Jaune walked back across the shattered crimson ground with a calm gait, despite the impossible sequence of events that had just unfolded.
Behind him, the remaining of Grimm lumbered, colossal frame scarcely more than an empty shell after having served as an unwilling reservoir of stolen vitality.
A faint, wry smile rested upon Jaune's face, small enough that someone unfamiliar with him might have missed it entirely, yet genuine nonetheless. A smile that quietly acknowledged the absurdity of the situation without diminishing its gravity.
He had nearly died within the span of a minute and manipulated concepts that should have been beyond mortal understanding, and somehow arrived back before Yang and Raven looking little worse for wear.
Yang simply stared.
Her expression had become strangely vacant, as though her mind had failed to keep pace with everything she had witnessed over the past several minutes.
Her eyes drifted between Jaune's face and Raven's chest over and over again, lingering every time upon the ragged hole torn through Raven's tunic.
The cloth remained shredded, though, oddly enough, no blood remained. It was a mute evidence that only moments earlier a spear large enough to punch through both heart and lung had occupied that space.
Yet beneath the ruined fabric there was only smooth, unblemished skin. No scar or wound. No sign that death itself had nearly claimed the older woman. Every time Yang looked back toward the torn clothing her thoughts seemed to snag upon the contradiction.
Her eyes widened slightly, narrowed again, then returned to Jaune, unable to reconcile what she knew had happened with what she was seeing now.
Raven, by contrast, recovered her composure far more quickly. Years of surviving impossible battles had taught her that dwelling upon miracles accomplished nothing. She slowly lowered the hand that had been unconsciously resting over her restored chest and regarded Jaune with an unusually quiet expression.
There was no trace of her usual biting sarcasm or guarded detachment. Instead she simply inclined her head, a gesture carrying considerably more weight than it ordinarily would have. "You saved my life," she said evenly, her voice still slightly rough from the blood that had only recently filled her lungs. "Thanks."
Jaune returned the nod without ceremony.
"Don't mention it. It's the least I could do after all the intel you've been giving me."
Yang blinked.
The words finally shook her mind loose from its stunned paralysis. Her brows furrowed almost immediately as confusion replaced shock. "Intel?" she repeated slowly before looking from Raven back to Jaune.
"Jaune... where... where have you been? You didn't answer any messages or calls. Nothing. You just... disappeared."
For just a moment the smile on Jaune's face softened into something considerably sadder. It wasn't guilt exactly, nor regret, but something that sat uncomfortably between the two. Countless memories flickered behind his eyes before he quietly shook his head.
"I'll answer another time. First, let's get your wounds cleared up."
The instant those words left his mouth, Yang felt something incredible happen. The aching cuts covering her body vanished.
The deep punctures Hazel had carved into both her forearms simply ceased to exist. Bruises earned from being hammered into the moon's surface disappeared. Countless smaller lacerations, burns and abrasions suffered throughout the battle evaporated all at once, leaving behind only clean skin. Relief flooded through muscles she hadn't even realized remained clenched.
Then she watched every one of those injuries appear upon Jaune.
Fresh blood burst from his forearms. Cuts opened over his shoulders and hands exactly where hers had existed an instant earlier. The sudden volume of transferred injuries might have dropped most awakened to their knees, but Jaune didn't even flinch.
His expression remained perfectly composed. A heartbeat later those wounds disappeared as well.
Yang's eyes widened in shock, yet again. She had watched him heal Raven and nearly kill himself while also somehow undoing that fatal injury.
Now, he had casually... transferred every injury she possessed before effortlessly erasing those too. Even after witnessing all of that, her mind still struggled to comprehend it.
She finally found her voice.
"What... kind of Rune is that?" she asked quietly. "Transfer? Something like Blake's Substitute?"
Jaune hummed softly before shaking his head. "Not quite, although you aren't entirely wrong."
Yang waited.
"It's an application of my Plunder Rune, just... boosted by an incomprehensible hierarchy."
Yang frowned harder.
"Boosted by... hierarchy?"
She genuinely had no idea what that meant.
Hierarchy?
Was he talking about Rune hierarchy? Meta Rune authority? Some new system? Every explanation she tried constructing collapsed almost immediately beneath the weight of everything she had already witnessed.
She had seen Plunder steal strength before.
Objects and physical statistics,
But now?
Now it was stealing damage?
Health?
Things that shouldn't even qualify as things. She wasn't entirely certain whether she wanted the explanation anymore.
Jaune's attention had already drifted beyond them toward the battlefield. Rank Ones and Rank Zeros had slowly begun filtering back across the shattered landscape after confirming Hazel and Cinder had truly withdrawn.
Soldiers regrouped and exhausted awakened helped one another upright, until the last remaining Grimm within visual range had already been exterminated through combined effort. Temporary calm had descended over the battlefield.
Temporary.
Jaune knew better than anyone that it would not last. More Grimm would come. They always did. He took one slow breath before turning back toward Yang.
"Listen, I'd love to stay and chat. Catch up properly."
His smile returned faintly.
"But unfortunately I don't have a lot of time."
Yang instinctively straightened.
"So I'm going to keep this short." Jaune folded his arms loosely across his chest. "It's great seeing you again. Really."
For a fleeting second sincerity completely displaced the quiet humour in his voice.
"But Sleepless' plans are..." He searched briefly for an appropriate word before giving up. "...a little convoluted."
That was perhaps the understatement of the century.
"I'm one of the keys that can stop them."
Yang's expression sharpened immediately.
Key.
She had remembered a long time ago, that Jaune had mentioned that words before. Something his father had once said to him, when he had first found out that his father was a part of Sleepless.
That single word carried implications she couldn't ignore.
Everything that had happened since being dragged into this crimson moon seemed connected to something far larger than any of them had anticipated.
She studied Jaune's face carefully before speaking.
"Key... huh? It seems like you had that fight with your father after all."
Jaune didn't deny it. He merely nodded once. There was no triumph in the gesture. Only acceptance. Without elaborating further he began walking away.
"I met a few other awakened groups on the way here," his attention already returning toward the distant battlefield. "I've been directing them towards this direction."
He glanced briefly over his shoulder.
"They'll converge here in roughly ten minutes."
Yang listened carefully.
"Meet up with them, then head to the core together."
He raised one arm and pointed across the impossible lunar landscape.
Far beyond ordinary sight enormous continental fragments of shattered moon drifted around a central abyss, each connected through immense rivers of crimson runic energy stretching across space itself like glowing arteries.
"The core?" Yang repeated.
Jaune nodded, eyes remaining fixed upon the distant floating continents.
"Yeah. From the looks of it, you already had the same idea."
Yang slowly nodded.
Before Cinder and Hazel had shown up, Raven and her had been fighting toward the center from the beginning.
Jaune smiled again.
"The other groups too, thankfully. Saves time from having to round them all up across the surface. In any case..."
He spread his hands helplessly.
"As much as I'd love to catch up... booze and banter are going to have to wait."
Yang couldn't help it.
Despite everything, a tiny laugh escaped her. It surprised even herself. Jaune raised one open palm toward the surviving Rank Two Grimm resting several hundred meters away.
Instantly space distorted and the enormous creature vanished. It reappeared directly beside him with enough weight to shake the surrounding moonstone.
"Wait!" Yang called out. She knew he had to leave, but that didn't mean that she was was willing to let him go that easily.
Jaune turned and was startled as a the blonde bombshell crashed into his arms, giving him a deep and soul crushing hug, seemingly emptying her entire gratitude and emotion into his body.
Jaune's heartbeat sped up a little at the contact, but he didn't flinch away. He could feel the entirety of her emotions emanating. Just seeing him, had placed a form of relief that washed away the stress she had been under. He wrapped his arms around her and returned the hug, channeling his own emotions through the contact.
A couple seconds later, they separated.
Yang's face had turned slightly red, but neither Jaune nor her commented on it. He gave her and Raven a last nod, then, without hesitation Jaune reached down, grabbed one gigantic finger claw, and simply started dragging the skyscraper-sized monster behind him again.
The visual contrast bordered upon the ridiculous. From a distance it resembled an ant casually hauling an elephant across the moon.
Yang watched him disappear toward the horizon, dragging an immobilized Rank Two Grimm behind him as though transporting oversized luggage represented the most natural thing in the world.
She slowly lifted one hand to her forehead and rubbed at her temple.
"...I think I need to lie down," she muttered.
Beside her Raven quietly watched Jaune's retreating figure until he had become little more than a distant silhouette crossing crimson stone.
Only then did the older woman glance sideways toward Yang. There was the faintest trace of amusement hiding within otherwise composed crimson eyes.
"Your future husband, is quite impressive, isn't he?"
Yang's head snapped around so quickly it almost cracked.
"What?!"
Colour immediately flooded her cheeks.
"Wha... future... what are you talking about?!"
Raven's expression remained perfectly straight.
"I merely made an observation."
"That wasn't an observation!"
"Then what was it? After all, you seem unusually invested."
Yang pointed accusingly toward the rapidly disappearing Jaune.
"He just transplanted fatal injuries between people, stole health from a skyscraper-sized Grimm, casually healed all of us, then walked off dragging another Rank Two like it was grocery shopping!"
Raven nodded thoughtfully.
"Very dependable qualities, wouldn't you agree?"
Yang made an utterly inarticulate noise.
"You can't seriously..."
"I can't?"
"You know what I think? You've lost too much blood. You're clearly delirious."
"I don't believe my blood levels have changed. Whatever he did, was akin to causality manipulation. My body is operating at 100% capacity."
Yang opened her mouth, closed it and opened it again.
Unfortunately, nothing came out.
Raven finally allowed the smallest ghost of a smirk to tug at one corner of her lips before turning her attention back toward the distant battlefield.
Yang stood there in complete mortification, silently wondering whether surviving Hazel, Cinder, an apex Grimm, and almost watching Raven die had somehow resulted in her biological mother suffering a concussion after all.
Eventually Yang sighed deeply and shifted her attention away from her and towards the surroundings. The battlefield had finally fallen quiet.
Not peaceful, however.
The moon would probably never know peace again. It was merely... quiet. The kind of silence that followed catastrophe, when even the wind seemed hesitant to disturb the dead.
The broken crimson landscape stretched endlessly before her, gouged apart by battles that had rewritten the terrain itself. Massive craters still radiated residual heat while fragments of floating moonstone lazily drifted through crimson currents of runic energy overhead.
In the distance, Rank Ones and Rank Zeros kept emerging from behind ruined outcroppings and shattered pillars of blood-colored stone. They moved cautiously, supporting one another, carrying the wounded, checking bodies that would never rise again. They had survived, but survival hardly resembled victory.
Yang simply watched them.
Her hands rested loosely against her knees as she sat upon a broken slab of crimson ground. The wounds Jaune had taken from her had vanished as though they had never existed, yet phantom pain still lingered inside her muscles.
Perhaps it wasn't pain but simply memory. Every impact that Hazel had delivered and every arrow Cinder had fired. Every moment she had believed someone else was about to die because she had not been fast enough.
Her gaze drifted yet again towards the hole torn through Raven's tunic. The fabric remained ruined, yet beneath it lay perfectly healthy flesh.
It truly looked odd. She remembered watching the spear pass through Raven's chest and the blood. At that moment... she remembered believing...
No.
She swallowed quietly.
Beside her, Raven remained equally silent. She had replaced her ruined outer garment with a shadow construct woven from her own Rune, its surface shifting subtly like feathers caught beneath moonlight.
She sat down as well, with one knee raised and one arm resting across it. Her crimson eyes observed the recovering awakened without expression. Anyone who didn't know her would have mistaken her for calm.
Yang knew better.
She had noticed the tiny pauses in Raven's breathing. The occasional unconscious hand drifting toward the place where the spear had pierced her heart.
Even now, healed, her body still remembered dying.
Seconds passed and neither woman spoke. Eventually Yang's voice broke the silence so softly that it barely carried beyond the two of them.
"Why?"
Raven didn't answer. Yang kept staring toward the awakened in the distance.
"Why did you take that hit for me... Raven?"
The older woman's shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly. Yang continued before she could stop herself.
"You could've just let me die and left like you wanted to from the beginning."
Silence.
"Aren't you the one whose spent almost twenty years telling everyone that emotions cloud judgment and that survival comes first?" Yang laughed quietly, though there wasn't any humor inside it. "You abandoned me because you believed it was the logical thing to do, right?"
She finally turned.
"So why?"
Raven lowered her gaze.
"I don't know."
Yang frowned.
"I don't accept that answer."
"I figured you wouldn't."
Another silence settled between them. Eventually Raven exhaled slowly.
"Perhaps you're right in that I've spent years telling myself that everything I did was rational."
Yang waited.
Raven reached out into the air, like she was trying to grasp something an impossibly far distance away.
"It felt like it was only yesterday, that I was a Rank One, fighting beside Taiyang, Summer and Qrow."
Yang didn't interrupt, even though she knew of the story already.
"We were young then. Teenagers like you. At the time, we were strong enough to believe strength solved every problem, especially when it came to the dream realm. Then, we began seeing what really lived beyond civilization."
Her eyes drifted toward the endless crimson horizon.
"Back then, we could only see fragments of the whole. Not knowing what we do now."
Yang remained quiet.
"I watched entire towns and villages disappear, you know?"
Raven's voice remained level, but quieter now.
"I watched entire small LUCID branches vanish because they underestimated the creatures within a Nightmare Zone."
She smiled bitterly.
"I watched Rank Twos, people stronger than almost everyone alive, reduced to ash because a Rank Three happened to be nearby."
Yang remembered Summer and said nothing in regards to that.
"When I became Rank Two, I stopped believing in happy endings." Raven closed her eyes briefly.
Yang frowned.
"What does that have to do with me?"
"Everything. I became pregnant." Raven finally looked directly at her and her expression softened in a way Yang had never witnessed before.
"I remember holding you. You were so tiny."
"Well, yeah? I was a baby you know? What do you think babies look like?"
"No. You think you know, but you truly don't, Yang. I remember wondering how something so small could survive in a world like ours."
Yang felt her chest tighten.
"I looked at you... and I was terrified."
Raven frowned quietly. Yang stared at her and Raven had to look away again.
"I wasn't afraid of raising you, but... I was afraid of losing you. I'd already seen too much by then and at the time, I wasn't even sure if you would have become and awakened. To become an awakened is due to the luck of the draw, after all? How could I have brought someone as weak and fragile like you into the world.
Raven sighed.
"I knew what the Sleeper was capable of. Well, at the time, I suppose the concept of the Sleeper didn't exist, but... you get what I mean. The Grimm were evolving. Rank Threes existed."
She folded her hands together and her voice almost disappeared.
"And then I looked at you, and I realized that if I stayed..."
Yang frowned.
"What?"
"I would love you."
Yang's eyes widened in shock and Raven gave another bitter smile as she gazed toward the distant battlefield.
"And if I loved you, I wouldn't be able to do what needed doing. I wouldn't be able to do my duty and kill the creatures threatening humanity."
Yang felt something twist painfully inside her chest.
"So..."
Raven nodded.
"I convinced myself. I told myself humanity needed another slayer more than another mother. I told myself that every Nightmare Zone I destroyed, every Grimm I killed and every year I spent traveling instead of returning home... would mean you grew up in a safer world."
Yang however, gave off a scoff of derision, while her fingers slowly clenched.
"What a pathetic excuse. You left and never came back, letting dad struggle alone and let Summer raise me.
Yang's voice cracked.
"Then she died. What's worse was dad was there at the moment of her death, unable to do anything, only having enough power to preserve his own life. Dad... he was broken after that, you know? He blamed himself for his own weakness. And... I just know, if it wasn't for me and Ruby, he probably would have committed suicide."
"I..."
Yang wiped furiously at her eyes.
"You don't get to just say that kind of shit!"
The words echoed across the ruined moon.
"I waited!"
Her breathing became uneven.
"I waited for years thinking maybe you'd come back and help us and dad! Help him pick up the pieces! But... you never did. When Summer died..."
Yang laughed brokenly.
"I still thought maybe, maybe my real mother would show up, but you never did."
Yang looked away before continuing, swallowing her emotions down.
"I kept wondering what was wrong with me, you know? I thought... that maybe I just wasn't worth staying for."
For the first time since Yang had known her...
Raven looked genuinely sad.
"No. No."
She leaned forward.
"Never think that. You... you were the one thing, that made leaving hurt. If I hadn't loved you, it would've been easy."
Silence returned and Raven's voice faltered.
"I left, because I convinced myself I could bear the pain better than you could."
Yang laughed hollowly.
"You were wrong. I grew up hating you and spent years trying to understand you."
Yang sighed.
"And then..."
She smiled weakly.
"...I met you again and I wanted to keep hating you."
Yang shook her head.
"But..."
"You weren't evil. You might have been a little cruel but you were just like dad, weren't you? You were..."
She searched for the word.
"...broken."
Raven looked away.
"I suppose that's accurate. After all, I only returned to see you when... you were an awakened. Truly... I was... so surprised to see how much you had grown, Yang."
Yang stared at the recovering awakened and sighed.
"When Hazel attacked, why?"
Raven answered immediately this time. Her voice became firm.
"Because you're my daughter, Yang. I failed once and I wasn't going to fail twice."
Yang's throat tightened.
"You would've died, for me?"
"Probably."
Yang covered her face briefly before lowering her hands again.
"You're an idiot, Raven."
Raven actually smiled.
"I've been called many things. But that one, is certainly a new term."
Yang smiled slightly through fresh tears.
"I still haven't forgiven you, you know? I'm probably going to stay angry for a long time."
"I'm aware and I expect nothing less."
Yang looked at her for several long seconds.
"...But, I think I understand."
The words seemed to strike Raven harder than any spear ever could and she looked away quickly.
"...Thank you."
Neither of them noticed how much lighter the silence between them had become afterward. It wasn't forgiveness.
Some wounds required longer than miraculous Runes to heal. But for the first time, neither of them carried those wounds alone.
A distant rumbling gradually drew Yang's attention away from the conversation. She lifted her head toward the horizon where clouds of crimson dust rolled steadily across the broken moon.
Numerous figures appeared atop floating rock formations before descending across the landscape in organized formations. Unlike the scattered awakened who had survived the previous battle, these moved with more vigour and vitality.
Reinforcements.
Yang rose slowly.
At their head walked a woman whose white military coat remained immaculate despite the journey. Silver hair flowed behind her while an enormous sword rested across one shoulder.
Winter Schnee? Weiss's sister?
Yang hadn't expected to feel relief simply from seeing someone familiar.
Behind Winter marched dozens upon dozens of awakened. Rank Ones and Rank Zeros filled the center of the formation while several Rank Twos spread themselves around the flanks, naturally forming a protective perimeter as they advanced.
Then Yang spotted another familiar figure.
A young woman with long black-white hair threaded with faint white. Her frame was delicate, but she carried herself with quiet confidence while tiny motes resembling starlight drifted lazily around her body.
Recognition came almost instantly.
"...Auberyn."
She hadn't seen her since the Vytal Tournament. Back then, she was the one who had defeated Jaune and Pyrrha. A true monster that was probably stronger than all the participants in the tournament.
"The Starlight Girl."
Yang watched the approaching force and exhaled slowly. Jaune had been right. The awakened were gathering.
And somewhere beyond the endless fields of crimson stone, beneath the floating continental fragments of the broken moon...
The moon's core waited.
So did Sleepless.
And whatever awaited humanity there would decide far more than the outcome of one battle. It would decide whether all the blood spilled across this broken world had bought them one final chance... or merely delayed the inevitable.