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Chapter Text

Hearing Jaune’s cry of anguish was bad enough for Weiss, she knew exactly what it meant. Turning towards him just confirmed it, and Weuss couldn’t help but let her tears begin to fall at the sight she saw.

Penny was dead…. She was gone… like the rest of her team. Weiss, the last member of Team RWBY left standing, and now, joining the rest of her team, was Penny.

Weiss couldn’t help but let her tears start to flow as she watched Jaune stand over the lifeless body of their friend, her blood dripping from his blade. Weiss had lost so many people in such a short period of time, and by now, it had nearly broke her.

To the point where she couldn’t really do anything but lie there as Cinder Fall launched herself towards Jaune. She is only knocked back to reality by the sound of Jaune’s blade shattering on impact with Cinder’s own weapon.

“Where did it go?!” Cinder had knocked Jaune to the ground and angrily began advancing on him. Weiss wished that she could do something, but by now she was far too beaten down. Her aura was already completely drained, and she did not have the strength to get up and defend Jaune.

Fortunately, it appeared that she did not need to do anything. Cinder was suddenly struck by a light blue blast of energy, sending her flying away from Jaune. Both of the survivors are momentarily surprised by the sudden attack, but turning towards the direction it came from, both of them feel the first bit of genuine relief they’ve felt in a while.

Winter Schnee, now finally having the promised power of the Winter Maiden, had arrived, and she was not happy. Weiss could only imagine what Winter must have felt when receiving the powers.

Whatever, they didn’t have time to debate that.

“Weiss!” Jaune managed to bring himself to his feet and sprint towards his fallen friend. “Cmon, we’ve gotta get out of here!” He reaches a hand out towards Weiss.

It takes her a moment to truly snap back from the shock of everything that had just happened, but she eventually manages to pull herself together and accept Jaune’s hand. Jaune hoists her back up to her feet, slinging his arm over her shoulders to help her stay standing.

The two of them begin the treck towards one of the portals to Vacuo, attempting to get away from the sounds of the two Maidens clashing behind them. Unfortunately, as they continue to try and escape, they hear the sound of something clanging to the ground behind them.

Turning back, the two of them notice the Staff Of Creation had fallen onto the path behind them, and looking past the Staff, they notice Cinder, turning her attention to the two of them.

Before they know it, a fireball is suddenly rocketing towards them. Jaune only barely has enough time to throw a Disc Grenade behind him to put up a shield and block the attack. Unfortunately, the impact of the blast still manages to knock the two of them over, leaving them vulnerable.

Winter notices her sister in her vulnerable state, and begins flying towards her as fast as she can. Beneath Weiss and Jaune, the ground begins to heat up and glow bright orange. “No. No!” Winter had to act fast, or risk watching her sister explode in front of her.

Winter quickly fires a blast of concentrated ice at Weiss and Jaune, impacting the ground ahead of them, and causing a wall of ice to erupt. The force of the blasts propels the both of them backwards along the path, closer to the portal, and the wall of ice manages to absorb the explosion, leaving both of them unharmed.

Briefly relieved by having saved her sister, Winter lets out a brief sigh. Unfortunately, the relief is short lived, as the entire dimension of portals begins to shake. Turning back, Winter is greeted with a terrifying sight.

Cinder has the Staff.

Jaune once again stands back up and helps Weiss to her feet and the both of them turn towards Winter. “We need to go, now!” Jaune’s words manage to shake Winter’s fear and rage, causing her to glare at Cinder one last time.

“You… are going to pay… for everything you’ve done!”

Winter then begins to fly towards the portal that Weiss and Jaune were close to, with Cinder also taking the opportunity to retreat, exiting through another portal back to Atlas, taking the Staff with her.

As the three heroes begin making their way towards the portals, the path behind them slowly begins to vanish, being erased after Cinder’s use of the staff. Jaune and Weiss try their hardest to keep up with Winter, but she easily outpaces the both of them.

“Winter!” Weiss calls out to her sister as she reaches the portal, both her and Jaune still a slight distance away. Winter barely has time to do anything before she begins entering the portal.

Fortunately, in that quick window of time, Winter launches yet another blast of ice, this one landing directly behind the two of them. The force from this blast again propels the two forward, causing them to fly straight into the portal after Winter.

When the two of them land, they find themselves not on the solid path of the portal dimension, but instead on a blanket of coarse sand.

Weiss manages to open her eyes, barely managing to spy a mass of people through the sand fluttering across her vision. She manages to push Jaune off of her, who had landed on top of her, and begin rising to her feet.

“Weiss!” Her attention is grabbed by a familiar voice to her left. Turning, she sees her mother, Whitley, and Klein, all staring at her with great relief. Her joy at their safety would be rather vast, but after all that has happened in the past few moments, all she could muster was a soft smile in their direction.

Next to Weiss, Jaune also stands, helped to his feet by Nora and Ren, who both immediately flocked to his side. Weiss is glad that the three of them are still together… but her team…. Her team is gone…. She’s all that’s left of Team RWBY.

Nora and Ren both turn their attention to Weiss next, coming over to check on her as well. “Weiss, are you ok?!” Weiss is only able to give Nora a feint nod as a response.

“Where’s the others? Did they get lost in the crowd?” Nora looks around briefly, confused as to the whereabouts of the rest of Weiss’ team as well as Penny. Weiss looks at them, and she can tell that Ren already knows. She’s surprised that Nora hasn’t figured it out yet, given Winter’s current abilities.

After Nora gives a brief overview of the crowd, she turns back to Weiss. Looking at her friend, Nora is met with a look of pure sadness and devastation. That’s all it takes for her to realize what happened.

Her and Jaune were the only ones that made it out.

They were the only survivors.

Weiss could see a tear form in Nora’s eyes. That broke Weiss’ own dam, and she was unable to hold back her own tears any longer, letting them flow freely as she cried.

Over the sounds of Winter slaughtering the Grimm of the Vacuo desert around them, Weiss just cried.

That was all she could really do.

Chapter Text

The trek to Shade Academy was long, arduous, and full of dangerous Grimm ready to strike at any moment. It’s a miracle that they managed to get all the survivors there, but having Winter with them definitely helped.

Winter herself was completely exhausted by the end of the journey, having had to always be alert in order to defend the crowd from whatever danger’s the deserts of Vacuo threw at them. Despite the exhaustion, Winter knew that she probably only felt the second worst out of the survivors.

Now that they were finally close to Shade, Winter could spare a glance back at her sister to check up on her. The look of pure despair on Weiss’ face when she turned towards her absolutely broke Winter’s heart.

Weiss’ entire team had fallen, leaving her the last one standing. Winter couldn’t even imagine just how much that must have hurt Weiss. All of her closest friends were gone, she must feel so alone.

At the moment, Weiss was closely clinging to the rest of their family as well as her other friends in Team JNOR. She physically refused to unwrap herself from Klein’s arm. Winter would usually smile at the sight as it reminded her of Weiss’ childhood, but now, nobody could really manage a smile after all the hardships they had to go through.

At least now, they could finally rest for the first time in a while. Shade Academy was in sight, they were finally in reach of their refuge from the dangers of Vacuo.

They were finally able to have a moment of piece among this storm.

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When they finally arrived at Shade, Weiss immediately needed to sit down. She was exhausted, beaten down, and not in the best mental state at the moment.

She desperately needed time to rest and process things, especially after what happened to her team. She needed time to think…… time to mourn.

Time to really come to terms with the fact that her team was gone.

Ruby, her partner, her best friend, was gone. Blake and Yang were gone, never able to finally just tell each other how they felt. On top of that, Penny was gone too, now a part of Winter in some way. Hopefully they were all at peace for the first time in years, they deserved to finally rest.

But Weiss knew that she had to keep fighting. Just because her team was gone doesn’t mean that she could sit around and mope all day. She had a job to do, they were still at war, and she couldn’t just go AWOL cause she was sad.

Though, she could wait a bit before getting back in the fight. A tortured soldier is hardly any help in the midst of battle, so she needed time to recover. Fortunately, she was allowed to stay in JNOR’s quarters when they all arrived at Shade, Oscar was kind enough to offer to sleep on the couch so she could get one of the beds.

The rest of JNOR was currently off getting a lay of the land, exploring the city around Shade to try and see what it was like in Vacuo. Nora didn’t even try to hide her desire to scope out the local cuisine. Weiss opted to stay in for the day, she had her own things to do.

First order of business now that they were all in Vacuo, Weiss had to find some way to deal with the blistering heat. Her Atlas gear was designed for the intense cold of her home kingdom, not the sands and sun of Vacuo. She was sweating up a storm, and her hair was full of sand.

On the subject of being sweaty, she heard the door to the dorm opening up behind her. Turning towards the entrance, she saw Jaune entering, noticeably without his shirt.

“W-Weiss! S-sorry, I forgot you were in here.” Jaune immediately got embarrassed as he realized that Weiss was still in the room. Weiss just gave a soft smile in his direction. “Jaune, we’re both adults here, it’s fine.” Honestly, Weiss had to admit that he was far more well built than he was back at Beacon, so she couldn’t exactly be mad at the view he was accidentally giving her.

“I-I’ll just… put a shirt on, mine got covered in sand and I had to drop it off at the campus laundromat. Nora, Ren and Oscar are gonna pick it up when they get back.” Jaune awkwardly spoke as he began fishing through the dorm wardrobe for something to wear. Eventually, he settled on a dark gray Shade T-Shirt. “S-so, we found a nice sandwich place not too far from the Campus, we figured we could maybe pick up some lunch tomorrow, you down for it?”

Weiss wasn’t really sure at first whether or not she really wanted to join JNOR for lunch. She was still trying hard to get over the loss of her team, and didn’t really want to dump that on her friends, who were already grieving the rest of RWBY’s fall anyway.

On the other hand, Weiss knew from experience that it might not be the best thing ever, but it was always better to suffer together than it was to suffer alone. She had spent so much of her life just going through her strife on her own, and she hated every minute of it. As soon as she really got to know her team and the rest of her friends, everything felt so much easier to deal with.

“A-alright, why not.” Weiss gave a very weak smile towards Jaune, accepting his offer. “G-great! I’ll let the rest of the team know you’re in when they get back.” Jaune sat down next to her on the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re coming Weiss, really, I am. It’s good to get out into the world after what happened.”

Jaune’s attempts at comforting Weiss were very appreciated, especially considering he probably had the most experience with personal loss of anybody Weiss knew. She was glad that she still had friends like Jaune with her even after her team had fallen.

“Yes… I suppose it is good to get out there again.” She just leaned into his side hug, laying her head against his shoulder. “Thank you…. For everything.” She softly sighed as she spoke. “No need to thank me Weiss, we’re all going through this together. Ruby, Penny… everyone else… we’re all going to be dealing with them being gone, but… we can’t let the grief stop us now. They wouldn’t want us to just lie down and live in mourning forever… neither would Pyrrha.”

The mention of Pyrrha hurt a bit. She was the start of all this loss…. The start of all this pain. But Jaune was right, none of them would want the survivors to just sit down and accept their fate, they would want them to get back up and fight back in their name. And that was exactly what Weiss would do, no matter how long it took her to move on.

“No… no they wouldn’t.” Weiss sat back up, taking her head out from Jaune’s shoulder. “But first… I really could use some new gear, this outfit was not designed for high temperatures.” Weiss looked down at her current outfit, again being irritated by its cold weather nature.

“Yeah, we should probably try and get some new outfits for the desert.”

Chapter Text

The sun was so bright that it actively hurt for Weiss to look at the sky. Vacuo was so much hotter and brighter than Atlas was on the warmest of days, and Weiss was not sure if she liked that. The temperature in Vale and Mistral was perfect, not blisteringly hot or frigidly cold. Vacuo, it felt like Weiss was going to melt if she spent too long outside.

Unfortunately, she was going to be spending most of the day outside, letting the sun boil her alive. Jaune had promised that she could come with his team on their day out in Vacuo to get a lay of the land. She knew it was probably the best option to accept his offer, it wouldn’t be good for her to be cooped up all day.

So here she was, walking around the sand covered paths of the City Of Vacuo, taking in the sights. Just her, Jaune, Ren, Nora, and Oscar…….. and Emerald too. Weiss wasn’t exactly sure why they were bringing Emerald with them, let alone why they allowed her to take the extra bed in their dorm.

Weiss knew that Emerald was supposedly “good” now, but why in the hell was she suddenly just part of the gang now? She also didn’t know why the hell Oscar seemed so hell bent on defending her. Sure, she freed him from Salem’s clutches, but she still caused so much harm to so many people.

At least she could say that Emerald was fully aware of that last part, and clearly remorseful for it. She also had to admit that given the situation, it was probably best to have as many capable fighters out in the field as they could.

Whatever, she’ll get used to Emerald being around eventually, now, she should focus on what to have for lunch. Maybe a nice sandwich would help take her mind off of things…. If it was even possible to take her mind off what happened.

“Ah! There it is!” Nora eagerly pointed out a sandwich shop on the side of the path. “Told you I remembered where it was!” That was a lie, Nora had gotten them lost in the city for over an hour looking for this place. Whatever, they were here now, they could finally eat something.

….Yang probably would’ve loved this place, nice, quick to make food she could customize to her liking. Ruby probably would’ve liked it too, she enjoyed a nice sandwich. Blake too……..

Weiss was cut out of her train of thought by the feeling of a hand being placed on her. Turning to her right, she saw Jaune, his hand firmly clasped on her shoulder. He had a weary frown on his face as he looked right into her eyes.

“You ok Weiss? He looked so genuinely concerned, so worried for the wellbeing of his friend. Weiss had to admit, his pure worry was mildly adorable. It reminded her a bit of the absolute idiot boy that Jaune used to be back at Beacon.

But he wasn’t a boy anymore, much like Weiss herself was no longer a little girl. They were both adults now, and honestly have gone through more than most other adults. They didn’t have the luxury of being kids anymore…… children can’t win a war.

Hell, the adults could barely even fight it properly, so everyone’s screwed.

Right now, Weiss probably shouldn’t be thinking about that. She’s trying to AVOID thinking about the looming threat of Salem and the loss of her team, this is just making her think of it even more than she already was.

Nora and Ren had already made her way into the shop, having collected everyone’s order on the way over. The rest of the group all went to one of the outdoor tables to sit and wait for them to get out with their food.

When they all sat down, Weiss noticed Emerald bowing her head the entire time, keeping her face out of view. She probably didn’t want to attract any attention from the other people in the city, given her involvement in…… well, a LOT of things.

Oscar just placed a supportive hand on her shoulder, trying to get her to stop hiding herself. It wasn’t really working that well, clearly Emerald’s guilt was still eating her alive. She could barely even look Jaune in the eyes, probably because of Pyrrha.

After a little while, and only about 2 or 3 dirty looks thrown towards Emerald, Nora and Ren exited the shop with a bag full of sandwiches and made their way over to the table.

The gang all dug into their meals, with Nora digging in a bit too much and making a pretty sizable mess of the table and her shirt. Ren just sighed, knowing damn well that he was next up to do the team’s laundry.

As they ate, Nora spouted out something about their new gear being slated to arrive in the next three days. Weiss was looking forward to getting something a little less heavy for the warmer weather, she was absolutely baking in her Atlas gear.

Honestly, this was actually rather nice, Weiss was enjoying it. It’s been a while since she was able to just sit down with her friends and have a nice meal together while making some small talk. She didn’t really want this moment to end anytime so-

“Holy crap, hey guys!”

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the sound of a very familiar voice broke the atmosphere completely. Turning around in the direction of the voice, Weiss was met with five men who could best be described as “aggressively masculine dudebros” as Yang so eloquently put it.

Team SSSN, now with another member who Weiss didn’t immediately recognize. Upon further inspection, he appeared to be somebody Weiss saw at the Vytal Festival, from team BRNZ she believed. Whoever he was, he was very tightly holding hands with Scarlet, so that explains why he was with them.

Sun immediately made his way over to the table, strutting over with the most excited walk possible. “Holy hell, we were looking everywhere for you all!” He seemed ridiculously excited to see them again.

He walked up between Weiss and Jaune’s seats, and put his arms around their shoulders. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve been looking for you all morning, and-“ Sun cut himself off at the sight of Emerald. He then backed up and reached for his weapon in the back of his shirt.

“W-wait, she’s with us!” Oscar immediately jumped to Emerald’s defense. Emerald herself had already grabbed onto her weapons, ready to remove them from their holsters. Sun eased up a little bit at Oscar’s words.

“She’s what now?” Neptune leaned in, confused by the bombshell about Emerald’s current allegiance that Oscar just dropped on them. “I-I know it’s hard to believe, but Emerald is with us now.” Oscar continued to defend their new ally.

“I-I…. Whatever, we’ll talk more about that later, I’ve got other things on my mind. So, where’s Blake? She promised to gimme a rundown on how things with Yang were going the next time we saw each other?”

The hearts of everyone at the table sank with that question. Weiss almost immediately felt a few tears welling up in her eyes at the mention of Blake and Yang. Sun, not picking up on the mood change, leaned in further. “Hello? Guys… earth to Weiss, hello.” He turned to Weiss and waved a hand in front of her face.

His hand was stopped by another one grabbing it. Sun turned to Jaune, who had pulled his hand away from Weiss’ face. “Sun….” He was just barely able to speak, clearly just as torn up as Weiss. “Blake… Yang…. Ruby… they….”

Jaune couldn’t even continue his sentence, but after a few seconds of processing, it was enough for Sun to figure out what happened. His hand fell at his side, and his face twisted into a saddened grimace.

Weiss had completely broken down, bursting into quiet sobs, tears streaming down her face. Jaune immediately scooted his chair over to Weiss and brought her into a hug, gently stroking her back in an effort to calm her down.

It wasn’t working.

She just kept sobbing, letting all the sorrow and sadness of losing her team out right there at the table. She missed them all so much, she needed them back so badly.

She didn’t know what to do without her team…. Without her family.

Chapter Text

After about 2 whole days of air travel, Qrow was finally able to set foot in the hot sands of Vacuo. Honestly, he never thought that he’d be glad to be back in Vacuo again, he always hated the desert, the sand was always so coarse and rough, and it got everywhere.

Whatever, the sand in his shoes could wait, he had to get to Shade Academy as soon as possible. Robyn and Marrow had opted to watch the remaining Ace-Ops, giving Qrow the opportunity to hopefully talk to Winter, or Theo, or Oz, or somebody who could tell him where the fuck his nieces were.

He quickly made his way through the cities roads, practically running to Shade at a rather crazy pace. Several people tried to get his attention as he made his way through the city. He ran his way past all of them, Yang’s girlfriend’s idiot blonde bff, that one chick with the sunglasses that all the girl swoon over, he just kept rushing towards Shade, not bothering to stop for any of them.

After a lot of jogging through the city, Qrow’s destination was finally in sight, Shade Academy was just a few blocks ahead. “Fucking finally.” Qrow was getting a bit tired by the trek through the city, so finally reaching Shade was a pretty sizable relief.

When Qrow had finally made his way to the base of Shade, he was filled with the first sense of calm he’s had in a while, taking in the sight of humanity’s next bastion of defense against Salem. Right when he was about to make his way into the Academy, he was temporarily stopped by a voice he recognized.

“Mr Branwen? Is that you?” Turning around, Qrow was met with the sight of two members of Team JNPR.. or JNOR.. whatever they were calling themselves nowadays. Ren and Nora, the ones that were always glued together at the hip.

“H-Hey kids, listen, I can’t really talk right now, I’ve gotta find… somebody with authority here.” He went to walk through the main door to Shade. “W-wait, Mr Branwen, there’s something we need t-“ Nora’s sentence fell upon deaf ears, as Qrow just ignored her and continued into Shade.

He didn’t mean to come off as rude or anything, but he had one priority and one priority only right now. He was gonna find Ruby and Yang in the next hour or he was gonna start a fucking riot.

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Winter felt like she’d just gotten done quelling a riot. Being the acting Winter Maiden was a rather exhausting task, placing her on a pedestal of power which caused her to be called on quite often for obscene tasks. It had only been 2 days since they arrived in Vacuo, and she’s already killed well over a hundred Grimm in the surrounding desert.

She couldn’t wait for night to finally arrive, since that’s just about the only time she was allowed to get any damn rest. For the last 2 days, it’s been nothing but fighting Grimm, meetings with Headmaster Theodore, checking up on her family, making sure Weiss was ok, etc, etc.

Finally, she was permitted to have a break, some time to herself in order to try and get a handle on things. Maybe she could finally see the sights in Vacuo, she’s never actually been to the Kingdom before so she doesn’t really have a lay of the land.

Whatever she did, she was going to do so after she took a nap or something. She was absolutely exhausted, the only thing that would bring her even further down the well of exhaustion would be-

“There you are.”

-….of course he had to show up right as she was thinking about him.

“Ugh… what do you want Qrow?” She didn’t even bother looking at him when she acknowledged his presence. “Wow, not even gonna look me in the eye when you’re talking to me? And I thought you had some proper mann-“

“Qrow, I’m tired, irritated, and I just want to go to bed already, just get on with whatever it is you want.” Qrow gave a smirk and a chuckle before responding. “Well if ya wanna head to bed, I’d be happy to take you th-“

He suddenly found a sword pointed at his chin before he could finish his sentence. “A-alright alright, jeez. I just wanted to ask you a question.” Winter turned to Qrow, clearly still very pissed at him. “What the hell do you want to know.”

“Do you know where Ruby and Yang are?”

Winter’s heart immediately sank at the question Qrow presented her with. She never imagined that she would be the one to break the news to Qrow about his nieces. Hell, she honestly forgot that he had to get the news broken to him in the first place.

She just stood there, suddenly tensed up, a grimace plaguing her face. Qrow noticed her change in attitude, and leaned in closer. “The hell’s the front face for? I say something to piss you off?”

Well, he absolutely did, but that’s not at all why Winter was so tense at the moment. She didn’t want to do this, she didn’t want to hurt him like this. Sure, she never really got along with Qrow, but having to deliver the news that his nieces are presumed dead is…… not something Winter would ever want to have to tell him.

But she wasn’t left with another option. If she didn’t tell him, who would? Did anyone have the heart to do it? She most certainly wouldn’t let that job fall to Weiss, her sister was already torn up from the deaths of her teammates.

“Qrow…… a-about your nieces….” She was clearly on edge, her tone was shaky. “What about them, where they hell are they damnit?!” He was getting angry at this point. He wanted to know where they were, but Winter knew he couldn’t handle the truth.

But she was going to have to tell him anyway.

“Qrow, I-I’m sorry, b-but after the evacuation… Weiss was the only member of Team RWBY that made it to Vacuo….” There it was, Winter told him exactly what happened.

He just seemed to stand there for a minute, staring blankly at her. And then, he let out a laugh, a very raspy and disturbed laugh. “G-good one Ice Queen, seriously, where the actual fuck are they.”

He was in denial, Winter could tell, she knew Qrow better than to think he genuinely didn’t believe her. “Qrow… I’m so sorry… they had already fallen by the time I arrived….. that bitch Cinder had managed to sneak in with the refuges…. I-I am so sorry.”

And then, Qrow let out another chuckle, his eyes welling up with tears. Suddenly, he turned to the wall on his left, and swung his fist into it, hitting it with enough force to leave a crack.

The cry that he let out afterwards was absolute heartbreaking for anybody close enough to hear it. Behind Qrow, several more figures entered the hallway that they were situated in. Looking past them, Winter was further distressed. It was Weiss, as well as the other survivors.

Qrow seemed to notice them showing up as well, and turned to face them, his expression one of pure heartbreak and sorrow. When Weiss saw his face, he knew that Winter had told him what happened. And the knowledge that the poor man had to be informed of the death of two people he held so dear to him…… it broke Weiss yet again.

Once again, Weiss cried. This time, she was not crying alone.

Chapter Text

Weiss was glad to finally be back in the field on a search and destroy mission. It was about time she got back to killing stuff to numb her brain. A good mission or two… or ten, would help ease the stress.

Fortunately, Jaune knew that it would get her mind off of the rest of RWBY, so when a notification came up that a group of huntsmen we’re requesting backup dealing with a group of large Deathstalkers, he gladly signed up J…W…N..R…E… technically JWNORE if you count Oscar, but they didn’t bring him on missions.

Speaking of Jaune, Weiss practically had to shield him the entire time, since he was relatively defenseless. He still had his shield, but his sword was currently under repair and set to be returned to him with the new shipment of gear for the team. So for now, he was left without a weapon to fight with.

Of course Weiss was left guarding him the entire time, not Emerald, not Nora, not Ren, nope, Weiss was left to be Jaune’s knight in shining armor. Rather ironic given Jaune’s knightly flare as opposed to Weiss’ more princess like appearance.

By now, she was busy attempting to fight off a group of tiny Deathstalkers that had emerged from the sands around Jaune and ambushed him. Weiss ended up getting struck rather hard by one of the Grimm’s claws, taking a good chunk out of her aura.

Behind Weiss, her Arma Gigas was currently locked in combat with probably the largest Deathstalker that Weiss had ever seen. The giant knight attempted to swipe its sword down at the Grimm, but ended up missing and snagging its Blade in the ground.

This opened it up for the Deathstalker to skewer the knight on its sharpened tail, before then throwing it off to the side. Unfortunately for Weiss, who had just finished clearing out the smaller Deathstalkers, the Arma Gigas was hurled straight towards her.

Weiss could feel the force of her summon being launched at her, and began to brace herself for impact. What she didn’t see coming, was the feeling of two strong arms wrapping around her, and her aura suddenly being replenished.

Jaune had jumped straight into Weiss, embracing her and using his semblance to boost her aura back to full. Unfortunately, all that wound up doing was putting Jaune in the crossfire as well, and thus, both of them were impacted by the Arma Gigas being flung at them.

They both went flying from the impact, crashing dozens of feet away in the sand, their auras shattering, though fortunately any serious injuries were avoided, mostly thanks to Jaune’s semblance. Of course, they were both still in serious pain from all the blunt force they were hit with, Jaune barely being able to sit up, and Weiss needing to use Myrtenaster as leverage to kneel.

“Ugh… I-I appreciate the effort Jaune, but… I think you put us both out of commission with that move.” Weiss tried her hardest to lighten the mood, but the sound of the approaching giant Deathstalker shot them both back to reality.

“Y-yeah, realizing my mistake now!” Jaune attempted to get up and make his way over to Weiss, but both of them were still too winded to move properly. The Deathstalker rushed towards Weiss, and readied its tail to strike.

Fortunately, a barrage of bullets straight to its tail caused the appendage to break off from the Deathstalker and fall to the ground. Weiss and Jaune both turned to see Emerald and Ren aiming their pistols at the Grimm. From behind them, Nora catapulted herself into the air.

Soaring past the blazing sun in the sky, Nora raised Magnhild high, and prepared to strike. She then came crashing down straight on top of the Grimm, bringing her hammer into its torso with ludicrous force. The strike immediately snapped the Deathstalker clean in half, killing it instantly.

“Whew! Man it feels nice to cut loose and smash some stuff again!” Nora enthusiastically picked herself up and collapsed her weapon back into its compact form. “You two ok?” She turned to Weiss and Jaune.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine, I just…. I’m just really sweaty… and tired.” Weiss once again began to complain about the heat exhaustion. Honestly, it irritated her more than anything that the Grimm could do to her.

“Weeeeellllll, lucky you. Oscar just messaged me that our new gear should be arriving at our dorm shortly.” Weiss perked up at that, clearly excited at the prospect of finally getting some new gear. She’s been smelting in her current outfit, hopefully her new one will be a little less layered.

————————————————

Weiss’ prayers were fortunately answered. On top of her outfit not being anywhere near as thick in the materials, it now ditched a lot of unnecessary areas of coverage altogether. Most of her collar, arms, and her legs apart from her boots are now completely free. Weiss found the newfound openness of her outfit to be a very welcome change.

Nora’s new outfit was also noticeably less heavy, with the most covered part being the new white crop jacket she was wearing. The majority of her outfit apart from that was rather thin and maneuverable, with the slight exception of her new belt which held multiple pouches held by strings.

Ren’s outfit was the most similar to his previous one, mostly just cutting down on the padding to make way for more maneuverability and less bulky warmth. He also noticeably had a black jacket with red accents tied around his waist. It looks very similar to the one Nora had worn in Mistral.

Surprisingly, Emerald and Oscar both were given new gear as well. Emerald’s was rather non-concealing for most of her torso, her short, bright green crop top barely hidden behind a brown overall top. From the waist down her outfit was relatively thin, but had much more coverage.

Oscar’s updated outfit was a lot more sleek and combat-oriented. His coat was thinner, shorter, and dropped a lot of its warming bulk in exchange for additional armor padding. His outfit otherwise remained the same, save for it being generally darker in color.

Weiss had to admit, most of her friends looked rather good in their new outfits. Clearly the designers had maneuverability and comfort in mind as opposed to the padding and warmth of their previous Atlas gear.

Though Weiss was yet to see all of the new gear, as Jaune was still changing into his. It took his longer to arrive since Coco, who for some reason was in charge of delivering their new outfits, got caught up in a conversation with Velvet on her way to the JWNORE dorm.

She was glad to see them again, but it felt like they were far more focused on each other instead of doing their jobs and delivering the new gear. Whatever, Weiss could go complain to them later, right now, she just had to wait and see Jaune’s new outfit.

What was taking him so damn long? Is his outfit really that hard to put on? It only took Weiss about 5 minutes to put her’s on, why is it taking Jaune over 15 to do the same. When the heck is he gonna get out of the changing room, everyone wanted to see what he-

Oh…. He’s out now…. And he redid his hair. No wonder it took him so long to get changed. His new haircut was much less trimmed than his previous one, being more wild and less spiked up. Though the hair on his forehead had all be swooped up a bit to stay out of his vision.

For his actual outfit, it was, as to be expected, less bulky than his Atlas gear, though still plenty heavy given its nature as armor. From the waist down he wore a pair of faded blue jeans and brown combat boots designed for coarse terrains.

His sleeves now cut off just at the edge of his bicep, leaving most of his arms open and uncovered. Weiss had to admit that she honestly enjoyed that last aspect. His arms were rather well built and strong, so she was not about to complain about seeing his muscles on display more often.

What drew Weiss’ eye in a less exciting way, the red sash now refitted as a bandana that was wrapped around his neck. Even after all this time, Pyrrha still weighed heavy on everybody, haunting their minds and hurting their souls.

But they couldn’t let themselves get caught up in the grief… much like how they couldn’t get caught up by Ruby, Blake and Yang’s disappearance. They had a job to do, and they had to do it properly, otherwise everyone was screwed.

Ugh, why couldn’t she have just focused on Jaune’s muscles, at least then she wouldn’t be upset. If anything, she was getting excited looking at them. Whatever, it’s time they got back to work.

“Looks like you guys are all prepped for the wasteland.” Everyone’s attention was brought to the door, which had now been opened. Standing in the doorway, was Coco, holding a tablet. “Good, cause you’ve got another assignment coming up.”

She tossed the tablet to Jaune, who caught it and surveyed the screen. He then looked back up to Coco, gave her a nod, and tossed the tablet back to her. Coco left her spot leaned against their doorframe and began walking away.

“Alright team, we’ve got a search and rescue mission about 10 klicks north, so we’ve gotta-“ Jaune was cut off by Nora speaking up “Uh…. What’s a Klick?” Jaune just sighed before responding. “It’s a kilometer, or around 0.6 miles.” Nora just gave a thumbs up.

“Ok team, let’s get ready to head back out there, we’ve got a job to do.”

Chapter Text

Emerald was still not the most used to combat against the Grimm of Vacuo. Even after 2 weeks in the field, it still felt weird to fight the beasts that were commanded by her previous master. Of course, she had fought Grimm before, but it just felt so… alien to her doing it as a Huntress.

Was she even really a Huntress? Sure, she was on payroll with the rest of Jaune’s team and Weiss, but she was never given any sort of identification or licensing as a Huntress. When she asked Jaune about it, he said that he proudly considered her a Huntress on his team. When she went to ask Coco about it, she whacked her with her purse and told her to screw off.

Even in spite of the mixed reception to her new allegiance, Emerald knew that she still had a lot of work to do if she ever wanted to make up for her horrid crimes towards humanity. So, she gladly gave her services as a Huntress on the newly branded Team JWNORE.

One such use of her services, the search and rescue mission that they were currently on. A group of civilians were caught out on their way back from a visit to Mistral by a group of Sicklehands, a newer Grimm modeled after a Mantis. Salem had only just recently created them by the time Emerald had deserted her ranks.

Jaune had signed up the team to rescue the civilians from the new, very dangerous Grimm. By this point, his weapon was finally restored. Actually, restored was an understatement, it was heavily upgraded. It now featured a secondary blade attachment that nearly doubled the overall weight of the blade, and also contained a very wide speed shotgun barrel.

Finally having some ranged capability definitely helped Jaune in combat. Though unfortunately not enough to avoid being swung into Weiss by one of the Sicklehands after it picked him up. Weiss herself had already finished dealing with the Sicklehand that she targeted so neither of them were in danger, but she could clearly see both of their faces turn beat red at the position they had found themselves in. Weiss was lying on her back, pressed against the sand, while Jaune was prone above her, only kept off her by his arms propping him up.

Nora was fortunately close enough to deal with the Sicklehand that thrashed Jaune. Now all that’s left was the one that Emerald herself was currently trying to avoid being swiped by. At least, she thought there was only the one left, but a scream behind her proved that wrong.

Turning around, she noticed two of the civilians, a mother and her young daughter, being caught off guard by another Sicklehand emerging from the sand. Quickly, Emerald turned her attention to the Grimm attacking the civilians, and begin opening fire on it.

The Sicklehand was quickly dispatched by Emerald’s barrage of bullets, leaving the civilians safe. Unfortunately, Emerald was not so safe, as the Sicklehand behind her had made its way behind her. Before she could fully turn around to fire on the Grimm, she was struck in the side by its sharp sickle claws, shredding through her aura and knocking her into the sand.

Emerald had forgotten just how sharp those claws were, but the pooling of blood in the sand beneath her definitely served as a good reminder. Well that wound was probably gonna hurt for a while, that’s just perfect. To add to the misfortune, the Sicklehand was rapidly approaching her.

Fortunately, it was taken out by a blast of buckshot from Jaune, who had finally managed to pry himself off of Weiss, who was also back on her feet. Jaune quickly made his way over to Emerald and kneeled down at her side. He immediately began using his semblance to accelerate her healing.

“You good Em?!” She coughed a bit before turning towards him. “Y-yeah, I’ll live…. Everyone else ok? All the civilians make it out alright?” Jaune just sighed in relief before answering. “Yeah, they’re fine, thanks to you.”

Emerald was more relieved by the safety of the civilians than her own safety. Though her relief was a bit short lived, replaced with the guilt creeping in, feeling that she was partially responsible for the situation in the first place.

“A-alright, we done yet? Cause I could really go for something to eat.” By now, her wound had fully healed and she was able to make her way back to her feet. She quickly looked towards the civilians, making sure that all of them were accounted for. Next to her, Jaune spoke up. “Yeah, we’re finished here, now let’s get the civilians back to the city.”

———————————————

After arriving back at Shade, Emerald had immediately made her way to the Academy dining hall, looking to get something to eat. The dining hall wasn’t the most populated, only about 5 or 6 other teams sat there. Emerald was able to make her way to the buffet, only receiving dirty looks from about 5 people in the room.

Jaune, Weiss and Oscar had joined her, but they had already gotten their food and sat down, Emerald lagging behind since she needed to stop at the Campus Laundromat due to her gear being bloodstained. Ren and Nora opted to stay back at the dorm, and Emerald knew damn well that they were gonna have to do some seriously cleanup when they got back to their room.

Emerald was nearly done filling her plate with food, and ready to head back to their table, but a hand was suddenly placed on her shoulder. Emerald nearly dropped her plate, but managed to keep all the food on it and place it back on the buffet counter.

Turning back around, she noticed a familiar, tall figure staring at her from behind a pair of sunglasses. “Oh, h-hi Coco.” Even from behind the sunglasses, Emerald could tell that Coco was giving her the stink eye. The rest of CFVY were all now seated in the main dining hall, opting to sit next to Emerald’s own team.

“Hey there greenie, been a while.” Coco’s tone was relatively irritated at the sight of Emerald. “Y-yeah, it has…. I-I’m sorry about… what happened to you at the Vytal Fesiltival…” Coco rolled her eyes at Emerald’s apology. “Sure you are. Look, kid, I know you’re on our side now or whatever, but don’t think I’m just gonna be all buddy-buddy with you because of that.”

She expected that much, knowing damn well that most people would probably still hate her for what she did. Honestly, Emerald was surprised that she wasn’t arrested as soon as they arrived in Vacuo. “I-I figured….” She just turned away from Coco and picked up her plate again. Unfortunately, Coco went to stop her again.

“Look, you don’t get to just-“ She was cut off by somebody else entering the buffet. “Coco, back off already, she’s had enough.” Both of them turned around to see Jaune, Weiss and Oscar entering the room. “Just go sit down if you’re not gonna do anything but harass her.” Weiss continued to go to her defense. “Yes, she did some terrible things, but she can’t make up for them if she’s always being hounded by others.” Coco stopped for a moment, before sighing and walking away. “Fine, but she still owes me some sunglasses.”

She eventually left the room and made her way back to the rest of Team CFVY’s table, all of who seemed a bit on edge by Emerald’s presence, but Velvet waved to her anyway. Yatsu and Fox only bothered to spare a glance in her direction.

Emerald was about to head back to the table that Jaune, Weiss and Oscar were previously sat at, but she felt a hand placed on her back. Turning to her left and down a bit, Oscar had caught her attention. “Em, don’t let what she says get to you. Everyone knows that you’re trying to make up for your mistakes, and they all appreciate it, but it’s going to take them a while to really get used to you being around.”

Jaune also spoke up to her right. “Yeah, don’t let some words bring you down, just gotta keep moving forward, Pyrrha helped me realize that you can be better than what the people who belittle you say you can be.” Emerald was at first grateful for Jaune’s support, but the mention of Pyrrha brought a lot of her guilt back to the surface.

The others could clearly tell that, so Weiss placed a hand on her shoulder. “Emerald, it’s ok, we know you’re not a bad person, so prove it to everyone else. We believe in you… your team believes in you.” Weiss felt a bit weird saying that to Emerald. She herself was still a bit on edge about her being there, but she did truly believe what she said to her. Emerald wasn’t a bad person, and it was about time that everyone, Weiss included, gave her a proper chance to make things right.

Because, at the end of the day, it’s better to at least give somebody a second shot if they really want to make a difference.

Chapter Text

Nora really hated it every time her newfound scars began to get itchy or hit her with a jolt of pain. Honestly, it’s probably the most irritating thing she had to deal with in a long time. Fortunately, Ren was there to help her properly treat the bursts of pain, it would be much harder to do it by herself, and nobody else wanted to stare at her while she was in her underwear.

“Nora, has the stinging gone down yet?” He continued to apply her physical therapy gel that the local doctor’s office provided her with. It helped ease the pain and numb the itching, but it always seemed to come back after a few days. “Y-yeah, it’s dying down now.” Ren gently removed his hand from her back, allowing the gel to dry against her skin.

After a few moments of allowing Nora to sit there, he eventually leaned against her side, placing an arm across her shoulders, and his other hand atop one of hers. “Nora, are you….. ok?” He looked her straight in the eyes with a face of love and concern. “I-I’m fine Ren… I-I can live with this.. besides, docs said the pain would only last for a month or two, so only around another week left.

“N-No, I mean…. Are you really ok… now that you have these?” He gently ran a hand along some of the scars running along her collar. Nora just sighed before looking back at him, and leaning her head against his shoulder. “I’ll be fine Ren. I just… it’s taking a bit of time to adjust to them, but I’m not gonna let em drag me down.” She smiled lightly as she continued to cuddle up to him.

Ren should’ve expected that answer, Nora wasn’t the type to let her scars keep her down. He smiled with her, and leaned his head against the top of her own. “That’s why I love you.” Nora giggled a bit at his proclamation of love, knowing damn well just how much he admired her will.

“Yeah, that’s what I love about me too.” She sort of proudly joked to him. Ren just chuckled and further pulled her closer to his body, planting a quick kiss to the top of her head. “Alright, we should probably get you-“ He was cut off by the sound of the dorm room’s door opening behind him.

The two turned towards the door to see Emerald and Oscar entering the room. “About time you two got back.” Nora flashed an unamused look at the two of them. Oscar just rolled his eyes with a smirk before returning to the room’s couch in order to watch the TV. Emerald on the other hand, just sort of stood there, looking a bit dejected.

Nora took note of that, but she had a question to ask them first. “Hey, where’s Weiss and Jaune?” Oscar piped up behind her. “They said they were gonna try and get some training in, help Jaune get a better handle on his upgraded sword.” Yeah, Nora bet that Weiss wanted to get a very firm handle on his “sword”.

Whatever, she could chuckle about those two and their obvious horniness at another time, right now, Emerald clearly had something keeping her down in the dumps. “You good Em? You seem kinda bummed.” Emerald barely even looked up at Nora’s question. “I-I’ll be fine, it’s just….” She didn’t even finish her sentence, just standing there awkwardly.

“We ran into CFVY in the dining hall, Coco apparently wanted to start trouble with her.” Nora heard Oscar speak behind her. Ren just sighed in disappointment at the words of Coco’s pettiness. Nora likewise felt annoyed by what Coco did, but unlike Emerald’s obvious intentions to let her continue, she was gonna do something about it.

“Alright, let’s go, we’re heading to CFVY’s dorm room.” Nora stood up from her chair and walked past Emerald. “Huh? N-Nora, you don’t-“ Nora didn’t even let her finish. “Yes I do, she doesn’t get to start crap with one of my teammates and get away with it. We’re going to talk to her right now, and I’m gonna make her apologize.”

Nora continued her walk towards the door, before she quickly stopped and pivoted on her feet.

“Right after I put on some clothes.”

——————————————

The walk to CFVY’s dorm was a bit stressful for Emerald. She was clearly not looking forward to speaking to Coco again, but she knew better than to try and stop Nora when she was determined. So, she just followed her as she stomped through the halls of Shade.

Eventually, after a few minutes of travel, they had reached Team CFVY’s room, and stood in front of the door. Before Emerald could even say anything, Nora began relentlessly knocking on the door. Honestly she was more so punching it than knocking on it.

From behind the door, the two of them heard footsteps approaching. After a few seconds and the sounds of Coco’s voice speaking to somebody else, the door finally opened, and Coco was standing in the door way. “Oh, hey there sparky, and…. Emerald.” Her expression soured a bit at the sight of Emerald, clearly not very enthused to see her.

“Yeah, hi, we’re here cause I don’t appreciate you being a jerk to my teammate here.” Nora immediately got ticked at Coco and gestured towards Emerald when bringing Coco’s treatment of her up. “Emerald’s one of us now. I know asking you to be her friend is a total impossibility, but try not to be a bitch to her.”

Coco didn’t seem to care much for Nora’s words at first. “Yeah… maybe when she finally makes up for all the-“ and then Nora slammed her fist into a wall, leaving a pretty sizable hole in it. “I know she has a lot to make up for, but she can’t really do that if people like YOU keep hounding her about it!”

That definitely got Coco a little less pissed and a little more scared. Sometimes Emerald forgot just how freakishly strong Nora was. “So how about, you two just be civilized about this, ok? Maybe try to get to know each other a bit.”

After a bit of very awkward staring between her and Emerald, Coco eventually let out a sigh and spoke. “Alright, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to give it a shot. Maybe I can take you out for a drink sometime.” From inside the room, an irritated “Ahem” was heard.

Looking past Coco, a very irritated looking Velvet was wrapped in a blanket on one of the dorm’s beds. “I’m not asking her out Bunbun, just trying to see if I can get a drink out of her.” Coco spoke to her teammate and turned back into the dorm, closing the door behind her.

“Well… I think that went decently.” Nora enthusiastically proclaimed after a few seconds of standing outside the door. Emerald had to admit, it went better than expected… which isn’t exactly a high bar to clear, but still.

Whatever, she just wanted to get back to their room and rest. Hopefully Jaune and Weiss were back by now.

———————————————

Inside the training room, Jaune found himeself attempting to either dodge or block a bombardment of rapid speed jabs from Weiss and her sword, flying at him from all around, bouncing off a series of glyphs. Somehow, he had managed to avoid all of the attacks, still having most of his aura intact.

At least, that was until Weiss placed a Gravity glyph underneath him. The glyph elevated him into the air, and he dropped his sword from the sudden jolt off the ground. From above him, Weiss stopped on a glyph angled straight down, and held out Myrtenaster straight ahead, ready to lunge.

When she did lunge, Jaune managed to fire of a blast of gravity dust from his shield, knocking himself to the right a bit, causing Weiss’ strike to miss. He then spun in the air, and grabbed onto Weiss’ arms. Unfortunately, Weiss’ gravity glyph had dissipated by this point, and the two of them fell to the ground in a pile.

When Weiss finally opened her eyes after the impact, she was immediately faced with quite the embarrassing sight. Jaune’s face, planted straight against her chest. Strangely, she didn’t immediately kick him off of her, instead just sort of… laying there, not moving at all.

When Jaune took notice of their position, he did have the courtesy to fall backwards and begin profusely apologizing. “Weiss, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen, I didn’t think-“ Weiss raised a hand to silence him. “I-it’s fine Jaune, accidents happen.” Both of them were rather red in the face. “M-maybe we should head back to the room now.” Weiss agreed with Jaune. “Y-yeah, probably.”

What she wouldn’t let Jaune know, was her disappointment when he removed his head from her chest.

Jaune likewise wouldn’t make it vocal how pleasant the contact felt. Nor would he open up to her about the sudden influx of some very familiar feelings.

Chapter Text

Jaune figured that now was as good a time as any to finally talk about what happened. Weiss was gone, visiting her family. Emerald and Oscar were also off somewhere else, but he didn’t exactly want that. It was just him, Ren, Nora and . Team JNR, together in the dorm room.

He knew they’d understand his grief…. he hadn’t truly opened up to them about what Penny’s last request had really done to him. Even almost 2 months later, he was completely torn apart by guilt over what he was forced to do. He really needed to try and lift some of the crushing weight… even if he would probably never be able to life all of it.

“H-Hey…… guys…… can I… just…… I-I……. I need to get some stuff off my chest, is that ok?” The rest of the group all turned to him, looking on with mild concern. “Of course Jaune, what did you need to say?” Ren was the first to question what exactly he needed to open up about.

“it’s… it’s about Penny…” Everyone’s mood went from worried to distraught at the mere mention of her name. Jaune had already told them all what Penny had him do, but he never really took the time to open up about how much it affected him.

“I just…. I just need to talk about it…. I…… I feel like….. I could have saved her…. I-I know there wasn’t really another way, a-and it was what she wanted… b-but….. O-oh god…. Ruby would hate me….” Jaune hadn’t even thought about how Ruby would feel…. He was too focused on how he already felt, he didn’t even think about how it might be impacting others….. others that Penny held so close to their hearts…….. others that held Penny close to theirs. That just made him feel even worse about everything.

“I-I…… T-there…. I just…..” Before he could continue his broken, torn apart sentence, he felt a hand being placed atop his own. Looking up, he saw Ren, now sitting right next to him. “Jaune…. What you had to do…. Is not something anyone should ever have to…. But you did…. And…. I know that you probably will never quite shake the feeling that things could have gone differently….. but please…. Know that we will always be here for you to lean on…. Your pain is ours to help you bear…… we brave this storm together, and fight it off as one. For Penny, and for Pyrrha.”

Normally, the mention of Pyrrha would be enough to send Jaune into a fit of tears, but now…… hearing her name felt… comforting… it felt nice. “I-I..” He was immediately stopped by a weight embracing him from his left. He turned and looked down, noticing Nora catching him in a hug. He just smiled at her and placed a hand around her, returning the hug. He turned back to Ren, and continued. “I…. T-Thanks guys… I-I know… that it was the only good choice at the time, I just…. I just wish I didn’t have to be the one to make it…. But…… I don’t want anyone else to have to deal with… all the guilt…… the pain…… I-I…. I just….”

He was again stopped by Ren moving his hand to Jaune’s shoulder. “We know Jaune… it’s ok…… you did what needed to be done…… and… it’s ok to regret doing it…… sometimes the only option is one that leaves us torn apart inside.”

“Guys……” To his left, Nora spoke up. “You’re not the bad guy for what you did, and if Ruby was here… she would for a minute believe that.” He knew that he was about to start crying… and he also knew that this was about as far as this conversation could really fix things.

“T-Thanks… guys, but… I-I need to talk about something else or I think I’m just gonna have a breakdown…..” Ren and Nora both immediately understood his desire to take a break from the topic of Penny. “Ok… if you need to put this on hold, we will…… is there anything else that you needed to say?”

There was, one thing that he honestly never would have expected to say back after Beacon fell, but the past few months… he felt like there was something…… someone, that old feeling were bubbling back to the surface over.

“There…. Is one thing… one other thing I need to tell you guys about…. I-I haven’t really told anyone about this yet…..” Ren and Nora both looked to him with concern. “It’s not… anything bad… it’s just….”

Their expressions did lighten a bit at that, but they were still curious as to what he needed to say. Well…. Jaune figured that it was about time he finally got it off his chest…… and he was thankful that Weiss wasn’t here at the moment.

“I think…. I think that I still love Weiss.”

—————————————————

Weiss was glad that she was finally able to sit down and have a nice conversation with her family for the first time in years. The mood was calm, peaceful, and reminiscent of some of the only good times back at the manor… the times back when Weiss was young, when Winter was still at home, and when their father was away for business. She still remembered that time when she was around four years old, where she and Winter had turned Weiss’ bedroom into an enormous pillow fort. Their mother practically had an aneurysm at the sight, before she broke down in a fit of laughter.

The fact that she could just sit down with her family, talk, and have a nice cup of coffee, or… 12 cups and counting on Winter’s case, she was clearly very exhausted by her duties as the Winter Maiden… w-whatever, she’ll get back to that at another time, the point is, that Weiss was glad that she was able to share a moment like this with her family again. Even if these moments weren’t all that common due to Winter’s constant need to be elsewhere.

“So, darling, how has it been… out in the field?” Her mother spoke up, attempting to get some information on Weiss’ daily life as a Huntress. “It’s… definitely stressful… but I can manage it… dealing with Grimm was never the easiest task for one to undertake.”

Winter sighed in agreement, having been working as a Huntress for far longer than Weiss had, and having so much more experience to back up Weiss’ claims about the stress. She’s probably fought more Grimm in the past 2 months than she had in the past year beforehand.

Whitley paid this little mind, instead more forced on his coffee, attempting to process just how different the coffee in Vacuo is to the much more refined stuff they usually drank in Atlas. Honestly, Weiss sort of liked the coffee in Vacuo better, it was much less bitter. Though, in her opinion, the coffee in Mistral was the best out of any kingdom.

“So, Weiss, how have things been with your team?” Winter was the next to speak up. “I hope that they’re all treating you properly.” Weiss just chuckled at Winter’s concerns. Sure, Jaune’s team wasn’t quite Team RWBY, but they were still an amazing team to be a part of.

…..But still….. they weren’t Team RWBY

W-whatever, mope on your own time Weiss, you came here to get your mind off of all that. Just think of things that make you happy… other than your team. Things like… music…… your family that you’re with, Jaune.

….wait, what?

Oh… right… she had almost forgotten about those feeling for Jaune that she just couldn’t shake recently. God, she felt like such an idiot, thirsting after him like he did for her back at Beacon….. honestly, looking back on it, while very idiotic… she found most of his cartoonish advances on her to be a bit cute…… though still very irritating in how he continued to pester her even after she made it clear that she did not reciprocate the feelings at the time.

But Jaune was far from that goofy idiot boy she used to know. He was an adult now, a mature, kind, strong… well sculpted adult. D-damnit Weiss, get your mind out of the gutter. Jaune is your friend and your current leader, stop having these perverted fantasies about him!

“W-Well, t-they’re all treating me rather well. Ren and Nora are both amazing friends, Oscar is quite the little genius and very fun to spend time with, Emerald…. Emerald is admittedly a bit of a sore spot. Jaune is…. Jaune’s perfect.” Weiss realized what she finished that sentence with and immediately attempted to rectify what she said “P-Perfect as our leader, he’s rather mature and intelligent!”

She could feel a everyone staring at her, with Winter’s smug glare being the most prevalent of the three. Winter knew, her mother knew, Whitley… probably didn’t really care, he always saw feelings like that as redundant.

But the point is, it was obvious now….

…..she had fallen in love with Jaune Arc.

How ironic… after all the time she spent avoiding him and his advances back at Beacon, now all she wanted to do was feel his warm body against hers.

Damnit, now the fantasies were coming back.

Chapter Text

When Raven first showed up, Qrow was just about ready to swing Harbinger into her gut, but honestly, he barely had the energy left to lift the damn thing anymore. Instead, he just glared at her, looking on with nothing but pure disgust and rage in his eyes.

Raven didn’t seem to pay his irritation at her presence any mind whatsoever, she clearly had other things on her mind. Qrow figured she was there to start shit with either him or Winter or really anyone who got in her way. His surprise when she immediately started asking where Yang was could not be quantified.

Raven Branwen, giving half a shit about her family, well that was indeed the true shock of the century.

“Spill it Qrow, where the hell is she.” Honestly, if it wasn’t for the fact that Yang was his niece too, Qrow would probably take some joy in telling Raven that the only person she really cared about was gone, just to watch her face crumble in anguish. Unfortunately, he cared about Yang just as much as she did, probably more than that.

“I said spill it, where is my daughter, tell me-“ Qrow cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “YOUR Daughter?! That’s fucking rich. And here I thought that you didn’t do “family”. Fuck off.” Raven just sneered at him. “Qrow, I don’t have time for your edgy bullshit, tell. Me. Where. Yang. Is. Now. Before I rip your spine out of your ass.”

“No need for violence Mrs Branwen… At least, so long as you do not provoke any.” Both of their attention was drawn to another voice nearby. Winter had entered the room they were both sat in, strutting over next to Qrow. Raven just glared at her briefly before continuing.

“Whatever. I’m not here to start a fight, I’m just here for Yang. I can’t use my semblance to get to her, so where the hell is she?” Winter returned Raven’s glare before letting out a sigh. “Mrs Branwen…. Your daughter… as well as her partner and Miss Rose… they’re gone.”

Raven gave Winter a quick glance, before she let out a chuckle. “Yeah, sure. Seriously. Where is she.” Qrow just grit his teeth and slammed a fist on the table they were sat at. “Raven, she’s dead! Yang is dead, Ruby is dead, they’re both dead!” After Qrow snapped, he had expected Raven to have a very poor reaction.

He wasn’t expecting her to just frown at him and say what she did. “Qrow, she’s alive, I can feel it. It’s faint, faint to the point where I can’t use my semblance to reach her, but I can still feel her… she’s alive.” Now it was Qrow’s turn to chuckle at his siblings actions.

“Raven… just fuck off already… she’s gone.”

That just earned him a disappointed stare from his sister. “I’m honestly surprised that you’re the one giving up on her first. Shame on you brother.” With that, Raven stood up, turned on her heels, and left the room. Qrow and Winter both just remained there in silence.

They had to be gone, Raven must have just been feeling the residuals of her bond fading.

Qrow refused to have any hope, in fear of it being misplaced.

———————————————

Team JWNORE’s dorm was quite active despite how late it was… or more accurately, how early it was. It was almost 1 AM, and most of the team was still up and about, watching movies on their TV. They had been given the next day off for all their hard work in the field recently, so they were free to stay up late and wake up even later.

Well, most of them decided on that anyway, Oscar had gone off to bed at his usual time, since Oz was probably going to be needed at some point tomorrow. After Oscar, Emerald drifted off about an hour and a half later.

At the moment, only Jaune, Weiss, Nora and Ren were awake, sitting on the dorm’s couch and watching the TV. Honestly, it looked like that wouldn’t be the case for very long, since Nora was basically half asleep and leaning against Ren’s chest. The two of them looked rather adorable like that.

After about half an hour more of watching the TV, Nora had completely passed out in Ren’s lap. Ren picked her up in a bridal carry and stood up from the couch. “I think it’s about time that the two of us went to bed. Don’t stay up too late, or else you’ll be asleep all day, and that seems like a waste of a day off.”

With that, he walked Nora over to the bunks, placed her down on one of them, and then climbed in next to her. The two of them had started sharing a bunk recently, meaning that Oscar finally got to sleep on a real bed and not just the couch. Though the rest of the team did have to admit that it was a rather nice couch.

Now it was simply just Weiss and Jaune awake on the couch, the only ones not asleep in the room. They just sat there, watching some random movie about an edgy anthropomorphic hedgehog or something like that. It was a good movie, a bit on the goofy side at times, but Jaune felt like that was a good thing.

After about another 15 to 20 minutes, the movie had finally ended, and Weiss was content to finally head off to bed. Unfortunately, Jaune made her stick around for the two post credits scenes. That took another 10 minutes out of her night, but honestly, she wasn’t that mad. She was just glad to spend some time with Jaune while not out in the field.

She still couldn’t believe that she had fallen for him after everything. All of his idiotic attempts to get her attention back at Beacon, all of the dorky flirting and pick up lines. Back then, Weiss just wanted to slam a door into his face with enough force to send him flying across the entire campus. Nowadays, she wished she had given him a chance back then.

Though maybe that wouldn’t have been very good for Pyrrha. Her and Jaune never even got the chance to act on their feelings properly and Weiss didn’t want to break Pyrrha’s heart even worse like that.

“Alright, while that was quite enjoyable, I do believe that it is about time we went off to bed. Ren is right, the longer we stay up, the less time to do something with our day off.” Jaune turned to Weiss with a bit of an awkward smile at her suggestion. “Y-Yeah, you’re probably right.”

The both of them stood up from the couch, with Jaune turning off the TV and setting the remote on top of it. He turned to head back to his bunk, but unfortunately didn’t count on Weiss also attempting to head to hers, causing the two of them to walk straight into each other.

“Oof- S-Sorry.” Weiss was leaning against his chest, his arms on her shoulders to keep her steady in case she almost fell from the collision. Her own arms were pressed up to Jaune’s torso. Jaune looked down at her with concern. “You ok Weiss?” Weiss just looked up at him, before quickly turning her head away to stop him from seeing her blush.

“I-I’m fine.” She sounded and looked rather embarrassed by the situation the two of them had found themselves in. “Ok, good.” Jaune also had a noticeable blush on his face, but unlike Weiss, he didn’t feel the need to avert his gaze from her.

The closeness was driving Weiss absolutely crazy, and Jaune just staring at her like that wasn’t helping either. She honestly felt like she was about to burst from pure embarrassment… or at the very least do something she was probably going to regret at later time. She wasn’t sure if she could control herself any longer if Jaune didn’t let go of her soon.

Unfortunately, he continued to hold onto her shoulders tightly, not letting her go out of concern. “You’re sure?” Weiss responded without looking back at him. “Y-yeah.” Jaune just sighed in relief, but still did not bother to remove his hands from Weiss’ shoulders.

And that was about all that Weiss could take.

“Alright, let’s get to-“ Jaune was completely cut off by the most unexpected thing to happen to either of them in a while. The feeling of Weiss’ lips pressed against his own was apparent immediately, taking away his words and his breath. Weiss herself was basically going off pure instinct, not even sure what the heck she was doing at the moment.

Jaune’s hand left Weiss’ shoulders out of shock and made their way down her body and to her hips. Much like Weiss, Jaune seeming to act on pure instinct. He clutched her hips tightly, pulling her even further against him, holding onto her like she’d run off if he let go.

Unfortunately for the moment, both of them seemed to finally snap back to reality. Their eyes shot open in shock and disbelief over what they were doing, both of them jolting away from each other rapidly. They both just stared at each other with looks of pure confusion.

“W-Weiss?” Jaune was the most level headed of the two at that moment, still having the sense to question what the hell had just happened. Weiss’ shocked eyes suddenly began welling up with tears. “Jaune… I-I’m so sorry.” She held her hands against her chest and backed away slightly.

“W-Wait, Weiss-“ Jaune attempted to move towards her, but Weiss held out her hand to stop him. “I-I… I need to go… I… I need time to think.” She turned towards the door to the room and opened it. “I.. I’ll be back later.” She then bolted out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

Jaune just stood there in disbelief. Weiss…… kissed him……. He didn’t really know how to react to that, so he just…… didn’t react, just standing there, processing everything that just happened.

Hopefully Weiss came back soon, so they could work out what just happened together.

———————————————

Winter made her way back to her quarters, lazily dragging herself across the floor, exhausted and bored. She hoped that she would get a light day tomorrow so she could sleep off all the stress she’s been accumulating over her time as the Winter Maiden.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to start that sleep just yet, as she heard something quickly approaching to her left. Footsteps, rapidly making their way towards her, as if they were about to crash into her.

“Winter.” Turning towards the call of her name, Winter was met with Weiss almost barreling into her, catching her in a hug. “W-Weiss?! C-careful. What… what’s wrong?” Winter could immediately tell that something was troubling Weiss by the tone of her voice.

“Winter….. I need to talk to you…. It’s important… really important…… it’s about Jaune.” Oh. It’s about her team leader. That would explain why Weiss seemed a bit distressed at the moment, her feelings for the boy were rather obvious. Hopefully he hadn’t done anything to hurt her, otherwise Winter would make him pay.

“Alright, come on, in my quarters, I’m too tired to talk standing in the middle of the hallway.” Winter led Weiss into her quarters, hoping that this conversation wouldn’t stress her out even further.

Chapter Text

Weiss’ mind was absolutely running rampant, filling her head with so many mixed emotions and thoughts, so many conflicting feelings that she did not want to feel. She felt like she was about to lose her sanity, and she was already on the verge of a depressive breakdown basically every day that she’s been in Vacuo.

Winter gently set down a cup of coffee on the table in front of her, hopefully that would help ease her mind a bit. It probably wouldn’t, since Coffee didn’t exactly do that, but Weiss never liked tea, so this was the alternative. Winter also made herself a cup of coffee, and Weiss tried very hard to pretend that she didn’t see her pouring a pretty large amount of vodka into it off to the side.

She sat across from Weiss at the table, placing her very spiked coffee in front of her, ready to listen to whatever Weiss has to say. She just waited there patiently, looking at Weiss with a pretty decent amount of concern.

Weiss finally managed to open her mouth through all the conflicting things she wanted to say, forcing herself to finally say something to her sister. “I-I…. You know… you know what Jaune means to me, right?” Winter just gave her a quick nod, confirming that, yes indeed, she knew how Weiss felt for him.

“Well….. f-firstly, I have good reason to believe t-that he feels the same about me.” Winter’s gaze softened a bit, less on edge with the possibility that Jaune hadn’t broken Weiss’ heart. Weiss let out a quick sigh of partial relief at the lightening of Winter’s mood. Afterwards, she once again to speak.

“I….. t-tonight, w-we had a team sleepover…. Nora’s idea.” Weiss’ voice was rather shaky and nervous. “Isn’t… technically every night you sleep a sleepover? You all share a-“ Winter’s rather blunt and confused reaction did make Weiss laugh a bit on the inside. “N-Not really what a sleepover means.. I know, the name is misleading.”

“O…ok then… so what exactly happened?” Weiss just looked down at her cup of coffee, raised it up to take a rather large sip, placed the cup down, and sighed. “Well…. Most of the team went to sleep, a-apart from me and Jaune… we… we were up a bit later than everybody-“

“Weiss! Don’t tell me that you lost y-“ Weiss immediately cut Winter off before she could even finish her sentence. “N-NO! WINTER, THAT’S SO GROSS!” She was positively disgusted that Winter would even suggest that. And maybe… mildly upset that it wasn’t true.

“No, we… we didn’t do that… I-I just… all we did was kiss.” Weiss hoped to the gods above that Winter would take that information well. Unfortunately, the bright blue flames suddenly pooling out of the corners of her eyes seemed to suggest that she didn’t. “I-I initiated it, not him!” Weiss desperately attempted to calm down her sister.

It didn’t do that very well, as Winter’s Maiden fire was still blazing out of her eyes. Fortunately, the scowl she grew on her face had shifted into a look more so of mild annoyance. Weiss didn’t necessarily like that Winter was still annoyed, but she would take what she could get tonight.

“I just… I don’t know what came over me… we just… bumped into each other and then before I knew it… I-I don’t know why I did that… I don’t know.” Weiss was honestly rather ashamed of what she had done earlier. Springing on Jaune like that probably absolutely was not the best thing for either of them.

“Well based on your feelings, I think it’s fairly obvious why you-“ Weiss knew that Winter was about to sass her, and she was not in the mood for it. “Winter, please, not now, not after what happened.” Fortunately, Winter did lay off the attitude after Weiss didn’t take it well.

“Look… Weiss… love is complicated… it makes you feel and do things you don’t usually want to, trust me, I’ve been in 3 separate relationships in the past. My point is, sometimes love can be a stronger force than rationale.” Winter placed a hand on top of Weiss’ shoulder, gently holding her down.

“I know that I can be too much to process some times… sometimes you don’t understand what all of the feelings are… but you need to confront them, not run from them. A fear of the unknown is a great way to keep yourself stuck in one place your whole life.” Weiss again just looked down, this time more out of fear than out of embarrassment. Winter moved her hand to Weiss’ cheek and helped her to look back up.

“Weiss, you love this boy, right?” Weiss just let out a sheepish nod. “Then tell him. Don’t hide from how you feel, embrace it, run with it, don’t just let it eat you alive inside.” She just stared Weiss dead in the eyes, fully seriously, with concern and empathy she rarely saw from her usually much more closed off sister. Though, Weiss supposed that meant Winter had some unfortunate experience with the whole “hiding from her feelings” thing.

“I just… I’m…. Winter, I’m scared it won’t work out. I’m scared it’ll just drive us apart… that we’ll end up hating each other….” Winter looked at Weiss, who had averted her eyes, and sighed. “Well… I can’t exactly deny your fears. My first ex girlfriend does sort of hate me… mostly because I fully committed to the military after we graduated, and she didn’t exactly like General Ironwood.”

“Yes, we’re all aware of how much Robyn hated him, but my point exactly. How do I know that won’t happen to us too? What if I-“ Winter placed a finger on Weiss’ mouth, briefly silencing her. “Weiss… if things don’t work out… then, I hate to say this, but reality works that way sometimes. It’s a leap of faith, you never know if things will pay off, but you need to hold onto the hope that it will.”

“I… I don’t know if I really have any hope left to be honest.” Weiss looked back down, staring at her hands, hands she wished held those of her teammates, her family. But instead, the hands of her sister found their way to them instead, clutching them gently. “Then make some. I know that you’ve been through more than most of us here.. I know that there’s a lot on your shoulders for such a young age, I know that things seem like they’re falling apart, but our hope isn’t dead yet. It’s our job as humanity to get up and face the unknown, with our wits and our hope.”

That managed to get a smile out of Weiss. “Well…. I suppose you’re right… but can I find that hope tomorrow? I’m very tired.” Winter just let out a small chuckle and let go of Weiss’ hands. “Alright, that’s fair I suppose. I’m assuming you’re going to want to stay with me tonight.” Weiss nodded at that, and Winter motioned for her take the nearby bed.

“Winter, you d-“ Winter stopped Weiss before she could turn down her offer. “I’ll be fine Weiss, the couches in Shade are rather nice anyway. Weiss just quietly chuckled. “Alright, fine…. T-Thank you… for this… I really needed it.”

“Weiss, I’m always here to talk to if you need-“ Winter was cut off by Weiss catching her in a hug, nearly toppling her. “Thank you, so much. I love you.” Winter felt a bit of a tear form in her eye after that. She simply smiled softly down at Weiss and placed a hand atop her head. “I love you too, dear sister. Now can you please let me go, I’m probably more tired than you are.”

Both of them laughed a bit after that. Probably the first time either of them had genuinely done so in a long time.

Chapter Text

There was quite a bit of loose hair littering the floor of Raven’s room, scattered all across the area as it continued to fall from Raven’s head at her desk. Raven was carefully cleaving off large chunks of her hair with Omen while staring into the mirror to make sure she didn’t mess anything up.

She figured that it’d be a good idea to cut her hair shorter in order to avoid as much sand getting in it while on a mission. So she sat at the desk, and cut the majority of her hair clean off. By the time she was done, her hair only reached the bottom of her shoulder line.

One thing that generally surprised Raven was her allowance of residence at Shade. She was more than content to just set up camp outside the city, but Theodore had been kind enough to give her a room, as well as a change of clothes.

When she had finally finished with cutting her hair, she began to admire her work in the mirror, carefully making sure that she cut off all the hair that she wanted to. “Eh, it’ll do.” She seemed to be pretty satisfied with the results of her makeshift haircut.

She stood up from her desk, turning around and checking out the back of her hair. “Yeah, good enough for now.” She eventually made her way back to her bed, sitting down on the edge of it, still holding onto Omen.

She sighed slightly, not to anyone in particular, sort of just staring into space. After a while of silence, Raven looked down at Omen in her hand. She raised the sword briefly, before bringing it down in an attempt to form a portal.

Nothing

Again she tried to open another portal, and again nothing. Several more attempts were made, and several more failures occurred. No portal ever appeared on Raven’s attempts, absolutely nothing. She just sighed again.

“Damnit Yang…… just prove me right… come back.”

One last try, and one last failure.

“……Is this karma? Is this what I get for leaving?…… Yang…. If- N-No, when you come back…. I swear…. I’m not leaving you again.”

Several more attempts to form a portal were made that morning.

———————————————

Jaune was rather stressed to say the least. Last night was….. certainly not something he ever expected to happen. He spent basically the entire night processing just what in the heck Weiss did and why she did it.

After explaining what happened to the rest of the team, most of them just smirked at him. Nora in particular laughed quite audibly. By now, Jaune was trying to find Weiss after she had left that night. Jaune had assumed that she decided to stay with her sister, so that was the first place he went to.

After knocking a few times on her door, Jaune waited outside Winter’s room. He heard a series of footsteps inside, signaling that Winter was indeed in the room. After a few minutes, she opened the door to greet Jaune.

Honestly, seeing Winter out of uniform was weird, seeing her with her hair down was even weirder. According to Qrow, back at Atlas, she used to sleep with her uniform on. Jaune probably would’ve laughed a bit at the rumor if it didn’t imply some unhealthy workaholic behavior.

“Oh, Mr Arc. I assume you’re here for Weiss, correct?” Just from the tone of her voice, Jaune could tell that Winter was rather tired, probably meaning that she didn’t get much sleep that past night. He supposed that Weiss kept her up for a while.

“Y-Yes, I am. Is she with you?” Winter shook her head. “No, she left about an hour ago. I believe that she said she wanted to head up to the top floor balcony to clear her head a bit.” Jaune nodded at her. “Thank you, and sorry to wake you.”

Winter just nodded back and closed the door. Jaune turned around and began walking further down the hallway. He continued to make his way across the halls of Shade, trying to reach the way to the top balcony. He knew how to get to the top from the times that he found Nora up there alone, apparently trying to “find out more about herself”, her words not his.

After a few more minutes of walking through the halls and up the stairwells of Shade, Jaune eventually managed to reach the stairs to the Academy’s top balcony. True to Winter’s words, he did indeed find Weiss sitting on one of the many chairs littering the balcony.

She looked rather stunning bathed in the sunlight from the bright morning sky, it highlighting her bright clear skin perfectly. It took Jaune a moment to stop admiring her beauty and make his way over to her side.

“H-Hey, Weiss… everything ok?” She didn’t exactly seemed shocked that he had found her. “Hello Jaune, I’m guessing Winter told you where I was.” She turned her head towards him and he nodded towards her.

“Of course. And… yes, I’m fine Jaune, just a bit… flustered.” She had stood up and turned to face him, staring straight into his eyes. “I needed to think some things through.” Jaune again nodded in understanding. He was also rather scrambled after what had happened last night.

“Weiss….. is it ok if we talk…… about last night.” Weiss sighed at him softly before answering. “Yes, yes, it’s ok Jaune.” Weiss had slightly turned away from Jaune after his question, clearly a bit embarrassed at the prospect.

“I just…. I want to know…. I want to know why…. I-I just don’t get why you did that…. I’m not mad or even upset, I’m just…….. confused.” He stared at Weiss with a look of both pure bafflement and sincere concern. He wanted to know why Weiss did it, but he wasn’t at all angry at her for doing it.

Again, Weiss just sighed, still very embarrassed, but read to finally speak up to Jaune about why she did it. “Jaune Arc…. I know this seems rather unreasonable given our past at Beacon……… but neither of us are the same people we were back then…… we’ve both grown….. we’ve both changed….. as have feelings.” She continued to stare him in the eyes.

“Jaune, for a while now, things between us have been rather different then they used to be, and I know that you are aware of that.” Jaune seemed to both understand things a bit better and still have one massive question. “Weiss…. A-Are you saying….”

“Yes Jaune…. I am… I-I love y-“ Before she could even finish her sentence, she found a pair of hands on her shoulders, and the feeling of warm lips pressed against her own. Jaune had pulled her into a sudden kiss, far less aggressive than the one from last night, much more passionate and gentle.

Weiss’ arms found themselves wrapping around Jaune’s torso, pulling him closer against her, as if they didn’t want to ever let him go. Unfortunately, the two of them did eventually have to break apart from the kiss and pull back for air.

“Weiss…. I-I love you too… I know it’s… I…I don’t think I’ll ever really get over Pyrrha… but I know she wouldn’t want me to wallow alone for my whole life…. I…I… I like you a lot… I have since we first met and… well, you already knew that part but… still….”

Weiss chuckled softly at the reminder of Jaune’s past advances. “Yes… we’re all aware of that….. so… a-are we….. a-a couple now?” Jaune just looked down and smiled at her. “I mean…. I-I guess when can at least try to be one… see if things work out.”

“….yeah, t-that sounds nice.” Weiss look up into his eyes, positively smitten by the opportunity that she was presented with. And so, the leaned in towards Jaune, and proceeded to kiss him yet again.

For the first time since they had arrived in Vacuo, the two of them felt truly at peace. They felt happy.

———————————————

Heel’s against sand was a rather bad combination, especially since heels were designed for a more level terrain. Disregarding the uneasy time keeping balanced on the uneven sands, she continued walking through the deserts of Vacuo, her gray cloak flowing behind her from the morning winds, its orange and crimson internal accents plainly visible.

By the time she was finally able to see the city of Vacuo, she was just about done with all the sand getting in her hair. It was an absolute pain in the ass to try and get it out, especially since she could only use one of her hands to do so, or else risk clawing her scalp open.

Fortunately she didn’t care about the heat, she was already used to intense heat at almost all times, and it was a rather nice change from the positively unbearable coldness of Atlas, a kingdom she never wanted to feel the the displeasure of returning to ever again.

But now, that she had finally arrived in Vacuo, Cinder Fall was ready to finally ready to burn the kingdom down like the Vale and Atlas before it.

Chapter Text

Cinder continued to attempt to avoid getting an absolute hailstorm of sand in her hair with her cloak. As she kept on tracking through the desert of Vacuo, she help the cloth high around her head, using it as a curtain to block her hair from the sands around her.

“Ugh… damn desert… where the hell is the fucking meeting spot?!” She kept making her way across the uneven sands and trekking past mountains and rock and whatever the hell else littered the massive empty expanse of Vacuo.

She hated sand so damn much, it was coarse, rough, irritating, and it kept getting everywhere. She hated sand so much more than she hated snow. At least when she was in the snow ridden tundra of Atlas, the cold ground beneath her easily melted under her immense body heat. Sand takes a LOT more heat to harden into glass than it takes for snow to melt.

There had been multiple attempts to find somewhere to sit down and relax for a moment or two, but there was absolutely nowhere to go with any cover from all of the sand being wafted into her face by the warm morning winds.

After about 3 whole hours of constantly being pelted by sand and pebbles, 3 hours of trudging through the absolutely infuriating sands of Vacuo, Cinder finally found her location. In the distance, she noticed a small house or multi-story shed of some sort, fitting the description that Salem had given her for the location of Tyrian and Mercury.

Cinder continued to make her way towards the structure in the distance, keeping her slow pace across the sand. It took her about another 5 minutes to finally arrive at the house, finally having some relief from the sandy winds, which were fortunately coming from the direction the house stood in front of.

She practically yanked the door to the building, quickly causing it to fling open at pretty high speeds, shoving aside quite a bit of sand on the ground as she did so. As she entered the building, she slammed the door closed with enough force to slightly shake the building.

When she slammed the door, she noticed a figure across the room from the door fall off of a couch and onto the hard wooden floor. She’d take the splintery wood over the uneven and coarse sands. Walking over to the figure across the room, Cinder noticed his gray attire.

“Mercury, get the hell up immediately.” She stared down at Mercury with contempt and disappointment. “Yeah yeah, back up so I don’t freaking hit your ugly mug on the way up.” Cinder wanted to incinerate his insides for that remark, but she couldn’t due to Mercury’s current high standing with Salem, or risk even more pain.

After Mercury eventually stood up, Cinder noticed that he looked tired beyond belief, though not in a way that signaled a lack of sleep or overworking. He looked mentally exhausted, as if something had been taking a rather large toll on his mind. Whatever, Cinder didn’t particularly care how he felt, she never cared how he felt. He was at least partially right about her care for her underlings, she couldn’t care less if he died.

She wished that Emerald was here and not Mercury, at least she wouldn’t dare to ever talk back to her…….. and deep down, Cinder had to admit, things didn’t really feel… “right” without her there. For whatever reason, she found herself missing Emerald’s presence.

“Alright, where in the hell is-“ Before she could finish her question, it was answered by the subject of it. “Oh, right here little ember.” Cinder immediately found herself further annoyed at the sound of Tyrian’s incredibly grating voice, before looking up towards where the disturbing noise came from.

After Cinder looked up towards the voice, she found Tyrian, dangling by his tail from several exposed beams across the ceiling. “Get the hell down here already, we need to prepare.” Tyrian chuckled maniacally before untangling his tail from the beam and allowing himself to fall, casually landing on his feet directly in front of her.

“Back off, fucking unhinged bastard.” Tyrian laughed at her, placing his hands behind his back and walking away from her backwards. “Oh dear girl, flattery will get you nowhere.” He eventually turned away from Cinder and towards a table in the center of the room that Mercury was also standing next to.

Tyrian pushed a large amount of what appeared to be empty food wrappers off the table, clearly from Mercury, and revealing a large map of the city of Vacuo. “You are correct though, preparation for Vacuo’s dismantling is necessary.” Cinder noticed that Tyrian seemed to be keeping a rather close eye on Mercury.

When she herself glanced at Mercury again, she took note of just how unmotivated he appeared to be, how little he looked like he wanted to be there. Whatever, Cinder didn’t have time to worry about whatever mental health problems he had.

They had a firestorm to plan.

————————————

Nora didn’t necessarily like being alone for prolonged periods of time, but she felt that she needed to be alone for a while. How could she really figure things out about herself is she wasn’t BY herself.

Every now and then she would just take a long stroll around Vacuo, just walking around the city and thinking to herself. Usually her thoughts just consisted of one question over and over again, “who exactly am I”? Nora knew who she was when she was with Ren, but she really needed to make a name for herself apart from him.

What was her roll on the team as herself? Was she just the strong one? The optimistic one? Those were two things she had been while she was with Ren and prided herself on being them, but was it really her? Was it just a better image of herself that she created when she was with Ren?

Whatever it was, she really needed to figure things out, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life questioning just what the hell said life was to begin with, that’d just be incredibly sad.

So here she found herself, sitting down at a little cafe on some random street of Vacuo, waiting for something to happen that would help her figure things out. She really wished that something would happen soon, whether that be a spectacle, an event of some sorts, some random side quest for her to complete. Hell, even some random person showing up and talking to-

“Woah, hey lightning bolt.” Oh…. Ok, at least one of those things are happening. Nora turned around in her seat, noticing somebody sat across from her at the table she was sitting at. “Oh… hey Neon.” Neon had just decided to sit down with her. “Hey. Howzit hanging? You seem a bit… blah.”

“Yeah, I guess “blah” is a good way to describe it… how about you?” Neon smiled uncharacteristically softly at her, almost seeming a bit concerned. It was weird considering that the two of them weren’t really close at all. “Well, I’m fine, just waiting for the rest of my team to show up. As usual, I’m hella early.”

Nora just made a sound of acknowledgement before turning away from her again. “Ok, what’s up sparky? Something is clearly bugging you big time.” Nora sighed a bit and spoke, not looking back at Neon. “Look, it’s a personal thing, I don’t know if I-“

“Cmon, doctor Neon, PHD in funk, is here for you, girlfriend. Spill your guts, I’ll listen. I know we aren’t really friends, but seeing somebody so bummed is making ME bummed.” Nora just let out a mix between a groan and a sigh before turning back to Neon.

“Well…. I guess I just….. don’t really know who I am.” Neon seemed…… confused to say the least. “Uhm… aren’t you Nora?” Nora just facepalmed. “Not like that! I mean…… I don’t really know what my identity is….. apart from Ren.”

Neon just made some sort of noise of understanding. “Ah, a classic case of “codependency relevancy” disease.” Now it was Nora’s turn to look rather perplexed by what the other girl had said to her.

“I mean it Lightning Bolt. You’ve spent your whole life feeling that you and your boyfriend-“ Neon was cut off. “He’s not actually my boyfriend.” And then spoke again after Nora’s interruption, topic now shifted. “Really? I’ve heard you two say “I love you” to each other a TON of times.”

“Yeah, it’s….. complicated. I don’t.. I’m trying to find my own identity away from him, now isn’t the best time to get even more attached to him. For now, we’re just friends who know about our mutual feelings for each other and are vocal about them.”

“Alright, alright, I feel you. Anyway, back on the original topic. You’ve spent your life thinking that you and ol’ Ren need to be connected at the hip to have any sense of self, but guess what, you’re dead wrong.” Nora felt a bit disrespected, but had faith that Neon would flip the script a bit.

“Cause deep down, you’ve got something that’ll always be yours and yours alone to forge yourself with.” Nora’s faith in Neon was thankfully not misplaced. “And… what exactly is that?”

Neon just leaned in closer to her. “Your actions, your flow in life, all the dances you’ve danced because YOU wanted to, nobody else.” Nora didn’t exactly like the closeness, but she did like what Neon had chosen to say to her.

“You’ve spent your whole life doing stuff cause of your own will, so here’s what I say you should do. I say you take all those actions, and really think about what feelings in your big ol’ rainbow of a heart prompted you to go out and do em. Maybe if you think on that enough, you’ll find some stuff that makes you who you are deep down.”

“Huh…. Wow…. T-Thanks Neon, I-I’m gonna be honest, I wasn’t expecting such good advice from you.” Neon just smirked her iconic cat smirk and stood back up. “I am a master of self love, it’s only fair that I help others master it as well. And for the record, I give great advice, just ask Flynt.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask him another time.” Nora also stood up and held out a hand for Neon. “Thank you, seriously… this helped a lot.” Instead of the handshake Nora was expecting, she received a High-Five that she probably should have been expecting instead.

“No problem Sparky. Maybe hit me up when you’ve got the whole “finding yourself” quest down, we can hit the club scene some time.” Nora laughed a bit before responding to Neon’s offer. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, you’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Well, the waiting makes it all the more satisfying when you finally get the result. Whether that be a dance, a response, or an incredibly emotional deep dive to find your identity.”

Nora gave Neon a little playful punch to the shoulder for that last part.

She didn’t intend for it to send her flying into another table.

Another thing she needed to get a handle on, her absolutely ridiculous strength.

Chapter Text

Jaune was definitely getting better in combat over time, but he knew that he still had a rather long way to go before he could really catch up to some of the heavier hitters he knows. That was made extremely apparent when he found himself being knocked on the ground of Shade’s training room by a whack to the back of the head from a pair of nunchaku.

“Aaaaand, that’s 3 wins for me.” Jaune turned around off the floor to see Sun looking down at him with a smug, toothy grin. “Alright, I think that’s a wrap for today.” He held out his hand for Jaune to grab.” Jaune rolled his eyes and sighed a bit, but still maintained a smile, before grabbing Sun’s hand to get some help back to his feet.

“Sorry about smacking you around like that bud, but you did ask me not to take it easy on you.” Sun was clearly trying to mess with him a bit, Jaune could tell, and he knew Sun didn’t mean to belittle him at all. Even despite his intentions, he was still a little bit hurt by the insinuations of what Sun had said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He wanted his tone to come off as a lot less annoyed than it ended up as. He didn’t want to make Sun feel bad because of a joke, but he could see Sun’s face sour a little bit in response to him.

“Hey, man, you ok?” Sun was starting to get a little concerned. “I…… yeah, it’s just…… I don’t like feeling….. inferior to everybody else…..” Jaune never did, he always wanted to try and be the hero. Even if he couldn’t play that part, he still wanted to be stronger.

“Dude, it’s ok not to be the best.” Jaune did appreciate Sun’s words, but still, he felt the need to be better. “I know, I just…. I want to be strong enough to protect everyone….. I can’t let them get hurt… not again…. I-If I let that happen to anyone else… especially Weiss….”

Sun just gave him an understanding look before letting out a light sigh. “Trust me man, I get it… I’ve always thought about how so many things would’ve been easier if I was just a bit stronger… if I was strong enough to help everyone I know get out of every problem they had.” He put away his weapon and continued.

“I keep going back to the past, thinking about how it’d be better if I was just stronger….. but you’ve gotta know that you can’t always fight off every problem you face…… you can’t keep letting what happened to Pyrrha tear you apart.” Jaune tensed up slightly at just the mention of Pyrrha’s name.

“I-I know, it’s just… hard not to feel responsible… I know there wasn’t anything I could’ve done… but still… I just feel at fault because of that.” Jaune put away his sword and folded back up his shield. “I hate that I couldn’t do anything.”

“Well, I think you should just be glad about the things that you could do. You saved Weiss back at Haven, you stopped what happened to Pyrrha from happening again. And hey, looks like it’s paying off, gonna be honest, I didn’t expect the two of you to pair up.” Sun tried to draw Jaune away from the negative of the past, focusing more on the good of the now.

“Yeah… if you asked me about a year ago, I’d probably say the same thing…. I’m just….. glad she went for a guy like me.” He just ruffled the back of his hair a bit, chuckling as he did so. “Guess I’m just very endearing….. hey, man… is it ok if I ask you a kinda awkward question.”

“Go for it buddy, I’ve answered plenty of very awkward questions.” Sun smiled and prepared for whatever the heck Jaune was gonna ask him. “Do you… like… have any advice… about girls… I wanna make sure things with Weiss turn out ok.”

“Oh boy, you did NOT pick the right person to ask. I know I might look like a total Casanova ladykiller, but I’m gonna be honest, I have no actual luck when it comes to forming an ACTUAL relationship.” Sun just looked down and shook his head with a smile.

“Really? You haven’t dated anybody?” Jaune was honestly pretty surprised by that. “Yeah, sure I’ve gone on plenty of dates, but nothing really beyond that first date.” Sun looked back up, still smiling at Jaune.

“But I can tell that you guys are gonna go pretty far. You’re close, you know each other well, and you know what makes each other happy. Honestly, what I think you should do, just be happy you guys got to say you guys love each other in the first place.”

“Yeah…. I guess… not everyone gets the chance to…” Jaune thought back to Pyrrha, how much she must’ve been hurting keeping her feelings for him bottled up. “A lot of people I know never got to….. love isn’t always guaranteed to work out.”

“Yeah…. Like… Blake and Yang didn’t get to say it either… I can’t imagine how much it must’ve hurt knowing they died before being able to say it.” Oh god, Jaune had let Blake and Yang’s feelings slip his mind. Even more people he know never got their chance to act on the feelings eating them alive.

“Hey, man, don’t let that bring you down. Blake was like, my all time best friend, and I’m not letting it stop me that she’s gone. She wouldn’t want it to keep me down, and she wouldn’t want it to keep you down either.” Sun just placed a hand on Jaune’s shoulder. “Neither would Yang, or Ruby, and especially not Pyrrha.”

“No… no they wouldn’t… anyway, you actually gonna try to give me any advice?” Jaune definately was feeling better thanks to Sun’s words. “Well, you want my advice? Just take things easy, don’t force anything, let it come naturally. I tried to force things a lot, and I’ve screwed up a lot.”

“Yeah, trust me, I know how bad forcing things can go.” Jaune chuckled a bit, thinking back to how annoying he was towards Weiss back at Beacon and how it just drove her away at first. “Seriously though, if I got a girlfriend before you, we really need to work on getting you one.”

“Yeah, I know, Neptune wouldn’t shut up about how I needed to get a girlfriend, or else I’d look lame. Even though he’s never had a girlfriend in his entire life… at least I think he hasn’t, one of those chicks from NDGO is looking at him kinda flirty.” Wow, Jaune didn’t expect that one either.

“Well, guess you better get to work on finding somebody special, cause I expected more from you.”

——————————————

“So why exactly did you wanna meet me for coffee? You taking me on a date or something?” Coco was a bit confused, but she wasn’t gonna say no to free coffee, so when Emerald offered, she wasn’t gonna turn it down. “Cause if you are, there’s a 95% chance Velvet shows up at your door tomorrow with murderous intent.”

“Eh, nah. No offense but you’re not my type, too tall.” Emerald just leaned back against her chair, taking a drink from her coffee after she spoke. “I just thought some coffee would be a nice way to finally try and patch things up.”

“Well it definitely helps. Free coffee is a pretty easy way to get on my good side.” Coco likewise took a drink from her coffee. “Honestly I never expected you to take patching things up between you and I so seriously. I mean, I barely even knew you beyond the time you kicked my ass.”

“Guess I’m just dedicated to making good on the stuff I did with Cinder, no matter how big or small they were. I hurt a lot of people, broke a lot of things… speaking of.” Emerald reached behind her into one of the many pouches lining her belt. “I know you’ve already got some new ones, but I wanted to pay you back anyway.”

Emerald pulled out a fresh black leather glasses case, with Coco’s emblem carved into it and painted over, gold lining the edges of the case. “This cost me a shit ton to get these specially made, so you better appreciate it.” She passed the case over to coco, who picked it with a look of pleasant confusion.

Opening up the case, Coco found a pair of sunglasses, one way tinted lenses, gold frames, the rest of them a dark brown with numerous golden accents. Coco was familiar with the brand, she had always wanted to get a pair of sunglasses custom made by them but never had the chance to. Besides, they were painfully fucking expensive.

“Damn, you really do care about patching things up, these cost an entire month’s pay for a Huntress last I checked.” Coco snapped the case closed and placed it in her purse. “Well, I can’t say I don’t appreciate em, so you don’t have to be pissy about that.”

“Fucking better, I had to borrow a good third of the Lien from Nora. It’s gonna take me a while to pay her back, she charges 15% interest.” Coco laughed bit at Emerald’s complaint about Nora’s system for borrowing Lien. She herself was familiar with it from all the times the rest of her team and team RWBY all bitched about it back at Beacon.

Emerald finished the rest of her coffee before speaking again. “So, are we cool now? Or do I need to waste all my damn lien on you.” Emerald smirked at Coco, who was still laughing slightly from Emerald’s exasperation.

“Eh, sure, why not, we’re cool.” Coco held a hand out, offering it for Emerald to shake. She gladly accepted Coco’s offer, grabbing onto her hand and shaking it. “Thanks, now don’t expect any more handouts from me.”

Again, Coco laughed. “Ah, I knew there was a reason I liked ya when I first say you. You’ve got style AND you’ve got an attitude.” Coco had finished her coffee as well by this point. “Hey, maybe next time I’ll pay for the coffee. Gonna have to bring Velvet next time, she was hella pissed that I agreed to hang out with you in the first place.”

“Sure, why not, I can more than handle the both of you.” Emerald smirked after she finished her retort, knowing damn well the implications of what she had just said. For the third time, Coco burst into laughter. “Ah, girlfriend, you have NO IDEA how crazy she gets.”

“Well maybe I’m a bit eager to find out.” Emerald just winked at her, glad to have finally made some steps towards really making up for all the bullshit she did before Atlas.

Chapter Text

As with most of the nights she’s spent in Vacuo so far, Raven slept like absolute shit. She barely even slept at all, and what little rest she did get was filled with enough stressful dreams to wake her up within minutes. Suffice to say, she was very tired and very irritable after about the twelfth restless night in a row.

So she really did not appreciate being called to Theodore’s office so damn early in the fucking morning. This had better be important, cause if this was a waste of her time, Raven was going to fucking kill the next person she sees… probably Qrow… specifically Qrow, she was absolutely going to kill Qrow.

Speaking of, Qrow also walked into the hallway she was currently stomping through, also looking rather annoyed and tired. He probably didn’t sleep well either… Qrow rarely ever slept well unless he was blackout drunk. Theo must’ve called him to his office too for some reason.

“You too, huh?” Qrow yawned slightly as he said that, proving Raven right. She just nodded towards him, her eyes half-closed from a mix of exhaustion and irritation. The two of them just continued down the hall, pushing past the people that got in their way as they made the walk to Theodore’s office.

Raven was just ready to get whatever the hell this was over with, she had better shit to do today…. Ok, that was a lie, she fully intended to spend the entire damn day lying in bed and trying to open a portal to Yang. Whatever, she just wanted these meetings with Theodore to stop, she never cared about a single one of them and she doubted this one would be any different.

At least… she doubted it until the twins finally made it to the door to Theo’s office. When Qrow opened the door slightly, both of them froze in pure terror. A voice both of them recognized well was currently irately speaking to Theodore… a voice Raven always felt terrible hearing.

“Theo, I don’t give a shit where you need me to be right now, where the hell are my daughters and their team?!” Taiyang was there, angrily pestering Theodore to give up the location of Ruby and Yang… something Raven knew he would never get from Theo… or Qrow… or even herself.

Raven still believed… no, KNEW, that Yang was alive somewhere… but she couldn’t possibly prove it to Tai… not now… all she had to go off of was a faint feeling through her semblance… but that was enough for her. Not enough for everyone else, but it was about time Raven had some of that faith in others that Yang always had.

“Tai, please, just sit down for a moment… it’s a very complicated situation and I don’t feel comfortable explaining it to you while you’re this irate.” Theo tried to get Tai to calm down, gesturing towards one of the chairs across from him at his desk. Tai didn’t seem to care what Theo wanted him to do, he clearly only cared about getting to Ruby and Yang.

“Listen Theo, I’m not here to have a long conversation or any other crap like that. Tell me where my daughters are, and tell me NOW!” Tai slammed his hands down on Theodore’s desk, a rather pissed off and desperate expression plastered on his face.

“Tai, just sit down… you’re gonna want to sit down for this.” Qrow spoke up as him and Raven finally entered, drawing Tai’s frustration away from Theo. Unfortunately, it ended up drawing his frustration to Raven instead, and Tai had a LOT of frustration towards her.

“Oh, well look who finally decided to stop running away from her problems.” Tai glared at her with genuine spite and fury in his eyes, crossing his arms as he spoke in a rather dark tone. Raven wanted to fire back, wanted to defend herself… but she knew better than that… she couldn’t… Tai was right. She just hung her head in shame, clutching one of her arms.

Tai just scoffed at her and rolled his eyes, turning his attention to Qrow instead. “What the hell is it?” His expression and gaze was still one of fury, not pissed directly at Qrow, just pissed off in general. Qrow attempted to speak, to tell him what happened to most of Team RWBY… but… he couldn’t find the words.

He continued to struggle for a bit, not really being able to break the devastating news to Tai… he himself was only barely able to stay sane.. or sober, after Winter broke it to him. Theodore didn’t seem to be able to break it to Tai either, just sitting back in his desk chair, watching with concern.

Raven knew exactly how this was going to wind up… she knew what it was going to do to Tai when one of them told her… and she didn’t want that to happen. “Tai, come with me, I’ll explain everything.” She stepped forward, lightly pushing past Qrow to draw Tai’s attention back to her.

“Oh, yeah, sure, like you’ve been around long enough to get the-“ Tai began to shoot down Raven’s offer, but she wasn’t going to let him. “Tai… please, you need to hear this.” There wasn’t any anger in her voice, no annoyance, no fury, nothing… nothing but concern.

Tai just rolled his eyes a bit before deciding to just go along with it, walking towards Raven. With Tai taking the offer, Raven stepped out of Theo’s office, walking back out into the hallway, Tai following relatively close behind her, but keeping an intentional distance.

It took a while, and a lot of Tai mumbling curses under his breath towards Raven, but eventually the two of them were able to reach the stairway to Shade’s main balcony. They just barely managed to catch the last member of RWBY, Weiss, and Jaune from JN…O..RE, they’re still workshopping the name. The two of them both looked pretty flustered and were rather tightly holding hands, not paying any mind to anybody around them.

Raven and Tai made their way up the staircase and onto the balcony, with Raven making her way over to the edge, leaning forward against the guard railing. Tai walked up next to her, clearly anticipating something that would either piss him off and terrify him.

“Tai…. Ruby, Yang, her partner… they..… they’re not here Tai….” She just stared into the city below them, watching people get on with their morning activities as she spoke. “They’re not in Vacuo…. They… they didn’t make it.” Raven just said it, knowing better than to drag it out any longer.

“What….?” Tai’s voice dropped to a terrified low tone, one that Raven could immediately pick up on. “Everyone’s pretty sure they’re dead Tai…. Everyone else at least.” She could actually hear Tai falling slightly against the railing, which he had begun leaning against to keep himself stable after what Raven said.

He was about to speak, tears welling up in his eyes, but Raven spoke first. “But they’re all wrong. Yang… Ruby… they’re alive, I know it.” Next to her, Tai’s expression shift from a mortified one, to a still heartbroken but confused look. “I can feel it Tai… I can still feel her… when Summer died.. that feeling.. my connection to her with my semblance, it died too, but Yang’s….. it’s still there Tai, I can still feel her… I can’t make a portal to her… but she has to be alive.”

“Raven… I-I don’t… please… don’t give me false hope… I can’t-“ Again, Raven cut Tai off. “Tai, they’re alive, Yang is alive and I KNOW it. Nobody else seems to have any faith in them… but, it’s about time I had some…… I trust Yang… she’s our daughter after all… she’s not going to just stay down like this…”

She finally turned to Tai, clocking his face of mixed fear and cautious optimism. “She’s going to come back to you Tai… to us… I know she will.” Raven herself, surprisingly, looked hopeful… probably the first time she had in over 20 years. She had hope that Yang would find her way back home… she believed in her daughter.”

“Rae… I don’t know if I can fully believe that… but… as long as there’s some hope that they’re going to come back to me….. I guess I should be glad that there’s something keeping me anchored at least… and you’re right… Yang definitely got your stubbornness. She never stays down for very long.”

Raven, for the first time in QUITE a while, looked back fondly on the last… her time at Beacon with the rest of Team STRQ…. Her and Tai growing closer over time… Yang’s birth… the first time she saw their daughter… she used to never want to admit it, but that was probably the happiest day of her life.

“Yeah… yeah she did. I doubt even death itself would keep her down for long.” Raven believed in fate, all things must die after all… but she didn’t believe that Yang had reached hers yet… she knew that it wasn’t her time… she was going to fight her way back to Remnant, she was Yang Xiao Long after all.

Raven knew better than to think she wouldn’t make it.

Chapter Text

Jaune had absolutely no clue what the hell he was supposed to do. The moment him and Weiss both sat down at the table they found themselves at, their confidence just absolutely died on the spot. Both of them were absolutely frozen by their nervousness, neither really knowing how a real date works.

He had never gone on a date before, mostly because he never had anyone accept an offer from him until now. Something he hadn’t expected, Weiss never really went on any real dates either. She apparently tried with Neptune once, but he couldn’t find the nerve to accept. Jaune constantly found himself reevaluated calling Neptune cool in the past.

Whatever, he can worry about how actually lame some guy he’s talked to all of three times is later, he had to make it through this date alive first. Raising his head to look back up at Weiss, that seemed to be a rather hefty task. She looked positively gorgeous, deciding to just let her hair down during the day for the first time in a WHILE.

Weiss herself wasn’t exactly in a better position than Jaune was, because she honestly had absolutely zero idea of what exactly was expected on a date. She hadn’t ever even kissed anyone before Jaune, let alone go on a date with anybody, this was entirely uncharted territory for her. The unknown had always been a bit of a fear for Weiss, but now more than any other time, she was terrified, terrified that she would mess something up.

“S-So… y-you…. Uh…… you decided what you want to eat yet?” Jaune tried to make conversation, stuttering and pausing with basically every other word in the single most awkward tone imaginable. “U-Uh… n-not yet, I-I’ll probably just… I’m not… I don’t….” Weiss’ response wasn’t exactly any less awkward.

“I-I’ll probably just… get one of the sandwich melts…. I-I guess they look pretty good.” She awkwardly placed the menu she was holding down. The restaurant Coco recommended was nice, pretty causal, nothing TOO extravagant.

“O-Ok, I‘ll probably get one of them too…….” There was a pretty awkward silence after Jaune said that, clearly having no clue of what to say afterwards. Weiss didn’t really have anything to say either, just going to the gods above that this painfully awkward moment would end soon.

They both continued to just sit there in silence, basking in the endless awkwardness of the situation. It was obvious that breaking the silence would require an absolutely Herculean effort since neither of them had any real idea how to properly act, instead just suffocating in the awkward atmosphere that positively radiated off of them.

Fortunately, if there’s one thing Jaune has had to do a LOT of in the past two years, it was put in a Herculean effort. This was probably one of the single hardest things he’s ever had to will himself to do, he’d gladly charge head first at Cinder Fall again without a second thought, but this is something he REALLY needed to find the strength to do.

“So….. this is the single most awkward conversation either of us have ever had, isn’t it?” He awkwardly fumbled with his hair, first time he’s done that in a while, he started growing it out slightly over the past couple of months in Vacuo. Not to the same length it was before Atlas but much longer than he had previously cut it to.

“Y-Yeah… it is… I… I have no clue what I’m doing Jaune… I’m not really the most romantically knowledgeable… I wish Blake was here to help, she knew much more than I did about making stuff like this work.” She thought fondly back on all of Blake’s romantic fantasies, she remembered talking about them on the off chance that the two of them were left alone… how much Blake desperately hoped to live them out with Yang.

Usually, thinking about her lost team would sour her mood… but now… now she looked back on their memories with hope for the future… she had to keep moving forward, keep her spirit alive.. for them. “I…. It feels like everything between us just changed overnight… like we’re two different people when talking to each other… strangers who can’t hold a conversation.

What Weiss said was understood, Jaune definitely had a similar feeling when it came to his recent interactions with Weiss. Things just felt like they were completely flipped on their head, like they were trying to rebuild their dynamic from scratch. Honestly, he was already getting tired of that.

“Yeah… I get it… ” He looked her right in the eyes, noticing the look of pure confusion in them. “Things are definitely gonna be different with us from now on….. but… we’re not different people just because of what we are to each other… what’s to stop us from talking to each other normally like we always do.”

“I guess…. I guess we don’t need to change anything… we might not be just “friends” anymore… but I guess we’re just going up from there… building off of how we acted like that, not tearing everything down…” She chuckled a bit after thinking for a moment.

“What’s so funny?” Jaune crossed his arms in mild confusion and raised an eyebrow. Weiss looked up at him with fondness. “Just thinking about all your horrid attempts to ask me out back at Beacon… honestly, in hindsight, I probably should’ve given you a chance.” That caused Jaune to blush a little bit and rub the back of his head a bit awkwardly.

“Well… I would’ve been really happy, but.. back then… I think I’m glad it took until now for things to finally escalate to the level they did… Pyrrha… I…” He just looked down, reminding on his unfortunately hard to realize feelings for Pyrrha that he never got to act on or really even understand for himself.

“Yeah… it wouldn’t have been fair to her… she deserved it so much more than I did at the time.” Weiss did have to think back on how much of a jerk she was to Jaune back then… both of them have changed so much… they’ve grown more than most people will across their entire lifetimes… they had to.

“Weiss….. it’s not a matter of who deserves who…. I just…. Gods, this is so much more complicated than I thought it would be.” Jaune looked back up at her. Weiss met his gaze with an understanding expression. “I know… love can be a pain in the ass sometimes….. I’m just glad it’s working out for us so far.” She smiled at him softly as she said that.

“Yeah… I’m glad too.” Jaune echoed the sentiment and likewise smiled, happy that there was some hope for them despite everything falling apart around them. It’s been sparing that he was this hopeful, hopeful enough to ignore the fact that he saw Nora and Emerald watching them from a few buildings down, but now, he had hope that things might just turn out alright, as long as they stuck together.

——————————————

Tyrian was an expert at staying out of sight, keeping to the shadows and staying hidden from the eyes of the public, it’s always been a specialty of his. That was no different in Vacuo, as he kept to the more shaded rooftops and other tight areas with low visibility. He could quite easily slink around the entire city, observing everyone and everything in preparation of Salem’s plan.

He very much found out that, while quite stealthy, Mercury was nowhere near as good at hiding from prying eyes as he was. So, he had to keep a watch on the boy, making sure he wasn’t messing up their reconnaissance mission into Vacuo. Tyrian opted to take the boy with him over Cinder, due to her… complete and utter lack of any subtlety whatsoever. It was a shame her short mute friend didn’t make it to Vacuo, she would’ve been quite useful.

Whatever, Mercury honestly couldn’t give less of a shit about Cinder’s tiny fuckbuddy, he knew her for like 2 days and never interacted with her at all. What he was more concerned with at the moment was Tyrian’s annoying as fuck lunacy and how he had basically been dragging Mercury around with him everywhere he went since they got to Vacuo.

Mercury just spent most of these outings just looking over the city, seeing if he could find at least anything fun or interesting going on, it’d be about the only damn thing he wouldn’t absolutely despise doing for the past few months. He’d just grown.. melancholic to all of Salem’s orders… to her end goal.

Nothing had ever caught his eye for that long on their weekly recon missions, he usually just lit a cigarette and let Tyrian do the watching for him, which the Faunus didn’t seem to mind much. Today, that changed, something finally managed to catch his eye for real, something bright green sticking out among the very sparse colors of Vacuo.

It’s been a while since he’s seen Emerald… too long, she was the only person he ever spent time with that didn’t actively piss him off 24/7. He’d go down there and talk to her right now if the unhinged redhead with the hammer wasn’t right next to her. Besides, he needed to stay hidden or else the entire population of Huntmen and Huntresses of Vacuo will be on his ass in a heartbeat.

He was gonna find a way to talk to her alone, he needed to or else he was going to lose his goddamn mind. He just hoped she would go for it… oh, who was he kidding, of course she would, he knows that she’s worried about him. He’d never admit it, but he was kinda worried about her too, about what Salem would do if she got her hands on Emerald.

Whatever, he could worry about that another time, for now he just needed to try and survive another damn minute of Tyrian’s bullshit. Honestly, one of the absolute hardest things that he has ever done in his life full of some really fucking hard stuff.

Chapter Text

Mercury had never really considered smoking at any point in his life before arriving in Vacuo, but now he practically smoked 5 cigarettes a day. He found them helpful in calming his nerves when around Tyrian and Cinder. Neither of them really seemed to care where he got them from or the fact that he seemed to have an entire surplus of the stuff.

He was already on his fourth cigarette of the day, and it was only just barely noon… gods, he was astronomically stressed. What the hell was he even doing anymore at this point? Oh, that’s right, he’s trying to infiltrate Shade Academy. Not in the same way he did with Beacon, this is much more of a “stay out of sight” operation.

As he continued to traverse the outskirts of the Academy, staying as hidden as he could, he just continued to question what the hell he was even doing here. He wasn’t here because Cinder or Tyrian or even Salem had told him to, he was just here because he wanted to talk to Emerald. Obviously not AT Shade, he just wanted to alert her to him being there and get her alone.

When he finally reached the dorm room that he had found out she was staying at with whatever was left of Team RWBY’s friends and the last living member of said team. He still didn’t know why the hell she was associating with those idiots, but to be fair, the people that he associated with were SIGNIFICANTLY worse.

After launching himself up to the balcony to their third floor dorm room, Mercury surveyed the room through the slightly transparent curtains of the outside door, making absolutely sure that nobody was there. He felt bad for the other students at Shade, it was obvious that the Atlas survivors were getting some special treatment. Full balconies weren’t exactly common at Shade.

Quietly and slowly, he opened up the conveniently unlocked balcony door, making his way inside of the team J…W…NR… E, Jesus that’s a stupid name, whatever, he just made his way into their dorm, putting off evaluating how dumb their name is for later. For now, he had a message that needed to be left.

—————————————————

Emerald had spent a lot of time in the team dorm room when they had first arrived at Shade, usually relying on the rest of the team to keep her free from scrutiny. Recently, she had been getting out a lot more, especially after finally being able to patch things up with Coco.

Her, Nora and Ren were coming back from a quick sparring session with Team SSSN, with Weiss and Jaune off doing who the hell knows what, and Oscar in a meeting with Theodore. The three of them were all ready to just relax for the rest of the day, sit on the couch and watch some TV or something.

They had finally made it back to their room, Emerald always hated having to get all the way to the third floor from the first one every time she wanted to lie down after a training session. Most of the elevators were on the other side of the third floor anyway, so taking the stairs put her closer to their room.

Whatever, they were finally back in their room, so they could finally just kick back until they had something better to do. She could finally just stumble over to her bed and collapse onto it, ready to just lay down and play some games on her scroll of somethi-

She could’ve sworn she felt a piece of paper on her bed when she finally fell back onto it.

Getting back up slightly and turning around, she did indeed find a piece of paper on the pillow of her bed, having been mildly crumpled from her head crushing it when she lied down. Grabbing the paper and trying to get it open, she was just confused as to why it was even there.

After opening it up slightly she read out the message that was written on it, noting that the handwriting looked pretty familiar. “Meet me a mile southwest of the city in the next two hours”. She had no clue who exactly had sent her this, she didn’t know if some random Atlas Survivor wanted to kill her or if Coco was just inviting her to an outing.

At least, she didn’t know until she finally fully pulled the paper open, revealing everything that was on it. Everything, including the familiar symbol of a winged boot near the bottom of the page, and a small smug smiley face drawn crudely next to it.

Sighing softly to herself, Emerald stood up, stuffing the paper into one of her pockets before walking towards the door, making sure that both her weapons were present in their holsters. Nora and Ren both caught sight of her attempting to leave the room.

“Where are you going?” Nora asked, confused since Emerald was previously pretty eager to just stay in the whole day. “Got an invite to hang out near the edge of the city, just for me and it’d be rude to turn it down.” That was all Emerald had said before race-walking out of the room.

She didn’t even notice Qrow walking by, his attention falling on the very nervous way she walked down the hallway.

—————————————

Mercury had been standing there for a solid 3 hours, waiting for Emerald to hopefully show up and just talk to him for a while. Honestly, after that 2 hours mark (and about 3 more cigarettes smoked out of boredom), he started to lose faith that she would even show up at all, or maybe she’d just sent the authorities after him.

It took a helluva long time, but after those 3 agonizing hours of waiting, Mercury’s patience was finally rewarded. A rather loud “ahem” was heard to his left, and he turned around to see if Emerald had finally arrived. At first, nothing appeared to even be there.

After a few seconds, what could only be described as a glitch in reality of sorts popped up in front of him, and Emerald was suddenly standing about 20 feet away. Ah, she was keeping herself cloaked with her semblance, probably trying to scout out what exactly he wanted to do with her.

Mercury took his eight cigarette of the day out of his mouth and flicked it aside for the sand to swallow up. Emerald’s eyes tracked it as it left his mouth and flew away towards the sands beneath them, before hitting the ground and falling right through them. She looked back to Mercury with a mild expression of concern.

“Since when do you smoke?” She crossed her arms as she waited for him to respond. Mercury just put a hand on his hip and shot her a bit of a spiteful look. “Since you left and I had nobody to talk to who I didn’t wanna strangle in their sleep.” His voice sounded bored, bored with all the bullshit he’s had to put up with.

Emerald didn’t take the jab lying down. “Well maybe if you didn’t keep going along with Salem’s genocide plans, you wouldn’t NEED to.” She straight up glared at him, not even remotely falling for the attempted guilt trip. “I’d say it’s gonna impact your future, but if you keep helping her, there won’t be much of a life left for you to live.”

“Not really doing this cause I wanna live a long life Em….” The spite dropped from his face completely. “Can’t really blame you for leaving, but I can’t exactly say I agree with you doing it either.” He just looked away, out towards the now setting sun in the skies above.

“What the hell are you doing it for then?” Emerald’s face also dropped any spite it may have had, instead taking on a look of confusion and concern. Mercury turned back to her, giving a quick chuckle as he did. “Em, none of us are gonna last that much longer… you can’t beat Salem… so I might as well live out the little time we have left on the winning team… there’s no point fighting an insurmountable obstacle.”

“Then help us find a way to surmount her! Merc, you’re not like her other followers, you’re not a bad person.” Mercury outright LAUGHED at that. “Not a bad person?! Em, I’m a fucking monster. You were the only one of us who had any chance of making it with your new friends….. and you still have a chance to make it with Salem.”

That immediately caused Emerald to take out one of her pistols and point it directly between Mercury’s eyes. “I am NEVER going back to her Merc. For the first time basically ever, I have some actual hope, a REAL family, not whatever Cinder tricked me into thinking was one. You can be a part of that family too Merc… please, don’t do this for me, do it for you.”

Mercury just sighed as he briefly looked down and shook his head with a mix of disapproval and regret. “Em, I’m in too deep. Just give up on me already… I’m not gonna be on the right side of history… but I’m sure as hell gonna stay on the winning side.” He looked back up, some of the spite he had earlier returning to his gaze.

“Then leave Vacuo.” She took out her second pistol, also aiming it straight at Mercury’s head. “Before I have to make you leave myself.” The glare she shot back at Mercury’ was one of pure disappointment and pity. At first, Mercury was pretty sure that she was gonna put the guns down after a while… but all she did was pull back the hammers.

“Can’t do that Em….. so put the guns down and go back to your buddies… I have to get back to wo-“ He was suddenly caught off guard by a bullet flying past his head, causing him to stagger to the side. Looking back to Emerald, one of her revolvers was smoking.

“….we really gonna do this?” He regained his composure and stood back up. Emerald just continued to stare him down, keeping her guns trained on him. “It was bound to happen eventually… so might as well get it out of the way now.” Her voice was full of pure venom and spite.

Mercury got into a proper fighting stance, clearly not seeing any other way out of this fight. “Alright then… no real way around this, is there?” Emerald didn’t even bother to respond to him, just continuing to aim directly at his head.

As the two of them squared off, Tyrian just observed with excitement from a distant sand hill, interested to see just how this fight would go. Ever since Cinder had told them the news about Emerald’s defection, Tyrian saw this coming from a mile away.

He was so desperately hoping that this would be a bloody one.

Chapter Text

For the gods sake, where in the hell had Mercury and Tyrian gone this time?! Cinder was tired of looking over this enormous sand wasteland where everything looked the damn same! The more she flew across the desert, the more sand she was getting in her damn hair.

As soon as she found those two idiots, she swore to the gods that she was going to melt their damn balls off. Whatever, she could find out a fitting punishment for them abandoning her like that later, firstly she just had to find them in this endless expanse of fucking sand.

Yep, it was definitely official, Cinder absolutely hated sand significantly more than she hated snow, It wasn’t even remotely a contest at this point, sand was so much worse. At least snow was soft and melted with just a touch, sand was coarse, rough, irritating and it got absolutely EVERYWHERE. She has had to clean her outfit of sand no less than five times a week.

Now she was going out of her way to rocket across the desert and get EVEN MORE sand in her damn hair. She swears, if she ever sees sand again after toppling Vacuo, it’ll be FAR too soon. She will likely find some way to turn all the sand in the world to glass before she willingly steps foot in it again.

Whatever, she’ll just get Mercury to clean her outfit after she brought him back to their hideout. This time, laundry was on him… just as soon as she could find his sorry ass.

——————————————

“Hey… guys… where’s Emerald?” When Jaune and Weiss had finally gotten to their dorm room, they were both confused as to where exactly Emerald had gone. Last they checked she would be back at the room with Ren and Nora. Where could she be?

“Uh… she said that she was gonna go hang out with somebody… didn’t say who and she left before we could ask.” Nora was just as confused as they were, her and Ren were just watching the TV while not really paying too much mind to where Emerald was. “We didn’t really mind at first but she’s been gone for like two hours, so we’re a bit confused now.”

Ren got up and made his way towards the door. “I’ll see if anybody outside has seen her.” He walked past Jaune and Weiss, leaving the room. “Alright…. Well… maybe she just got caught up in whatever she was going…” Nora tried to provide and answer. “Maybe she went to hang out with Coco, she always takes ages.”

“No, we saw her on the way here…. Has to be with somebody else.” Weiss pretty clearly remembered seeing Team CFVY preparing to use the campus gym. “Oh…. Well I’m not really sure who she could be hanging out with then.. no offense to her, but she doesn’t really have any friends other than us and her.” Nora was REALLY confused now.

“Guys…. I think I know where she is.” Ren had come back in the room now, sounding rather concerned. When everyone turned to look at him, they noticed that his face matched his tone of voice. Another thing that they notified, he was holding a rather crumpled piece of paper.

He hurriedly handed the paper over to Jaune, looking like he had just seen a ghost or something on that paper. Jaune grabbed it and started to open the paper up, pretty confused at Ren’s expression, and concerned for what could possibly be on the paper for him to look like that.

When he finally opened the paper, his expression dropped even further than Ren had, taking on one of absolute mortification. “Everyone, get your gear and follow me, now!” Jaune turned to the rest of his team, grabbing his sword and shield off the floor. “Jaune… what’s goi-“ Weiss was immediately confused.

“Mercury, that’s what, now come on!” That was more than enough to get the rest of the team to start gathering their weapons. Immediately after they had everything ready, they were immediately racing out of the room, Jaune taking the lead. On the way out, they damn near bowled over Winter.

“S-Sorry Mrs Schnee, we’re in a hurry!” Jaune apologized as they rushed past. “Y-Yeah, sorry Winter!” Weiss did so as well. Winter didn’t really know why the hell they were going so fast, she just needed to find out where the hell Qrow had gone.

——————————————

Tyrian just watched with glee as bullets and shells wizzed across the skyline, massive piles of sand launched into the air from the force of something metal hitting the ground. He was positive enamored with the display of violence a short distance away from him.

Mercury brought his boot down against the ground, flinging even more sand up into the air. Emerald only just barely managed to backflip out of the way, using the sand as cover to fire a volley of bullets towards Mercury. She managed to land on her feet, observing the cloud of sand.

She very quickly had to dodge to the side from an explosive shell zooming at her. Just a second after, she ended up having to lean back to avoid an incoming kick from Mercury, who clearly wasn’t hit by any of the bullets and had come charging straight at her.

As Mercury flew over her, Emerald transformed her weapons into sickle mode and suddenly wrapped the chains for them around one of Mercury’s legs, before whipping them forward, launching Mercury a distance away and slamming him into the sand, causing even more of the stuff to shoot up.

Emerald attempted to pull them forward, but she found a weight holding down both of them. After the sand cleared, Mercury was revealed to be fully standing, stomping on the chains with his other foot. He then whipped the boot with the chains on it backwards, using the momentum to pull Emerald towards him.

When she came flying towards him, Mercury spun on his leg, leaving his other one out for Emerald to crash right into face first. She impacted it rather hard, landing on her back in the sand, in white a lot of pain from that boot to the mouth. When she opened her eyes, she found something blocking her vision, a boot being brought down above her.

She quickly rolled away to avoid Mercury slamming down on her, instead again leaving him to impact the sand and waft up a cloud of sand and dust. During the brief second where Mercury attempted to clear the sand, Emerald pulled out a cylindrical container of fire dust, throwing it at Mercury and shooting it in the air, creating an explosion right in front of him.

The blast sent Mercury flying back, landing flat on the ground. Emerald saw this as an opportunity to really throw him off his game, and rushed right towards him. Mercury meanwhile had regained his composure and jumped back to his feet, immediately trying to locate Emerald. What he found, was no less than thirty Emerald’s surrounding him.

“Really? Illusions? That’s how you wanna play, huh Em?” He then immediately fired an explosive shell at one of the Emerald illusions, only for the attack to phase through it. A barrage of bullets then hit him in the back, causing him to stagger and fire another shell blindly behind him. The second barrage of bullets hitting him in the side seemed to confirm that he missed.

“Alright, enough of this.” He then immediately got down to the ground, placing both his hands on it, raising his legs, and then began to perform a flare spin, firing off shells in all directions around him. The shells began passing through all of the different Emerald illusions, until one of them finally hit the real one, causing her to go flying backwards.

Mercury immediately took notice of that, flipping back to his feet and immediately using more projectiles to launch himself at the real Emerald. When Emerald hit the ground, she was met with the sight of Mercury rapidly approaching. Acting fast, she somersaulted backwards, kicking Mercury straight in the jaw as she did so.

The kick knocked him back a bit, but he was able to regain his footing when hitting the ground. He briefly held his jaw in slight pain from the rather hard kick. “Hey, that’s my move!” He had to admit, he was a bit proud of Emerald for stealing his favorite kick there.

He immediately then spun around, managing to deflect the oncoming chains from Emerald’s weapons with his boot. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t as able to avoid Emerald sliding right under him and tripping him up on the now retracting chains, causing him to fall.

The trip definitely caught him off guard, but he was able to thrust his foot backwards, hitting Em in the back of the head as she slid, causing her to tumble forward across the sandy ground. Mercury the pushed off the ground with his arms, pushing himself back to his feet, before whipping himself around.

Emerald attempted to get back to her feet and regain her footing as well, but as soon as she turned her head, she was hit with a massive kick to her face, launching her a pretty sizable distance away and tanking a pretty sizable chunk out of her aura.

Mercury just stood in place for a while, watching Emerald tumble and land face down in the sand, clearly pretty decently disoriented by that last kick since she wasn’t able to immediately get up. He briefly just watched her for a moment, honestly praying she would just be knocked out by now so he could just leave.

Unfortunately, she began to slowly stir, planting a hand on the ground, coughing up some mix of sand and blood. She tried to press herself off the ground, but she couldn’t find the strength to do so at first. “Em… just stay down… I can’t keep holding back if you get up after this.” Mercury looked at her with a mix of sadness and pain.

“F-fuck that.” Emerald shakily spoke as she slowly managed to push off the ground and get to her knees, grabbing Thief’s Respite off the ground as she did so. She slowly and weakly managed to finally get back onto her feet, staring down Mercury with both pain and determination in her face.

Mercury just let out a soft sigh of regret and closed his eyes for a moment. “I warned you.” Was all that he said, before he suddenly bolted forward. Emerald barely even saw him move at all, but she was able to just barely see a boot coming at the side of her head. Ducking down, she saw Mercury had somehow gotten behind her, in barely even a second.

She flipped backwards, firing a barrage of bullets at Mercury as she did so. Somehow, Mercury managed to move his leg fast enough to kick each individual bullet away before any of them hit him. He then countered with an explosive shell launched straight towards Emerald.

Emerald was only narrowly able to dodge the shell by leaning back, hitting the ground and flipping back to her feet. When she got back up, Mercury was directly in front of her, a leg raised. Emerald was about to raise her arms to block, but she was hit by no less than five kicks to the torso before she could even do that, hell, she was hit before she even saw Mercury’s leg move.

Another kick to the side of her head sent her flying yet again, impacting even more of the sands beneath her. She didn’t even have time to move at all before another kick to the face launched her back off the ground and onto her back, impacting the sand with some pretty hefty force.

With the last of her strength, she slowly and weakly pushed herself back to her feet, eyes closed from all the damn sand she got in them with all the crashes into the stuff. She rubbed it out of her eyes quickly, restoring her vision just in time to see the front of a metal boot coming up towards her jaw.

Taking back his favorite move, Mercury somersault kicked Emerald square in the jaw, landing the last hit needed to disperse particles of green aura across the skies above them, sending Emerald flying back one last time. With that last hit against the ground, she didn’t have any strength left to get back up, and just lied there, defeated.

All the while Tyrian just watched with glee as Mercury predictably emerged victorious.

Chapter Text

Mercury knew he was gonna win, he knew damn well that Emerald didn't have even a slight chance of beating him. There were VERY few people that could actually beat him in a fair fight, he'd bet good money that if Pyrrha Nikos was still alive, he'd probably beat her too. He honestly had no clue why Emerald even TRIED to fight him.

Emerald knew it was a losing fight just as much as he did, she knew just how massive the skill gap between them was. Honestly, not one of her smarter decisions in recent memory, it was pretty damn dumb. She just hoped that her aura would heal the ache in her jaw that getting a metal boot rammed into it had left. The taste of blood would probably be there for a WHILE.

“I warned you Em… I warned you.” He just looked down at Emerald’s motionless form on the ground, just glad that she was still visibly breathing. He took a step towards her, checking her face to make sure that he didn’t batter her hard enough to leave any permanent damage.

“Just stay out of my way next time.” He turned on his heels, rolling his eyes as he began to walk away. He made sure to give one last look back at Emerald after taking a few steps. “Seriously… just stay away… I’m not gonna just walk away next time.”

“And you definitely shouldn’t be doing so this time either my dear boy.”

Mercury honest to gods almost jumped at the sudden voice calling out from a slight distance away, having to plant his right foot pretty hard in the sand to stop himself from falling. Turning to where that voice came from, Mercury’s expression immediately dropped to one of mixed annoyance and concern.

“Fuck off poison breath.” He almost snarled that out, clearly not happy to see Tyrian whatsoever, especially now. He turned slightly in the sand, slightly blocking Emerald behind him from Tyrian’s line of sight, not eager to find out what Tyrian was going to do if he let him get to her.

“Oh, I’m sorry, but I can’t quite do that. After all, there is a rather dangerous enemy right behind you that you seem to have not yet exterminated.” Tyrian slightly looked over Mercury’s shoulder, gazing at Emerald, who at this point was slightly more mobile than she was a minute ago.

Mercury again tried to move further in between Emerald and Tyrian, but he wasn’t quite fast enough to move before Tyrian slinked by him. When he turned towards Emerald again, Tyrian was practically leaning over her, standing directly at her side.

“I know it’s a bit much to ask you to kill her yourself, so I’ll save you the trouble and preform the deed myself.” Tyrian leaned back towards Mercury, a rather gleeful grin on his face at the thought of being the one to murder Emerald. He relished in the distressed look that Mercury got as a result.

Tyrian turned back towards Emerald, leaning in close, his tail curled beside his head, ready to strike her. “Poor girl wound up on the losing side… it’s a shame too, Mistress Salem was actually quite fond of your company.” He smirked down at her as he spoke, loving her continued motionlessness in everything but her eyes and face.

Mercury almost made a move to try and stop Tyrian from doing anything, preparing to make a dash towards him, but even he knew that he was a bit out of his league with Tyrian. On top of the fact that he’d likely lose that fight, attacking him at all would probably just wind him up on Salem’s shit list.

Emerald at this point had kinda just accepted that she was probably freaking screwed, still unable to move from the immobilizing pain Mercury had caused her. Now that Tyrian was here, she basically had no hope of getting out of it at this point. She honestly kinda deserved this for being such an idiot her whole damn life.

As Tyrian plunged his metal stinger forward towards her throat, Emerald had just about given up and accepted that she was going to die here. She was preparing herself for the immense pain of a poisonous stab to the neck. Weirdly, even after several seconds, that sting never came, she never felt it.

Opening her eyes to see what the hell was taking so long, she wasn’t exactly able to see much, since something was very much blocking her vision, and Tyrian’s attack. The rather massive blade of a single edge greatsword had placed itself between her and Tyrian, cutting off his attempt to finish her off.

Turning her head slightly, she saw a rather tall, lanky man positioned behind her, holding onto the handle of the sword and glaring daggers at Tyrian. She recognized that distinct look of stress and depression anywhere, and she especially recognized that piercing red glare.

Qrow Branwen stood there, much to everybody’s sudden surprise, shielding Emerald from Tyrian’s attack. Tyrian turned his head to look at Qrow, letting out what Emerald could best equate to a growl at the sight of him. Qrow responded by quickly dragging his sword up from its spot in the ground, pushing Tyrian’s tail up and swinging the blade straight at him.

Tyrian only barely had time to bring his gauntlets in front of him to block the swipe from hitting him dead on, instead just forcing him backwards from the impact of metal on metal. The impact sent him rather FAR back, practically launching him away with the force of Qrow’s swing.

The strike caused him to bounce backwards against the sand quite a few times, tumbling further and further away until he was finally able to catch himself by digging his blades into the ground and stopping his motion. After once again becoming stationary, he scowled at Qrow with pure murder behind his eyes.

“Get out of here, now!” Qrow’s voice was tired and pissed off, clearly wanting to take out a LOT of frustration on something. Fortunately for him, he finally had the chance to let out some of that frustration on his #1 target. He’s been waiting since Atlas to finally get another chance to lop Tyrian’s head off.

All Qrow said was that one demand to leave, completely brushing off Mercury and Emerald as he zeroed in on Tyrian in the distance. Hefting his sword back and getting into a running position, Qrow prepared to charge straight towards the Scorpion Faunus.

And charge he did, breaking into a full sprint with his sword behind him, ready to bring it forward and strike. Tyrian likewise began to rush forward, his blades out at his sides, tail curled up against his back, both men had nothing but murderous intent in their glares.

It took a while for them to finally meet each other after their mutual dash, but when they did, the rematch had finally begun. Qrow jumped up, sword raised and ready to strike, before falling down and bringing his sword forward to drop on Tyrian.

Tyrian put his gauntlets up and leaned backwards to put the blades between his body and Qrow’s sword. The incoming strike was blocked, and a shockwave was let out by the clashing of the blades against one another, blasting the sand around them up into the air and away from them, leaving Mercury and the now mobile Emerald a bit stunned.

After the shockwave had subsided, Qrow rebounded off Tyrian by bringing his legs down and kicking against him, knocking the Faunus to the ground and pushing Qrow away from him. After he landed, Qrow immediately broke into another dash, dragging his sword against the sand.

When he reached Tyrian, he attempted to swing his sword directly into his side, only for it to be blocked by Tyrian’s tail coming up to deflect the strike. He then stepped back to narrowly avoid Tyrian pushing himself back to his feet, kicking his legs in Qrow’s direction.

With both of them back on their feet, Tyrian lunged forward, jabbing his blades at Qrow, aiming straight for his chest. Qrow managed to sidestep the attack, leaving his sword positioned in front of Tyrian, before bringing it up towards his face. Tyrian only barely managed to stop his momentum and avoid running right into the blade, leaning back to stop himself from getting hit by it, suddenly delivering a kick to Qrow’s side as a counter.

The kick left Qrow off-balance, but still able to preform a quick 360 spin, striking Tyrian in the back with the handle of his sword, causing both of them to stumble forward. Qrow was the first to regain his balance, turning on his heels and bringing his sword forward to again strike Tyrian in the back.

Tyrian only barely ducked forward, causing the attack to miss, leaving Qrow unable to bring his sword back in time to dodge a jab from Tyrian’s tail being thrown out, poison leaking from his stinger. Fortunately, he was still able to move his head to the side and avoid the stab, suddenly bringing his free hand up to grab onto Tyrian’s tail.

In a shocking display of strength, Qrow then whipped his arm back, picking Tyrian up over his head, and then slamming him against the ground beneath them. Tyrian was left completely disoriented by the sudden impact against the ground, not even remotely expecting that to happen.

He was however, not disoriented enough to let the oncoming descent of a scythe blade towards the ground skewer him, instead rolling to the side and spinning his way back to his feet. Qrow pulled his weapon out from the ground, now in scythe form, before rushing towards Tyrian, spinning his scythe in a circle formation to repeatedly strike him.

Most of the strikes were blocked by Tyrian bringing his gauntlets up, but a few of them did manage to land, chipping at his aura slightly. Tyrian crouched down, below Qrow’s attack, before leaning back against the ground, and bringing his legs up in a double kick against Qrow’s jaw, causing the man to stumble backwards.

He then attempted to take advantage of Qrow’s momentary instability to charge him down, ready to strike with his tail. Unfortunately, Qrow simply allowed himself to fall backwards with the momentum that Tyrian’s kick had given him. When he dropped to the ground, below Tyrian’s attack, he did something that absolutely shattered Tyrian’s defense and caused Mercury to wince in pain from the sidelines.

He rammed his foot at full speed directly into Tyrian’s crotch.

To say that the kick had left Tyrian completely helpless was a GROSS understatement. He staggered back, clutching his groin in pain, groaning out with pure agony in his voice, only just barely able to keep himself standing, head hung, defenses completely lowered.

Qrow immediately got to work on using the opportunity to his advantage, readying his scythe to strike, swinging it towards Tyrian’s torso. The strike managed to connect, wrapping the blade of his scythe around Tyrian like a claw, before Qrow suddenly thrust forward with his weapon. The force threw Tyrian backwards, and the blade impacting him took a massive chunk out of his aura from the initial hit and the launch.

Tyrian was able to catch himself by pushing his tail against the ground, reversing his momentum to instead launch forward, towards Qrow. after getting in front of Qrow, he leaned down, allowing his tail to push towards him. Qrow managed to slam the blade of his scythe against Tyrian’s tail, pushing it away.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Tyrian wanted, as he then brought his gauntlets up towards Qrow, unloading a rather large amount of bullets from them into his torso, eating away most of his aura and causing him to be pushed back. Tyrian then booted Qrow in the chest, knocking him even further away.

He then prepared to charge at Qrow, his hands cloaked in purple energy, ready to cut clean through Qrow’s weakened aura and finish him off. What he absolutely didn’t see coming, was Qrow just chucking his scythe straight at Tyrian, causing him to stop his advance to block it.

After Harbinger reflected off Tyrian’s gauntlets, Qrow then kicked the weapon, rebounding it back to Tyrian, the force causing his arms to fly off to the side. Qrow proceeded to kick Harbinger at Tyrian several more times, each time spinning the weapon and causing the blade to cut more of Tyrian’s aura away.

Qrow then brought his right arm forward at full force, landing an incredibly hard punch straight on Tyrian’s face, pushing him back onto the ground quite a distance away. After punching Tyrian, Qrow then caught his scythe before it hit the ground, holding his position in preparation for the finale of this fight.

Tyrian was kneeling against the ground, coughing on pain as his aura had finally faded away from the continued attacks. He opened his eyes, looking down at the sand below him, noticing the sizable amount of blood he had either coughed up or let pour from his nose.

Standing back up with pure rage in his gaze, Tyrian wiped a sizable amount of blood off his face, before growling at Qrow and getting into a charge stance. Both men stared each other down, ready to engage in the final clash of this battle.

After a brief pause, both of them launched at each other, with Qrow swinging his scythe forward as he neared Tyrian. The attack was avoided as Tyrian ducked down, and with the last of his ammo, fired off into Qrow’s torso, finally shattering his aura. Despite this, Qrow remained standing, bringing his knee up, straight into Tyrian’s gut.

The knee strike definitely hurt, but Tyrian was running on enough adrenaline to not care about the pain in the moment. He attempted to elbow Qrow in the back of the head, but Qrow leaned to the side, striking Tyrian with the handle of his scythe, pushing him away.

He then rushed towards Tyrian, spinning his scythe towards him no less than three times. Tyrian blocked the attacks, but his guard grew weaker with each consecutive strike, eventually breaking completely, allowing Qrow to kick Tyrian yet again. The force pushed him back a few inches, but not far enough away to put him out of melee distance.

Tyrian brought his right arm up towards Qrow face, attempting to strike him with this blades yet again. Qrow only barely avoided the strike, feeling it graze against his face and cut him slightly. Not caring even remotely about the cut, Qrow spun around Tyrian, getting directly behind him.

After Qrow had gotten behind Tyrian, he prepared to land the most devastating strike of the fight yet. Bringing the blade of his scythe up with immense force, Qrow cleaved off something rather important, the entire back half of Tyrian’s tail and launching it into the air.

Groaning in pain from the loss of his artificial limb, not feeling it anywhere near as much as his previous tail, but still having the pain of it severing his aura in that area, Tyrian recoiled forward, venom leaking from his tail and out onto the sand. He turned around just in time to duck under a swing from Harbinger, now back in sword form.

After Tyrian ducked the strike, Qrow spun his sword around in his grip, flipping the side the blade was facing, before swinging it back up in the opposite direction. Tyrian brought his blades up to block the strike, but being knocked back by it.

Once Tyrian again regained his footing, he was suddenly met with Qrow’s fist slamming directly into his throat, completely taking the wind out of his lungs and stunning him momentarily. The attack left him unable to notice something falling down in between him and Qrow, something that Qrow caught in his free hand.

What he absolutely noticed was the sudden stinging pain that he felt in his gut, the clear feeling of something stabbing him. Looking down towards where the immense pain was coming from, Tyrian was absolutely furious in what he had allowed to happen, and at Qrow for doing it in the first place.

He found his own stinger, jammed into his torso.

After Qrow let go of Tyrian’s stinger, leaving it jammed into the Faunus’ chest, he watched as Tyrian staggered backwards, grabbing at his stinger in pain. The two of them shared one last murderous glare as Tyrian pulled his stinger out.

With blood flowing from the wound and out onto the sand beneath him, Tyrian growled one last sentence to Qrow. “You know, t-this isn’t over yet.” And then, after staggering backwards a few more steps, Tyrian fell to the ground in a pool of his own blood, consciousness leaving him.

Chapter Text

Emerald had to admit, that was probably the coolest fight she has ever seen, and that was a pretty high bar to clear. The old bastard did pretty good all things considered, she really didn’t expect him to actually BEAT Tyrian.

Unfortunately, it seems like that took the last of Qrow’s energy out of him, and he began to fall backwards. After a few seconds of stumbling, he ended up collapsing on his back against the sand, breathing pretty heavily from exhaustion.

Great, now both of them were flat on their asses and out of aura, that’s just fucking great. She wasn’t particularly worried at the moment, not of Mercury, she knew damn well he wasn’t gonna hurt her or anything, but she really wanted at least one of them to be on their feet… in case somebody else showed up.

From the sound of footsteps against the sand coming from behind her, it seemed like somebody DID in fact show up. Turning herself over with the minuscule amount of strength she had left, Emerald shifted to look towards whoever was coming. When she saw who exactly had arrived, she was filled with a sense of relief.

The rest of Jaune’s team had made their way out to them. She guessed that they found out what she was up to. Emerald was glad they decided to come out and help her instead of just kicking her ass when she eventually got back.

“What… took you jackasses so… long to get here, I’m fucking dying over here.” Emerald only barely managed to sputter that bit of sass out, and quite a decent amount of blood with it. She would’ve been more grateful usually, but she was in a shit-load of pain right now.

Jaune quickly rushed over to her side, dropping his weapons and quickly getting to work with his semblance. Weiss almost immediately followed his example, while Nora and Ren opted to check on Qrow.

“Hey, you good old man?” Nora lightly tapped Qrow with her foot as she spoke, trying to make sure he wasn’t dead or anything. Qrow’s eyes barely opened as he looked up at her and Ren. “Yeah, just… gimme a minute… or thirty, I’m kinda tapped out here.”

Emerald was finally starting to regain her strength, her returning aura working to clear the colossal headache that Mercury gave her with his metal boot. Slowly but surely, she was finding the strength to stand up again.

It took a good while, but she was eventually able to make her way back up onto her feet as Jaune continued to work, her aura repairing any of the many minor injuries that Mercury gave her. When Jaune finally finished, Emerald’s defensive aura barrier had re-manifested around her as she grabbed her weapons off the ground.

“Thanks guys… man, that pain in my neck ain’t going away anything soon. Alright; we’ve gotta get Qrow’s dusty ass up and then get the hell out of here.” Emerald quickly began speaking to the rest of the team as she motioned towards Qrow’s very immobile form.

“Alright, on it.” Jaune quickly began to move towards him as Weiss stayed with Emerald. “You seem worried about commenting.” Weiss spoke with a hint of her own concern, clearly a bit fearful of what had Emerald startled.

“We just need to get back to Shade before-“ Emerald was cut off in an instant by the sound of something hitting the ground a short distance away and a light shockwave of dust and sand pelting her and the others. “…oh no.”

With a stiff and terrified turn of her head, Emerald looked towards where that shockwave originated from, praying to the gods above that it was just a rock hitting the ground or something. Her prayers, as usual, went unanswered, and all she saw was a burning orange eye piercing straight into her own.

“Fuck.”

Everybody’s hearts dropped, including Mercury, who was standing quite a ways away, out of sight. The sudden dramatic increase in the temperature around them just served to amplify the immense stress. Everyone instantly reached for their weapons, getting them ready for a fight.

Wisps of flames began flaring up around the spot that Cinder had impacted, a noticeable crater in the sand around her, some of it turned into glass from the heat. Emerald could swear that she saw fire pooling behind Cinder’s teeth as the two stared at each other.

She saw the bright flames I spewing from her throat much better when Cinder was suddenly rocketing right towards her. She almost immediately went to try and avoid the charge, but Cinder was moving far too fast for it to mean anything.

Fortunately, it seemed she wouldn’t be getting splattered against the sand, as Cinder suddenly had to shift her attention to an oncoming Boarbatusk to her left. She only barely managed to turn and catch the pale white Grimm by its horns, avoiding having it ram into her side, being pushed back as she halted the charging beast.

After a while, she managed to blast the summoned Boarbatusk into ash with a stream of fire straight from her mouth. After the flames and smoke dissipated, Cinder saw Weiss with her sword raised, several bright yellow Glyphs pointed straight at her.

Cinder quickly maneuvered to the side to dodge the first stream of electricity from Weiss’ glyphs, quickly continuing her backwards movement to avoid the remaining strikes. After she finally stopped on her feet, she returned Weiss’ attacks with her own blast of lightning, aiming straight for her head.

Weiss only barely managed to bring up a gravity glyph beneath her own feet to propel upwards and avoid the bolt of lightning. Unfortunately, in the sky, she was met with Cinder propelling herself straight up, charging another blast of lightning.

Suddenly, Cinder’s arm is snagged by two grappling wires wrapping around it. Turning to her side, Ren is stood below her, his wires pulling her towards him. Cinder raises her Grimm arm, a fireball charging in it to try and blast Ren. Suddenly, her remaining arm is caught by chains snagging onto it. Emerald pulls Cinder’s arm to her side to stop her from being able to counterattack.

Suddenly, Weiss is positioned on a Glyph behind her in the air, her rapier ready to jab straight into Cinder. She then shoots forward, striking Cinder straight in the torso, before landing on yet another Glyph in the air. Using that glyph, she propelled herself back towards Cinder at extreme speeds, continuing to do so with multiple more glyphs at a constantly increasing speed.

Unfortunately, Cinder finally managed to get her guard back up, and unleashed a wave of fire from her mouth all around her, blasting Weiss back to the ground. She then yanked her Grimm arm free of Emerald’s chains and then grabbing onto Ren’s grapple wires with it and slicing them off of her.

After freeing herself from her restraints, Cinder was finally able to turn her attention back down towards the ground. When she did so, she was swiftly caught off guard again by something shooting up right in front of her.

When she looked up to see what the hell had just happened, she was met by the head of a hammer barreling right towards her. She attempted to avoid the attack, but was struck straight in the back by Nora’s hammer, being blasted into the ground with crazy velocity.

Nora immediately prepared to drop down on Cinder hammer first, crushing her into the sand, but unfortunately that didn’t happened. Cinder’s Grimm claws suddenly shot up and grabbed her by the face, before swinging her straight into Ren.

Cinder quickly got back to her feet, wiping sand out of her eyes as she did so, disoriented by the attack she just took. She wasn’t disoriented enough to not catch the clicking of guns off to her side, and she swiftly ducked underneath a barrage of bullets.

Emerald continued attempting to shoot Cinder, but just continued to have her bullets effortlessly dodged. Cinder was preparing to charge at Emerald to counter her attack, but she was suddenly hit with something swiping clean across her back and staggering her forward.

Turning around, she saw Jaune behind her, his sword already being brought back up to slash at her again. She quickly materialized a blade of her own to block the strike, before using her free hand to blast Jaune away with a gust of wind.

She turned back towards Emerald, no longer concerned about Jaune. Unfortunately for her, Weiss managed to summon a gravity glyph behind him as he flew backwards. The force of the gravity blast propelled him forward, back towards Cinder.

Once again, he managed to strike Cinder across the back with his sword, taking off most of her cape with his slash this time. Cinder, clearly having lost a sizable amount of aura with that one, kneeled down and stuck her hands into the sand.

Suddenly, the ground beneath her, and Jaune, had begun glowing orange. Thinking quickly, Weiss suddenly launched a small Nevermore towards Jaune, catching him and carrying him into the air. Her timing was perfect as the ground suddenly burst into a massive explosion beneath him.

Cinder, seemingly unfazed by the explosion, blasted back into the air once again. She immediately manifested a large javelin and sent it hurtling right towards the Nevermore that was carrying Jaune. The weapon pierced right through the summoned Grimm, dispersing it to dust and causing Jaune to fall.

Fortunately for him, Nora came flying in on her grenade launcher, snagging Jaune out of the sky before he hit the ground. The two of them landed a bit shakily next to Weiss, with Jaune coughing up quite a bit of sand from the impact.

Turning towards the three of them, Cinder raised another Javelin to launch at them , dead set on skewering at least one of those damn kids who kept giving her trouble. Her attack was immediately halted by the feeling of something chipping right through her aura and impacting the side of her head.

A bullet flew right into her head, right into the side where her missing eye was. Blood began pouring from the massive gash that the bullet carved in the side of her head, only having barely missed going into her skull. The attack caused her eyepatch to be blown clean off, leaving her empty eye socket exposed.

Emerald honestly couldn’t believe she had just done that. She actually just shot Cinder square in the head… without any hesitation whatsoever. She was actually kinda proud of herself for being able to pull that off.

Unfortunately that pride wouldn’t last long, since it seemed that getting a bullet to the head didn’t affect Cinder as much as it should’ve. In a quick burst of fury and flame, Cinder came barreling towards her. Emerald found herself being launched backwards by Cinder landing straight in front of her.

Ren just barely moved fast enough to get behind Emerald and catch her before she flew too far. Neither of them were able to move fast enough to react to Cinder suddenly having boosted behind them in a ridiculous show of speed.

A blast of fire straight behind them caused them both to be launched forward, directly at the rest of their team. Weiss just barely managed to halt their flight with a series of Glyphs, stopping them mid-air and allowing them to fall to the ground.

Weiss then immediately had to burst forward and bring up a wall of glyphs around her team. Cinder had formed a fiery set of wings behind her, rising into the air, and suddenly launching a barrage of flaming blades straight at the heroes.

Weiss’s glyphs began cracking under the constant pressure of the attacks, but she managed to hold them off. What she didn’t hold off was Cinder rapidly crashing right through the glyph wall and kicking her straight in the gut, shattering her aura in one swift strike.

The attack caused Weiss to be knocked to the ground, not moving. Jaune immediately flew into a rage, attempting to strike Cinder with his sword. He barely managed to snag her across the cheek, drawing blood, but was the caught straight in the chest with a point blank fireball, shattering his aura as well.

Behind Cinder, Emerald and Ren both began firing as many bullets as they could at Cinder, with the Fall Maiden easily cutting them to pieces with one of her blades. Nora then got back up, aiming her grenade launcher straight at Cinder.

As soon as Nora fired, Cinder stepped to the side slightly, just enough for the grenade to whiz past her head, and just enough for her to be able to grab onto the grenade with her Grimm arm. Shifting on her feet, she then threw the grenade back at the three with absurd force.

Ren immediately grabbed Nora and pulled her to the side as Emerald dove in the opposite direction. None of them were anywhere near fast enough to avoid being hit by the shockwave of the grenade as it hit the ground between them, their aura’s all dispersing as they hit the ground.

Cinder clutched the side of her head as she stood back up, wincing and groaning at the intense pain that contact with the bloody bullet wound gave her. Nevertheless, she continued glaring straight at her now immobile enemies with her remaining eye.

She continued to do so for quite some time, trying to get used to the pain and the ringing on her ear. At least, until the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps broke her focus on the ringing and caused her to turn to her left.

Bringing a blade up in front of her, she just barely blocked another slash from a very irate Jaune. Beneath the both of them, she ignited the ground yet again, with Jaune staggering backwards before the explosion could go off.

The force still sent hurtling back a few dozen feet and caused him to fall to the ground. Cinder, still on her feet, had slowly begun walking towards him, the scowl on her face twisting into a demented grin as she did so.

“It won’t be quite as satisfying doing this to you as it would be doing it to Mrs Rose, but you know what they say.” Cinder spoke as Jaune weekly attempted to stand up. As she closed the remaining distance between them, she raised her claws.

“An eye for an eye.”

And she brought her claws straight down towards his face.