Fox Alistair was a blind man, but even he could see the way his night was headed. He was a second-year student at Beacon, and wouldn't have made it that far if he had no clue how to adapt. None of them would have. It was a lesson he'd had to learn early on in life, a necessity given his circumstances. One that had only gotten beaten further into him as he'd tried to chase his chosen profession further. He believed, despite how in the dark he was most of the time, he did a decent job of things. A valiant effort to maintain the maxim of a certain professor of his team's to: "Stay Vigilant". In a way, he felt he actually had that easier than the rest of them. Blind though he was, he could often see things most others couldn't.

Such as, for example, how tonight was very likely to put most of their futures up in smoke.

The ride to get to where they were now hadn't been a comfortable one, what with being crammed into the back of a vehicle and tossed around like a soda can. Though that mattered less to him than what he knew they were trying to do. Having climbed to the roof of some building and scanned out to a horizon he couldn't even see, and listening to a plan that most would consider harebrained at the best of times. He knew harebrained plans when he heard them. Despite being her partner, Coco Adel wasn't known for her tactical thinking. Good heart, and a reputation for breaking them, but not a planner.

He felt he could almost say the same of the Courier now.

"What are the odds he doesn't get the three of them killed?" Coco asked.

'I think Red and Coppertone will be fine,' Fox answered. 'I think our favorite mailman's probably going to ship out though. Don't think he's got the Aura to tuck and roll.'

Coco nodded her head, a motion Fox could see well enough only through long practice and proper help. His experience with Aura had made it an unconscious ability of his. To see the natural Aura exuded by people around him, whether they actively used it or not. Only further helped through the use of ADA. It wasn't a substitute for sight, as far as he could tell, but the two working in tandem kept him on par with those who still had it, so he had to guess they were worth something. Small gestures might be lost on him, but ADA's sonar and his Aura caught most things. It's how he could tell they were standing on a rooftop. The sonar could only travel so far in any direction before the pulse wasn't strong enough to work. He could gauge the rest using his Aura. Which was how he was able to pick out all the people currently spread out over the field in front of him.

There were a lot of them. Even having descended from the rooftop and back to the alleyway, his view had scarcely changed.

Team CFVY had been on a handful of missions during their time at Beacon. Mostly scouting missions, a few exterminations, and even one or two re-enforcement requests. Which merely meant they'd garrison in some frontier-town for a week or two, in the event someone else's extermination didn't go to plan. That way, they could help evacuate. It gave him the chance, more than once, to see what it was like, looking down at people. Seeing all those different Auras, huddled and grouped together in one location. Coupled with his Semblance, he could sometimes see and feel the emotions that coursed just beneath the surface. The fear and anxiety that came with being in a place like that. When he was a child, and barely had a clue how to control his Semblance, he'd been bombarded with those emotions. It had been hard to learn to control and separate his own from them.

Looking out over the field before them though, Fox didn't sense fear. With every explosion and gunshot that echoed back, his ADA generated a sonar image. No different than if it had sent its own 'ping' outward. It gave him a rare, clear view of what was ahead of them. The battle that was being pitched.

Through their Aura, he could feel the anger and hatred the White Fang carried with them.

He wouldn't waste time wondering what made them that way. People were like that. Human or Faunus, anyone could turn out like that if pushed the wrong way. Some didn't even need to be pushed. Most couldn't find their way back.

With all the ambient noise and motion, he could track the vehicle as it raced up the road to Kohl's Gate. It gunned across the field, gaining speed as it went. There must have been a road. He couldn't see that part.

"I can't believe we're letting him do this," Weiss Schnee, the heiress, said, her Aura cold and brilliant white. "Of all the dumb risks to take, why this one?"

"Well, we didn't exactly try very hard to stop him," Blake answered, her shade-like Aura twisting and writhing as she moved. "He probably wouldn't have listened anyway."

"We probably should've tried though," Jaune said, Aura strong and pulsing, growing stronger with every second. "Since, y'know, he kinda took Ruby and Penny with him."

"He's made it out of scrapes before right?" Sun asked, Aura light and dancing. "I mean, c'mon, he's Crazy Steve of all people."

Velvet chuckled next to Fox. "You know, that's still quite strange to think about. Most people know how strict the consequences for vigilantism can be. It's why most active Beacon students don't tend to break that particular rule."

"How strict is it?" Nora asked, appearing like a pulsing and bouncing ball of pink energy in Fox's sight. "I mean, getting expelled is bad, but it can't get worse right?"

"Try having a criminal record put to your name," Yatsu answered. "Assuming Ozpin and Goodwitch don't get to you first, the police really don't like it when we stick our noses in. Last two students I heard tried to do something like this, they got expelled and nearly did time."

"I think Port mentioned there was a team from when he was younger who tried it too," Velvet added. "They were the ones who messed up so badly they had to put the laws in place to begin with."

'Clearly that's what it was, and not all the bribes saying otherwise,' Fox thought, knowing Velvet could hear him.

"Oh… What happened to them?" Nora asked.

"Dunno," Coco answered. "Last any of us heard, apparently some of them now teach at Signal-"

As the words left Coco's mouth, a sudden shockwave lashed out from the checkpoint. It was quickly followed by several more, as explosions ripped the air. Fox had observed as the three occupants of the van had dislodged themselves from it, stopping. He hadn't realized they'd bailed out until the first impact. The remaining explosions had likely been part of the scheme the Courier had going on. Two that came quickly after the van's impact, followed by a distant third, which then collapsed the distant checkpoint in a thunderous crash.

"… Well, that's one way to do it," Ren commented.

"And our cue to start moving," Coco added, moving ahead. "That get anyone's attention Fox?"

Fox's gaze swept over the field, checking up and down the wall in either direction. He could still see the White Fang as they fought, many now holding at the wall that marked the checkpoint. But that was the end of it. Although he was certain many of them had vehicles, none were making a move towards the now collapsed checkpoint. A curious choice, but perhaps they considered it not their immediate concern. He shook his head, answering Coco's question.

"Good, let's move," Coco said, strutting ahead of everyone.

Wordlessly, everyone began to move after her. They did so quickly and intently, as they crossed the road and began to run up the hill towards the checkpoint. It wasn't a short distance they needed to cover, and even though the White Fang hadn't set their sights on them yet, that could still change at any moment.

"Anyone else having second thoughts about this?" Jaune asked, as they ran. "No?... Cool, me neither."

Despite saying the words, Fox could sense the truth from him.

Despite no one else voicing it, he could sense it from them as well. None of them were afraid, not in any meaningful amount, but he could sense the apprehension in them. It came with being able to see their Auras, read their thoughts. Even the ones that were only surface level said more than their faces did, at times. No one present was completely taken with what they were about to do. The consequences, should they be apprehended, should they fail, had the risk of being dire. The ones who seemed most prepared for what was coming were his own teammates. But even they weren't immune to the reality of what could happen to them. The rest of them, first years who had only been doing this for a charitable five months, lacked that.

Fox could see none of them were afraid for a fight, but the fear of failure laid heavy on most of them, whether they would put it into words or not. Notably, he found that the ones comprising JNPR seemed the most worried over it, followed closely by the heiress. From the last two, the two Faunus in their group, he read something different. The cat was nervous, but for something different. Fox could not tell what. The monkey on the other hand, seemed more nervous for the cat than he did the situation itself. Fox wasn't sure if that was any better. If he wasn't taking what was happening seriously, things could backfire, quickly.

Then there was sunshine. The pun-making brawler who seemed to glow like the sun.

Except tonight, or at all for that day, she hadn't been glowing. The light of her Aura had been muted, her thoughts elsewhere. Even then, as they climbed the hill, her focus was far away from them and that place. Somewhere dark and angry, yet sad and clouded over.

As they ran up the road, another explosion erupted a small distance away. There were better times and places to pry into others' business, and Fox wasn't a fan of it in any case. Whatever she was thinking, Fox was happy he couldn't read it.

She probably wished she couldn't either.

…

Outside of the ruins, I could hear the artillery shells continuing to fall. They were growing more sporadic, same for the gunfire. Some of it I could keep in time with the odd amber flash that illuminated the other side of the hologram, casting brief shadows over the guard-woman's face. She blinked as she tried to process what exactly she was looking at, dog ears twitching on her head.

A moment later she said: "… Holy shit."

"Save it for later," I said, not even bothering to do the voice. "You need to listen to me, things aren't what they seem and they're about to get worse-"

"Hey- Carl!" The woman said, turning to look off the camera, the display flickering as the link struggled to stay open. "I've got Crazy Steve on the checkpoint camera, stop firing and come check this out!"

'Oh for the love of-'

More gunfire stopped echoing through the hologram. A rather muscular man with a bandana over most of his face peaked his head into frame. Briefly. "Cool!" He then ducked back out of view and resumed firing.

"Tonight's just full of surprises," the woman, Tseren, if I could read her name tag right, continued. I might not have been, because that was an odd combination of consonants. "First a prison raid and now a visit from a different wanted criminal."

"Are you the one in charge up there?" I asked again. "If you are I need you to listen, the White Fang aren't just trying to get in from out here-"

"Gonna cut you off there, Steve-" she continued, before cutting herself off with another bout of gunfire. "-But of all the places you should be tonight, cutting into our comms isn't one of them. In case you can't tell, we've got our hands full right now. Yes, this portion of the garrison is under my watch, and in case you didn't notice, we're taking fire from all sides. If you don't mind, I'm waiting for reinforcements to come and beat these guys back. Otherwise we've got it handled here."

"Reinforcements from where?" I asked. "If you mean from out here-"

"They're going to be a while, they're always slow to respond," Tseren cut me off again. "No, I've got guys from inside the prison I'm waiting to hear back from. We know this was coordinated, a riot broke out maybe a half hour before they made a go for the walls. Not the first time people have tried to stage a jailbreak-" There was a pause as more gunfire belted through the hologram "-But I'll say that this is a pretty determined attempt at it."

"It's not a jailbreak," I told her. "When did you last have contact with your guys inside?"

"I don't know, forty minutes ago?" Tseren answered. "Like I said, just before they tried to reach the walls."

My nerves did a dance. That meant she hadn't had contact with them for the entire time it took us to get here. "Call them, now."

"Look, Crazy-" Tseren tried to say.

"This whole thing is coordinated," I pressed. "They've been planning it for I don't know how long, and it's not a prison break. They're trying to raid the arsenal someone thought would be a good idea to shove in there!"

Tseren didn't respond to that for a moment. But I could tell, by the movement in her eyes, in the way the dim light shifted in them, the gears were turning. She was catching up to what the rest of us had already cottoned on to.

"… I'm going to break comms for a moment," Tseren said, the connection growing fuzzy and buzzing with static "Stay there, I'll call ba-"

Then there was a pop from the machine, and a little stream of smoke. Our connection cut out, as acrid smoke began to rise from the machine. The temporary repairs had proven to be temporary indeed.

I swore, and tried to fan the smoke out of the way, enough I could see what was left of the machine. Superficially it looked fine, but that honestly meant nothing. If the circuits and connecting computer bits were fried, it didn't matter how the rest of it looked. Try as I might, and I did try, I couldn't see any way to fix it either. None of those little flashes appeared as I tried to disassemble the machine again. Whether that was because I didn't know how to use it, or the machine was completely scrapped now, I didn't know. But in either case it meant the same thing, we'd just lost the brief connection we'd had inside. Given the artillery was still raining, there wasn't much of a chance we were going to make it to the walls.

"What do you make of it Penny?" I asked, looking at the young girl beside me, made easy by the cramped space.

Penny looked at the machine for a moment, her eyes rapidly focusing and unfocusing, studying it in a way I couldn't match. Her lips pursed and her brow furrowed as she did. Studying the machine so intensely, she was unconsciously physically exerting the effort to do so. Her tongue even started to poke out the side of her mouth before she finally spoke.

"… I don't think there's anything we can do to fix it," she said at last. "Many of the parts were already nearly destroyed to begin with, we'd need to replace them. Papa would've been impressed we had it work for as long as we did."

I swore, again.

"Please watch your language," Penny chided.

I grunted and looked at the device as I pulled out my Scroll. I looked back and forth between the two items for a moment, before forming an idea that might work. Firstly though, I sent a message.

(You): [If you're not already on your way here, get moving. Things aren't looking good inside.]

There was a short pause before someone responded.

(Nora): [We r, ya butt :D]

I had no idea what a colon D was supposed to mean, but at least they were getting closer. My Scroll collapsed on itself and I passed it to Penny. "All these things have to relay through the CCT in some fashion right? Or at least use comparable architecture and components?"

Penny looked briefly at my Scroll before taking it. "Not everything relays through the CCT, but most of them do use the same programming language to help function, same for the pieces."

"Then we might have a chance yet," I said, motioning to the busted machine. "See if you can't pull the routing and network information from that and give us a direct line inside. If there's a firewall or encryption we need to get past, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it, but we need to know what's going on inside."

Penny nodded and began to examine the machine again, messing with my Scroll as she did so. About the point that she began to move her swords towards the machine's carcass, I left. She'd have a more intimate understanding of what she was doing than I did. If I stuck around and asked questions she could probably teach me a thing or two, bridge the gaps in my knowledge regarding how computers worked here. But this wasn't the time, we needed to get inside, and my questions would only slow us down. I could pick her brain another time. Or whatever it was that constituted her brain… A computer chip?... Did she have a platinum chip in her head?

As that thought wormed around inside my head, I stepped out from the rubble and back into No Man's Land. The duffle bag on my shoulder snagged onto a bit of rebar as I went, and I tangled with it for a minute to get unstuck. The sounds of gunfire and artillery still filled the air, the occasional flash of light from mortar shells illuminating the inky void of the night sky. None of them seemed to be reaching beyond the stone wall that demarcated and stretched between the checkpoints. They got close, and I was certain they could go all the way into Vale if they wanted to. Artillery can measure distance in miles, not meters. If they wanted to, they should've been able to blow the White Fang off the map already. Internal riots or not, they should've been a lot more accurate than they were. It didn't bode well for whatever was really going on inside.

I came out to find Ruby standing not too far away from the checkpoint, looking out at all the fighting that was happening from the checkpoint line. None of the White Fang were paying us any mind yet. Their focus seemed to be dead set on the walls of the prison. Sporadic fire was still being returned. I got the sense they'd be readying for another go at the walls soon.

Ruby turned to look at me as I approached, my APW hanging low in her hands. "What'd we find out?"

"They've got a riot going on inside," I said. "The people on the wall don't seem to have much of a clue what's actually going on. The comms down here are fried, and Penny's trying to patch them now."

"… How bad do you think it's going to be?" Ruby asked.

"How bad will what be?" I asked.

"Inside," Ruby answered. "If this has been going on this whole time…"

"It's not going to be pretty," I told her. "The fact that the guards haven't received support from inside doesn't bode well either."

Ruby nodded but didn't respond.

"… So was that grenade intentional or-"

"I didn't know the safety was off!" Ruby snapped, face flushing.

I chuckled, shifting the duffle bag on my shoulder as the two of us waited, observing the battlefield around us. Peering down the road, I could see the rest of our group was trying to quickly make their way up to us. It would take them a few minutes, even rushing. In the time we waited, the White Fang didn't make their move. They were waiting, and I was trying to see what for. But there wasn't any noticeable change I could see. Between the machine gun fire coming from the top of the wall and the sporadic shelling, things seemed in-hand. But I knew enough to know something was coming now, and unless we knew what, charging the field was suicide. I could still recall the No Man's Land between Forlorn Hope and Nelson. I was sure there were even some White Fang laying out in the field to help with the recreation.

The others arrived as a brief pause in the shelling began. They moved with surprising speed, despite the footwear some of them chose. Running in heels has always struck me as a recipe for a busted ankle. Yet somehow Coco, Weiss, Blake, and Pyrrha still managed. On uneven terrain no less. Even having been here for a few months, how they did that still confused me. Was it an Aura thing, or practice?... But why would you practice in heels?-

The twelve of them drew up on me and Ruby as we stood there.

"That was your plan?" Weiss asked, fuming. "Throw a car at them and blow it up?"

"It was step one, and it worked didn't it?" I countered. "No White Fang bothering us right now."

"Then why are we still down here?" Weiss asked. "What part of that plan was supposed to get us the rest of the way to the prison?"

"The part where we hope there was a communications link between the checkpoint here, and the wall there," I answered, motioning between the ruins of the checkpoint and the prison. "And there was, but the thing was busted."

"Before or after you threw a car at it?" Blake asked sardonically.

"… It was a van." I countered, which earned me a laugh from exactly Nora and no one else. "Besides, I'm sure they had a blast anyway."

My lame attempt at humor didn't receive a response either. Maybe it was the fact that people might be dead that killed it. But I'd been expecting Yang to at least say something. She hadn't. She hadn't for much of that night either, and it was actually a little concerning.

"Ok, well what happens now?" Jaune asked. "We've come this far, what do we do, just charge ahead and hope for the best?"

"Penny's working on trying to get the comms fixed now," I said. "She's got a good understanding of the tech, and is trying to rig something. From the little I got out of the people inside, the White Fang is keeping to the plan we thought they were. The guys they had inside staged a riot-turned-jailbreak, and are keeping the guys on the wall from getting reinforcements."

"Looks like they've been holding despite that," Ren said.

"They can't keep it up forever, especially if the White Fang has more in store than just running at the wall," I told him.

"If they don't answer us, we're going to need to try and make a run for the wall ourselves," Ruby said. "It'll be dangerous, but we can't do anything from out here."

I grunted, looking out at No Man's Land. "I hate to agree with you, but I do. If we can't get a clear lane open, then we're going to need to take the chance anyway. But I've dodged artillery fire before, and it's no fun even being near ground zero of a shell."

"Somehow I'm not surprised someone threw artillery at you," Ren said

"I am!" Sun chimed in. "Dude, the more time I spend around you the more I wonder what the hell you used to do before coming here."

Stolen story; please report.

"Everything from Courier work to mercenary bee-ess," I told him. "But Ruby's right in that we can't stay here."

"… I have an idea!" Ruby suddenly said, rushing over to the ruins. Shrugging, I turned and followed her.

As we drew close to the ruins, instead of actually entering the ruins themselves, she circled around it, stopping when she reached the stonewall connected to it. I did well to follow her as she went. Though I did stop for a moment, when I noticed an arm poking out from the rubble that Ruby failed to notice. A quick prodding with my boot hid it back out of sight, and I joined her at the wall. Everyone else followed close behind.

"Artillery aims using maps, right?" Ruby asked. "They need coordinates to concentrate fire on."

"That's the basic idea, yeah," I told her. "You only use artillery for direct fire if the enemy is right in front of you."

"But the artillery here isn't, it's inside the prison," Ruby explained, pointing to the wall. "Meaning they have to be aiming off of whatever coordinates they have."

"Again, yes, that's normal," I told her.

Ruby turned and began grinning at me. "How do they know where the White Fang are, if communications are down?"

"…" I got what she was saying, and looked back out at the field ahead of us. "It's not targeted fire, they're firing at fixed locations… Yeah, I can see it now."

My eyes scanned over the field and I could see what Ruby was saying rolled out before me. There were large swatches of the field that had been destroyed by the artillery, the ground pitted, pocked, and looking about as holey as a coal mine. But it was organized, grid like. I could see large stretches of the ground that had been clearly missed by the shelling. It's like how it'd been with the Boomer's artillery line outside Nellis. Short of having a large target to hit, they could only get so close, and had to resort to shelling a set pattern. There was no reason they couldn't have shelled those houses beyond the fact that they couldn't quite get the coordinates right.

Though I always preferred the train tunnels not far from Raul's shack. The Boomers always thought they were sealed well enough to not need coverage. Avoid the explosions altogether, especially after my first attempt at them nearly took my legs off.

"So we're going to try and run up the hill while having everything explode around us," Coco said, miffed. "Well, that's going to ruin my outfit."

"You've got bigger things to worry about right now than getting your clothes dirty," Sun said. "That's why you wash them."

"You can't just 'wash' cashmere," Coco answered curtly. "You need it dry cleaned. Do you want to foot the bill?"

"No thanks, I already have him chasing me over it," Sun answered.

"You're gonna have more to worry about than just cleaning up if we don't move," I said, trying to get them to focus. My hand motioned up to the field, between the various holes dug by the explosions and gunfire. "If we keep to the patches of ground that are still intact, we can avoid the worst of the damage. It won't be perfect, but we'll be safer in those spaces than outside them. We're likely to catch bits of the back blast anyway, so watch where you step. As soon as Penny's finished with the comms, we'll make a break for it. Sounds good?"

Ruby nodded. "I think we can make it work," She turned to everyone else. "Questions?"

"Um, yeah?" Jaune asked "How do we not explode?"

"Does anyone else hear that?" Velvet asked, looking around curiously.

Our group paused and listened to our surroundings briefly. I didn't hear anything–

…

I didn't hear anything.

"Where's the explosions?" Nora asked, looking around. "… Come to think of it, why's everyone stopped shooting?"

"That's not what I was talking about," Velvet said, her ears twitching about. "…But that is a good point."

"What do you hear?" Ruby asked.

"I hear it too," Blake said, looking behind us, back towards Vale, brow furrowing. "… It sounds like a Bullhead."

As she said the words, I could begin to hear it myself. The high-whine of a turbine running at max throttle as the surrounding air struggled to get out of the way. Despite the low light vision built into my helmet, I could only make out so many shapes in the night sky. But I could see something, approaching from the skyline behind us. A dense, shadowy shape, wings stretching out from either side of it.

It buzzed the air as it blew past us overhead, approaching the prison at a banked angle. It flew unopposed over No Man's Land on an approach to the prison. Only when it was already halfway there, did the gunfire resume, coming directly off the walls. I could see bullets colliding with and peppering the hull of the craft as it flew unimpeded over the high walls of the prison. It slowed somewhere beyond them and began to descend.

"I don't think they're with us," Yatsu growled.

Almost immediately following this, a roar rose up among the stone wall, running down the line. In the darkness I could see a flurry of motion as people began to course forward.

The artillery fire hadn't resumed.

"Si-Steve!" Penny shouted.

I turned and saw Penny hurrying out of the ruins, Scroll outstretched. She came to a stop and I grabbed the device out of her hands. Someone she'd managed to establish a connection into the prison, and Tseren had a feed over the device. Audio only, but better than nothing.

"Are you there?" a voice called, sounded like the female guard again, Tseren. "Talk to me, are you still out there?"

"We're here, what the fuck's happening up there?" I asked. "Was that Bullhead with you?"

"No- Shit!" A sudden belt of gunfire roared through the speaker. "It's not with us, I can't reach anyone inside. Communications are down, I don't know what's happening in there!"

"They took your artillery down," I said, feeling that pit reopen in my stomach. "They just brought their own reinforcements in."

I heard vehicles begin to roar from all around us. The White Fang were about to storm the wall en masse. They'd been planning for this part to work.

There was a pause in the air for the moment, before Tseren spoke. "… Steve, I'm suddenly feeling inclined to ask you for help. Where are you now?"

"Ruins of the checkpoint on the… southeast facing road. Northwest on your end," I answered, double checking my map and compass. "We're about to start running."

"…Ok, one sec-" Tseren pulled away from the link again and started shouting orders, directing people on the wall where they needed to keep their fire. After a moment she came back. "I can't promise you safe passage, but if you keep to the road, I'll try to have my people not light you up."

I nodded, readjusting my duffle bag as I looked at everyone. "Best we can ask for. We'll be there soon, just hold the line," I snapped my Scroll closed and looked at Ruby, motioning for her to pass my APW back. "Change in plans, artillery's down, everyone start running. Now!" My eyes scanned over No Man's Land one final time. I could see the vehicles the White Fang were using in the distance, racing towards the wall ahead of us.

"We just-" Coco began to say.

Then VATS opened, and I calculated my angles, adjusting for movement speed.

VATS closed and I breathed out.

"-got here!" Coco finished.

Then I double tapped the trigger and launched a pair of grenades at one of the vehicles, off to the west of us. With the extended barrel, they flew further and faster than they otherwise should have, but they hit their mark, the first exploding just in front of the vehicle.

The second punched through the side of it, then exploded, causing fire and smoke to blow out the windows and windshield. The vehicle guttered to a stop not long after, one of more than maybe two dozen that we could see. I rushed out from behind cover, targeted another distant vehicle, and repeated the action, this time not having the luck to disembowel the vehicle, but blowing it onto its side. I then moved about another half-dozen paces before realizing I was the only one moving forward.

I turned back to see everyone waiting, having somehow either missed or ignored my words.

"… What're you waiting for!?" I asked "You wanna live forever or something? Let's go!"

"… Not forever-" Coco answered, being the first to move. "But longer than this!"

Everyone took that as their cue and began to surge forward after her. Aura enhanced strides launching them faster than should've been humanly possible. What I considered humanly possible. They'd all caught up to me, and even began to surpass me in the span it took me to blink.

I turned and ran with them, even as some of them began to surge further ahead using their Semblances, their tools and their own techniques for traveling faster in a pinch. Such as Ruby and her petal cloud, or Nora blowing herself up and riding the shockwave on her hammer. They coursed ahead of everyone, followed immediately by Yang and her shotgun-gauntlets, then Ren and Fox, the latter of whom knew enough of Aura to be more efficient with it. The rest of us fell into a quagmire, not really racing to get there, but Penny and I fell into the rearguard. Not sure why Penny chose to, but I did it to be on the lookout, in case we suddenly got more attention than we'd been counting on. Which was likely to happen, as I sent another grenade at a vehicle racing towards the wall. Then another at a group of Fang that were moving on foot.

That second one is probably what drew the fire from the rest of them after the fact.

A couple moments after I took my shot, there was a small outcry from some of the Fang off to our right. It was followed by poorly aimed gunfire that managed to whiff all of us. Moving targets proved harder for all of them to hit.

Just as easily, I twisted and returned fire to them. Needing to be less accurate meant I hit my mark. The blast caught and scattered them for a moment, but it was going to take more than a moment to matter. The prison was still about a half-mile uphill. Between us and it: pitted ground, enemy fire, and a high chance for vehicular manslaughter. It all depended on how much of it chose to find its way to us, or what we went looking for.

Outside of the odd shell I'd send elsewhere, the Fang did seem more intent to focus on climbing the hill themselves. Probably because they had to handle more suppressive fire than we did. Tseren, it seemed, was trying to keep to her word and kept the road open. There was an odd bit of spray that flew our way, but they were outliers, and generally missed us. I saw maybe one bullet clip Yatsu as we ran, but he managed to shrug it off. Depending on how you wanted to look at it, that explained a lot about the situation.

Noticing that we weren't taking fire, small groups of the Fang would try to join us. When I didn't shell them, someone else in the group knew enough to stop them from getting close. I counted at least one time Nora launched a grenade at someone, another where they got close enough for the others to briefly engage them in melee. I tried to not let them get that close, but we didn't have to try and focus on getting to the wall. Plus my APW only held so many grenades, and the number I had were not as easily replaced as my bullets.

Though the prospect of replacing them with some Dust variant was tempting.

But overall, everyone did a good job of not letting the White Fang slow them down, as we climbed the hill. It might have been a different story if the White Fang had decided to concentrate on us. We'd probably have gotten bogged down and stuck there while things continued to fall apart in the prison. Depending on how the rest of tonight went, that might have been to their detriment, or ours.

As it was, we had to step into a fight when we got up the hill anyway.

The majority of the White Fang hadn't noticed us, and instead focused on the prison walls. As we approached, I could see the gates that were supposed to let people through. Massive structures that likely would've been wood at one point, now massive slabs of riveted steel. Many of the White Fang seemed to be focused on it, vehicles parked around it in a semicircle, sparks flying up into the air. That close to the wall, the wall gunners couldn't get a good angle on them. I could tell by the fact they weren't all lying dead in a heap. Anybody who wasn't at the door was spread out along the wall, carrying extension ladders, clearly scrambling to make whatever way into and beyond the wall they could.

I wasn't familiar with watching people trying to siege a castle, it didn't happen in the Wasteland. But the rare occasion Raiders tried to get past the walls into freeside and Vegas, they'd try the same. Go for the main gate or walls. Most would die at the gate even if they managed to get through, they were easy enough to defend. The walls were a bit more trouble due to needing vantage points to actually make the shots, though most Raiders that chose to climb them would die anyway, since there was nothing but fifty feet of air to the concrete below.

Seeing what was going on at the gate ahead of us, I angled my APW high and mortared a grenade. It flew over my friends' head and landed right in the middle of the knot of people around the gate. Construction equipment and Fang went flying, clearly having been trying to carve their way through the door. It was followed by Nora sending a more direct grenade at them, spinning off of her hammer. She, Ruby, and Yang reached the knot of them ahead of the rest of us. Yang punched one of them hard enough to shunt one of the vehicles aside when they slammed into it.

Lucky bastard got off light, I knew she could hit harder.

As Ruby swept into the knot, swinging and hooking a pair of the Fang, the rest of the group began to dissolve. Ren, Yatsu, Fox, Blake, and Sun ran into the fray. Coco, Weiss, Velvet, Jaune, and Pyrrha stayed back, scanning our surroundings as Penny and I caught up. We could've all very easily thrown ourselves into the fight and finished it. But that wasn't what we needed to focus on, not when we had dozens of other Fang waiting in the wings to replace them.

"What's the play kid?" Coco asked, gripping her handbag.

"Dunno, didn't think we'd get this far," I said, trying to think. "I'm still stuck at getting to the wall… We need to get inside, so that means up and over or through the gate. Gate's not opening any time soon."

"I think they need us up on the wall too." Jaune said, motioning towards one of the groups of Fang. They'd managed to extend their ladder and were quickly scaling it. Some had already disappeared over the lip.

I swung my APW towards the ladder, then thought better of it. As my weapon lowered, I looked at Jaune. "Do you and Pyrrha think you can handle being up there alone?"

Jaune looked at me for a moment, before scanning up and down the wall. Pyrrha mirrored him, looking up to the top of the wall. I remember hearing a scream, then something hitting the ground behind me. Judging by the look on Pyrrha's face it hadn't been a clean landing. I could only hope it was a Fang. "… We can try," Jaune answered.

"Good, go, we'll figure things out down here," I said, the two of them breaking into a dead sprint for the distant ladder as the White Fang began to take notice of them. Jaune led the way, shield raised as Pyrrha fired her rifle from over his shoulder.

"You actually have a plan for them, kid?" Coco asked.

"Fuck no, I've been making this up since we left the safehouse," I told her, trying to figure out what next angle to take as I reloaded my APW.

"How inspiring," Weiss droned, raising her sword and casually knocking down a tower of Fang elsewhere to our left.

"We all need to get off the ground and out of the open," I said, mortaring a grenade at another group of Fang. "That's step one-"

I was interrupted by a howling war cry as a dozen White Fang began to charge at us. They seemed to realize I was the one throwing grenades at people and charged us with weapons drawn. Rifles, swords, axes, and even a light-machine gun. My APW swiveled towards them and I prepared to fire.

Then Coco's handbag made a whirring sound, and it began to rapidly expand and extend in size. Motors and tubes lowered from it, a metal housing attached to them. The bag's sides and lid formed a small cover at the front, and over the housing, a sextet of gun barrels poking out. A massive drum dropped out beneath the housing, curving from one side to the other, the whole thing painted in a brassy-golden yellow.

Coco pointed the minigun at the White Fang, who had suddenly tried to reverse course, and fired. A short, loud, and heavy volume burst of fire leapt from the muzzles of the weapon dropping the White Fang almost instantly. She'd merely waved the gun in their direction for half a second and dropped them.

Coco looked at us and smirked.

I stared down at the weapon, dumbfounded.

"… fucking how?" I asked.

"Planning," Coco smirked.

"You fit a minigun into a handbag, that is not planning," I said, trying not to get dragged off course.

"Worry about it later," Weiss interjected. "How are we getting inside? Everyone else is still at the gate."

I took Weiss's encouragement and focused on the task at hand. We needed to get inside before we started getting swarmed completely. Time wasn't on our side. I could see Jaune and Pyrrha already making their way up the ladder. The group at the gate were starting to beat everyone back. There really weren't any options. We couldn't force them to open the gate for us, that would defeat the whole point of this, which meant we needed to climb the wall as well.

"We'll have to climb," I said. "Let's try to barricade the gate so they can't keep trying to get through it, then we need to move up."

"Better," Weiss said, nodding, looking at the carnage. "We can use their vehicles, I should be able to use my Semblance to move-"

"Incoming!" Velvet and Penny shouted at the same time.

The three of us spun back to look in time to see the truck bearing down on all three of us. In all the chaos, I hadn't seen it tearing up the road behind us.

Coco and Velvet leapt to the side as I grabbed Weiss and did the same. She protested my doing it, and probably could've done it herself, but reflex had me do it first. I'd been hit by a truck, and wasn't inclined to repeat the experience. Penny, meanwhile, had also been hit by a truck and came out no-worse for wear, so I wasn't as worried for her. As it was she easily leapt out of the way as well. The truck roared through the empty space we'd occupied and cut into a sharp turn, skidding to a stop. Broadside to us now, I could see there were at least two guys in the bed of the truck aside from the driver, a heavy machine gun set on a pintle mount. Which technically made the truck a technical. A technical technical.

The gunners began to swivel the weapon around to us.

Right as a glyph appeared underneath the truck, glowing white, before transitioning into a darker shade.

The truck then shot into the air like it'd been catapulted, flying back towards the gate of the prison. Weiss repeated Penny's warning into her Scroll, and our friends suddenly scrambled out of the fray. The truck landed in the tangle of other vehicles, its occupant flying off as it tumbled through the air. With a thunderous crash, the truck wedged itself against the gate, barring it.

"… I didn't know you could do that," I said beside Weiss.

"Neither did I, that was a guess," Weiss answered. "… Are you going to let go of me now?"

I realized I was still holding onto her, and promptly released her. We got to our feet and began to move. The gate issue unexpectedly resolved, our next course of action was simple enough. Holding my APW in my off hand, I fished my Scroll out and opened the voice chat with everyone.

"Gate's blocked, everyone start climbing, we need to get up top," I barked.

"We're already up here!" Jaune shot back. "Help would be nice!"

I then heard another scream and looked up. Which rewarded me with the sight of Jaune bashing a Fang over the edge of the wall with his shield. The Fang fell and we all began scrambling to find our own ways up the wall. Well, I say we, but it was really only some of us. Ruby, Nora, Yang, Weiss, Blake, and Sun had no problem suddenly fielding their Semblances to climb the wall, or otherwise fly up it. Even Yatsu and Fox managed to find their own ways up, springing and climbing off what little handholds they could find, or using the hooked point of their sword to help make them, in Yatsu's case. I noted that Ren also received some help from Nora, which wasn't unexpected.

Then Coco and Velvet ran for the wall, and took a separate ladder up. Mundane, even with the massive gun dangling at Coco's waist.

Which left me and Penny waiting down there. We looked at each other, and she gave me a small smile.

"…Be gentle," I said.

"Ok!" She said, latching onto me.

She then drew her swords and arrayed them about us again. They glowed, hummed, and then we rocketed into the air. This time, at least, I'd been prepared for it, and didn't panic as much when we entered the air, though the momentary feeling of weightlessness as we sailed forward was still unsettling. But we managed to clear the distance, and came down on top of the wall. As we did, we dove into a pair of White Fang and slammed them into the ground. A brief look back confirmed, yes, we were now on top of the wall and had done it in a single bound.

It was a lot higher up than it looked from the bottom.

"Ok, we're up here!" Ruby said over my Scroll. "What now?"

"Everyone regroup, we need to try and-"

Once more I was interrupted. This time by an explosion.

The space beyond the wall opened into a courtyard area, dotted by stone buildings and roads, all leading up to the much larger structure beyond. A smaller distance than the road we'd had to take to get here, but sprawling. I could see the fencing that made up the various yards of the prison. I guessed the buildings were either administrative or maintenance structures. At the farside behind all of them was the prison, and a large stretch of land that swept around to one side and behind it. There was another structure in that distant portion of the prison, but I couldn't see it at the time.

From behind the prison itself, a red fireball rose, lighting up the sky. I hoped whatever had caused it wasn't important.

"Fuck's sake- Regroup!" I barked. "Penny and I are on the wall over the gate."

A hand slapped onto the wall beside Penny and me. We watched as a White Fang began to climb over, making it halfway before he noticed either of us.

I stuck the barrel of my APW against his chest and pulled the trigger. The grenade wouldn't detonate at that close a distance, but the force blew him back off the wall and into the air. Another victim for gravity this evening.

'One more interruption I swear-'

"We're moving, be there in a second," Coco answered, something I hoped everyone else would copy. They couldn't have gone far in the short time it took each of us to get on the wall.

As everyone began to gather, I reached out to Tseren over my Scroll. Whatever Penny had done, it'd kept me keyed into the prison's frequency for the time being. "Tseren, you still there?"

There was a pause, before a voice came over. "We're here still, did you make it to the wall?"

"We did, we're standing over the northwest gate trying to keep the White Fang back," I answered, as everyone finished gathering. Sun let out a whistle, looking over the prison. "You see that explosion before, that you guys?" I asked Tseren.

"No, there's nothing back at that part of the prison but a checkpoint for the arsenal," Tseren answered. "That Bullhead earlier landed on the roof. They must be making their way back to it."

We hadn't seen the Bullhead leave either, which meant it was still there, waiting in case they needed to pull back.

"Where are you now?" Ruby asked, stepping up to my Scroll. "This is Red Hood, we'll come meet you."

"We moved to the eastern gate, they're hitting hard over here," Tseren answered. "We're hitting them with everything we've got, but they came prepared."

"Ok, then we'll hit back," Ruby answered. "Give us a few minutes, we'll be there!"

"There's no time!" Tseren called. "If they're already that deep into the prison, what we're doing here is only delaying them. If you want to help, you need to find out what happened to the guys in the comms room. If we don't get actual support soon it won't matter who's here. We can hold- Carl look out- AGH!"

There was pop in the connection and a skittering noise as gunfire continued to echo over the connection. More shouting followed, but none of it was clear enough to make out.

I closed the connection and looked at everyone. "You heard her, whatever's going on inside, we're needed more in there than we are out here. If outgoing communications are down, it's only going to make it even less likely people are going to get here in time. We need to keep moving."

"But what about them? They need help too!" Ruby said.

"They'll have to hold their own," I said. "We don't have time to help them and stop the White Fang. That's what they're hoping for."

"Definitely didn't sound like they were holding their own," Nora piped up, looking westward.

"All the more reason we need to move," I said, motioning towards the prison. "This isn't a time for debate."

I didn't like the idea of leaving them hanging either. I'd heard the sounds of losing battle before, and they were never pretty. The guards weren't there yet, but they would be soon if they weren't given reinforcement. But time wasn't on our side either. We were already late to the part, any time we lost here wasn't going to be made up.

But we didn't have much choice. At least, ones I wasn't willing to make, not then.

"You're right, it's not," Coco said, moving along the wall, peering off in the same direction as Nora. "West is this way, right?"

Nora nodded next to her. I wasn't sure how Nora knew that, but really all they needed to do was follow the wall anyway.

Coco turned back towards us. "We'll split up here. You kids move toward the prison, we'll handle the gate and catch up later."

There was the choice I hadn't wanted to make.

"Splitting up doesn't end well," I said. "We split now, it's only going to keep happening."

"Then make sure it only happens when it needs to," Coco said, before looking at Ruby. "You think you can handle this Tiny?"

"I'm not Tiny!" Ruby protested, before nodding. "But heck yeah we can." She then looked at me. "I don't like it either, Six, but we can't leave them behind. I know you know that."

"… Dammit." I turned back towards Coco as her teammates began to gather around her. They watched me as I quickly strode up to them, APW in front of me. I came to a halt in front of Velvet, giving her a quick once over. "I notice you're the only one here without a weapon."

"I-I've got one," she protested. "And I want to use it- It's just a bit- um-"

I held up a hand, interrupting her. Which was then followed by raising my APW up so she could see what I was doing. "Pay attention," I told her, and began operating the weapon. My hand ghosted over the mag release and popped the drum out of the weapon. My hand then swept back up to the bolt and racked it back, cycling out the grenade currently in the chamber. Which I caught, slipped back into the drum, and then worked back into the receiver. I then cycled the action, reloading it, and fingered the safety on and off, just to make sure she knew where it was.

Then I looked back at her. "You get all that?"

Velvet blinked, once, then looked at the weapon, then me, and then nodded.

"Good, you struck me as a Swift Learner," I told her. I then handed the APW off to her. She took the weapon, completely surprised, as I began to remove the ammo drums from my duffle bag. "The grenades won't go off at close range, they've got a centrifugal fuse that doesn't prime the grenade until it's had enough time in the air. It's a short distance between the two, but you won't need to worry about blowing yourself up if you accidentally shoot it into the ground.

Velvet looked down at the weapon I handed her and began to examine it, flipping it over in her hands. It definitely seemed like it was a bit heavy for her, but she was maneuvering it easy enough. In fact, she was handling it with a level of finesse that was quite surprising for a ten-second manual of arms. "… Cool."

"I've got about thirty eight rounds total here, so be smart with it," I told her. "The ones with the red paint are High Explosive, be careful, those ones are even more finicky."

"Understood," Velvet nodded, looking at me curiously. "How am I going to carry them?"

"You can bring the bag with you," I said, fishing around in it. "I just need to pull something out of it, the APW wouldn't do much good indoors anyway."

My hand clasped onto the weapon I was looking for and I took it out, setting it down. The wood stock and foregrip were weathered to the point the finish was almost completely scratched off. The stock was further damaged by some markings the previous owner had put into it. But they were marks and dings I wasn't inclined to remove out of respect for said owner. I did everything I could to keep the weapon, an AR pattern service rifle, in working order, even if that meant the foregrip was held together with hose clamps and I couldn't replace the damaged front sight.

I set the weapon down and fished out the magazines for it, arranging them on myself before passing the bag off. As I picked up and loaded the rifle, I noted the way Velvet eyed it.

"That's an old looking rifle," She said, slinging the bag over her shoulder. "Does it work?"

"Like a well-oiled machine," I told her, handling a magazine. "Same goes for the weapon in your hands, take care of it, yeah?"

Velvet nodded, then spun around and moved up with her teammates. Coco was smirking at her oddly, but then nodded towards us. "We'll be after you as soon as we can, save some for us."

"We'll see!" Ruby called.

They waved us off and took off running down the wall. A part of me hoped they were ready for whatever danger lay ahead. The other parts knew there was no sense in hoping, they were clearly better prepared for this sort of thing than my friends were. They'd done this enough to know the kind of trouble that came with it.

I turned back toward everyone, checking my gear again. Axe still on my back, lever-action slapping against my thigh, and rifle in my hands. As I did, we began to group up, moving towards the nearest flight of stairs down to ground level.

"You really traded a grenade launcher for that?" Sun asked, eyeing my rifle suspiciously.

"It's got a rich history of defending wayward souls and lost children," I said, chuckling at the irony. "If there were ever a night I was gonna need it…"

Nora blew me a raspberry as we began to pick up the pace. Though I could see Ruby still peeking at the rifle out of the corner of her eye. Girl had an eye for when something was up.

"It's also chambered in a cartridge about as powerful as Ruby's rifle," I said, smirking.

"… Oh." Sun nodded, choosing to let that lie.

I could tell it got Ruby's Bighorner though. If we weren't trying to rush off into danger, she'd probably have asked a million questions or something. As it was, we already had enough on our plate.

We tramped down a set of lightly enclosed stairs. Steel ones ringed by an industrial grade metal cage. It ran all the way from the top of the wall to the ground. Seemed more like something you'd find at a construction site than a prison. But with how old the place was, the occasional bit of construction was probably necessary. On the ground, everything was lit up as bright as mid-day. If there'd been an alarm going, someone had killed it. The courtyard was abandoned, vehicles and equipment mid-use. Like the people operating them had suddenly evaporated. Up ahead, towards the yards, I could make out people, some in orange jumpsuits, some in guard uniforms. The riots Tseren had mentioned.

If we were going to keep moving forward, that was as good a marker as any other.

I snapped a magazine into the receiver and pulled the charging handle back. It cycled flawlessly.

Randall Clark had taken good care of the rifle. Even when I found it, after centuries of sitting out in the elements of Zion, it was still in working order. For all his hardships, the man didn't neglect the basics.

I thumbed the safety of the Survivalist's Rifle, Clark's rifle, off and gave Ruby a nod. She returned it with a determined grin.

"Let's go."