7

This is ridiculous! Everything Yang ever knew about fighting was falling apart. When two hunters fought, be it tournament, spar or even an actual fight, it always went the same way. They exchanged blows until one's aura was broken and the loser surrendered. Now it didn't matter. Their aura wasn't used to dampen the blows but to fight for domination. Their weapon barely mattered, they clashed time and time again but neither able to score critical strike it gave way to their semblances. It was an endless cycle, Ruby would attack, she would block and let her semblance charge up just to block the next attack. Swaths of razor-sharp petals would encircle her and try to pierce her defenses. Compared to Ruby's seemingly absolute control, Yang's semblance was more of halo, she could control the intensity and slightly the direction of it's expansion. Every time the swarm would get to close she would turn up the heat and see all of it turn to ash.

This is getting me nowhere! Yang was on the backfoot. While she could incinerate everything that got too close it only highlighted the main obstacles she had to overcome whenever fighting with Ruby. Distance and visibility. Ruby was keeping her distance and hid behind a hurricane of rose petals. Yang could only get a general direction of her whereabouts only because she could feel Ruby's aura pushing against hers, thus the direction with strongest resistance would be the right one. I hope you are ready, Rubes!

I, who shall awaken

Golden dragon who devoured the flames of the sun

Soar to the edge of the world

She could feel Ruby's assault recede as her latest wave of petals ignited and exploded into a large fireball. This was her chance. If she let Ruby get away then no matter how hard she tried she would be chasing her in circles until one of them would run dry. She ignored how all the snow was slowly turning into vapor, how the ground would become slightly softer under her steps, how the branches on the trees started to smoke and little embers appearing amids needles. She took one step forward. Then second. Suddenly the very wind carried the words.

To save the men, to slay the beast

She felt that the pressure reached equilibrium once more. Among the petals she saw a glint of steel. She moved Ember Celica to block in the last second when a curved blade of a warscythe crashed into them. She could see their auras sent out ripples as now they were not only vying for dominance but directly clashing. Her sister now also looked quite differently. Instead of an awkward little girl who was afraid to hurt somebody by accident her expression was one of serenity. Her very body was a blur, like it couldn't decide whether it was human or just a mass of rose petals. Yang herself wore an excited grin. Killing nests of grimm got a bit stale after a few days but now she had someone who she could cut loose against. Ruby should smile too… "Hey sis, what's with the mood? You should enjoy it too!" Yang yelled over the chaos around them. Instead of responding, Ruby backflipped and unloaded a sniper round straight into her chest. Despite its speed, the bullet was nothing more than a somewhat fast blob of molten metal when it hit Yang. She was thoroughly unimpressed by the display and nonchalantly wiped the metal from her chest. Hah, I knew you had it in you! She saw an indignant glint in Ruby's eyes. She wouldn't let anybody make fun of her weapons! She switched back into scythe mode and took a stance. Yang could feel Ruby's aura tremble and she knew what would follow.

Be virtuous/Banish the darkness

Neither of them moved but the battlefield around them exploded with renewed vigor. A stream of petals was met with torrent of flames. On Ruby's side, the frenzied hurricane was tearing apart the ground around her and reducing trees to splinters. On Yang's side there was only fire. Trees that were before too far away to be caught up in the fighting were now being reduced to ash and the very ground she stood on was becoming an ever growing pool of magma. The sisters were staring each other in the eyes, one wanting to prove herself and the other willing to oblige a simple request. One pair blazing red and the other glowing silver. And if Yang wanted Ruby to go all out she would deliver.

Be righteous

Ruby's eyes glowed stronger, not that she herself noticed. The storm rose higher, creating a half-dome over the destroyed clearing, slowly smothering Yang's fire. But she would still meet it head on.

Usher the inf-

*Crack*

Huh, it got so cold all of a sudden… "-..ng!" Somebody is screaming… I'm so tired…

Ruby was looking at Yang, waiting if she would be able to follow up. She felt Yang's aura swell as Yang started speaking the next line. Then everything went wrong. Yang's aura didn't break, it lit up over her skin in a flash and then shattered. "Yang!" She tried to call her sister who had started falling like a puppet without strings. She immediately aborted the attack, instead she sent a cloud of her petals to gently wrap Yang. She pulled her out of the burning patch of land and took off home at the breakneck speed. When Yang collapsed, it left a vacuum inside her sphere of flames, now with neither its source nor a hurricane to stop it, it collapsed into itself and exploded with all of its pent up energy.

-BBW-

*riiiiing*

"Ugh…" Qrow woke up on a couch. He absentmindedly scanned the room, not Tai's place, and started doing his aftermath check up. He was alone, good, he didn't sleep with some random lass. He was in the clothes he was wearing when they started drinking, also good, waking up in a pink dress once was one time too many.

*riiiiing*

He rose from the couch and slowly made his way towards the table where his scroll was excessively ringing. At least Tai was in a different room or he might have needed a new one. When he saw who the caller was, Qrow already knew that hangover would be the source of only some of his headaches.

"Oz, for brothers' sake, this better be really important." He answered the video call and greeted his boss.

"Well, good morning to you too." Ozpin answered nonchalantly.

"Cut the crap Oz. You said I had to go only tomorrow."

"Things changed, I'm sending you the coordinates right now. I'll meet up with you on the ground zero."

"Ground zero? What are you talki-" the message with the location arrived and Qrow's eyes shot wide "It's on Patch? What the hell happened?"

"That's what we will need to figure out. See you there." Ozpin ended the call.

Qrow walked up to the nearest window and promptly jumped out of it. One day! Can my shitty semblance give me one day without a shitshow?!

-BBW-

He saw a crow circle around the clearing. When talking with locals he was told that the place was now almost two times larger than it was a day ago. Destruction on this scale wasn't anything new. His own fights when he was still in his prime would leave even more devastation in its wake. A maiden could do this in a few minutes. Enough Dust would also do the trick. He took a sip of coffee from a glass mug with Beacon's emblem on it. He heard the flapping of wings, then it changed into footsteps.

"Glad you could get here so soon." Ozpin greeted his former student.

"Yeah, yeah. What the hell happened here? Did Jimmy decide to test some new bomb here?"

Oz rolled his eyes, the childish animosity between the two of his most loyal followers, while not a problem, could slow them down quite a bit.

"No, I already had the ground checked for residue Dust or other explosives. Nothing." He took a sip of his coffee. "I also had registered semblances checked, only one who could throw around fire in any large amount is a dropout from Haven and should be somewhere in Anima."

"Six feet under, that's where he is." Qrow remarked. Oz curled an eyebrow at that and with a side glance asked Qrow to elaborate. "He tried to start his own group of thugs. Ran into Raven, the rest you can imagine." Oz signed tiredly over his former students' life choices. "Oz, please tell me there isn't a maiden running around the island." Qrow asked wearily as both of them started walking towards the middle of the ravaged clearing. "No, I've been here for some time and except me and you there is nothing magical in this area." They reached the middle and started to look around for details. "Also, there would have to be two of them." It was a logical conclusion. The place was essentially divided in half. "Well this is troubling." Oz remarked as he reached the center of the blast zone. The earth was still hot but at least solid. At the same time Qrow walked into the proverbial eye of the storm, all around him the ground was turned upside down and nothing larger than an inch was left. Both of them scanned their immediate surroundings and came to a conclusion.

"Damn…" Qrow took a medium sip from his flask. "They fought in close to medium range and did all of this?" He looked around, on the sides and behind him the trees were stripped of branches and some of them were even uprooted. On Ozpin's side the ground was scorched black and the forest behind him looked like it wasn't set on fire but combusted on its own.

"I can at least tell that the one who set everything on fire lost." Qrow started walking in a short arc towards Ozpin's location. "This was most likely the last strike."

Ozpin nodded, he could see it as well. "It would seem that they lost control of whatever power they were relying on, the wind one capitalised on it and dealt the finishing blow. The explosion likely occurred as a result of losing control or perhaps some last attempt to achieve victory." He concluded. He then stabbed his cane into the soil. "Yes, the ground here is burned deeply, while the explosion did only superficial damage on top of it." He then reached down and picked up a large rock from the ground. His aura flared up to protect him from burning his hand. "Qrow, is that metal in it?"

Qrow looked closely at it. "Seems like it, it's melted into it."

"Think we can get any clue what happened here?"

"Not really. With temperatures like this there won't be anything left, hell, it melted into the ground, it pretty much went back to being an ore." Not an answer he wanted but at least they wouldn't look for a dead end.

"Now. You've been on this island for some time. Was this really an out of nothing occurrence or were there any signs?" Ozpin grew more serious. He needed to know whether this was a threat to the public and more importantly if this was any scheme of his nemesis.

Qrow started thinking about it. "I don't know, the only thing that we had a bit of a problem recently is a grimm shortage. We can't find any grimm on the island for the brats to practice on."

Ozpin let out a short huff. "I wish I had your problems." He said with a smile. "Anything else?"

Qrow took a small sip from his flask. "There was a forest fire somewhere in the north but that was around a week ago." He was really grasping at the straws now.

Ozpin took one last look around and walked up to one of the local guards. "Call whoever is in charge of this around here. I need the full report on a forest fire that happened a week ago. Take as many photos here as possible and forward them to me." After a quick 'yes sir' he was off.

"Come Qrow, there is still work to be done."

-BBW-

"This is… unexpected."

"Don't tell me that… if I knew we had so many fires recently I would've looked into it."

Ozpin and Qrow were sitting over a carefully constructed map of all the incidents over the past month. Random forest fires of varied intensity in the north and supposed tornados in the middle of the forest in the south.

"Give me a second Oz, this looks familiar." Qrow pulled out his scroll and projected a different map over the one already laid out.

"And what are we looking at now?" Oz was now intrigued. Almost all the locations overlapped. This had a clear pattern.

"Known grimm nests. And I know for a fact that there was a large pack of beowolfs somewhere over here." He pointed at the map, coincidentally there was a tornado mark nearby.

This was a good development from Ozpin's standpoint. Even if the two unknown fighters fought to the death, it would still leave one individual who was very capable in both combat and stealth and had a thing for clearing out grimm en masse. Sadly this would have to wait. Qrow was his best scout and there were more important things to do than to chase after a ghost. In the meantime he would cast his own net. If they showed themselves he would know. And if they angered a certain individual with their grimm slaughter… he saw what they did, unless she decided to go personally or somehow find an expandable maiden there wasn't any way she could be a threat. "Very well, Qrow, enjoy your day off. I have already prepared your next assignment. As to this matter, we will adopt a wait'n'see approach. Whoever is doing this, they target grimm and now to keep the destruction away from the civilians." Qrow gave Ozpin a small nod and went on his merry way. He still had several hours of sleep to catch up with.

-BBW-

She was standing on top of a mountain, a small plateau to oversee the lands below. Smoke that used to plague this place had cleared out but there was still barely any light, only source being the embers scattered on the ground or hot ashes floating in the air. She was alone, except for the two small gems half buried in the ash atop the plateau. One smoky red and the other browny yellow. She knew one more should be here somewhere. Maybe she should look for it or it would find its way back on its own. Like it always did.

Yang woke up slowly. Her entire body was sore, she felt completely drained and both her hands felt numb. She remembered fighting Ruby, she was about to play her last card and then… Slowly she craned her head to the side and saw her sister kneeling over her bed and sleeping with a small frown. She tried to pat her on the head to wake her up but froze up when she saw her hand covered in bandages. "Huh?" Yang was rather confused now, she knew she probably blacked out but her hands weren't hurt when that happened. A weight shifted on her bed as Ruby sleepily stretched her arms. It took her a few seconds to properly wake up but when she did.

"Oh brothers Yang! You are awake! I was so worried! What happened?!" She shouted at Yang in rapid succession.

Yang didn't know herself but she knew one thing and with a warm smile she replied.

"I lost."