a tablecloth. Luckily, she was no magician, and the arachnid was yanked backward, flopping onto its belly.

Taking the opening, Weiss shot forward between the Grimm's claws and plunged her sword directly into one of its many eyes. Keeping her grip on Myrtenaster, she quickly flipped herself up to stand on its head as the two claws crashed together where she had just been standing.

The yellow stinger of the tail lunged at her from above, but was jerked to a halt before she had to defend - a length of water had wrapped around the tail and was keeping it at bay. Katara, behind, stood firm and held her hands out as though pulling on a tug-of-war rope, though the water whip began some distance from her fingertips.

Weiss once again activated the ice Dust in her sword, which was still lodged in the Grimm's eye. With horrible crackling noises, spikes of ice began forcing their way out of the joints of the scorpion's armor from inside. After a few moments of shivering, the Death Stalker was blown apart, replaced by what looked like an ice sculpture of a giant lotus flower. Weiss, thrown skyward, conjured another glyph and stood on it, observing the battle around her from an elevated vantage point.

A group of Creeps moved in to surround Katara, so she appropriated the water from the lotus and swirled around to create a protective ring branching into eight watery tentacles. Figuring that she had that situation covered, Weiss scanned for somewhere else to jump back into the fray.

Zuko danced through the flailing of a Beowolf's arms while scoring minor hits with his fire daggers. Increasingly burned and desperate, the beast made to close him off with a lethal hug, but a sudden ear-splitting bang blew open a hole in its side. Canceling the small dagger jets and stuffing a larger fireball into the wound, Zuko glanced aside to find Ruby hefting her scythe out of the ground where she had planted it to steady her shot. The Beowolf shuffled back in pain, and in a flash of red flower petals, Ruby appeared on its shoulders and readily decapitated it.

Following the sound of its head landing on the ground, Zuko heard behind him a louder thud followed by a groan, and turned to look.

One of his men lay at his feet, sporting only light scratches but clearly winded. Several yards away, unmistakably the thing that had thrown the soldier, stood another Beowolf. This one was bigger, with greater amounts of bony plating, including armor down its lower jaw and what looked like exterior ribs. Compared to the monstrous bird chasing Aang around the sky, it was still quite small, but Zuko recognized an alpha wolf when he saw one.

The Fire Lord stepped over his defeated subject toward the beast.

The Alpha kept its eyes trained on him, and its long ears darted to and fro. Unlike its brethren, it did not immediately rush forward, but waited for him to make the first move.

Ruby beat him to it.

Sailing over Zuko's head with petals trailing from her cape, she swiped her scythe at the Beowolf, only for its claw to strike the side of the blade and redirect her over its shoulder. Zuko took the opportunity to punch several bursts of flame at the Alpha, which shielded its face with its other arm.

As Ruby scrambled back to her feet, Zuko leaned forward and brought his fists together, then threw them both at the Beowolf, producing a large beam of fire that lasted for several seconds. When the flames cleared in front of him, he was shocked to find the Grimm sprinting right at him, apparently having run headlong into the attack. He dodged its claw, but lost his balance and fell backward.

When the wolf lunged down at him, he took a cue from its own tactics and rolled toward it instead of away, just barely managing to slip under it to safety. Pushing off from the ground with his hands, he generated a brief firewall for protection as he regained his footing.

The Alpha's black fur was smoking, not as Grimm did when they died but from the fire. Nevertheless, it moved assuredly, spinning to face him and using the momentum to lash out again with its claw. Zuko dropped into a swipe kick, ducking under the blow and sending a stream of fire at the wolf's feet. It hopped back to avoid this, and then Ruby's scythe slammed into the dirt next to Zuko.

Shots rang out as the diminutive girl cranked the weapon's firing handle repeatedly. The Alpha jerked at each impact, but did not seem more than bothered. Zuko, however, stared down at the mechanical blade in concentration.

Whatever it was doing was not exactly fire - or lightning, for that matter - but he could feel the energy created by each shot. Synchronizing his breathing with Ruby's firing rhythm, he suddenly thrust his hand at the scythe with a loud "Ha!"

The weapon's shot was amplified by Zuko's chi, displaying the girth of a fireball along with its usual higher speed. At being stricken with this blast, the Alpha was properly stunned, slumping onto one knee and laying a hand on the ground for support.

Ruby let out a delighted if incoherent string of praise and yanked up her scythe. Bolting into the air with her rose petal ability, she fired a scythe shot at such an angle as to send her into a spin, descending toward the Alpha. Acting on instinct, Zuko aimed a flame burst at her twirling blade, turning the girl into a deadly vortex of fire.

The combination of heat, momentum, and sharpness of edge was enough to dig into the flesh of the Beowolf's back, leaving multiple large gashes. The Grimm convulsed, but ultimately collapsed at the same moment that Ruby touched down on the earth, the circle of fire dispersing around her.

Zuko intended to thank her for the team-up, but before he knew it she had been replaced with fluttering petals.

Ruby sped along the battlefield, slashing left and right whenever a Grimm whooshed by. Before long, she ran out of oomph for her Semblance and had to skid to a stop.

Her timing turned out to be fortuitous, because a moment later she felt the ground beneath her feet softening into slipperier sand. She glanced to one side where Toph stood with one foot on the face of a dead Creep, but the earthbender looked as surprised as Ruby did by the sand situation.

Then the sky seemed to darken.

Looking up, Ruby saw Aang, with his glider, making a nosedive for the sand, and a Nevermore of similar size to the one from their initiation at Beacon on his tail, its wingspan blocking out the sun.

Caution defenestrated, Ruby aimed her scythe and repelled herself backwards, the shot throwing up a huge cloud of dust. Seconds later, Aang plunged into the top of the cloud, and then out of the side. The Nevermore, as was presumably Aang's plan, was not so lucky, its head becoming lodged in the sand pool, sending a small quake through the surrounding earth.

Aang landed, stowed his glider, and held one hand out toward the Grimm. By closing his fist, he caused the sand to become as stony as his expression.

The bird abruptly stopped struggling.

As Ruby watched it begin to evaporate into black smoke, she was vaguely aware of her teammates happening by in rapid succession. Finding themselves in a momentary lull of Grimm activity, Team RWBY regrouped with Aang and Toph, though for a while only silence was exchanged between them. Then . . .

"Guys?" said Toph nervously. "What's that?" She pointed, and the others turned to look.

In the distance, something loomed, huge and dark. It was approaching slowly, but each of its quadrupedal steps covered the length of a barn. It was elephantine in stature and build, with curving tusks and rows of sharp white spikes along its back. Its eyes burned like volcanic pits, and as it grew closer, the degree to which it towered over - everything became increasingly obvious. And it was headed straight for them.

"Uh-oh," Ruby understated. "Goliath . . ."

Everybody took a moment to digest the appearance of the beast. Finally, Aang turned to face the others.

"I'll deal with it," he said. "You guys handle the small ones."

"THEY'RE NOT THAT SMALL!" Sokka screamed as he ran by, pursued by an Ursa.

"Aang," said Weiss as Yang blasted off to save Sokka, "there's no way you can -"

Aang's eyes and tattoos suddenly shone white once more, and maintained it this time. Though he made no bending motions, a powerful wind whipped up around him. When he next spoke, the voices of all of his past lives spoke with him, creating a deep, dramatic echo.

"This is our world," said the Avatar. He turned toward the oncoming Goliath and rose off of the ground. "Let's take it back."

A large, distinct ball of air formed around Aang as he was lifted higher still. A small spark before him ignited a stream of fire, which circled him to form a ring around the air ball. From a nearby feeding trough, water snaked out and made another such ring, perpendicular to the fire one. Lastly, a series of stones popped out of the ground and lined up end to end to create a third loop, spinning around Aang along with the other three elements.

Then, as Aang's element ball drifted toward the Goliath, he raised his arms with his hands pointing down at the earth beneath him, and it began to rumble. Boulder-sized chunks were torn from the ground, piling up underneath the glowing Avatar. Higher and higher the rocks lifted the wind sphere, and Ruby, Weiss, and Blake leaned back their heads to watch it grow, their jaws falling lower in the process. Finally, as Yang returned with Sokka in tow, they stood in the shadow of Aang's completed construct, which matched the Goliath in height.

Atop the earthen golem, Aang's air ball sat as a mock head. Suspended inside, the Avatar made the motions of taking a step forward, and in response the golem lifted its massive stone foot and strode toward the giant Grimm. The impact when its foot returned to the ground almost threw Ruby's group off of their own feet. As the golem continued toward the Goliath, the elephant hesitated, ceasing its own march for the time being.

Team RWBY looked at each other, and Yang said what they were all thinking.

"We were protecting him?"

Sokka put a hand on her shoulder and said, "That job's not over. When he gets all glowy, that's called the Avatar State. It makes him stronger, but it's also dangerous for him. For one thing, he can get out of control."

"Is that out of control?" Ruby asked, pointing at the golem.

"Nah," said Toph dismissively, "he's done that before."

"Wait," said Ruby, "does this have anything to do with seven chocolates?"

"Oh yeah!" Yang added, and she formed a square shape with her fingers. "And ant farms?"

Sokka rubbed his chin. "Spider ants or plain ants?"

"Sokka!" Toph barked. "More important things here!"

"Right, right, sorry. The point is, the extra power comes from Aang's past lives. When the Avatar dies, he's reincarnated. But if he dies in the Avatar State - he won't be. Ever."

Everyone sans Toph looked up at the golem again. It had almost reached the Goliath, which had taken a defensive stance. The immensity of the two of them made the idea of a normal-sized person being able to affect the fight seem ludicrous. Then Ruby perked up.

"Ooh! Ooh! I have an idea!"

With a snarl, another Beowolf loped toward Zuko. A glint of the sun drew the Fire Lord's attention to the monster's back, where, amongst its bony spikes, a sword was buried to its halfway point. Wide-eyed, Zuko drew the blade's counterpart, and then he did something that he knew he should not. For but a moment, he abandoned the wisdom of the Sun Warriors and allowed anger to become his driving force once again. With a long, loud cry of pure rage, he brought the boy's sword slicing down through the air, and a powerful stream of flames burst out along its arc.

The flames burned bright blue.

The creature was halved diagonally, and the blade from its back, glowing red-hot, fell from its dissolving form and embedded its point in the ground. Closing his eyes, Zuko forcefully threw the inscribed sword into the earth next to its twin. Then he took a deep breath, turned, and walked away.

The ground shook beneath him, and he opened his eyes to find, in the distance ahead of him, a brown colossus striding purposefully toward a black elephant creature of equal magnitude. A breeze - air displaced by the golem's giant steps - ruffled his hair as he looked on in awe, reminded of his glimpses of the Ocean Spirit's behemoth form when Aang had fused with it at the North Pole. The image of Admiral Zhao being pulled into the murky depths lunged unbidden into his mind's eye.

Then a fierce cry sounded behind him, and he spun around and kicked a blast of fire - back to its normal orange hue - at the diving Griffon.

Aang's rocky creation took its final step, landing within melee range of the titanic elephant Grimm. The Avatar's shining white eyes looked down into the Goliath's searing red ones. Red like roses; white like snow. The two stared at each other for seconds that seemed like hours, the whistling wind of Aang's sphere of elements causing the Goliath's tentlike ears to ripple slightly.

The elephant shifted its head uncertainly. Then it rose its foot to move forward.

In a voice - nay, voices - that shook the very heavens around them, the Avatar roared, "GET OUT OF MY WORLD!"

Mimicking Aang's motions, the golem heaved a mighty punch backed by the weight of untold tons of solid earth that cleaved the air before it with its sheer force. The sound of the impact upon the Goliath's skull-plate was like an entire thunderstorm condensed into a single boom. Below and behind, Toph covered her ears.

The Goliath's foot returned to the ground, its whole body sliding backward. The golem lowered its fist and the two were still for another tense moment.

Then the elephant trumpeted and charged.

"Ruby," said Weiss, "of all your insane plans -"

"Come on!" said Yang. "It's too awesome not to try!"

"It's completely impractical!" said Weiss in exasperation, shouting over the monstrous noises of the battle of giants.

"It . . . really is," Blake admitted. "But then again . . . how else do we fight a Goliath?"

"I like it!" said Toph, slugging Ruby affectionately on the arm. "But Twinkle - I mean, Aang isn't that coordinated. He'll need my help." The ground trembled beneath them, and she added, "So let's get going! Ice Queen, you in or out?"

"I just think there are some things we need to -"

"Too late!"

With a stomp of her foot, Toph catapulted Team RWBY toward Aang's staggering golem, and a moment later rocketed after them by way of a rocky pillar. Sokka was left standing alone amidst the rubble, staring at the situation pensively, until more not-that-small Grimm circled around him.

He smiled nervously, choking on a hollow laugh.

Katara spun, collecting all of the water from her octopus arms, and froze it into a large, vertical sheet of ice, which she commanded to swing downward like an axe in order to attack a particularly large Creep charging at her. The first blow did not break through the monster's armor, but impeded it enough for her to easily land a second, which neatly bisected it.

Hearing scuffling sounds behind her, Katara turned to see an Ursa rearing up menacingly. The bear roared at her, and she responded by blasting the whole axe's worth of water into its open mouth. Caught quite off guard, the Ursa stumbled around; a pack of Beowolves surrounded the two of them, and, tearing her hands apart violently, Katara ripped a ring of icicles out of the Ursa's insides and sent one into the belly of each of the wolves.

In the corner of her eye, she watched Toph and Team RWBY leap like fleas toward the imposing silhouette of Aang's stone giant.

Feeling her way through the blinding vibrations in front of her, Toph threw up her arms, and beneath her and each of the RWBY girls rose a tower of earth, lifting them up to Aang's height. The golem had its hands wrapped around the Goliath's tusks, and the two were leaning their weight against one another.

"Aang!"

She was unable to see Aang himself, floating as he was in the air ball, but she could tell that something went wrong; the golem went slack and the elephant Grimm was able to push it backwards toward them. She guessed that she had shocked Aang out of the Avatar State; regardless, she punched both her arms forward just in time to toss herself and Team RWBY onto the golem's shoulders before it smashed into their five stone pillars.

"Sorry," she said quickly. The rocks underneath her collected themselves again, suggesting that Aang had "glowed it back up." The golem stopped sliding backwards.

"Listen," Toph shouted, "we're gonna help you out with this one! Just hold tight for a second!"

The Goliath let out another angry trumpeting noise, and the five girls leaped into action.

An Ursa once more nipping at his heels, Sokka tossed himself into a bush for cover, only to find himself tumbling down an incline on the other side. The Grimm charged after him, keeping its footing down the slope. When the ground evened out, Sokka rolled to his feet and faced the beast, which stood on its hind legs and roared at him.

Drawing his club again, he said, "Okay Sokka, get it together. Big scary evil monster? No problem. You can handle this."

Before either of them could attack, the earth rumbled on either side of the Ursa, and out of the ground popped two Creeps.

Sokka swallowed hard, and his voice rose an octave. "Alright . . . three scary death monsters. Could be worse."

There was a snorting noise, and Sokka felt a hot puff of air on the back of his neck. Slowly turning his head to investigate, he found a large, brown-furred creature with enormous tree-like antlers and stalactite-like fangs standing right behind him.

His nervous expression turned to one of vexation, and his voice went deadpan. "Saber-tooth moose lion. Sure, why not."

The moose lion growled, and the Ursa bellowed right back. Sokka threw himself flat on the ground as the huge animal leaped over his head and into combat with the three Grimm. Despite the Ursa matching its size and the monsters outnumbering it, the moose lion displayed superior strength, and after a few short seconds the Grimm had all been sliced open by horn, tooth, or claw. The Ursa pawed stubbornly even in its death throes, causing the moose lion to lift it off the ground with its antlers and heave it backwards into the side of the slope, where its body finally slumped in defeat.

Victorious, the animal rounded on Sokka, who had gotten to his feet and made to sneak away. Face-to-face, the moose lion stared at him and snorted again.

"Uheheh . . . ah . . . hey there, big fella . . ."

The creature produced a low grumble. Raising its oblong snout slightly, it sniffed Sokka's head from chin to wolftail. Then, suddenly, its expression softened, and it stood still, looking at him with curious eyes.

Sokka returned the sentiment for a moment, and then his jaw dropped like an anvil.

"No . . . way . . ."

Then he threw his arms skyward and smiled ear to ear.

"Foofoocuddlypoops!"

The moose lion opened its mouth and gave Sokka a long, slobbery lick across the face. Sokka wiped the excess drool away and then hugged the animal around its massive neck.

"Wow, you sure sprouted up! I guess my karma finally paid off!" Sokka removed one arm, crossing his legs and leaning against Foofoocuddlypoops with a devious expression on his face. "Hey, so since you're here and all, what would you say to helping me fight some more of those mangy monsters?"

Foofoocuddlypoops responded with another friendly lick.

"Alright!" said Sokka, patting the moose lion on the head. "Now we're talking!"

Toph tore one of the boulders out of the center of the golem's chest and hurled it at the Goliath. The rock shattered against its bone-plated head; the beast showed little concern over it. Toph then slid down the front of the golem's body, her feet adhering to the stone enough to prevent her from falling to her doom. Situating herself inside of the hole that she had just created in the chest, she entered her mantis stance.

She could feel Ruby and Yang running down the golem's right arm and Weiss and Blake down the left. When they arrived near the hands, Toph took a deep breath.

With a mighty heave, she ripped the bottom half of the golem's right arm down off of the top half, and then repeated the same for the left side. Yang and Blake hopped down onto the lower two of what were now four thinner arms, and Yang gave Toph a thumbs-up signal.

The Goliath attempted to interrupt, but Aang sent a roaring blast of fire into its face, and kept pumping flames at it long enough for the girls to complete Ruby's vision.

Each member of Team RWBY stood on the end of a rocky arm and allowed Toph to embed her up to the waist in the stone. Upon completion, the golem now effectively had the four girls for hands.

Ruby loaded a new Dust cartridge into her scythe.

Weiss spun her rapier's revolving chamber.

Blake unsheathed her katana and brandished both the sword and the sheath.

Yang punched her fists together and smiled.

Aang spread his arms, and the golem's top two arms, holding Ruby and Weiss, followed suit. The arms holding Yang and Blake rose into an imitation of Toph's mantis stance, copying her movements in the chest cavity.

Aang let out another tremendous roar, spitting a jet of fire high into the sky.

Chapter Text

The air thumped and crackled across the Goliath's head as it was assaulted by a spectacular fireworks show of shots and blasts converging from four different - and changing - angles.

As Weiss lurched around at the whim of Aang's earthbending, she silently fumed over her position. Their Dust attacks were no stronger coming from the golem, and -

She arched her back just in time to avoid the upswing of the elephant's trunk. The black appendage then wrapped itself around the stone arm behind her, and with a heave, severed her from it, still half-locked in a now-falling piece of rock.

Glancing in alarm toward Aang, she saw him reach both arms in her direction and make pulling motions, and shortly she was reattached, good as new. Aang then prepared a left-handed punch, and she was dragged back by the golem's mimicked motion.

And, she mentally resumed, while the golem could increase the force behind their blades, she had to focus all of the Aura she could muster into her arms to prevent them from snapping in the process. She had her doubts that even Myrtenaster would remain intact were it not for her Aura.

As she steeled herself again, the earth holding her suddenly rushed at the gargantuan Grimm. The beast attempted to turn its head and block the rapier-punch with its tusk, but it was outsped, and her sword struck just to the side of its skull-like face-plate, leaving a cut in its thick hide.

Too thick. There was no hint of red.

Ruby rode in on a right hook as Weiss was recalled, but her scythe met the white armor, which still proved impregnable. Brushing her hair out of her face with her unfavored right hand, Weiss shouted to her partner, "Honestly, Ruby, is there anyone crazier than you?!"

Carried up on the wind from the ground below came an exuberant cry of, "Heigh ho, Foofoocuddlypoops! Creatures of Grimm, eat hot karma!"

Looking down resignedly, Weiss found herself watching Sokka, seated on the back of some kind of burly brown quadruped, slicing left and right at Grimm with his club as his steed did the same with its oversized fangs and antlers. The pair charged through waves of monsters like a speedboat over the water, completely undeterred by any counterattacks; now and then Sokka's boomerang lashed out for a more distant strike, always finding its way back to his fingers even after multiple improbable ricochets.

Weiss rolled her eyes and tutted. "Whatever." Casting a hexagon of glyphs around her, she sent a series of small, target-seeking energy snakes at the Goliath's eye.

A Boarbatusk reached maximum spin and shot toward Katara like an earthbound cannonball. Sidestepping the roll, she pirouetted and directed her large supply of water around her in an arc. The flying stream made a full circle and washed over the boar from behind, hijacking its own momentum; another revolution later, the Grimm was hurled far into the distance, its long squeal of disapproval growing steadily quieter.

As Katara's foot scraped on the ground to halt her spin, she noticed Zuko dueling an Ursa nearby. The bear raised its arm to slash, and Katara thrust out both of hers and engulfed the paw in liquid. The Ursa looked at her, then got a fireball to the cheek.

Katara tugged on the water tube and the Ursa was yanked to the ground. Zuko then swung his leg around in a jump and delivered a fiery falling kick to the monster's neck - there was a distinct snap.

As more Grimm gathered, the waterbender and Fire Lord jogged over to one another and formed up back-to-back.

"There's a river nearby," Zuko said over his shoulder.

Katara, who had been wrapped up in the moment, paused briefly to think. Upon reflection, she remembered seeing the river from above on the flight in, though her first glimpses of the village had at the time burned all other images from her mind. She mentally kicked herself for letting the potential advantage slip by.

"I should go," she told Zuko. "Are you okay here?"

"I've got this," he replied firmly.

Katara pulled her hands in and waves crashed around her, and then she rose her arms and was elevated above clawing height. Dropping herself outside the ring of Grimm, she surfed away.

Moments later, she heard a powerful cry and explosion, and glanced back to see black bodies growing hazy against the glow of a vast swirling inferno, streaks of which appeared to take on uncanny hues of green or purple.

Toph would never have admitted it, but this golem thing was difficult for her. Sure, she was the greatest earthbender in the world (regardless of what that Bumi guy said; he was crazy anyway), but the Avatar State imbued Aang with the knowledge and skills of countless past Avatars who had mastered the craft, making it relatively easy for him to map his movements onto the earthen body. She had no such shortcut, and had to concentrate intensely to control two arms at once.

Besides that, while the Goliath was huge enough that its vibrations were impossible to miss, she was not used to looking at something of that size as a single living - ish - creature. A mere badger mole this was not.

The thing's trunk rushed up at her, and she made a blocking motion with her arm, raising up the next boulder down on the golem's chest to cover her cave. The walls shook around her at the impact of the nose-limb, trails of dust falling from overhead.

She could see just as well from inside, of course, and considered leaving the rock there for protection, but then she heard muffled shouts, and removed it to find out what they were yapping about.

"What?!" she shouted vaguely.

Blake responded from the left, "Can you spin me?!"

Toph held her left arm out straight, and Aang moved Ruby and Weiss in above to distract the giant Grimm. She began twirling her left hand at the wrist, and, slowly, the end of the rock-arm holding Blake detached only just so from the rest of the stone and began rotating as well.

Blake held out both of her arms, one gripping her sword and the other the sharpened sheath. As the spinning speed increased, Toph got the idea, and moved the whirling Blake-saw toward the Goliath's trunk.

The elephant let out a trumpet of pain as its proboscis was repeatedly slashed. As Toph eased Blake this way and that to maintain contact with the writhing trunk, Yang shouted over at her.

"Toph, listen! I get stronger the more I'm hit! Can you hit me against your chest?! I mean, not your chest, but -"

"Are you sure?!"

The trunk snaked out of Blake's reach, and the Goliath pushed forward with its tusks, striking the golem in both shoulders before pulling back again in preparation for a repeat.

"Do it!" Yang cried.

Toph clenched her right fist and slugged herself in the gut. Then she raised the arm and felt for Yang's vitals. She seemed woozy but alive; shortly she punched her own fists together, and Toph felt a small burst of hot wind from her direction.

"Now shoot me at it!" Yang commanded.

"In case you die," Toph yelled as she pulled her arm back for the blow, "you should know you're awesome!"

Toph punched, and at her command, the golem did the same and blasted the end of its arm - containing Yang - off at the Goliath, whose head had just lunged forward again.

By the feel and soundscape of the impact, the rock around the girl was explosively pulverized - the distinctive gunshot sound of her gauntlet was almost completely lost in the rest of the noise. But more importantly, she had stricken the beast directly between the eyes, and Toph unmistakably felt its skull-plate crack in a spiderweb pattern.

The brute was still standing, though, and its trunk curled up in search of Yang. The boisterous brawler slid down the elongated nose to the center of its length and then walloped it once, twice, thrice - until she broke clean through. Toph felt the half-appendage thud against the ground with Yang on it, and then her attention was returned to the elephant proper when it angrily slammed the golem with its tusks again.

Equally unrelenting, Toph reentered her stance.

Katara balanced atop a miniature wave as it sped along through the chaos. On either side of her, kept aloft by a raised arm, an additional bubble of water floated, and whenever she became the object of a Grimm's attention, one or the other would take on the form of some horrible icy spike or blade or claw, and lash out.

After a few suspicious seconds of nothing attacking her, she discovered the reason: something big, brown, and furry was standing over a pile of evaporating corpses. The thing turned toward her and she hopped off her liquid conveyance and into a firm stance, but Sokka, who she just realized was mounted on the animal, yanked on its huge horns and it stopped in response.

"Whoa there Foofie, that's just my sister. Cranky, sometimes, but not a monster."

Staring up at her brother incredulously, Katara asked, "Okay, when and how did you - ?"

"He's an old friend," said Sokka, patting the creature on the back of the neck. "I'll explain later." Taking on a more serious tone, he asked, "How are you holding up?"

Katara sighed. "I'm fine. Really. This is - therapeutic. But . . ." She glanced at the chaos uncertainly, watching as Aang, at the top of the golem, fended off an intervening Griffon with a sheet of flame. "I'm not sure it's very useful." She chewed her lip a bit, thinking. "This just isn't the kind of fighting we're used to. We need a new strategy."

Sokka, in that oh-so-Sokka way, held his chin for a moment of pondering, then pointed skyward with an inspired smile. "Or an old one! Don't kill them!" Swinging his arm to point sideways, he continued, "Go to the river and get as much water as you can, and then trap them all in ice as fast as you can! That way we can, y'know -" he waggled his boomerang in little circles - "finish them off at our leisure. Just make sure they're trapped!"

"Huh," Katara mused. "I wonder why I didn't think of that . . ."

Sokka shrugged. "Hey, you got the bending. Somebody had to get the brains."

Katara placed her hands on her hips. "If you find out who it was," she teased, "let me know." Forming up her wave ride again, she added, "Stay safe," and took off for the river.

Ruby let out a protracted "Yaaahhh!" as she sliced a hole in the relatively thin flesh of one of the Goliath's immense ears. The thing's anguished gurgles through its half-trunk momentarily deafened her as Aang drew her back again.

Beneath Weiss, Blake was moved in, and just like Yang before her, she was launched off the rocky arm at the Grimm. By producing a shadow clone, she freed herself from the stone projectile, and Ruby noticed that the clone was made of fire only a second before it exploded on contact with the Goliath's face. Flames and pebbles pummeled the fractured skull mask as Blake threw her weapon around one of the monster's tusks and used the long black ribbon to swing safely to the ground.

A groan then came from somewhere above, and Ruby looked up to see Appa dueling a Nevermore about his size. The Nevermore beat its wings and shot a flurry of feathers at the bison, who bellowed in pain.

"APPA!"

All attention went to Aang, who heaved his right arm back, and as he did so the elements swirling around him increased their speed, coming to resemble an angry swarm of rapier wasps. Then he threw his hand toward the Nevermore, and the four elements shot upward, spiraling together to form a huge, drilling blast of raw natural power. The beam engulfed the bird completely, and after it passed, all that remained were a few burning feathers being pulled along in its wake.

Aang was left with only air and fire encircling him; he balled his fists, pulled down his arms, and and let out his most ferocious roar yet, shaking not only the entire golem but the ground underneath it, and in short order new samples of earth and water were rising toward him.

Ruby felt a pair of smaller tremors jolt the golem, and she looked down to find that this was Toph banging on the rock like an old lady complaining about noisy neighbors.

"Don't lose your head, Twinkletoes!"

"Aang," Ruby shouted, "I'll help him! I'll help Appa! Get me up there, okay?!"

The Avatar stared at her with those unnerving white eyes, and Ruby, for a moment, was afraid that his angry expression was directed at her, until she realized that he had been wearing it for as long as he had been glowing, and she started to consider the emotional toll that the fight must have been taking on him. This train of thought crashed into a truck as the earth arm pulled her down, gathered its weight, and then rocketed her skyward. At the end of the punch, the stone around her crumbled and that beneath her boots extruded, and she was flying.

She prepared to use her Semblance to correct her path, but Appa seemed to get the idea and swooped in to catch her. Landing on his saddle at the peak of her arc, she made hardly an impact.

Ruby folded up Crescent Rose and crawled onto Appa's head, pulling out a few Nevermore feathers in the process.

"Um, hi, Appa!" she said, digging her hand under the darker fur of the arrow symbol to stroke his scalp.

Appa made a series of calm grumbling noises, listing slowly over the two mammoth combatants while the golem delivered a volley of rocky punches to the Goliath.

"Yeah . . ." Ruby continued softly. "It's okay . . . You're just like a big, flying, six-legged Zwei, aren'tcha?"

With something of a wail that did no justice to her singing ability, Weiss whooshed by in an upward trajectory. Moments later, she descended a stairway of glyphs and joined Ruby on Appa's head.

"Good," said Ruby, "you're here. I have a plan!"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Of course you do."

An eruption of light and noise from below drew the pair's attention, and investigation revealed that Aang had unleashed his four-element beam on the Goliath. In an apotheosis of stubbornness, the thing's bony mask held, but gradually the cracks in its surface began to spread.

Fully disarmed of the world-hopping team of monster-slaying girls, the six-person combo move was officially a bust, and Toph bent the chest hole closed in front of her and then shot out of the golem's back just as Aang blasted the elephant with - well, as best she could tell, everything. All four elements together; the same attack that had taken out the giant spirit General Old Iron, and would surely have done the same to Ozai had Aang not stopped himself in time. Upon reuniting with the ground, which responded to her feet much more in the manner of a trampoline than solid earth, she did a seismic double take when she felt the Goliath to be whole rather than holey. How strong was the darn thing?

After a while Toph realized that this was not the only peculiar thing happening around her. Many Grimm were still moving, but many it seemed had also been restrained - not dead, though; they were still struggling against whatever was arresting them. Not earth; she could see that. Spotting an unusual pattern of vibration, she persuaded the ground to carry her toward it, and eventually she understood.

Katara was riding one of those water tornado things, using it to lift herself over the heads of most of the Grimm and then swing down and freeze them in ice. Oddly, she seemed to be specifically avoiding dealing lethal blows . . . Elsewhere, in contrast, Yang and Blake were doing what they did best, which was to say actually slaughtering the beasts.

"Oh," Toph said to herself, "I get it." She stretched out her arms, rolled her neck, and went to work, seeking out monsters and imprisoning them in stone. It proved indeed an easier way of dealing with the tougher ones than trying to finish them off before more got in the way.

Elsewhere still, Toph could make out Sokka doing what he did best: something utterly ludicrous.

. . . Was that the same saber-tooth moose lion as that one time . . . ?

As Aang's spiral beam pushed against the Goliath like a glacier carving a fjord, Appa rumbled through the air, descending to the now-inert golem's waist level. Weiss, standing in the saddle, whipped her sword overhead and released a streak of lightning that severed a wing from a small Nevermore, causing the Grimm to plunge out of sight. Weiss then spun Myrtenaster's chamber and took her stance, holding the weapon forward. In front of her, on Appa's head, Ruby lay stretched out on her stomach, arms and legs spread wide.

"Ready?" Ruby asked, looking back at her.

Weiss responded only by conjuring a glyph several inches out in front of Appa's face. From the glyph sprouted a cone of ice, which grew until its diameter at the base was equal to that of Appa's sizeable head. As the bison drifted on the breeze, the ice spike maintained its same distance and angle from him such that it may as well have been attached.

Ruby turned to look forward, though now she could not see much past the icicle.

"Alright," she muttered, "let's see if this works . . ."

Ruby closed her eyes, snuggled her nose into Appa's fur, and dug both hands down to his skin. Feeling for his heartbeat, she concentrated, trying to synchronize her own with it.

Slowly, scrupulously, she focused her Aura.

"Hurry up!" came Weiss's complaint. "I can't hold this forever!"

Ruby took a deep breath - admittedly, Appa was not particularly fragrant - and activated her Semblance.

Appa's pupils dilated, and he growled. Then, with a great slap of his tail, he surged forward quickly enough to create a sonic boom that temporarily blotted out the peal of Aang's monstrous beam. Fluttering and swirling behind the sky bison was conjured a trail of rose petals, but instead of red, each was bright white with a gray-brown arrow on one side.

Weiss had knelt and grabbed hold of the front of the saddle with her right hand, and her left trembled around her rapier as the tearing winds assailed her. Squinting, she gauged their distance from the leathery black wall that was the side of the Goliath's torso. "Rushing to meet them" was the most accurate description.

Careful not to dispel the ice cone, Weiss called forth a second glyph.

This one was black instead of white, and made no efforts to lock onto Appa's movements. It manifested just in front of the icicle, and when Appa passed through it, his speed was amplified even further, forcing Weiss to duck her head and close her eyes against the sting of the relative gale.

It was at this point that Ruby, hands still clutching Appa's head, heaved her weight to one side, compelling the bison to go into a full-body spin.

Where Aang's beam had failed, this new drill succeeded: in a mere instant, it seemed, the twirling blur that was Appa shot out of the other side of the gigantic Grimm, throwing chunks of its pseudo-flesh in every direction and leaving an Appa-sized hole punched cleanly through its massive form.

Aang ceased his attack, and water and stone tumbled to the ground at the same time that the elephant's legs gave out beneath it.

Foofoocuddlypoops let out an angry low as his antlers clashed with a Death Stalker's claw. The other claw made to swipe in, and Sokka was nearly thrown off the moose lion's back as the animal reared up to save his front legs, which he then brought down on top of the second claw, pinning it to the ground. With a heavy buck of his head, Foofoocuddlypoops used the leverage of this position to flip the scorpion over onto its back, where it writhed ineffectually, legs kicking and tail flailing.

Sokka pushed himself to his feet on his mount's back, took a running jump forward, and plunged his club down into the weaker black armor of the Grimm's underbelly. The Death Stalker struggled more frantically; Sokka glanced back at Foofoocuddlypoops, who raised his snout and then thrust his two enormous fangs into the underside of the scorpion's head. The many limbs around Sokka went slack.

Standing up again, Sokka said, "Okay, that one was at least fifty-fifty. I mean, I could've finished it off by myself."

Foofoocuddlypoops stared at him patiently.

Sokka half-groaned, half-sighed. "Fine. One more for you."

They were then interrupted by what felt like an earthquake, and both turned their heads to see that the hulking Goliath had finally been defeated, and had now been forced to make the proper introduction to the ground that it had thus far rudely avoided.

After the allotted boggling time, Sokka pointed his club sideways at the elephantine corpse and said to Foofoocuddlypoops, "How many points you think that's worth?"

The luminescence of the Avatar State faded from Aang's body, and the ball of wind around him died down as well, allowing him to sink slowly onto what remained of the golem. The slain Goliath lay before the Avatar, putrid black smoke pouring out of the hole in its midsection. Aang stared at it for several moments before observing the rest of the battlefield spread out below him.

His attentions having been on the Goliath for so long, Aang noticed for the first time that Katara and Toph had taken to trapping the other Grimm in ice and rock, focusing on immobilizing them quickly instead of fighting the whole fight. Zuko was directing his soldiers to distract the free monsters while Blake and Yang took out the confined ones, and Sokka was still partnering with Foofoocuddlypoops (whom Aang was as surprised to see there as anybody, but he could never forget a name like that). All of this had certainly sped up their progress, but there were still a great number of Grimm remaining . . .

Feeling the golem vibrate a little, Aang looked down to see Grimm gathering at its feet and attempting to scale them. The Beowolves got the best grip with their dexterous claws. A hundred red eyes stared straight up at him from all around, their intentions clear.

Aang closed his own eyes. Using what Toph had taught him, he concentrated on the earth beneath his feet. Through the vibrations of the battle, he felt not only the beasts climbing toward him, but all those trapped and all still unrestrained. He would never be as good at this as Toph, considering that it was her primary method of interacting with the world, but being the Avatar gave him certain advantages.

His tattoos briefly pulsed white again. Then, opening his eyes, Aang leaped straight up into the air, a wisp of windblown dust momentarily trailing beneath him. At the height of his ascent, he gathered his arms, and, with a shout, threw them apart, using the air to push himself downward and aiming a kick at the stone below.

The Beowolves were about halfway up the golem when Aang collided with it. As he bored through the giant earthen figure, it shattered from the top down, sending rocky debris flying every which way. The climbing Grimm were buried under tons of rubble, but that was not all: every last piece of the golem that had taken to the sky followed a precise trajectory in order to land on top of one of the beasts that had been subdued by jackets of ice and earth. Some were crushed by massive boulders, others impaled by stone spikes. Not even a single pebble touched any one of the humans nor their animal aides.

Aang was left standing in a large crater, surrounded by rocks from underneath which the black particles of dissolving Grimm leaked up into the air. Were the image taken out of context, most would be forced to assume that Aang had just emerged from some kind of meteor.

The airbender's legs wobbled, and his vision swam. Exhaustion claimed him, and as he tipped over sideways, he lacked even the energy to brace against the ground with his hands before he passed out.

Weiss surveyed the battlefield from above on Appa's back, thoroughly impressed. There was still some mopping up to do, but Aang had very nearly ended the entire skirmish in a single move. She vaguely recalled, when Aang was in Remnant, him saying something about his "blocked chakra" (not "chocolate," as Ruby insisted), which had apparently prevented him from using this Avatar State power, without which he had seemed rather frail, what with the lack of an Aura. But now she understood how he could be the protector of a whole world.

"Did you see that?!" gushed Ruby, hopping into the saddle beside her.

"No, Ruby," Weiss scoffed. "I didn't see that."

"How could you miss it?!"

In Weiss's mind this deserved only acerbic silence as a response. After a few seconds, Ruby finally narrowed one eye and said, "Wait . . . are you being hungry again?"

At this Weiss's mind threw up its hands and stormed off, and so she did the only thing that she could come up with in its absence and performed a single backflip, exiting the saddle and arching into a headfirst fall toward the ground.

If there was one thing that every student at Beacon got out of their education, it was a landing strategy.

Although . . . Given the time pressure, maybe this was her chance . . .

Holding out her rapier and focusing her Aura, Weiss created a glyph in front of her - white, but with a different pattern than usual. Like the one that had given Appa the icicle helmet, it kept its pace with her as she fell, though it did rotate at a varying frequency.

Come on, come on, she thought, Nevermore or something . . . As long as it's big enough to ride . . .

Slowly, what appeared to be an armored hand, composed of white light, reached out of the glyph up to its wrist, flexing its fingers. Weiss was so surprised at the sight of it that she lost her concentration; the hand sunk back in, and the glyph vanished.

Grumbling at herself, Weiss produced a black glyph below her, which severely reduced the velocity of her descent when she passed through it. As she prepared to land, however, something caught her eye.

A Griffon was diving toward Toph from behind, its front claws outstretched. It was terribly close already, and quite a large one - no guarantee that an attack from Weiss would stop it. At least, that was what she told herself; not so much deeper down, she knew very well that she wanted to get back at Toph for interrupting her with that earth catapult earlier.

Another black glyph sent Weiss plummeting at an even faster speed than before, and then a third was angled sideways toward the earthbender. Gracefully, Weiss shot in just below the Griffon, and yet another black glyph slowed her enough to avoid grievous injury as she slammed into Toph from the back, pushing her out of the way of the Grimm's attack.

The part that Weiss had not expected was the portal that opened up in front of them. First appearing as a medium blue spark, it quickly grew into an oval frame composed of undulating strips of energy not unlike flames except for the unnatural boldness of their color. Inside the ring of energy, an entirely different landscape was visible as though through a window, featuring buildings resembling those of Remnant. It appeared so suddenly and so close that Weiss had no time to attempt to redirect them with more glyphs. Toph and Weiss fell through the portal, and the Griffon followed.

At least, half of it did. Swiftly and inexplicably as it had come, the portal closed back up, unfortunately for the Griffon doing so right down the middle of its torso. The rear end rapidly transformed into smoke as it fell, leaving no trace behind.

Katara lifted herself high into the air on a column of water, trying to make out Aang's shape in the middle of the crater that the golem had become. Coaxing the water into the air before her and then freezing it into a flat surface, she let gravity do the work of carrying her forward, and slid toward Aang.

The Grimm population had been severely reduced, and she ignored any that jumped her way. Reaching the end of the slide, she melted it again and pulled it toward her, surfing as quickly as she could. As of yet no Grimm seemed to be moving toward Aang, but he also seemed to have collapsed . . .

She urged the water on. She knew she had nothing to worry about, but she worried anyway. The world had changed for her in that village.

At last, she washed into the hole in the ground, and as she let the water fall around her feet and begin to fill it, Aang floated slightly above the dirt. He stirred a little, and she bent down and gently held him up. He blinked many times, eventually keeping his eyes open and looking into hers.

Smiling with relief, Katara said, "We have to stop meeting like this."

Weakly, he smiled back.

In the corner of her eye, Katara saw a Beowolf appear at the edge of the crater. Propping Aang up with one arm, Katara opened her other palm and extracted a small whip of water from the pool.

As the tournament's spectators fled toward the edge of the platform where small airships with their four lazily-flapping wings were parked, some of its combatants held off the black monsters with their logic-defying multiple-function weapons. Mai and Ty Lee found themselves somewhere in the middle.

Mai slipped a pair of concealed daggers into one hand, but a screaming citizen shoved past her, hampering her aim. Collecting herself again, she unleashed two consecutive waves of shuriken at a bear-thing, but though the miniature blades buried themselves into its back, it merely turned toward her as though tapped politely on the shoulder. This did at least serve as enough of a distraction for Ty Lee to flip in and deliver several precise strikes between its bone-like coverings.

The creature's arms went limp, and it stared at one and then the other dumbly. But a moment later, it swung them back up with an angry roar, and appeared to regain full functionality of both, which it took advantage of to attempt to split the single Ty sister into all seven.

As Ty Lee curled easily through its attacks, Mai shouted to her over the general racket, "I'm not doing much good here! Hurry up and find their pressure points!"

"That's not the problem!" she shot back, maneuvering herself onto the Grimm's shoulders. "It's - it's like - it's like they don't have any chi to block!"

"So we're both useless," Mai huffed.

Ty Lee launched into a flying somersault to avoid some overhead swipes. Landing gracefully next to Mai, she said, "Well, at least we can dodge."

A tall, brown-haired boy wearing gray armor charged past them and drove a mace-thing into the bear's stomach.

"Dodge into the ship!" he yelled back at them.

Mai cycled through a few snippy comebacks in her head, but before she could choose one, Ty Lee grabbed her by the wrist and they ended up heeding his advice. As they approached the aircraft, some guy with a ridiculous green mohawk waved them in.

Sokka fled at top sprint, on his tail a slithering King Taijitu. The chase ran parallel to the point where open field transitioned into dense foliage, but Sokka made no move to acquire cover. Instead, he slung his boomerang back at the snake, which swerved slightly toward the bushes in order to dodge.

This was when Foofoocuddlypoops burst from those same bushes and charged the serpentine Grimm with his antlers held down. The ambush left the snake with gashes along one side of its head and confused enough that its retaliatory bite struck only dirt.

Sokka's boomerang whirred back toward him, and just as he caught it, what appeared to be another boomerang attached to a long black ribbon flew past him. As the Taijitu pulled its fangs - comparable to those of Foofoocuddlypoops - from the earth, Blake's weapon wrapped around one, and a tug on the ribbon set off the gun trigger, the force of the shot snapping the long tooth in half.

The snake spat in rage, and over the top of its wounded black head, its rear white one loomed, baring its own fangs. The white head readied a strike - and then several holes blew open throughout it. When the destroyed white half-body flopped down on top of the black half, Sokka saw Yang standing and grinning behind it, her gauntlets lightly smoking.

Foofoocuddlypoops jumped into the coils and landed hard with all four paws atop the black head. With a decisive swipe of his horns, he dealt the final blow, and the Taijitu began to smoke.

While Sokka, Blake, and Yang caught their breath, Appa landed lightly nearby, and Ruby hopped off of his head and made a rather less graceful landing, getting one foot caught in the reigns and hopping about on the other whilst she disentangled herself.

"That was the last one!" she announced cheerily, stumbling back into a stable standing position. "I was checking from up there. No more Grimm!"

"Are you sure?" came Katara's voice as she rode in on an ice slide, supporting Aang under one arm.

Ruby nodded vigorously. "We looked everywhere, right, Appa? Besides, they were all attracted to, um -" she fumbled for a moment, clearly not wanting to talk about the village in detail - "y'know, uh, the negative emotions, so they would all, uh, come here."

Foofoocuddlypoops, eyeing Appa warily, sauntered back over to Sokka, who patted him on the shoulder. Yang, taking notice of this, pointed at the creature and asked, "So, what's the deal with this thing?"

Sokka smirked and performed a wide gesture at the animal with both hands. "All those not acquainted, meet Foofoocuddlypoops the saber-tooth moose lion."

"Foofoo-what?" Yang snorted, devolving into laughter.

Sokka reddened slightly and said, with dignity, "It seemed more appropriate when he was little."

At this point Foofoocuddlypoops turned his head toward the brush and made a sort of low-pitched honking note with a purr behind it. There was a moment of pause, then a rustling in the nearest shrub, and finally a second, equally large moose lion appeared, peering out at the group cautiously. And at its feet, no less than seven corgi-sized cubs, with only stubby protrusions of bone for fangs and antlers, poked their heads out one by one.

Ruby positively squeed. "Little baby saber-teeth meese lions omigosh they're so cute I want one I want oooooooone!"

Sokka's eyes and mouth opened wide, and the former began to water. Throwing out his arms with a huge smile, he cried, "I'm an uncle!"

The litter of cubs all bounded out of the bush excitedly - and ran right past Sokka. Blake had just enough time to construct a horrified expression before they dogpiled on top of her, knocking her flat on her back.

"Help . . ." she croaked, holding one hand up out of the pile as though she were sinking into a pool of lava.

"Ohhhh," said Yang knowingly, and then, as though it explained anything, "saber-tooth moose lions. Which are cats."

Blake mumbled something that may have included the word "profiling" as the cubs fought to lick and snuggle her face. Meanwhile, Sokka's arms had drooped and his bottom lip had thrust into maximum pout, but Foofoocuddlypoops nudged the back of his head with his snout, and he turned and started petting the adult animal on the neck, slowly relocating his smile. The other adult slowly walked over and stood next to them, and the two moose lions nuzzled one another.

As Blake managed to sit up, causing the cubs to spill down to her waist, Yang looked to Ruby and asked, "Hey, where's Weiss?"

"Oh," Ruby said, "she and Toph fell through another portal."

"What?!" said everyone else at once.

Ruby looked from face to face, taking a defensive step back toward Appa. "Uh, should I've said that sooner?"

Zuko stared up at the zeppelin - or what remained of it. The metal skeleton of the balloon still retained its basic shape, but most of the exterior armor lay scattered on the ground around it, and the gondola had fared even worse, the metal all but ripped to shreds.

"They attacked it as savagely as they did us," lamented General Mak, shaking his head. "I apologize, Fire Lord, I wasn't -"

Zuko held up a hand to silence him, then asked, "Are all of your men alive?"

"Yes, My Lord. Some are badly injured, but none require more urgent care than we can provide with the salvaged supplies."

Looking him in the eye, Zuko said, "Then you have nothing to apologize for."

Mak performed the Fire Nation bow and turned to leave. As he did, however, a messenger hawk swooped in and landed on Zuko's shoulder, and Mak held his position as Zuko took the letter from the bird and opened it.

The hawk, adorned with a black ribbon, departed immediately. Zuko's grip on the parchment slowly tightened as he read, and when full minutes passed with no further reaction from the Fire Lord, Mak grew concerned.

"What is it, Lord Zuko?"

Zuko lowered the paper. His nose was scrunched up in fury, and a tear was working its way down the topography of his scar.

"They're at the palace."

Chapter Text

The sun had not yet met the horizon, but the first ethereal hints of dusk were quietly emerging. Appa, lying on his belly, cast a long shadow over the Fire Nation soldiers loading supplies onto his saddle; his head was turned slightly toward them, but remained immobile as his eyes followed their movements with mild interest. Momo, who had returned from wherever he had hidden himself, nibbled on a peach atop Appa's head.

Sokka, standing at the treeline, rubbed Foofoocuddlypoops' chin, his eyes experiencing flash flooding and his mouth doing the worm. "Well, buddy . . . you take care of your family, now, and watch out for any more of those mean old Grimm . . ."

Behind him, Katara rolled her eyes at the theatrics, though Aang smiled.

"I'll try to come visit you again sometime!" Sokka continued. Glancing sideways, he thought aloud, "Even though this isn't where you were the first time, so I don't know if you'll still be here . . ."

The moose lion calmed the oncoming emotional storm with yet another slimy lick to the face. Sokka hugged the animal around the neck again and then turned away.

Raising his head, Foofoocuddlypoops stared over Sokka's shoulder and let out a mildly angry snort.

In his line of sight, Ruby was making toward Appa, ineffectively attempting to conceal one of the moose lion cubs under her cloak. The cub squealed happily, wriggled out of her grip, and ran over to its father, sending Ruby into her own rendition of Sokka's performance.

Yang approached her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I know they're cute, Ruby, but you can't just take -"

She was interrupted by another snort. A moment later, a second cub popped its head out of the prodigious mass of Yang's hair.

Glaring at the baby, Yang said firmly, "This is your fault." The cub responded by licking her nose. Then it disappeared back into her golden curls, slipped out the bottom, and joined its sibling.

Not far from the would-be cubnapping sisters, near Appa's tail, Zuko and General Mak stood and monitored the soldiers' progress.

"That's enough," said Zuko as another sack of food was handed up. "You need more than we do."

The lower soldier shot off a quick bow and proceeded to help her companion down from the bison's back.

Turning to Mak, Zuko said, "I'll send an airship back as soon as we arrive, but if you can find one of the hawks, send a message anyway, since it might get there faster."

"Do not worry about us, Fire Lord," Mak responded with a chest-thump salute. "The Royal Family must be protected at all costs."

Zuko shook his head slowly. "There's just no way . . . By the time we get there . . ."

"Hey," said Katara as she approached. "Remember the Day of Black Sun? The Fire Nation's not an easy place to invade." Backing up the assertion with eye contact, she said, "They stand a good chance."

Zuko sighed. "I just keep picturing one of those portals opening up in my mother's room when she's asleep, and . . ."

Blake, who had been leaning reticently against Appa with her arms crossed, said, "After we make sure they're safe, we should try to find out what's causing the portals in the first place." Glancing almost imperceptibly at Yang, she went on, "Similar powers aren't unheard of in Remnant, but obviously your world isn't common knowledge."

Sokka walked up, sniffing and wiping his eyes. After clearing his throat several times, he opined, "In our world - Earth, I should say - weird stuff like this is usually caused by spirits. But their thing is usually revenge for destroying nature, and I didn't really see any nature being destroyed around here. Besides, the Grimm came through this one, but you guys came through the other one, so -" he shrugged - "I dunno."

"Well, I know one thing," said Yang with a goofy grin. "Whichever world ends up with Weiss and Toph is in for a rocky ride! Aeh? Aeh? Anyone?"

Sokka leaned over to Katara and said, "Her jokes need some work." Katara gave him a rather Weiss-tastic look, to which he cluelessly responded, "What?"

On the other side of the portal, Weiss landed on top of Toph, and immediately rolled forward off of her and spun around to face the Griffon. But she need not have bothered: the portal, which appeared orange- rather than blue-rimmed on this side, shrunk to a close as the beast was only halfway through it, and the front half began dissolving before it even struck the ground.

Toph scrambled to her feet before Weiss, looking distinctly displeased.

"Wha - what just - what did you do?!" she blustered.

"We fell through another portal," said Weiss calmly, stowing Myrtenaster.

"Why?! Why did you - Don't do that again!" Toph jabbed her finger at Weiss accusationally.

"Well excuse me for saving your life!" Weiss shot back.

"I don't need saving, Ice Queen!"

"Okay, seriously, how does everyone come up with that independently?!" Grumbling, Weiss held her face in her hand briefly. Then she looked back at Toph and continued, "You see through the ground, right? There was a flying Grimm coming at you, so I thought -"

"I know!" Toph interrupted. "It was shrieking its head off! I do have ears!"

"Well, I didn't know there would be a portal, okay? It just appeared!"

"So where the heck are we, huh? Is this your world?"

Weiss looked around, and the question turned out to be more difficult to answer than she had anticipated.

It did look like one of the many ruined cities to be found in Remnant, but something seemed a bit off. This particular city looked a little too familiar . . .

Toph tapped her foot impatiently. "Well?"

Weiss half-sighed, half-huffed. "I'm not sure. I mean, I think it's Remnant, but . . ." She trailed off, staring at the castle-like building off in the distance. Dark fog surrounded it, and blanketed the sky in general, but she would recognize Beacon's silhouette anywhere. Except . . . it seemed a little different. The top of the central tower appeared to be missing, and there was a huge, misshapen mass bulging out from one side of the same. It almost looked like . . . something was clinging to -

"So what's the plan here?"

"Just let me think for a second!" Weiss spouted. "Didn't anyone teach you it's rude to interrupt people?!"

Toph took on a mock-elegant voice. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry to have offended the delicate sensibilities of the dainty little princess who's always biting everyone's head off!"

Weiss marched up to Toph with her finger bared as she replied, "Your snarky little tough-girl attitude is of absolutely no help right now!"

"I told you, I am tough, and you're the one with the attitude problem!"

"The only problem I have right now is your disrespect! You badly need to learn some manners!"

Toph let out a sharp but gravelly screech as she spun around and stomped away, shaking the ground with each step. Throwing her arms around dramatically, she professed to the heavens, "Of all the people to get lost in another world with, I have to get stuck with the spoiled brat!"

"Excuse me?!" Weiss all but shrieked as she started after the impetuous earthbender.

Toph whirled back around and said, "No, you know what? You're not excused! Your type is all the same - I try and try to get away, you always find me - we're here five seconds and I already wanna claw my own useless eyes out!"

Weiss wrapped her fingers around Myrtenaster's hilt, moving slowly and gripping hard to make sure that Toph felt the vibrations. "I might be able to arrange that."

Toph waved her hand, and then after a moment her expression faded to puzzlement. With a "Huh?" she repeated the gesture, and after another pause said, "Hey, what kind of metal is that thing - Wait . . ."

"What do you mean what kind -"

"No, seriously, shut up for a second," said Toph, her brow furrowed but all anger gone from her voice.

"Why -"

"SHH!" Toph jammed a finger over Weiss's mouth. A second later she released it and said, "Yeahp . . . Yep, that's definitely uh . . . more Grimm, coming in fast."

"Well it's no surprise, the way we were arguing," Weiss lectured, wiping at her mouth.

Toph took her mantis stance. "Let's just agree to live long enough to kill each other."

Weiss drew her sword and took her fencing stance. "I'll hold you to that."

As the agents of evil rushed in from all sides and Weiss patiently watched her opening coalesce, in her periphery she could not help but notice the way that Toph waited and listened for the perfect moment to strike.

Kiyi didn't understand what was happening. It was the middle of the night, but she got woken up by all the noise. Outside her room, it sounded like everybody was fighting. Not yelling fighting - firebending fighting. But there were growls, and howls, and roars. Like everybody was fighting crazy animals or something.

She had to find Mommy and Daddy.

Zuzu wasn't here, she knew. She wished he was. He would beat up all the bad animals. But he was on a trip with the Avatar.

She had to find Mommy and Daddy.

Nobody was around in the halls, so they were all probably outside fighting. That meant the bad guys weren't inside yet, maybe, so she was safe for now, maybe. But she didn't want to be safe, she wanted Mommy and Daddy to be safe.

She slammed the doors of their room open. But they weren't in there. Where were they?

"Mommy?" she called, in case they were hiding. Nobody answered, so she turned around and started running again.

Kiyi didn't care about the bad guys, or animals, or whatever they were, but she had to find Mommy and Daddy. She had to make sure they were okay. Why did she sleep by herself again? If she was with them, she would know they were okay. Now she didn't know.

It was weird that Mommy got a different face from the spirits. She didn't look like Mommy anymore. It was weird and Kiyi didn't know what to do about it. But she still loved her. Mommy knew Kiyi still loved her . . . Right?

But she was kinda mean to Mommy . . . What if . . .

She went around the corner and - there was Mommy! And some weird black bear thing. With sharp claws that it was trying to scratch Mommy with and a stupid ugly face that Kiyi hated and wanted to punch.

Mommy pulled a sword off the wall and started fighting the not-platypus bear. Zuzu said those swords were just for decoration. It looked like it was working fine to Kiyi.

Mommy saw her and shouted her name, "Kiyi!" She slashed at the not-armadillo bear and said, "Run! Get out of here!"

The ugly bear turned and looked at Kiyi, and Mommy slashed the sword at its neck. But its head didn't get cut off. It just turned back to Mommy, and when she tried to slash it again, it caught the sword in its mouth.

And it bit the sword in half.

Okay, just for decoration.

The bear that was too stupid to be two animals lifted its ugly hand to scratch Mommy, and Kiyi's heart jumped out of her mouth.

There was no time to do the whole form - Kiyi just ran at the idiot-bear and threw her arms forward again and again and again, sending out little puffs of fire that combined into one big flame that waved backwards and forwards with her hands.

"DON'T - HURT - MY - MOMMY!"

The bear was surprised, then tried to swat the fire, then got mad when it got burned. It swung its ugly paw up through the fire and smacked Kiyi, knocking her back and down on the ground. Mommy screamed her name.

Kiyi pushed herself back up, but it hurt because she landed on her funny bone.

Why was it called a funny bone? It wasn't funny! It hurt!

The dumb bear got down on all fours and roared at her. Mommy kicked it in the head, and it roared at Mommy. Kiyi bent more fire at it, and it roared at the fire. It was really stupid.

Then it ran at Kiyi.

Kiyi wasn't scared of it, but she wasn't stupid like it either. She made a bunch of fire so it couldn't see what she was doing and she ran to the side. It worked, and the bear went past her and had to stop and turn around. Kiyi ran over and stood in front of Mommy and held her fists up.

The bear's eyes glowed red, and kinda left little trails of red light when it moved. It was nighttime, so the red lights were bright. But the hall wasn't all the way dark.

Kiyi had an idea.

On the roof there was a chandelier, which was a word that Daddy taught her. It was a pretty one made of those green crystals that glowed in the dark. And it was just hanging by one rope.

The just-a-bear ran at them, and Kiyi started doing her form. There wasn't much time, so she did it faster than she was supposed to. It still let her make a bigger fire. She aimed the fire up at the chandelier rope and stretched it out.

The ugly bear got closer, and the fire got farther.

Mommy's hand reached down by Kiyi's feet and grabbed one half of the bitten-in-half sword. She threw it at the bear, and it hit it in the face and the bear slowed down.

The fire got to the rope. The rope was on fire. But the chandelier wasn't falling.

The bear stood up on its back legs. It roared at them.

The chandelier fell.

It smashed the bear into the ground like a dumb ugly moronic loser.

Mommy's arms came around Kiyi from behind and hugged her. Her hands were freezing. Kiyi could feel Mommy's heart beating against her back and Mommy's breath in her hair. Kiyi was breathing fast, too.

They caught their breath.

Then a giant black arm punched through the wall right in front of Kiyi. The hand grabbed Mommy and pulled her and Kiyi through the wall and Kiyi didn't know what was happening until they slammed into a different wall far away.

Kiyi was dizzy and couldn't see for a second. When everything stopped being blurry, she saw they were in the courtyard with the pond where Mommy liked to feed the turtle ducks. She hoped the turtle ducks were okay.

There was a roar that was different than the bear roar and she looked at the different animal.

It looked kinda like a drawing the Avatar showed her of a goat gorilla, only without the goat. Why were all these things so stupid?

The stupid thing stood up on its stupid little back legs and punched on its chest really fast with both hands. Its arms were huge.

Its whole self was huge.

It ran at them with its hands and feet.

There were no chandeliers outside.

Kiyi tried to make fire, but she was dizzy and tired and her arm still hurt and she just made a little spark.

This time, Kiyi was scared.

Her eyes felt hot.

"Mommy . . ." Her voice sounded weird. She pushed herself around to hug Mommy and tried to talk louder. "Mommy, I'm sorry! I still love you!"

Mommy looked surprised and then she started crying too. "Oh, Kiyi, it's okay, I know you do." Kiyi felt Mommy's fingers in her hair. "I love you too . . ."

The ground was shaking from the bone-gorilla getting close. Kiyi and Mommy squeezed each other.

"Mommy . . . !"

A bird cawed.

The big hand hit Kiyi, but it didn't really hurt. Confused, she opened her eyes.

The gorilla stood over them. But its arm was on the ground. Its arm was cut off.

The one-armed gorilla turned around to look behind itself, and Kiyi looked too.

There was a man there with his back to them. He had black hair, a white shirt, black pants, and a ripped-up red cape. And he was holding a thing that made big swords look like toothpicks.

He looked back at them and smiled like he was winning a game or something and said, "Left that one a little close."

The gorilla started to move, and the man swung his sword back. Kiyi didn't understand what happened, but there were lots of clicking and sliding noises and the sword handle got longer and the sword leaned so it was hooked around the gorilla. Then the man spun around and used the sideways-sword to throw the dumb gorilla over the pond and into the hole that it made in the wall when it pulled them out.

Since the man spun he was facing them now and he held his hand down. Mommy reached up and grabbed it, and the man yanked them up so fast that Kiyi was squished between him and Mommy.

"Or maybe not close enough," he said to Mommy over her head. Kiyi didn't get what that meant, but for some reason she didn't really like the way he said it.

The man's breath had a weird smell that made Kiyi's nose wrinkle. Mommy pushed a little away from the man too. But then Kiyi remembered the stories everybody was telling.

"Hey mister!" she said. "Are you the Crow Spirit?"

He looked down at her like she had told a joke. But he said, "Sure, kid."

There was a noise, and the one-armed gorilla came back out of the hole. It slammed its one arm on the ground.

It roared like thunder.

Then there was a blue flash behind it and actual thunder.

The dumb thing fell down and behind it was Uncle Iroh and -

"Daddy!" Kiyi jumped down from Mommy's arms and ran over and hugged Daddy.

"Kiyi!" he said. "Thank goodness you're okay." He was holding two swords that hopefully weren't for decoration.

Kiyi looked up at Uncle Iroh because he was probably gonna say something wise or something. But Uncle was looking weirdly at the Crow Spirit.

"Have we met before?" he asked him.

"Doubt it," said the Crow Spirit, and his sword turned back into a sword.

Everything got even darker than it was, and everybody looked up.

A really huge giant black bird was flying over everything, and it blocked the moon. Then on the roof another not-goat gorilla came, and then another idiot-bear, and they both jumped down to the ground and looked at the Crow Spirit.

"Let's discuss it later," he said.

Both the monsters ran at him and he switched his sword to the other hand. The gorilla jumped at him and tried to punch.

The Beringel's fist crashed into the ground an inch from Weiss's foot, splintering the already weatherbeaten pavement. Weiss unleashed a lattice of strikes across its face before throwing up a glyph to block its other hand. Her stomach lurched as the first hand clutched her ankle and swung her over the hulking beast's head, slamming her into a car. Or perhaps 'through' would be more accurate; suffice to say it was thenceforth not much of a car.

Some earthbending happened while Weiss collected herself, and by the time she was back on her feet the ape was buried in the asphalt up to its neck.

Weiss brandished her rapier and allowed Dust to flow onto the blade. The Beringel barked at her, and she shoved the weapon into its nostril; arcs of electricity scrambled over the beast's head, and it convulsed for a few moments before going slack and beginning to evaporate.

"There's no end to these things!" Toph griped, and indeed more Grimm were closing in.

"I'm getting low on Dust," said Weiss. "But anywhere we go, they'll follow."

Toph snapped her fingers. "How about underground?"

"That - could work." Weiss pointed her rapier at Toph. "Here, this might help."

A yellow ribbon of light flew from the end of Myrtenaster and snaked through the air before diving onto the earthbender. Below her bare feet, a yellow glyph with gear-like patterns appeared, and there was a noise reminiscent of a helicopter blade revving up.

Toph, moving unnaturally quickly, took her stance and stomped her foot, and land began to flow like liquid.

The nearest of the Grimm were taken out before Weiss knew what happened to them, and the rest began to slow down and reconsider their advance, which gave Toph the time to tear open a hole in the road and hop down into it. Weiss followed, and the earthy ceiling closed like a mouth above her.

The Schnee heiress held up her spare right hand and conjured a miniature glyph, the glow of which allowed her to see in the enclosed space. Toph had started on tunneling sideways when the speed boost wore off, and she flexed her fingers curiously.

Weiss transformed her tiny white glyph into another yellow streamer, which sought Toph out again. The sounds of Grimm pounding on the dirt overhead accompanied the helicopter thumping, but shortly Toph was skating over the ground and parting the earth before her as though she exuded some sort of field of repulsion. Weiss followed at a trot, lighting her way with small glyphs beneath each step.

They continued wordlessly for some time; the repeated haste glyphs began to take a toll on Weiss, but it paid off in the end, as when Toph announced that she could no longer see any Grimm and brought them back to the surface, the city that they had left appeared to be little more than a toy model in the distance.

They had emerged in the Forest of Forever Fall, or at least it sure looked like it. But if that was the case, then the ruined city . . .

Weiss's thoughts were interrupted by a painful slug to the upper arm.

"Ow!"

"That speedy thing saved our butts. How do you do that?"

"Time dilation," said Weiss, rubbing her arm. "Like I said, my Semblance has a variety of uses. I still haven't figured out summoning, but . . ."

She trailed off. Eventually, Toph, shifting her weight from foot to foot awkwardly, started back up.

"So uh . . . Sorry I got a little shouty before. Whatever a portal is, I can't see it, so when we suddenly landed in a different world, I was pretty freaked out, y'know?"

"And I should have been more understanding of that," Weiss admitted, stowing her rapier. "I know I can be . . . difficult . . ." She was avoiding eye contact despite Toph's blindness. "People think I don't care, but I do. I'm - trying. I - Don't tell Ruby this, but just being with her, with all of them, has . . . helped. A lot."

Toph nodded. "Let me guess: your family's rich, dad's kind of a jerk, you had everything you ever needed but nothing you really needed?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes. "Now how did you . . . ?"

"I was describing myself," said Toph pointedly.

"You're rich?"

Weiss immediately regretted her judgemental tone, but Toph took it in stride.

"My parents are. The Beifongs are the richest Earth Kingdom family outside Ba Sing Se. I left all that behind."

Weiss sighed. "Look -"

"Can't, remember?" Toph interrupted, tapping her temple with a snarky grin.

Weiss shook her head. "You're worse than Yang. Listen, then." Her tiny amused smile faded. "I'm trying to be nice, but I don't want to talk about my family, okay?"

"Then don't talk," said Toph. "You listen." Reaching behind herself, she pulled her hands up and created an approximation of a sofa out of stone, leaving the coating of red grass and leaves for - assumably - the sake of comfort. Sitting down and patting the spot next to her, she added, "Pull up a rock. By which I mean I just did it for you."

Weiss folded her arms and opened her mouth to protest, so Toph flicked her foot and pushed up the ground underneath one of Weiss's high heels, causing her to fall exactly into a seated position next to the earthbender. Folding her arms behind her head, Toph caused the rock behind her to lean back like a recliner.

"Aang, Sokka, Katara, and kinda Zuko - he joined later; long story - those guys have been more of a real family to me than my actual parents. My dad never let me do anything or talk to anyone - he thought because I'm blind, I'm some delicate little flower that needs to be protected from dangerous things like 'people' and 'fun.' And my mom just went along with whatever he said. So I ran away - a lot, but most importantly the time I joined Aang. I didn't see my parents for a while after that." Toph paused for effect before continuing, "Until . . . I unexpectedly ran into my dad at a refinery."

Weiss folded her arms again. "So what, you hugged it out and then everything was happy and easy forever?"

"He acted like he didn't even know me."

Weiss stared in silence. Toph was not crying, but the edge had gone out of her voice, and for the first time Weiss saw the rude, crude earthbender as the young girl that she was. Maybe even younger than Ruby . . .

Speaking softly herself, Weiss asked, "So what happened then?"

"Well, Aang did that golem thing to fight a giant spirit, and later we reinvented a holiday . . ." The snark faded slightly again after that resurgence. "But, me and my dad talked, and . . . things are better now. Not great, but better." Toph stretched out her arms above her head, then sat up on her elbows. "I guess what I'm saying is . . . Talking might make things worse - but not talking won't make things better."

Weiss stared at her shoes, feeling as though her brain were on fire from overexertion even though none of her thoughts seemed to take on any comprehensible form. Like she was silently screaming at herself in an attempt to be heard over her own scream. Outwardly, of course, the Ice Queen showed nothing, although she would not have been surprised were Toph to claim somehow to feel her inner turmoil.

The truth was, these kinds of feelings had become increasingly familiar. Winter was right - she would not go crawling back - but, at the same time, Toph was right too. Sooner or later, she would have to face Father, and she needed to be ready for it.

"I won't make you promise or anything," Toph said. "Just throwing it out there."

Weiss closed her eyes and let out a small, slow sigh. The otherworlder was about the furthest thing from a proper psychologist, and their scenarios were certainly different, but she understood that Toph was trying to help, and that it may not have been easy for her. Swallowing her own snark, she turned to thank her, and -

Toph was unabashedly picking her nose.

Even as Weiss launched into a tirade of disgusted protest, she could not entirely hold back a smile, and by the time Toph finished countering with another parody rant, the two of them were consumed by a fit of laughter.

Because they were flying west, the sunset had been drawn out to several hours in length. Normally, Katara would be the first to appreciate the beauty of such a situation, but she felt mostly drained, and was ultimately relieved when nightfall finally became complete. Of course, her connection to the moon may have played a role in that.

She sat against the side of the saddle with her eyes half-closed. One hand cradled Aang's head in her lap, and the other held one of his, limp though it was as he slept. Yang, directly across from them, was also asleep, her arms and head thrown backwards over the saddle and her mouth hanging open, occasionally releasing a loud snore. Her teammates were nestled on either side of her, Blake looking over some of Sokka's maps and Ruby staring down at Momo as she stroked him from neck to tail. Sokka was at the back of the saddle reorganizing their supplies for the umpteenth time, and Zuko was at the reigns, his back to everyone.

They were only missing two members, but somehow the group seemed much smaller.

Just as Katara once more temporarily succumbed to her eyelids' downward insistence, she heard Ruby's squeaky voice address her quietly.

"Hey . . . Katara? Are you awake?"

"I don't want to sleep," she responded, and opened her eyes to meet Ruby's. Smiling and speaking calmly, she elaborated, "I'm afraid of what I'll dream."

Ruby's mouth curled down at this and she fell into a pensive silence.

"Sorry," said Katara, "did you have a question?"

"Well, I just . . . Is Aang gonna be okay?"

Any remnants of jealousy that Katara had felt over these girls' apparent familiarity with Aang melted away when she heard the genuine concern in Ruby's voice.

"The Avatar State uses a lot of energy," she explained. "He just needs to rest."

"Yeah," said Ruby, "but I mean . . . that look he gets, on his face . . ."

Katara nodded slowly as Aang stirred a little. "It scares me too."

Beneath them, Appa groaned and flexed his six legs as though performing a swimming stroke. Then he returned to his simple hanging posture.

"Can I ask," said Katara softly, "what exactly happened when Aang went to your world?"

"Well, uh, there was a weird light and Aang appeared in our school courtyard, and then I took him to Professor Ozpin and I dunno what they talked about, but the next day he launched us all into the forest and there was this weird half-guy half-Grimm thing that Aang got rid of by shooting lights out of his eyes and -"

"You're wondering how well we really know Aang," Blake cut in, and only then did she lift her gaze from the map. "Not that well, but well enough to know he's - sensitive. About killing."

Katara closed her eyes again and said, "When Aang found a way to end the war without killing the Fire Lord, he set an example of peace for the rest of the world to follow. We all went through so much to get to that point . . . And it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing since then, but it's better than it was." She lifted one hand to rub her eyes and then opened them and glanced at Zuko. He had not reacted to the conversation; she was sure that he could hear them, but he may have been lost in his own - probably unpleasant - musings.

"An example of peace . . ." Blake mumbled, her eyes unfocused. "For the world to follow . . ."

"But now . . ." Katara said. "Zuko's been through a lot too. His mother had to kind of go into hiding, and it wasn't that long ago that we found her." She took a long, slow breath. "I hope she's okay."

Several silent moments passed before Katara realized she was clutching her necklace.

"So I shoot her up there, she gets her scythe around its neck, and she runs up the glyphs, finally cutting its head off at the top."

"She sounds like your version of Sokka, only - well, I was gonna say girlier, but . . ."

"And this was literally our first proper day of school," Weiss added.

"Wow." Toph grinned and shook her head. "I am definitely chucking my students off a cliff when I get back." Frowning, she corrected, "If I get back . . ."

Weiss sighed. "I don't know what's causing these portals, but . . ." She stared into the distance for a while before turning to Toph and saying reassuringly, "I'm sure we'll get back."

"You're lying."

"What?"

"I can tell. Breathing, heartbeat - if you know what to look for, it's a dead giveaway. Unless you're creepily evil like Azula. Which, I mean, you kind of are, but it works on you."

"Thank you," said Weiss distastefully, with half a grin and half a frown. "Is there anything you can't do?"

"Nope." After a moment of silence, Toph said, "Wait, so . . . if they're sisters, how come they have different last names?"

"They're half sisters," Weiss explained. "Same father, different mothers."

"That's just weird," said Toph, shaking her head disapprovingly.

"A little," Weiss shrugged. "But you have to learn not to judge people by what they're born into."

Toph opened her mouth, then closed it again. Changing the subject, she said, "I invented metalbending, you know. Nobody could do it before. I look for the impurities in the metal, but apparently you guys are so good at metalworking that I can't find any."

Weiss drew her sword again and examined it idly. "You know what we're up against. Our weapons have to be perfect."

Toph tilted her head like a curious dog. "But I bent those . . . things earlier . . ."

" 'Things?' "

"Those little . . . pellety things. That came out of Yang's - punchy things."

". . . Oh, the shells. Empty Dust bullets. They're lower-grade material. They only need to work once."

The distant howl of a Beowolf drifted through the fluttering leaves, cutting the conversation short.

"I don't know how you guys survive here," said Toph gloomily.

Weiss stared up at the shattered moon. "We might stand a better chance if we didn't spend so much time fighting each other. My family has been a big part of that problem, but there are even worse people in Remnant . . ." She slumped forward, resting her chin on her fist. "Who knows what other horrors our world is inflicting on yours . . ."

Neptune flashed his sparkling smile.

"Well, gorgeous, I don't like to brag," he bragged, "but I do just so happen to be -" under his breath, he inserted "training to be" before resuming - "a professional monster slayer."

"Really," said Suki with mock interest.

"That's right," Neptune said, casually making flexing motions with one arm, which did not particularly reveal much muscle. "So why don't you point me toward this 'unagi' and then, y'know -" he winked - "kick back and enjoy the show."

"It's right over there," said Suki, pointing at the beach.

Neptune turned and scanned the area. Obliviously remaining chipper, he said, "Where? I don't see it."

"In the water."

Neptune, in his cocky posture and expression, froze so completely that he appeared to become a statue, even his azure hair ceasing to loll in the breeze. Unfortunately the statue's weight was not evenly distributed and it began to slowly tip over, until eventually he had to snap out of it and move to avoid faceplanting.

"What's wrong, Mr. Manly Monster Slayer?" lilted Suki. "You're not scared, are you?"

Wrangling up his machismo like a flock of escaped geese, Neptune chortled, "No, I'm not scared . . . Of the monster . . ." Pointing over his shoulder, he said, "Uh, let me just go consult with my teammate - because, y'know, the fight'll probably be over so fast, I don't want him to get left out." He flipped his pointing gesture into a thumbs-up and flashed his teeth again, before hastily dashing off around the side of the building.

Rounding it, he shouted out, "Hey, Sun?"

Sun, it turned out, was standing with his arms slung around two of the other Kyoshi Warriors, whilst the rest of them were fawning over his customarily-exposed abs.

"You say somethin', Neptune?" he said over their giggling.

"OH COME ON!"

Chapter Text

The drone of the Bullhead's engines doubled in volume as Torchwick swung the door open and sauntered out onto what remained of the pavement. The men - or mongrel facsimiles thereof - followed, except for the pilot: in effect, a getaway driver, though no cop would dare to tread out here.

Throwing his arms and cane wide to address the Fang grunts around him, he said, "Alright, you - beautiful creatures, you. Aerial recon's a bust, so -" he pulled a stick of dynamite from his pocket and twirled it in his fingers - "fan out and string these babies together. That underground city isn't gonna find itself."

As they began to do just that, one approached Torchwick and addressed him meekly.

"Hey, uh, if it is under us, won't the ground, like, collapse, and we fall down, or something?"

"That's why we have the airship, Perry?" Torchwick explained with what little patience he could manage.

"Actually, Perry's over there," the goon corrected, pointing.

"Great," said Torchwick, and he tossed the dynamite stick at not-Perry, who fumbled with it before gaining hold. "Then go help him out, huh?"

The beastie slunk off, and Torchwick inhaled slowly through his nose to combat his headache.

Even by his standards, the boss could have kept cleaner company. But hey, she needed pack mules and attack dogs, and Taurus's boys fit the bill. She was nuts anyway if her plan was any indication, but if Vale was going up in flames, better to be the lighter than the kindling. Speaking of which . . .

Torchwick extracted his lighter and a cigar, and made use of them while he watched the animals work.

He always got a rush from seeing the pieces of a plan fall into place - or maybe it was the cigar, but still, he had to admire the grandeur of the boss's vision. Blowing up a few, albeit long-abandoned, city blocks was trivial to her, and it was a riot operating on that level. Even factoring in some potential future "code red hood" situations, they stood a real chance of bringing the entirety of Remnant to its knees. But, while she never said it in so many words, Roman had no illusions about the true end goal, and it made him a little uncomfortable. Where was the fun to be had in a world with no more suckers to swindle?

And what did a man do when he knew he was the sucker being swindled?

At least I'll go out in style, Torchwick mused, and he frowned. There are some bets you just don't take.

Before long, the mutts started filing back into the Bullhead, and Perry - probably Perry - handed Torchwick the string.

This was where the magic happened. They were saving the hi-tech stuff for the train, so this was old school: a single fuse that branched off to ignite each pile of explosives in sequence. As Roman carefully positioned his hands, he began to sing to himself.

" 'L' . . . is for the way I Light -" he flicked his lighter - "the fuse . . ."

As usual, it took a moment for the material to catch fire, but when it did it produced a satisfying burst of sparks. Torchwick dropped the line and continued, " 'O' . . . is Oh-so-many lives . . . they'll lose . . ."

Perry or whoever waved urgently at him from the ship, but he took his time, swinging his arms in a mild dance as he boarded. " 'V' . . . is Very, Very . . . incendiary; 'E' . . ."

The aircraft revved up and rose above the tops of the highest ruined buildings. Staring down at their handiwork, Torchwick concluded, "Is Even more, Explosions than I've seen before, and . . ."

Since the ship had no proper windows, he pushed his way into the cockpit to gaze down upon the spectacle. As he waited, however, the moment slowly turned from anticipatory to awkward to frustrating. Finally, rubbing out his cigar against the glass, Torchwick asked, "What's going on? Where's the bang?"

The Fangs fell into uncertain mumbling over the obligatory "That's what she said." Useless.

Torchwick rounded on the pilot and commanded him to bring them back down.

When he stepped out the doorway for the second time, the nature of the problem was immediately apparent, but it only raised more questions.

Some little . . . creature had the end of the fuse in its mouth. Well, "mouth," in that it was roughly in that spot on its face and was making suckling motions, but the mouth, as well as the eyes, appeared to be nothing but black circles. The rest of its body was white and similarly amorphous, with only vague hints of a head and limb shapes, like it was made of bread dough or something. It spun its head fully around to "look" at them without bothering to rotate its body, but kept chewing away at the fuse.

"What is it?" asked one of the Perries.

"It's in the way," Torchwick answered, and he strode up to the critter and poked it with his cane. It responded by spitting out the fuse, wrapping its appendages around the cane, shimmying up it, and continuing onto Torchwick's arm. Nestling just below his shoulder, it "closed" its eyes (which was to say they went from circles to lines), appearing to fall asleep.

Perry snickered.

"Hey!" Torchwick prodded its forehead with his other hand. There was no reaction. He tried to pry it off, but its grip was surprisingly tight. "Hey. Thing. I'm secure enough in my masculinity to admit you're cute, but I've drowned cuter things than you." He pushed at its face. "Get. Off."

Just as he dropped his hand to catch his breath, the being's eyes snapped open and it hopped up onto his shoulder, looking around warily. Only a second later came Perry's warning of, "Boss! We got Grimm!"

Before Torchwick could complete a sigh, the previously-overly-affectionate creature recaptured his attention: rising from his shoulder and hovering next to his head, its body began undulating at an increasing speed, and its color darkened to a deep blue, though random pinpricks of white remained unchanged, resembling stars in a night sky. Bits of its rubbery form protruded and formed sharp-looking spikes. And before Torchwick could properly process this unusual event, the floating critter's legs merged into a single tail which proceeded to slap him across the cheek.

The con artist retaliated with a vertical swing of his cane, but the weapon passed right through the thing's body, which visibly split through the middle, streaking upward on both sides like a liquid, but promptly fused back together again. The little gremlin then opened its mouth, now a jagged series of pseudo-fangs, and silently screamed at him, before flying away at the speed of a shooting star.

Torchwick had not reached his position in the criminal underworld by requiring great swaths of time to react to an urgent situation. Quickly, he stamped his cane on top of the fuse still at his feet and pulled the trigger; the shot sent the cane rocketing skyward, but neatly set the string ablaze again. Lowering his gaze from the weird thing's departure point to the White Fang agents and the Grimm they were combating, he briefly assessed the severity of the threat before catching the falling cane, firing it at a Creep, and calling out, "Anyone who doesn't want an immediate illicit burial, back in the ship!"

Apparently nobody was keen on it. And he was no exception.

He also had no desire to be beheaded by Taurus, so he gave all of the flea-bitten footsoldiers a fair chance to make it aboard before turning to the pilot and commanding, "Get us outta here, Perry!"

"I'm not Perry."

"You're all Perry! Just GO!"

Miraculously, the pilot did his job. More importantly, there turned out to be no wings amongst this particular pack of Grimm. After a few minutes, the monsters' gasconade of howls and barks was cut short by the first of the explosions, and the rest of the dominoes fell in glorious, annihilative beauty.

Shame they revealed no underground cave.

At that moment, Torchwick's scroll let out a pair of soft beeps. Inhaling deeply again, he retrieved it and was greeted by a message from Neo.

C wants update

Roman let out the breath in a defeated "Pwuh," his eyes locked on the tiny screen. "C" had many strange powers, but his least favorite was her supernatural knack for timing.

Putting on his best fake smile, he spun around, clapped his hands together, and asked the ship's occupants, "Okay, which one of you is actually Perry?"

A hand extended reluctantly over the herd's heads.

"Perry, my good friend!" said Torchwick, pushing his way through to the hand's owner. "I've got great news: I'm promoting you to Vizier of Negotiations and Planning! And for your first task -" He pulled up Cinder's number on his scroll, pressed "Send," and shoved it into Perry's aforementioned hand. "Give the boss's boss a progress report."

"But, uh . . . we haven't really made any -"

"Hello," came Cinder's sultry voice through the scroll.

The interior of the airship much resembled that of a tour boat, with rows of comfortable green seats and large windows in the main cabin. The windows were strung with triangular red flags - now a haunting reminder of the festive atmosphere that had been shattered only minutes earlier.

They were far enough from the colosseum and the ground that the sounds of whatever horrors were happening there did not reach them, although every so often something black and menacing would screech by one side of the ship, skirting its four flapping metallic wings.

Along the walls below the windows was a continuous bench of green cushions, and Ty Lee knelt on part of this with her face and palms pressed to the glass while Mai stood behind her, gazing over her shoulder. Occasionally Mai turned her head to glance back at the rest of the passengers - usually when the mohawk guy walked past her, as he was pacing laps around the room while wringing his hands and muttering expletives. Of his three armored teammates, the tall guy with the bird emblem stood at the front of the room, while the other two occupied the bench on the opposite side of the ship from Mai and Ty Lee.

The sound of an explosion rattled the windows - they had not been hit, but something else had.

"No!" said the blue-haired guy, jumping up. "No no no no no - that was Ironwood's ship! They took out Ironwood's ship!"

"But dude," said his companion, "nothing even hit it! The explosion came from inside!"

"Like there was a bomb inside?"

"Is there a bomb in this ship?!"

That sent the crowd into a panicked murmur. The tall guy had to shout "Quiet!" several times to calm them back down.

"There's no bomb on this ship!" he said. "Everything's fine! I mean, everything's not fine, obviously, but we'll get to a safe zone, and -"

Something rushed past the window with a fiery roar, causing Ty Lee to fall backward; Mai caught her head in her hands.

The mohawk guy, in contrast, dashed over to the window. "Was that - Rose? Riding a locker?"

"I was not ready for today," said Blue-Hair.

The four questionably-qualified authority figures devolved into bickering again, but as Mai spotted something out the window, her world went mute. More distant than the previous object, but headed right at them, the flames that propelled it were a ghostly shade of blue.

All was darkness, then came a light. But the darkness was swaddling; the light harsh. As the sensation of speeding down a perpetual tunnel gave way to that of flying over an open field, the one white point of light split into two halves, one orange and one blue. The halves began dancing, and spreading further out in opposite directions even as they still drew nearer.

Once close enough, two people were visible standing between the two expanses of dancing light, each facing one.

The light was fire, and Azula faced the blue half.

The woman standing back-to-back with her was almost her twin, but perhaps a few years older and wearing a revealing red dress instead of padded armor.

Tongues of the blue and orange flames began sprouting limbs and dancing in a more literal manner. Despite their apparent mirth, distant screams and cries for help were woven throughout the melody of their crackling hum.

Above Azula and her counterpart, another light blossomed. This morphed into the form of a crystalline dragonfly with large butterfly-like wings; the colors of the flames glimmered inside its translucent body.

"Follow me," it said in a calm, feminine voice. A voice that, while new, sounded somehow familiar.

The creature led the way through a complex maze of identical nothingness, leaving the embers behind. Time wobbled indecisively.

Then the insect seemed to fly into a panic before being consumed by a wave of shadow, leaving just the darkness again.

Out of nothing leaned the front of Koh, wearing his Noh mask and a neutral expression. His membranes closed, and a new mask flicked out. White as well, it had vein-like cracks reaching in from the sides and a black diamond adorning the forehead. The whites of its eyes were black, and its irises a glowing red.

"Aang," it said in Katara's voice.

The world fled like a runaway train.

"Aang."

Aang's eyes snapped open. Katara, looking normal, smiled down at him.

He closed his eyes again and rubbed them, this time seeing nothing until they were reopened. Katara offered him a hand, and he took it and allowed her to pull him to his feet.

They were still in Appa's saddle, but he was no longer airborne, instead floating in the ocean with no land in sight. Across from them, Sokka was conversing with the present three quarters of Team RWBY.

"So it's kinda like Toph's school?"

"I mean, it's bigger," answered Yang. "And . . . everybody uses a different weapon." She idly examined one of her bracelets, the compact form of her explosive gauntlets.

"And they're all crazy transformy ones like yours?"

Ruby giggled and said dreamily, "Yeah."

Sokka shook his head. "Why is everything in Remnant so - extreme?"

"Hey, don't feel bad," Ruby chirped. "You have a pretty extreme . . ." Her eyes darted about for a while before she finally blurted, "Uh, ponytail."

Sokka angrily jabbed a finger toward the back of his head and said, "For your information, this is a warrior's wolftail. In Southern Water Tribe culture, it's very manly!"

Ruby shot a questioning glance at Katara, who shrugged and made a "so-so" gesture with one hand.

Aang was still gripping the other.

Turning back to her, he asked, "So uh, why'd we stop flying?"

From behind them, Zuko's voice replied, "Because of that."

Aang turned around fully to find Zuko - standing down on the lowest part of Appa's tail that was not submerged - pointing at something a few yards away, and a few yards above the surface of the water.

It was a door.

A framed wooden door, hanging in midair with no building or airship attached. No balloon, no anything - just a flying door.

". . . Huh."

Ruby appeared at Aang's side and chittered, "It's probably another portal, right? I mean, come on, it totally has to be! If we're lucky, it might even take us right where we're going, the Royal National Fire Palace or whatever?"

"The chances of that are infinitesimal," Blake's voice shot down from behind.

"See?" Ruby persisted. "It's guaranteed! Want me to open it?"

"We should be careful," said Katara. Assuming a bending form, she executed a series of balletic motions that transformed the shifting waves underneath the door into an icy islet with sets of stairs leading up to both of the door's sides. The ice anchored to the bottom of the doorframe, which, bizarrely enough, seemed to hold it in place against the push of the sea.

Aang looked down at Zuko. "We'll just check where it goes real quick and then get back on track."

Zuko nodded, eying the door warily.

Aang made an air-assisted jump onto the stairway and climbed the last few steps slowly, as though approaching a sleeping platypus bear. He could feel everyone else's eyes upon his back. Trembling slightly, his hand reached toward the door, barely outspeeding a growing plant.

The metallic doorknob was slightly warmer than the surrounding salty air. Aang turned it, and heard the mechanism click. He paused to take a deep breath.

He pulled the door open . . . and stared through the empty doorframe at the ocean beyond.

No portal. Nothing.

Aang blinked twice.

Turning around, he said, "Well, that was -"

He registered the tugging sensation on the back of his robes only an instant before the sight of everybody else being suddenly yanked through the air toward him. They all flew through the doorway in quick succession, and the door slammed behind them.

Appa was the only one unaffected, and he lazily turned himself around in the water, only to be further perplexed by the absence of his passengers. After he examined the ice floe for several seconds, Momo's head popped out of the water next to it, followed shortly by his hands, which brought a pair of small kelpquats into his mouth. As he chewed, he looked at Appa curiously.

Appa let out a sigh, blowing bubbles in the seawater.

Under the light of the shattered moon, Mai's dress and Ty Lee's braid whipped in the wind - the ship was still fleeing, after all. The tall guy - Cardin - had accompanied them to the rooftop, repeatedly ordering them back inside; Mai spared him not even an iota of attention. Cupping both hands around her mouth, she cried out into the Grimm-filled night sky.

"Azula!"

More surprising than her presence was that she was apparently not there for them: though she had been flying in their direction, only after hearing her name did she take notice of them standing atop the airship. In hindsight, it probably made more sense that she had found herself in this world as unexpectedly as they had.

Mai did not let it show, but at least a tiny part of her, in post-hindsight, wanted to take back her shout.

She felt both of Ty Lee's hands clutch her upper arm tightly - whether a gesture toward one or the other's protection or simply an acknowledgement of companionship, Mai took internal solace in it while keeping her eyes locked on the approaching princess.

Blue fire met the roof's surface and splayed out before extinguishing, the sound muffling that of Azula's steel-toed boots tapping against the hull. She folded her arms behind her back primly, but seemed unable to hold back her hungry smile.

Her eyes were a little too wide, wrinkling the skin underneath.

No one spoke for a few heartbeats as Cardin looked from Mai to Azula and back several times. He extracted his mace and held it at the ready, but had evidently lost his faith in verbal communication.

Azula, it turned out, was still devout.

"Well, well, well. Today's just full of gifts. It must be my birthday." Without dropping the smirk, she glanced upward in mock contemplation and said, "Honestly, with all the jumping between worlds and times, for all I know it could be." She looked back at Mai, whose needlepoint gaze had not shifted. "On that note, remind me, Mai, when was the last time we saw each other?"

Mai narrowed her eyes and waited a second before responding. Her voice was as level as ever. "As I recall, you were busy putting the 'kid' back in 'kidnapping.' "

"Ah, good," said Azula, "we're on the same page then."

In her periphery, Mai caught movement on top of the next, identical escape ship following them - Grimm had moved in on it and what were presumably tournament contenders were defending it from them. When she returned her eyes to Azula, Azula's eyes had moved to Ty Lee.

Beside her, Ty Lee swallowed and asked, "So, uh, you can fly now, huh?"

Azula's grin widened. "I can do so much more than that."

Cardin finally decided to join in, stepping between them and saying, "Look, I don't know what your guys's problem is, but if you haven't noticed, this isn't the best time or place t -"

Azula made a sweeping motion with her hand, and at the same time a gust of wind swept under Cardin's feet, cutting him off, toppling him over, and brushing him off of the ship.

Mai could feel her mouth hanging open stupidly, but was too flabbergasted to remember how to close it.

Azula replaced her hands behind her back. "To answer your question, no, I'm not an airbender. I'm not even an Avatar." Once again, her eyes bulged a little as she announced, "I'm something even more than that! I've finally received the full extent of my divine birthright!"

"Received?" Mai pondered. And "gifts" . . . What's going on here?

"I should thank you two, I suppose," Azula continued. "It was your betrayal a few years ago that sent me down this path, wasn't it? And just look at where I've ended up." She spread her arms in what should have been a welcoming gesture. In one hand, her typical blue fire ignited, but the other produced what appeared to be a miniature tornado full of snowflakes. Additionally, a procession of dead leaves rose up from behind her feet and spiraled around her torso.

Her smirk twitched.

"So. It's only fair that I repay you . . ." She extinguished the whole of her elemental display and folded her arms again. "With the same favor."

Azula closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, blue flames poured out, enigmatically doing her skin no harm. Fixing her burning glare on Mai, she stood motionless as, before her, with a sound like a hissing rat viper, blue-white sticks of electricity slowly, deliberately tore themselves into existence. Though Azula's hands remained behind her back, the lightning followed the typical firebending pattern, arcing down and back up and then repeating back the other way, building all the while.

It was not that Mai observed the degree of control in the attack and judged it to be undodgeable. It was simply that she recognized that she was thinking through molasses and that her body would likely move no faster. The words What could possibly flap my most unflappable friend? drifted through her mind in search of irony, but everything else had shut down. Ty Lee must have been going through something similar, because she stayed anchored to Mai's arm.

The lightning bolt lashed forward - and something crashed down onto the ship in front of them and intercepted it.

Vague notions of Zuko and his redirection technique were quickly dispelled; tiny blue sparks scrambled all over the surface of the - quite small and female - figure, causing her short orange hair to stand up straight like bamboo.

"Stop!" Nora shouted.

What happened next was too fast for Mai to follow; there was an explosion of blue fire, but when it cleared, it was Nora who was standing where Azula had been, following through on a swing of her huge hammer, and something that was probably Azula had been sent rocketing directly upward, leaving a slight trail of wispy smoke. In a blink, she had traveled much too far to be visible anymore.

Planting the hammer on her shoulder, Nora declared, "Hammertime!" and started to dance.

A few moves in she had rotated enough to face Mai and Ty Lee, and she immediately forgot what she was doing and said, "Oh hey, it's you guys!" Turning toward the other ship, she yelled out, "Hey Ren, look, it's those two girls from the fairgrounds!"

Several of those sharp sounds that Mai had gathered were called "gunshots" rang out, and she turned to watch three people being flung through the air in their direction. The green-clad Ren and a red-haired girl - as she neared, Mai recognized her from the tournament match - landed on the roof, while the blonde guy accompanying them caught the ship's horizontal tailfin directly in his stomach, letting out an appropriately comedic noise in response.

"What's going on over here?" inquired Ren.

Ty Lee recovered more quickly than Mai and gesticulated upward. "It's - Azula, she's - um, this is hard to explain, but I think we're, like, from a different world or something - and . . ."

"Different world?" asked the girl with the spear. Then realization flashed across her face, and she turned and said, "Jaune, the mirror!"

The blonde guy had just finished pulling himself on top of the tailfin, and from his sitting position he looked down at her and said, "The who?" Then his head jerked upward, and he pointed and warned, "Look out!"

Nora rolled out of the way as Azula returned, her impact jolting the airship. This time her entire body seemed to be on fire - blue, of course - but still undamaged, and between this and her enraged expression, she looked more like a dark spirit now than she ever had in her Kemurikage uniform.

The flames disappeared from the bottom up, leaving just the eye effect.

"Aura users, hmm?" Azula snarled. "You know, it's rude to interrupt people in the middle of a conversation."

The Jaune guy leaped from the tailfin and landed between Azula and everyone else, where he drew his sword and somehow caused the scabbard to expand into a shield.

"I didn't know shooting lightning at people qualified as a conversation."

"You don't know Azula," Mai quipped automatically, and only subsequently did she realize that she had snapped out of her stupor.

Azula grinned again. "You're right, Mai. Proper introductions are in order."

Before she could do whatever horrible thing she had in mind, a clanging sound came from one side of the ship, causing her and everyone else to look in its direction. A moment later, Mai caught movement and glanced back just in time to see Cardin swing up over the front of the ship and plant his feet in Azula's back, knocking her over forward and standing on top of her.

In the hand devoid of his mace was one severed end of the rope of flags that had hung around the ship. He tossed it aside.

After a moment of silence - save for the ship's engines and the screams of airborne Grimm - Cardin said, looking at Jaune, "What? I got your back, Jauney-boy."

It was only because she was so attuned to Azula's voice that Mai heard her mutter, seemingly more to herself than Cardin, "Fine. They're all yours."

A burst of air threw Cardin off and Azula to her feet, and a second reached out and pulled Mai and Ty Lee in between the others and straight toward Azula. The Fire Nation Princess clamped an arm around each of them and whispered intimately, "This is between us, after all."

One blast of fire later, they were off the ship.

And then Mai's stomach lurched as Azula took no further action to prevent them from plummeting.

"Azula!" Ty Lee shouted, her voice choppy against the increasing wind. "What are you doing?!"

If Azula replied, Mai tuned it out as her brain raced to find something, anything, that could be done. Chi blocking would only make Azula unable to halt their fall, and there was some chance that she was faking them out and would do so - but her unhinged expression at the moment made that doubtful, and for the same reason persuasion lacked a certain viability in the given time frame. The only other option seemed to be breaking away and trying to land on one of the winged Grimm, which would be an only marginally preferable position.

They had twisted into a headfirst drop, so down was now up as Mai tilted her chin toward her chest and saw Grimm moving in on the ship above her feet.

In spite of her budding relationship with the ground being a more pressing issue, she found herself more interested in why it seemed as though the monsters had waited for Azula to leave before attacking.

As everyone tumbled out of the door and landed in a heap, it was clear from the presence of something not so icy on which to land that they were no longer in the same location.

But as they disentangled from one another, it became clear that their new location was not only different, but different.

It seemed to be earth that was beneath their feet, if rather redder than average, but what had appeared to be bright orange pine trees sprouting from it were, upon Aang's reorientation, revealed to be orange mushrooms growing one on top of the other in decreasing order of width. The sky was a murky brown and displayed no sun or moon or stars, so the light by which he saw seemed simply to lie in the air like a fog, blurring things at the edges. What was in the sky was a solid gold alligator with baleen instead of teeth, which galloped along at such a height that its size could not be distinguished beyond "very big."

Aang turned back to his companions, who were all looking around in wonder. Katara was the first to speak, asking him breathlessly, "Is this the . . . ?"

"The Spirit World." He completed her sentence with a smile.

Sokka threw up his arms and announced, "Alright, listen up, if anyone has to go to the bathroom, you'd better duck back through the door, because -"

Before he could finish, the door in question glowed brashly and then exploded into particles of white light, which drifted down around them.

Sokka dropped his arms and sighed, but then the light specks perked back up and swirled into a gnat-like cloud, which situated itself in front of Aang - where it congealed into a single, insectoid form.

"Hey!" Aang said brightly. "You're the butterdragon spirit from my dream!"

If the crystalline bug could speak, it refused to do so, merely fluttering in place for a moment before taking off over Aang's head.

"Come on, guys!" he said with an encouraging wave. "We have to follow it!"

And he did so.

Katara and Sokka set off after him without fuss, and Ruby followed suit with an elated cry of, "This is really weeeiiird!" Yang hesitated, so Zuko told her, if somewhat exasperatedly, "Just go with it," and set an example. After exchanging glances with Blake, she joined him, and Blake herself silently brought up the rear, moving so as not to touch anything other than the ground, and keeping her eyes narrowed suspiciously regardless of where they fell.

In this eldritch realm, the passage of time was difficult to gauge, but at some point the group approached a waterfall and skirted around it. On the other side, the ground took on a dark hue and the rough texture of lava rock. Rising from it were stalagmites with smaller earth spikes poking out from their sides, and even smaller ones growing from those, and so on - once again posing as a forest of pines. There was a ceiling of some sort overhead - as Aang squinted up at it, he discerned it to be a meadow of yellowish grass, hanging upside-down in the air above them. Indeed, the waterfall came from a stream that traversed the length of the meadow, content to remain suspended until it reached the edge. After spilling down to their level, the water flowed through the stalagmite thicket - only to ultimately fall back up to meet its other end in the inverted meadow, creating a full loop.

The meadow was otherwise empty save for three person-sized tulips with green petals and red stems. The nearest of these opened to reveal a single, huge eyeball in the center, which stared down at them intently.

Aang and the others weaved between the stone trees, still on the trail of the butterdragon. As they entered a small clearing, several chinchilla spirits already occupying it turned toward them in alarm.

"Humans?" one squeaked.

"Humans?" The others repeated the first's cry one at a time; the last to speak had an inexplicably deep voice. Then the lot of them hopped into the air and merged into a purple manta ray, which sailed off beyond the meadow and into the sky.

While Yang mumbled something about "lots and lots of drugs," Ruby asked Aang, "Do - spirits not like humans?"

"Pretty much," Sokka interjected.

Aang elaborated, "The spirits are very in tune with nature and emotions. As long as you're respectful, there's nothing to be afraid of." He frowned and added, "Mostly."

A few moments later, the butterdragon suddenly began darting back and forth in a panic. Aang said, "Huh? What's wrong?" as, above, the other two eye flowers folded open and looked this way and that expectantly. The butterdragon ducked behind one of the tree-like pillars, and when Aang tried to follow, he found that the spirit had vanished completely.

"So . . ." said Yang uncertainly, "if they're 'in tune' with stuff . . . does that mean . . ."

Blake drew her sword. "Something bad's coming."

"Why are you doing this?!" Ty Lee sobbed. Her tears were being ripped away from her by the wind as the city below roared ever closer.

"An eye for an eye!" said Azula manically. "Technically, I'm taking two eyes, but you know me - always the overachiever!"

Mai was conflicted. The only move she had thought up was apologizing, but quite apart from weighing her genuine guilt for inflicting this kind of madness on someone against the reality of who that someone had been even beforehand, she was not at all sure that Azula's reaction would be anything positive.

Feeling morbid, Mai glanced down.

Not far above the ground, something happened. It looked as though a section of thin air had been slit open and pulled to one side, with the images beneath that side appearing scrunched up - space itself was behaving like literal fabric. Inside the hole left in its place, meanwhile, was pitch blackness.

"What?!" Azula was distinctly displeased, suggesting that the space hole was not her doing. She flipped the three of them around in midair and blasted blue fire from her feet in an attempt to stop before they met the strange abyss, but it was too late.

On the other side of the small clearing in the stalagmite forest, not far above the ground, something happened.

The first thing that the something did after happening was to belch blue fire, causing most of the group to jump backwards.

The second thing that it did was to expel three girls.

The three girls popped upward slightly, then fell the short distance to the stony floor.

There was silence as the three girls got to their feet.

It was Zuko who spoke.

"Azula?"

Azula's eyes moved to inspect every person present before returning to meet her brother's.

Then she smiled.

"Yes. Of course."