Whew, welcome back everyone to yet another chapter. As I start this, I am contemplating two things, whether or not I should make this chapter long as shit and make it a 20k long chapter for the entirety of the rest of the battle of humanity, or break it apart into two chapters. You will get to see what I mean here in a second, you would know before I do tbh.

Update: Yeah, this is going to be a long one boys and girls.

Zeldawolffang: Don't worry, they'll find a way. I think…

Oblivious IJ: Damn, I can't do anything without my work being referenced to a different show or franchise. Lol I joke of course, sometimes I don't even realize the similarities until someone pointed it out to me. Enjoy that visual novel!

Soul109: Yeah, it would be Marvel if everyone survived, and I think I am known for my willingness to kill off characters. Hopefully, eh, I'll make up for it soon enough. Maybe.

Arctech: It is funny how that works :), but hey, I think it might be because TBH isn't really in an action packed arc at the moment. It is going to get there soon, but once this story that one is probably going to become my next main focus. It's already almost caught up with AUH in terms of follows anyway Lol. I understand how you feel, I can't count how many stories I have read that never got an ending, and it especially sucks when it's one of those stories that are just amazing! That is why I swore that I would finish this story, not only for you but also for myself. Thanks for sticking around man, I appreciate your support.

Thank you all for the reviews! And those who have been PM'ing me saying how much they enjoy the story, thank you as well!

Update: Yeah, if there is a next chapter, that one is definitely going to be the last. -Genatools 20k+ words into the chapter

Update 2: Enjoy the final chapter -Genatools 43k+ words finished

Chapter 81- Oh Gosh, An Unlikely Grand Finale!

"SAAALEEEEEM!" Hector screamed as his sword lanced for her dragons heart. Salem saw this coming from literally a mile away however, and maneuvered her dragon in such a way that made him go flying over her and into one of the other dragons. That Grimm monster screamed in pain as a sword dug itself all the way to the hilt into its shoulder, and screamed again when it was ripped out, much of it's bone armour going with it. Hector looked back to Salem, but decided to finish off the dragon now that he had it wounded.

Deus swung backward as he brought it over his shoulder, firing a slash of an arc of destruction energy into the direction of another dragon. He wasn't able to see how that dragon dodge it, and prepared to cut into the wounded ones neck with the blade. However he was forced off as the dragon he was holding on to rolled in mid air, he wasn't prepared for it and lost his grip and flew off of the monster. He caught himself in mid air using his magic, and was about to launch him right back toward the creature, but a massive jaw saw fit to try to swallow him whole, and he was forced to slam his hands upward into it's slimy black mouth while pushing down with his legs with all his strength.

These creatures were incredibly strong, he noticed as he grit his teeth and pushed upward. The force of the dragons mouth slamming onto his hands created a shockwave that blew away some of the black mist that was filling the sky. With a grunt he was about to activate Kaioken, but narrowed his eyes as he saw dark purple light building up from down the creatures throat. His eyes went wide and he activated his shield just in time for the creatures violet fire breath to blow into him, luckily he had the shield up lest he would have taken a serious blow to his aura. He was however launched back into the ground like a meteor, and his shield did little to protect him from the impact force that rocked his bones and shook his brain within his skull.

He stood back up shakily, and shook his head to try and rid himself of the stars he saw in his vision. Forgetting momentarily that he was back in the middle of an ocean of Grimm. He waved Ozma's cane sword around and forced the Grimm back, still groggy from his fall but still more than strong enough to slay these creatures threatening to attack him.

A bolt of red lightning struck to his side, he covered his eyes with his left forearm to protect his eyes from the blinding light, and then rose his other forearm to protect himself as flames licked at his aura when a large explosion of fire destroyed most of the Grimm around him. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Yang beckoning him.

"Come on! We have to take down those dragons!" Yang shouted to him.

Grunting his agreement with the notion, he ran to follow her and jumped up to fly with her. Getting higher and higher he could see that the formation they made to give as much room for their soldiers has all but fallen. It was being held by only Rhea and Summer, with Natsuki helping out the bulk of the force. The dragons were the greatest threat to his army, one alone was able to bring down Beacon once the negativity got too high. Another one would have destroyed Atlas if Ruby didn't take it down. He could kill them with the Relic of Destruction, but it took a lot of energy to strike at full power. He could take a few down himself, but if more than three converged on him at the same time it may be difficult for him, any more than that and he would never be able to have the time to store up the power for the full strength attack.

"We're the only ones who can take those dragons down right now." Yang said straight after the two of them killed another one of the massive Grimm wurms that blew out of the ground.

"Where's Ruby?" Hector asked as they dove into the Grimm. They attacked from all angles, but with Ozma's cane Hector decapitated one, and let another fall into the other sword. Using that Grimm's body, he twirled and threw the Grimm into some hybrids that were sprinting at him. Crushing them with the weight of the Beowolf.

"Last time I saw her she was fighting with the others somewhere in that mess, and just in case you haven't noticed yet, Ruby can't fly!" Yang pointed out with a snarl as she stabbed an Ursa through the head with her robotic arm, and ripped it out with a sickening crunch.

"We can carry her!" Hector exclaimed as he slashed a small arc with his sword, creating another wave of energy of destruction and let it cut through and kill another few dozen Grimm. The empty space that they created was filled in almost immediately, there was just so many Grimm.

"We still have to fight Hector, especially us. We're the strongest weapons this army has, we can't handicap ourselves." Yang explained, and then pointed up to one of the dragons attacking Ironwoods fleet. They were doing their best in taking down the massive beast, but their bullets couldn't penetrate deep enough through its armour, and the beasts were too fast and mobile for their missiles to hit it directly. If they didn't go help them, some of their most needed forces would be destroyed.

"Shit!" Hector cursed as he realized that Yang was right. He or her could carry her, and Ruby could use her eyes on the dragons, but that would effectively remove the one carrying her from battle. They couldn't use their powers as much out of fear of hurting Ruby as well, who would be right on their backs.

"I believe I may be of assistance." A new voice said, attracting the attention of both Yang and Hector before they fly themselves to the aerial battle. Their attention was caught especially quickly because of where they were as well, in the middle of the Grimm where you couldn't look anywhere without being attacked or swarmed. When they saw who was with them suddenly, they understood how she was able to get there.

Penny walked toward them nonchalantly as her no longer wired swords flew about her body, cutting through any and every Grimm before they could even touch her form. She had the same smile on her face as the day he first met her. The android even saw fit to wave at them when she got close enough. Her ginger hair and metallic body was covered in Grimm blood, and she had a new look. It was easy to tell that she was an android now just by looking at her. Her eyes were more robotic, and glowed brighter, the texture of her skin was shinier and more plated, and there was an opening in her stomach where more and more swords were being 3D printed from within her body. Not only that, she also had stowed mini guns attached to her thighs, and the area where her heart should be was glowing green, like something was ready to come out. Sprouting from her back were wings like a jet, and Hector wouldn't doubt that there was some kind of thruster that would propel her through the air.

"My other father worked day and night to make me battle ready father!" Penny exclaimed giddily. "I can carry step-mother Ruby and fight at the same time, and her silver eye abilities will not be able to impede my battle capabilities!"

"You definitely look strong." Hector said, nodding his head and smiling at the android. Whatever else Polendina did, he had faith that it only made Penny stronger. "Go find Ruby, get her up there in the skies and take down those dragons by any means necessary." He ordered her.

"Yes sir!" Penny exclaimed as a thruster indeed sprouted from her back between her wings, and she took off into the sky was such grace, and made a beeline for wherever Ruby was. Considering there was bright white flashes of light coming from a certain part of the battlefield, he knew where he would also look first.

"Wow, that's convenient." Yang said with an impressed voice. "Let's go, the guys up top need some heavier firepower."

"Right behind you." Hector replied as he stared at Salem's dragon, flying overhead and specifically not entering the battle. She was trying to bait him, that much was obvious. It worked at first, but he wouldn't let himself fall for it a second time. Tearing his eyes away from the witch, he opted to have their fight later in this battle where he knew his forces would be safe. His plan to fight her safely without the risk of massive collateral damage would need to be performed perfectly, and that didn't mean for him to rush into battle with her riding a dragon, she was only slightly less powerful than he was, he wouldn't want to get outsmarted and killed. If he still had all the magic he sacrificed to save himself from the past, a battle like this wouldn't have been needed, but alas the Gods saw fit to handicap him somewhat.

Instead, he eyed the same dragon he wounded from before, it was raining black blood from it's shoulder, and the puddles of blood that landed on the ground were spawning even Grimm out of them by the dozens. That would be his first target.

Penny rolled through the air and cut a Griffon in half with her blades. They were designed to be printed with nano meters of edge sharpness. They would slice through anything and everything with little force, and yet not quite sharp enough to cut an atom in half. She wouldn't want to set off massive bombs that would take out their own forces after all. She was designed perfectly for this battle, specifically for slaying Grimm of all shapes and sizes. The Goliath that broke through the frontal line lost its tusks and soon the rest of it's limbs, and was left to bleed to death on the red soil. Approximately, this battle has lasted over three hours already. Three hours of constant fighting and death. Three hours of constant pushing from both sides push the other back.

These `Seasons Maidens` that her father injected into her memory were as powerful as they were described to be, and she was thankful that they were all on her second father's side. Before they were making ground steadily, and making progress into a forest. But they were now at a standstill and being pushed back ever so slowly because of the dragon Grimm taking the attention of most of their strongest weapons. The one who mainly wielded fire who was also previously wounded was now healed by that Jaune fellow. She was now fighting with them on the leftmost flank, where the bright white lights that must have to belong to her step-mother Ruby's silver eyes. That was where she checked first.

"Penny!?" Nora exclaimed in shock when the android cut apart a Deathstalker with her blades with ease, and allowed it's stinger to fall to the side and impale an Ursa Minor through the back, killing it instantly.

"Hello stranger Nora!" Penny exclaimed back, waving at her.

"What-? No, whatever, I won't ask." The other ginger said with a giggle. Which quickly transformed into a loud grunt as she slammed her hammer down to flatten a Grimm hybrid that nearly tackled her.

"Where is step-mother Ruby?" Penny asked as she stood there looking into her fellow ginger haired and green eyed associate. She has never had the pleasure of meeting this girl, but her facial scanners have identified her as Nora Valkyrie, a friend of step-mother Ruby.

"Step-mother? Oh gosh, Hex was serious about that?" Nora said with a snort. "Last time I saw her, she was fighting with Mercury. Over there, I think." The ginger said as she pointed to another chaotic brawl that was occurring about a hundred yards from where they were currently standing. Nora found it fascinating that she was able to stand still and take a breather, mostly because Penny's flying sword things were flying around cutting everything in half. She wished she could do that…

"Thank you for your assistance new friend Nora!" Penny said with a bright smile. "And you as well, stranger Ren, for covering us while we had this conversation.

Stranger Ren was currently on one knee with his hand on the ground, using his semblance to nullify their negative feelings. The fact that it worked on Penny as well was something that made her smile even more. The boy looked up with black and white eyes, and nodded his head.

When Penny nodded her head back, she flew off into Ruby's supposed direction. Nora looked to Ren while he was still using his semblance on her, and smiled. "I want a daughter." She said with a wink.

Ren sighed, but nodded his head. "Okay, but only after this battle is over. And if we survive."

"Yay! Thank you Renny!" Nora said as color returned to her body.

"Focus! We're in the middle of thousands of Grimm!" Ren shouted back as he unloaded his submachine guns in nearly all directions, being careful not to hit any of his allies in the process.

Penny hummed as she heard Nora's reply, but was too far to properly hear every word of what she said. As she flew lower to the ground, her swords killed and wounded Grimm within twenty feet of her body in a full spherical radius. Saves on purpose and inadvertently at the same time. Since she had the brain of a computer, she was able to think things at speeds no regular human could possibly hope too. Combine that with her dozens of swords being relatively automatic, all she really needed to focus on was finding Ruby, adjusting her flight path, and checking on her fuel every once in a while. She could absorb more power from the sun, but currently the black mist was blocking most of the light out, she had to rely on more primitive sources of power. Which was like winding herself up with every Grimm she murdered ruthlessly.

Eventually while looking overhead, she saw a red flurry of rose petals split apart into three smaller flurries, dodge around a Beringel, and appear as one Ruby Rose behind the monster. The Beringel looked back, and got a sniper bullet in its eye. Ruby backflipped off of the monster, and one silver haired boy kicked it in the snout, it's head flying back and neck shattering within it's skin and bone armour.

When Penny landed beside them, Mercury widened his eyes at her and suddenly got much more nervous. While Ruby beamed at her robotic friend and hugged her quickly. "Penny? What are you doing here?"

"Mercury Black." Penny said robotically, and in a cold voice. Her eyes were narrowed, and the silver haired young man found himself with three tips of swords pointing into both his ears and neck. He held his hands up in surrender, and gulped nervously.

"Yeah, I can see why you would do this. I do, really." Mercury said, and choked when the blade against his neck pushed deeper into his aura.

"Penny wait!" Ruby exclaimed, jumping in front of Mercury and throwing away one of the blades. The sword fixed itself in mid air, and flew to join the others tearing apart the Grimm around them. "Mercury is a good guy now, trust me!"

"Mercury Black was partly responsible for the fall of Beacon, the death of a headmaster, and is one of the most wanted men in the world. Also, you were also partly responsible for my first death." Penny said, her eyes staring through Ruby and toward the ex-assassin.

"I was pardoned!" Mercury complained. "And I definitely did say sorry, a few times." He added when even Ruby turned to look at him with a 'really?' kind of expression. "Sorry about that…"

"You were pardoned by Atlas," Penny pointed out, but when a string of memories flowed through her mind, her eyes went wide and her smile returned. The blades she had threatening him to join the others, and Penny stood with her hands in front of her. She bowed regally. "Apologies, I was not made aware that Father had called for pardoned criminals to join this battle, and you are also a pardoned criminal. Therefore you are a free man. Welcome to join this battle, and assumed to be trusted."

"Assumed… Ha." Mercury laughed a single time as he rubbed his throat, still feeling the phantom pressure of a balde pressing into his neck.

"I trust him." Ruby declared, and Mercury resisted the urge to tease her for it. Mostly because they were currently surrounded by Grimm at the moment, and definitely because she is not single and her boyfriend happens to be the guy leading this attack, so there's also that. "But that's not important now, we're all fighting here. What are you doing right now?"

Penny straightened up, turned around, and got down to one knee with her back facing Ruby, the silver eyed girl got confused and was about to question her. But the android was already on that. "I have been given an order to retrieve you, and carry you up to the dragons close enough so that you may use the power of your eyes to slay them. Father and Yang are currently fighting against them alone, and by my calculations the battleships above us will not be able to help much longer without more assistance."

"I'll do it!" Ruby said instantly. Hopping on to Penny's back and wrapped her hands around her wings and her legs around her waist. Hector and Yang were very powerful beings with their magical strength, but they were only two people, and it could be assumed that each dragon would be much stronger than the ones that they have previously encountered. More durable and faster as well. "Mercury, will you be okay on your own for now?"

"Think so." Mercury said as he let his silver aura flow visibly for a second. "I'll be fine, go slay some dragons you two."

"That's the plan- Woah!" Ruby shouted and held on tight to Penny's wings as tightly as she could. For the android burst off of her feet and into the red dark sky, leaving their former enemy behind.

"Heh," Mercury cracked his neck and then his knuckles as he slowly turned around to face the Grimm that could now make it to him, yet were still cautious just in case it was another trap. "Looks like I'm fair game again, who wants a piece of me first?" He asked the creatures. He wasn't showing it, but he was getting exhausted. Throwing kicks and punches and throwing his semblance around every which way did little to help with that. He was in great shape, but even he could lose his stamina up to the point where he burned himself out. He doubted that he would see the end of this badly purely based off of his close quarters fighting style, and it was way too late to change it now.

"Come on then!" Mercury shouted and charged the Grimm, bionic feet primed and ready to be kicked out once more.

A thick wide sword sliced one of the Creeps in two, and a flaming black and white dog pounced onto on of the hyrbids and tore away at its throat. There were two other blonde guys, and only one of them he recognized. He blinked his eyes twice and sighed as he recognized Qrow as he flicked the black blood off of his sword in his direction. "Really kid? 'Come on then!'" He mocked his voice, and Mercury rolled his eyes. "Nice last words, but I am going to have to give you a 'lil more time to think of some new ones."

"Funny, and here I thought you were too old for dry humour." Mercury snapped back.

"Ooo, got you there man." Taiyang said as he patted his partners back, each pat reeking with sympathy.

"Whatever, we've made some ground, let's make sure we don't lose it because some flying lizards decided to join the party." Qrow said as he shifted his sword back into its jagged scythe form, and just like he taught Ruby he stabbed the blade into the ground and fired large explosive bullets into the eyes of a Grimm wurm making its way toward them. Forcing it to dive back under the ground to either find a different target, or to attack from a different angle.

"If you psychopaths don't mind," Nicholas started as he sapped the life force out of a Grimm hybrid, and threw the evaporating body away to the side, his aura glowing as it was partially replenished. "I have to go find my son, I haven't seen him since the start of this battle and I'm worried."

"Go ahead, the blonde kid ain't that far, and he is fighting with some other blonde kid with a tail. Shouldn't be that hard to miss." Qrow replied without looking at him. "Go for it."

"Thanks, I'll meet back with you once I know he is safe." Nicholas said as he ran away from their little group. There were dozens of bodies around them, both human and faunus and also the still decaying bodies of Grimm that were fogging the surrounding area with their black mist.

"I don't think anywhere is safe anymore." Taiyang said once the other blonde man left. He didn't have the heart to tell him that. He was of course worried about his own daughters, but he knew that between Ruby's eyes and Yang's Spring Maiden status that both of them would be more than okay, and just have to be doing better than he is anyway.

"Yeah, well, it's our job to make it safe." Qrow said adamantly. "So let's make sure we at least get this green kid through this shit mess."

"Green kid? Whatever old man, talk that shit after you killed your own dad."

"Can't, Raven beat me to that one a long time ago."

"I can't believe that I am not only used to this kind of talk, but I am also glad that both of your fathers are dead." Taiyang sighed. "I'm getting too old for this."

"Kaioken times ten!" Hector screamed as he shoulder charged into the chest of the wounded dragon he inadvertently attacked earlier. He felt the creatures bone armour crack and flake off when he hit it, and pulled back before a breath of purple fire could melt his aura down any further than it is already. Ozma was already on that, using what remained of his powers to heal restore his aura, and alongside him Creare and Amphelia, since they are not nearly contributing as much to this battle as Deus was, and the latter needed to use his powers the most out of all of them.

He prepared to kill the dragon as it reared back and pulled back it's head, one of its wings were flapping slowly than the other, and with the weak spot he created the battleships could take this one down without him. But he couldn't wait any longer, already a few of the larger battleships were taken down and destroyed. It crashed into a few hundred Grimm and crushed them and blew them up when it exploded, but it is worth a lot more than a suicide bomber in the sky bombarding them from above. But before he could finish it off yet another dragon, this one much bigger with much stronger hide breathed it's fire on him, he created a shield around his body and held it back, but it was a waste of time and energy. Luckily Yang came from below and uppercut the monster, slamming it's mouth shut and destroying some of it's sharp jagged teeth.

"I got this, finish the small one off!" The Spring Maiden shouted to him as she blew a blast of red lightning mixed with orange flames into the body of the much larger beast. They disappeared into the black fog before he could respond, but he could see still see the light show that was Yang using her powers against the creature in the darkness.

He thanked her silently for giving him the opening he needed, and pointed his sword toward the creature. He didn't even need to use the relics powers for this one, and this particular dragon seemed to be weaker than all the rest. It's sole priority seemed to just be spawning more Grimm as it was getting killed. Which was why he intended to take this pale grey one down first before any of its kin came to save it.

The dragon flew away from him, turned around in a wide arc, and then proceeded to start flying straight for him at mach speeds. A white barrier appeared around the creatures head and body, showing how it was breaking the sound barrier just by going as fast as it was. He gritted his teeth and went to meet it, at Kaioken times ten, it would be more than enough to finish the creature off. It seemed like he didn't have to however, since one of the naval battleships from far below managed to land a direct hit even as it went as fast as it did. Either by accident or on purpose, Hector was relieved that he didn't actually have to meet the damn thing, no matter how strong he was, he could still feel pain.

His relief was short lived. His suspicions about why this dragon was weaker than all the others were answered when the Grimm suddenly burst black blood, and this black blood spilled so wide and was carried by the wind. Hector watched with shock as the blood broke apart and became large droplets the size of people. Some landed on people and literally melted them down, some landed on Grimm and made them strong, some hit nothing and simply spawned more Grimm. Natsuki and Summer's jobs became much harder when they now had to destroy the droplets in the air along with taking care of the Grimm attacking their soldiers.

With a snarl, Hector put away Ozma's cane and then grabbed the Relic of Creation with that now free hand. "Don't let the droplets touch the ground." He demanded the relic while pointing it toward the battlefield. Just as he demanded, a massive bowl shaped barrier made of yellow colored Light magic formed above all of the human forces. It caught most of the droplets and prevented them from touching the ground just as he intended for it to.

Next, he pointed Deus toward the barrier and made to swing at it, but as he pulled his arm back another dragon the same size as the one Yang was fighting bit down on his arm. He screamed in pain but kept a tight grip on both his sword and let the staff float along beside him as he tried to pry the monsters mouth open with his bare hands. He felt the teeth of the monster dig into his aura, almost forcing its way through. Hector groaned in pain and activated Deus' power from within the creatures mouth.

The red eyed dragon screeched in pain as it's tongue began to dissipate away in a heap of purple destructive energy, and Hector rubbed his shoulder where his arm was caught. It was in pain, and it was lightly bleeding. It's razor sharp teeth managed to just graze him enough to cut his clothing and bite into his skin, puncturing it. He rolled it a few times, and let his aura do the work of healing the wound. He didn't have time to worry about it, he had to destroy that Grimm blood he captured with the Relic of Creation as fast as he could.

This time a spear nearly stabbed through his body. He sensed it coming and was forced to dodge. Looking around, he could barely see through the thick black fog that filled the red sky. But he recognized the malignant Dark magic that Salem uses. He dodged another one, and deflected the next, each spear faster than the one before, and in random unpredictable patterns. He created his shield to block the next five, but each of them embedded themselves into the magic energy and nearly stabbed him anyway. With a roar, he let his power rise and he blew away the rest of in Kaioken times thirty, his aura shone red mixed with purple. On the border of being turned to blue if he went any higher.

Salem wasn't going to make this easy for him, her dragon suddenly burst through the black fog and breathed fire at him. He dodged to the right and countered with a slash of his sword that shockingly bounced off of the creatures hide and ricocheted into the ground, thankfully not toward his forces, and sadly not even to the Grimm for that matter. But the fact that the energy of destruction bounced off of her dragon told him that he might have to get a little up close and personal to be able to damage it seriously.

The moment he started going after the witch however, she threw another spear at him to force him to dodge and then disappeared into the black fog. Impossible to be seen through the black.

"Dammit, she's just toying with me at this point." Hector said as he looked around for any other signs of life, mainly Yang since she would be the only other person up here other than himself and maybe Penny if she managed to find Ruby yet.

"Every time you try to destroy the Grimm blood from the dragon, she will intervene. She is playing this fight cunningly obnoxious. She will wait for you to tire yourself out before fighting you, where her resulting victory is more assured. I would assume that she is riding the dragon in the first place just to save as much energy as possible just for you and the maidens." Creare explained.

"Might I suggest using full power? Destruction is the answer to many kinds of problems." Deus added.

"No," Hector answered right away. "Sure, I might be able to get a full power attack off with you Deus, but it would do more than destroy the Grimm blood, it would also destroy the barrier, and those underneath, and even the ships in the water that certainly have enough things to worry about and do not need to try to dodge the attack."

"Of course, the lives of the humans are important to. I suppose I should remember that for now." The fact that the Relic of Destruction said `suppose` and `for now` should have risen a few red flags for him, but right now there were more important things to address. He was in the middle of a dark fog that was nearly impossible to see through, and there were eleven more known dragons to kill, as well as Salem. He and Yang had their hands full as it is.

"How long can that barrier hold up?" Hector asked Creare as he kept an eye on the barrier, as well as the area around him wherever his eyes could stretch their limit too. His senses were focused and sharpened, Salem wouldn't surprise attack him again. He wouldn't allow it.

"With no more of my magic to support it… a few minutes, perhaps." Creare estimated. "I would not hope for it to be any longer."

"Yeah, I wouldn't anyway." Hector agreed. "We have to find some way to distract Salem-"

The sound of a dragon breathing fire exploded into his eardrums, he turned around and stared on in horror as one of the stronger dragons made a pass over his forces, burning the ground and any who were standing in the path of the flames. When the initial explosion of purple flames died down, people burning to death, charred bodies and skeletons were all that were left behind. Hundreds of people, dead, just like that. Hector flew toward the dragon in a rage, but a spear caught him in the shirt, cutting through his shirt and being deflected by his aura. He cursed and smacked away the following spear, and put up a shield to block the next three. Salem flew closer than ever before and he was forced to blow back the dragon with a magical bast out of his left hand. The dragon screeched in pain as the red and blue vapor seared against its bone armour, and threatened to melt through it. However, Salem reached down with her hand, and fueled the dragon with her own dark magic, healing it's wound.

Hector almost went after her as she disappeared into the dark black fog again, but stopped as he remembered the people burning alive beneath his very feed. Damn the dragons, he couldn't let them burn his people to death on his watch.

To his horror, before he could get to them the same violet colored dragon made another pass, killing and burning those who were unfortunate enough to get caught in its path. However, halfway through a massive blue bolt of lightning pushed back against the flames. The blue lightning overpowered the flames and forced itself down its throat. The dragon screeched and threw up blood, but flew higher into the air.

"Not so fast you lizard shit!" Natsuki's scream was so loud even he could hear it. "You wanna burn people alive? Try someone you own level!"

Hector agreed with the Summer Maiden all the way, and was relieved to see Summer flying through the path of flames that the Dragon made and freezing it to non existence. She also created small flurries of clouds that put out the flames on the people who were still alive and on fire. There auras would be out, but they would still be alive.

Not long enough to get away from the Grimm, Hector quickly realized. Without a second thought, he grabbed the Relic of Creation and pointed it toward the people that were suffering from their burn wounds, he thought he could see Jaune healing one of them down there somewhere as well. Then once again refreshed the auras of hundreds of people. It drained him ever so slightly, but at least they would live a little longer, and hopefully long enough to be pulled back to the bunkers that were slowly being rolled up the beach by massive wheels and Atlesian technology.

Then, just to be safe, he pointed the staff above him and poured more magic into the barrier. Restarting whatever timer Creare told him about, and giving him more time to deal with the Grimm that immediately needed to be dealt with.

"Hector!" A distant voice called out to him, but one quickly getting closer and familiar. He turned his neck so fast it nearly snapped when he recognized the voice as Ruby, and another voice calling out to him, that one being Penny. He watched as the android flew up to him within seconds, and hovered there before him.

"I've got the silver eyed warrior father!" Penny reported eagerly.

"What do you need me to do first?" Ruby asked, holding on for dear life to Penny's back plane like wings.

He was about to say to slay some of the dragons, like he told Penny to make her do. But the android came to him first for a reason, and the fact that there was pretty much a giant yellow magical bowl filled with Grimm blood probably explained that. He looked to Ruby, and then to the Grimm blood, and suddenly had a hunch. It might work, it might not, but the rewards outweigh the risks by far.

"See this big bowl of Grimm blood?" Hector asked and pointed up to the sky toward the obvious object. When Ruby and Penny nodded their heads, he continued. "Try to see if you can use your eyes to destroy it, I keep trying to, but Salem keeps interfering."

"What's stopping her from attacking me while I give it a try?" Ruby asked.

"I am." Hector declared. "I am strong enough to block her attacks now, and they can't hurt me. I will be your shield as we do this." He explained.

"I don't know if my eyes work like that though!" Ruby shouted back over the lightning bolts of Natsuki chasing after the same dragon.

"We will never know unless you try!" Hector shouted back. "We're running out of time, and this blood is toxic. If it lands on any people down there it will kill them, so give it a try. If it doesn't work, we'll figure something out."

"I agree with Father Rivers' suggestion." Penny said. "My calculations state that the Grimm blood is still Grimm, and your eyes are the natural enemy to all types of Grimm. You should be able to get rid of it in its entirety within a single activation, and it should be especially easy since there is no skin, bone, and flesh to get in the way of your light. It is simply Grimm blood, and Grimm blood is meant to evaporate."

Ruby thought on it for a few seconds, and then smiled. Determined. "Okay, I'll do it!" She exclaimed.

Hector smiled, but it was short lived. He clapped his hands together and then wrenched them away from one another. A blue bubble shield expanded out of his hands and surrounded Penny and Ruby. When Penny nodded her head at him, that was his cue to follow the android on a flight path around the barrier to the top of it. True to her earlier analysis, the Grimm blood was already evaporating like any dead Grimm would, there was just so much of it that it would have taken ages for the entire bowl of it to evaporate harmlessly into the air. Once they reached the top of it, Hector saw a spear aiming for Ruby's back. He used a burst of Kaioken enhanced speed to catch it, and threw it back in the same direction it came. After a few seconds, three more came right back at him. Hector snarled and deflected each of the spears. None of them were aimed to him, but to his lover and android (apparent) stepdaughter. Some of them even moved in irrational patterns that would have been impossible for any real javelins. He kicked and punched each of them away, sheathing Deus so he had more hands to use to redirect them away from Penny and Ruby.

Ruby looked behind her and winced every time Hector deflected a spear with the back of his hand. He moved impossibly fast, almost too fast for even herself to keep up with. Every time he stopped one spear or parried it, another one lanced for her spine, and even though she had a barrier to protect her Hector didn't let a single one ever get that close. Forcing herself to look away and calm her rapidly beating heart, she took a deep breath as Penny used her swords to follow each other so fast in a circle that it blew away most of the black smoke that would have suffocated her. She let out her held breath and took in a new one as Penny blew over the Grimm blood. The stench was horrendous and made her want to throw up, but she pushed through, she couldn't afford passing out at a time like this.

"Now would be the opportune time stepmother Ruby!" Penny shouted with an amplified voice as she hovered over the middle of the Grimm blood.

Here goes nothing… Ruby thought as she looked over Penny's body, and toward the entire massive yellow energy bowl filled with Grimm blood. She closed her eyes and thought about happy things, about her family, Yang, Qrow, Taiyang, Summer, and now Hector and even his stepdaughter(s). Then about her friends, about Jaune who was her first ever friend at Beacon, about Weiss who was and still is her partner. The mysterious girl with a bow that she found incredibly fascinating. Then there was Ren and Nora, and then Pyrrha, and all those who lost their lives in the battle of Beacon, and then about everything that was at stake. All of humanity would be wiped out a second time if they lost this battle, all that they did would just be erased and reduced to atoms. Like they never existed at all.

She couldn't allow it — Wouldn't allow it. She would not let everything be for nothing, and even if she was the last silver eyed warrior in the world she would do everything in her power to help win this battle. And if that meant burning a way a giant bowl filled literally with the blood of her enemies, then so be it.

"HAAAAHHHHH!" Ruby screamed as her eyes opened again, and a massive wave of white light flowed out of her eyes. They were so bright that her eyes looked like a pair of sun's through the black fog that filled the sky. The Grimm blood burned away, bubble and burst. Evaporating into black vapor which even that was burned away into molecules. She kept her eyes going for seconds, which felt like minutes to her. She only stopped when she could see the ground again, and then burned her eyes even brighter!

"AAAAHHHH!" She screeched as her eyes began to hurt, but she spotted one of the dragons getting closer to her and Penny and Hector, and wouldn't allow it to get any closer. The beast suddenly screeched in fear and tried to turn back, but light was much faster than it was. Part of the creatures lower body was turned into stone, and it fell to the ground where the stone part of its body cracked and broke off. It's inner organs spilled out of its body, and it writhed in pain as the soldiers underneath her rushed to finish it off.

That was another dragon down, Ruby counted. Ten more to go if what Penny told her was true about their quantity. She shut her eyes and deactivated them, and when she tried to open them again her vision darkened and she very nearly did pass out from the activation.

"Oh!" She shouted as she suddenly felt energetic, if only a sharp pain in her left thigh. Looking down at it, she noticed how Penny had stabbed some kind of shot into her leg, only to then immediately pull it out and immediately threw it away.

"I have given you an enhanced aura booster, you shall not pass out on my watch!" Penny said to her and gave her a thumbs up. Ruby laughed weakly and gave one back. Her eyes were sore and her head was pounding, but she did what she needed to do.

"You did it!" Hector exclaimed as he reappeared before them, immediately noticing how tired she was. "Take a breather for a few minutes, your eyes sure did a number on them. Even some of the fog was burned away, and now everyone can fight better and with less stress. You did great."

"Thanks." Ruby said sheepishly. Leave it to her to somehow feel embarrassed at a time like this, as much as Hector found it cute, he was too battle hardened at the moment to think about it for more than half a second.

"Be careful, visibility may be better, but the Grimm are still strong in the millions while we must be under a single million ourselves by now. This battle isn't over by a longshot." Hector shook his head. "Get some rest, I got some work to do."

"Be careful…" Ruby muttered weakly as he flew off toward another one of the dragons. She was worried about him, he didn't even seem to notice it himself, but he was hurt. He may be powerful, but he wasn't invulnerable. He can bleed, and if he can bleed he can be killed. He didn't show it, but he was getting tired too.

As Penny brought her closer back down to the ground, she had a lot to think about all the while. This battle started out okay, but so many people were dying already. Any one of them can be one of her friends, and she dreaded to hear the news while in the midst of battle.

"Behind you!" Weiss shouted to her feline teammate as a Grimm hybrid lunged for her from behind. The faunus used her semblance to leave a clone behind, and the Grimm grabbed onto nothing, the next thing it knew it had a blade sticking out of its chest from behind. Blake slid Gambol Shroud out of its body, but not after leaving a gift in the form of an unstable fire dust crystal jammed into the back of its body. The dying hybrid screamed inhumanly as it was kicked into a group of the same kind of Grimm, and a small explosion took place. Vaporizing the Grimm on the spot.

Weiss sighed in relief, and pushed herself up with the help of her weapon, Myrtenaster. She has used up the vast majority of her aura to summon her Atlesian Knights and previously slain Grimm, and buffing her nearby allies with power and speed and time dilation. Now she was on her last legs, but still in the fight, just without the use of her semblance. Blake rushed back to her and pressed her back against hers. They stood side by side, surrounded by Grimm of all types slowly moving in on them.

"We got separated from the others." Blake said with a deep raspy breath.

Ever since the dragons started attacking, formations were a thing of the past. Most people were just trying to stay out of the way of the path of flames that would have burned them to death, and Blake and Weiss were two of them. They were unfortunate enough to be in the path of the first of the dragons passes, and were forced away from the main force of their allied army and into the mass of Grimm surrounding them. Things were not looking good, and those who noticed them and tried to help were sadly killed, or just gave up on them. While Weiss would have been upset by that, she was too focused on killing any Grimm that took a step forward to care.

"Is… is this it?" Blake asked, wiping sweat from her face as she looked around to the Grimm slowly enclosing them in a tighter and tighter circle. The silent question she did not ask was if they were going to die now, like this, being torn apart by Grimm. The very thing they trained to destroy.

"I… hope not." Weiss replied, her eyes were shaky and her hands shakier. She could barely stand as it is, and her aura was flickering and would shatter in the next hit. If they weren't saved now… they would die. "I suppose I should apologize…"

Blake snorted, despite their current situation. "What for?"

"For how I treated you in the beginning, It must have been hard for you… I never really did say sorry, did I?" Weiss asked.

"It doesn't matter now, we are the best of friends and nothing is ever going to change that." To her comfort, Blake reached behind herself with her free hand and grabbed hers, squeezing it. Weiss squeezed it back. "If anything, I should apologize for nearly getting myself and Sun killed like that. It was foolish."

"It was…" Weiss sniggered. "But I am sorry, for how I acted back then."

"You have already been forgiven." Blake easily said, and reluctantly drew her hand back. She grabbed Gambol Shroud with both hands, and detached the thick cleaver from the short curved blade part. She ran out of ammo a long time ago, and she couldn't afford to use her semblance with the small amount of aura she had now.

Weiss and Blake tensed up as the Grimm snarled at them, and clawed at them. They swung and stabbed their weapons out and screamed their defiance as they fought the Grimm the best that they could, and to their credit, they did just for a decently long time. Until Weiss' aura finally gave out, and she was forced to use her natural strength to desperately hold back the Beowolf from tearing out her throat with its teeth. Blake flipped and dodged away from the ones attacking her, but she was running out of space quickly. Eventually, she was brought down as well. Blocking as much of her body as she could with her arms as she was knocked down and piled on by a dozen Grimm hybrids, and even more trying to force themselves on top of her.

They were so close to death that they didn't even realize that the Grimm started to be fired upon. Weiss's sword was wrenched out of her hands and thrown to the side, but just as the creature was about to tear into her throat, the tip of a halberd stabbed into the side of its head, spilling Grimm blood onto her face and into her mouth. She coughed and hacked, but still wondered who her savior was.

She cracked one icy blue and red eye to see a head of blue hair, shocked to see Neptune of all people, she was more fearful for his own health. He seemed to have been caught in the dragons last attack, and half of his clothes were burned off, and his skin singed with red, pink and a horrible brown disfigured color.

"Hey Snow Angel, having a tough time keeping up?" The boy she went to the dance with years ago asked her, looking at her with that same dashing smile she once thought was so very attractive. Now his teeth were bloody, and his eyes were red with tears and spilled blood. His blue hair was partly burned away on one side. He was in bad shape, and only able to wield his weapon with one hand, but he was still standing in her defense.

"N-neptune!?" She called out to him.

"Don't forget about me now!" Another boy shouted, this one she recognized immediately as Sun. She was helped up by Neptune, and turned to see Sun's condition. He was in a sorry state, with his shirt being completely burned off and some minor burns here and there, but he was in much better shape than his partner.

"Saw that you girls needed some help, so we came to rescue you damsels." The monkey faunus said as he gave them a thumbs up as he twirled and fired his staff-slash-shotgun toward the Grimm that dared to attack him and Blake. Blake! She was okay, thank the Gods. Her aura was on the border of breaking, and her jacket was torn to shreds and she was bleeding from minor wounds, but she was still alive, which was all that mattered.

"H-how did you get to us?" Blake asked as she caught her breath.

"Had some help." Sun said as he gestured toward a blonde Huntsman, and another blonde Huntsman who looked much like the former. Not only them, but Ren and Nora were there as well, all fighting through the Grimm to keep them away from them all.

"Those guys..." Blake said with a relieved laugh. "Figures it'd be them, I should have known right away."

"You have some dedicated friends." Sun said as he helped her up with one of his golden clones.

"Don't you have two more teammates?" Weiss asked, and looked around for the one with red hair, and the dark skinned one she saw at the dance.

"Yeah…"

"Where are they?" Weiss wished that she didn't ask.

"The dragon… it…" Sun shook his head and shut his eyes tight. It was clear that he was holding back emotions, and Weiss felt terrible for prying with such a question, and cursed herself for not taking into account that the rest of Sun and Neptune's team might have not been as lucky as they were.

"I'm so sorry-"

"Don't." Sun snapped at her, tears falling down his cheeks. The ones that he couldn't hold back. "We'll get through this, for them, right Nep?"

"Yeah." Neptune said, and twirled his staff with one hand and propped it on top of his left shoulder. "We'll win this battle, for them."

"For Scarlet and Sage." Sun agreed.

Jaune, Ren, Nora, and Nicholas all caught up with them soon after, and right after Jaune did what he could to bring Blakes and Weiss' aura levels back to a healthy state, they moved as a group back to the main force where they were guarded by other Huntsman and Huntresses until they were safe back behind the front lines. Neptune collapsed soon thereafter, and Sun Wukong went down to one knee to catch his breath, and not a second too early. Weiss and Blake were lucky to be alive, and only their friends to thank that they might now just be able to see through this battle all the way through.

"Something else is attacking us!" One of the other Huntsman screamed over her thoughts, and Weiss stood up shakily and forced her partially replenished aura to flow through her body and rejuvenate some of her stamina. It seemed like she was going to have to fight again after only a few short minutes of well needed rest. But she would repay the debt she owed to Neptune and defend him with her life, just as he did for her.

"That's not a `something`." Nicholas said with narrowed eyes as he caught sight of a robotic scorpion tail stabbing into an unknowing Hunter, the venom coursed through his veins quickly, and while weakened the Ursa he was fighting overwhelmed him and pinned him down. He made himself look away so he didn't have to watch as the Grimm tore his head off easily.

"It's Tyrian Callows." Jaune said and held up his shield. "I've seen his venom work before, it's not pretty."

"Tyrian Callows?" Nicholas asked.

"He's a faunus man, very powerful and quick on his feet, he works with Salem. He beat us all and Qrow Branwen all by himself. We were only able to force him to retreat once Ruby cut off his tail." Ren quickly explained to his best friend's father.

"I see…" Nicholas said, and looked back to the younger Huntsman that were with him. Most of them were tired or injured or both, and some of them were already beaten by this man before. "I'll deal with him myself." He said as he pointed his sword toward the cackling and hysterical faunus. The bastard was having fun killing people left and right, and since most of the world didn't know his face, or how dangerous he was. They assumed him to be on their side, which proved to me a grave mistake since he slaughtered all those who had their backs turned to him.

"We can take him together." Jaune declared, joining up at his side. Before his father could deny him that, he cut him off. "We are stronger now, and we have better teamwork. He can't beat us all, and I won't stand by and let you fight him all by yourself."

"Right!" Nora exclaimed, and joined in by his side. Ren followed suit, and Nicholas found himself with precious little time to reply as the faunus bastard looked at them with violet eyes.

"Oooh! You three again! Oh, how I can't wait to finish what I started!" The faunus screamed maniacally and charged at them.

"Fine, be careful." Nicholas said with gritted teeth, and rushed up to meet the crazed man.

Jaune and his teammates looked to each other, and nodded. "Will you all be okay for now?" The leader asked Sun.

"We should be, we have other people looking after us too." Sun said with a nod. "I don't know who that guy is, but make sure he doesn't kill any more people. We need every soul as it is."

"I promise, this is his last battle." Jaune said with a determined nod.

"Team JNPR!" Jaune shouted, Ren and Nora narrowing their eyes toward the scorpion faunus as he clashed blades with Nicholas Arc. "Let's kill the son of a bitch."

"Now that is an order I can get behind!" Nora exclaimed as she and her teammates charged into battle.

Natsuki roared as her body crackled with electricity. She lost the dragon somewhere in the darkness, and was now back in the main battle on the frontlines. She felt like she has killed thousands of Grimm all by herself, and to her credit she probably did already reach the quadruple digits, or perhaps even the quintuple digits. Moving at light speed provided with more than enough quickness to dispatch Grimm from every front, while at the same time being sure to not hit her own allies. She has practiced this power for long enough, and it felt good to finally be able to release it.

The Summer Maiden spun around and fired another bolt of lightning into one of those ugly disgusting slimy crab types of Grimm. The magic easily pierced it's armour and killed the thing instantly, just as she knew it would. She kept her eyes on the skies and kept searching for any signs of flapping winds. But the winds were so strong that even if the wings of the dragon was displacing the black mist to give away it's own position, it wouldn't be enough to reveal itself to her. At least not in an obvious way.

She looked up into the sky where she was able to see the aerial battleships once before, but was disappointed to see how it was still nearly impossible to see the shape of them. She wanted so badly to go up there and take down some of those dragons herself, but she knew that she was needed here. Their army would get swamped without her electrical maiden powers, and she has already saved hundred by flying around killing shit left and right.

"Do they even end?" She wondered as she looked toward the massive Grimm army that kept scrambling toward them. Over a million of them must have been killed by now, perhaps more. She wouldn't doubt it, but a lot of Grimm have to be killed in order for the sun to be blocked out like it is. They were making ground, but now they have made too much ground, if such a thing was possible. She looked toward where the beach used to be, only for it to be shrouded by a mixture of black and red mist too thick to see through.

And dammit, she was getting tired. Not so much so that she couldn't move at full speed, but enough that it pissed her off without end. Looking back to the immediate battlefield, she wondered how long this battle would last, because it didn't seem like they were ever going to get a break in the action. The Grimm didn't need to rest, or eat, or sleep, or drink water to keep themselves hydrated, and there's millions of them. This battle would start and wouldn't have an end until the Grimm are defeated, or they are. Though, they all knew that already. Once Salem is defeated, the Grimm should follow suit quickly. Without someone gathering and leading them, they should grow confused and much easier to take down without a fight. Which was another reason why she desperately wanted to attack Salem as she was flying around on the back of a damn dragon. She held herself back, however, she knew her place was here. The Winter and Fall Maidens couldn't protect this army all by themselves. There was simply too many Grimm attacking from all different sides-

There! She spotted a drop of black blood that splashed on the ground harmlessly, a Grimm started to spawn out of it but was immediately murdered by Huntsman the moment it reared its ugly head. That blood came from the sky, and unless it came from one of the other nine dragons it belonged to the one she wounded earlier. The Grimm must have healed somehow. Her lightning crackled so violently that it even shot from her eyes like some superhero in a comic book, and it traced along the ground at lightning speeds. She prepared herself to attack the creature the moment it opened its mouth and spat it's fiery breath.

She saw the glowing tongue of the Grimm dragon as the purple fire breath traveled up its throat, and she went full speed toward the monster and slammed its mouth shut with a quick bolt of lightning, breaking some of its teeth and forcing the flame out through its nose. The fire breath burned it's own nose, and the dragon groaned loudly in pain and try to throw her off of it's snout.

She kept a tight grip however, she dug the tips of her fingers into the creatures bone armour, and held on as tightly as she could while coursing her electric power into the dragon. The monster pointed it's head up, and it flew straight into the sky, Natsuki still held on and roared back at the creature even as they flew up above the clouds. That was the dragons mistake, she was the Summer Maiden, and there was no better source of thunder and lightning than from the clouds themselves. All around them, discolored grey clouds formed up around them, all of them crackling with electricity. All the way up here, her allies wouldn't be caught up in a full power attack. So she took this opportunity and grabbed it by its metaphorical balls, and within seconds her entire body was just a mass of lightning.

Natsuki dug her fingers even deeper into the dragon's snout, and wrenched the dragons mouth open herself. The creature of darkness immediately blew its fire breath at her, engulfing her almost completely in a dark blast of purple fire. Natsuki took the brunt of it without even flinching, at full power and charged up by the forces of nature the dragon no longer stood a chance.

"Here, have a taste of your own medicine!" The Summer Maiden screamed as she opened her mouth as wide as she could, and spat out a pure beam of blue lightning that overpowered the breath of flames in an instant. The beam of lightning traveled into and throughout the entire dragons body, and the entire monster shook as it was electrified with millions of volts of lightning. The skin bubbled and burst, and the bone armour cracked and shriveled, until eventually the entire body of the dragon exploded in a mess of black blood and organs. Natsuki held it's still intact head, even if it was missing a few of its eyes, and threw it at one of the Nevermore she wasn't even looking at.

"Gotcha, you lizard shit." She said with a wide ear to ear grin, and waved around her own reptilian tail. Her slitted eyes went wide with excitement at the accomplishment of slaying a dragon in such a way. She wished there was some of those things in Vacuo, so she could do the same thing to them and have a ton of fun while doing it.

She let herself dive back through the clouds and toward the army, she was gone for far too long already. But at least there was one less dragon to worry about now. There were nine left from what she was counting, which was nine too many. Rivers and that blonde maiden were still doing what they could, and soon that number may very well go down to eight or less. But now they could never say that she didn't participate in taking them down.

"Was that you?" The maiden with the white cloak asked when she returned to the ground.

"Yup, got rid of one of the dragons that was burning our people. Did ya' see a light show or something?"

"Light show? The whole sky practically blew up!" Summer exclaimed. "Good job, that's' nine to go I think, Hector took one down already, and my daughter killed one herself. Be ready for more though-"

"I know, I know. Sheesh, got away from one old person pestering me only to get hounded by another." Natsuki complained.

Summer slowly turned to look her in the eyes. "Wanna run that by me again?"

"Nope," Natsuki popped the `P` to emphasize how much did cared at that moment. She looked around and specifically chose not to look in the Winter Maidens general direction, and then saw a familiar freckled girl somewhere in the chaos. "Oh look, Chameleon girl! I'll catch up with you later Winter Summer girl, I got some more Grimm to kill and a faunus girl that kept following me around in Vacuo to keep alive."

"Sure…" Summer said as she watched her fellow Maiden disappear in the chaos. "Go right ahead, don't let me keep you."

Summer ignored and forgot what the Summer Maiden said to her almost immediately after she left. Times for amusing jokes and quips were sometimes needed in a battle like this, where you couldn't look anywhere and not see someone dying. Even the Huntsman started to fall here and there, and the soldiers that relied on guns and ranged weapons were overwhelmed by Grimm once they got too close and there was no one to protect them. She sighed and shook her head, getting rid of those nasty images from her mind. Instead she thought about her daughter, and what she was doing and if she was still okay. Obviously, she still was, since only minutes earlier she saw the unmistakable light of the silver eyes burst from the sky, destroying the Grimm blood that almost fell on the whole army, as well as mortally wounding one of the dragons.

The last time she caught a glimpse of her daughter however was when she was riding on the back of that ginger haired android that she told her about before. So she was still okay as far as she knew. Strangely enough she trusted that android girl to make sure that her daughter doesn't get hurt, partly because she was referred to as `Grandma` by the mechanical girl.

She wished that she still had both of her silver eyes still, Salem stole one of them from her the last time they battled. She never knew that she actually needed both eyes in order for them to still work they way they did before. She tried and failed so many times to activate her powers with just that one eye of hers, but it never worked. She always ended up just making herself exhausted, and the most she got was barely a flicker. Summer gave up a long time ago, her time with silver eyed powers was over, and it was time for the next generation to take hold. She only wished that her daughter wasn't the only other silver eyed warrior still alive. There was only one other silver eyed warrior that she met a long time ago on a mission, he refused to tell her his name and she could only refer to him as `Mal`, and unfortunately he gave his life in protecting his family. She never checked if said family also had silver eyes, but it wasn't her place to go and reveal them to Ozpin, not after what Rivers had told her about him in the past.

A hailstorm with spears of ice stabbed into the back of a charging Goliath as she thought about this, she kept on fighting every moment of her train of thought. She couldn't afford to stop. The massive creature screeched out of its long trunk of a nose, and fell to its side and died once the Atlesian droids opened fire into its underbelly. Nodding at the scene, she turned and looked over the entire battlefield as a whole.

It was utter chaos, as one could expect. People and droids were fighting and dying against Grimm all around her. There were so many dead Grimm that the surrounding area was clouded with the black mist of their dead decaying bodies, and you almost couldn't step anywhere without having to step over the dead body of one of your allies. She would have taken a battle against Hell any day over this madness. If only Salem had just surrendered, all of this could have been prevented.

Alas, an ending like that would have been too idealistic to realistically hope could happen. This battle started bloody, and it was going to end bloody. There was no avoiding it. She only hoped that the battle wouldn't drag on longer than it should.

Salem smiled down at the chaos as she flew overhead on the dragon she specifically made for herself. People were dying left, right, and center. It was beautiful, she hasn't seen such an amount of death since the kingdoms of old marched on her all those years ago. She supposed that she should thank Hector Rivers for providing her with such a sight.

Just as she planned, she was letting her dragons cause whatever chaos they could as quickly as they could. The battleships in the sky were next to nothing compared to her grown creatures. The Spring Maiden and that fool of a man was causing her more trouble than she would have hoped, but the result was being achieved all the same. Even though she has already lost three of them, one to the humans, another to silver eyes, and the last to the Summer Maiden. Just as she expected, as much as she would have loved to create a Grimm strong enough to defeat maidens, it was simply impossible with the amount of time she had to create these Grimm. Though she did manage to make most of them much stronger than the ones naturally born hundreds of years before that she kept in hibernation until the time came to awaken them. Sadly, they only proved to show that they weren't strong enough to achieve what she wanted. Now, they could destroy armies by themselves.

She knew that she would have to fight Hector herself soon, but not so soon. Not when she had the advantage of numbers to tire him before he could even get to her. She would have had Watts create another dark version of him, but after the issue that went on with Hell and his problem with the memories that weren't his, and the soul he would require to become strong enough to even face his counterpart, there was simply no reason to create another Hell. Arthur instead focused on augmenting Hazel and Tyrian to make them stronger, especially since the former lost his limbs and had a lot of internal damage after the battle in the snowy wastelands of Atlas. After Arthur Watts served his purpose, he no longer had one. Soon after, she no longer saw a reason to keep the excommunicated scientist around. He fulfilled his purpose, and win or lose, there was no place for him in the world she aimed to create in the possibility that she won this battle. He was lucky enough that she did find one last thing to use him for though.

And so, Arthur Watts was now one of the thousands of hybrids that snarled and clawed and bit at her enemies. He was right to beg for his life like he did, she would have him serve her until the moment of his death, just as he would have desired.

Sadly, part of her plan was no longer possible since that young silver eyed girl destroyed the Grimm blood of the dragon that she wanted to spill all over the battlefield. She created that one to specifically be weaker than even the one at Beacon, and made its blood toxic to any creature with a soul if it got onto their skin. Even if it didn't hit them, it would have spawned more Grimm or make a mass much stronger. She would not underestimate his cleverness again, and she made a note to rip the eyes out of that silver eyed girl herself when the time came, and make that fool Hector watch as she did so.

Jinn told her that the `fool` she aimed to slay was going to be the one to finally put an end to her long reign. The being hasn't even left the Relic of Knowledge that she still held in possession. The gold and blue jeweled ring was around one of her fingers, and she would have forced herself to become the owner of the relic if the relic wasn't already owned. It was little more than a decoration for her hand as it was now. But she still needed it's powers for after she killed Hector. She would become the new owner of all the relics, and the world would be hers for the taking.

She could see him even now. She took some pot shots at him earlier, but as she expected he was simply too powerful for her summoned weapons to do any harm to his body. Her spears bounced off of his strong aura, and even when she landed a direct hit he would simply catch it and throw it right back at her. Of course, she was also more than strong enough for her own weapons to not harm her. But it was still a nuisance.

Since she couldn't take him on directly. She opted for different targets. Which were the flagships in that pesky Generals fleet. A lot of them were destroyed and brought down already, but not enough. It seemed like the Relic of Creation was also going to be something most valuable to her when she got her hands on the staff.

There was another target she could go after… she pondered if it was really worth angering him. But if it meant making this battle easier for her to win…

Yang roared and slammed her fist into the chin of the same massive dragon that she has been facing this entire time. The damn thing kept healing almost as fast as she was doing damage to it. Probably because of some kind of Dark magic from Salem healing the damn thing. She didn't give a shit, she needed to keep this one from attacking the ships anyway, and if it was a draw this thing wanted, she would show it that a draw against her was reserved for her combat rival, and this thing was definitely not her rival.

Her eyes flared with red, and her hair burst into pale yellow and orange flames as she grew more and more angry with this damn monster. The damn thing kept flying away from her, only to come back and ram into her. She stopped it every single time. She was stronger than it, and even it knew that, and it fought her with more intelligence than any Grimm she has fought before. It was little more than annoying, she wasn't letting herself get too tuckered out and waste any energy. She wasn't like that anymore, she knew how to fight, and knew how to contain her own stamina. It took a while to master the powers of the Spring Maiden, but master it she did. Now she had the powers of fire, lighting, and ice-

Ice! That was her answer, the thing couldn't get away from her if it was too frozen to move in the first place. Ice as never her thing, fire always was, which was why she leaned toward a more aggressive and explosive fighting style with the powers. But if getting out of her comfort zone meant that she could take out another one of the dragons, than it was more than worth it.

She focused her mind, and shut her eyes for a few moments. When she opened them again, an explosion of blue aura flowed around her. Cold, freezing aura. Not as freezing cold as Summer's Winter Maiden powers, but just as cold as Raven's when she was the Spring Maiden. When the dragon came for another pass, it didn't to be smart enough to know what it was getting itself into.

Yang roared as she flew at full speed to meet it just as she did many times before, but instead of an orange flaming fist with red lightning surrounding it like an aura, she had a crystal blue fist encased with frosty ice.

She smiled when the dragon didn't even slow down, and the way it screeched in pain when she dodged out of the way of it's flaming breath, and slammed her fist into the wing of the creature was pleasurable for her to listen too. She rarely ever used ice as a weapon before, but when the time called for it, she figured it out. Ice encased all over the dragon's right wing, and froze it in place. Yang reared back her fist while the dragon was still screeching in pain, and her flames and lightning returned. This time when she punched it again, the entire wing broke off and shattered, leaving a bleeding stump where the dragons wing used to be. Spurting with black blood.

"Yeah, it sucks. I've been there before, twice!" Yang shouted to the dragon and laughed as she pushed off of the creature, and watched it as it slowly fell from the sky. It might not die from the fall, she knew that. So she went to make sure it did.

A spear slammed into the side of her ribs right as she decided to go finish the dragon off. She would have had a weapon stabbed into the side of her chest if her aura wasn't still strong and full. She looked up with one eye and saw another dragon, this one even bigger than the last, and with Salem of all people riding on top of it. Yang winced and hastily dodge the next spear sloppily, but managed to get her body out of the way. "You gotta be kidding me… You're coming after me, huh?" Yang asked, even if Salem was much too far to hear her and even if she could hear the sound of the battle around them would drown out her voice way before it ever reached the witch.

Salem answered her anyway, with her actions. The dragon she was riding took in a deep breath, and Yang knew right away what was coming. She crossed her arms to protect herself as she flew to the side, using the dark mist against the Grimm in hopes of making it lose her. If she thought that was going to work, she was wrong to do so. The dragon breathed it's flames anyway, uncaring for the other smaller flying type Grimm that got in the way of the flames that spilled out of its mouth and made its way toward Yang.

It had some kind of magical tracking, it was obvious to see that the flames were moving unnaturally. The initial blast missed her, but the breath of flame turned in mid air behind her, and struck her in the back. Yang screamed in pain as she was pushed closer to the dragon, unable to twist herself out of the way of the flames, she clenched her eyes and awaited for more pain when she saw that she was headed straight toward the monsters wide open jaws. She wouldn't be able to break out of this one, not until the flames stopped burning her aura and back. If it wasn't for the fact that she was already used to extreme heats because of her training with her own powers and the training she did with Rhea, her aura would have fallen already.

Opening her eyes again, she snapped out of her submission and forced her arms back to her sides, and pushed her feet into the flames. Her semblance kicked in, and her red lightning magic crackled up all around her body. Before long, she set off an external explosion out through her body the moment before she could be trapped in the beasts mouth. The dragon screeched and turned away from her, but before Yang could celebrate her own small victory, Salem reached toward her and grabbed her by the throat before she could react in time.

"Pesky Maiden, you're as powerless as your mother was." Salem hissed at her as she squeezed down on her throat. Yang choked and kicked at the taller and larger woman, but her kicks did nothing and she was quickly fading. She was getting zero air to her lungs and her body was suffering for it. Aura did a lot of things to protect the body from harm, but one of the small amounts of attacks that could get through the aura were submission holds, aura could do much, but meant little to nothing when you were grabbed and put into a submission hold. Against her minds will, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she spat out spit and her vision went dark.

Then all of a sudden she could breathe again. She coughed and hacked as she rolled down the back of the dragon, holding onto a loose scale purely out of instinct lest she fall from the sky while still be half unconscious.

Yang cracked one eye open, seeing nothing but blurry darkness and a vague sight of Salem holding something back. She blinked them fast and hard, and when she opened them again it was still blurry for her, but she could see what was happening clearly.

"Get out of here!" Hector shouted to her as tried to force the Relic of Destruction down into Salem's chest, the latter caught the blade with both of her hands, and was pushing back just as hard with all her strength. "Now! Kaioken!" He screamed as he slammed one hand on the back of the hilt. Salem was slowly giving ground, and the blade tickled her chest and shed blood, she winced and twisted to the side. Hector went along with his force and buried the sword down to the hilt into the back of the dragon they were all on top of. The dragon screeched and rolled, but they all held on tight. Salem kicked at Hector's face as he tried to rip the sword back out, and kicked him again once he did get it out. He swung the sword, and just barely managed to miss and only cut a lock of Salem's white hair off. After one more kick, this one to his groin. He lost his footing and fell off the dragon. When Salem looked back to her, she heeded his earlier words and let go herself.

She flipped and turned in mid air so much that she grew dizzy. She tried to stop herself, but she was still out of it after being nearly choked to death like that. She continued to cough and spit out blood, and her throat continued to burn like there was no tomorrow. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes as the ripping speeds of wind blew into her face. Finally, she managed to correct herself enough so that she was able to spread her arms and legs and slow down her descent as much as she could. The ground was still far, but closing in on her fast. She needed to take control of her magic again, because no amount of aura would save her from a fall that high.

Struggling, she could only make her eyes flame and flicker every few seconds. Her body gained it's fiery aura, but only for a few seconds at a time. Not tears as much time that she needs to use her ability of flight to keep herself up in the sky.

The ground was now just a few hundred feet away, and every second she was getting closer faster and faster as she reached terminal velocity. Right as she was twenty feet from the ground, she closed her eyes and prayed. But her prayers might as well have been answered in that very instant, because through her clenched shut eyes, a frosty blue color flashed before her. Suddenly she was flying again, and then she was on the ground safely after feeling a weird sensation flow throughout her body.

"You alright?" Ah, right, Hector can teleport now.

"Y-yeah," Yang said in a raspy voice, and then coughed a few times. "Thanks."

"No problem," Hector said as he stood up. After looking around, she could see that they were back on the ground with the other soldiers, and they were actually in one of the bunkers that were set up along the coast. There were doctors running every which way, and one with no blood on them was pulled by the sleeve and met eyes with Hector. If that wasn't enough to make the young girl listen to him, the fact that he was covered in evaporating Grimm blood, was. "Take care of her until she's okay to go again, she's one of the maidens. So as soon as she can take a breath of air without coughing send her back out."

"Y-yes sir!" The girl meekly replied and rushed to her side. She winced as the bruises on her neck already formed and were being touched by the young nurse. But she was still determined, and loathed the idea of taking a break on the sidelines with the injured.

"I-I can still fight." She declared and made to stand.

A strong hand pushed her back down. "No, you can't. No pointless risks. We can afford losing someone like you."

At another time she might have asked exactly what he meant by that. But in this case, she knew right away. If they lost any of the Maidens, they would lose the fight. That was why he was so strict about them being careful. Miles away from the action, injured, but alive. That's better than being dead in hers and his book.

She didn't verbally respond and allowed herself to be pushed back down to the bed. "H-how many-" her coughing cut her off.

"How many dragons are left?" Hector finished her question for her, she nodded.

"I took another one down, and then I noticed Salem grab you. You're lucky I saw you, and fast. If I was a second too late, she would have snapped your neck." Yang whined and kicked him in the knee where she knew he was standing beside her bed. "Rest for a bit, there are eight more dragons to deal with now, and we are slowly gaining ground down here. Make sure she actually gets the treatment she needs."

"I will!" The nurse nodded her head at him.

Hector nodded and shut his eyes. A thin cool blue aura lit up around his body, but before he teleported to where he sensed Rhea's power, Yang said something to him.

"B-be careful." She groaned to him.

He didn't respond, not verbally at least. He put one thumbs up to her and in a flash, he disappeared on the spot. Leaving her there to get treated for her neck injury.

"HHAAAAAAAAAA!" Rhea continuously screamed as she kept a steady flow of fire bursting out of the palms of her hands towards another low flying dragon. She was by herself on the left flank. She saw Yang falling from the sky and Hector catch her, and then saw both of them teleport away. By the look of it, it was urgent. Yang was hurt somehow, and he needed to get her away from the battle for the time being. That was okay, more than okay. Just like they went over, they couldn't afford to lose any of the maidens anytime throughout this battle when they were needed against impossibly large Grimm, the dragons, and of course Salem herself. If any of them fell early, every fight ahead of that would be much harder than it already would have been.

Which was why she was so damned pissed off! If Yang was really hurt, and hurt badly, then she was going to be out of the fight, and that meant that everyone else had to pick up her slack not for a lack of trying to word it kindly. She never thought that she had this much power before, the Grimm were literally melting against her flames, and that fucking dragon kept making passes by her and breathing fire on her allies and friends.

When that same dragon came by for another pass, she got in the way of the fire blast and shot one of her own out from the palms of her hands. Trying to do the same thing that the lesbian looking Summer Maiden did before and completely overpower it. Little did she know that she did not have that kind of power hidden within her. She was only able to match the dragon blow for blow, and then get blown back by the force of her own attack and get shot into the ground a few feet. She blasted herself out, and exploded the Grimm who tried to dog-pile her.

It felt great, completely letting loose like this. But now she was so unbelievably hot that even she was sweating like a pig, and she was the Fall Maiden who specialised in fire. Every step she took, and every meter she flew, a trail of fire followed her. Literally. On the ground, and even in the air. Flames were all that she left behind. This forced her to fight almost completely on her own, lest she burned her own allies by mistake. The only ones who were able to fight with her without their aura taking damage by her extremely hot aura were those who were lucky enough to have semblances that protected them or made them invulnerable from the element of fire, and even some of them were keeping their distance as well, just in case.

If only she was as fast as the dragon, faster even, she would have liked to melt that thing right out of the sky with her fire. She has already blasted who knows how many blasts of fire out of her hands, and her fire whip was left forgotten in the back of her mind as she simply killed Grimm who were just close enough to her to be burned to death by her massive flaming aura.

The only one who wasn't affected was the one who suddenly teleported in front of her. She almost didn't recognize him because of how ragged and torn his clothes looked, and the fact that he had a small blue aura around him rather than the big red fiery one that she had grown used to. "You seem to be having fun." Her stepfather told her as he rubbed her head between the ears.

"Is Yang-"

"Okay, yes. She is okay. She is just going to be a little out of it for a while." Hector explained and answered her unasked question. She visibly sighed, and sagged her shoulders. She was worried about her auntie, bestie, and sparring partner.

"What does this mean for us?" Rhea asked, relieved and getting fired up again at the same time.

"It means we're going to have to fight a little harder… and someone is going to have to take care of those dragons up there." Hector said, and a second later his red aura burst aflame and overpowered even hers. He didn't even wait for her reply, or to ask for her help, he just flew back up there into the black and dark sky, and disappeared into the mist. Leaving her down there to continue fighting against the lower Grimm, both statistically and literally.

She trembled angrily, and her flaming aura burned even hotter around her body. Was this all she was now? Just the Fall Maiden who was too weak to slay one of the dragons on her own, and forced to fight alongside the ones the weaker force of the army? All her life, she was the weak one, never able to protect herself, never able to stop the other kids in the orphanage from bullying her. Then she suddenly got magical powers, and then she became an outcast. A monster. A witch. She only ever had one friend, and even he was cautious of her at times. Not even those magical powers could protect her against that white haired man that tried to take her away, and she needed to be protected for so long even after Hector took her in. Even when she learned how to use her powers, what has she done with them? What good did she do? The only other time she really let loose was in the battle of Atlas, and that was just letting her powers go crazy and using that fire whip of hers. After that, the next important thing was unlocking the vault for the Relic of Choice. Before that, she was next to useless in the first battle against Salem. All she did was take Natsuki, and fly away with her.

Rhea clenched her fists so tightly that she scratched into the palms of her hands and shed blood. The blood dripped out of her hands, and hit the ground, where evaporated on the spot almost instantly. She looked around, and saw how many bodies were surrounding her. She didn't even notice how many people were dead already, the number was high in the thousands. With Grimm still tearing away at some of the bodies. All of them, dead. Torn apart, burned alive, beaten to death, or just plain flattened into the ground by the weight of a Grimm. All kinds of death was happening all around her, and here she was having an internal crisis.

She clenched her fists even harder and screamed to the skies, wind and flames flowed around her like a tornado. The tornado flowed over her body and grew larger in size. The Grimm that were caught in it were melted down on the spot, and the people that were fighting with her were blown away. Creating dozens of feet of room for her to do as she wished.

Rhea looked back up into the sky, and searched for the dragon. It was already making another pass over their army, but Summer was busy fighting another dragon, and Natsuki was locked in combat protecting a large group of their soldiers. Both were occupied, so it was up to her to make the move.

"YOU'RE MINE!" Rhea screamed as she flew at speeds faster than she has ever flown before. She zipped through the sky like a bright orange comet, and crashed into the side of the Grimm dragon in an explosion that burned one of its wings. Rhea kept burning hot as both of them started falling to the ground, the dragon desperately trying to keep itself in the skies by flapping it's one wing as fast as it could. It was to no avail, Rhea and it crashed into the ground, crushing Grimm and unfortunate people alike who were trapped underneath it. Rhea stepped back from the dragon, and raised her hands into the air and screamed again as her self-made fire tempest grew even wider with heat. The dragon bit and stabbed at Rhea, but as soon as it got close enough to bite around her, it's teeth were turned to ashes in it's mouth. It screamed and blew fire at the young maiden, but Rhea was even hotter than it's flames, and so it did next to nothing as she took it without so much as flinching. She continued to scream at the top of her lungs, and her tornado grew so massive in size that it picked the dragon up off the ground and carried it through the flames that she was creating. More Grimm were picked up, and soon the fire tempest she made was bigger than a building, and it grew so high that even some of Nevermore and Griffons and other flying kinds of Grimm were sucked into it. All burning and melting away inside of the magical tempest. Rhea's eyes felt like they were melting, as well as the rest of her organs and skin. But she pushed through it with a roar of defiance.

When her body finally gave out. She fell onto her hands and knees, and her aura disappeared. All around her, charred evaporating ashes of the bodies of Grimm fell. Despite her immense pain and quite possible heat stroke she was suffering from. She just smiled and laughed at the carnage that she had just created. The ground all around her now had a reason to be a pitch black ashy color. Once she caught enough of her breath back she sat up on her knees and looked up into the sky. The light of the sun was beaming through, and there was massive gaping hole where the black mist of dead Grimm used to fill it almost completely. Although the color of the sky here was red, she couldn't help but crack a smile at the sight.

Being as light headed as she was at the time, she barely noticed that a Deathstalker was inching its way toward her, and when that Grimm stepped into her aira and didn't melt away, other Grimm slowly closed in on her. Rhea blinked her eyes and chuckled, then stood back up with shaky legs and shakier arms. She was more than exhausted, she was on the border of collapsing. Yet much like she knew her stepfather would, she still stood up, and faced the Grimm with a smile on her face.

"You want some more!? I got more to give!" She shouted out, and her eyes flamed and her flaming aura returned. She liked to think that she looked like her adoptive father in that moment, surrounded by an aura of fire, with glowing eyes and strong powers just waiting to be used. However, she wasn't Hector. This was all that remained of her powers at the moment, going all out and beyond her own limitations like she just did tired her out to the extreme, and she didn't have enough magic to make a difference. Her fires couldn't even scare the Grimm anymore, and they almost taunted her with the way they slowly closed in around her.

Something went out within her brain. Rhea's eyes went half lidded, and she rocked back and forth, barely keeping herself standing as it is. But she wasn't going to fall here, not like this. The news would break Hector, and demoralize their friends. She needed to live through this.

She thought her mind was playing tricks on her when a needle like sword stabbed through the back of the head of a mustached Grimm hybrid, and watched as it fell to the ground with a slump and started dissipating away. Rhea looked around and blinked, but saw nothing that gave away who might have just bought her a little more time. Perhaps it was a stray bullet from one of the droids?

It happened again, and this time she had to throw herself to the side so that the stinger of the Deathstalker didn't fall onto her and crush her to death with its weight. When she pushed herself back to her knees, a dead Beowolf scared her and made her jump back to her feet. She only realized it was dead when she saw that it's body was full of tiny little holes. It must have bled to death.

This time, she saw a flicker of the one who was saving her right now. A bright pink and brown figure as it flipped and dodged it's way around the attacks of the surrounding Grimm, breaking apart into glass shards and the moment after both the eyes becoming missing from the creatures face. Rhea knew who it was the moment she saw a pink eye wink at her. Slowly and methodically, she pushed herself back onto her feet, and allowed only her eyes to flame with power. She can't use too much at once right now, so she created an old weapon of hers that she hasn't cast in a while.

Her fire whip cracked and cackled on the ground as her fire magic flowed through it. She clutched the grip and coiled some of it around her wrist loosely. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she snapped it at a hybrid that tried to rush her down. The creature found itself lacking a heart, and fell to the ground dead or dying. Next she whipped it around the claw of another Deathstalker, and forcing her aura and putting her back into it, she twirled it around her body thrice before letting it go, sending it plowing through its own Grimm allies. When she snapped the wind of the whip back and caught it in her free hand, she smirked.

Neo flexibly flipped into her vision, and happily wave at her with a toothy smile while covered in blood. So naturally, Rhea did the same thing, except that instead of blood she was covered in soot and ashes from her shoulders down to her feet. "Thanks Auntie Neo!" Rhea cheered, and Neo made an `awe` gesture as she stabbed another Beowolf to death.

She was still exhausted, and Jaune was nowhere to be seen, but she could stand and fight a little while longer while she recovered some of her magic back. No Grimm could stand against the combination that was herself, and Auntie Neo after all.

"HYAHAHA!" Tyrian cackled as he struck Nicholas' sword, the blonde man parried and tried to counter with a thrust attack, but Tyrian dodged with unnatural grace and slithered his way back into the crowd.

This bastard is tough, Nicholas thought. It's been a while since he had to fight another human opponent and think that accepting help was actually a good idea. Tyrian Callows was crazy strong, and crazy fast. Not to mention that he constantly had to keep track of where his tail was lest he find it stabbed into his side, and deadly venom be pumped throughout his body. He could match him blow for blow, but it took intense concentration and it was more difficult since he actually had to consider the threat of the Grimm still around them unlike his opponent.

He switched his grip into an offhand reverse grip, and clashed blades against what was soon to be revealed as his tail. Nicholas grunted and twisted his blade, pushing the tail aside and grabbing the hilt again with his dominant hand. Tyrian spun along with his tail, and lunged off of his back foot to engage him. Cackling all the while with that sick manic look on his face. The thought of this man existing on the same planet as his daughters disturbed him in itself.

His son got in the way of the faunus however, and he shouted out how he felt about that and rushed forward to try and assist his son. However, Jaune Arc had it under control for the most part. Holding the entire weight of Tyrian on his shield and pinning his tail to the shield with his sword.

"Oh, it's you again interesting one." Tyrian said as he pushed his face into Jaune's so close that he could almost kiss the younger man. "Would you like to know why you interest me?"

"I don't care why." Jaune spat into his face, Tyrian giggled as he wiped it off his face, and grunted as he was thrown off of it. He flipped when he hit the ground and landed back on his feet, then used his tail to block the green bullets that belonged to the pink eyed boy. He moved agilely and dodged everything that was thrown at him, and to Jaune and the others, they might as well assume that he had full aura, while they were all tired. This was going to be a hard fight to win, but they didn't go into this battle hoping for an easy one. Not even Nora was that idealistic.

"Keep those eyes on me blonde boy!" Tyrian taunted as he caught a bullet with his bare hands, and dropped the dented metal to the ground. It left a bruise in his hand, but Jaune didn't think that he even felt the pain that came along with it. He was just in a different world.

Tyrian was different from the last time he saw him. He no longer wore the shirt over his upper body, and allowed his many scars to be on full display. There was a new one on his chest however, one that seemed impossible to survive, it looked like he was stabbed in the heart and the blade was so big that it cut his heart in half. It took a moment for him to realize that it was the same wound that Qrow told them all he dished out unto him. He very nearly killed him, but apparently he had some kind of semblance that rapidly healed his fatal wounds at the cost of his mental sanity. And by the way that Tyrian cackled and didn't react to the minor wounds that he did have on his body, he was even further down the path of insanity.

Nora slammed her hammer into the ground and created a shockwave in the shape of a cone that traveled fast through the ground, kicking up dirt and stone as it made its way toward the mad faunus. Tyrian jumped over it and dodged to the side, where Ren managed to catch him in the back with a few more rounds. Angrily, the scorpion faunus reared back and turned to face him, and the next second Ren was desperately trying to hold back the man on his own. He was losing badly, he managed to defend against the first few attacks but once the first one hit him he got staggered, and Jaune's heart plummeted as Ren just barely managed to parry Tyrians tail in time. For a moment there, Jaune thought that his best friend was going to be killed.

Thankfully, Nora came in to save her lover. Smashing her hammer into Tyrian's tail and forcing him to retreat back so he didn't once again lose it. He crawled on all fours and then stood up on one knee, looking back at them with a grin on his face.

"Are you okay?" Jaune asked as he helped Ren up.

"I'll live," Ren said as he held his side. There was some blood behind it, but it wasn't purple like Qrow's was. "We have to take him on together, he'll pick us off one by one if we don't use teamwork."

"Right." Jaune said, and used his semblance on his teammates for a few seconds to return some of his aura to him. "That should hold you over for a while, can you stand?"

"I can fight." Ren said as he wiped his blood on his shirt, his wound freshly healed now thanks to Jaune's borrowed aura.

The sound of Nicholas clashing blades against Tyrian and Nora smashing her hammer into the ground where Tyrian just dodged it snapped them back into the reality of the situation. Jaune nodded to Ren, and rushed up to join his father and other teammates in the battle. Ren stayed behind, looked down at his bloody hand, and clenched that fist. He picked up his weapons, and rushed to go help them.

Tyrian was just as good at fighting them as he was before, they couldn't land many solid hits on him and the ones that they actually managed to land didn't even make the faunus man flinch. The damage and pain was there, but it meant nothing to someone who didn't care for it. Jaune and Nicholas pushed their swords and locked them into each of Tyrian's wristblades and pushed against him, they pushed him back but he was pushing back just as hard. It was insane how strong Tyrian had to be to push back two trained Huntsman all on his own. But his surprise strength didn't last for long when Nora slammed her hammer into his back. He slipped and winced at the lance of pain he felt run all the way up his spine, and it got even worse for him when the Arcs both sidestepped his fall and slashed an X at his back. Tyrian tensed up and groaned as he felt the burning sensation of his skin being cut as trickles of blood fell down his back where their swords cut into his back. The attack was strong and focused, and it managed to cut through his aura a tiny bit.

"Next time, aim for the head!" Tyrian cackled as he spun back around, bright bloodshot purple eyes wide with excitement.

If there was a next time, Jaune would be happy too. Sadly he didn't think that they'd get another opportunity like that again. Knowing Tyrian's semblance was making this even harder, since even if they did beat the man he would still be able to come back even stronger and even more insane and kill them all anyway. The only way that probably would work against him was if they cut off his head, or destroyed his entire body with one massive attack. But none of them were maidens, and no one there was strong enough to throw an attack like that anyway. Perhaps if the naval ships started firing again, they could aim for him and blow him away into tiny bits and pieces with one well placed shot. But right now they were still busy offloading people and fighting back against the Grimm sea monsters that threatened to sink more of their ships.

They were on their own on this one, and they didn't like the chances of any other people that came to fight Tyrian themselves. He has already killed so many people who were probably better than they were, even if it was by surprise and stabbing them in the back. He had to be taken down now, or he would kill them, the wounded Sun, Neptune, Weiss and Blake, and countless others before whether he tired himself out or someone who was strong enough to take him down beat him.

A cackle was Nicholas' only warning as a tail stabbed for his eye and two wrist blades to his throat and belly. The attack was so quick he almost didn't have enough time to react to it. His hand batted away his tail and his sword blocked one of the wrist blades. However, the second one could only be held back by his hand. Getting an idea, Nicholas allowed the blades to cut his hand, and the weapon partially slice into his body.

"Hah!" Tyrian laughed as Jaune screamed in grief. When he tried to pull back the same hand pulled at his wrist, and Nicholas held him tight and actually managed to push him back. Tyrian's eyes went wide as he found himself begin to get overpowered, and his feet slowly slid backward through the ground and kicked up dirt. He looked down at his hand and watched as his aura was stolen by the blonde Huntsman.

With newfound strength and a rejuvenated aura, Nicholas pried the blades out of his side and kicked Tyrian flat in the chest hard. Cracking a rib or two. Tyrian yelped in pain and jumped back further when Jaune made to slash at him.

"Not today… no, she would be disappointed if you fell this early… She'll be angry, disappointed, no this cannot be at all." Tyrian said to himself as he took steps back, and then sprinted back into the tide of Grimm that were still surrounding him. Yet, his voice was still loud enough for them all to hear. "Have fun with my parting gift!"

"Parting gift…?" Nicholas echoed. Then shook his head, not understanding why the man would have said something like that.

"Are you okay?" Jaune asked him, rushing up to him.

Nicholas held a hand out to stop him before he could try to use his semblance on him to heal already healed wounds. "I'm fine, I stole some of his aura. I'm pretty much back at full strength."

"Whew, that's good. How are you guys doing?" He asked Weiss, Blake and Sun. Neptune was still out of it, but now that they have some breathing room, he could spend some time using his semblance on them.

"We're good." Sun said, giving him a thumbs up. Weiss and Blake gave him positive grunts, so he knew they were still okay.

"Jaune…" Ren called out to him quietly.

"What?" Jaune asked as he turned to look at him, and widened his eyes with shock and horror.

Nora was helping him stay standing, and slowly lowered him to the ground. Her eyes were teary and the fear was written all over her face. She tried not to look at the bloodstain that Ren wiped on his shirt.

Jaune couldn't help but stare at it.

The blood was mostly red, as all blood should be. But there was a speckle of purple in it, and looking at his friend more closely he could still see cut part of his shirt. He didn't notice it before he healed him and gave Ren aura, but the wound must have been deep and thick, for the scar wasn't even fully healed yet.

"I'm… sorry I didn't tell you sooner." Ren hacked up purple liquid. The venom was working fast.

"No… no no no no no!" Jaune exclaimed as he ran up to his teammates side. "No, this can't be happening, not again. Ren… we have to get you to one of the bunkers, they should have something that could save you!"

"No Jaune… I don't think I have that much time left." Ren said with a sad smile. "I'm sorry… that it ends like this for me."

"No… Ren… don't say that, please." Jaune cried, holding on to his best friends hand with both of his, Crocea Mors laid discarded to his side.

Nicholas stepped up to them slowly with dull eyes. He felt the same pain that his son felt before, and he too had to stay by the side of his best friend as he bled to death and died. He knelt down and solemnly placed a hand on his son's shoulder, who leaned into his touch almost immediately. The ginger haired girl, Nora, threw her arms around Ren's head and pulled it into her chest. The young man was still alive, but he was quickly getting pale and the veins in his arms were beginning to get tinted with purple.

This… This was one of the many reasons why he didn't want his son to become a Huntsman. The pain of losing a loved one or a best friend was a horrible thing. He lost his whole team back when he attended Beacon a long time ago. It was a mission gone wrong, like so many other sob stories that he listened too.

"Jaune…" Nicholas called to his son, and gently brushed his chin so that his little boy was looking at him. He relished in the eyes of his son, and stared into them as they tore with sorrow he knew all too well. "Stop touching him… I am going to try something. It might save him."

"T-try what?" Jaune asked in a choked gasp as he was suddenly pushed away from Ren by his fathers strong arm.

"What are you doing!?" Nora screeched at him as he placed his hands on Ren's body. The boy passed out already, and probably wouldn't open his eyes again if he didn't at least give this a try.

"I am going to use my semblance on him." Nicholas explained to them. "My semblance works differently than yours, son. I can steal aura from others, yes, but it also runs the risk of accidentally stealing a diseases as well, or lets say… venom or poison." For a moment he looked at his son and thought how he developed a semblance so blessed like that, his mother Juniper has a semblance that gave people extra stamina, which was mostly the reason how they were able to have eight children so quickly.

Jaune's eyes lit up for a split second, but then he quickly realized what his father had just said to him, and just like that he was crying again. "Wait… if you do that to Ren… it would save him, but what would happen to you?"

Nicholas smiled sadly at his son. "I won't let you live with this pain for the rest of your life, and an old man like me has already lived his life to the fullest."

"W-wait a second!" Nora exclaimed suddenly. "Even if you save Ren, we won't ever be able to forgive ourselves for you giving your life for him!"

"Then don't, and if you feel like you have to make it up to me somehow, just name your kid after me." Nicholas said, and pushed Nora off of Ren so that he wouldn't risk stealing what little remaining of her aura as well.

"No please! Don't make me make choose!" Jaune shouted and threw himself onto the back of his father. "I-I want Ren to live with all my heart, but I don't know if I want to sacrifice you just so he could live!"

"I'm sorry son, but you're going to have to make that choice." Nicholas replied harshly. "You want you best friend to die like this? In the middle of the Grimmlands by some scorpion faunus who happened to string him?"

"N-no!"

"Then let me save him."

"I don't want you to die the same way!"

"Hey now," Nicholas chuckled. "There's always a chance that the venom would be diluted when I steal it, this old body and it's immune system could fight it off the rest of the way. Have a little confidence in your old man, that's all it takes."

All you need is a little confidence…

That phrase haunted Jaune's mind for years, it helped him do a lot of good, but did just as much bad as well. Yet, his father here was telling him to have some more confidence in him? If the worst happened, and his father ends up giving his life so that Ren could live, what would he tell his family? How can he explain that to them?

Have a little confidence, that's all it takes. His father's words repeated themselves back to him, and he suddenly felt like a little boy all over again.

Shakily, Jaune let go of his father. "Okay… I'll trust you… please don't make me regret this."

Nicholas was surprised that his son actually trusted him enough for this, but he hid it behind a prideful smile. Even if he did give his life for this young man he hardly knew, even though he had all the time in the world to during the reclamation of Beacon, he would do it all again even if he knew what his ultimate fate would be. Even if it was death.

Jaune and Nora held onto each other and gave each other the comfort they so desperately needed as Nicholas Arc began to use his semblance on the unconscious Ren.

After the deed was done, no one knew what was going to happen. Ren's skin tone was slowly turning back to normal, and Nicholas' went paler and he stumbled around to get back to his feet, but he was in a better state than Ren was. Who was now resting peacefully instead of having a pained expression on his face as his body desperately tried to fight off the venom within his body.

"Get him back to the bunkers." Nicholas told them as he picked up his sword again.

"What are you going to do?" Jaune asked him, still in a state of shock.

Nicholas looked into the direction Tyrian fled into. "I got a bug to go squash, go on. Get out of here."

"I'm coming with you!" Jaune declared, standing up and grabbing Crocea Mors.

"No!" Nicholas grunted at him loudly, and Jaune actually froze in place. His face was pale, and he seemed to take more labored breaths of air, but he was still standing and proclaimed himself able to fight. "If you want to help, make sure all these kids make it through this day in one peace. Please Jaune, don't make this harder than it needs to be."

"I…" Jaune's eyes shook with emotion. "Please… stay alive." He begged as he took a step back, and relaxed his tense muscles.

"I love you son." Nicholas told him as he took a step away from him. "Never forget that."

He disappeared into Grimm, and toward the front lines where they knew Tyrian ran off too. Nicholas was on borrowed time, they all knew that. Another tear ran down his face as he forced himself to look away from where his father had just ran to.

"I love you too, Dad…" He whimpered quietly. "Thank you."

Nicholas felt heavy, and his vision was blurry. The sword in his hand was slippery with sweat and blood of the Grimm he cut his way through. He was chasing the scorpion faunus, and killed any Grimm that got in his way. The only thing preventing the venom of his tail from killing him was the massive amount of aura he had stolen from him, and the life force he had kept stealing away from the Grimm as he kept slashing his way toward him. He thought incorrectly, his body couldn't fight back well enough against whatever kind of venom that was in that tail of his. He felt it burning through his veins, and felt it burn as it flowed throughout his entire body. He could see the discoloration in the veins of his arms as he killed his way through the Grimm, slowly gaining on the crazed scorpion faunus.

Suddenly, the scorpion faunus seemed to have regained his courage, and twisted on his back foot to attack him. Nicholas expected something like this however, and caught the attack with the flat of his blade and pushed the man higher into the air. Tyrian flipped over him and landed on his feet somewhere behind him. His sword cut through another Grimm hybrid as he made to slash at the man again, and Tyrian leaned back to dodge it and weakly kicked at his ribs. That weak kick was still able to push him back, however, and he had to protect himself from another one lest he get knocked down. He could still dish out a lot of damage, but he couldn't take much more punishment. His body was just too weak for it.

So he mentally said "Fuck it," And shoulder tackled Tyrian the next time he lunged at him. He couldn't allow this fight to be drawn out, if he did he would die before he would be able to kill this man, and he couldn't allow Tyrian Callows to run free in their army, killing unsuspecting people around every turn. How many more people would die here if he didn't stop him now? He didn't want to found out.

When Nicholas slammed Tyrian down on his back, he brought up his sword and tried to stab it into his neck to sever his spine and decapitate him without even removing his head from his body, he didn't care what kind of semblance Tyrian had, he couldn't use it if he died instantly from an attack like that. Tyrian caught it however with one of his wrist blades, though he wasn't able to get it between the two blades. Nicholas pushed down hard with both hands, but then had to use one of those hands to push back the second pair of wrist blades that would have stabbed into his shoulder. His aura was powerful, and full, so his bare hands was able to hold the blades back as he pushed his sword down harder into Tyrian's guard.

"Why won't you just die!?" Tyrian screamed into his face and stabbed his tail into his aura. Nicholas grunted in pain as his aura deflected the first blow, and groaned again when Tyrian stabbed at him a second time. His aura held strong, but a few more blows like that he wouldn't have enough to completely stop the stinger from piercing into his body and injecting more of that venom into him.

Nicholas smiled in Tyrian's face, and headbutted him so hard that the back of Tyrian's head slammed into the ground, cracking it. He couldn't move and felt his aura leaving him once again, and Nicholas grew stronger as he grew weaker. "No! Get off of me!" Tyrian shouted as he desperately tried to push away the blade that was now digging into his neck.

"No." Nicholas said, and pushed down on the back of his hilt with both hands again. "Die."

Tyrian gurgled as the blade slowly slid into his throat, and coughed up blood when it slid in even deeper and cut open his trachea. He thrashed about and kicked at Nicholas' back, but to no avail. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and when Nicholas pulled out the sword he stabbed it back down as hard as he could, severing the spin from the brain, and halfway decapitating him.

He didn't even notice the stinger that was stuck in his side. He wrenched it out with a pained grunt, and fell to the side. The venom was doing its work now, and he couldn't even move anymore.

"Heh," Nicholas smiled nonetheless, and thought about his family. "I hope this wasn't for nothing… Jaune… I hope you live… a long life… my son." His voice trailed off as his life left him, and the bodies of both Tyrian and Nicholas were swarmed by Grimm mere moments later before other Huntsman descended on their position.

Six dragons left… Hector noted to himself as he stood on top of Ironwoods main flagship. Keeping an eye out for any more dragons. He killed two, Yang killed one, he saw Natsuki kill another, Ruby killed one with her eyes and just a few minutes ago he had to dodge a massive fire tornado that caught him by surprise, so he safely assumed that Rhea took one down herself. Once their numbers dwindled down to just half of what is was from the beginning of the battle, they have been attacking much less frequently. That might have been because Hector almost got to Salem when he went to save Yang, so she was now being more cautious, and by extension her dragons were too. He could just go full strength and speed and find the rest themselves, he could vaguely sense the dark magic that was within each of them, and might be able to teleport to each of them, but by now Salem had to know that he was able to use his Light magic more efficiently, and use the spells that came with it.

He could also lightly sense Yang's Light maiden magic replenishing as she rested. That was good, she needed the rest. And even though he was just one person he was managing the battle up here in the skies more than a little well. He figured that he could handle the rest. The only bad thing about this turn of events was that he was getting tired. Fighting for hours and hours like this was bound to make anyone tired, especially in a giant battle like this. He had a worry for how Ruby and Summer were doing, since he hadn't seen either of them for about an hour or two. But knowing that Ruby was probably still with Penny made it easier for him to decide that she was safe, and Summer was the Winter Maiden, so she was going to be more than well staying on the ground taking out Grimm left right and center with her frozen flames.

Now that half of the dragons were dead or dying, Ironwood is now managing his fleet and holding his own quite well now. The dragons that he did see try to make passes at the ship were quickly bombarded by every single gun that was available to shoot at the thing. Forcing it away eventually. He hasn't seen Salem at all ever since he saved Yang though, so there was still her to be worried about. Seeing his break session as over after a few short minutes, Hector ran and jumped off of the ship, falling for a few seconds before kicking his flight into gear. He flew threw the sky and slashed at Nevermore and flying Grimm of all times with his sword, they were easy to take down for him, but it took more than a little more effort for those who didn't have powers like he or the maidens did.

He kept flying through the sky, and kept looking around for the dragons. But now they were nowhere to be seen. He took a trip down to the ground, and didn't see any of the dragons making any more passes down here either. Confused and frustrated, he went back up into the sky, and cursed as he saw one of the dragons grab onto one of the bullheads and rip off its wings, letting it fall to the ground helplessly as it disappeared back into the darkness.

Another dozen or so people dead, just like that, and he wouldn't doubt it for a second that it was because he moved back down to the ground to look for any of them down there. He cursed again and tried to pursue it, but gave up as he heard another explosion from behind him. He turned around and widened his eyes at the sight of a gaping hole in the side of Ironwoods flagship, it wasn't big in comparison to the rest of the ship, but the damage was severe and people most definitely died from the explosion. He could see people desperately trying to put out the flames, and the automatic sprinklers activating to put out the fire as well. Looking away from that, he went back to looking for the dragons. If they wanted to play the hit and run and distract Hector game, he would find a way to cheat at it to eke out a win.

Closing his eyes, he focused on sensing Dark magic. There were only other beings that used Dark magic regularly other than himself. Grimm, The Relic of Destruction Deus, and Salem. But some Grimm used more than others, and the dragons used a lot more than any normal sized Grimm, and Salem used much more than the dragons, and Deus was tied with her, but only because he was using the powers of the blade of destruction sparingly.

He sensed a massive spike in Dark power behind the other side of Ironwoods flagship. He activated Kaioken and burst into action. He flew so close to the hull of the ship and ended up with his back facing the visor of the main control center itself, he looked back and squinted to see Ironwood with wide eyes staring passed him. Crossing his arms, he turned back around and created a shield that completely blocked the flame attack that would have brought down the entire ship.

The dragon realized it wasn't doing any meaningful damage and turned to flee, but Hector wouldn't let it, he was much too fast for that. He caught it by the tail and yanked it back toward him, almost ripping off the beasts tail in the process. The dragon screeched and snapped at his arm, it's teeth barely grazed his skin, but ripped off that sleeve. Hector growled back at the monster and punched it in the snout with his left hand. He just got these clothing, and no dragon was going to ruin the gift that Ruby got for him! The Grimm dragon reared back and rolled, it's wing clashed against Hector's shoulder, and he let the force of it blow him back and away. The monster was extremely strong, it was going to take much more effort to take this one down.

"Times twenty!" Hector shouted as his eyes flamed with a red power. Similar to a maiden, but the flames stuck completely out of his eyes and straight up, trailing behind him as he flew at greater speeds and charged into the dragon's back and wrapped his arms around its neck. He squeezed as tightly as he could, and his arms weren't long enough to wrap around the entire things neck. He gave up on the idea of trying to choke it out, and pulled back to slow down it's flight strength.

The dragon snarled and tried to snap at him, but it's neck wasn't so flexible that it could turn completely around and bit at it's own neck to get him off. Instead it flew into the sides of one of the flagships, and dragged its back against the hull. Hector groaned and yelled as the metal cut into his back and ruined his coat. All that was left of his clothing was the scarf still tied tightly around his neck, his red shirt, and his black pants and boots when he appeared again on the other side of the ship. The dragon rolled and tried to fling him off, but Hector kept holding on. He couldn't afford to let go and let the demon get away. He tried to reach for the Relic of Destruction, but doing so nearly made him fly off the creature. So he snapped his hand back into place and gripped tightly. A new idea formed in his head.

"Alright you little shit, time to go for a ride." Hector said as his flaming red aura turned blue, and then he screamed at the top of his lungs, "Kaioken times forty!"

His muscles bulged and tensed up even further, and with newfound strength Hector pulled the dragon up into the sky with the power of his own flight, his arms tightening around the dragon's neck more and more every second of the way. He kept going up into the sky until the red turned into sky blue, and they were high above the clouds. Unable to breathe well this high in the sky, Hector let himself and the dragon turn around, and made to dive bomb back toward the ground.

The dragon screamed and thrashed around as it tried to free itself from Hector's grip, they were so high that as they fell fire burned all around them as they re-entered part of the planets atmosphere. Hector kept his eyes shut almost completely so that they wouldn't be damaged, and he nearly went deaf as the dragons screamed even louder. Soon, the sky turned red again, and the ships and flying Grimm were able to be seen once more. Still fighting as if they were never there in the first place. Hector took one look down to the ground, and then to the dragon and acknowledged the speed of which they were falling at. Terminal velocity wasn't enough, he decided.

"KAIOKEN TIMES FIFTY!" He screamed as his aura glowed even brighter and grew even larger, his arms tightened even further around the dragon's neck but most importantly, he propelled himself and the dragon even further back toward the ground. They fell at speeds he didn't know was possible, and his arms were burning as he kept them around the dragon's neck. Once they were only a few hundred feet above the ground, Hector spun himself and the dragon, and threw it as hard as he possibly could and stopped his own descent once the monster left his arm.

Thankfully, he was careful to not hit his own forces. When the dragon slammed into the ground there was a great explosion of dust and dirt. Trees were uprooted and knocked down, and the shockwave it created pushed much of the Grimm so far back and with so much force that when they hit the ground patches of skin was ripped off. Still, he didn't think it was enough. The dragon was bleeding from its mouth and another thousand wounds, but it was still, albeit shakily, getting back up onto all of it's fours.

Clasping his hands together, and then tearing them apart. Two balls of red and blue energy formed in each of his hands. He aimed the palms of his hands toward the dragon, and charged up an attack that would most likely destroy it. He was worried that it wasn't going to be enough, but sensing a presence to his side he turned to see Summer floating there beside him, a big blue cold flame in both hands and growing in size as she prepared to fire a powerful magical attack much like he was. Smirking, he looked back toward the dragon, and screamed out his effort as he blasted it out.

"HAAAH!" He heard a scream beside him, and saw as another beam of icy flames was blasting toward the dragon alongside his own red and blue swirl magical attack. The dragon stood back up, and roared at the offending blasts. It opened its mouth and blast purple flames out of its mouth, it clashed against both of their attacks, and held it back for just a second before the actual power of the Winter Maiden and the Unlikely Hero reached the impact point.

The dragon actually widened its many eyes as their blasts merged together, and one massive light blue magical blast of energy was headed towards it. It couldn't fly away fast enough, and was vaporized the moment the blast engulfed it completely. The blast kept moving further, and destroyed the forest full of Grimm as well. A massive bright blue mushroom cloud the size of a large reached for the sky, and like that, a seventh dragon was dead.

"Hah… thanks for the assistance." Hector said to the Winter Maiden.

"No problem, I saw you throw the thing into the ground and your blue aura. I knew that this one had to be stronger than the others." Summer said with a nod. "How many more are left after this one?"

"Five, I think." Hector answered. "We're making decent progress, I can't see the beach anymore."

"We won't be able to make it much further, we are down half of our forces, most of them dead or dying or injured. We have to end this battle soon. We don't have that much time left." Summer explained. "I'm going to go find Ruby, and with her eyes we should be able to take down the rest of the dragons with relative ease. If we all attack the dragons and Salem at the same time, we can end this battle quickly."

"That's exactly what Salem wants." Hector snapped. "Don't you think I want to end this battle right now!? I want to attack her so very badly, to use my full power against her. But do you know how catastrophic our battle is going to be?" He asked her, and Summer couldn't reply fast enough before he continued. "Keep doing what we've been doing, once the four other dragons are dead, Salem will have no choice but to enter the battle herself. Once that happens, we'll take her own together."

"I think you are making a mistake Rios." Summer said, grabbing his wrist before he could storm off. "People are dying, Jaune, Ren and Nora have retreated back to the bunker, Weiss and Blake are passed out, that android girl is missing, Yang is out of action, Rhea isn't even fighting with her magic anymore, the Summer Maiden is getting exhausted, and I am already exhausted. Nicholas is dead."

Hector felt his heart drop, and he slowly turned to look back at Summer.

"Yes, Nicholas Arc is dead. Qrow, Mercury and Tai found his body, and his sword stabbed into the neck of Tyrian. He gave his life to kill him, and now we are out of time. Once we start falling, how do you think the people are going to take it? They're going to start giving up, and retreat. They're going to count this battle as lost and go back to Mistral for a desperate last stand that we all know isn't going to work." She grabbed his shirt with both of her hands, and even though the gesture surprised him and she pushed her face up into his to glare into his eyes, she felt so weak, tired. She was right.

"Stop. Holding. Back." Summer told him slowly.

"W-what do you mean?" Hector asked, gulping nervously.

"You're holding back, you're afraid that if you go all out you're going to hurt us in the process. We've all heard Ozpin's origin story, and the time he fought Salem at full strength. We also know that when you and Salem start fighting, the collateral damage is going to be even worse. We know that, you know that, and we all know that it is going to be the only way to win."

"I-I can't just do that." Hector said weakly. "I don't want you to die, I'd never be able to forgive myself if I hurt any of you by accident."

Summer smiled warmly at him, but her glare remained hard. "I know, Rios, I know. But you have to risk it. Salem will win this battle if you don't just… let go. Besides, you're a God apparently. Use some of the Godly power to bring us back if we don't make it through this." She let go of him, and started to float away slowly. Her eyes never leaving his as she backed away. "You have a choice, Hector Rivers, continue to hold back and stick to the plan, slowly lose more and more of your army until you're the only one left, or just kill the damn bitch and be done with it. Humanity would live, and they'd have someone to lead them. Make your choice, my only hope is that you make the right one."

She left him alone at that, flew back toward the main battlefield. Her parting words haunted him as he stared blankly in the direction that she left in. He didn't even realize how dire the situation really was. He has just been going after Grimm blindly and killing them. He stared toward the battlefield, and saw the bodies that were literally piling up on top of each other. Dead bodies suffering from all kinds of wounds, and maggots already beginning to eat away at their dead parts. He looked back toward the sky, and the battleships were barely holding back the flying Grimm. Not winning, or gaining ground. Just holding them back. Toward the sea, Grimm sea monsters were destroying battleship and wrecking everything they could. It was a battle all over the place, and while they could have been winning at the start. They weren't winning now, they were losing…

He gritted his teeth, and resisted the urge to cry. So many people, dead, because he was too afraid to go full power earlier. His fists clenched, and the flaming blue of his aura returned. Though it was growing even more massive in size, and started to change in color once more. At first it was a yellow-green shade, and then it grew darker into the yellow, and all the green disappeared. He felt the palms of his hands bleed as his nails dug into them, and the blood from his many wounds flowed down his body and flaked off, adding to his aura. His eyes changed color again, but this time they were golden.

His hair flowed upward with his aura as the gold overtook the blue, and with a defiant scream, he made his choice.

"KAIOKEN TIMES EIGHTY!"

He took to the skies at the same speed as the Summer Maiden, and headed right toward the massive mass of Dark magic he sensed there.

Salem looked down at the carnage her Grimm were committing. She would have thought it beautiful again if she wasn't constantly searching for her mortal enemy. She has managed to render one maiden incapacitated, but it nearly cost her the mount she was riding on. The Spring Maiden was most likely back at one of the bunkers that the humans set up back at the coast. That Hector had that very pesky ability to instantaneously teleport himself to a specific person or a sense of magic, so it made it much more difficult for her to maneuver around on her dragon and suppress her own powers. It was one of the reasons she was flying on the back of a dragon after all, and why she specifically chose to heal this one rather than the ones that were dying.

So far the human's army was about half of where it was once was before. Although she has lost millions of her own Grimm by now, she had all the time in the world to spawn them again, it may take a while, but even if she lost this battle but defeated Hector and his maidens she would have nothing in her way to stop her from creating more Grimm in her name. Sadly, she has sensed that one of her final human allies has fallen, that was a shame. There was no one more devoted to her than Tyrian was. Her only other human ally was Hazel, the only one still alive at least. The big burly man seemed to have run from the battle rather than fight in it. She would make sure to personally hunt Hazel down once this battle was won, and show him exactly why no one ran out on Salem, the Goddess of Darkness.

Her satisfied smile fell from her even faster than the time it took to form. She sensed something coming toward her, and it was coming toward her fast. The dragon sensed her discomfort and roared, but it fell upon dead ears as she stared with wide eyes toward the golden comet that made its way toward her. She thought it was one of the maidens for a moment, but the presence of both Dark and Light magic made her realize who it was almost instantly.

"Waited long enough have we?" Salem asked useless, he was still much too far to hear her. "Well, I suppose we can begin-"

"Now?" Hector finished her sentence for her as he suddenly appeared in front of her eyes. Salem only had enough time to register that he did indeed instantaneously move from his position lower to the ground all the way up to her above the clouds before a cane smashed into her cheek.

Salem gritted her teeth and her red eyes glowed. She pushed the cane away and she struck his chest with the palm of her hand. The blow was so powerful that it created a shockwave that pushed away all the clouds around them, but he didn't fly back as far as she would have hoped he would. Hector stopped himself in mid air, and glared at her before chasing after her once more. Salem stood up on the back of her mount, and dug her heels into it's skin to keep her balance. The dragon roared in pain, but did little else as its creator summoned up a sword in one hand and a spear in the other, exactly like the ones Hector was introduced to in Vacuo. The pale monster shouted as it threw its spear at him like a javelin, but as it passed through Hector it did little to nothing, and passed right through him as if he was never there to begin with.

Salem winced and clenched her eyes as Hector slammed his forehead into hers suddenly. He then landed and rubbed the area that he used to headbutt Salem with and got into a low stance. His eyes were golden and his aura blazing. Salem shook herself of the stars she saw, and allowed her own aura to explode and flame around her body. Her black and red aura was contrasting the white and gold of his perfectly, and for a moment she wondered if the two of them were like Gods compared to the rest of the mortal world.

"Why won't you join me Hector Rivers?" Salem asked, a seducing smile on her face. Hector narrowed his eyes at her. "With our powers combined, we can be the new Gods of this world! You and I can rule together divine monarchs, think of the possibilities…"

"No thanks," Hector said as they circled around each other from on top of the dragon. He was careful to consider the possibility that the dragon would attack him at any moment, or any of the other dragons that he knows is surrounding him at this very moment. But as strong as he was now, there was no way any of them would stand much of a chance against him. If they attacked him all at once, there might be a problem however. He had to be extremely careful here. "I'm not keen on the idea of forcing all of humanity into slavery, I'm not you, I'm not Hell, and I'm not going to fall for your tricks."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk… so disappointing." Salem pointed her sword at him. "I expected this… I'll just have to remove you from the equation myself!"

Hector raised the Relic of Destruction and blocked the lightning fast attack that actually pushed him back slightly. He was surprised by her strength, he didn't think that she would have gotten this much stronger since the time they last fought in Vacuo. Though he quickly thought himself foolish for thinking previously that Salem wouldn't have trained herself to become more powerful after learning that he was going around claiming relics. He was already stronger than she was back in Vacuo, but she was far above that at this point. As they were now, they matched each other blow for blow.

With the back of the dragon as their fighting stage, they clashed and dodged each other's attacks. It sounded like thunder every time their swords smashed into each other. Sometime in the middle of their flurry of attacks, Hector used the force of the destructive energy within the Relic of Destruction suddenly in one powerful slash with a scream. Salem ducked the initial blast and swung her legs at him, he jumped over the sweep and slashed again at her, but she rolled out of the way and his sword slashed into the dragons skin, earning another roar of pain out of it. As they sized each other up once more, Hector watched from behind her as the arc of destructive energy that he created went through the black mist of the sky, and exploded harmlessly miles away, destroying nothing.

Up here, he didn't have to hold back. Hector smiled as he got into a lower stance, and slashed upwards toward Salem's belly. The witch flipped backward and dodged him, and landed on the head of the dragon who flicked his head upward and sent her flying just a few feet above him. She swung at him a few times and stabbed with her spear as she flew overhead, but each of her attacks were met with equal force or dodged. She landed on one foot and twisted herself into an unpredictable angle, and the tip of her spear was flying under and up underneath Hector's offending arm. He saw it at the last second luckily, and flicker his neck backwards so that the spear tip just barely grazed his chin, and nothing else. He flipped backwards with his own momentum and kicked Salem in the stomach as he did so, landing at the nape of the dragon on one knee.

They both stared into each others eyes, and waited for the other to initiate the next engagement. After a few seconds, Salem smiled at him. Hector immediately knew what was coming, but he realized too late as one of the other dragons barreled into him from the side. He was trapped in its mouth, and was locked in an awkward position where his arms were stuck to his sides and he couldn't muster up the upper body strength it required to get himself out of the unfortunate place he has found himself in.

After a few seconds however, he kicked his knees into the top of the monsters mouth and considering the loud scream that the dragon had in response to that it must have hurt it. He kicked himself out of the jaws of the monster, and kicked it in the side of the head. Cracking it's bone helmet and gaining himself even more distance. But before he could kill it off for good another dragon attacked him from behind. He only put his shield up in time out of pure instinct and a vague sense where the fire breath was coming from. Once the dragon gave up and stopped breathing fire at him, Hector gripped the Relic of Destruction in two hands and made to slash at it, but after sensing something about to charge into him a second time he allowed himself to fall several feet so that he could dodge it, and slashed his sword upward into the leg of the fourth appearing dragon.

He sensed something below him, and immediately knew that it was the last one. Activating his flight powers again, he thrust a burst of air underneath his own feet and twirled out of the way of the creatures jaws, and then slammed his left fist into one of his six left eyes. Destroying one of them and causing agonizing pain to the monster. He wasn't able to finish it off however, since another breath of flames prevented him from doing anything other then putting up a shield to protect himself. He held back the flames and dispersed it with a controlled explosion of energy that came out of his left hand, and then threw Deus toward the dragon he sensed flying at him from behind. With expert precision and a lucky guess, the blade buried itself down to the hilt in the eye of the massive creature, and it cried out in pain as it clawed at it's own face to try and rid it of the protrusion in its face. He wondered how it could still be alive, but then took into account just how massive the damn dragon was. The stem of the eye was probably longer than the sword itself. Keeping his arm extended, he used his status as the owner of the relic to call it back. Deus wrenched himself out of the dragons head, and flew back to him hilt first, landing in his hand.

The second that happened, a spear slammed into his back. Sharp and strong, Hector turned back around and slashed away the next one and dodged the one after that. He gritted his teeth when the fourth one came, and caught it with his hand. Salem caught the spear as it was thrown back at her, and threw it back with even more force. Hector kicked the spear head up and as the back of the staff pointed to it he punched it with all his force. Salem dodged the spear which didn't need to be dodged, because the spear she had summoned stabbed all the way through the shoulder of the dragon she was riding on, and then it kept going. The dragon screeched in pain as the wound in its shoulder spurted out black blood, but Salem pressed her hand into it's back and fueled it with even more of her Dark magic. Healing the wound Hector had just dealt unto her beast.

In a fit of rage, she raised her arms slowly and all of the dragons converged to her side. In a long line they all faced against Hector in the skies, one man alone was up against a witch as powerful as he was, and almost half a dozen dragons all getting ready to breathe fire at him. Still, he stood up against them regardless, making his golden flaming aura grow even larger as he prepared some energy blasts of his own.

"No more of this, I will not let you ruin thousands of years of progress!" Salem screamed, and pointed a signalling finger at him. All at the same time, the dragons unleashed massive breaths of fire toward him at the same time. Hector screamed back and blasted out energy blasts from his hands, to meet the flaming attacks. All of the purple flames from the dragons merged into one much bigger and much more powerful one. Hector's was golden in color, and it met the breath of the dragons all at once.

It was a stalemate, neither side gave out. But Hector was slowly getting more and more tired. He's committed to overpowering this blast now, and couldn't even get out of the way since even if he did dodge it the fires would simply touch the ground, and burn away more of his troops. He wasn't going to let any more people die in this battle, not by these dragons anyway. So he held his ground, and poured more of his power into it.

Salem was shocked to see that the power of her dragons began to get overpowered. She knew that none of the dragons were slacking off as well, she has been keeping a close eye on them this entire battle. She knew which was going all out and which who weren't. She created them in such a way that she could tell all the time. But seeing that her creations even all together couldn't defeat just a single man? No… that couldn't do.

"You will die here!" Salem shouted as she fired a blast of her own into the mix. The purple flames became red, and suddenly Hector began to get overpowered himself. He slowly began to get pushed back, closer and closer toward the ground. He felt the clouds and the black mist displace around him as he blew through them, and kept losing ground with every second that went by. With a grunt, he pushed the maximum power of his Kaioken times eighty, and only began to slow himself down a tiny amount. This was it, this was all he had. He couldn't risk going any further lest he cause an explosion great enough to destroy his own army. He had to win this struggled with this amount of power alone.

He knew it wasn't enough, but he was damned if he pushed himself even further, and damned if he didn't force himself past his self proclaimed limits. But thankfully he didn't have to make a choice like that, he sensed a friendly presence next to him, and didn't even need to look to see who it was.

"I was wondering where these damn things went." Natsuki said as her body crackled with energy. Her clothing was ragged and torn up, and her black and yellow a mess. But she was still in this fight. "Need some help hero?"

"That… would be appreciated… thank you." Hector growled to the Summer Maiden.

"Gotcha," Natsuki winked at him as she pushed her hands together out in front of her, electricity crackling at the palms of her hands. "Take this!"

A beam of lightning magic fired out of her hands, it was thin compared to his own blast, but still extremely powerful nonetheless. The two of them took hold together in the skies, and pushed back against the dragons and Salem. The witch narrowed her eyes and hissed at the sight of the golden blast of Hector gaining an aura of blue lightning, and the force of her own attack to slow down to a near standstill. Growling again, she poured even more of her power into the blast, and now Hector and Natsuki both were being pushed back by the powerful force of her blast. Natsuki roared in defiance, and put every drop of the magic that she had into her blast and it became slightly stronger, Hector kept growling and could barely keep his eyes open, but could feel that they still weren't gaining any ground.

"I'm here!" A new voice exclaimed as she flew up to the empty spot beside him. Hector looked to his left and saw Summer, who joined her powers with there and fired off a massive blast almost the same size as his, a fire blast the color of blue, and in temperatures well below freezing. She screamed alongside them as their attacks merged into one, and the struggle against the dragons and Salem came to yet another stalemate, and again, Salem snapped and through her other hand along with another blast of Dark magic. The deep red fire energy attack almost grew double in size, and Hector and the maidens were blown back so far their feet slammed into the ground to stop themselves.

"Just die already!" Salem screamed and poured even more power into the attack. She started to get tired after exerting herself as much as she was, and that made her even angrier. She didn't want to use her full power yet, only when victory was assured. Hector would survive this attack, she not only knew it but she expected it. Once she wiped out his army, he wouldn't hold back anymore, and she would need every ounce of power that she had in order to outlast and defeat him.

Hector's legs were burning with fatigue as he was pushed farther into the ground. He hasn't felt pain like this in a long time, the pain of fatigue and tire. His Kaioken times eighty was eating away at his stamina, and causing an excruciating amount of pain which grew in intensity with each passing second. His teeth with grit so tightly that it felt like they were cracking under the pressure of his jaw, and the two maidens with him weren't in a much better state. Natsuki looked like she was about to burst her electricity was cracking so much, and her entire body was red with strain. Summer on his other side was shivering from her own power, and sweating at the same time because she was burning internally. It was a deadly combination, yet here she was giving it her all anyway. Hector opened his eyes and pushed his shoulders forward, drawing up power from deep within to add to his blast, every drop of it counted, and some was even dripping from his face.

"I'm gone for five minutes." Hector almost collapsed with relief at the sound of Yang;s voice, and two pairs of feet landing on the ground around him.

"And you get yourself into this mess." Rhea finished the sentence with a cocky smirk. Behind that smirk was an exhausted girl on her last legs, but when she puffed out her chest and fired a plume of fire out of her hands to support in the desperate struggle, he felt a weight lift off his shoulders. In this case, literally. He looked to his right where Yang charged up power in her left human arm, it made sense considering that she probably will not have been able to use magic in her bionic one. But he was proven wrong when a ball of flame condensed itself in Yang's human hand, and crackling red lightning flowed around Yang's right bionic arm, settling and crackling in the palm of that hand. A second passed, and with a scream alongside them she fire her own blast which was a mix of fire and lightning.

Hector smiled and looked back up over the blasts, and into Salem's eyes which were oh so far away. His muscles burned and he felt like he was on the verge of collapse, but his lungs were still healthy and strong. With him and all the maidens together, they blasted one massive blast of golden magic mixed with ice, magic, two kinds of fire and lightning, and a whole lot more magic of both types. They pushed back the attack together and easily overwhelmed it, they flew along with their own momentum and put their bodies into it as well, and Salem quickly found herself on the back foot.

Throwing caution to the wind, she cursed the maidens and Hector and put her full power into her attack. The flames of her dragons mixed with her own malignant dark magic grew twice in size, and all the ground that Hector and his allies had just made was quickly reversed, and they were once again being pushed back down to the ground.

"I can't do this for much longer!" Rhea exclaimed as she exerted herself far beyond her limits. They were still losing.

"How much power does this bitch have!?" Natsuki yelled as she too came close to her body's limit.

"Hector! Use more power!" Summer shouted to him, Hector almost tuned her out completely, but when he heard what she had said his face snapped to hers.

"I… can't!" He claimed.

"Bullshit!" Yang called out. "We're all going out except you, we all know you are stronger than this!"

"No, you don't understand!"

"Dad please!" Rhea cried, he looked towards her with shock. She was barely able to keep herself afloat and the flames in her eyes were flickering, she was about to pass out, and they would lose a big portion of their power as a group, and she would fall to her death because of her lack of aura.

"I-I…" He hesitated.

"Aim towards the sky!" Summer shouted to him suddenly, and his eyes went wider. "Aim it toward the sky! That way it won't hurt anyone but the Grimm!"

"But what about the ships!?"

"Don't hit them." Summer said with a shrug at her shoulders, at a time like this, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Please, if you don't go all out we're all going to die."

"C'mon man, stop being a little bitch and do it already! If you burn me I'll forgive you, as long as you don't get it on my face." Natsuki grumbled that last part out.

"Do it master!" All the relics save for Jinn shouted out at the same time.

"Do it now Hector!" Yang added next.

"Please!" Rhea hit the final nail in the coffin.

It was like time was going slower for seconds, and the seconds felt like hours. His eyes darted from left to right, back up to a smiling Salem and then back toward his army. They were all at risk here, he didn't even know if he could survive such an attack like this, but if they lost it here than all of the maidens would die at once, and this battle and all of humanity may as well be lost. All of his friends… his family… Ruby… would all cease to exist because he was too scared to use more power.

Something snapped with his mind. His eyes shone gold, and his body swelled up with more power. His aura was merged with the power of the maidens, and all of them gained the same aura as he had. Rhea cracked her eyes open, and looked on in awe at the sight of her father going even further beyond.

"KAIOKEN TIMES NINETY!" Hector screamed as loud as he could through the deafening sound of the blasts mixing all together.

"Kaio-NO DAMMIT!" Salem shouted back.

Their energy blast grew massive with more power, and all of it combined with the power of the maidens plus the Relics, and Salem and her dragons stood no chance. Salem's eyes shrunk with nervousness and fear as her and her dragons attack was completely and utterly overpowered. Her enemies blast was getting closer and closer, and she gave up on trying to stop it and twisted out of the way and shot herself like a bullet with her Dark magic in an effort to escape the blast. But something stopped her, another attack, this one a bright green laser as thick as a tree struck her in the stomach. Her eyes bulged at the sudden force, and her eyes darted for the perpetrator. She found them in the green eyes of some girl with orange hair, who had a mirage of swords circling around her extended arms with some sort of mechanical cannon sprouting out of her chest. She even had the audacity to wave at her as she was pushed right back into the attack she was trying to escape from.

First, her dragons were overwhelmed and destroyed, all five of them. Then once the green laser stopped firing into her stomach, all Salem could do was watch helplessly as the attack consumed her whole. She felt like she was on fire, freezing, being electrified, all at the same time and all the way down to her very bones. Her immortality prevented her from dying, but it didn't spare her from all the pain that came along with this punishment. She hasn't felt pain like this before ever since her battle with Ozma years ago, and the punishment of the Gods she received when shards of the moon fell from the sky. She felt her eyes felt within her skull and her organs fried as the attack burned through her healing for a moment, but she was forever trapped in a state of alive and dead, since her curse prevented her from the sweet release of death.

When the attack ended, she felt like she has been stabbed in every part of her body. Parts of her skeleton were showing, though muscle and skin were quickly being regrown because of the curse, and she felt her vision return to her as her eyes healed back into existence. She sacrificed a lot of Dark magic in that attack however, and even when her body was fully healed, and the pain slowly faded away, she barely had enough concentration to keep herself flying. So, she let herself fall back to the ground.

Much like Hector and the maidens did when they too fell to the ground in a heap of exhaustion. Hector went down to one knee, but refused to let his aura and power fade away. Rhea fell flat on her back, Summer on all fours, Natsuki in a sitting position and Yang on her face. They were all out of power, drained and exhausted. They wouldn't be fighting again anytime soon, they needed time to rest.

"Did… did we do it?" Yang asked, groaning into the ground.

"She's immortal, she definitely survived that attack." Hector pointed out, and forced himself back to his two feet. His aura never left him, and he was still in Kaioken times ninety. He had a hunch that Salem was going to surprise attack them if they all let their guard down. Thankfully, the majority of the Grimm around them were blown away and killed, so they had a lot of time to rest before they came back. If Salem was going to allow them that time, at least.

"Ah, bollocks to that bullshit." Natsuki said with a snarl. "We beat her, she should be dead by all rights. Damn hacks…"

"You literally can't say that to me after what I went through twenty years ago." Summer complained as she turned to look at her fellow maiden. "I didn't even know she was immortal, and when I used my eyes on her and she burned away I thought I won, but NO! Guess what happened?" She pointed to her missing eye with her bionic arm, and pouted at both Hector and Natsuki.

"Not my fault." Hector said with a shrug.

"What're you saying then? You wanna go a few rounds?" Natsuki challenged, and raised a fist toward the Winter Maiden. It was well known that she was yearning for a chance to prove herself the most powerful maiden by defeating Summer in combat. And because of that, Rhea began to laugh, amused to no end. It triggered a chain reaction that flowed over to Summer, Natsuki, Yank, and finally even himself. Even though the battle wasn't over by a longshot, he appreciated the moment of clarity they were all able to have at this moment.

The moment died when something crashed into the ground about a hundred feet from where they resided. The laughter died off as soon as impact was made, and Salem was seen on her hands and knees, just as tired as they were, but still just as dangerous as Hector was even as weakened as she is.

"Dammit…" Yang groaned, and pushed herself up to one knee. "And here I thought I was going to have some time to rest."

"Stay down," Hector told her, and stepped forward to meet Salem himself. "All of you, I'll take care of the rest of this myself."

"How?" Summer asked. "She's immortal, even if you're more powerful than her still, how can you win?"

"I have a plan… been kinda saving it up for a time like this." Hector said as the Relic of Creation lingered around his form. His hand inched toward the Relic of Destruction however, which still laid dormant slid into his sheathe. "Doesn't seem like there's any other way."

"We can help." Rhea declared, but was betrayed by her body when she fell back down to lie flat on her back. She could hardly feel her body as it was.

"Please, just stay back." Hector begged them. "I wouldn't want you all to get caught up in it, it's not exactly the kind of plan that should have more than Salem and I involved in it."

"Go." Summer said before anyone else could protest. "I have faith in you. End this."

"I will." Hector promised to her, to the other maidens and the rest of his friends, and then to himself. "This ends here."

He walked away from them, and toward the red eyed witch that has haunted his dreams and made his life a living Hell, literally in some cases. Salem saw him approaching, and stood up to meet him herself. She limped at first, but her foot completely made a one eighty and snapped back into place as she took her first few steps. The rest of the scabs and marks on her body also disappeared as she moved toward her. Hector clenched his fists, but didn't do anything rash. Salem might have been weakened, but so was he, she could still kill him if he wasn't careful.

Just like when their earlier battle started, his aura burned gold and white while hers flamed wildly with black and red. Contrasting each other just as perfectly as before, except now they were both battle damaged and on their last legs. Salem's armour was dented and torn off in places. Her modesty only being kept because her breastplate was still attached around her body, and the veins in her face were pulsating and eyes were shining a little dimmer than before. Hector lost his coat in the battle, and was back down to his red shirt, and the scarf that was somehow still around his neck. His baggy pants were torn up so much they might as well be considered shorts at this point, and unlike Salem, he had a few wounds which stayed on his body after the blasts were finished fading away.

"Just you and I now Salem." Hector said as they got into hearing distance of each other. "Let's end this, just you and me."

"Funny, I was going to say the same." Salem said as she threw her right arm to the side, summoning a powerful sword into her grip. "Let's see how long you manage without your pesky allies."

Hector dawned the Relic of Destruction, and held it out in a ready stance, prepared for anything. "I think I'll manage long enough… as long as it takes to rid you from this world." He said as the other relics floated around him. The crown of Choice rested itself back on his head, and the staff was stabbed into the ground beside him. He pointed a finger toward Salem, and concentrated.

The ring he had Knolly turn into that was currently around Salem's finger shook so slightly that Salem didn't even feel it. Then, once it was loosened, the ring went flying off of Salem's finger, jerking her offhand forward and knocking her off balance for a moment. When she realized what happened, the Relic of Knowledge had already been returned to its original and rightful owner.

"And that's one promise fulfilled." Hector said as he tightened his hand into a fist, and looked down into the blue jewel embedded in the golden engraved ring.

"It took you long enough." Knolly's weak voice greeted him, and he could feel the familiar sensation of her smiling within his mind. "I am so happy to be back with you, master. My siblings, thank you for allowing yourselves to be claimed."

"Of course sister!" Deus replied a little took quickly, making the other two relics snicker out of amusement.

"You…" Salem's snarl put Hector back in action. His reunion with Knolly can wait another time, he had more pressing matters to attend to after all. "No matter, the Relic of Knowledge was useless to me anyway, I'll just them all out of your cold dead hands."

"Try it." Hector challenged, getting into a hybrid stance.

Salem narrowed her eyes at him, and her feet barely inched forward as she prepared to lunge at him, intent on being the one to start round two herself instead of waiting for him to attack first. The stone of which she once stood was left cracked and destroyed as she closed the distance in less than a second. The Relic of Destruction clashed against her magical blade, and the ensuing shockwave shook them both to their very core. They pushed into each other in a battle of strength, but when Hector activated the powers of destruction from within the blade, Salem let go of her sword before she could end up getting part of her hands destroyed. Hector lunged at her while she was disarmed, and spun out of the way of a spear right as she summoned it in front of her. She whipped it to the side and struck his side before he could counter attack however, but he countered the counter by slamming his elbow on the shaft of the spear and snapped it in two.

Salem hissed and opted for a simple kick into his midsection, but Hector managed to block it with his forearm the moment it was about to make contact with his body. He slid back on the back of his feet, and shook his arm of the lingering pain that remained trapped in it. Switching his grip into a reverse he used his teleportation ability to move behind Salem, he swung his blade into her back, but her armour proved difficult to penetrate and before he could activate the energy of destruction again, Salem was already fighting back against him. Jumping back he allowed himself to twirl on his foot before teleporting again, this time having more momentum that stayed with him as he teleported to Salem's side, catching her on the side where her armour didn't protect her as well and drawing blood. Strangely enough, for a witch woman like Salem, her blood wasn't black, but a dark red, just like anyone else's blood color would be. He ignored that minor detail, and teleported away again before Salem could counter him.

He didn't expect her to be fast enough to catch up to him however, once he reappeared a dozen feet away from her, she turned and reacted fast enough to catch him off guard. An elbow caught him in the face and he flipped with the force that Salem had behind that attack, he landed roughly on his side, and rolled based off of instinct right as a spear stabbed into the ground where he once laid before.

"I don't understand, how is it this close?" Yang asked as she watched the fight from a safe distance along with the other maidens. "Hector should be stronger than her…"

"That bastard!" Summer exclaimed, slamming a fist into the ground.

"What is it?" Rhea asked, worried.

"The bastard is still holding back! That's what it is!" Natsuki shouted to the younger maiden, slamming a fist of her own down to the ground in frustrated anger.

Yang looked shocked for a moment, but as she looked back to the fight she began to understand how her mother and the Summer Maiden were able to tell that something was wrong. Hector and Salem were meeting each other blow for blow, it was almost impossible to keep up with their speed and strength. Every time their weapons clashed a shockwave blew around the area, every time they appeared something was destroyed. In fact, the entire area was shaking as they fought. Trees were falling down and even the Grimm were having trouble keeping their balance, she noticed as she looked around and back to the battlefield, there seemed to be a momentary pause in the action. Looking back to the fight, Hector looked like he was actively keeping something within himself. He had the Relic of Destruction, and now all four relics to use in his disposal, he could use them and win this fight much more quickly. The Relic of Choice itself might be used to coerce Salem into stopping this fight, but she snuffed out that thought quickly. If it was truly that easy, he would have done it already. But now that she focused on the way he fought, and that overly tensed expression he had on his face, it was clear to see that he was definitely holding something back.

"Dammit… what kind of plan does he have then?" She asked out loud.

"Whatever it is, it better work." Natsuki groaned painfully as she tried to active her powers again, to no avail. "I'm all out of power, he needs to win here before the Grimm get their heads out of their asses and attack us."

Hector spat out blood as Salem drove her elbow into his midsection, but he grabbed onto that arm and watched for a moment as the witches eyes went wide. He picked her up and slammed her into the ground by her arm, and then picked her up again and slammed her down again, he picked her up one more time and threw her away from him, throwing the sword of destruction as soon as she left his hands. The sword activated it's destructive energy in mid flight, and Salem noticed this and used what Dark magic she had to blast an energy attack blindly to the side. The intention of this attack was not to hurt her enemy, but to propel herself out of the way of the sword. She didn't know what would happen when infinite life met infinite death, but she didn't want to test out just how immortal she was at the moment.

Hector sprinted toward her as the sword returned to his grip, his eyes were wild, with the clear intent of murder within them. She noticed however that the Relic of Creation was not there with him this time around…

"Creare, now!" Hector shouted.

Salem acted on instinct and prepared to defend herself, but when nothing happened at first she looked up, confused.

A bright flash of yellow went off behind her, and she felt some unnatural force begin to pull her in. She dug her heels into the ground and looked back to what it was pulling her back. Salem wasn't afraid of many things, but the sight of a dimensional portal terrified her as a million possibilities ran through her mind at the same time. Then she looked back to Hector, running with the force of the pull with the very clear intention of tackling her through the portal. That in itself told her that she wouldn't be trapped forever, since Hector was clearly content on being in there with her. But she would rather not see what he could have planned for her.

She pushed her foot into the ground and used her Dark magic to create a Grimm pool before her. Hector was moving too fast and couldn't stop himself in time. His foot entered the black ooze and he tripped over, the sword in his hands spiraling away from him. The ooze acted like quicksand and started pulling him deeper, but he held on tight to edge of the puddle and didn't allow himself to be pulled down to further than his knees.

Slowly, the unnatural force pulling her backward started to get weaker, and chancing a glance behind her, she could see that whatever dimensional portal that Hector had the Relic of Creation create was getting smaller. She smirked as she looked back to Hector, struggling to get his feet out of the puddle of Grimm. She wasn't going to fall to a trick like this.

"Hector!" A high pitched voice screamed out over the polarizing wind pressure flowing around them both. She turned to her other side and saw that damned red hooded girl sprinting toward her with that nuisance of a semblance that she has.

No…

"Ruby! Quick, use your eyes!"

"No… no. NO. NO. NO-"

Ruby nodded her head at Hector and used her speed semblance to get around the portal, but was careful not to get caught in the winds herself. To Salem's horror, those damned silver eyes of hers shone white, and she felt every inch of her body burn impossibly hot. Not only that, but the Grimm puddle that she created to halt Hector in his tracks was also burned away, and he regained use of his leg. The white light was burning away at his body too, but to much less of a degree than it was hurting Salem. She lost her footing and nearly fell backward, only keeping herself standing by just managing to regain her balance in time. But Hector fixed that by spearing her in the body with his, and picked her up by the legs. With Salem effectively on his shoulder, he kept on sprinting with the force of the pulling and they both screamed their defiance as he pushed both of their bodies through the portal.

As soon as their bodies went completely through the created portal it disappeared, and only the Relic of Creation was left behind. Ruby shut off her eyes and immediately panicked, thinking the worse had just happened.

What… what did I just do!? She thought to herself as she placed her hands around her mouth.

Hector and Salem were just… gone? Just like that? No, it couldn't end like this, would he really sacrifice himself just to get rid of Salem for good. Of course he would, she felt stupid for thinking otherwise.

"What just happened!?" She heard Yang shout somewhere behind her. "Where did they go!?"

"What was that he created?" Natsuki asked next. "Some kind of portal for sure, but where does it lead to?"

"I don't know..." Summer said, she didn't show it but she was equally as panicked as her daughter was at the moment. "I don't know…"

"The Grimm are still fighting…" Rhea hesitantly pointed out. "If Salem is dead, wouldn't the Grimm have no one to tell them what to do?"

"You… may be right." Summer said. "If Salem is still breathing, and it has been mere moments since she and Hector disappeared through that portal, then perhaps they both still alive, and fighting. Just in a different area…"

"That means there's still a chance, right?" Ruby asked her as soon as she ran up to her.

"I believe so." Summer said, sighing. "We'll just have to have faith in him, in the meantime, we'll just have to hold back until he gets back."

"I hope that's soon." Yang said as she spat to the side. "Because I think the Grimm noticed us again…"

True to her words, as they all looked into the distance, there was a bastion of Grimm headed towards them. Easily a few hundred strong. Ruby readied Crescent Rose, and all of the maidens got into battle stances. They didn't have any magic left, but their auras were still up and they would make do with that they had.

And hoped that whatever was going on in there, Hector was winning.

Hector fell and dropped the taller woman to the ground once they made it through the portal, the ground didn't look like it was there at all, instead it looked like they were standing above a void of white with nothing in their way. In fact, the entire area he had the Relic of Creation create was just a simple white void. It was said that the Relic of Creation could create anything, and a portal to a different dimension was never explicitly said to not be on that list of things that it could create.

"Where have you taken me!?" Salem screamed at him and made to grab for the collar of his shirt. Hector leaned back and smacked her hand away, spin kicking her in the chest and forcing her back from him.

"Oh, you know, a little place I had in the back of my mind I thought we could have a little chat in." Hector said, smirking victoriously at the witch. "A place where even if you kill me, you'll never have a way to escape."

"You lie, surely." Salem accused him. "You wouldn't separate yourself from those you love, you're too soft for that."

"You're right." Hector said as he stood up straighter, the Relic of Destruction in his right hand flaring up with a flame of red and black. "I am soft, I do love my friends, and I would love to live a long life alongside all of them. But, if locking you away from them meant that I was the key forced to keep you here, then so be it." His aura exploded, the golden flames returning as he got into a combat stance. "I must warn you though, in this dimension the only living beings are ourselves… which means I have nothing to hold back!"

"You will never be able to kill me!" Salem declared angrily, unleashing a full magical release for a second time. "I am immortal, you will never be able to-"

"FUCK YOUR IMMORTALITY!" Hector cut her off, his aura exploding with even more power. "You'll be the first to experience this level of power from me, a power that even an immortal will never be able to fight back against!"

Salem was blown back by the sheer force of Hector powering up even further. Salem blocked her face with her forearms and peeked through them. Her eyes widened as she saw the extent of which Hector was pushing himself. He was going far beyond time ninety of his Kaioken power, so much so that even she could hardly believe just how far the gap was between the two.

"KAIOKEN TIMES ONE HUNDRED!" Hector said with a scream so powerful that it immediately destroyed his vocal cords. Salem's eyes bulged from her face as a sword was stabbed into her body at speeds she had no hope of keeping up with, she looking down and gripped the hilt of the sword that was stabbed all the way through her, and screamed in pain as he activated the energy of destruction from within her.

The purple energy tore a hole in her abdomen, and she fell to one knee holding her rapidly bleeding side. It was healing, just as she expected it too, but she felt weaker and more tired out. Energy of destruction was a dangerous thing to be up against, even for someone like herself. Growling in defiance, Salem lunged back up and tackled Hector to what could be assumed to be the ground, but as soon as her arms wrapped around his body, one of her arms was slashed clean off. She screamed in pain and held that arm, and watched as it painfully stitched itself back together and regrow in a heap of golden magic, the very magic that the God of Light cursed her with that kept her alive all these years. She had the sense to actually dodge the next attack that would have cleaved her head clean off of her shoulders, and managed to sweep his legs out from under him as she dodged.

Hector flipped off of his left hand and landed back on his feet, a shockwave blew out behind him as he kicked off his back foot, the entire dimension shook as he slammed his shoulder into her chest. She grimaced as she felt every rib in her body crack or break, and the back of them bruise as she flew back into the ground and rolled over herself. She really didn't stand a chance against how he was now. Was this how he felt when she attacked him and his allies back in Vacuo? No… she wouldn't be reduced to the fear of a mere mortal, not again! She swore off the very emotion after the Gods cursed her with infinite life.

Her arm re-grew itself within seconds, and she summoned a sword to barely deflect Hector's next attack. His eyes were pure gold as she stared into them with her dark evil red ones. She pushed back in defiance and drew up strength she didn't know she had, and for the first time he allowed himself to be pushed back and make some distance between themselves.

The fight went on for hours it felt like, Hector must have killed Salem over a dozen times, and still she was coming at him with reckless abandon. She gave up on defense a long time ago in their battle, her immortality was the only defense that she needed, and as their battle dragged out Hector was ever so slightly slowing down. His attacks weren't as strong or fast, his footwork got more sloppy, and even the Relic of Destruction was running low on power.

During the battle, other Salem's and Hector's came from other timelines to battle in the same dimension they were fighting in. At first, Salem thought that she could use this to her advantage and team up with a different version of herself, but while she could see them, they could not interact with each other. Hector tried the same thing with a blonde version of himself, but all to no avail. Other versions of themselves tried the same thing, but yielded the same results. Like shadows unto themselves, they all found their own counterpart, and continued their battle in near perfect synchronization. It was like when you put two mirrors across from each other and saw an infinite reflection of yourself over and over, that was what this battle looked like as Hector and Salem fought each other with the very clear intention to kill.

More hours passed by, or was it just half of one? Less than a minute? Neither of them knew, and neither could figure it out. All they knew was that the person ahead of them needed to be killed, and that they were the only ones capable of killing them.

Suddenly, something bad happened to Hector's body, his golden power suddenly started attacking his own body. His aura went orange and his skin red. He clutched his chest where his heart was located in his chest, and went down on one knee. The other Hector's in this dimension also went down to one knee at the same time, all in a variety of different colors and shapes, and Salem saw her opportunity to strike the final blow while he was recovering.

"Now you die!" Salem screamed as she thrust her hand toward him in what was perceived to her as slow motion, and while she was in this slow motion like state, she could see the grave error she had just made.

Hector looked up at her with a grin on his face, and the Relic of Choice shone it's orange magic along with his eyes. She felt pain in her heart, and looked down to see his hand stabbed into her chest, and the arm she was intending to use to stab into his was draped over his shoulder, and lying there limply as she coughed out blood from her mouth. Looking around her, she could see all the other different versions of herself in the same state, and one by one, they all disappeared from view. All the way until it was just her and her Hector, the one with his hand in her chest. She fell down to her knees, and would have fallen forward flat on her face if Hector wasn't holding her up with his hand. He looked her straight into the eyes, and laughed at her.

"H-how?" Salem choked out to him.

"I used the Relic of Choice to make you choose to see what you wanted to see. Me down on my knees, vulnerable." His glare turned nothing less than malicious as he twisted his hand within her. " You fell for it, like I knew you would. Now you will get to know the feeling of being powerless. It is much less than what you deserve." Hector said as he drained her of her Dark magic.

Salem screamed in pain as she felt her Dark magic that she has had within her body for thousands of years begin to get stolen away, just like she did to the king of the kingdom of darkness all those years ago, all those people that tried to slay her, and even Hector who found himself suffering by her hand in the same way. Now, it was happening to her.

Hector watched as Salem's pale white hair finally had some color added to them in the form of platinum blonde. Her eyes lost their black color, and the red of her irises went to a pretty blue. Next, her snow white skin finally gained some pigment within it. It turned back to the peachy skin tone that she had all those years ago. All the while, she had to watch as Hector's eyes became the same black and red that she had been corrupted with all that time ago, and his own skin to turn a pale white color and his own hair to turn snow white. The violet veins in her face was the last to fade away, and she watched as those very same veins popped out of Hector's face. He now looked like the male version of herself, and by the time he ripped his hand out of her chest, she had no magic, or even aura for that matter, and she fell to her hands and knees taking in deep raspy breaths.

Hector staggered back and deactivated his Kaioken. He felt the overwhelming amount of Dark magic he had just stolen away from Salem flowing through his blood, it was almost too much for him to bear. But, he felt something within himself, something that could win the battle out on the other side with just some concentrated thinking.

The feeling of being in control of the Grimm.

The Grimm that were attacking the army that they have all gathered to invade the Grimmlands suddenly stopped fighting and turned tail. Ruby and the exhausted Maidens who were just getting ready to fight back against the Grimm watched as they stopped in their tracks, and ran away into the forest. They then watched in shocked away as all the Grimm that went out for miles also turned around, and ran away from their forces.

"What the hell are they doing now?" Natsuki asked, no less confused than everybody else there.

"The Grimm are all retreating." Penny explaining simply as she landed beside them all. "All the Grimm, from the ones in the oceans, to the ones in the skies, and the ones that you see here on the land. They are all retreating."

"Why?" Yang asked. "They were winning, and Salem wouldn't ever give an order like that to them."

"Maybe it wasn't Salem who gave the order…" Summer pondered out loud.

"Oh…" Yang widened her eyes at the realization. "Oh shit… he really did it." She remembered the plan that he had all told them back in Vacuo, and then not that long ago here in Atlas. He stole Salem's Dark magic, rendering her powerless, but at the risk of corrupting himself with the power stolen from her. "Fuck…"

"He won us the battle!" Ruby exclaimed, not seeing the even more dire situation that they might just find themselves in if Hector comes back through that portal looking like Grimm human. "We won!"

"Yes…" Summer said, hugging her daughter. She didn't have the heart to tell her that the battle may have been won, but the war may have not. But she had the same hopes as she did. Hector wouldn't let the power corrupt him… right?

Hector could barely control the snarling feeling he felt within him. He was hissing and snarling much like a Grimm would as he tried to control himself. Salem fell back onto her back, and snickered to the skies of this dimension. "Now you have lived long enough to become the villain." She said, raising her head to look at him, her voice was much more human and feminine now. "How does victory taste, Hector Rivers?"

"Well enough, I suppose." Hector said as a dark red aura flamed around his body. He made himself sound less in pain then he really was. This was the same feeling he had when Salem nearly took over his mind back in Haven, except amplified to be so much worse. His Light magic was overwhelmed and could not do anything to help him through this. His hand inched toward the Relic of Destruction, which he dropped to steal Salem's power. But he fell to his knees as he did so. He needed to expel this energy, just like he planned.

Salem managed to prop herself up on the back of her elbows, and smiled triumphantly as she watched him struggle with his own power, despite her own clear defeat. "If I knew that you'd fall under the influence of Dark magic, I would have given some to you back in Vacuo instead of taking it away, or when you called for my aid to dispel Ozma from control." She laughed. "Even in defeat, I've still won."

"Shut up!" Hector said as he grabbed the hilt of his sword. His vision was going red, his eyes were glowing, he realized. Not in the same way as he was used to, it didn't feel good at all, it was like there was something trying to claw its way out of him. "Unlike you, I have allies that I have to help me with this." He said with a strained toothy smile.

Deus appeared outside of the Relic of Destruction, the red divine being smirked at the powerless and shocked Salem as he placed a hand on his shoulder. "As the Relic of Destruction, my source of power is Dark magic, and I have used quite a lot in this battle. I am hungry for more." He said as Hector's flaming red aura suddenly flowed into his arm. Salem's glance went wild, but narrowed as she watched that not all of the Dark magic that Hector had within him was taken, and the Relic of Destruction was struggling.

"What are you doing?" Hector hissed through his teeth. "You didn't take enough of it."

"I am afraid that my brother cannot take any more, master." Jinn told him, flowing out of the ring she turned herself into a dark weaker version of herself as the result of her giving up some of her life force to save him months ago. "Even Relics have their limits, and my brother is very tired after being used so many times in such quick succession."

Hector's eyes went wide with panic, and he looked back to Deus for confirmation. "I am afraid that my sister is right…" He confirmed his horrors. "I myself did not even know I had a limit, I am sorry master, but I cannot destroy any more of your magic until I recover."

"Is there any way to speed that process up!?" Hector exclaimed, his voice was darker and deeper, a sign of the corruption beginning to spread to his mind. It was a quick process at first, and now it was simply slower, and looking down to his hands, he could see the snow white skin still corrupting his body.

"I'll enjoy watching you suffer-"

"And can someone shut her up?" He added, cutting Salem off and felt satisfied despite himself when Deus reached over with one of his arms and knocked Salem out after punching her in the face.

"There is one way that you can overcome this." Jinn told him. "You have defeated Salem, and stolen her power. This power is slowly corrupting you, and will make you no better than she was until you send it away."

"But where? How? I don't understand how I can do this." Hector said as he slammed his head into the ground in a desperate attempt to stop the aching in his head. Not only was his mind going rampant, but he had just defeated Salem! Where were the Gods!? Why weren't they returning to give him the reward?

Wait… Hector growled as he realized. The Gods said that they wouldn't return to Remnant if he won the battle. He did indeed win the battle, but if they meant what the said literally? Then they won't come, they won't come and he'll be cursed to live the rest of his days with this magic corrupting him. Damn them, damn the Gods!

"Hector, consider where you are." Ozma's voice somehow managed to drown out all of the other sounds in his mind. Hector acknowledged him with a tearful whimper. "You are in a dimension between dimensions, and you had just seen other versions of yourself from different timelines and dimensions… Perhaps you could find a younger version of yourself, and give away the power you stole from Hell to that younger version, so that you may yet control yourself?"

"H-How can I do that?" Hector asked, clutching his head with both hands painfully.

"All you need to do, is look for them." The Relics told him.

Hector forced his eyes open, and focused the best that he could. Besides Salem's unconscious body, there was nothing else to distract him as he flowed what Light magic he could through his mind so that he could keep control over what he decides to do. As he turned to his right, a gate was there to greet him, a gate with no doors. In this gate was an entirely different world, he thought he recognized it from somewhere. He was thinking of Vale at the moment, and the last time he was in Vale he went to a clothing store… he remembered, and now this gate lead to the same clothing store.

The 'Wearhouse', that was the name. He was also thinking about someone, it didn't even have to be himself, but someone that he could give the magic he stole from Hell too. Widening his eyes with shock, he found who he was looking for. The Wearhouse?!

He looked deeper and saw a version of himself looked different. He had longer hair, he was younger, and he was talking to one of the owners of The Wearhouse with a nervous and fearful expression on his face. What was that he was wearing too? A shirt that said Team… and then four letters he couldn't make out from where he was. Pushing himself to his feet, he started moving toward this gate, this younger version of himself from a different timeline.

"No, not him." One of the relics said before he could enter through the gate. Or was it Ozma? He couldn't tell anymore, he could barely hear himself think as it is. "Focus."

Focus he did, and when he focused he felt something dark already within this version of himself. He realized that this Hector already had Dark magic within him, and he didn't want to give up his power only to corrupt a different version of himself and doom that timeline. So he clenched his eyes shut, and looked over to a different gate that had just appeared. This time it was a different world entirely, he didn't recognize anyone from there, struggling to walk closer to the gate, he started to make out faces that he still didn't know. But what he did know was that the man he was looking at had dark skin and silver eyes, talking with a friend of his over a fire. Could he…? No, he couldn't be a version of himself, he looked much too different, the only similarity they had was the same dark black hair.

Something attacked the silver eyed man, but his friend pushed him out of the way and got punished for it. Before Hector could react, the gate slammed shut on him and faded way. The opportunity leaving him.

"You're not focusing hard enough Hector, find your younger self, a version of yourself that doesn't have dark magic, focus on that feeling, and find IT!"

Hector growled and thought about the one he saw from the first gate, but his mind was a mess, and dozens of gates appeared before him. The same first gate he saw with himself buying clothes, then the same one with the silver eyed man fighting against… Tyrian!? No, he couldn't think about that too much. But then there was a gate which showed a man in a purple suit, looking at himself in the mirror. The horned man smiled and seemed to look at him with those deep purple eyes of his.

"Hello there, who might you be?" The man asked. Hector thought that gate shut right away, whoever that man was, he had even more Dark magic than he did, and he sensed a divine presence from him. "Was it something I said?" Not him. Definitely not him.

He looked to a different gate, one that was below him. Looking into it, he saw himself again, but not the right person he was looking for. In fact the one he was looking at was himself back in Vacuo fighting Salem. Too recent, and the wrong timeline. Finally, with a labored grunt Hector snuffed out all of the other gates he saw of different worlds and dimensions, ignoring the one where Marcus Black himself was somehow still alive, and focused on one simple feeling. A memory.

Out of nowhere, all of the infinite number of gates ceased to exist, and he looked at himself in a memory he didn't know was really real. This version of himself was sleeping in the middle of class, he was younger, unfit, but fit all the other criteria. This one would do, and he smiled as he saw that in this timeline, Earth was in fact a real place.

Entering through the Gate, he became a spectral ghost, just like he did when he went back in time in a vision and lived alongside Summer for the better half of her life. He staggered as he fell about one foot as he saw Earth,and began to be pulled back at a space between the gate, a non existent place... the gate itself.

"This… this." He said with a face of pure shock, the place was full of dark and light magic, it was like an ocean, it was way too much, this place existed and had much more energy and magic that there had been in the entire fight, far more, way too much. With effort to keep himself stable on this ocean of magic he suddenly realized what he had to do, he just felt it.

"I… I guess I have a gift for you?" He said as he placed a hand on the current of magic. The current started to look like a whirlpool and started draining more and more magic, getting rid of the excess. The whirlpool took it and Hector saw the darkness flow through it. Then, as Hector felt a tremendous weight jump off his shoulders, he saw how multiple doors where there, some exchanging magic, some people… and there he also saw that other version himself, going through that sea of light and darkness, mostly through the sea of darkness however. Apparently he did give his magic to another version of himself in some way, but far less… he could live with that. He went flying through the door and portals and shifted through them, and saw his body float through another door to another world… maybe another Remnant.

"Have fun in Beacon." Hector said as he sighed out of relief and jumped back through the rift that closed the moment he went through it. Now that Hell's power was gone, he only had Salem's Dark magic, which was still much more than the Light magic that he had but it was manageable. Manageable enough that he felt the veins popping out of his face recede back in, and he'd like to think that they were no longer a dark violet in color. He was exhausted however, even more so now that he had less magic in his body to fuel his body. He fell to his knees, but laughed despite how he felt.

He continued to laugh as his emotions began to settle in. He won. He beat the corruption, he beat Salem, and while he had the power to control the Grimm he ordered their retreat. The battle was won, everybody that lost their lives on this day were not in vain. So he laughed, and cried tears of joy at the same time. The shock of the realization of an infinite number of other dimensions existing all at the same time, especially the ones with other versions of himself, was all nothing to him as he balled his eyes out.

It was finally over.

There was only one thing left to do, he had a feeling that even though the Gods didn't come right away, he wasn't not going to see them again. He stood back up and wiped his face of the tears that fell from his eyes, and walked over to where Salem still laid, stirring back into consciousness.

"All of you," He spoke to the Relics. "Give Salem and I some privacy."

Jinn, Deus, Amphelia, and Creare all did as he said. Creare created an exit to back to his original timeline, right around the time where he left. Each of the Relics floated off of his body, and exited through the portal. Leaving Hector and Salem alone in the created dimension between dimensions.

Salem sat up, and blinked her eyes open. Her vision was blurry, but she was just able to make out the body of the one who had defeated her. Her eyes were full of pure hatred as she noticed that his body was no longer corrupted with magic. "What will you do now?" She asked, the will to fight lost upon her.

"I don't know." Ozma answered her, Hector's hair went silver again, and his eyes turned to a dark brown. After the transformation was complete, it was Ozma who stood before her, and not Hector. "If the Gods are kind, I won't have to figure out what to do with my final life, but if I must, I shall lock myself away within Hector's mind. My task is complete."

"How can you be so sure Ozma?" Salem asked, snickering. She wasn't even surprised that it was going to be Ozma was going to be the person to bring her in to justice. "Do you really the Gods are just going to let you go? Just like that? If you truly believe that, you're an even bigger fool than I was."

"Perhaps." Ozma said, nodding his head softly. "But unlike you, I have someone who I can rely on. Unlike you, I am no longer alone. You will be alone for the rest of eternity, and you will never be able to harm anyone ever again. Whether it is the Gods that get rid of you, or myself, you have lost."

"So what? You're going to lock me away in some prison? Hah, one day I'll break free, your curse has been broken Ozma, and when you die your final death, there will be nothing in my way. I may be powerless now, but I will find a way to get it back. Of that, I promise you."

"Of that, I have no doubt. But…" Ozma sighed, but chuckled to himself. Salem narrowed her eyes at him. "Who said anything about locking you away in a cell?" He asked rhetorically as he slowly backed up closer to the exit portal.

Salem immediately understood what Ozma could have meant. She lunged up to her feet with what strength she had, and try to desperate make a pass by him to get through the portal back to the real world. But Ozma blew her back with the palm of her hand, she slid back and rolled over herself until she was flat on her face. With scared wide eyes, she extended her hands out to Ozma as he backed up into the portal.

"Farewell Salem, this will be the last time you see anyone." Ozma said with a wink, disappearing through the portal.

The sounds of Salem screaming at Ozma to come back the moments before the portal shut behind him was music to his ears. The old man smiled and resigned control back to Hector, and decided that now, his time to rest has finally come. His task has been completed, his story ended, and an era to be left to memories soon to be forgotten.

Ruby hugged Hector tightly the moment he gained control over his body again. He hugged her back and laughed as Rhea jumped into the group hug. From the corner of his eye, he could see the other maidens, Yang, Natsuki, and Summer, even Penny getting ready to join in on the hug. Natsuki was never one for what she would refer as 'Gushy shit' but the knowledge that the immortal Salem will never be able to harm them again, and the Grimm were no longer a threat, she was the first to join the group hug. Yang followed quickly after, then Summer, and they all laughed as they all fell to the ground as they lost their balance, forgetting that they were all still so very exhausted.

When the broke apart, Hector looking into the distance and saw the remains of his army all celebrating their victory. They were shooting their guns into the air and shouting happily. Others cried by the bodies of their comrades, but were just as relieved to hear the news. The battle was won, humanity was free, and the Grimm were gone. All left somewhere, they didn't know where, but they weren't about to go chasing after a losing battle.

Up above in the skies, Ironwood stood in the middle of the control center, his hands still tightly gripped around the handrails so hard that his knuckles were white. He had a confused expression on his face, the kind of look of disbelief only a man like him could have at a time like this.

"We… won?" He asked out loud, chuckling.

"I certainly hope so." Winter said, treating one of her injured comrades for burns. It was all over his legs, but relatively mild and wouldn't mean the end of his life. He would live. "It seems like your hunch proved itself," The Specialist smiled a rare smile. "We won."

Winter has seen a lot of things, but General Ironwood fainting had to become one of her most treasured memories that she would hold dear for the rest of her life.

Qrow and Mercury sat back to back with each other, with Taiyang lying down beside them passed out with Zwei, who was now missing an ear and a patch of fur, sleeping on his chest. The older Huntsman rested his head against the back of Mercury's, and said, "So, wanna share a drink now?"

Mercury laughed weakly. "Thought you'd never ask."

Ruby kept on hugging Hector, pushing her cheek into his chest as he rocked her back and forth and giggled along with her. They could hardly believe it themselves, they won. That phrase kept on repeating itself through their minds. They won, they won, they won!

"I… there's one more thing left to do." Hector said as he noticed things around him begin to slow down considerably, and an unnatural chill running down his spine.

"What?" Ruby asked him, looking up at him with those bright silver eyes of hers.

"The Gods, they are coming back to me, I can feel them." Hector told her, a vulnerable sign of him showed when he pressed his forehead against hers, and he croaked, "I don't want to see them again, I just want this to be over."

"You can do this." Ruby told him, holding his face in her hands. Though the more she spoke, the slower she started to become. "You have to, we already won the battle. Those two have to follow up on their promise, they… have… too…" Her voice sounded slower and slower as time slowly came to a stop, but Hector was barely able to catch the final words that came out of her mouth before time completely came to a stop, with him and two others able to perceive what was happening.

"I love you too." He whispered back to Ruby, and forced himself out of her hands. He turned around, all of the relics flying back to his side, and he stood up against the Gods of Light and Darkness once again.

"You won, I see." The God of Darkness said in a way that sounded vaguely positive.

"He did indeed…" The God of Light added, much more darkly than his brother, ironically.

"I completed my side of the deal." Hector said, forcing the fear he felt down so that he may be brave. "You two will follow up on your side, right?"

"Ah, little Rivers, if only things could be that easy." The God of Darkness replied, and to his credit, he did seem to sound sorry for it.

"You won this battle, yes, but there is a cost to us leaving this world indefinitely." The God of Light started. "Once we leave this world, all the magic that we have allowed to still reside here, will be brought along with us. The people will no longer be able to wield magic for anything, and creatures created from said magic," Scornfully, the God of Light looked to his brother. "Will cease to exist."

"That just means that Grimm will all die, whatever, take your magic away. It has done nothing but take lives anyway." Hector said, crossing his arms defiantly.

"I am afraid that it is still not that easy for you little Rivers, you don't understand." The God of Darkness continued. "When we say all magic, we mean all magic, and who among us was created solely by magic?"

Hector's eyes went wide, and for a few moments he could hear anything but a ringing sound in his ears. Him. He was created by magic, and if the Gods leave this planet and took all the magic with them, the Grimm would all die, the maidens would exist anymore and they would be free from their curse. But… he would die as well.

"You're… going to kill me?" Hector asked once he regained control of his wild emotions. "After everything I've done, everything I did for the future of this world. I did what you two couldn't!" Hector shouted at them, not even trying to hold back the tears that fell down from his eyes. "I united humanity, and I put an end to Salem. I locked her away in a dimension she will never be able to escape from, and my award is you murdering me? Why!? Because I did what you couldn't!?"

"Hold that tongue Rivers," The God of Light warned. "While I still dain to allow you to use it."

"Fuck. You." Hector growled to the God. "This isn't fair, I held up on my side of the deal, and you are too much of a child to accept your own defeat, no, you just have to get the last laugh. I know you can allow me to live while also taking away my powers, you're Gods! You can do literally anything, you're just spiteful that I beat you, and now you're throwing a temper tantrum and not only killing me, and Ozma, but you're taking the relics away from Humanity as well."

"You dare insult me?" The God of Light shouted back at him, his voice was so loud and bellowing that it knocked Hector down onto his butt. But even still, he looked at the deity with defiance in his eyes. "You are fortunate that I even allowed my brother to convince me to allow you to do this. Understand this Rivers, you were always meant to be our pawn, and you were always meant to die at the end. You only still exist now because of the respect I have for you. Because despite your many faults, you did do what we couldn't thousands of years ago, and for that, I am allowing you to say your final goodbyes to your loved ones. Or would you rather I erase you where you stand now?"

"Brother, come now, I must say that I agree with Little Rivers here. You are being a child about this." The God of Darkness said, he sounded bored and downright frustrated with his brother. "Would it really be too much for you to just make the man human and allow him to live on for the rest of his days?"

"I will not hear any more of your rebellion." The God of Light spat to his brother. "Do not forget who let you continue your existence after your little attempt on my life years ago, I can just as easily rid you from this world as I could back then."

The God of Darkness tilted his head curiously. "Is that so? Would you care to prove to me how much more powerful you are?"

"Bah, I shall deal with you later." The God of Light declared, and held out a hand toward Hector. "You have taken away what patience I had for you, I will end you where you sit."

"I swear…" Hector growled at the golden God. "One day, I will find a way to come back, and when that happens I will find a way to rid you from this world."

"Hmph, we shall see." The God of Light said, and Hector felt himself get lightheaded. He looked down to his body, and saw golden flakes of energy breaking apart his body. He was being erased at this very moment… everything he did… and this is how it ends?

"No!" A burst of red magic exploded the Relic of Destruction, destroying the sword that Deus was trapped in, and he held a hand back toward his fellow deity and ceased the erasure of his master. Hector fell forward and caught himself with his hands, and felt himself stitch back together as the golden energy reattached themselves to his body.

"Dues, as your creator I order you to step aside." The God of Light demanded. "You are a deity, your place is not here with the likes of him."

"I am afraid creator," Jinn said as she broke free from her relic as well, and stood beside her brother. "That you yourself have instilled rules for us relics to follow. Once we claim a master, we do whatever he asks of us, and defend him with our lives." She explained, and extended a hand out to defend her master. "Hector Rivers is our master, and we will not let you destroy him, or take us away from him."

Creare formed beside her, and joined in the effort to save his master. Amphelia broke out next, the crown of choice breaking apart and falling to the ground in pieces. All of the relics that the God of Light created with the help of his brother were now standing against him, all four of them had the powers of a God, but none of them were as powerful as him. Not even when they were all together.

"You guys…" Hector said as he raised his head to look at them. "Thank you…"

"I am obligated to defend you with my life, and stay by your side." Amphelia said as she extended her hand upward, glowing orange energy crackling at the palm of her hand.

"What my sister means is that she likes you enough to risk her life for you." Deus added.

Amphelia groaned in annoyance, but didn't deny it. Hector laughed and stood back up, still holding his side where he first began to get erased earlier. He stared at the God of Light, whose vague expression appeared to be filled with anger as he looked at them.

"To think that I would have to snuff out a second rebellion…" The God said with barely concealed anger. "I really have been too lenient with what I allowed to roam on this world. If you all wish to die beside your master, so be it."

"Brother, now you are going too far." The God of Darkness said, grabbing hold of his brothers extended arm. "We put in much effort in creating these beings, and now you want to erase them? Perhaps I should wield the powers of Light, and you the Dark."

"Hah! You wouldn't be able to bare the power of Light, don't perceive that you can handle my responsibility. Look at you, you are barely fit to even call yourself a God."

"No, but I am more one than you are." The God of Darkness said as he pulled his brothers arm away from Hector and the relics. "I have had time to think in these past few thousand years, and I have grown to understand that no, we are not perfect. We are not all powerful and just because we can create and destroy anything does not mean we are worthy to rule over them. I Certainly know now that you are not, threatening the erasure of five of our most powerful creations just because they are speaking out against you."

"You would rebel against me a second time?" The God of Light asked, his voice quiet and threatening.

"If it means that at last one of our planets we have created together actually are able to live their full cycle, then yes." The God of Darkness prepared for a battle. "I am rebelling against you. As the God of Darkness, it is my duty to destroy what needs to be destroyed, and brother, these beings do not need to be destroyed. Now… if you wish to do battle, go right ahead and throw the first punch. I'm sure the relics will be more than happy to join my side."

The God of Light very nearly did, but he took one look toward his brother, and the relics that they created defending the person he sought to destroy, and reluctantly backed down. His powerful aura disappeared, and he spared one last glance toward Hector.

"You are fortunate that my brother seems to have a soft spot for you. You will have the ending you desire."

Hector nearly fainted at the news, his smile went ear to ear and he watched as his relics celebrated quite verbally. With no more words, the God of Light faded away, and left them. He had nothing else to say to them and would rather not have his defeat rubbed into his face. The God of Darkness however, landed on the ground and walked toward him. The Relics stood in his way, prepared to defend their master, but the God of Darkness simply waved his hand softly and assured them that he was not going to try anything.

"Have no fear relics, I will not harm your master."

"Let him through." Hector said, and the relics did as he said, but stayed at his side as he walked up to the God of Darkness himself. "Thank you, for doing this. But I have to ask, why did you go that far for me?"

The God of Darkness shrugged his shoulders. "I found you and this world to be quite interesting, it would have been a shame if I let my brother get his way." The God said, and slowly extended out a hand to him. "Once you shake my hand, the magic within you will cease to exist, but you will live on the rest of your days as a mortal man. Do not worry about the age, you will not be turned into a toddler."

Hector laughed as he thought about that happening at the same time as the God saying it wouldn't. Without even hesitating, he reached his hand forward and clasped it around the Gods. His hand was felt warm, and radiant. Not at all what he thought the literally God of Darkness' hands would feel like. In an instant, he felt all of his magic drain from his body, he felt much weaker, but he was still strong and able to stand. Hector looked up into the Gods face, and had to ask one more question.

"The maidens, Yang, Rhea, Summer, and Natsuki, are they all going to have their curse lifted from them as well? Will they be able to live full lives?"

"Well, all magic wouldn't be gone if their curse remained. You have Ozma to thank for that after all."

Ignoring Ozma's indignant protest, Hector let go of the Gods hand, and stepped back from him. "Do I have anything else to worry about?"

"Eh… I think no. It depends on how well my brother takes this." The God of Darkness shrugged. "Enjoy the rest of your life Little Rivers, and do make sure that humanity doesn't destroy itself. At least not in your generation."

"Trust me," Hector looked to his relics. "If anything happens, I'll stop it."

"Good." The God began to fade away from his vision, the time flow around him began to go back to normal as the final God departed. "Farewell." The God of Darkness disappears as soon as those words were spoken. A burst of wind followed, and the Gods that created Remnant were gone, forever.

"Farewell, friend." Hector said with a sigh as another tremendous weight was lifted off of his shoulders. He never felt so tired before in his life. He looked to each of the relics, time around them was still coming back to normal speed. But before they could be revealed, Hector told them that they were free to do as they wished now, he wasn't going to force them to stay with him.

"We appreciate your setting us free, but I believe I speak for all of us when I say that you are not going to be getting rid of us any time soon." Jinn said to him. The rest of the relics nodded their heads and responded accordingly. Deus flexed his arms and declared that he would stand by his side until his dying day, Amphelia huffed and said that she would stick around, she guessed, and Creare gave his answer by creating new relics for the beings to reside in. But inside of Deus being in a sword, Jinn in a ring, Amphelia in a crown and himself in a staff, he created four rings. Each jeweled with the color of their bodies.

Hector held the rings as the relics entered them, and put each of them on slowly. Two on each hand. He looked down at them, and grinned. "Thank you all." He whispered to them.

Looking around as time began to flow again, he could already see Ruby sprinting toward him to squeeze him in another hug, however her silver eyes were no longer silver. Hector wondered if that was because of the Gods taking away all the magic with them, but whatever the case, they were now a light blue now, like her father.

Next, he looked to the former Maidens, each of them wondering where their powers meant, but Summer gave him a knowing look. She knew what had happened, and she started to mouth the words "Thank you." In his direction. Rhea was also running up to him in slow motion alongside Ruby, her eyes brimmed with tears of joy. In his mind, he can hear Ozma sigh out of relief, and resting within his head. The other ancient beings were quiet, and for the first time since he was born. He felt at peace.

Then, he looked toward the battlefield, where everyone was still celebrating their victory. He thought about his friends, Jaune, Ren, Nora, Blake, Weiss, Qrow, Mercury, and even Neo and everyone else he now had a chance to speak with, and not about plans to save the world. They were all going to live now, full happy lives to do as they wished. The Grimm were gone. They won.

When Ruby and Rhea crashed into him, he thought to himself,

Being a hero, doesn't feel so unlikely anymore…

Fifteen years later…

A young boy runs at the age of thirteen years old throughout a house with his big stepsister chasing after him, and his younger sister struggling to keep up behind her. This boy has a light blue eyes, tan skin, and black hair, and the grown woman behind him has sharp orange eyes, and a beautiful look to her face.

"You can't catch me! I have super speed!" The young boy shouted as he activated his mothers inherited semblance.

"Hector Rivers The Third, get your ass back here!" A now thirty year old Rhea shouted at him as she sprinted even harder to catch up. "Damn it… if only I still had my powers." She huffed, ever since she lost her Fall Maiden powers, she was forced to live as a regular human as her husband Oscar Pine jokingly referred to it as. She had a child on her own now, a young boy she had named Coal, after her biological father who was murdered by her mother. She was going to name him Hector, but Ruby already beat her to it when their firstborn came into this world just nine months after Hector, the older Hector, proposed to her and asked her to marry him.

The sight she saw when she walked in on… that. Still shook her to her very core to this day.

"Wait for me!" Little Summer Rivers exclaimed as she struggled to catch up, unlike her older brother, she didn't have her aura or semblance unlocked. She was obviously named after Summer Rose, her grandmother. Grandma Rose, as her and her step-siblings all referred to her as, was now well into her mid sixties. After the battle for humanity, she got back together with Taiyang Xiao Long, and took up the position as the new headmistress of Beacon after Glynda Goodwitch stepped down for her and retired. She was now living happily with James Ironwood as her husband and the last time Rhea heard, they were going to have a child. Taiyang took the combat professor after some time, and always boasted that even though he was old, he could still kick ass. The other Maiden she knew, Natsuki, is still the headmistress of Shade to this day. Even without her magic, she still declared herself the strongest woman on the planet. Nothing would ever otherwise, and her spar with Summer never happened.

"Sorry sis, but I haven't seen Great-Drunckle Qrow is so long!" Hector The Third exclaimed as he rounded the corner, and slammed into a dusty old crows chest.

"'Ay!" Qrow complained as he spilled his drink all over his pants. "What are you doing kid? Where's your ma?" Like most of the adults that she knew, Qrow was now old and retired. He stopped being a Huntsman after the battle for humanity, and refused to participate in any of the competitive competitions that followed the result of the war to fill in the gaping hole that was the purpose of Huntsman after what happened. With no more Grimm left to hunt, Huntsman were given to choice to retire, or become bounty hunters for unlawful people who were still running around after the battle.

And oh, did Auntie Neo make her decision real quick. She still held the record for most bounties claimed in a single given week.

"Sorry about that Qrow." Rhea said when she finally caught up to the little snot that was her little brother. "He used his semblance again, and he got faster… again."

"No fair!" The young Summer exclaimed as she finally caught up. "I wanna have my semblance unlocked too!"

"Hey now," Yang stepped up to her and picked up the little girl in her arms. "Give it some time kind, before you know it you'll be running circles around your big brother."

"Or, and hear me out." Mercury added as he stepped out from behind his wife. "You could just train to unlock it, like I don't know how your brother did it?"

"Mercury, stop being an asshole." Yang said as she elbowed him in the stomach with her bionic arm. That really shut him up quick.

"Swear word!" Summer cried out, and pointed to the swear jar.

"What? I was defending you!" Yang protested.

"No excuses, cough it up." Summer demanded, still pointing to the jar. As Mercury laughed his ass off, Yang begrudgingly threw a few lien into the jar.

Yang and Mercury got together after years of flirting and dancing around their feelings, it took Nora locking them in a room together and using her own son Nicholas as a hostage to keep them in there, and by God, she was very serious when she said that she would feed her and Ren's child pancakes until he burst until they didn't talk about their feelings right then and there. Finally, after a full thirty seven hours, Mercury and Yang finally gave in, and started their relationship in the freezer of a kitchen they were baited into. Two years of dating, and they finally got married. With Mercury taking up the Xiao Long name and becoming Mercury Xiao Long. He proceeded to get teased for it for the years that followed, but his reasoning was understandable. He wanted the Black family line to die with his father, and with their child that was on the way, he would break the cycle of his family and raise his child to specifically not be an assassin. It was all pretty confusing over a bottle of beer.

Blake and Sun got together, predictably. They had two children, two sons, one named Sage and the other Adam. Named after one of Sun's deceased teammates and the other after an old friend. After the battle, Natsuki and Ilia went back to Vacuo, since that was the place they were both born. Also, the old insult that Rhea used to call Natsuki about looking like a lesbian when they were much younger wasn't without a lack of truth. Natsuki refers to Ilia as 'Chameleon' and almost nothing else, much to her girlfriends dismay. As she thought of Blake, there was a certain man that came to mind. A man that just so happened to be graced with his name being passed down to a new generation. Adam's death was hard to recover from, surprisingly hard. But after some time, Blake was able to recover from it.

However, when they went into the Emerald Forest to search for Adam's body, or what remained of it. There was nothing there. At all. Not even bones. Grimm weren't known for scavenging, or eating at all really. So the fact that Adam's body could not be found, even after weeks and weeks of searching, it was rumored that he never died at all. Blake herself went to confirm this, with the presence of Hector along with her. Back to the village where the picked him up in the first place, to find Claire and maybe try to see if Adam might have returned to her. They found the village abandoned, but in the house that Hector spoke to Adam in for the first time to recruit him into the cause, was only a note nailed into the wall. What was on that note confirmed what they always knew, and they never went searching for the 'dead man' ever again.

"Damn kids and their kiddie logic." Yang grumbled as she put in another lien just for insurance purposes.

"Is Mom and Dad here too?" Hector The Third asked his blonde aunt after running up to his blonde aunt and slightly less cool silver haired uncle.

"Ruby's here, and someone has a daddy who's going to surprise his young little man." Yang said as she tickled her nephew with her robot arm. "Happy birthday kid." The young boy laughed and struggled to get away from her, but he didn't get very far. "Hey Rhea, where's Penny? Is she coming."

Rhea frowned and shook her head. "She is taking care of Doctor Polendina, he got sick recently and she is spending all the time she could with her."

"Awe, I'll be sure to take a trip to Atlas to say hi to her. Right babe?" Yang asked Mercury.

"Sure… but we could always just y'know… call her on the CCT." Mercury suggested.

"Nope."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Speaking of Atlas, Weiss was the new headmistress of the Huntsman school over there now, with the equally as confusing name Atlas. After years of vying after he once again, but in a much more mature way. Jaune got what he wanted finally after Weiss gave up on pushing him away and went on a date with him. They still weren't married yet, for the reason that Weiss wanted to keep testing him to see if he was the one. But her being engaged to him said otherwise. Her brother Whiteley was still in a mental health facility, but making progress, and Willow, their mother passed away years ago of a sudden illness. Weiss promised to both herself and Winter that Whitley wasn't going to end up like their mother, and so they have both been visiting him every Friday and Sunday, and whenever they able to in their free time. Winter was a professor at Atlas now, and if the rumours were true she was finally warming up to Qrow, despite being seen with him doing... un-Schneely things, only time will tell what would happen with them in the future however. Neither of them wanted children, Qrow wanted the Branwen name to die out for good. After everything his family has done, and all the pain they've caused. He wouldn't allow their reign to continue, even if he had to die completely alone. Winter was hesitant to say the least, content with not ever becoming a mother. At least, not a biological one... Qrow gave in eventually at least she wouldn't technically be related to him.

"I'm here!" The sound of her barely older than her step-mother made Rhea snap out of her inner thoughts, and looked in her direction. Ruby Rose was now Ruby Rivers, and even though she was nearing her forties she still looked like she was in her twenties. At the sight of their mother, Hector The Third and Summer Rivers both ran up to pounce their mother with a surprise hug. The woman allowed herself to fall to the ground gently, laughing along with her children all the while. "Didja miss me? Huh?"

"Yup!" Hector and Summer exclaimed at the same time, and Ruby awed at them and kissed their foreheads. There was a noticeable lump on her belly as she made to stand up, a sign of her third child on it's way into this world. Ruby spent her childhood with just one father and one sister, now she wanted to surround herself with family, and luckily for her husband felt the same way.

"Did you think of a name for the third one?" Qrow asked her as he hugged his niece. "An actual original name, I mean."

Ruby smacked him on the shoulder playfully. "We were thinking that if it was a boy, we'd name him Brandon, and if it's a girl, Larissa. After the sister he thought he had."

"Well then, color me impressed-"

"Deus c'mon man, let me go through the door." A familiar voice sounded out through the front door. "No Knolly, I am not being moody today, it's just that SOMEONE created a new door I didn't give the order of again. Creare, I'm looking at you."

"Daddy!" Ruby's children exclaimed at the same time, waiting for him eagerly from behind the door.

"Oops, Amphelia, hold that thought. And all of you get back in the rings! Not you Ozma, you're cool." Hector's children giggled as he over dramatically gave himself a pep talk from behind the door. Before finally, he cleared his throat, and opened the door to allow himself to get tackled by his son and daughter.

"Look at you two, getting so strong already like your Dad." He said as he wrestled with the two of them, and lifted them both with each of them sitting on either forearm.

Ruby walked up to him and pecked him on the cheek, earning a sound of disgust by their children as they gagged and looked away from them.

Hector walked into his home and enjoyed celebrating his son's fourteenth birthday party. As the time went by, he thought about the past. At this time, most of his friends were either criminals, or training to hunt Grimm. While he existed in an illusion of his own memories the Gods created for him. Now, it was a time of peace. With no Grimm around to harm people, and humanity united, war was a long forgotten thing of the past, and if there was ever any tensions, all he had to do was tell Amphelia to stop any conflict from happening with her powers of manipulation. He would keep the peace for as long as he could. Then when he died of old age, he would pass the relics on to Rhea, just as he claimed he would years ago, and after her, she would get to decide what she wanted to do. It was hard to accept that she was growing up, but after putting Oscar through the ringer in a test of virtue, he consented the two to get married. But he would never delete the video he had of Oscar Pine, a farm boy, asking a well known figure of peace like him, to marry his step-daughter. Not even if they begged him on their hands and knees to.

He looked on with a smile on his face, he made this possible, he and all of his allies. He even had the God of Darkness to thank for this. For he was the one who actually went along with their deal, and forced his brother to leave them alone. Living without magic was difficult to get used to, but he managed after a year or two. He couldn't care less about magic anymore, or the Kaioken, he got the ending he wanted. Even if there was still technically one more servant of Salem still out there, being Hazel Rainhart, he couldn't bring himself to go after him or send anyone after him. As long as the one armed man didn't do anything, he wouldn't have him harmed. All of this was out of respect for what he did for Mercury.

Now all he wanted was to raise his children, live a normal life, and keep the peace of the world.

Speaking of the world, when the council of the world got together to decide on a new name for their planet. Since they were no longer a remnant of what they once were, and united. Hector was more than happy to voice his own opinion on that, and he was just famous enough to have the final say.

Earth.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH. There we go guys, fuck. What a story, what an ending, and what a damn battle chapter for me to write. This took me 4 DAYS! FOUR! Gah, I can't believe I am even still alive right now. I decided that this is going to be the final chapter of the story, there is nothing else to do but the epilogue, and I have decided that I will add that hear as well. So, I did. I am sorry if there is a lot of errors, this is over 40k words long, and it took days just to write it all. That's my only excuse to you all.

This is the final AN of this story. Thank you, all of you who read this story since the very beginning. I can't thank you enough. I am honestly getting emotional about this, it's crazy. Writing out of all things, even if it's just fan fiction, was never something I thought I would be doing with my life. This story… and all of the stories to come, really was something great for me to get into.

Some of you might be able to piece together that I have created a Multiverse between some of my stories with this chapter. I am here to confirm that yes, this story is multiversal with A Tale of Two Heroes, The Blind Huntsman, Detective Grimm, and my newest story, Destiny Fate Black. Not all of them will have multiversal breaks, but one or two of them will. I just thought it would be a cool idea to link my stories all together like this. If you want to see some of these changes, you're gonna have to go read my other stories! Wink wink.

Thank you all for your support, and thank you all for your kind words.

Edit 7/8/2019: I made a mistake that was only brought up to me by a reviewer, I forgot a certain character to have the epilogue on, and so I have went back into this doc to fix it. Hopefully you guys enjoy! God, I can't believe I forgot That.

About the side stories that will come after. They are going to be quite a ways away. The two side stories that I can say are definitely happening, are An Unlikely Hero: Following The path, which is going to be a spin off of Hector replacing Oscar in the canon, but in the actual canon of RWBY now. That story will be coming out after Volume 7 is finished however, I want to have more to go off of, and I still haven't planned much of it.

The next side story that I will be making this story is going to be Unlikely Hero: Guardian Angel, which is going to expand on the journey's that Hector and Summer went on together for the years up until Hector broke away from her and went back to his own time. That one will be happening, but I cannot say when I need to get some other things done first.

The next story that will come out in a few weeks after this one is another idea I had in mind about one such as Marcus Black. You can read my little rough summary of the story in my profile.

If you want to see more of Hector, I have another story called "A Tale of Two Heroes", he returns in that story, and he goes on a very different adventure.

With me of course. -CrowSkull. (Co-writer)

With all that out of the way, I have one final thing to say to you all for this story. Since there isn't going to be a chapter 82, I will respond to reviews in PM's after this point.

What I am trying to say is… Thank you again, and I hope you stick around to read my other stories. And if you would like to follow me on my twitter:

T w itter . com (slash) genatools

This is Genatools, signing off of An Unlikely Hero for the final time.