Ruby, Weiss, and Blake ran through the doors of Beacon Academy's Infirmary, pushing past an uncommonly dense crowd. They had retreated from the island along with the rest of the teams as soon as they'd heard that Team JNPR had been badly injured. It wasn't until they were en route back to the school that they received word that one of them had been killed. Somewhere in the frantic relaying of information between teams, the name of the one killed had been lost. The trip home had been a tense, brutally emotional guessing game. Now, they shoved their way through the mob of doctors, nurses, and curious students, Ruby leading the way, desperately shouting the names of her friends.

As Ruby ran down the hall, she heard a commotion coming from a room just a few doors down. A doctor saw her coming and held up his hand.

"Wait, Miss Rose, you shouldn't be-" He began.

Ruby burst into a cloud of rose petals, and reappeared behind him. She kept going without breaking stride. The doctor looked over his shoulder, then let his hand drop down, defeated. Blake and Weiss ran past him and followed Ruby as she entered the room. Inside was a crazed swarm of doctors rushing about, several gathered around a gurney near the center of the room, working furiously to stabilize the girl laying on top of it. Team RWBY immediately recognized her as Nora. In the corner, more doctors were tending to Lie Ren, several of them insisting he lay back on the bed. He was ignoring them, eyes trained on Nora. He was more scared than any of them had ever seen. The doctors did what they could to treat a hideous wound on his leg. One doctor was applying pressure to Nora's throat while another prepared a suturing kit. Another doctor was working hurriedly to insert an intravenous needle for a blood transfusion. The doctor's efforts were not made easier by Nora's struggling. As she writhed, she caught sight of Team RWBY. Blake couldn't remember Nora ever greeting them without a bright smile, but now, as she looked at them, she could only weep. She tried to speak, and a fresh spurt of blood came from between the doctor's fingers. She reeled back against the gurney in pain.

"Nora!" Ren shouted, "Nora, don't try to talk, just-"

Frustrated, the doctor attempting to insert the needle put it down, grabbed some sort of tranquilizer in an insertion device, and jabbed it into her arm.

"Hey!" Ren yelled at her, "Don't knock her-"

She clicked the button, and Nora fell unconscious almost immediately. Ren shouted in rage. She resumed her efforts with the needle, this time with greater success.

As the doctors began suturing her neck, Ren looked over at Team RWBY. He stared helplessly.

"Ren, what happened?" Ruby asked, with concern.

Ren stared at Nora, looking on the verge of tears.

"We had no idea what we were up against."

"Who did we lose?" Blake asked.

Ren lay back, putting his hands over his face in grief.

"Pyrrha." He said, "Pyrrha was killed."

Weiss put a hand over her mouth in shock. Ruby's head sank. Blake continued staring blankly at Ren.

"How could Pyrrha-" Ruby started, before choking, "Who could kill Pyrrha?"

"That- that fucking freak was using some sort of Semblance," Ren said, "Like nothing I've ever seen before. We couldn't hurt him. He was cutting himself."

"What?" Blake asked, in utter confusion.

"Every time he cut himself, one of us would be injured. He nearly killed all of us just by stabbing himself over and over. Pyrrha shot him in the head and her own brains were blown out. He didn't have a scratch."

Blake stared, wide eyed in amazement. Even a couple of the doctors looked over to Ren, horrified by these words.

"We just... ran," Ren said, starting to break down, "Nora was bleeding, and he told us to leave and we just ran. We left Pyrrha there. We couldn't do anything."

"Where's Jaune?" Ruby asked him.

"I don't know," Ren said, shaking his head, "I lost sight of him when we were brought in."

Ruby looked between Ren and Nora, glanced at her team-mates, then slipped out of the room.

"Her heart rate is starting to stabilize," Reported one of the doctors working on Nora.

"Will she be okay?" Ren asked.

"She should be fine. Her aura will start healing her wound once she's awake."

Ren looked furious, "It'd be healing her now if you hadn't knocked her out."

"If I hadn't, I'd still be fighting to get the IV in," The doctor who'd drugged Nora interjected, "And she wouldn't be stable."

Blake left the room, looking back and forth down the hall, looking for some indication of which way Ruby went. She settled for heading in the opposite direction from the way they'd came. She only had to go around the nearest corner before she glimpsed Ruby's cape in between the shifting mob of people. She slipped through the crowd, closing the distance between them. When she reached, Ruby, she saw Jaune. To her surprise, he wasn't being treated. He was seated on the floor, back against the wall, head hanging down. Blake was taken aback at the sight of the small pool of blood on the floor beneath him. It seemed to have come from the horrific wound on his hip, based on the bloodstain on his clothes travelling from the wound down to the floor. Jaune was staring at his own hand, which Blake realized was missing it's index finger. He had a huge gash running down his forearm. Pyrrha's rifle was laying on the floor next to him. There was a nurse standing next to Ruby, looking down at Jaune helplessly.

"What's going on?" Demanded Blake.

"He's refusing treatment," The nurse reported.

"Jaune, why are you doing this?" Ruby asked, pain in her voice, "You need medical attention!"

"I'm fine." Jaune said, weakly, "Bleeding's stopped. Aura will take care of it."

"If that hip heals improperly, you could have a permanent limp," The nurse said, "You might need extensive treatment, maybe even surgery."

"I said I'm fine!" Jaune growled angrily, looking up, "I don't need your help."

He noticed Blake, sighed, and looked back down. He examined the bloody stump of his finger, as if in only mild interest.

"Jaune, I'm sorry about Pyrrha," Blake said, "But you need help."

"It should have been me, Blake," Jaune said, "I should have died for taking us in there."

"You can't do that to yourself, Jaune" Ruby said, "You couldn't have known."

"She was the best of us," Jaune said, putting his head in his hands, "She wasn't just strongest. She was the kindest, the most caring... I wouldn't be here if-"

Jaune suddenly lashed out, slamming his elbow into the wall. His teeth were gritted tight, and there were tears in his eyes.

"If she wasn't such a good person, she wouldn't have helped train me. I would have dropped out, and then I wouldn't have lead us in there. Do you understand? If she wasn't the person she was, she'd still be alive. And that's on me."

He stared at Ruby.

Ruby got down on her knees to look Jaune in the eye.

"You didn't kill her, Jaune," She said, "You couldn't have known. I've told you before. You're a leader, you need to help yourself to help your team."

"Yeah," Jaune said, looking away from her, "I've done a great job of that, haven't I?"

"Don't punish yourself," Blake said, "Punish the bastard who killed her. You're going to find this guy, and kill him. We'll help you do it. But you can't do it crippled."

"How am I supposed to kill him?" Jaune demanded, "Pyrrha tried and she- you didn't see what he was doing, Blake. Look!"

Jaune held up his hand, showing the missing finger.

"He cut his own damn finger off, and mine just... and then his was still attached. How are we supposed to fight somebody when everything we hit him with just injures us?"

"We'll find a way," Ruby said, "Just because he's powerful doesn't mean he doesn't have weaknesses. But its not going to be any easier to beat him if you don't help yourself."

Ruby grabbed Pyrrha's rifle from the floor. Jaune let out a small cry of protest and snatched at it. Ruby turn the rifle around and then held it out to Jaune, just out of his reach.

"You're going to kill him with this." Ruby said, "When we find out how to kill him, you're going to do it with this."

Jaune reached for the rifle. Ruby pulled it back just a bit.

"...but first, you're going to get your wounds treated," She ordered, "You're not going to beat him if you can't fight."

Jaune took a moment to consider these words. Eventually, he pushed away from the wall and began to struggle to get to his feet. Ruby went to his side to help him up, but he waved her off. She persisted, wrapping her arm around her shoulders and lifting him. Tears were still running from his eyes. Ruby hugged him tightly. The nurse motioned towards the door of the nearest room and Ruby helped Jaune hobble towards it. Blake watched them enter the room, then looked down at the puddle of blood left on the floor. She suddenly sensed something behind her. She turned around. There, leaning against the wall next to the door Jaune, Ruby, and the nurse had gone through, was Yang. She was smiling sweetly, but her eyes were saddened, sympathetic. Blake sighed. She followed the three of them into the room.

Just a few hours later, the surviving members of RWBY and JNPR were gathered in Ren and Nora's room. Nora was sitting up, thick bandages wrapped around her throat. Ren was squeezed onto her bed next to her, arm wrapped around her. Jaune was sitting in the corner, staring at his bandaged hand, idly. They hadn't spoken for several minutes. Blake was reminded of that first day after she woke up in the hospital. Whenever they weren't crying, they would often just sit in silence. There was nothing to break the silence with that would ease the pain. Jaune had Pyrrha's rifle laid across his lap. He was holding the grip tightly, in his left hand. Every few seconds, his grip would tighten, then relax. Finally, he spoke.

"We need to talk about how we're going to kill this guy." He said, not looking up.

"How could we do that?" Ren asked, "Everything he did to himself... none of it even slightly hurt him."

"It hurt him," Jaune said, "He felt the pain. He projected the injuries onto us, but he felt pain, I saw it."

"How would you use that to kill him?" Weiss asked.

"I don't know." Jaune admitted.

Blake thought about the night Yang and her were attacked. The first sensation she'd felt was being stabbed from behind, then burning pain spreading through her body.

"What if we could get our hands on an Aura-neutralizing blade?" Blake offered, "He can't use his Semblance without his Aura."

"Those only work if your Aura isn't up already," Jaune said, "Either a sneak attack, which probably isn't going to happen, or we'd have to wear down his Aura first, which put us back at square one."

"We've got to come up with something," Ruby said, "We can't go back to that island without knowing how we're going to deal with him."

"What if..." Jaune began, trailing off for a moment, "What if we sliced his throat, and made sure whoever he projected it to didn't bleed out... but we held the wound open, somehow? He couldn't transfer blood loss, could he?"

"Who's to say he can only project an injury once?" Blake asked, "Maybe as long as the wound stays open, he could transfer it to as many people as he wants."

"Right, he could kill all of us at once." Jaune said, "What are we supposed to do? Everything we know, everything we've been trained for, its all useless. We can't fight an enemy who-"

Jaune suddenly stopped. He looked down at the floor, deep in thought. The others remained silent. Suddenly, to their surprise, Jaune grinned.

"Pyrrha." He said, "She figured it out. There was this moment, when he was about to cut himself again. She knocked the knife out of his hands. We have to disarm him. Make it so he can't injure himself."

"So we can disable him," Weiss said, "That's a start. But how do we finish him?"

"Still working on that." Jaune said.

Nora seemed to get an idea. She leaned over and whispered into Ren's ear. Even this small amount of communication seemed to cause her great pain. Ren nodded.

"Hit him with something even he can't heal back from," Ren relayed, "All Semblances have limits. Say we hit him with something that would destroy his body entirely."

"We're not going to do that until we can be sure whoever does it doesn't get killed, too," Jaune said, "But you're right, its a start."

"So what now?" Ruby asked.

"Let's get the teams together," Jaune said, "Pyrrha wouldn't want us to waste time. We need to plan our next move."