Eight hours later - Mistral Swamplands – Ruins of Mistral Trade Route City – Week 19, The Vytal Festival begins in 14 days

There was no such thing as a satellite in Remnant.

Whether by some quirk of the planet's atmosphere or by the inability of dust to power space travel or even upper-atmospheric flight, the people of this struggling planet not once broke their chains. Not once did they leave their atmosphere for the massive expanse that lay beyond it. Airships lost all power, projectiles burned up and the precious few rockets made by Remnant's denizens never reached the stars.

It was sad, certainly. This was a people tried and true. Resilient and strong. They resisted the Grimm for centuries of known history and many more beyond that. They survived wars and plagues and disease the likes of which Earth had never known.

And yet, space still eluded them.

"Are you absolutely certain you can move?" Weiss asked, drawing me from my thoughts. She was kneeling next to me, her broken arm cradled against her chest but that did not stop her from leaning over me, eyes darting up and down my body. "That burn is still fresh and even the slightest movement could reopen the regions that were cauterized-"

"Weiss," I muttered, shrugging off the pain in my side with an ease born only of practice. Sparring with the likes of Yang Xiao Long demanded no less. "I've been lying on the ground, doing nothing, for the better part of a day. I can't sleep. I need you guys to help me eat and drink. I've gotten, and rid myself of, the hiccups no less than five times now. I am sick of staying still."

I stopped speaking long enough to eye the girl from my position on the ground, where I lay on my side. She was next to my makeshift bed – a collection of tarps, drapes, blankets and scraps of clothing that the girls managed to scrounge up – with eyes slightly wider than normally would be. She had her bottom lip between her teeth even as the afternoon sun shone into the husk of a building team RWEBY claimed as our own. The dull grays of the bare, concrete walls around us contrasted nicely with the girl's pure white hair and the sun only seemed to add to its luster; it nearly glowed despite the fact that I knew it had gone without a wash for several days.

My hand found the ground underneath me and I heaved myself up into a sitting position, sending Weiss into a fit. I slapped her hands away as best I could.

"I'm fine," I grunted even as a shudder ran down my spine. Again, the pain was ignored. Instead, I lifted up my Scroll. "I'm- I have more important things to worry about than this burn."

"Enten," Weiss said flatly, her cheeks slightly red and her eyebrows furrowed. She crossed her arms over her chest as best she could. "You received third degree burns up and down your right side. They stretch across half your back and some reached your bones. Additionally, that… that ingrate's explosion threw you hard enough to leave bruises all over your torso and those have only just healed. You should remain still! I worry that you may have broken bones in addition to the concussion-"

"I'm not concussed, Weiss," I said idly, glancing down at my Scroll. No connectivity, still. That was bad – never had I wished Remnant managed satellite technology more than I did now. Satellites were much, much harder to destroy than the Cross Continental Transmit Towers that served in their place. "And those third degree burns are hardly anything more than moderate second degree burns."

The girl's nostrils flared, an indication that meant she was absolutely furious with me, I knew.

Slowly, I put my Scroll down and refocused my attention on her. The device was useless until Ruby and Blake found a CCT Tower anyway. A city the size of Liar's Landing or, rather, Mistral Trade Route City would have required several to function.

They needed only to be activated.

…And possibly repaired.

Nonetheless, once one was back online, I could go on the attack. I could stop sitting idly in these ruins. I could get in touch with Ozpin and Beacon Academy. I could learn of the fallout from Team RWEBY's… exodus from Spotlight Citadel.

But, perhaps most importantly, I could place the first iteration of my listener bot disguised as security software on the open market.

I did not have much time to develop it and so it was as barebones as a bug could get. The software would pass only a Scroll's location and basic information about its user back to me through the various appli- Quill stores that I would use to distribute it. That, in turn, could be combined with the map I already made of Beacon Academy – an expanded version, of course.

Tracking people across the whole of Remnant would demand no less.

"That you do not have a concussion is a small silver-lining," Weiss said lowly. The tone of her voice indicated either sadness or anger but I knew it was the latter in this case. The girl did not take well to her counsel being ignored. "And those burns are serious enough that you must remain still!"

I offered her a smile – it came to me easier than I thought it would. In the sunlight, Weiss looked absolutely radiant and the plain clothing she wore only made her more impressive.

This was no pampered heiress. She was not a spoilt, presumptive girl… not anymore. She was far beyond that, now, she was far more mature, more experienced and more intelligent than she was when Team RWEBY was first formed so many months ago.

The smile widened even as a soothing sense of nostalgia flooded me.

"A small silver lining," I repeated, briefly wondering where I myself first heard the expression, back in my first life. I could not recall. Then: "Earthen idioms have gotten me into trouble before, you know."

I crossed my legs and leaned forward as best I could. My side protested but the bandages my teammates scavenged held and I felt my Aura-infused blood hard at work.

That was still disconcerting to me, that I could feel my blood moving. I needed to focus to do it but focus came to me easily, sitting still as I was. I knew now that I could speed up the flow of blood, slow it down or even stop it completely – that last one nearly gave me a seizure when I stumbled upon the ability, the others only caused numbness or pain in the areas I tested it before I decided enough was enough.

Now, though, I urged my blood-turned-Aura-turned-blood to my wounds. The unharmed side of my body remained slightly numb due to the reduced blood flow but together with my control over my life-blood and the natural healing that Aura provided all huntresses and hunters, my wounds were healing prodigiously fast.

"Came out of left field," I continued when Weiss only offered me an arched eyebrow. The girl's expression did not betray any emotion beyond a sense of curiosity, though, so I knew not if she was still cross with me. I would not be able to find out, either. Not unless Weiss decided to show me what she was feeling. "Blake and Ruby took a liking to that one in particular."

"I remember," the girl offered, a small smile pulling at her lips. "Ruby was relentless with her use of that phrase when she learned it. It relates to fieldb- baseball. Yes?"

A pleased nod of my head answered her even as an Ursa – the bear-like variety of Grimm - roared in the distance. The bestial sound echoed across the silent, still ruins and I waited until it dissipated completely to continue.

"That's right. I don't know why they liked that one so much but they both inadvertently used it around Headmaster Ozpin."

"Oh," the girl winced, bringing her uninjured arm up to put a hand in front of her mouth. "He is far from the most ideal person to hear such an odd expression, certainly."

I hummed my agreement, glancing down at my Scroll again, only to find that it was still without a connection to the CCT. A sigh escaped me before I could stop it.

"They will find it," Weiss assured me, placing one of her hands on my knee. She offered me a small quirk of her lips when I turned back to her. "Blake was not present for the explosion and Ruby was only slightly dazed, thanks in large part to you. They will discover one of the city's towers and find a way to reactivate it."

I snorted, the action causing the white haired girl's lips to tense.

"I don't like being blind, Weiss," I admitted, clumsily rubbing at my eyes with the hand half-asleep from a lack of blood flow. Annoying, but ultimately necessary. "All my life, I've focused on being one step ahead. I've planned and plotted and schemed and I've largely enjoyed success in my every venture. But… but now-"

"Now," the girl cut across me, a breach of decorum so rare for her that I stopped speaking in my surprise. "Now we will regain our footing. We will recuperate and hide away while we lack strength. We will prepare ourselves for the turmoil yet to come in both Headmaster Ozpin's shadow war with those who seek the Maiden's magic and our own personal vendetta against my father.

"We will begin by restoring CCT connectivity to this area, thereby allowing you to distribute your compromised software. We shall let it percolate through all levels of society, burgeoned by the unexpected attack upon my father's network when your infection in the company's airship is unleashed."

She paused and I took the moment to pick up where she left off, my resolve returning at the matter-of-fact way in which the girl spoke. As though nothing could go wrong.

I knew better but it was encouraging all the same. There was always a chance that something might go wrong – the airship might never be returned to a Schnee network, thereby rendering my attack useless. My security software might never get uploaded to Remnant's Quill stores and Ruby and Blake might not even be able to activate a CCT tower.

So many ifs. So many possibilities.

But Team RWEBY possessed one very large advantage that we would not squander: secrecy.

We were out of the public eye, out here in the ruins of Mistral Trade Route City as we were. It was as Weiss said: we could take as long as we needed to gather our strength so long as we kept ourselves hidden from any huntresses, hunters or any other bounty seekers that chased after us.

And in this vast ruin of a once proud society, there were plenty of places to hide.

"Once the attack is unleashed on Schnee Dust Company and my software is firmly entrenched within Remnant's population, we strike," I muttered, squeezing the hand she placed upon my knee once, before releasing it. "We make people disappear. We blackmail. We bribe. We barter… We gather our allies and we fight. We live."

Survival, at all costs.

"We fight. We win."

"We will survive," I agreed. "We will win."

"Win what?" Yang's voice asked all of the sudden, to my right.

Weiss, a prominent blush flooding her cheeks, quickly leaned away from me. She covered her mouth, glancing away from our blonde teammate, and cleared her throat.

It was a testament to the girl's control that the redness faded from her expression within seconds.

My lips curled into a half-smile, half-smirk, caught as I was between amusement at the girl's predicament and sympathy with her feelings at large. I also felt no small amount of relief at Yang's interruption for I did not want to deal with the Weiss' feelings now. And she did have designs on me that went beyond friendship, of that I had no doubt; the only problem was that I did not return her affection beyond that of a close friend.

I knew Weiss better than Ruby did, given my leader spent so much of her time at Beacon dealing with her lack of social skills and then navigating the politics of our hierarchy. Easing the white haired girl out of her shell thus fell to me. The public façade that she so often wore was broken down thanks in large part to the conversations I had with her on an almost daily basis. The frequency with which they happened even had our magnanimous leader calling them our 'Deep Freeze Time'.

Were I honest with myself, I cared for Weiss more than I did Blake and almost as much as I cared for Yang and Ruby. The cat faunus, though, was such an independent spirit that she did not need any help or any aid in easing into life at Beacon Academy. So many of the stereotypical problems that plagued teenagers – insecurity over their looks, over their social lives, over their crushes, over their pasts – did not apply to the girl. Aside from her fear over the fact that we would hold her faunus nature against her and her hesitation at revealing her involvement with The White Fang, she was the perfect teammate.

Of course, I did not mean to suggest that I was the perfect teammate – an example to look up to of sorts. I had my own ideas on how to further team RWEBY's position and it got us an invitation to the Schnee Gala.

The Schnee Gala, of course, got us marked as criminals.

Perhaps if I did not facilitate our team taking a dominate point lead amongst the first years, Hagel Schnee never would have taken an interest in us beyond the fact that we were paired with his daughter. He might never have invited us to his Spotlight Citadel given the… frostiness between father and daughter brought about by her choice to attend Beacon Academy over Atlas' own huntress school.

Maybe, were I not on Remnant, team… team RWBY never would have become criminals.

In the end, I could not know.

"Our wars, Yang," I vocalized, glancing toward the blonde as she sauntered over to us.

Her leg was fully healed now, I noted… Or at least it was healed enough that it did not bother her anymore.

The girl's grin faltered then but she placed herself next to me on my makeshift bed all the same.

"Huh. 'Course we'll win 'em," she said, leaning back on her hands and stretching her legs out in front of her. "We always win. Always will too. Nothing less from the team that beat Pyrrha Nikos."

"I believe that was my doing," I inserted, my twisted, half-formed smirk morphing into an actual smile even as the unease I felt earlier left me. In its place was the same sense of enjoyment I received from all my banter with Yang. "She whooped your ass and didn't even make it look hard."

The blonde scowled amidst Weiss' muffled laughter. The girl punched my shoulder just hard enough for a spike of pain to lance up my side despite the numbness and my grin turned into a grimace.

"Serves you right," Yang muttered, pausing long enough to stick her tongue out at me.

"Yang," Weiss stated, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth a firm line. "He is injured. You cannot rough house with him like you usually-"

"He's fine," the blonde insisted. "Look at him! He had that plotty-schemey face on when I walked into the room and whenever Enten has the energy-"

"My plotty-what face?"

"Plotty-schemey," she informed me in a matter-of-fact manner that I thought she must have learned from Blake. The neutral tone. The incredulous stare – as though I was insane for not agreeing with her. It was all there. "You know, that intense look in your eyes… You usually chew on your lip or crack your knuckles while you're doing it."

I glanced at Weiss, an inquisitive eyebrow arched, but the girl only offered me a shrug. Nonplussed, I turned back to Yang.

"You've been spending too much time around Ruby."

The girl's cheeks reddened ever so slightly and I took the rare sight for what it was worth. Yang Xiao Long rarely blushed – such was the confidence she had in herself – and to have driven her to it gave me no small amount of satisfaction.

"Shut up," she grunted, eyeing my grin like it was a personal offense against her honor. "I'm gonna tell Sjev it was you that put mirrors all around our training area."

Unbidden, a bark of laughter escaped me. The third year used ultraviolet light to attack her opponents. Mirrors were her most hated enemy.

And I remembered that day quite clearly too. I had never seen her hair flare such a violent shade of purple before.

"I'm quite certain you were more bubbly than usual that morning," Weiss observed, her tone neutral even as she leveled an unimpressed look at Yang, complete with the arched eyebrows and upturned chin. The former heiress had looking down her nose at people mastered such that it was an art form to witness. "That leads me to believe-"

"If you'll kindly remember," Yang said, sitting up and doing her best to duplicate the white haired girl's expression. It was a shoddy imitation but given how Weiss' eyes narrowed, it worked well enough. "That was also the morning I filled Blake's tea cup with kitty litter." She hesitated, but then: "Peasant."

"You- You insufferable mongrel!

Yang scoffed. "Neanderthal!"

"Okay," I interjected, shuffling myself between them as soon as Weiss' expression turned thunderous. I was quite certain that this was the first time her nostrils had flared so much. Idly, I stopped manipulating my blood flow – one arm being half numb made maneuvering myself incredibly difficult, after all. "Yang. Yang. What did you want to tell us? You're supposed to be on watch duty…"

The blonde blinked, refocusing her eyes on me even as her scowl faded and the muscles in her face relaxed. She was actually angry! Truly angry… "Oh. Right. I just wanted to let you know I saw your Grimm admirer out in-"

"And you only tell us this now?" I demanded of her.

She threw her hands up in front of her face. "He's just sitting there again! And it's not like we can take him without any weapons and your burn and Weiss' broken arm… There's nothing-"

"He could've moved," I insisted. "That's the reason we have a watch."

The blonde snorted and made to speak again, but Weiss beat her to it.

"Do not bother with explanations, Enten," the former heiress muttered as she spun to her feet from the cross legged position she was in, as fluid as any dancer. "They would be wasted."

I blinked, as surprised at the vitriol in the girl's words as I was to see the legitimate anger in Yang's face earlier.

My blonde partner suffered none of my hesitation though and she flew to her feet to meet the white haired girl face-to-face. "Don't get all high and mighty towards me, princess! You're no better-"

"Quite the contrary, I am," Weiss stated, her arms crossed. "You can't even understand the simplest of-"

"You're such an arrogant twat!" Yang thundered, stepping forward.

"And you are nothing more than a bumbling twit!" Weiss answered, matching the blonde's advance.

"Hey!" I shouted, finally regaining enough sense to push myself to my feet. I went ignored, though – the girls only stepped around me. "Enou-"

"You and your stupid ego! All that self-centeredness wasn't worth anything to Daddy! He still-"

"You ingrate! I see now why your mother left you-"

"Hey!" I yelled, fully and completely fed up with… with whatever was going on between the two of them. To punctuate my shout, I let loose a blast of Aura from my good hand. Nothing overly strong, but enough to show them that I was mad.

They both stumbled and turned as one to face me. Furious expressions were etched into every hard line of their faces. Weiss' public façade was long gone and replaced by a deep scowl. Yang's lips were pressed together so tightly that her jaw was visibly tense.

"You both have some kind of nerve," I spat, every sound in every word emphasized as much as I could. "You're gonna pull this shit- Don't interrupt me! You're gonna pull this shit, now?! Now! Of all times?!

"You're both huntresses! Huntresses!" I hissed, watching as their anger faded, only to be replaced but surly looks of defiance. Teenagers. Honestly. "You're both fighting for our lives- Don't scoff at me! Whether or not you want to hear it, both of you fight for our team! I fight for us. Ruby fights for us. Blake fights for us. And what are you two doing now? What is this? Are we fighting each other?!"

Neither of them were looking me in the eye now, they both found the ground or the decrepit walls around us far more interesting. It was a point of pride for me – that my anger was still enough to intimidate them into this state. Given how long we had fought together and how well we knew each other, I was half certain that the two of them would just laugh me off.

A sigh escaped me. "United we stand. Divided we fall… There's an Earthen idiom for you both to think about. One I hope you never forget! Team RWEBY is on our own out here and if you two don't-" Yang opened her mouth. "If you two don't get your acts together and put whatever that was behind you… you'll kill us all."

Weiss made to protest and the blonde at her side scoffed.

"You will kill us all," I reiterated, my voice quiet but as strong as I could make it. It appeared it was enough – they remained silent. "We have enemies now. Enemies in powerful places. Enemies that would love to see us ended. And if you don't think for one second that infighting would weaken us-"

"You're being-" Yang tried.

"Enough, Yang," I barked. "I don't want to hear your excuses. I don't want to hear your arguments. I'm so incredibly disappointed in you both right now that I can scarce stand to be near you."

Weiss' eyes widened ever so slightly and the girl visibly swallowed, her hand twitching upward toward her mouth. The motion stopped before her limb passed her waist, though.

Yang's eyes, contrarily, narrowed. Her mouth dropped open and she visibly recoiled away from me.

I swallowed, wishing for a moment that Ruby was here to deal with this. Infighting should be handled by the team leader, after all. It should be dealt with by the person with the authority to stop it, once and for all.

But Ruby was not here.

And so, I would have to suffice.

"Do you remember what happened to Team JNPR while Jaune had his troubles with Cardin?" I asked them quietly, eyeing them both. "Do you remember how he refused their help? How his teammates tore themselves apart over the situation? How Ruby tore herself up over the situation? Do you remember how much damage one single boy managed to cause?"

The blonde's gaze dropped to the floor again and Weiss suddenly found the walls of the empty, abandoned building around us very interesting.

"Anger is a poison," I insisted. "It festers and grows and harms everything and everyone it touches. It tears down bonds and destroys people from the inside out. It does nothing good for anyone. Nothing good for this team. For us. Or do I need to remind you both of the time I blew up back when our team was first formed? Back when Ruby and you, Weiss, were fighting?"

Together, they both shook their heads. They still would not look at me and Yang hesitated just a split second longer than Weiss did, but they were quiet now. More introspective, too, if I was judging their expressions correctly.

"I'm going to go find our observer Grimm," I said after a short beat of silence. "Yang, you'll go up to the top floor of this building to cool off. Weiss, you'll be on the bottom floor."

The former heiress had her glyphs to evade her in escaping any roaming Grimm, after all. Better she take the first floor.

The white haired girl herself nodded, once, then turned to stalk off toward the open-aired lobby. Her shoulders were slumped, I noted, but she hopped into the seven story space like it was a hop off of a small ledge all the same. She disappeared from my view quickly.

"Enten-"

"Don't, Yang," I said, shaking my head. I was not quite furious at them for fighting any longer, not since they both appeared to understand why it was such a horrible idea, but I was still annoyed with them both. I could not guarantee that I would not say something I regretted later. "Just go."

She opened her mouth but closed it again before any sound escaped her. Eyes downcast, she turned toward the stairwell to begin the eight story journey to the fifteenth floor of the building.

I watched her shuffle away from me and kept my eyes on her until she disappeared through empty doorway that led to the stairs. I waited until her plodding footsteps faded entirely. Until I could no longer hear Weiss shuffling around some seven stories below me.

Then, I sighed.

"Well this went to shit rather quickly, didn't it?" I asked the room at large, idly picking up my Scroll and ambling over toward the direction from which Yang approached earlier. She said she saw the watcher Grimm, the Beowolf that took such a keen interest in my team.

And the watcher must be watched, in turn.

Two hours later - Mistral Swamplands – Ruins of Mistral Trade Route City – Week 19, The Vytal Festival begins in 14 days

My Scroll lay forgotten at my side, that damnable red 'x' still present over the CCT's antenna-like icon on the upper right corner of the screen. Its battery was running dangerously low now as well.

A grimace touched my lips.

I needed my Scroll to stay active, just like I needed Blake's Scroll to stay active. Our two were the only ones to survive the fight against the glowing Grimm. Yang's was cracked and broken and water logged and so was Ruby's. Weiss' screen shattered in the fall that broke her arm and the device refused to turn on since then.

A sigh escaped me as I leant forward, placing my elbows on my knees. Idly, my legs swayed lazily in the breeze that drifted over my perch on the seventh floor of our building. Once upon a time I would have been scared to sit in an empty window so high up, but once upon a time I did not have Aura. Once upon a time, a seven story fall could have killed me. Once upon a time, I was only human.

But now… now, I was anything but.

Now, a fall from seven stories up would only result in a sprain, at the absolute worst.

I pushed those idle thoughts from my mind with a grunt even as I spied the outline of a Nevermore – the carrion, bird-like Grimm – flying lazily through the sky. I saw another fly up to join it from somewhere in the city even as I placed my Scroll next to me on the ledge.

The flying Grimm were too far away to be of any concern to me – a dozen or two blocks at least – and they also appeared to be flying away from me. To the west, where nothing but swamplands lay.

I tracked the bird-like creatures idly until I could no longer see them, a strange feeling overtaking me as I did so. They seemed so peaceful from this distance. Birds only, calming to watch and mesmerizing to observe, with the way their wings steadily beat the air around them and the graceful manner in which they traveled.

It was a pity they were so deadly when up close and personal.

My Scroll buzzed then and I glanced down at it in a hurry, eager to see Blake's picture appear on the screen. A call from her would mean that a CCT tower was functioning again and that would-

But it was not to be.

My shoulders slumped and my breath left me in an explosive sigh when I saw that the device was only alerting me that it possessed a mere 5% of its battery life now.

5% would not be enough. It was not enough to load my bug into as many Quill Stores as I could reach. It was scarcely enough to even answer the call I was anticipating to begin with!

Another long-suffering sigh escaped me even as I returned my gaze to the ruins around me, desperate for something to distract my mind. My Scroll's battery was depressing to dwell upon and the recent… spat between Weiss and Yang even more so.

Luckily, fortune smiled upon me in the form of my watcher.

The Beowolf was still there, perched in the wreckage of what could only be Mistral Trade Route City's fabled stadium. The massive building was once a point of pride for the city and it reminded me much of The Coliseum back on Earth, with its arched facades and open aired arena. The building towered over all but the tallest of skyscrapers, standing nearly ten stories in height.

'Silver Stadium,' I recalled, my childhood history lessons coming to mind. 'Only the third stadium of its kind to be built after The Vytal Festival's own Amity Colosseum, the floating marvel itself.'

Now, the once renowned building served only as a home to the Grimm, Team RWEBY's watcher included.

The wolf-like creature was crouched beneath one of the arches on the fourth floor of the Silver Stadium, hunched over and looking so terribly smaller than I knew its full twelve feet of height could. Its eyes tracked me steadfastly and unnervingly, always watching but oh so rarely shifting. The beast had not moved against our team since it figured out that there were four in addition to myself, back when it attacked me before I found that crazy preacher and thereby managed to sense the girls' momentary spike of panic when I was tossed across Spectrum Square.

Idly, I picked at the bandages covering my torso, turning away from the Beowolf as I did so. Dwelling on him would do me just about as much good as would dwelling on Weiss and Yang and my Scroll.

Besides, the cloth was pinching the skin under my arm in a manner that was incredibly irritating.

I was manipulating my blood again and so half of my body was somewhat numb. It made adjusting my bandages somewhat difficult. Still, the itchy feeling permeating from beneath my wrappings pleased me, oddly enough. Irritation could only mean nerve endings and nerve endings meant healing skin. The numbness was a necessary sacrifice and one I would choose to make every time if speeding up the flow of blood to a burn allowed it to fully heal within one day's time.

'The wonders of Aura,' I thought, looking out across the cityscape before me. The sky was clear and the sun was well on its way to setting. It wasn't quite twilight yet but it was close. Soon, Ruby and Blake would need to return, whether or not they found a Cross Continental Transmit Tower.

Well, not so much find one but… whether or not they managed to fix one.

It was not hard to locate the towers in the ruins of this city, after all. I could see two from my position even now; both of the formerly pristine structures were dirtied and decrepit. One was half collapsed in on itself and the other was only marginally better. Their tall, thin and metallic forms stuck out amidst the ruins even in their dilapidated states.

No, finding one was not the difficult part.

Something clattered to the ground beneath me, seven stories down, and I leaned over the edge of my window sill to spy a wooden chair settling on the street corner. Soon after, another chair followed it and a large rug followed that one. Each item was broken or in a state of disrepair. One chair was missing a leg and the other lacked a back rest, the rug possessed a ragged-looking hole in its center.

'Offensive to Weiss, no doubt,' I thought, recalling the time I caught the girl throwing out a pillowcase because Ruby spilt a little coffee on it. That was truly the first time I came to understand how very different my life was compared to her own.

She was an heiress of a globally renowned, incredibly wealthy company. She was used to having the newest, sleekest possessions. The trendiest clothing. The brand name school supplies. The comfiest of chairs and silkiest sheets that Remnant could offer her.

Compared to my own life, wherein I wore hand-me-downs from neighborhood boys and became passably competent at sewing to repair them, hers may as well have been on a different world.

It was no small wonder that she would busy herself with ridding the building of the items that did not meet her standards.

'Though I don't think anything left in this city will meet her standards anymore,' I thought, a fond smile on my lips.

For all her quirks, for all her rich tastes, she was still a precious friend.

My smile fell a moment later, though, when my mind inevitably found its way back to the fight.

"What do you think, Beowolf?" I muttered quietly, returning my gaze to the Grimm crouching beneath one of the Silver Stadium's archways. "Did I do right? Did I handle that fight the way I should have?"

It gave me no answer but its company was oddly comforting to me. This desolate city was silent in an eerie way and so completely empty that it left me apprehensive. So used to seeing people, I found the transition to Liar's Landing jarring. No longer could I hear students idly conversing with one another. No longer could I observe my fellow classmates and our foreign visitors. No longer.

No longer.

Crazy it may be, but I was thankful for the Grimm's presence.

Metal vibrated against concrete suddenly and my eyes widened even as they turned to my Scroll. First they darted up to the antenna near the top of the screen.

'No red 'x',' I realized numbly. No red 'x'! That meant-

The Scroll vibrated again and I grasped it quickly, recognizing Blake's face on the screen easily.

"Blake?" I asked once I accepted the call.

But it was not Blake that answered me.

"Enten!" Ruby cheered, the Scroll mere inches from her face. I could only see from her eyebrows to her mouth. "Blake and I found a tower and- I mean, it's pretty easy to find a tower in this place but- anyway! We found a tower and guess! What! There's totally a metal shop near it! It's all secluded and fenced- I mean the fence is sorta not there anymore but it has an area for one and we could use it as a base of operations like in the movies!"

I blinked, trying in vain to sift through the deluge of words the girl just finished hurling at me. A tower. A metal shop. A fence-that-was-not-a-fence. And a base…

"It would be a good idea to settle down somewhere defensible," I said slowly even as the girl nodded.

"Uh huh! And that big building is impressive but it's waaaaay too open and defenseless! It has pretty much every single thing that Professor Port told us doomed the anti-faunus faction in the last war during that one battle."

"The Battle of Fort Castle," Blake said somewhere off the screen. "And that was lost because the human commander forgot the faunus-"

"Had night vision right," Ruby agreed quickly, her face turning away from me for a moment. "But also because the humans tried to run back to their crappy base and-"

"Ruby," I said.

The girl turned back to me, eyes wide. "Sorry! I didn't mean to say crappy!"

"Not-" A bark of startled laughter escaped me. "Not that. I only have 3% of my battery life left and I need to know where-"

"Oh!" the girl chirped, pulling the Scroll away from her face for a brief moment. I saw a darkened room lit up intermittently by numerous blinking, glowing lights behind her.

Then Ruby's face was back.

"We're-" She hesitated, biting her bottom lip and averting her eyes. "I'm- uh, I'm not so great with directions…"

"We're south," Blake said from somewhere off screen.

"South!" The girl parroted. "I know this tower is by the metal shop and that has a pretty big storage facility behind it. Like one of the sheds down on Vale's docks? Or in that storage area, where we fought Roman and you got your butt whipped by Neo!"

"Right," I said, my lips quirking upward. "Shouldn't be hard to find… it's good to see you happy again."

The girl offered me a wide grin. "We're making progress! It's just, after we spent so long running and hiding and basically moving around without a plan… it feels like we're finally taking real steps forward!"

I nodded even as the Scroll was moved away from Ruby's face and angled such that Blake could fit her face in on the call as well.

The faunus offered me a small smile, never more than a slight twitch of the lips with her, but I returned it all the same.

"Where is Yang?" She asked. "And Weiss? I would have thought they would come running when they heard Ruby's voice."

Ruby grunted, her eyes widening. "Yeah! What gives?! Little sisters are supposed to be loved!"

"Ahh," I grunted amidst a sigh. One hand came up to rub at my eyes even as I felt my lips curl into a scowl.

"You're such an arrogant twat!"

"And you are nothing more than a bumbling twit!"

"Enten?" Ruby asked. Her mouth was hanging open ever so slightly and her eyes were still wide. So impossibly large.

"They had a… let's call it a spat," I responded, even as I heard another piece of furniture hit the curb below me. "I-"

"What do you mean spat?" My leader asked quickly, sharing a quick glance with Blake. "Did they fight? Like, real fight?"

"You and your stupid ego! All that self-centeredness wasn't worth anything to Daddy! He still-"

"You ingrate! I see now why your mother left you-"

The scowl twisted into a grimace that I tried – unsuccessfully – to morph into a smile.

"They didn't come to physical blows," I said finally.

"I- what?" Ruby muttered, her eyes darting about my face.

"What did they fight about, Enten?" Blake queried.

"They didn't have-" My mouth moved soundlessly for a brief moment and hesitation once more took over. They did have a reason to fight, else they never would have done so in the first place. "I don't know why they were fighting."

My faunus partner and my leader shared another glance. The former was sporting heavily furrowed eyebrows and the latter once more had her bottom lip clenched firmly between her teeth.

"Where are they?" Blake ventured. "Are they… Are they still with you?"

"Oh!" I grunted. "You thought they ran- No. No… they're still here. I just separated them. Sent Weiss to the bottom floor of the building and Yang to the top."

The black haired girl nodded, her eyes closing in relief. "Then you should head-"

Ruby snorted. Her hand quickly came up to cover her mouth and her head then ducked out of the screen.

Blake's eyes – I could only assume – tracked the younger girl, an expression slackened by disbelief on her face, before she turned back to me a moment later.

"You should head over here," she said slowly, glancing once more in the direction I saw Ruby disappear. "I… I- Are you okay?"

My leader, somewhere off screen still, snorted even louder and immediately began coughing.

"Blake?" I asked slowly.

The girl shook her head even as the Scroll swung around. She was moving. "I don't know-"

A high pitched giggle interrupted her, it was more of a cackle than anything and one with which I was very, very familiar.

"She's laughing?" I asked, my face now a replica of Blake's own stupefied expression.

Then, the Scroll was seized from the black haired girl's hand and Ruby's face reappeared in the display.

"Enten! Are you saying-" She broke off chortling again but fought the laughter back a moment later. "You sent them to time-out!"

And suddenly, I could not help but grin back at the girl.

"I- It's really not-" A snort escaped me at the thought of sending Weiss and Yang, two of the most bull-headed girls I knew, to time-out, of all things. An absurd picture of me wagging my finger at them while they hung their heads and sat in opposite corners of a room entered my mind and a true burst of laughter escaped me at the thought.

"You did send them to time-out," Blake commented, her face back on the screen. Her lips were twitching.

"That's soooo embarrassing!" Ruby cheered. "I finally have some dirt on Yang!"

"Ruby," I chided, attempting to banish my smile to look properly stern.

I did not succeed.

She waved me off. "Oh, I know. I won't be mean! I swear! But still… you put them in time-out!"

"I'm kind of surprised they listened to me," I muttered then, my expression returning to its neutral state as memories of the fight's aftermath washed over me.

On screen, Blake shrugged her shoulders. "It sounds like they needed someone to talk some sense into them. You're good at that, inventor."

A line of trees was ahead of me. Beside me, the cat faunus perched herself on the bench and hugged her knees to her chest, her chin resting atop them even as her sneaker-clad feet settled themselves on the edge of her seat.

"Maybe," I admitted, the edge of my lips quirking upward again, this time into something of a fond smile. The Scroll in my hand vibrated then and my eyes immediately went to the battery icon.

"My Scroll is about to die," I told them quickly. "I'll get Yang and Weiss and head toward you guys."

"We'll stay here until you get to us," Ruby promised, nodding. Her eyes were narrowed ever so slightly and her jaw tense. "There were some Grimm we had to avoid on the way over here so watch out for them-"

The screen in front of me faded to black, the Scroll's battery finally having given its last bit of power.

But it was enough. I now knew team RWEBY had a working CCT Tower and a metal shop to boot. It sounded like a fairly defensible area – maybe we could even start sleeping a little easier at night.

Another object hit the pavement below me, this one an ornately framed painting that had a gash torn through its center. It was large enough that even from seven stories up, I could tell it was Alrmady Alssulb, sponsor of Pyrrha Nikos and Beacon's fourth year team MNSN. The steel tycoon's face was set into what I thought was a permanent scowl.

"Weiss!" I yelled, putting the painting from my mind and leaning over the edge of my perch. I only needed to wait for a brief few seconds before the white haired girl's head popped out of the building below me. I motioned her up with my hand and, with a confidence that was born only from trust, pushed myself off of my ledge.

Through the air, I fell freely. The ground immediately began to rush up to meet me and the building in front of me passed through my vision in a blur but I coiled my legs underneath my torso, certain that-

A glyph appeared under my feet even as I saw the former Schnee heiress launch herself up at me, aided by a glyph of her own.

I hit the Aura-based sigil somewhere around the fourth floor of the building and pushed off of it with an Aura-empowered leap. The ground rushed rapidly away from me and I soared upward, higher and higher and higher, until I reached the apex of my leap around the eleventh floor of team RWEBY's hideout.

Not human indeed.

A grin grew on my face even as another glyph appeared under my feet and this time, I angled myself toward the top floor of the building. More Aura burst from my legs and my body rocketed upward again, this time easily traveling a mere four stories of height before my feet came to rest on a fifteenth story window sill.

A grunt escaped me when I landed, a little too heavily and with a shiver of pain running down my spine, on that top floor. Immediately, I noticed that one side of my body was still numbed and I stopped manipulating my blood again, satisfied that I was healed enough to allow it to run its normal course throughout my veins.

I heard Weiss' boots land on the floor at the next window down from mine – one that appeared to belong to an entirely different room, in fact, but the dividing wall was no longer there. Instead it lay scattered about on the ground, broken into many tiny pieces of rubble.

"Was that truly necessary?" The white haired girl asked quietly.

"No, but it was fun."

She glanced up at me then. "You are happier, now," she ventured slowly. "Did Ruby and Blake repair a tower?"

I nodded even as I cast a glance about the floor in front of me. It was divided up into rooms that were larger than the ones on the floors below but larger rooms to stay in was likely a privilege of staying on the top floor. Still, despite the big rooms, enough dividing walls remained intact to block my vision of most of the floor.

Thus, my blonde partner was nowhere to be seen.

"Yang!" I called, my voice echoing across the empty expanse.

I waited a beat for a response but…

Nothing. Not a single bit of movement and immediately anger entered my mind. If the girl had run off after I explicitly told her to stay-

"Enten?" Her voice called back to me then. "Is that you?"

A relieved sigh escaped me even as the tension left my shoulders.

Weiss huffed then, drawing my attention to her. The girl had her nose turned up at me and her arms crossed over her chest.

I shot her an unimpressed look, complete with a single arched eyebrow and a tense jaw.

The white haired girl's shoulders drooped and she immediately averted her eyes. "I am sorry," she muttered. "I only thought it was foolish of you to think she ran off."

"Over here, Yang!" I yelled to the building at large. Then, I turned back to Weiss. "We're speaking of Yang, you know. She exemplifies bullheaded."

"She would not have disobeyed you," the former heiress responded, her voice firm. Her eyes were looking about restlessly, anywhere but in my direction – strange for a girl that always held herself with a sense of calm. She continued, then, even as Yang appeared at the end of a long hallway in front of us.

"She cares for you too much to make you angrier at her still."

My eyes narrowed but Yang reached us then and I was not about to bring that statement up in her presence. Instead, I refocused my thoughts with a single grunt.

We had a tower to find and teammates with whom we needed to regroup. Odd statements and what they meant – and I dreaded finding out what they meant if my hunch was correct – could be dealt with later.

"Ruby and Blake found a workable CCT Tower and repaired the thing enough to get it running," I informed the pair, pushing my thoughts from my mind. Both girls perked up at that. Their heads were suddenly held higher, their shoulders were not so slumped.

It was hope, they were feeling. I could relate to that – I felt it too.

"We're gonna go meet up with them, now," I continued, walking away from the Silver Stadium and the Beowolf who hid within it. That was to the north, after all. "They're in one of the towers to the south. One next to a big warehouse, like the ones in Vale's docks."

Yang's face darkened at the mention and I hesitated for a moment, pausing in the doorway of the room in which we stood. Her kidnapping was still something of a sore subject with the blonde, not because it happened to her, but because she could not stop it from happening to Ruby.

"You okay?" I asked her. "Need a moment?"

She shook her head. "No. No… Sorry, just- had a little flashback is all. Bad thoughts."

I answered her with a nod and a grunt and took a moment to look between her and Weiss. It was in that moment, in the silence left behind wherein I said nothing, that I noticed how tense the air was between the two girls. How their eyes would dart about restlessly and end up on me, but never on each other. How their fists clenched and their jawlines remained tense.

A scowl almost erupted on my face as anger flooded through me.

But then, our resident Beowolf watcher howled.

'Anger,' I reminded myself. 'They react to anger. Anger never does anything good for you. Never anything positive. Control it. Snuff it out.'

And so I did. It went slowly, the rage that flooded my veins, but it left me all the same. And with its absence came awareness. With its absence came a clarity of mind that I welcomed eagerly.

"I'm not pleased about this," I muttered, my voice startlingly loud in the empty, deadened halls of the ruined building. "I'm not happy at all that you two chose now of all times to have this spat… But you did."

Neither said anything. Neither looked at the other, either.

I stopped another scowl from appearing on my face.

"Fix this," I said, gesturing between the pair with a hand. Yang's eyes widened slightly but I continued before she could get a word in edgewise. "I'll be down on the ground while you two sort out your problems. We are not leaving this building nor will we group up with our teammates while you two are bickering. We will leave once you have this issue sorted out. Not before. I do not care if it takes all night. This will be solved before we leave."

I waited a beat, turning to each of them to see if they offered me any kind of resistance, but neither did. And so, after another moment of silence, I turned away from them and continued on my way through the building, to its southern side.

"I'll be on the ground," I reminded them, calling back over my shoulder. "Come find me when you're able to work together as members of Team RWEBY should."

'As members of Team RWEBY should.'

It was a statement that implied so very much while appearing to be so very little. On the surface, it only suggested that we of Team RWEBY should work together. But underneath that, underneath the literal message, there was another meaning. A subtler meaning. A deeper understanding that we all shared.

We were better than those other teams.

Those other teams fought and bickered with one another. Those other teams let themselves become divided, they let conflict fester as teenagers were wont to do, ignoring the problem until it became too big to solve. They let themselves be torn down from the inside, out. They could be manipulated. They could be turned against one another. They were weak.

But not Team RWEBY.

We were not those other teams. We bickered, certainly. We would have our fights. It was only human, after all, to disagree with one another.

But what we would not do was allow those negative feelings to fester. We did not allow those conflicts to harm us. We solved them. We worked them out. We were a team and a team we would stay. Undivided. Unified. Strong.

A hum escaped me as I reached the other side of the building and I jumped from its fifteenth story without a single sliver of hesitation. The ground was so very far below me but I knew I would survive the fall easily.

My Aura would accept no less. My team would accept no less.

Where others hesitated, we of Team RWEBY acted.

I landed first on a half ruined wall hanging half out of the building somewhere around the twelfth floor. Next, my feet found the edge of a window sill on what I counted to be the eighth floor. Finally, I vaulted off of a Grimm's bust carved into the corner of the building's third floor, the Beowolf's snarling visage serving as a platform for me.

And so, my feet hit the ground heavily but I straightened, some fifteen stories lower than I was only seconds ago, completely unharmed. Uninjured. Strong.

I allowed a slow breath to escape me.

Team RWEBY would accept no less.

30 minutes later - Mistral Swamplands – Ruins of Mistral Trade Route City – Week 19, The Vytal Festival begins in 14 days

A metallic sound stirred me from my doze.

I stood from my position sitting against the side of our hideout, stretching and urging my muscles into wakefulness as I did so. My eyes cast about in front of me, finding only the empty ruins of buildings and barren streets lit by the twilight glow brought about from the setting sun.

No threats. No enemies. No watchful Grimm.

'But damned if I didn't wish Blake were here.'

Her night-vision would be useful, now. The shadows were growing longer, the darkness, more opaque.

I allowed a breath to leave me from my nose and I glanced around the street in front of me one last time. Again, I found nothing but the empty city to keep me company. Quiet streets, absent of all life, Grimm or otherwise.

And then, there was the humming.

It was not a sound that a human could produce. It was far too mechanic, far too familiar to me to ever mistake for something emanated by a living person. I heard it too often at Beacon to misplace, when teams would leave on their missions.

'That's an airship,' I realized slowly, my eyes widening.

"Enten!" Weiss' voice, panicked and loud and urgent, echoed across the ruins from above me.

To look up at her would be useless – as dim as the setting sun's light was, there was very little chance I would actually be able to make her figure out against the building's façade. Instead, I only flared my Aura, an unmistakable beacon of brilliant blue in the otherwise dim light suffusing Liar's Landing.

It was approaching, I realized. This airship was approaching us but from where I could not say. It was unlikely that it would come from any direction but west or north. Mistral City proper were it the latter and likely Vale if it were the former.

I could only hope it was the former. Vale meant Ozpin and Ozpin meant aid.

Weiss landed behind me first, her footsteps made soft despite the heavy boots she wore. Yang landed shortly thereafter, her own feet heavier than the white haired girl's despite the fact that she wore only a pair of worn running shoes.

"We're going to find Ruby and Blake," I said at once, my eyes still set on the city's horizon. The sky was dark, now, far too dark to see a lone airship. To make matters worse, it was incredibly cloudy. I turned toward my teammates, my jaw set and my eyes narrowed. "Let the Grimm overrun that airship, wherever it lands. We'll be there to pick up after them."

A/N: So I watched the season four teaser for RWBY (which is set to be released October 22 by the way!) and… I'll be honest, I was not impressed.

…

…

Still here? Good.

It was too flashy for me, honestly. Now, granted, I believe the point of that trailer was to show how much Ruby's control over her Semblance had advanced (because it showed little to no information about season four's story line) and it did accomplish that.

But did it have to be so, I don't know, corny? One scene in particular, wherein her cloak lengthens to absolutely enormous lengths, when she stabs the big ape Grimm through the chest, was particularly aggravating to me. Cloaks don't do that. They don't lengthen or magically grow in size for any reason. Add to that the fact that her Semblance appears now as though she is more of a moving red ball trailing rose petals and the entire animation effort that went into the teaser left me more than a little jaded about the series as a whole.

That said, this teaser shows us nothing of the story itself. And if there's one thing that RWBY has done right time and time again, it is drawing us in with an interesting story.

So I'm withholding my judgement. The action may be corny and reality-breaking enough to really just put me off of the fight scenes, but if the story is there I'll stay a faithful watcher. They've built up the characters – villains and heroes alike – too much for me to stop now.

Anywho! Tell me what you think, as usual. Not much done in this chapter but it was necessary setup for team EDJY's arrival!

Till next time.

-Phailen