When the attack on Beacon started, Blake was in the eastern dorms. She had stopped for breath outside of CRDL's dorm and was seriously considering letting them figure it out on their own. Then there was a series of thuds, sounding a bit like they had come from the courtyard. The noise that followed was all too familiar. Whizzing, shrieking, then a series of muffled thuds. Then buildings falling collapsing, crashing, crushing.

"SON OF A FUCKING BITCH"

Apparently, Sky Lark knew what 130mm guns sound like. He came rolling out of the door in his armor (CRDL would have had combat class first period) and laid flat next to Blake until the fire stopped. Blake stood up and then dove for the floor again as more shells impacted the front walls. More sounds joined the blasts, until it was like a rolling barrage of thunder. The rest of CRDL sprinted out the door, then for some reason looked at her for guidance. Blake grimaced, then pointed towards the port by the foot of the Beacon cliffs and took off running.

She told herself she felt bad for leaving them, but the building could come down at any moment, and there just wasn't time to try and drag them. Either they would come or they wouldn't.

Didn't make it any easier. She hated the fact that she hated water, and it had caused problems more than once on missions in Vacuo back in her White Fang days.

"Where to now, Blake?" Cardin Winchester and the rest of team CRDL tagging along for her swim in Vale Bay was not helping. At all.

Blake glared at him. "You'll have to leave the armor here."

His eyes widened at the thought of leaving his precious armor behind. "I can swim in it, otherwise I couldn't have gotten it approved."

She didn't have time for this. "We'll be in water for at least 3 hours! The extra weight will kill you!"

He obviously hadn't gotten the length of time it would take to swim from Port Beacon to somewhere safe through his abnormally thick skull. Blake growled in frustration, then cut the sound short when Russell looked at her in surprise. 'Oh right, normal humans don't usually make noises,' she thought sarcastically. 'Of course I get stuck with these bastards'

He reached up to his straps and reluctantly pulled off his chestpiece. His team followed suit and she began to hope for their idiotic souls. Unfortunately for everyone, that's when the Atlesian Air Force decided to check if Port Beacon was empty.

The Atlas Attack Craft was Atlas's premiere ground attack gunship. It was basically a bullhead, but instead of seating, the AAC had two gatling guns and 4 rocket pods carrying eighty 82mm rockets.

Blake had two options. She could either try to save CRDL and probably die in the process, or she could run.

The AAC's guns began to spin up, and Blake raised her hands above her head, leaving Gambol Shroud at her hip. Thankfully, CRDL followed her example. The ship dropped several Knights. However, the pilot let the guns spin down, which was what she was hoping for.

As the Knights landed she shoved Cardin into the river. He opened his mouth, but his shout was got cut off when he landed in the brackish water.

"Get into the river!" She shouted, Gambol Shroud blazing in the general direction of the Knights. Thankfully Sky wasn't a total fool and dove into the water, yelling for his teammates to follow. Russel and Dove glanced at the ACC's glowing 20mm gatlings and threw themselves into the river, followed by Blake.

As she dove into the freezing water, her eyes closed immediately from the cold. Even underwater, she could feel the AAC open fire. She opened her eyes to a sight unlike any she had ever seen. Bullets shot through the water, making unholy sounds and leaving trails of bubbles. Knowing she was abandoning CRDL, she swam back under the pier, unable to see them through the murk. Blake came up three pilings back, and immediately looked back towards CRDL. She could see the other side of the shore, and CRDL was nowhere in sight, but the AAC had stopped firing, so she supposed they were dead or safely floating downriver.

Now she was trapped under the goddamn pier while they stood around up there and hoped for someone to climb back out.

Sun hated not knowing what was going on. He hated being caught unaware. He also strongly disliked waking up early. So when his townhouse's window blew open and a dripping wet Blake got him out of bed by slapping him, he knew that it was not going to be a good day.

"What the hell-"

Blake's hand shot out, clamping around his mouth. Her other hand was wrapped around Neptune's face.

"Shh."

Neptune was the first to speak when Blake removed her hands from their faces.

"Why are you so wet?" He blurted.

Blake looked tired. "Swam from Port Beacon."

Neptune's eyes went went wide. "What!? That must have taken-"

"Three and a half hours. Do not remind me."

Neptune shuddered and rubbed his shoulders with his hands. Sun ignored his friend's antics. "What the hell happened?"

She sighed, leaning sitting down against the wall. "It would be easier to show you guys. There should be a video on your scrolls."

Neptune grabbed his off the table. He tapped it three or four times, then sighed. "It's been messed up since you got water on it Sun."

Sun hopped out of bed and threw on his shirt. "You mean since you threw it across the room." He grabbed his own device from the nightstand and keyed his passcode in, then groaned. "The CCTs are down, says here 'unscheduled maintenance'" He tapped a few more times, then opened a video link.

Ironwood's voice, distorted by the recording and scrolls bad speaker system, leaped into the room.

"This is General James Ironwood of the Atlesian Armed Forces, Supreme Commander of the United Armies of the World Government-" Sun paused the video, turning around to look at Blake.

Blake said nothing, but her face told the sad story.

"Blake . . . Where is the rest of your team?"

She blinked once, shaking her head. "Not sure. They're alive, I think. The Atlesians launched a bombardment of the school after some students fought back, so we all started out separated. We talked briefly, so I know their overall plans." She sighed, then blinked again.

Sun raised an eyebrow, then grabbed his scroll with his tail and read aloud from it "Ozpin was eliminated . . . Grimm have supposedly vanished. . . total takeover of Remnant. . . This sounds a bit more like the end of the world as we know it."

Neptune was looking back and forth between the two of them worriedly. "Blake, what are you going to do?"

She glanced at him, then stared out the window for a long second. When she looked back, her face was calm and collected. "I'm going to start a war. Weiss is going to the SDC. Ruby and Yang have gone to find their dad and uncle. Atlas demolished Beacon, so they started it. We're going to finish it. I don't know what you guys are going to do, but whatever you decide to do, if Atlas is your enemy, you'll find us."

Sun immediately burst out laughing. "Blake you're seventeen. Even if you were a terrorist for a while, you aren't about to go out and just start blowing up buildings and not get beat like a dog and sent to prison or executed."

Blake glared at him while Neptune looked relived. She sighed. "I have a lot of contacts, a lot of powerful people who know me. I'm going back."

Sun's face changed from his usual easygoing smile to something far more determined. He reached for his scroll, tapping several times. "No, you're not. Those terrorists are far worse than Atlas."

Blake sighed, and turned toward the door. "You won't stop me. Your gunchucks are buried under a hundred feet of rubble. Get a job doing heavy lifting or bouncing for a club. That's all hunters are good for now."

Sun activated his aura, throwing a heavily enhanced sucker punch. Blake's shadowy form vanished, and she threw him into the wall.

She turned to him, eyes watery. "Goodbye Sun."

He growled and threw himself into a flying tackle. She shadowed herself and sprinted for the door. Neptune was already blocking her, but she leaped into the air, wrapping her arms around his head and smashing him into the floor in a headlock. As she moved again for the door, Sun smashed into her from behind, wrapping himself around her waist. She shadowed, but was caught by a spinning kick from Neptune, who was striking at her from his position on the floor. She backflipped to absorb the force, ending up five or six feet from Sun, who blocked the doorway again, panting.

She glared. "You do realize I have gambol shroud on me."

Sun smiled as sweetly as he could given the circumstances. "I do."

She glared some more. "I don't want to do this."

He smiled some more. "Then don't."

She was about to go for her weapon when she felt a barrel press itself into her back.

"Blake, sit down and let's think this out. This gun is capable of easily puncturing most hunter's aura. If I fight you with it, someone will get hurt." Neptune's voice was . . . odd. Steady, with a hint of steel, but at the same time pitched to carry.

Blake laughed, shadowed, and grabbed the gun, flipping over Neptune and drawing Gambol Shroud at the same time. The gun was nearly a foot long, with a double grip and a pearl handle. The loading mechanism was similar to that of a single shot rifle from before the Great War, but huge. The bullets that would load into that would be closer to a cannon shell than an ordinary bullet. It weighed enough that Blake's arm trembled from holding it. Neptune never even tried to fire it, obviously afraid of injuring her.

Neptune dove for cover immediately, but Sun sprinted at her, trying to get the gun.

She slammed the handle of the gun into his face and sprinted out the door.

She could hear Sun calling her name, but she was a fair bit faster then him, so she had outrun him by the time she reached the lobby. She left Neptune's strange gun there and stepped out into the early morning light.

The city was deserted. There were Atlesian soldiers who definitely hadn't been there when she had run by on the roof only a few minutes earlier. They were moving south along one of the cross streets, so she kept parallel to them on the next street over, assuming their unit was running a hatched search pattern. Blake saw no more patrols until she reached Seventh Street. Her safe house was on the corner of Seventh and Sons, halfway across the city. The idea of making it there today was ludicrous, even if the airbuses were running. They weren't, so she checked into a hotel, noting the Faunus at the counter. She could catch the seventh street airbus from the door if they returned to normal running. She very purposely tried her white fang account first, which though it was denied now, would probably tell them where she was.

She wasn't worried about the fang killing her. No, she knew Adam too well for that, and she knew he would want her back.

She was unaware just how right she was.

Adam Taurus was many things. A rebel, a freedom fighter, a rights activist, a hunter, a soldier. Above all though, he was a leader. A commander of men and women, someone who could turn any situation on it's head just by giving orders. By necessity, leaders are always adaptable. So when all his plans were turned on their head by events totally beyond his comprehension, Adam did not flounder.

Instead, he thrived. "Perry, take your regiment and work your way through the industrial district in plainclothes. Tell people that Atlas is here to return things to the way they were before the Rights Revolution. Benford, you move through the agriculture district doing the same. I'll take the lower residential district and the slums. Deerie, walk over to Junior's and tell him I want a meeting. His time and place. Then find Neo and have her break Roman out."

His lieutenants nodded. They were almost as frustrated as him to be working with humans, but nobody wanted that monster following them around. That time was over now though. They would now have plenty of recruits, plenty of donors, and a target rich environment. What could possibly go wrong?

The building was low and squat, sitting on a Y shaped intersection in the lower residential district of Vale. Officially, it was the "Xoing Club and Bar". In reality, it was the center of Vale's criminal underworld. Not that anything illegal ever happened there. The place was sacred, under a permanent truce. Roman Torchwick could sit down and have a drink with the head of the VPD and neither would have anything to fear. That said, most illegal things that happened in Vale were somehow related to it. It was often said that the bartender knew everything that happened in Vale, legal or not.

Blake hated the place. She had been there a number of times, and it never got any better. That said, it was the only way to find Adam on her terms, so there she found herself. It was still midmorning, so there were only a few small time gangsters chatting at the bar as she walked towards the main bar, and towards Junior. He was speaking to a man in a red shirt and pants setting up some meeting or another.

"Yeah yeah yeah, my time my place. Next open slot is 7 am this Wednesday. Meet me here. No I don't want you to bring me anything." He hung up his scroll and smiled that big fake smile at her. "Well if it isn't Blake. It's been awhile since Adam tore this place apart looking for you. I like the bow, really seems…. with the times."

She glared at him, lips drawn back. "Spare me Junior. I want to meet with Adam, and I want to do it here. Give him a call for me and I'll owe you a favor. No killing or illegal stuff, maybe some intimidation."

Junior laughed. "Straight to the point. Alright, I'll play ball. Adam's coming to my place for a meeting this afternoon anyway. I'll need your number."

Blake raised an eyebrow. "You realize the CCT is down?"

Junior had already reached for his own scroll. "I have it on good information that it will be back up by the end of the month."

She sighed and held out her scroll, tapping it to his and sharing her contact info.

Junior's smile widened even further. "Well, you've got an hour or four to burn. Would you like a drink?"

Blake glared at him some more.

A/N: Well um. Sorry. I gave up on this fic. It's been what.. Six months? Ok yeah ouch. Anyway, I'm back now, until I get writers block again. Also published The Remnan Age, a space fic. So check that out. Next chapter will cover the political fallout of the situation, the Battle of Patch, and the Evacuation. Qrow PoV, WHOO.

Thanks are due to my editor, /u/shandromand, from everyone who reads this. He is the one who convinced me to continue.