A/N: Whew, long time no see, guys! Can I just say, absolutely psyched about how good Volume 6 has been.

With no episode today, we figured it would be the perfect time to update. Semi-short chapter considering the wait, but hey, we're alive! So, in the traditional manner of our chapter updates (take that as you will), here you go!

- Fiercesomest

Silence stretched between the pair in the dim light of the frigid tool room. Weiss's icy gaze wavered in the face of Pyrrha's dark expression. Seconds seemed like hours before Pyrrha spoke again.

"There's a vault underneath the school, beneath even the special cases ward. It's where they were keeping the previous Fall Maiden before Cinder arrived and before I-" she stopped herself short, "And, anyway, it's where I'll be sealing myself if-... when, the time comes. That way, I won't be a danger to anyone..." Pyrrha looked away. There was something... very real, about actually admitting her plans to someone else. A lead weight settled in her stomach. But, rather than sink to her knees like she suddenly wanted to, Pyrrha sat atop the table once more, partially covering her face with one hand. "I hoped that by telling you all of this... you could warn the others to avoid that part of the school."

A vault beneath the special cases ward? That ward was carved straight into the rock of the cliffs, supplemented with several tons of concrete to give it that difficult to achieve maximum security prison feel. Weiss stood on the metal flooring facing Pyrrha with a mix of consternation and disgust. She'd seen that flash of anger and was still very aware of how badly it could go if Pyrrha turned Grimm while they were alone here, but that had seemed less and less likely as time passed.

"... so your plan is for me to tell them after you go lock yourself in a vault?" Weiss watched Pyrrha carefully. "Because you're dangerous."

Dangerous was an understatement. A Grimm with a semblance was bad enough, but a Grimm with a semblance and the powers of a maiden? Unthinkable. But, rather than answer what was likely just another opportunity for Weiss to call her idiotic, Pyrrha closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips to her temples, as if she could somehow enforce some sense of stability back into herself.

When she didn't answer, Weiss set her jaw a little. Dust, she wished that Pyrrha had picked someone else to confide in. She wasn't doing this right. What was she supposed to say to what essentially amounted to a suicide plan?

Ugh, if she were Ruby, or Yang, probably she would just hug Pyrrha and say some kind of nonsense about teamwork and everything would be fine. But she wasn't, and she was not about to offer physical contact to anyone, especially not in as delicate situation as this was. Seeking a middle ground, she approached the table and turned so she could lean back against it to at least face the same way Pyrrha was instead of staring her down. She brushed a loose strand of her white hair out of her face, trying to be somewhat non-confrontational and not entirely succeeding, "Look, I'm just... help me understand why exactly you think that this is the best course of action."

Pyrrha didn't answer immediately, but she did open her eyes, staring off into space for a little while. Eventually, her hands dropped back into her lap and she looked to Weiss. "I already turned once." She looked away just as quickly, not wanting to see her reaction, "It was during the fight for Beacon- for Vale. I don't remember much, but Ren was there. He said Jaune healed me," she laughed, but it came out sounding hollow, "Can you believe that? Someone who had never aura healed in his life, trying to aura heal someone who had already turned... And the amazing thing is, it worked. For me, anyway. For Jaune… well, you've seen him. But after all that… even after everything he gave… it's started coming back..." Pyrrha gripped her arm, as if she could cover up the dark skin and bony plating, "I'm not taking anyone else down with me, Weiss... I can't do it... I never wanted to-" her voice finally hitched, and she hid her face in her hands, "I never wanted to hurt anyone."

Weiss sat with her fists clenched in her lap, seriously rethinking her physical contact decision. Was Pyrrha crying? Dust, why why couldn't Ruby or Yang or the rest of Pyrrha's own team have been the ones here instead of her?

She would just have to do her best on her own. Removing one of her gloves, she lifted a hand to Pyrrha's shoulder, hesitating for a second before she laid her hand a patch of her unchanged skin in what she hoped was a comforting manner rather than a startling, your-hands-are-freezing one.

The light touch toppled Pyrrha's last defense, replacing any words she had left with tears.

Weiss almost snatched her hand away, but instead just kept it there, fixing her gaze on the floor and praying that Pyrrha would cry herself out. Or say something. Or just stop crying immediately so they could pretend this entire conversation had never happened. Better yet, this could be a dream. A nightmare.

She stole a glance at the bone plating on Pyrrha's shoulder.

Definitely a nightmare.

Blake and Ruby followed the tracks to the medical tent, and then across the open ground to the dark maw of the maintenance tunnels. There used to be a door to them or something, Ruby was sure, but now it was just an open square of black set in the steel walls.

Ruby paused, her cape still askew from her rush to get up and out of the tent. She looked to Blake, intending to take her cue off of her superior sight and hearing, but then a quiet echo reached her ear.

It sounded like someone was crying in the tunnels.

Blake's Faunus ears had already swiveled towards the sound - dry, heaving sobs. Were they from pain? Sorrow? There was no way to tell. Blake bit her lip. After the medical tent there had been two sets of footprints. Who was with Weiss now? The panic clearly driving Ruby only served to fuel Blake's natural paranoia, her mind immediately leaping straight to every worst case scenario; Neo- Torchwick- Adam- Blake's eyes met Ruby's in a split second of shared anxiety. She took off running full speed towards the sound, practically leaving a clone in her wake.

Weiss continued to sit next to Pyrrha, looking anywhere but at her as she did her best to ignore her open sobbing. She hadn't moved her hand. Should she apply more pressure? Less? Dust, she had to do something.

Her desperate thoughts were interrupted by a clang somewhere in the hall. Before she could so much as reach for her weapon, the door to the tool room burst open hard enough to dent the steel door on the shelf behind it as Ruby and Blake both leapt into the orange light of the Dust lamp.

"Weiss!" she cried, starting from her fighting stance. Crescent Rose dipped as Ruby's bright silver eyes fixed on the figure beside her partner.

Pyrrha's head snapped up, her eyes locking with Ruby's. Shining silver filled her vision. Every afflicted inch of her skin crawled, her plates of bone aching anew. Inexplicable terror gripped her.

Blake was still trying to process what exactly she was seeing, so thoroughly stilled from shock she didn't even think to lower her weapons. Though, that also could have been due to the very distinct Grimm markings covering the person sitting beside Weiss. "...Pyrrha?"

Pyrrha's hands clenched into fists, and for a moment, time seemed to grind to a halt.

She bolted, red hair trailing behind her in a wild arc as her polarity flared, forcefully rending an opening in the farthest wall through which she fled into another hallway.

The others had all flinched towards cover at the shriek of tearing metal. Ruby straightened first.

"That was Pyrrha?" she was at Weiss's side in an instant, her scythe lowered and her brow furrowed in confusion.

The fencer was equal parts ready to smack her partner for being so dense or hug her out of sheer relief, so she did neither, instead flinging an arm to the dark opening in the wall and snapping, "Don't just stand there! She's been planning to lock herself in a vault under the school!"

Blake had no idea why Weiss and Pyrrha were out here in the dead of night, and no idea why Pyrrha looked like she was halfway to becoming like Sun, but she knew one thing above all; Pyrrha was running, and running never solved anything.

"Pyrrha!" Blake called after her as she darted through the opening in the wall and gave chase, thankful that Pyrrha hadn't thought to close it behind her.

Ruby snapped a look from the jagged hole in the metal paneling back to her partner as she circled Crescent Rose shut. "Okay. You're okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Weiss swatted Ruby away when she moved to check her over for bumps and bruises or whatever, "What are you doing?! We have to go."

"Right," Ruby snatched her hands back and jumped to grab the Dust powered lamp, which was really more of a lantern, "Let's catch up to Blake."

"Pyrrha!" Blake's voice echoed from further down the long narrow hall. Where did it even lead? Gritting her teeth, Blake tried to put on an extra burst of speed. Pyrrha was fast, but she was faster, and she was gaining ground. "Pyrrha stop!" A metal door flew open right in her path, forcing her to dodge sideways, breaking her momentum.

A squeak and a rush of air and rose petals shot past Blake. "Watch out!"

The warning came almost too late and the sharp ring of one of Weiss's glyphs filled the air as the heiress sprang off an angled sigil to keep from running into her teammate as she propelled herself down the dark hallway.

Ruby's semblance was back at full strength. The scant light of the Dust lamp wasn't enough to see much ahead, but the hallway was a wide, straight shot. Ruby remembered hanging off of Yang when she was studying for her driver's license and seeing some page about overdriving your headlights- aka going so fast that by the time you saw something in the road up ahead it would be too late to stop. That was definitely what Ruby was doing now, and she couldn't help feeling the crushing dread leftover from the last time she'd run full-out in a dark tunnel like this.

"Pyrrha!" she yelped, knowing that there were no giant rats or sudden drop offs here. She got ready to put on speed- maybe she could get ahead of her and block her way.

There was no need, Pyrrha wasn't all that far ahead, and with a heavy thud the pair collided, sending them both crashing to the hard metal flooring. The Dust lamp clattered across the ground, rolling and coming to rest against the wall ten feet on their left.

Pyrrha immediately scrambled to get back to her feet.

"No, wait, Pyrrha," Ruby locked her arms around Pyrrha's middle, heedless of the sharp edges of what she assumed was her armor as she used her full dead weight to try to at least slow her down, "what's going on?"

"I'm sorry- I'm sorry!" Pyrrha repeated herself as she struggled to escape Ruby's surprisingly ironclad grip without hurting her. She could feel those silver eyes boring into her - she resorted once more to her semblance, snap reversing her polarity to full repulsion.

Ruby cried out, her buckles and weapon dragging her backwards so hard and so fast that she thought she might dislocate both shoulders, or get cut in half by her own weapon harness. The metal of the floor and walls distorted, buckling under the sheer force of the blast.

Weiss was just close enough to see the wave of black in the orange light of the Dust lamp, but she didn't register what it was before it struck her. She pitched backwards as Myrtenaster was torn from her grasp and hurled down the hallway, plunging her section of the corridor into darkness.

Ruby scrambled to brace her feet on the grating. Arms still locked and head down against Pyrrha's side, she gritted out, "Pyrrha stop! We just want to talk!"

A sharp cry of pain from the blackened hall interrupted anything Pyrrha was about to say, her semblance stopping cold at the dull thud of something hitting the floor.

Ruby gasped, able to breathe freely again, and she fell back to the uneven grating.

"Ruby!" Weiss called. She'd picked herself up off the floor and now ran to get the Dust lamp. She'd lost her sword and looked white as a sheet.

Pyrrha tried to quiet her breathing, straining to hear over the heavy thudding of her heart. This was wrong. This was all wrong. She'd botched everything. She could see Ruby and Weiss, but... "Blake?..." Another pained sound drifted through the dark, sparking a very different kind of panic in Pyrrha. She dared to call up her less practiced powers, flames licking to life around her so that she could actually see as she ran right back down the hall, past Ruby, past Weiss, to the figure crumpled on the ground beyond them.

Blake looked up as Pyrrha approached, a bleary haze of pain clouding her vision as she reached for her own shoulder, fingertips clumsily brushing against the cold metal of Myrtenaster buried to the hilt right through her.

Ruby and Weiss ran up behind Pyrrha, keeping a careful distance from the flames until they saw their teammate.

"Blake!" Ruby leapt to her side, hands hovering near her shoulder.

"Don't pull it out!" Weiss yanked Ruby back by her cloak, ice blue eyes darting between Blake and the icy steel skewering her shoulder. She'd activated the cartridge of blue dust in her sword's chamber for light, and frost showed on Blake's coat at the edge of the wound. The sheer speed her blade had to have flown at in order to puncture aura... She exchanged a glance with Ruby. They needed to be ready to deal with a lot of blood.

Ruby tore her gaze away from Blake and turned to Pyrrha, "Is Ren in charge of medical supplies?"

Pyrrha's flames extinguished as she shied away from the bright silver of Ruby's gaze, leaving only the orange light of the dust lamp mixing with Myrtenaster's dulled blue glow. Her hands shook. "Yes... He- he's on night watch... atop the coliseum wall."

Weiss had shed her gloves and was trying to hold the blade as steady as possible while prying the dust cartridges from its revolving chamber. They absolutely did not need an accidental discharge.

"Okay." Ruby took Pyrrha's wrist and used it to stand up. She tried to catch Blake's eyes in the low light. "Blake?"

Blake lifted her head just enough to look up at Ruby, ears pinned flat against her skull.

Ruby grimaced. She'd been about to ask if she could walk. "We'll be back in a minute. You okay to wait here with Weiss?"

Blake nodded, bracing herself against Weiss as she attempted to get to her hands and knees. "Don't-" she sucked in a harsh breath through her teeth, fixing her sights on Pyrrha, "don't run."

Between Blake's piercing gaze and Ruby's gentle but unyielding grip on her wrist, Pyrrha could scarcely do more than nod wordlessly.

"Stop trying to get up," Weiss scolded Blake, transferring the half used Dust cartridges to the pouch at her belt with one hand and trying to stop Blake from moving with the other.

Ruby took that as their cue to leave.

"Yeah, actually we're going to run," she said under her breath to Pyrrha as soon as they were far enough in the hall for it to be dark. They needed to get bandages and stuff fast.

Pyrrha pulled back slightly, her thoughts still reeling, cycling endlessly through guilt, despair, confusion, and back again. Everything was happening so fast - she could scarcely keep up, in more ways than one. "You'll be faster without me."

"Pyrrha, I don't know what's going on," Ruby confessed, stopping where she was in the hall. She couldn't see her friend clearly, but she'd seen earlier. The pitch black, the bone plating. "I don't... I want to help, but I don't know what to do." She buried both hands in her hair, like she was trying to think, "I just got here- we all just got here, and now Blake is hurt and that's the only thing I know how to fix. So let's fix that, and then we can talk about everything else. Plus you know right where Ren is, right?"

That wasn't much of an explanation of why Pyrrha had to come, but it was the best Ruby could piece together. She looked at her, hoping it was good enough.

I want to help... Ruby's words echoed in Pyrrha's head. She felt sick to her stomach. "He should be right where you came up to meet me earlier this morning."

Before she could say more, Ruby was hugging her. Pyrrha was at least a head taller than her, so Ruby just had her arms around her middle. She could hear the hurt in Pyrrha's unsteady voice, and Blake needed help. This was all a mess- she should've just stayed in the tent with Yang and Robin and not dragged Blake out, or not gotten so spooked in the dark maintenance tunnel and run into Pyrrha hard enough to make her lash out. She was the team leader- she should have been able to fix it, or at least not make things worse. Just thinking about it was making her choke up again, but it really wasn't a good time for that. "I'm sorry for grabbing you earlier and surprising you. You were just running and I wanted you to be okay."

The brave Mistralian champion locked up, stiff as a board. "Why... why are you apologizing?" She was the one who had every right to apologize. She had failed the city, her friends, Jaune, and now she'd failed her own plan to remove herself as a threat. She had just impaled one of Ruby's teammates - and Ruby was apologizing? Pyrrha shook her head. "You haven't done anything wrong," slowly, she relaxed into the hug, allowing herself to grip fistfuls of Ruby's cloak, gently pressing her face against the top of Ruby's head. "You've done nothing wrong." She, on the other hand, had done everything wrong... but, maybe she could at least help Blake, if not herself.

Pyrrha pushed Ruby away, looking anywhere other than those silver eyes. She regretted the loss of contact almost immediately. "Let's... go get Ren."

Ruby scrubbed her eyes on her sleeve, sniffing and sort of halfway pulling herself back together.

"Yeah," her voice came out a little watery. It had been a long day. A long week. Several weeks. "Yeah, let's go."

It was like that time in the tunnels again. She remembered the damp dark, when she'd been poisoned, when her teammates told her later that she had quit breathing. She remembered waking up to Ren and Weiss and the others.

If anyone could help with Blake, it would be Ren, or maybe Uncle Qrow if they could find him. They started running down the maintenance tunnel again, Ruby's cloak trailing behind her and Pyrrha's white bone plating showing in the near dark. Together they would figure out Blake, and then they'd figure out the rest.

A/N: See you in a few weeks,

- Fiercesomest