At 2:36 in the morning, Truck, Rescue, and Ambulance 201 all returned to quarters. The firefighters that had responded to the CCT Fire were exhausted.

After the volunteers lined up to fill out the roll call sheet, the paid firefighters went back upstairs, carrying their bunker pants with them and leaving their helmets and coats on the ambulance. Their gear, consisting of leather boots, pants and a coat with black with yellow/white stripes, a protective hood, 2 composite gloves, and a futuristic helmet with built-in protective goggles, a back heat shield, a visor, and a clip for an SCBA bottle was in sharp contrast to the rugged gear of the volunteers at Vigilant, which consisted of a traditional leather helmet, a 44-inch long black coat with solid yellow stripes, a pair of roll-up rubber boots that could be pulled up to the thighs, 2 orange fireball gloves, no pants, no visors, no hood, and no frills. Many volunteer companies were very resistant to change and stuck with the latter style, which dated back decades. The paid guys hadn't worn similar gear since 1987.

At 2:48, George drove to the station and parallel parked nearby. He then walked in and said, "Hey Yang, over here!"

Yang ran over and gave him a big hug, saying, "Georgie!"

"That was a hell of a fire, wasn't it?"

"You got that right. Wanna go back to my place for a little bit and have some fun?" Yang seductively gave George a smile and giggled.

"Of course," George replied.

Yang said to the group, "I'll see you girls later. Bye!"

Ruby replied, "See ya later, Yang."

Weiss said, "Wanna wait here to let them bang?"

Blake replied, "Good idea. They're loud when they get it on, especially Yang. I mean, I should know, since we used to go out until June this year, after all."

Ruby then turned and walked to the recreation room of the firehouse downstairs. Blake and Weiss soon followed her. Weiss said, "Turn it to VNN."

Ruby flipped the TV on and turned the channel to Vale News Network, or VNN, a 24-hour news service run by the Valeanian Government under the VBC, or Vale Broadcasting Corporation. They were talking about the fire still. By now, all units except for those that were on the first alarm had been ordered to return to service. "It says here they know what started the fire."

Blake asked as she opened a can of soda, "Was it terrorists?"

"No, purely accidental this time. It says here the fire broke out in an elevator on the 140th floor as 4 workers were painting it. When they opened the door to escape, it ignited all the paint and paint thinner and set them all on fire. One guy crawled out and died in a hallway, while the other 3 accidentally pushed a button to send the elevator to the 137th floor. When they stumbled out, they collapsed in a bathroom across the hall and set it on fire. They were 4 of at least 9 fatalities."

Weiss shuddered when she heard that. "Uhhh... Me and Yang found a body in the building..."

"You did?" Blake was stunned. "What did you do?"

"I told Yang to leave the body there since we had to fight the fire."

Then, Winter walked in, her hair once again covering her right eye. "Hello girls."

Weiss replied, "Hey there, sis. Wanna drink?"

"Alcoholic please." Winter then signed a sheet saying she would not respond to calls for 1 hour for every drink she had.

Weiss bent down behind the bar, opened a refrigerator, and said, "What do you want?"

"Münchenfelderbier, please."

Blake said, "Traditional Atlesian beer, I see. You have a good taste in beer."

"Of course," Winter replied. "Adolf Schnee, who was the founder of the SDC, had an investment in the Münchenfelder brewery because his wife was the daughter of the then-owner of the brewery. Since then, the SDC and the MBBC have been linked together, though they've never been the same company. There have been talks in the past for the SDC to buy the MBBC, but they've come to nothing."

Ruby said, "What doesn't the SDC do nowadays?"

"I know," Weiss replied. "It's crazy what my family... Well, our family, has invested in in the past 50 years. As late as 1944, we were only involved in dust and shipping. Now we're involved in auto manufacturing, weapons building, transportation infrastructure, telecommunications, and more. I'm surprised neither the Atlesian or Valeanian governments haven't knocked on our door to tell us to break up. Then again, nobody's told the Scroll Company to close up shop for basically being a computer and mobile phone monopoly, since their competitors combined have less than 18% of the market share."

"In hindsight," Blake said. "I guess while it was good business to expand, it also made the SDC a lot of enemies. I should know, for reasons."

Winter replied, "Oh yeah, the double-track train robbery thing. That's not a big deal for me personally. The train sucked anyways. If anything, you and your ex-boyfriend saved the SDC from more losses from that monstrosity of a failure by delivering the final nail in the coffin early." She then turned to Ruby. "So, what was your past like? We've pretty much covered everybody else."

Ruby said, "Me? Oh yeah. Huh... Well, my dad was a teacher at Signal, and he was a volunteer for Patch First Aid Squad and Signal Fire Company. My mom, Summer, wasn't a volunteer because she was busy with hunting. My dad's first wife and Yang's mom, Raven, was a vollie at Signal Fire until she left the area after their divorce. I remember when my dad would get a call either for Patch or Signal. He'd kiss us goodbye, kiss my mom goodbye, and run out the door to his truck and take off to the station. For EMS calls, he went to Patch unless he was working at Signal. For fires, he went to Signal."

Weiss, interested, said, "Your dad was in Signal and Patch?"

"Yep. He was the only one in his family to be a fireman. The Branwens, on the other hand, founded both companies. My uncle Qrow is still in both companies. Yang still wonders why she didn't join either of them back then."

Blake asked, "Is he still in both?"

Ruby replied, "He left them for 3 years after Summer went MIA because he was really depressed. He rejoined both of them, and currently, he's the captain of Patch First Aid. He's Car S2."

"I think I've heard him on the radio before," Blake replied. "Is Qrow an officer?"

"He's currently Signal's captain. He's Car S1. It can be challenging to be Signal's captain, since a lot of their guys are students and aren't old enough to do interior operations. He often has to hand command over to someone else and go inside because if 15 or 20 guys show up, only like 5 or 8 are interior firefighters. Patch First Aid has more interior guys than Signal Fire, and they don't even have any firefighting vehicles."

"Say, here what the VCVFA wants to do? They wanna renumber the school-based fire companies to fit the numbering system. They also are taking in applications from all around the city to form new fire companies. They also support the reformation of the Fire Patrol." Winter showed the group a document from the VCVFA about the proposed changes.

"Where are they?" Ruby was curious.

"One is in our district and will take over parts of our first-due and Goodwill's first-due. In total, this would increase the number of volunteer companies to 100. A few guys from our company and Goodwill are gonna be joining the new Meilyr Broderick Fire Company 91 to help them out. There's also the Situ Mingyu Rescue Squad and the Peng Kueng Fire Company. They're all named after the people who proposed them. If these go into effect, all 3 companies will be on our run cards for box alarms and Code 99s. It will be 5, 6, 91, and 92 plus 93 instead of 5, 6, 7, and 10 plus 12. Situ Mingyu Rescue will take over ambulance duties for Goodwill and Enterprise's section of Excellence. It's expected to do at least 1,750 calls per year and will be all-volunteer."

"Good," Blake replied. "We need more vollies. It could take the load off of us."

September 26, 2020

It had been 2 weeks since the CCT fire. Since then, repairs had been scheduled to be done on the CCT starting on October 10, 2020. Also, the clearing of the exclusion zone and expansion of the city was going well. Most of the forest had been cleared, giving the Grimm monsters little room to hide from hunters and aircraft. It was expected that the clearing stage would be complete by December, and the construction of the second city wall would start soon after.

Blake was reading a newspaper in her apartment in the morning when she got a phone call from an unknown ID. She answered it and said, "Hello?"

"Hello there. Is this Blake Belladonna?" A male voice on the other end seemed innocent enough.

"Yes, who is this?"

"I need you to come to Huntingdon Borough. It's about a 26-minute drive from Vale City. When you get there, go to the woods in the north of the borough and you'll see a road called Tall Tree Road. Turn on that and stop at the first building on it. Meet us there." The man then hung up.

Blake was confused. "Who was that?" She then got up, wrote a note on the table, and walked into her bedroom to get changed. She then grabbed Gambol Shroud and opened a gun vault in her closet. There, she grabbed a pistol, 5 15-round hollow-point magazines, an axe, and a serrated hunting knife. She said to herself, "This is a fucking trap, and I know it."

She donned a business suit and hid the gun in a pocket inside her shirt coat. Gambol Shroud and the axe were hidden in a suitcase she carried. She also removed her bow and exposed her cat ears.

At 10:42 A.M., Blake arrived at Huntingdon, a small borough of 1,000 residents. She thought to herself, "What would the White Fang be doing here? This area is literally farms, farms, more farms, and forests."

As the man said, she drove her car to the forest north of the borough and turned onto Tall Tree Road. At 10:51, she parked at the first building on the road. Sure enough, it was some sort of meeting house. It was completely unmarked, but it looked like it was used. There were several cars and an old bus already parked in front.

Blake got out, adjusted her suit and tie, and walked to the building. When she opened the door, she was greeted by a 122-strong group of White Fang members sitting in pews all listening to a speech by a White Fang high-rank.

The high-rank said, "Well, well, Miss Belladonna, welcome to our gathering. I was the man who called you here, by the way. Do you recognise me?"

"Yeah, you're right. I do. You're that high-rank that I almost busted for fucking human prostitutes."

The crowd gasped. "That was a lie, Belladonna, and you know it."

"I know there's nothing wrong with that these days. After all, I fucked a human myself, and it was another girl at that. We broke up and became friends, but let me tell ya, it was the best damn sex I ever had." Blake smiled.

A voice in the crowd shouted, "You traitor! You're a stain on faunus!"

The high-rank angrily shouted, "You sick pervert! I thought that Taurus traitor was good enough for you!"

"But you killed him. Any sort of sympathy I may have had left for the White Fang left on that day and NEVER returned. Anyways, I have proof you did hire human prostitutes, including a male one." She then opened her briefcase and took out 10 pictures. "These 10 pictures were taken by you in 2013 and 2012. I found them by accident and I was going to tell the leaders, but I left the group before I could." She then threw the pictures into the air.

Another crowd voice said, "Major Banesaw is a traitor!"

"That Blake girl is lying! Major Banesaw would never do that!" Blake then began to walk out as several WF guards began grabbing their guns.

After several more shouts, a woman walked up to Blake and yelled, "You are a sick girl! You slept with a human! How could you?! Those humans rape and murder us every single day."

Blake stopped. Then, she turned around, grabbed the pistol from her suit, and aimed it right at the woman's head, frightening her.

Suddenly, a knife was thrown by a crowd member at another crowd member, and Blake shot the woman right in the head, killing her instantly. All hell broke loose as a three-way battle broke out between Blake, those who believed Blake's accusations, and those who supported Banesaw.

Blake grabbed the Gambol Shroud from her suitcase and put the pistol away. As a WF member tried to lunge at her, she stabbed him in the chest with her knife. She then threw the briefcase at the front door, grabbed her knife, and charged at the crowd.

Within the crowd, blood spilled like crazy. Blake shot a man who tried to punch her and followed it up by breaking the neck of a woman who was attacking the same man. A man who tried shooting her had his gun grabbed from him by Blake and his throat stabbed with Gambol Shroud. Blake then grabbed the assault rifle the man had dropped and fired into the crowd, killing another 5. Blake created a shadow clone of herself to block a man with an axe. She then shot said man twice with the assault rifle before it ran out of ammo.

A man tried hanging onto her from behind. She responded by throwing him to the ground. When he got up, Blake bit his neck and stabbed him in the stomach with her knife. She ripped out a mass of skin and tissue and spat it out on the ground before using Gambol Shroud to decapitate a woman who tried to stab her. She then switched Gambol Shroud into pistol form.

A man suddenly stabbed Blake in the shoulder from behind. Blake, who didn't flinch at all, replied by shooting him in the head, splattering his head all over the place. She quickly took the knife out of her shoulder and then used her own knife to stab a woman who charged at her several times.

Then, Banesaw charged at her with an axe. Blake coldly shot him in the stomach, walked behind him, and decapitated him before shooting and killing 2 guards fighting each other behind her.

Blake charged once again at the infighting crowd. She slashed the throats of 4 as she ran in and stabbed another. She then shot 3 others and decapitated a man who tried hitting her with a piece of wood. She grabbed a woman's arm, twisted it so badly she gave her a compound fracture in two places, and stabbed her in the eye before shooting her. By now, she was clearly in a killing frenzy fueled by adrenaline.

Finally, after 3 more gruesome minutes, everyone in the building was dead except for Blake. By now, she was covered in blood, vomit, and guts from the White Fang members she had just killed. She took several deep breaths and walked outside, putting all of her weapons away in the briefcase. Suddenly, the realisation that people would discover this hit her. "Oh fuck... I need to find a way to get rid of all this."

She quickly grabbed a lighter from her pants pocket and walked around the meetinghouse. She opened a door to another room and found a bunch of plastic explosives and incendiaries inside as well as several detonators. Blake said to herself, "Perfect..." She also found spare clothes and a shower inside. Because the area just outside of the borough was relatively unpopulated, and hunting regular animals was common thus explaining the gunshots, it would take a while before anyone found out.

After showering, she changed into the spare clothes, a white t-shirt, a bra, underwear, and jeans, and began laying out the explosives and incendiaries inside the church. She also left her original suit, pants, and underwear inside.

At 11:14, Blake timed the detonators to go off at 11:30, leaving her ample time to leave. She quickly ran to her car with the briefcase and sped away. She stopped by the fire station in the borough at 11:26 and grabbed a radio scanner, tuning in to the Huntingdon County Fire Dispatching frequency of 46.4500. The county was a rural area of about 75,000 residents located in 6 towns and 8 boroughs with 42 all-volunteer fire departments and 7 all-volunteer ambulance squads, so the fire department frequencies were never busy.

She decided to walk inside the fire station, opening the front door and seeing that there was nobody inside on the first floor. Inside, there was a long rack of about 30 sets of turnout gear similar to that worn by Vigilant on the back wall. As she walked around, a woman walked down the stairs from the second floor and asked, "Hello?"

Blake turned around and saw the woman, a dog faunus who was a secretary and a volunteer firefighter. "Oh, hello there. I was visiting relatives in another part of the county when I stopped by here. I'm a volunteer firefighter in Vale."

"Really? What company?"

"Vigilant Fire. So, I assume you're a volunteer too?"

"Yes. My name is Claire Smith. I'm a secretary and a volunteer here. My family's been involved with the Huntingdon Fire Company since they helped create it in 1938. As you can see by our run board, we don't get a lot of calls, even with an ambulance that serves 3 surrounding fire departments in 1 borough and 1 town plus a ladder truck. We get about 500 calls per year, making us a busy department by our county's standards. About 85% of our fire calls are mutual aid."

"Huh... Interesting. Anyways, I got a scanner tuned in to your county's dispatching frequency right here."

Then, they were interrupted by a call going out on the radio. "Standby Auburnia Rescue Squad for a medical." The pager tones for Auburnia Rescue then dropped. "Huntingdon County Fire Control for Auburnia Rescue Squad, respond to 811 Brookdale Road for a Delta-determined EMS call for a 72-year-old female with difficulty breathing and chest pains. The patient has a cardiac history. Time of dispatch, 11:33."

"Where's that?"

"Auburnia is a borough next to us. Their fire department doesn't run to EMS calls because they have a separate rescue squad. Their FD gets less than 100 calls per year, but their rescue squad gets about 700 since they serve 2 other fire departments. They have 32 members, an engine, a tanker, a rescue, and a brush truck in their fire company and 20 members and 2 ambulances in their rescue squad."

"Interesting. How many guys do you have here?"

"We have 42 volunteers that serve our department. About 10 are paramedics, including me, and another 14 are EMTs. We have 2 engine-tankers, a tower ladder, a brush truck, and an ambulance. We actually got our truck from a company in Vale. I think it was from Valiant Hook and Ladder."

"Valiant? That's really close to my company, Vigilant. We're in the same district of the city, District 2. What's the model?"

"It's a 1996 Avex Tower Ladder with an 85 foot tower, a 1500 GPM pump, and 300 gallons of water with an 8-seat cab. We bought it used in 2012 to replace a 75-foot mid-mount straight stick quint from 1976 that we sold to a private collector. We got that ladder from East End Fire Company in Port Royal and refurbed it in 1991, expanding the cab from 4 seats to 6 seats. The truck carries our rescue equipment, such as the jaws of life and cribbing, since we don't have a dedicated rescue vehicle." Suddenly, they were interrupted again.

"Standby Brookdale Fire, East Brookdale Fire, and Huntingdon Fire for a structure fire."

Claire said, "Oh boy." She then ran to get her gear as the 6 tones (3 pager/3 siren) dropped for both departments. As Blake looked on, pagers in the station rang and the siren control box clicked, turning the station's siren on.

"Huntingdon County Fire Control for Huntingdon Fire, Brookdale Fire, and East Brookdale Fire for a reported structure fire on an unknown address on Tall Tree Road. A driver reported seeing heavy smoke from the area and said it was possibly a building on Tall Tree Road. Time of dispatch, 11:38."

Claire rolled her boots up and ran to the radio booth in the station. She then radioed, "Fire Control, Huntingdon Base acknowledging the call." She then ran back out to put her coat, her gloves, and her helmet on.

Meanwhile, Blake was shaking, thinking she had been caught. She thought to herself, "Oh no..."

Claire asked, "Are you okay?"

Blake then snapped back to reality. "Yeah. I'm fine."

"Wanna come with us? I can put you in a flip-down seat on ETA 1-1-1."

"Uhhh... Sure, Claire. I'll go." Blake then walked to ETA 1-1-1 and opened the back door. She then sat down in one of the 8 seats aboard the engine-tanker. Meanwhile, Claire jumped into the driver's seat and got the engine started as 3 more firefighters ran into the station.

At 11:55, ETA 1-1-1 arrived on scene. By then, an engine from Brookdale was also on scene. Blake got out and began taking pictures of the fire with her phone as the Huntingdon firefighters got to work. By now, the fire was mostly a brush fire, with nothing left of the meeting house.

Blake thought to herself as the firefighters fought the fire, "Was it all worth it?"

Blake returned home at 3:42. She had called the team individually and told them to meet at her apartment.

The team sat down at Blake's kitchen table. Yang said, "So, Blake, what happened?"

Weiss asked, "What was the purpose of the note you left?"

"Well," Blake replied. "You see, I got a phone call from Banesaw. He invited me over to a safehouse in the borough of Huntingdon about 26 minutes from here. I knew it was a trap from the start, so I went over in a suit and tie armed with some weapons in a briefcase. I also exposed Banesaw by showing a crowd of White Fang members pictures I had found in 2013 of him having sex with human prostitutes. After a while, I had turned the 122-strong crowd on itself. Then, I noticed they were also going to attack me, so I attacked. In the end, I was the only survivor."

Ruby said, "You WHAT? You went on an unsanctioned solo mission and killed 122 people?"

"I didn't kill all of them! They were tearing each other apart. They wanted to kill me too. I ended up blowing up the place with some explosives and incendiaries I found. I left my old suit there and changed into spare clothes I found there."

Weiss was bewildered. "You... Whoa... That's... That's incredible!"

Yang said, "Okay, team, let's keep this a secret between us, okay?"

Ruby replied, "Agreed. I want NOBODY telling anyone else what happened at Huntingdon. Do you agree, Weiss and Blake?"

They both nodded.

"Now, Blake, I honestly believe that you were in the right here. Besides, they were terrorists, so there's gonna be very few tears shed anyways."

Blake took a deep breath and said, "True... But... I guess I did go a bit overboard. I did go crazy when I was fighting."

"Don't we all?"

Yang replied, "True that."

Weiss replied, "Same here."

"Now we gotta worry about what the White Fang will do," Blake replied. "Especially since I killed one of their majors. But, we'll be ready for whatever comes our way."