Chapter 28: Enforcing the Law… in one's own, unique way.

Evil prevails when good men fail to act. Curiously, evil also prevails when good men act without thinking things through.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Or at least Blake wished it was, for while her companion, currently scouring the wharf in search of the perfect ambush spot, could very well conceal himself in the soon-to-arrive assailants' own shadows - literally - she would have to rely on the more conventional stealth tactics, ones greatly compromised by the surprising amount of open space and the moon's intense radiance. For all intents and purposes, isolating the potential hostiles and taking them out one by one seemed downright impossible, the only realistic option of engagement being a big ol' brawl in the middle of the loading area; depending on the size of the operation, that could turn out… problematic. Especially if, by some terrible confluence of horrid luck and paranoid planning on their adversary's part, firearms came into play.

It had been some time since the duo made their way back to the port and into its operating section, and both spent that time in their own, unique way. While Darius took to scouting, denoting all the most important spots of the area he expected to face the White Fang in, primarily the entrances and the exits, Blake was on lookout, poised to contact him at the first sight of their targets and making sure no errant guard would just wander into the neighborhood. Incidentally, such occupation also allowed for a great bit of consideration and reflection, and by the Light was there something for her to reflect upon.

Frankly, had she heard what she did from anyone else, the first thing she'd do would be to nod politely and inconspicuously phone up an ambulance. And, for what it was worth, such thought did visit her hindbrain in a faint, fleeting manner once the two had made their way to the docks. Ultimately, however, such urge was discarded. As cold and, at times, downright ruthless as his reasoning was, it was about what she'd expect from a Silva, something that he, by his own admission, took in stride. And in all fairness, it was rare for her to find proper refutation to the points he put forth, even in this case. Delusion, on the other hand, had never been a part of his repertoire.

At the very least, not the kind of delusion she was used to.

From personal experience, Blake rarely ever had trouble recognizing that very distinct trait. Back in her time with the White Fang, a laughably recent chapter of her life, in retrospect, all too many not simply let the new ideology take over in its creeping spread, but actually embraced the idea of Faunus supremacy, giving their all to the cause in a way only true fanatics could. Even in the rare moments when they weren't spouting ideology left and right, it wasn't difficult to tell one apart from a regular person, some of the more notable characteristics being an unhealthy glistening of the eyes, a tendency to fall into righteous indignation the second they even thought to have heard a word of disagreement… and the overwhelming, almost constant scent of fresh blood on them. A fervent believer in the superiority of the Faunuskind could not have taken a single life, yet still cause Blake to immediately begin plotting a swift retreat to anywhere but their general vicinity, for adhering so blindly to a belief that some people were innately worse than them could only culminate in a singular, logical conclusion.

And while this was, thankfully, absolutely not the case with Darius, this simple comparison already making his company infinitely more enjoyable than the White Fang sort - oh, the irony - the revelations bestowed upon her today nonetheless evoked in her a turmoil far, far greater than she was prepared for. Fact of the matter was, it wasn't even the believability of the tale Darius had spun for her; if he wanted to fool her, she judged, he'd probably tell something less ridiculous. And frankly, it would take something like a cryptic organization sharing an age-long conspiracy with the Church to take a supposedly dead man and deck him out in gear on the very forefront of technological progress, complete with training that put some trained Hunters to shame, all while remaining completely unnoticed.

No, what concerned her were the… implications stemming from some of the things that were said, but not exactly iterated upon. Like Darius correctly pointed out, Blake never really cared much for all things clerical, understandably, as the quasi-guerilla lifestyle of a White Fang member didn't leave much time to philosophize on matters such as the nature of the soul, nevermind the fact that the Valean people were, as a whole, rather removed from the Church. Yet as a learned woman and someone whose curiosity and hunger for knowledge never really petered out since her childhood, Blake was naturally aware of the whole debate, helped by the fact that as the number of people with awakened auras and Semblances skyrocketed over the last century, its subject matter only became more topical: if indeed one's aura is a physical manifestation of the soul, exactly where does said soul come from and what does it even mean? Conventional sciences failed to deliver any sort of answer, nevermind one that's actually believable, and while the Church itself has peddled its own solution for centuries - quite successfully, at that - Blake remained… unconvinced.

Today's conversation, however, left her skepticism faltering, heavily dented by the raw conviction brimming in Darius' voice as he revealed to her what sounded like such simple truths to him, as if having witnessed them firsthand. Blake wanted to call him out, to tell him he sounds like a loon, but knew such accusation would sound utterly pathetic because even to her, he didn't. In essence, Blake was left to draw one of the two conclusions: either, through whatever insidious brainwashing, those organizations instilled such overwhelming, beyond fanatical certainty that what they know is right in their members that even she couldn't help but buy into the delusion they sold as pure fact - an unsettling prospect, to be sure… or what he, and by extension, the Church, claimed, was unequivocally true. Neither of the two potential outcomes were particularly reassuring, for certain, yet only one of the two had Blake desperately wanting to curl up in a ball as an entirely new sensation slowly but surely wormed its way inside her very core: that of deep, profound anguish as the new knowledge tore open the fabric of the world, revealing unto her a tiny facet of the great and terrible truth that lay beyond.

A quiet thumping of Darius' steel boots had cut short her unwilling delving into the unknown and brought her out of her stupor, something she was quite happy about. Her companion, on the other hand, looked quite concerned, his jawbone jutting as his eyes darted to and fro, taking in as much information as humanly possible. Yet as his gaze stopped upon Blake, there was a noticeable stumble in his gait, and his eyebrow shot up as he tilted his head ever so slightly, his concern further amplified.

"You seem distressed."

For someone with such a tendency towards verbosity as Darius, he had this uncanny habit of cutting directly to the point at the most inconvenient times. With a second of consideration, Blake found no reason to keep playing coy.

"You gave me… a lot of things to take in," she sighed. "Currently, uh… processing. I guess I did ask for it, though."

"I thought about as much," Darius nodded, his tone somber and his overall look… apologetic, strangely enough. "What you heard today is fed to the potential initiate after no less than a week of thorough ideological prep, very slowly and carefully. This was not proper operating procedure."

With a sigh, he rubbed his forehead.

"Still, what's done is done. If you feel like something troubles you, I'll answer to the best of my ability… but, if possible, after we deal with the task at hand."

"Fair enough," Blake nodded, springing to her feet and surveying the loading area. "How bad is it?"

"We are at… quite a severe disadvantage," Darius shook his head. Beckoning the Faunus to the edge of the roof, he pointed at a pile of containers. "Take a look."

It wasn't exactly difficult to realize what he was referring to: scattered all across the loading bay, piles and piles of containers of every-which size and color occupied the lion's share of the dock, all sharing one unmissable feature: the snow-white logo of the Schnee Dust Company plastered along their length.

"S-subtlety," Blake snickered. "Clearly not part of corporate lingo."

"Aye, but you'd think foresight would be," Darius' shoulders slumped. "You'd think with all the recent happenings the execs would at least consider not putting big white targeting circles on their merch, but no-o."

He grumbled some more before settling down.

"Oh well. Case in point: an entire tanker's worth of prime-quality Dust, all sitting pretty in plain sight in the middle of a big open area, and thanks to Yang, most of my preparations for this have been rendered nil. No room for stealth, no way to isolate them. Can't even tell what exit they'll be coming from because they'll probably come from the air, as they tend to. Our only option is to wait until most of them have deployed, then take them out before they can get their bearings."

Her lips pressed tightly together, Blake shook her head.

"It pains me to say it… but you could let them have this one and wait for the next opportunity?"

"I'm afraid there won't be one," Darius refuted. "If they actually intend to use the Dust, then this haul will cover whatever exorbitant demand they might have."

"And if not?"

"Then there's still no point in continuing the assaults. At this point, anyone worth robbing in this city already has been; the markets are going crazy as is, while the price…" he interrupted himself, shrugging. "Really, why am I even telling you?"

Blake couldn't help but nod in agreement. She never could say she had cash to throw around, and with the Dust market completely hysterical, even that vital expense had to be cut down a notch. Really, she and Ruby basically had to rely on Weiss for her supply. It wasn't pretty.

"Say…" a hint of an idea sprung from root somewhere in Blake's hindbrain. "If it's just information we're after, why can't we just nab whoever most looks like a leader and get out?"

"I'm not exactly keen on just letting them have this, Blake," the Silva replied, the ringing steel in his voice only further emphasizing his refusal.

"Darius, look at this!" once again she redirected the focus to the dozens upon dozens of crates awaiting collection. "If they're taking even a tenth of this, they'll need half a dozen Bullheads at the very least. Do you know how many troops that is?"

"About sixty, less since they'll probably be flying lighter crew to fit in more," he refuted, completely unfazed. "So about thirty to fifty Faunus without aura and mediocre combat expertise at best," he sighed. "That being said, it's reasonable that we should probably focus on securing Torchwick before taking on the rest of them."

"Wait a minute, Torchwick?!" her eyes widening in disbelief, Blake had to pause on that important matter. "The guy with the stupid hat whom Ruby kicked into the curb?"

"Bit exaggerated on the last part, but yes, him."

"I thought he was just a fluke!" she shook her head. "There's no way the White Fang would work with scum like him…" after a moment's consideration, Blake had to backtrack a little. "Not willingly, at the very least."

"That simply means a third party is forcing them to work together," Darius shrugged. "Or they decided that stepping on their pride for a second would be worth the potential benefits. Like it or not, he's done serious work for them."

"Tell me about it," Blake's shoulders slumped as she looked, again, at the mountain of Dust so close she could almost taste it, yet at the same time so infinitely far out of reach. "Wait! Do you hear that?.."

It took Darius' human ears a couple seconds of concentration to pick up on the noise that Blake had already managed to discern: the roaring of jet engines. And indeed, not ten seconds later a pair of Bullheads have descended upon the wharf, settling down on the flanks of the loading area, allowing their crews to pour into the middle uninhibited. It was, alas, exactly as Darius predicted: from the characteristic masks covering the upper halves of the assailants' faces, to the white vests depicting a bestial maw resting upon three claw marks on their backs, there was no mistaking them from the White Fang.

The two, having already descended from their lookout, were making their way towards the scurrying Faunus in the middle under the cover of shadows when, amidst the chatter of people busy doing their job, however nefarious, they heard a voice that clearly did not belong here:

"Alright ya animals, I know following directions is an acquired skill, but we're kinda on a clock, so would you kindly bloody move it!"

Stopping in her tracks, Blake took a second to closer examined the obvious leader emerging from the Bullhead, his posh accent fitting disgustingly perfectly with the rest of his snobby appearance: dressed in a snugly-fitting white trenchcoat and twirling a pimping cane in his gloved hands, the dumb little bowler hat sat on his fiery-red hair with the precision of someone meticulously picking out just the right spot to put it on. With all the trappings of a rich douchebag in the fifth generation, the lit-up cigar sticking out from under his lip was the cherry on the mud-cake. In a way, he resembled Professor Port in how utterly cartoonish he looked, if said professor was an utter disgrace of a human being. The man was a walking, talking stereotype and he was lovingevery minute of it. Blake, on the other hand, decidedly did not. But it did give her an idea.

Turning around, she found Darius pressed into the corner of the nearest pile of containers, the featureless mask atop his face, surveying the crime scene with quiet intensity she could feel standing a solid two meters away from him. Slinking behind him, a light tap on the shoulder had the mask slowly turn towards her.

"Seems like we've overprepared a little," she whispered, a sly smile spreading across her features. Her demeanor found no sympathy in her companion.

"Don't get complacent," he replied, his quiet voice further muffled by the mask. "Doesn't make sense for them to just nab a couple of crates and bail. There'll be reinforcements."

"But they're not here yet," she pressed on. "Look, I can't imagine them having fun working under this guy. Let me handle Torchwick, maybe I can get the rest of them to talk."

Even with the mask completely concealing his face, the look she got from him alone told Blake the sheer scale of disagreement currently overwhelming Darius. Yet even through that he, too, understood that every second the two stood here and argued about the plan lost them a bit of the already miniscule advantage they had. With a silent sigh indicated only by the heaving of his shoulders, he swiftly reached into a tiny pouch on his belt and took out a singular jet-black crystal of Dust.

"Emergency refill only," reaching out towards Blake, he grabbed her hand, forcefully pushing the crystal into her palm. "I'm right behind you."

He was gone the very next moment, the shadow of the container they cowered behind swallowing him whole like he never was here in the first place, yet even in that fleeting second a small, insignificant detail couldn't evade Blake's superhuman senses: a malignant vein of shimmering abyss surging through the paper-white skin of Darius' palm.

Dispelling all doubts and intruding insecurities in one breath, Blake immediately pocketed the crystal and unsheathed the Gambol Shroud with a barely audible whistle of steel sliding out of its sheath.

There was no more time to waste.

One final look from the concealing darkness had her memorize the upcoming battlefield in a split second, and, more importantly, the locations of every hostile party: the majority of the Faunus were busy hauling thick steel cables and hooking them up with the soon-to-be stolen Dust crates, and even the few henchmen tasked with defending Torchwick were keeping their distance in pure resentment, making him as juicy a target as can be. Nimbly dashing between one stack of containers to another, evading detection, Blake hopped up on the lower stack, knowing that would put her directly behind the human.

In a single elegant leap Blake covered all the distance separating her from Torchwick – the idiot himself only realized what had happened after the spine of her sword rammed into his throat, dragging him after Blake a she immediately jumped away to gain distance from his entourage.

"Nobody moves, nobody dies!"

Though on second thought…

Blake slightly tapped her hostage's throat with the end of the katana's spine, just to give him an idea of its sharpness.

"Though no promises for you."

"Who-oa there, little lady!" his left arm raising ever so slightly, the gesture served two ends: one was to deliver at least a notion of compliance to his captor, the other to signal the Faunus who'd immediately taken formation before the two of them, rifles and knives at the ready, to cool it before they either shot him, or had her shank him. "Bit late for you to walk around that late, no? I'm sure there's just been a tiny little misunderst…"

"Shut up!"

To further drive the point home – literally – Blake pushed the spike on the Shroud's spine just that bit further in, slowly entering his throat and drawing a little blood, under the victim's protestant croaking. Reassured he won't be blabbering for at least a moment, her left hand reached behind her head, undoing the bind on her 'bow', revealing unto the Faunus her kinship.

"Brothers of the White Fang!" she proclaimed, her voice echoing through the cool night air, brimming with indignation. "Why are you aiding this scum?"

Though a bit too melodramatic, in retrospect, the appeal worked, as indecision had infested the ranks of her opponents; whispers ran amok amongst the White Fang troops as they eyed one another for answers, even somewhat lowering their weapons.

It should come as no surprise that, once again, Torchwick ruined everything.

"Oh, haven't you heard, kiddo?" cackling in amusement, the human had clearly gotten his bearings already, and so the situation shifted rapidly against Blake's favor. "The White Fang and I are going on a joint business venture. Very profitable, at that."

"Tell me what it is, or I'm putting an end to your operation right here, right now! Starting with you."

In any other circumstance Blake would be beyond disgusted with herself about just how quickly some of the… other training she had picked up with the White Fang was coming back to her. In a situation as precarious as this was, however, with her being solidly outnumbered twenty to one with rifles trained directly at her, whatever worked, worked.

Except when it didn't.

"Oh-ho-ho! Bold claim, missus," it was becoming increasingly obvious that Roman in no way felt threatened, despite being held at swordpoint. In fact, he even further exposed his throat, raising his head up and looking at the sky while chuckling to himself, which concerned Blake greatly. "But are you sure you're up to it?"

It was at this point that the dreaded sound of a jet engine roaring came into her hearing.

As if on cue, a small flotilla of Bullheads swarmed the skies above the dock, and from their bowels a solid platoon of White Fang extremists descended from the ropes to reinforce their brethren on the ground.

"With the smashing success that were those operations, you see, we could afford to… expand our ven…"

"What the f?!.."

As an arm reached around from behind Blake's back and grabbed Torchwick by the face, all the tension built up in the standstill, electrifying the air as seconds ticked away without consequence, was released in a singular, spring-like moment as Blake's brain registered more different events transpiring in less than a second than she could feasibly react to, rendering her perception a peculiar slow-motion to help her at least somewhat keep up.

Before the arm yanked the human towards it, Blake barely had the time to pull away her sword and step to the side, revealing to her the full picture: Darius, having appeared out of nowhere, was forcefully tossing Roman on the ground with one hand, whilst his other, helped by his body's rotation, already released from its grasp a vaguely cylindrical shape that Blake immediately recognized as a flash grenade, aimed squarely for the crowd of the Faunus already preparing to open fire.

Continuing his rotation to the left, Darius' steel boot, having finally materialized from the smoke, slammed in the face of the prone human with enough force to send cracks through the asphalt and knock Torchwick unconscious by the time the flashbang impacted with the forehead of the Faunus in the middle of the firing line.

Lastly, not even a fraction of a second later, the air separating Darius and Blake from the hostile forces grew even darker as the very shadows did the Silva's bidding, converging to form a matte sheet of pure energy, shielding them from the inevitable concussion.

Then the flashbang detonated.

Even though the actual concussive blast was heavily dampened by Darius' strategic placement of necessary isolation, thus manifesting only as a benign 'pop' in Blake's ears, even that little stimulus was enough to bring her mind out of the stupor, immediately speeding up the events to a pace a normal human would have no chance of keeping up with. How lucky for her to have been neither.

Locking eyes with the Faunus for a split-second – a monumental stretch of time in the heightened reality both Hunters were operating in – Darius barked a single command, breaking into a sprint mid-sentence:

"Get him out!"

And although the last syllable of his exclamation was swallowed by the shroud of darkness he tore through into what could well be a literal pile of blind kittens, the overall sentiment was received loudly and clearly. And so, without skipping a beat, Blake dashed to the unconscious body, flinging it over her shoulders and leaping over the triple stack of Dust containers away from the fight. Quickly dumping the mobster just behind the crate and having judged that the kind of smackdown laid down upon the none-too-smooth criminal's cranium would keep him out cold for at least another fifteen minutes, she decided to rejoin Darius to make sure things wouldn't get out of hand for either party.

Peeking back out from behind the container, however, showed that the conflict was brought to a standoff of sorts… if one could call the sight of a single caped figure looming over the terrified, cowering crowd of about twenty-twenty five still concussed Faunus armed primarily with various melee implements, if at all, a standoff. Particularly curious was the fact that although firearms aplenty littered the ground, ripe for the picking and certain to improve their odds, none dared so much as look at them. Perhaps the sight of their comrades plastered on said ground in various unflattering, if not downright painful, poses, still clutching the very guns they didn't get to fire once, served as a deterrent.

"Now then."

Two words, their meaning hardly even hinting at a threat. Yet those two words alone, their pronunciation slightly muffled by the steel mask resting upon Darius' face, were enough for everyone present at the dock, Blake notwithstanding, to freeze over at the spot, unable to avert their eyes nor move their limbs in a way similar to that of a mouse being paralyzed by the impending prospect of being swallowed whole by a constrictor. For even without uttering a single word there could be no hiding from the cold hatred and rage saturating the air, to the point of it thickening into a hardly breathable goo; and with how much of it was put into that short sentence, his words paralyzed better than any venom. Blake was aware, of course, that knowing how to make a scene with an appropriate impact on the viewer always was one of her companion's qualities… yet having taken into account the events that had transpired today, even she had difficulties telling how much of it was an act, and how much came from the heart. And it terrified her.

"With introductions out of the way, here is what you lot are going to do," his tempo measured, his every word a drop of poison seeping into the failing heart, Darius continued, still staring down a force outnumbering him twenty to one. "You're going to listen to what I say and you'll listen well, because I'm only going to say it once. Surrender and lay down your arms while you've still got limbs to hold them with, or I promise you'll be heading straight into ER after I'm through with you. Am I understood?"

In the looming silence, her own heartbeat seemed like the pounding of the church bells to Blake, whilst the numbing, suffocating presence that was Silva visibly chipped away at the last shreds of the White Fang's resolve. Wheresoever he had picked up these talents, Blake thought, they were clearly wasted on the Grimm.

As reality slowly coalesced into a tiny drop of amber, time itself clotted into a thick, almost solid substance, and then came to a halt entirely, its purpose as a function of movement through space rendered null and void by the ineffable entity of terror that froze the world solid around its vessel…

And then flowed once again with renewed vigor as, shattering the still dread that had descended upon the wharf, a hulking Faunus of a bovine variety standing closest to Darius broke into a deafening scream of utter hysteria composed of one part purest horror and one part bestial rage and charged at him with his messer already raised for a swing. A valiant attempt, sure… yet ultimately beyond futile. Waiting out the charge, the Silva waited for the moment he would be just outside his opponent's reach…then stepped towards him. Baffled by such a display, the colossus was carried forward another couple steps by his own momentum before attempting to readjust his strike, yet already it was clear it wasn't landing anywhere near the target as Darius leaned to the side, letting the blade pass just millimeters away from his chest, his next step bringing him well within striking distance.

As someone who'd been on the receiving end of Darius' fists many, many painful times, Blake knew exactly what kind of an experience the poor bastard was in for. A resolute technique of astonishing consistency, coupled with explosive speed and an arm that may very well serve as a smithing hammer, the result was an unforgettable sensation akin to a breaching charge going off inside one's body as internal organs bruised and tore at the seams, the only things stopping them from rupturing at the spot being the incredible toughness and the immense regenerative capabilities provided by one's aura. Yet in its absence…

Blake couldn't help but quietly breathe a sigh of relief as the oversized knife fell out of the equally oversized hand of its wielder and he plummeted to his knees in the stiffened, locked-up manner typical to a recipient of a well-placed blow to the solar plexus, the blindingly fast strike robbing him both of breath and energy to keep himself upright. Act or no act, when push came to shove, Darius clearly remained in control of both the situation and himself. With the brute's diaphragm well and truly paralyzed, the remainder of the fight was beyond uneventful, if nonetheless intimidating, with his fingers coiling around and squeezing down on the conveniently exposed muscled neck the width of a brick with childish ease, choking him out in seconds. A true display of dominance, yet not without a caveat: though it did leave enough of an impression for the entirety of the White Fang force to collectively stumble back as he calmly stepped over the unconscious body he cast aside, the terror that held sway over them was all but almost gone, seeing how their opponent was a mere human, if fiercely capable. Why Darius went to such lengths to give their enemies false hopes instead of taking them on with the full arsenal of powers at his disposal, Blake could only guess. For the time being, however, she decided to roll along.

"Would anyone else like to try?"

His answer was a wave of exchanged glances sweeping over the White Fang as the Faunus all limbered up in their own ways, resuming some semblance of a combat stance. It was clear that fisticuffs would soon ensue; reinforcements were in order, Blake decided.

Sweeping down from her cover, she closed up on Darius, taking a stand beside him. Yet the moment her hand reached behind her to rearm herself, the mask immediately turned towards her, and he slightly shook his head. An unspoken argument flared up for a second as the two stared each other down, with Blake trying to divine a motive for such handicapping, but in the end she let go of Gambol Shroud's handle, instead taking a slightly wider stance. Fistfighting them, the two agreed, albeit bounds more difficult, would indeed be preferable to having to shed blood.

"Look," in a last-ditch attempt to parlay, Blake slightly stepped forward towards the armed crowd, still trying to appeal to their shared kinship. "We don't have to fight. We only want Torchwick. You can still leave before either of us does something we'll…"

"Sweep."

Something was off in the way this simple callout came from Darius. For someone who's had a hand on the pulse of this entire situation up until – and apparently including – right now, there was a subtle, quite unnerving sort of suppressed forcefulness in his voice that brought all the wrong memories to life. Yet she was allowed no time at all to ponder this disconcerting trend, for the second she even slightly turned to her partner in vigilantism, her every sense screamed of impending danger, and as she reflexively spun back to face her former brothers-in-arms, she saw two henchmen dashing at her, machetes at the ready, with clear intention to pincer and inflict grievous injury, while another two mirrored the maneuver in Darius' direction… before all four tripped over themselves and fell right on their faces. A miracle for the righteous, truly. Yet where anyone else would attribute this occurrence to luck, Blake managed to deduce a clever ploy, as a fraction of a second before the quartet mounted their attack, she could barely notice the very shadows under their feet thickening ever so slightly, wholly obedient to the Silva's will.

The latter, meanwhile, already surged towards the crowd, curbstomping one of his failed opponents into anything-but-blissful oblivion, then grabbed the other Faunus by the collar of his coat and tossed him directly into the blindsided crowd, instantly regaining them the advantage. Following suit, Blake, too, drove the heel of her boot into the head of the prone idiot who tried to sucker-punch her, yet was forced to dodge immediately afterwards as the rest of the group finally got into the fight, with one of them already bringing down his shank on her. Without wasting any movement, Blake shifted just the slightest bit to let the knife slide down the length of the cleaver hefted on her back, then grabbed the exposed appendage and yanked it towards herself, sending the attacker stumbling past her and using the built-up momentum to then drive him into the ground, simultaneously wrenching the arm out of its socket. As heavy thumping from behind reached her ears, her body dove down on pure reflex, allowing her to evade a pair of hands that clutched nothingness at the spot she occupied just a second ago. Without much deliberation, she simply spun on her heels and rammed her fist directly into the attacker's kneecap, fracturing it with a juicy cracking sound, causing the leg, as well as its owner, to fold in two.

Once again she heard the characteristic whistling of a blade mid-swing, coming from behind her. Turning parallel to it, she again deflected the strike by letting the metal of her weapon take its brunt, then grabbed the confused Faunus by the throat and yanked him to her right with all of her might, sending him stumbling right into his comrade, tackling the both of them to the ground. Intent on using the valuable second this bought her to disengage into a more favorable position, Blake leapt over a stunned goon in a graceful somersault, clocking him directly in the back of the head on the backswing before he so much as thought about turning her way. And although another four henchmen immediately converged on her position, they were all given pause by the matte edge of the katana she held out in reverse, disconnected from the cleaver it was sheathed in. She had no intent on killing any of them, of course, but squaring up against so many people with melee weapons was about to become that much easier.

Suddenly, a loud and clearly surprised 'OH SHIT!..' rose above the cacophony of combat and the ranks of her opponents were halved in a blink of an eye as an enormous Faunus plowed through the middle and firmly pinned two of them between a Dust container and his own unconscious body, clearly thrown with immense force. It wasn't exactly hard to deduce the identity of the thrower, either, for in the very sizeable gap the throw left in the enemy forces, a vortex of fists and boots that was Darius wrought havoc at the origin point. Exchanging a puzzled glance between one another, the two remaining Fangs decided they'd rather try their luck with Blake. While technically not a wrong decision, it was stupid nonetheless; parrying the first one's amateur attempt at a swipe with ease, Blake stepped to his side and sent him flying directly into his partner with a mighty kick. Approaching the both of them, she pacified the one who tried to take a stab at her with a stomp to the head, while the other, desperately scrambling for his weapon, was rudely interrupted by her boot bearing down upon his wrist, bringing it into utter disrepair.

Finding herself with a moment to breathe out, Blake threw a glance at her Darius, in the unlikely event he required her help. He didn't. Anchored firmly to a point of his choosing, waves upon waves of a noticeably weakened raiding party broke themselves upon him as he cleaved through their ranks with the methodical relentlessness of a machine, all while remaining in constant motion. Grunts of pain, the creaking of dislocated limbs and the crunching of broken bones became the symphonic accompaniment for the night as he blocked, grappled, intercepted and struck, every move serving a purpose of his own divining. In any other situation, this could be an appropriate time to just sit down on the side and enjoy the spectacle. As it was…

A scream of pain pierced the night sky as bone snapped and tore through flesh, and what was going to be an unpleasant, but only briefly debilitating dislocated joint became an open fracture of the forearm, the result of a grab conducted just the slightest bit too quickly and too harshly. Shoving the victim aside, Darius jumped back a solid four meters to disengage, yet was forced to immediately fend off a goon charging him. It only took him shifting his weight slightly to the right for the clumsy bat swing to miss him entirely. In a perverse slowdown of his distorted perception as reality set in, the only thing left for the petrified Faunus to do was to watch in abject horror as the figure threw back a punch that even he could tell would go right through his sternum. No holds were barred: Blake could see, could feel, how Darius put every ounce of his strength into the attack as his muscles visibly bulged beneath his shirt and veins of onyx engorged down the length of his clenched fist as if desperate to burst out of his arm. Powerless to prevent this disaster, she too could do naught but watch the literal freight train run over the hapless idiot unlucky enough to pick a wrong fight at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was, therefore, a bit of a shock for Blake to witness events unfold in a radically different manner, taking her a second to process how, at the very last moment, the fist unclenched into an open palm, somewhat mitigating the damage done. Hardly by an appreciable margin, though: the sheer force of the strike blasted the poor guy a good twenty meters away from Darius, where his flight was abruptly ended by a Dust container standing in the way. Unprotected by aura, the Fang's already mangled body hit its corner with a sickening crack somewhere in the spinal region, whereupon he slumped down onto the ground, folding into himself like wet tissue paper and making no further movements.

It was as if some mischievous demiurge with a holistically malicious sense of humor bundled up existence into a big ol' roll of film tape, then cut out a very sizeable chunk of events that were supposed to transpire immediately after, and then attached the tape to a frame way, way later down the line. In an instant, all fighting ceased and, once again, the world itself froze, appalled by the barbarism inflicted upon it, and in its paralysis, came crashing down upon the shoulders of everyone involved. Like Atlas pinned down beneath the heavenly pillars, the pitiful remnants of the White Fang strike group watched with bated breath as the only entity, the only thing, that remained unaffected by the total collapse of nature's laws, surely discarding any pretense of a humanly guise by this fact alone, straightened out in single, flowing motion, completely ignoring the concept of joints or angular momentum, and extended its ghastly digit to point at the lifeless body.

"This is your last warning. Don't make me repeat this."

The clatter of weapons hitting the floor was his answer.