-Last Time-
'No… No… No. No. No! No! NO!' Ruby thought in horror, her struggling redoubled as Cinder walked off towards the now landed bullhead with Naruto. "Naruto! Let him go! Naruto!"
The hooded girl's efforts were in vain. Her body had already been pushed past its breaking point and had nothing left to give.
All she could do was lay there and watch as her pseudo-adopted nephew was carried into that aircraft and flown away.
"NARUTO!"
-And Now, Several Hours Later-
"Ruby!" One Yang Xiao Long yelled in worry as she burst into a hospital room with Weiss, Blake, Team JNPR, Penny, and Winter not far behind. The second she entered the once sterile recovery room, the busty blonde's eyes locked onto the raven-redhead out cold on a plain bed. The poor girl had several parts of her body covered in bandages, even more turned purple from bruises, an IV was attached to her right arm, and a heart monitor beeped beside her at a slightly erratic but steady pace.
She wasn't the only occupant of the room though as Neo lay on another bed on the other side of the room, and in much worse condition if the oxygen mask and numerous medical machines attached to her meant anything.
A doctor stood beside them along with a concerned Glynda and Ozpin, the trio appearing to have been in the middle of a conversation before the sudden interruption.
Shoving past them without a care, Yang knelt beside her battered sister and grasped her hand gingerly, worry and fear brimming in her watering violet eyes. The rest of the group stayed back, not wanting to intrude despite their own concern for their friend/teammate.
Instead, Penny and Pyrrha went over to Neo's side before they all turned their attention towards the two professors, with one overactive orangette in particular going right up the headmaster of Beacon itself and getting right in his face with a deathly serious expression.
"Where is Naruto?" She demanded as arcs of electricity started to dance around her.
"…We don't know Ms. Valkyrie." Ozpin admitted reluctantly, causing the angry orangette's scowl to deepen and the swarm of lightning to intensify.
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"Whomever was behind this knew exactly what they were doing and were able to cover their tracks well." The grey-haired man explained calmly despite the clear risk of feminine fury he was under, seeing as the girl had every right to know what was happening.
Every single dust shop in Vale that was still in business had been very publicly hit simultaneously. Because of this, by the time anyone phoned in what was happening at the docks, there was simply nobody left to send. It wasn't until literally half the docks had been obliterated by a stunning ray of light that the dispatched groups had finished with their current cases or abandoned them for the clearly more pressing issue.
"What do you mean whoever? It's pretty obvious that the White Fang were the ones responsible." Blake said with a mixture of anger and sadness in her tone. All of them had seen the numerous Grimm masked faunus that were being brought in, either by gurney or body bag, even as they spoke.
An exact count wasn't in yet as they were still hauling bodies out of the water and wreckage, but preliminary reports estimated at least three hundred of the terrorists dead on the scene. Several dozen more were found critically injured and rushed in for treatment, but even then over half of them were unlikely to survive the night.
"The White Fang were involved yes, but they were not calling the shots." Glynda stated bluntly, getting a few surprised looks.
"Ms. Rose was mostly hysterical from exhaustion and severe aura poisoning when we found her, but she was able to tell us about three human individuals who'd been directing the whole ordeal before the doctors sedated her." Ozpin explained while pulling out his scroll and showing three pictures, extremely grainy and blurry ones of Cinder and Mercury and a perfectly clear mugshot of Emerald. "We managed to apprehend one of them, but we haven't been able-"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up! What the hell is aura poisoning?!" Yang cut in, her eye flickering red briefly, finally looking away from Ruby in order to glare at the headmaster demandingly as she hugged her sister's arm in worry.
"Relax Ms. Xiao Long, it is not as bad as it sounds." Ozpin said with his hands raised up in a pacifying manner. "It's merely an uncommon condition where a person is overly exposed to someone else's aura that causes emotional and, in very rare cases, memory overlap from the latter to the former. If I'm not mistaken, Ms. Nikos went through a case of it herself recently."
Said redhead tilted her head in confusion for a few moments before nodding her head as memories of the incident with Naruto's aura training flashed through her mind. "Yeah… that was weird… really weird."
"Now that we have that cleared up, maybe I can… where is Ms. Valkyrie?" Ozpin asked, blinking in surprise when he noticed that Nora was no longer within the room.
"Knowing her, going after the perp you have in custody to get the information she wants out of them, one way or another." Ren said confidently, since that is exactly what his friend would do. "I'd say you have about three minutes before she finds them and one more for her to break them beyond repair."
Eyes widening at this statement, Ozpin and Glynda quickly rushed out the door after the wayward orangette.
…
"…You were kidding about that last part, right?" Jaune asked Ren nervously as a tense silence filled the room.
Looking the blonde straight in the eye, Ren shook his head negatively just as an ear-splitting scream filled the air. "Remember these words closely Jaune, 'Hell hath no fury like a mother pissed the fuck off'."
-Hospital Prisoner Ward, One Minute Earlier-
Emerald lay motionless upon a hospital bed, or at least she thought it was a hospital bed based on the disinfect smell in the air, her hands and feet restrained by cold metal cuffs while she stared at nothingness with her unseeing red eyes. She'd been like this every since she'd finally come to the horrifying realizations that she was truly blind, and that Cinder had abandoned her.
Of course, being the devote little follower she was, the greenette tried to rationalize her leader's actions, such as telling herself that Cinder was simply recovering her strength before coming to break her out.
Emerald was snapped out of pointlessly lying to herself when the sound of the door breaking open reached her ears. Then faster then she could blink, a hand grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her up as far as her trapped limbs would allow.
"You know where Naruto is. Tell me now." An unknown female voice demanded.
'Oh goodie, looks like their gonna play gold old good cop, bad cop.' Emerald thought dully, thinking that the person questioning her was some over-cocky newbie policewoman wanting to prove themselves. "I ain't telling you jack lady. You don't scare me."
"Trust me, you will be." The 'cop' said quietly before suddenly letting Emerald go, getting the greenette to scoff.
"Oh no, what are you gonna do to me? Throw me in prison? Like that'll scare- Hey, what are you doing?" Emerald demanded as she felt a pair of hands wrap around her own.
"You must not know how serious I am about this, so here's a little idea of what's going to happen if you don't start talking." The 'cop' said darkly.
"Puh-lease, like an empty threat is gonna-" *Cra-squelch* "-AAAAHHHHH!" A scream of shock and pain erupted from Emerald's throat as her hand was crushed in an instant.
Nora stood over the screaming blind Emerald with a scowl, blood oozing between her fingers as she kept a firm grip on the greenette's now smushed limb. "Either you tell me where my son is right now or I'm going to break your everything until you do."
"F-fuck y-y-you!"
"Don't say I didn't warn you."
*Squelch*
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"
By the time Glynda and Ozpin arrived at Emerald's room, it was in time to see a disturbingly stoic Nora walking out the destroyed security door using a rag to wipe the blood off her hands as she stepped around the KO'd security squad laying on the ground.
She didn't even acknowledge the two professors when she passed them, simply brushing past them as she headed directly towards Ruby and Neo's room once more.
Glynda started to go after her again, but was stopped when Ozpin put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. Sighing, the bodacious blonde teacher instead peered inside the medical room, cringing slightly when she saw the state Emerald was in.
The thief's entire right arm looked like it had been shoved into a car crusher, with bone, skin, and muscle sticking out of a contorted ball of flesh. The only reason she wasn't dead from blood-loss was because of a makeshift tourniquet around her shoulder.
The girl herself was gibbering randomly about mountains, underground hideouts, explosives, and begging for mercy.
Staring at the pitiful mess whimpering on the bed, Glynda only had one thought in her head. 'Whoever took the boy is going to regret it immensely.'
-Meanwhile, Mountain Glenn Underground City-
"That fucking kid is so going to pay for this." Cinder growled out, squirming slightly on a grungy bloodstained bed as a faunus doctor carefully pulled out a jagged shard of volcanic glass out of her side. Almost every inch of her body was covered in bandages, with the only visible parts being her face and back.
Shortly after leaving the scene of the crime, Cinder's adrenaline had completely burned out and she'd been truly hit by the true brunt of her injuries. Almost fifty of her bones had been broken and/or fractured, including eight of her ribs and three of her spine's vertebrae, several of her internal organs had been badly bruised, and over twenty large shards of obsidian had been stabbed into her.
It was only thanks to a very, VERY, large dose of pain killers that she wasn't screaming around in absolute agony right now.
"Speaking of which, you made sure that brat was properly locked up, right?" The ravenette asked while looking towards the corner of the room, where a slightly less bandaged scowling Mercury walked into the room.
"Aura restraining cuffs on every part of him we could fit a pair, a literal ton of tungsten steel chains on top of those, heaviest duty bite guard and muzzle I could find, cell made of twenty inches of bullet proof everything, and two dozen guards armed with the deadliest weapons we got on hand." Mercury stated while swiping a needle of morphine from the counter next to him and injecting it into his hip. "If he manages to get through all that shit then I'll just save him the trouble and jump off the nearest cliff I can find. Remind me why we can't just kill him?"
"He has the Fall Maiden's power now, the first male to ever be able to claim such. We cannot risk killing him until we know the full implications of this." Cinder said with a scowl. They were treading in completely unknown territory here.
Killing him now might cause what was rightfully hers to return, but it was just as likely now that it could simply jump to another male host instead, or Oum forbid simply disappear forever. "As much as I hate to admit it, we need Arthur's help with this."
"Ugh, that asshole? I might just jump off that cliff now." Mercury muttered while rubbing his brow before turning back around and walking out the door. "Speaking of assholes, I gotta go make sure Adam and his chainsaw-sword buddy don't try to kill the little bastard… again."
Left alone in the makeshift medical clinic, Cinder could do nothing but contemplate the numerous ways she would exact her revenge…
*Squelch* "GAH! FUCK!"
"Whoops, looks like the painkillers are wearing off."
-Mountain Glenn, Upper City-
A pair of White Fang grunts stood outside a dilapidated building, a male goat faunus with a broken set of horns and a female cat faunus with droopy ears, their faces hidden by their grim masks but their body language just screaming boredom.
"Hey." The grunt on the left suddenly said after several minutes of utterly nothing happening, getting the right grunt to jump slightly and turn her attention to her companion.
"Yeah?"
"You ever wonder why we're here?" The left grunt asked, getting the right grunt to shrug with a sigh.
"It's one of life's great mysteries isn't it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a god watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know, man, but it keeps me up at night."
…
"What?" Left grunt asked with a confused and weirded out tone. "I meant why are we here in this abandoned city."
"Huh, oh… uh yeah." Right grunt said awkwardly.
"What was all that stuff about gods?"
"Uhhhhh… nothing!"
"…You wanna talk about it?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Seriously though, why are we here? From what I can tell, this is just some stupid abandoned city that's full of Grimm."
"Well now that you mention it…"
"And not only that, but we're supposed to be fighting against humanity for our equality, yet here we are doing suicide missions because a couple humans told us to."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that too. It's really weird that Adam of all people would take orders from a human."
"I know right, its like so out of character for him," Left grunt said with a shake of his head before doing a quick check of the area, causing him to miss as Right grunt was pulled into a conveniently placed bush by a blue and black tail. "I mean he hates humans more than anyone I know so why would… Diff?"
Looking around at the empty area in confusion, the now solo grunt raised his gun and looked around worriedly.
"Diff? Diff! This isn't funny pal, where the hell are you?" The now solitary grunt called out as he slowly walked towards where his partner should be, snapping his gun up nervously when the nearby bush rustled ominously. However, just as he was about to pull the trigger, Diff walked into view while adjusting her pants.
"Relax Simon, I told you that I had to take a leak." Diff said in a slightly irritated tone, getting the bull faunus to rub his head sheepishly.
"Sorry, must've not heard you while I was rambling."
"Whatever, let's just get back to our posts, our replacements are gonna be here any minute and I'd rather not get bitched at again for goofing off."
"Yeah, good point." Simon said while turning around and walking back to his spot, thus causing him to once again miss something important. In this case it was the mischievous smirk that crossed 'Diff's' lips as a soft glow of gold and light blue emitted from the eye-slits of her mask.
-End Chapter-