The Great Gate

The breeze had died down, and the Atlesian Colour of the Fourth Battalion was limp; the silk square hung down its metal pole as Trixie carried it rearwards. Occasionally, if she had to shift the way she held it, or if she had to pick up speed, then the standard would flutter gently for a second, though even then, it was too dark to really see the Atlesian gear and spear upon the grey background.

The five of them — the three original members of Team TTSS, Maud, and Rarity — were all alone out here, alone in the darkness, alone falling back.

Alone in terms of humans and faunus, at least.

The beowolf bounded out of the darkness, jaws snapping, a harsh bark ripping from its throat. It lunged at Trixie as though it recognised the colours and wanted the glory of devouring them, but the grimm only succeeded in slamming into one of Rarity's barriers.

Starlight growled wordlessly as she thrust Equaliser into its side, as deep as the weapon would go, burying the blade and a foot of the shaft in the black flesh.

Rarity's diamond barrier dissolved as she stepped forward with her fencing sabre, thrusting into the beowolf's exposed throat.

The beowolf that had squirmed upon the tip of Starlight's spear fell silent, its head lolling forwards as it died.

Starlight extracted her weapon as the grimm turned to ashes.

The five of them had all stopped now. Sunburst had a fire dust crystal set in the tip of his staff, but the intended use of such a crystal in such a staff was to start fires, not give light, and the soft red glow did little to illuminate the dark around them.

And so they stood, clustered around Trixie and the limp standard she held in her hand, turned outwards, peering into the dark.

Waiting.

No second beowolf emerged, no other grimm came roaring out of the darkness.

Still, they waited.

Starlight could hear her own breathing, because everyone else was being so quiet.

Two more beowolves leapt out at them, finally announcing their presence with roars and howls. One of them died in a cone of fire from Trixie's wand, consumed by the flames. The second was tackled by Maud, who wrapped her arms around its midriff and slammed it into the ground before bashing its head in with her fists.

Again, there was silence, but as the grimm had just proved, that was no guarantee that there were no more grimm around.

"How are there grimm here?" asked Sunburst, his voice trembling. "Aren't we behind the lines?"

"They must have slipped through cracks in the lines," Starlight replied. "Gaps that opened up when the line broke."

"So … so they could be anywhere?" Sunburst asked.

"Not in huge numbers, Sunburst," Trixie told him. "There are only a few of them, don't worry. Nothing we can't handle."

Sunburst glanced at her. "What makes you so sure?"

Trixie almost smiled, despite the circumstances. "Because if the grimm had gotten behind the lines, then our troops wouldn't be continuing to retreat, but you can hear the gunfire heading this way. Listen."

Starlight listened. She could hear the guns of the Atlesian main force, rifles and cannons mingling together; they were not so close as to seem near; they were distant, remote and removed from Team TTSS for now, but getting closer at a steady, gradual pace.

Trixie was right; if the grimm had slipped a substantial force behind the Atlesian line, then the battalions wouldn't be continuing to fall steadily backwards; they'd be fighting for their lives against grimm in front and behind.

Any grimm who were behind the main line must be few in number, small groups that had slipped through the cracks, through gaps between platoons and companies.

A case in point, besides those three beowolves, no more grimm had emerged out of the night to attack them yet.

"Let's keep moving," Trixie said. "We don't want to wait around here all night."

No one demurred from her instruction; they all started forwards — or backwards, depending on how you wanted to look at it — towards the lights that were their destination.

Right now, they were moving across open countryside, the fields and farms and pastures that lay behind the Green Line. They had already stumbled into an irrigation ditch, climbed fences — there'd been a bull on the other side of one of those fences, but Rarity's semblance had kept it at bay without them having to hurt it — and crashed through hedgerows. Luckily, the sheep weren't in any danger from the grimm.

They were moving through fields now, but the lights of Vale lay in front of them, a beacon guiding them in. Those lights — hopefully lights that people had forgotten to turn off rather than a sign that people were still home — belonged to the outskirts of Vale, to the parts of the city that had sprawled out past the walls. Once they got there, they could just follow the road to the gate, then through the gate, and then…

And then they would have done their duty.

"What will we do, once we reach safety in Vale?" asked Rarity. "If you don't mind me asking, darlings?"

Nobody leapt to reply, and in Starlight's case, at least, it was because she wasn't entirely sure of the answer.

They had been ordered to carry the colour to safety; that was all well and good, but Starlight had never been ordered to carry the colours to safety before, so the exact nature of what it involved was a little unclear.

Carry them to safety; it seemed simple enough, didn't it? It was simple enough, as far as it went, until you got into the question of what was safety.

Was anywhere really safe with that enormous grimm around? It wasn't as though they could put the standard on an Atlesian cruiser and call it safe. That had been proven already.

"We shall keep hold of it," Trixie declared. "Until the night is over, or the battle is. Trixie … Trixie isn't so sure that Vale is so safe that we could just put this flag down once we get to the gate, but on the other side of the wall, it will be safer than it is here." She paused. "And it will stay safe, with us, until the danger has passed and we can return it to Colonel Harper, with our compliments." Her voice rose and recovered some of its usual ebullience.

"And we shall receive the thanks and gratitude of the Fourth Battalion for this steadfast performance of our duty! The Grrrrrreat and Powerrrrful Team Tsunami will be known and admired throughout the military!"

Starlight chuckled. "Well, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty good."

"I wish it were time for that already," Sunburst murmured. "And everything okay again, and taken care of."

"And all well," whispered Rarity. "In every sense."

A moment of silence fell amongst the group as they moved across the open, and presently empty, fields.

They hadn't seen any sign of Rainbow Dash or Blake since the grimm had broken through the line. In the chaos, and in the fact of their being given the colour to carry off, they had lost track of the pair of them. They were…

They were somewhere else on the battlefield, Starlight was sure of that.

"They'll be okay, wherever they are," she said. "Those two are as tough as a pair of old work boots. The ones with the steel toes."

"What a ghastly image to paint for reassurance," Rarity murmured. "Old steel-toed working boots, how ghastly; like something Applejack would wear." She glanced at Starlight, and smiled. "But thank you, all the same." Her gaze turned away, her eyes drawn upwards to the Amity Colosseum, that was moving away from Beacon, and from the ruined CCT tower, and over Vale.

Starlight had mixed feelings about the wisdom of that, considering that the giant grimm that had torn through their fleet and their battle line was in Vale right now, but it had been kind of exposed where it was.

And more importantly, it was still there. Ships had been lost, the Atlesian line had been overrun, the troops were retreating to the Red Line, the colours had been sent away to prevent their loss; Beacon tower had been destroyed.

But through all that, despite all that, they could look up at Amity Arena. It was still there, shining … actually, it wasn't shining so much right now; someone had turned off the lights.

But it was still there, and they could still see it.

Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie were all still there, still safe.

Though Rarity didn't know what had become of Rainbow or Blake, at least she could look up and see that her other friends were okay.

They kept on going, moving through the night, forming a guard of honour with Trixie and her standard in the centre. They were attacked along the way by a couple of other small groups of grimm — a lone ursa here, a couple of boarbatusks there, the grimm who had slipped through the cracks in the Atlesaian line as it retreated — but it was nothing that the five of them couldn't handle. Most of the horde — the hordes, plural — was or were being held off to the east, where the battalions were fighting in part to give them time to get the colours away.

Starlight wondered briefly how Team SABR was doing with the Battalion Colour.

They were a good team, even if they weren't always the most likeable team in Atlas Academy, and she had no doubt they would get the job done, just as TTSS would.

The five of them, for their part, were emerging out of the churned fields and empty pasture and entering into the furthest, unprotected parts of the city of Vale, the parts that had grown out beyond the safety of the walls that lay further on down the road. As Team TTSS retreated, they found the road running east-west towards Freedom Gate, they found that the rural emptiness shaded into suburban cosiness around them. Two-storey houses sprung up out of the ground to line the roads, with recycling bins in a rainbow of colours set outside each house, or most of them at least. Low stone walls or wooden fences marked the boundaries of each property, with bushes or flowers growing up against and over the demarcations, whilst well-manicured lawns or rockeries or even more flowers adorned front gardens. Cars, small and round and painted in a cornucopia of colours, sat parked on the roadside, constricting the space for other vehicles.

A herd of goats, big and white, with curling horns and expansive coats, frolicked through the streets with wild abandon. They leapt over the walls and fences into the gardens, or else, they balanced on the walls themselves and walked along them like circus tightrope walkers. They chewed the hedges and devoured the flowers, they climbed on cars and knocked over bins, or simply wandered here and there without restraint. Starlight even thought she saw one of them get up on its hind legs and ring someone's doorbell before running away.

"Alright for some, isn't it?" Starlight asked.

"I wonder how they got here," Sunburst said.

"They must have escaped from a farm or something," Starlight replied. "Maybe someone left the gate unlocked when they rushed to evacuate. Maybe some soldiers broke through their fence as they fell back. They must have gotten out somehow." She shook her head. "And they're not on the menu. Lucky guys have got nothing to worry about."

"Just keep them away from Trixie's cape," Trixie said. She hoisted the Atlesian Colour a little higher into the air. "And the flag, obviously. What would we tell Colonel Harper if we saved the standard from the grimm only to let it get eaten by escaped goats?"

"Maybe she'd see the funny side," suggested Maud in a deadpan voice.

"I doubt it, darling," Rarity said dryly. "Mostly because when it comes to letting a work of art be devoured by ravenous, loutish, brazen, smelly creatures, I'm afraid there really isn't a funny side to be seen."

Shooing the goats away slowed them down a little bit, but fortunately not by very much, and they were able to continue on their way without losing the colours to any caprine jaws or suffering any sartorial disasters — although the goats did seem eager to try their luck on Trixie's starry cape, much to the displeasure of their team leader.

But a colour guard that had fended off grimm was more than a match for a few curious and possibly hungry — although the havoc being wreaked on people's gardens suggested none of them were exactly starving — goats. They kept going, capes and flag and Rarity's sparkling skirt intact, and soon, they had left Vale's newest immigrants behind as they followed the road towards the gate.

And as they followed the road, the closer they got to the Valish walls, the more people that they saw, people crowding the sides of the road or filling up the streets, making it harder for TTSS to get through. They were standing around, not idly exactly, but motionlessly. There wasn't the sense of bored languor, of summer party relaxation, that would have led Starlight to call it idle; rather, there was a fearful energy in the air, a nervousness in the way that so many in the crowd twitched at the approaching gunfire, watched the skies with a furtive anxiousness like Vacuan meerkats in a nature documentary, heads turning in unison to follow the Atlesian airships streaking overhead.

There was fear in their eyes too, as they looked at Team TTSS, regarding them as the harbingers of a doom, in every sense, that had or was about to come upon them.

"Come on!" Trixie cried. Still carrying the standard, she got up onto the roof of a red sedan. "People of Vale!" she shouted. "The Green Line has fallen. Atlesisn troops are falling back this way with the grimm on their heels! You have to get to safety behind the Red Line immediately; it's not safe here! Follow us; Team Tsunami will lead the way!"

She was met with sullen silence, and a motionless crowd that did not follow, but only got thicker and thicker, harder to push through, the closer they came to the Red Line.

The Freedom Gate was the largest gate into Vale, the main gate, used by both road and rail lines, for which reason it was sometimes also known simply as the Great Gate; it was, as the name suggested, very broad, as wide as an Atlesian cruiser from bow to stern, a rectangle cut in the grey wall. The walls of Vale, though not as formidable-looking as the Colton Walls that surrounded Mantle, were tall and dark, especially now, with guns mounted atop the walls and set within, their barrels poking out of the barbettes along the ground and partway up the wall. Searchlights were mounted on top of the defences, their beams shining downwards upon the great crowd — some Valish soldiers in green, even a few Valish vehicles, and a huge number of civilians wearing t-shirts and jeans or hastily pulled on coats or even dressing gowns and slippers — who had gathered in front of the green gate.

For the gate was shut.

"Sir, it's Cadet Lulamoon," des Voeux informed him. "She says it's urgent."

"Put her on," Ironwood commanded him. "Lulamoon, do you still have the colours?"

"Yes, sir," Lulamoon answered him at once. "We've got the Atlesian Colour, anyway; Team Sabre has the Battalion Colour, they went a different direction to us. Sir, we're at the Freedom Gate, and it's shut."

"Closed?" Ironwood repeated. "Any indication on how long it's been closed for?"

"Trixie isn't sure, sir," Lulamoon admitted, in that slightly affected way she had that Ironwood forgave because she was a good enough huntress to forgive it. "But there are a lot of people stuck out here, trailing back into the suburbs. They're mostly civilians, but some Valish soldiers too. I think the gate must have been closed for a while. Trixie tried shouting up at the troops on top to open up, but they didn't respond."

"Understood," Ironwood said, his voice calm. "I'm afraid you'll have to sit tight while I sort this out."

"Aye aye, sir," Lulamoon answered.

"Ironwood out," Ironwood said. "Des Voeux, patch me through to the squadron commanders and get me Colonel Sky Beak on the line now!"

"Aye aye, sir," des Voeux replied.

Close the gate? To close the gate already? More than already, if what Lulamoon said was true — and Ironwood had no reason to doubt her word on this — then it wasn't just that the gate had been shut but that quite possibly it had never been opened. Valish soldiers? That sounded like the troops that had routed from the Green Line when the grimm assault first started, not to mention the civilians living on the wrong side of the Red Line.

Ironwood could understand closing the gate in a panic as the grimm drew near; he might quibble on the exact timing, but he couldn't say that he didn't understand it, but with the grimm still a way off, and being held back by his forces even as they retreated, why keep the gate closed for so long? As it was, it was quite possible that it couldn't be opened in time to let everyone through before it had to be closed again as the grimm really did draw near.

Was this more malice, some last trace of the Siren's influence upon the Valish Defence Forces, or was it simple incompetence resulting from the confusion of this night? Ironwood hoped that he would soon find out.

The sound of gunfire crackled over the comms and into the bridge of the Valiant.

"This is Colonel Harper reporting, sir."

"Buller here, sir."

"Pulleine here, sir."

"Something going on, sir?" Harper asked. "Is the dragon coming back?"

"The dragon is currently circling in Vale," Ironwood informed them. "It hasn't attacked Amity, and it isn't showing any sign of returning to the battlefield at this time." He didn't add that two Skybolts had already launched an attack on the dragon with anti-Titan missiles and had as little luck with them as any of the rest of their airships. No sense in bringing down the mood even further. Once they heard about the gate, things would be bad enough. "No, I'm afraid this is something else. I wanted you all to hear Colonel Sky Beak of the Valish when he joins us—"

"He's responding now, sir," des Voeux informed him.

Sky Beak cleared his throat. "General Ironwood," he said. "You wish to speak to me."

"Colonel," Ironwood said. "I have my three squadron commanders on the line: Colonel Buller, Colonel Harper, and Major Pulleine."

"A pleasure," Sky Beak murmured. "I wish it were under better circumstances."

"Colonel, one of my student teams has just reached the Freedom Gate," Ironwood told him. "They were sent to the rear with one of the standards of the Fourth Battalion. They've informed me that the gate is closed, and judging by the number of people — civilians and Valish soldiers — stranded on the far side of the gate and wall, it appears to have been closed for some time. Are you aware of this?"

"Yes, General Ironwood, I gave the order," Sky Beak said.

Of all the responses that Ironwood had considered, he had not expected Sky Beak to so simply admit not only responsibility but also direct culpability for the event. "You ordered the gate to be closed."

"Yes, General," Sky Beak said, plainly and without apology. "Councillor Emerald had ordered the evacuation of the city beyond the Red Line, but he also tasked me with the defence of Vale, and I took the view that we couldn't afford vulnerabilities in our defence, not even for a moment. I ordered every gate to be closed: Freedom Gate, Fall Gate, Southgate, Coastgate, they've all been closed at my command."

"And what about all the people stuck on the wrong side of the wall?" Harper demanded. "Your people, your troops, and you're just hanging them out to dry?"

"Don't suggest that I do this lightly," Sky Beak snapped. "But there are many more people behind the walls than in front of it; if I were to keep the gates open so as to try and let everyone through and a grimm got in … Councillor Emerald ordered me to defend the city, and to defend the city may require sacrifices. It's unfortunate, but … unavoidable."

"Your Councillor wanted them to evacuate to safety," Harper pointed out.

"Councillor Emerald is currently unable to exercise his responsibilities," Sky Beak pointed out. "I've spoken to the other members of the Council; they were all in agreement with me as to what needed to be done."

That was no great surprise to Ironwood. Take a group of frightened and confused people in the middle of the night and ask them what to do in a crisis, they would naturally defer to the judgement of the professional military man who seemed to know what he was talking about.

"You didn't mention this when we spoke last," Ironwood said.

"I'm not obliged to, General Ironwood," Sky Beak pointed out. "I don't follow your orders."

"No, but coordination could only help us to defend this city," Ironwood replied. "If I'd known your intentions, I could have had my airships start flying people over the wall. You could have done that yourself."

"I don't have the pilots," Sky Beak responded. "I told you, General, my forces are shattered. They've been through … I don't know what they've been through, I'm not sure they know what they've been through, but I have battalions in which one man in ten is fit for duty, if that; I have officers I can't reach and officers who can't find their men; I have soldiers who have routed and who will spread their own low morale if I let them through the gate amongst the defenders, and I can't call on the police for support because the police have taken heavy losses of their own — partly at the hands of the military! I can't properly man the wall, and if the grimm get through the wall, then gods help Vale because my forces won't be able to." He paused. "My only hope, the city's only hope, is to trust in the strength of the wall itself — and of the gates. We may lose everything beyond, but at least there'll be a city called Vale left at the end of it."

There was a moment of silence in the CIC, and from the squadron commanders. Nobody had it in them to condemn Sky Beak; he had been dealt a rotten hand, and if they might not have played the cards in quite the same way, there was no desire from anyone to rush to judgement. He'd been given a job to do, and he was trying to do it, to the best of his ability.

Only one thing did inspire a touch of judgement from Ironwood. "You could have told me, Colonel. You should have told me."

"I thought you'd object," Sky Beak admitted. "I didn't want you to drop a force on Freedom Gate the way you did on our headquarters."

Ironwood didn't dignify that with a response. "If I were to start using my Skyrays to airlift civilians over the wall, would you have any objection?"

"Not at all," Sky Beak said. "In fact, I'd welcome it. I don't want these people to die; I just don't want them to kill all of Vale, either."

"Hmm," Ironwood murmured. "I hope you don't mind that I won't thank you for finally being straight with me."

"Quite understandable, General," Sky Beak said.

"Goodbye, Colonel," Ironwood said, motioning with one hand for des Voeux to cut him off. Once he had done so, Ironwood took a moment before he addressed his officers. "So, there you have it. I'm afraid you're all retreating towards a wall with no way through, and our airlift capacity is likely to be taxed by trying to evacuate the civilians over the wall, meaning—"

"Meaning that we'll have to hold off the grimm until the evacuation is complete before we even have a chance of being airlifted ourselves, sir," Harper said evenly.

"That's correct, Harper," Ironwood said. "Thoughts?"

There was a pause, a quiet only broken by the sounds of gunfire over Harper and Pulleine's comms as the troops of the Fourth and Third — and the First, although with Buller commanding from an airship that couldn't be heard — held off the grimm pursuit.

"It would have been better if the Valish had told us sooner, sir," Pulleine said. "I'm afraid this may come as a blow to morale, which isn't too high as it is."

"But it'll be done, sir," Harper added. "They'll grumble, moan, and curse the Valish, but they'll do it regardless. Are we to stop retreating?"

"No, not yet," Ironwood replied. "Continue to fall back until you reach the city limits, then establish yourselves amongst the buildings, barricade the streets, anything that you can do to establish a new defensive position. Hold the grimm back until…" He paused. He suspected that the grimm would not continue to attack for much longer, given what was going on at Beacon right now. Either Salem would soon have the Relic in her possession, in which case, Vale would be meaningless to her, or — hopefully — her attempt to seize the Relic would have been stopped, and she'd have missed her chance. Either way, there would be no point in continuing to press an attack that had only ever been a grand diversion.

Of course, it could be that even if she got the Relic — and even moreso if she didn't — that Salem would continue to press the attack regardless because destroying Vale was something desirable to her. That was entirely possible, but at this point, his hope was that once she either got what she wanted or she couldn't get it, then she would withdraw, if only to conserve her grimm.

If not, if she continued to attack, then this battle would be a whole lot harder.

"Until they decide they've had enough or the evacuation is complete and we can start airlifting your infantry," Ironwood said. "How are you fixed for ammunition?"

"Retreating has made resupply difficult, sir," Harper told him. "We're short on shells, missiles, and rockets; and most of my infantry only have a couple of magazines left per soldier. It'll be even harder to resupply once we start using all our airships to taxi civilians over the wall."

"Then we'll land the supply ships themselves," Ironwood said. "They'll set down just beyond the outskirts of Vale, and you can resupply directly from them; once you've got everything you need, the ships will take off, and as Colonel Harper says, you'll have to make do from that point until the evacuation is complete. Air units are to support the front line, of course, but I also want a second line in reserve in case the grimm decide to go for Vale; we want to prevent any aerial grimm from getting over the wall. From what Colonel Sky Beak just said, it doesn't seem as though we can expect the Valish anti-air defences to be working at full capacity."

"Has anything Valish been working properly tonight?" Buller asked, prompting a chuckle from Pulleine.

"Valish backstabbing has been getting a good workout," Harper muttered.

"That'll do, Colonel," Ironwood murmured. It was one thing to snigger at Valish incompetence — if telling themselves that they were better than the flat-footed Valish kept Atlesian morale up, then Ironwood would welcome it — and another to step into outright rancour. "They've been through a lot tonight."

"Right, sir, they've all gone mad, and we mustn’t mock the afflicted," Harper said dryly. "But I hope they remember this next time they want to sneer at us for being too militarised. In fact, after tonight, I hope they remember to keep their mouths shut for a while."

Oz would probably tell me that these actions by the Valish military are why it's a good idea to separate out huntsmen and soldiers, Ironwood thought. He could hear the old man's voice, 'What would have happened, James, if it had been you the Siren had afflicted?'

But Ironwood's mind would be the only place he would hear such words, now that Ozpin was dead.

Well, until a new Oz appeared, at least, depending on how much he had of the old man in him.

"Take your own advice, Colonel, keep some of your feelings to yourself," Ironwood instructed her. "We are still allies, after all."

"Yes, sir," Harper said softly. "Apologies, sir."

"That said," Ironwood added, "once we have saved the people of Vale from the indifference of their own government, I won't begrudge any officer or soldier who wishes to enjoy the bragging rights for a while." He paused. "I know that this battle has not developed as we would have wished; I'm sure that the troops are tired and that morale is not as high as it was. Make sure they understand that they've already worked miracles and that they're only being asked to hold out until we can get the civilians to safety, after which it will be their turn to put a wall between them and the grimm. Tell them that they've done so much already, they can certainly do this too. Good luck, everyone."

The Beacon and Haven students entered Vale in a cluster; what had been a spread out group with a little width bunched up as they moved from the rural outskirts to the streets of the city itself. The street lights were still on, lighting up the suburban houses with their gardens and painted doors, the high street shops and the cars parked on the street. There was no sound but the footsteps of the huntsmen and huntresses, their snatches of conversation as they headed towards the looming walls of Vale. At least, that was the only human sound at first; there were animal noises too; Ruby thought that she could hear a fox prowling amongst the bins and even catch sight of its bushy tail. She could hear birds of some kind chattering to one another. But she couldn't hear any people who weren't a part of their group, weren't students who had fought together and now entered Vale together, for the part of Vale they had entered was empty and abandoned. For a moment, as they walked down the street, between the parked cars and the pools of light made by the street lamps, Ruby was reminded of Mountain Glenn, the empty city abandoned to time.

Fortunately, there were fewer bodies.

What there were, driving away all memories of Mountain Glenn as the huntsmen and huntresses began to move deeper into this part of Vale, was people. A lot of people. An astonishing number of people, people waiting, people fretting, people watching the skies, people staring at the walls, people who looked as though they'd just got out of bed without even time to get dressed. So many people, filling the streets, blocking the streets, what were they all doing here?

"These people do know there's a grimm attack, right?" asked Nora. "I mean, this isn't the time for a street party."

"I don't think these people are having a party," Ren said softly.

"Then what are they all just standing around for?" Nora demanded. "Or at least, why aren't they standing around on the other side of the wall?"

Ruby was wondering the same thing, and wondering if it might be best to just ask someone about it, rather than just asking the question of the air and hoping for a response. After all, these people hopefully knew why they were just standing around like this, otherwise … well, otherwise, it would be kinda stupid of them to just be standing around like this, wouldn't it? There had to be a reason for it, and hopefully a good reason too.

They didn't all look especially talkative, she had to admit; some of them were giving the students funny looks, or dirty looks as though they smelled, shrinking away from them as the huntsmen and huntresses came to a stop, standing as still as all the people out on the street, waiting for something that Ruby didn't know, and doubted that anyone else knew either, just waiting.

Waiting because they couldn't press on and leave all these people behind them, between them and the grimm.

"Come on, move!" Violet Valeria shouted. "Move, you bunch of lemons!"

Nobody moved. A couple of them glanced in Violet's direction, but none of them actually moved, apart from perhaps a little bit of shuffling of feet, a couple of people moving closer to one another. It was like a packed train when the conductor asks people to move up inside the carriage, but nobody does — or can. There were times when people just didn't obey instructions.

But why were they all just standing here? The grimm weren't pressing hard upon the heels of the Beacon and Haven students — they were still wary, of the huntsmen or of Ruby's silver eyes or both — and they weren't going to descend upon the group at any moment, but at the same time, they weren't so far away that it was safe for all of these people to just … hang out like this, whyever they were doing it.

She was just about to step away from Ren and Nora to try and find somebody who could tell her what was going on when she was hailed by a voice.

"Ruby Rose? It is Ruby Rose, isn't it? From the bike club."

Ruby looked around, taking a few seconds to identify the source of the voice: a girl, human, with slightly bronzed skin and dark hair worn down just past her shoulders. Ruby … there was something vaguely familiar about her, but at the same time, she didn't recognise — but she did recognise, at least more clearly than she recognised the girl, the faunus woman whom the girl had just stepped away from.

That was Leaf's Mom, she was sure of it.

"It is Ruby Rose, isn't it?" the girl said. "I recognise you from your match on TV, and I … sorry, you've got no idea who I am, do you?"

"Not … I mean, do you know Leaf Kelly?" Ruby asked.

"Yes!" the girl said. "Yes, I do, my name's Angeline; I'm Leaf's stepsister." She glanced towards Leaf's mom, and towards a man stood beside her who looked more like Angeline, who Ruby thought must have been her father. "It's nice to meet you, even though…"

"Yeah," Ruby muttered. "Yeah, it's not a great night." She bit her lip. "Listen, what's going on out here? Why is everybody just standing around? The grimm are coming, everybody needs to get out of here—"

"And go where?" Angeline demanded. "That's what I was hoping to talk to you about; the gate's shut, and they're not letting anyone through. I was hoping that, as a huntress, you could … I don't know, get them to open the gates for us, or something."

"The gate's shut?" Ruby repeated. She took a step back from Angeline and looked around. There were so many people here it was hard to believe that they were all stragglers, left behind because they hadn't moved fast enough. "Since when? For how long?"

"For always," Angeline replied. "I don't think anybody's gotten through. Some people have given up waiting and gone home. And now that the CCT has gone down—"

"What?" Ruby cried. "What's the matter with the CCT?"

"The tower's gone," Angeline said. "Didn't you see?"

No, Ruby hadn't seen; her attention had been fixed on the grimm behind them, not at Beacon; after Teams SAPR and RSPT had set off for Beacon to stop Amber from taking the Relic, she hadn't really paid the school much mind, or attention. There had been other things which had more claim upon her thoughts. She hadn't wanted to get distracted by thinking about what might be going on there, although she hoped that they stopped Amber.

It was only now, prompted by Angeline, that she looked up and towards Beacon and saw, or rather didn't see, the CCT Tower. It wasn't there anymore. The lights that had always burned in the darkness, the emerald lights were gone. There was only dark sky there now.

The CCT Tower was down, and with it, the whole network. They couldn't talk to other kingdoms; it was touch and go if she could even reach Patch. Leaf couldn't reach her family, and they couldn't reach her either. Everyone had been muted. Everyone had been cut off.

They would survive — the world had gotten along okay before the CCT Towers went up; they'd get by afterwards too — but that didn't mean it was going to be easy. In fact, it was likely going to be pretty hard.

Still, as an issue, it kind of paled in comparison right now to what was going to happen to all of these people stuck outside the wall with the gates shut. "Sorry," Ruby said. "Thanks for letting me know, but … you were saying?"

"Right, um … yeah, just, with the CCT down, we can't find out anything about why the gates are shut or when they might open," Angeline said. "Can … can you help? At all?"

"I … I mean, I can't just order them to open the gate," Ruby told her. "But I'll do what I can. Just … wait here just one second; I need to talk to a couple of people."

She turned away, her red cape swirling around her, as she took a couple of steps back to Ren and Nora.

"Friend of yours?" Nora asked.

"No, but I know her sister a little bit," Ruby explained. "She recognised me. She said the—"

"What's going on?" Arslan asked, as she and Violet made their way over to join Ruby, Ren, and Nora. "Did that girl tell you something?"

Ruby nodded. "She said the gates are closed, that they've always been closed as far as she knows, that they're not letting anybody get through them."

"Not letting anyone through?" Nora cried. "Why not?"

"Presumably, they're worried about letting grimm through," murmured Ren.

"But there haven't been any grimm around here!" Nora shouted. "They could have got lots of people, maybe all these people, through the gate already if they'd just opened up!"

"I'm sure they had good reasons," said Ren quietly.

"Does being yellow as a custard cream count as a good reason?" asked Nora.

"And a fat lot of good you lot turned out to be!" shouted an old man from out of the crowd. He was bald on top, with white hair crowning his back and sides, and tufty eyebrows extending out past the ends of his craggy, age-lined face. He gestured at them with one fat finger as he went on. "All that prancing about on telly, all that strutting back and forth, and you can't stop a few grimm, can you?"

"'A few grimm'?" Nora repeated. "'A few grimm'?!"

Violet Valeria's hands knotted into fists as she began to stride forward.

"Hey, hey," Arslan grabbed her by the wrist, slipping around her until she was between Violet and the old man. "No, no, you can't do that."

"I'm just going to teach him a lesson for his impertinence," Violet said.

"I know," Arslan said. "That's what you can't do. This isn't Mistral; this is Vale."

"I don't care about Valish custom, so long as I follow Mistralian custom—"

"Do you think everyone else will follow Mistralian custom in letting you get away with it?" Arslan demanded. "Let him spout off; don't we have more important things to think about?"

Violet hesitated for a moment, before letting out a loud huff and turning away, back to Ruby, Ren, and Nora.

"Sit still and wait for orders from your betters, you who are worthless, counting for nothing in battle or debate," she muttered. "Wretched peasant."

"What were you going to do to him?" Ruby asked quietly.

"It doesn't matter," Arslan said quickly.

"Just give him a little crack on the head, that's all," Violet said casually. “Teach him to mind his manners and hold his tongue in future.”

"We're supposed to protect these people," Ruby said.

"Lily has taken wounds protecting these 'people,'" Violet declared, her lip curling into a sneer. "And Cicero, too, the son of a Councillor of Mistral. Worse than wounds, sons and daughters of Mistral will ne'er be seen from the White Tower again and see now with what gratitude their sacrifice is received by the 'people' of this wretched city."

"They don't have to be grateful."

"There, we must disagree," said Violet. "If not gratitude, then at least the facsimile of the same through a respectful silence."

Ruby rolled her eyes.

"We should stay focussed," Ren said.

"That's right, focussed on the real villains: the people who closed the gate," Nora said.

Ruby looked around. So many people out here, so many people waiting, waiting for a gate that would not open, waiting for salvation that would not come, waiting for somewhere to go when they had nowhere to go.

Waiting for the grimm to come and devour them all.

"We need to get the gate open," she declared.

Everyone looked at her.

"Seriously?" Arslan asked.

"Yes, seriously," Ruby replied. "I'm not saying it will be easy, necessarily, but I think we can do it; it can't be impossible."

"You're also saying that we should," Ren pointed out, his voice remaining outwardly calm, like a still pond.

"Because we should!" Nora cried. "Look around, Ren; how many people do you think there are out here?"

"How many people are behind the walls?" asked Ren in response.

"How many of us are there?" Ruby demanded. "We've been lucky, so far, that ever since the dragon took off, the grimm have been handling us pretty lightly, but how long is that going to last? Are we going to keep on getting lucky, or are the grimm going to remember that they outnumber us by a hundred to one and throw everything they've got at us again? Ren, anyone, do you really think that if the grimm attack in force, we can hold them back with the numbers we have?"

Ren began, "The Atlesians—"

"Are retreating too; who knows if they can hold out?" Ruby said. "And even if they can, we're still…" She hesitated, because she didn't want to admit this, even if it was true. "We're still the weak link. I'm asking you again, do you think we can hold the grimm off?"

She looked at Ren, her eyes fixed upon him as she waited for his answer.

Ren's expression didn't change. He was unflinching. Ruby had to admire that, even when she disagreed with him, like she admired the way that his voice didn't waver as he said, "No."

"Then all these people will die," Nora said.

"Perhaps they will," said Violet. "Perhaps it is as you say, we are not strong enough to hold them. I will go so far as to admit you are probably right; we have not held them so far, and we were stronger then … we will go down to death as our ancestors did, and all these Valish abandoned by their leaders will die alongside us. Yet, as I have been reminded, this is Vale, not Mistral, and we have no authority to overrule the leaders of this land when they have chosen their course."

"So our only choice is how nobly we die?" asked Arslan.

Violet shrugged. "It comes to us all in the end, no? What choice could matter more than how we meet it?"

"We're huntsmen and huntresses," Ruby said. "Defenders of life; that gives us all the authority we need."

"Even if it means putting Vale in danger?" demanded Ren. "If the grimm reach the open gate—"

"That's a chokepoint," Ruby said. "We can defend that easily, a lot more easily than we can defend this part of the city." She paused. "If it were just us out here, then I'd agree with you, but it's not. It's all these people too, and they didn't sign up for any of this. We can't just let them all die."

"Not even for the greater good?" asked Ren.

"The greater good only applies to our lives," said Ruby. "When it comes to everyone else, we have to fight for every life. No matter the cost, no matter the risk."

"We can't just abandon people," Nora said softly.

"We're n—"

"Yes, we are," Nora insisted. "If we know that we can't keep them safe, then we're abandoning them."

Ren was silent for a moment, looking at Nora first, before his eyes swung to Ruby. "What's your plan?" he asked.

"I … really only have the concept, right now," Ruby admitted.

"Let's head to the gate," Nora said. "See what's actually going on there."

"We'll stay here," Arslan said. "Hold the grimm back if they come."

"Right," Ruby said. She sprinted across the short distance separating her from Angeline, trailing some rosepetals behind her on the ground. "We are going to get the gate open," she told her. "I don't know how, yet, but we're going to do it. You should try and get a little closer to the gate, if you can, for when we do." She didn't mention that it would also keep them safer when the grimm arrived; they could probably work that part out for themselves.

"Okay, I'll tell Mum and Dad," Angeline said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank us until the gate is open," Ruby replied, leaving Angeline and returning to Ren and Nora.

"Let's move," she said.

They found it kind of hard going; the crowd only got thicker as they got closer to the gate, the gate that Ruby still couldn't see but thought they must be closing in on because the walls seemed higher now than they had been before, looming larger over the suburbs down below.

Unfortunately, the crowds were thicker too, and the closer to the walls — and the gate — they got, the thicker the crowd pressed in around them and made it more and more of an effort to force their way through.

They were still trying to get through the crowd, which sometimes pressed so tightly around Ruby that she lost sight of the walls, or Ren and Nora, and only saw a cramped mass of bodies all around blocking out every other view, when they saw a few Atlesian Skyrays pass overhead, then began to drop down into the crowd.

"The Atlesians must be evacuating people," Ren said approvingly. "So there's no need to open the gate."

"We'll see about that," Nora muttered darkly.

They didn't have to wait long to find the reason for Nora's scepticism. As the Atlesian airships descended, they were greeted rapturously, with raised hands and joyous cries from the people down below, but no sooner had the airships landed and opened their doors than people flooded in, no order, no restraint, just a mass of desperate, frightened people pressing into a confined space that was nowhere near big enough for all of them. Through the window, Ruby and the others could see people pushing into the cockpit of one airship, while someone screamed in pain as the door shut while they were still half out of the Skyray, crushing them in a vice. Even once one airship had shut its doors, people clung to the side of the fuselage or clambered up onto the wings and hung on for dear life. Overloaded Skyrays wobbled in the air like plates balanced on straws as they struggled to gain elevation, while people grabbed hold of them as though they were trying to hold the airships back or pull them down again to the ground.

More people screamed as they lost their grip and fell back down into the crowd off the wings or fuselages of the unsteady Skyrays, while one person fell into the engine on one wing, which exploded with a huge bang and a shower of debris that had everyone down below ducking for cover as an answering shriek of horror rose from the people still on the ground.

The Skyray spun into the air, colliding with a wobbling and unsteady other airship which itself began to tumble, rolling downwards like a cheese, both airships plunging into the crowd; people tried to get out of the way, they tried to run, they screamed and shouted, but everyone was just pressed so tightly together that not everyone was able to escape, some of them were still down below when the airships crashed, both of them exploding in blossoming burst of fire.

Cries of fear turned to cries of pain as people were touched by the fire, or by the shards of metal that sliced like hurled spears through the crowd.

Another airship, far too full, crashed less explosively; it had barely gotten ten feet up in the air before the strained engines gave out, and it flopped back down to earth with a metallic thump.

"They'll never get everyone out that way," Nora said. "If they can get anyone out that way. The airships aren't big enough, and the people aren't organised enough. The only way that enough people can get to safety is through that gate."

And so they pressed on, struggling through the crowd until at last they reached the Freedom Gate, where spotlights shone down from the parapet on top to sweep across the desperate crowd — mostly Valish civilians, although Ruby could see some Valish soldiers too, and even the tractor that they'd seen Reese off on carrying their own wounded earlier in the battle — who huddled at the green metal barrier.

People stood on the road, they stood between the rails too, taking their own lives in their hands; they held up desperate hands, or held up children, towards the soldiers on top of the wall, they cried out to them for pity or for mercy, they cried out for humanity from those who looked down upon them from the walls with such bright lights.

Who looked down and did nothing.

Nora was right, and Ren was wrong; even if Ruby hadn't believed that already, she thought that she probably would have believed it now, watching these people bang pitifully and fruitlessly on the gate, listening to them begging for help, knowing what would happen to them if no help came.

They couldn't just leave them to die. Ruby couldn't leave them to die.

But how to open the gate? The only way would be to get onto the other side of the wall, and then—

"Nora," Ruby asked. "Do you think you could hit me hard enough to send me over the wall and onto the other side so I can open the gate?"

Nora grinned. "Can I hit you hard enough? Oh, just you watch me, little lady." She raised her voice. "Stand back, everyone!" She pulled her hammer from across her back, unfolding it from its grenade launcher form into its hammer mode, drawing it back over her shoulder. "Batter up!"

Ruby, for her part, crouched down.

She concentrated her aura in her legs, not so much for the sake of the jump but because she thought she would need all the aura she could get down there.

One. Two. Three.

She jumped like a leaping frog, rising up into the air.

Nora's hammer hit her on the soles of her feet about as hard as Ruby had expected them to, battering her aura down — Ruby thought she must have lost about half of it; that was certainly what it felt like — even as it tossed her up into the air. Ruby flew up and up, rising higher and higher, past the guns in their mountings, higher than the spotlights on top of the wall, higher than the wall itself, higher and higher — before she began to come down.

Ruby pulled Crescent Rose out from behind her back, and as she dropped down on the far side of the wall, she fired to slow herself, once, twice, three times, firing her weapon in its carbine configuration, slowing her descent with every shot until she landed, safely, on her feet on the far side of the Red Line.

There was a roar, a massive roaring sound that made Ruby look up as the dragon swept overhead, its enormous wings beating. It didn't look at Ruby, it didn't seem to look down at all, it just flew over her head, over the gate and outwards to where Ruby couldn't see it anymore. The walls were too high, and more importantly, she was too close to the walls, and the dragon quickly disappeared from her sight. She couldn't see it, she couldn't see what it might be doing, she could only hear it roar again, a deafening sound that drowned out every other noise, even all the crying and the wailing from the other people on the other side of the gate.

The dragon's roar died down, and Ruby could hear the people crying out once again.

She could also hear, coming from behind her, the rumbling sound of a familiar motorcycle.

Ruby turned around, to see that same, familiar, ugly, hodgepodge bike rumbling down the road towards her, with Weiss on its back and Sunset at the controls.

Author's Note

The goats that Team TTSS encounter on their way into Vale are based on the Llandudno goats, who escaped during the covid lockdowns in 2020 and have been roaming the streets of a Welsh town ever since, growing increasingly brazen according to the local council:

The big deviation from the original here is who exactly is stuck on the wrong side of the gate; in the original version it was just the huntsmen, so Ruby favoured keeping the gate shut; in the rewrite there are a lot of other people who didn't evacuate in time and so Ruby wants to open the gate.

I have to say that when it comes to Violet wanting to smack that guy for running his mouth off at them, my sympathies are with her, he's got some bloody cheek for presuming to talk like that after all they've been through, and the Beacon students are too nice to just put up with it.

The other change I suppose is that instead of nebulous Valish authorities deciding to shut the gate, it's the personal of Sky Beak who has made that decision; it may not be a very nice decision, and it's rough on everyone stuck on the wrong side of the wall, but it's understandable considering the paucity of resources that he has to work with.