The moment the awakened gang members surged toward them, Jaune felt everything inside him tense in consternation. Dozens of enemy auras pressed in at once, thick and suffocating, like being swallowed by a tide of pressure. Even before the first punch was thrown, he knew the fight would be ugly.
He didn't hesitate.
He triggered his meta rune.
"Weaken."
A pulse of invisible energy rippled out from him, expanding in a wide radius like a shockwave without sound or wind. The effect on the Dragon Gang was immediate. Their movements stuttered and their steps dragged. Even the way they breathed seemed sluggish, as though the air around them had thickened to syrup.
Twenty percent of their stats vanished instantly—more for those whose Aura stat was less than numerical value of maxed-out Will stat. Jaune felt the strain hit him just as quickly. His Aura drained in great hungry gulps, a burn under his skin that warned how short-lived this advantage would be.
Ten minutes. If that.
"Meta rune skill!" one of them shouted in response to his power, warning the others. But even with that warning, the lot of them chose to charge, anyway.
They had a goal, after all and nothing, not even the members of LUCID would stand in their way.
The battle truly began.
Yang was the first to meet the rush. The bottom of her feet erupted in sparking detonations as her new Inferno Rune activated, hurling her forward in an explosive blur. Fire licked across her gauntlets, heat distorting the air around her arms. Every punch she threw burst outward in miniature explosive blasts—fast, violent and uncontrolled in the way only Yang's power ever was.
Yang had went through a few Rune Skill iterations, and after deliberating on the best ones, she settled on this particular rune. The Inferno Rune synchronized well with her Kinetic rune. Not only was she able to simply release flames or shockwaves, but together, they could combine and release a large explosive force that could sunder the environment of the world.
Her first strike hit a man so hard he shot backward like a rocket, crashing through a rusted car. Her second punch chained into another explosion, shattering the ground and sending rubble spinning into the air. Yang herself skidded back from her own recoil, teeth clenched and hair flickering with embers.
But even Yang couldn't keep up with the sheer number of attackers. A lightning user hurled a crackling bolt from the rooftop above her. Yang spotted it too late. It scraped across her shoulder in a sizzling streak, making her cry out as the smell of scorched flesh under her armor filled the street. She retaliated immediately with a burst of flame that sent her assailant tumbling, but the damage was done—Yang was already panting harder than she should be this early in the fight.
Her kinetic rune was strong against force, able to absorb and transfer it with ease, but against elemental power, it was weak.
Ruby moved the opposite way—vanishing outright.
She stacked Accel once, then twice, then three times. The limit that she could achieve without comprehension, though she was close.
At the third activation, Ruby wasn't a person anymore, so much as a red smear of motion, a streak darting between slowed enemies. Her scythe carved through them in precise arcs, slicing tendons and weapons alike without ever striking a fatal blow. Her movements blurred so fast that they were extremely hard to follow. Even with the enemies weakened, their reactions were now lagging behind reality which meant that she could just barely stay ahead of them.
A large brute with a grotesquely overstimulated muscle-enhancement rune punched through an entire house to intercept her, forcing Ruby to burst into petals, using her Bloom rune to avoid being crushed. The brute stomped, sending a shockwave through the pavement that disrupted her reformation and nearly broke her concentration. Ruby reappeared meters away, breathing hard, with her face pale.
She couldn't keep using Accel indefinitely. Even she had limits.
Jaune saw an opening—and teleported.
He appeared behind Yang just as a Dragon Gang swordsman, whose blade was glowing with a flame rune, swung a fiery arc toward her exposed back. Jaune caught the blow on his dual swords, but the heat from the man's weapon licked against his skin despite the protection from his rune frame.
Jaune didn't waste the opportunity.
He pushed the man back, planted a foot on Yang's back and flipped over her just as she turned to follow up.
Her gauntlet exploded outward.
The fiery blast swallowed the swordsman whole and turned the other half of the street into a crater. The man rocketed away like a burning doll.
Another teleport carried him across the battlefield, appearing beside Ruby just as a staff wielder smashed toward her exposed flank.
Ruby dodged the first two hits by dissolving once again into petals, but the third caught the trailing edge of her transformation, scattering her apart again. She reformed further back, shaken.
Jaune struck before the staff-user could follow.
He teleported above him, drop-kicking the back of his skull with all the momentum he could muster. The man flew like a projectile, who was then intercepted by Yang who punched him straight in his gut. The explosive force of her punch launched him into a line of houses and where he disappeared beneath the rubble.
Jaune felt a brief surge of relief—but it lasted only a heartbeat.
There were still far too many.
Dozens of awakened surrounded them on rooftops, in the streets, leaping from windows and fences. Some wielded fire. Some crackled with lightning. Others had brute-strength runes that let them punch holes in the ground. A few had strange, complex abilities—force direction, weight manipulation, impact diffusion. And while none had rune frame armor like Jaune, Ruby, and Yang, their sheer numbers more than made up for that.
Even weakened, they swarmed like a pack of wolves.
Jaune sliced and diced with his sword towards a man with a reinforcement rune—only for the brute to block the hit and grin with teeth that looked like broken gravel. Jaune was forced to teleport away as the man swung back with enough force to crater the ground beneath him.
Yang screamed something wordless as three attackers boxed her in, explosions detonating from her fists and feet, the air around her boiling with heat. Ruby zipped between a cluster of enemies, carving deep cuts across their legs, but even she couldn't dart fast enough to keep them off her entirely. A lightning blast forced her to retreat, panting, sweat dripping down her jaw.
Jaune teleported again, breathing harder. His Aura was draining too fast. He could feel the Weaken rune eating through his reserves like wildfire.
At this point, he only had around 50% of his Aura left.
But still the awakened gang members pressed forward.
Amidst the chaos—Jaune noticed two figures languidly watching on a nearby rooftop.
They were the only ones among the awakened who weren't moving.
One was a tall man dressed in a immaculate coat and bowler hat, holding a slender cane as though he were out for a casual evening stroll rather than watching a battlefield. His hair was a striking shade of orange, perfectly styled, with an amused, almost lazy expression on his face.
Beside him stood a small girl in an outfit so colorful she looked like she'd stepped out of a pastel painting—brown, pink, cream, all swirled together like some bizarre confection. She twirled, what looked like an umbrella, one-handed, eyes half-lidded and a faint teasing smile ghosting at the edge of her lips as if the carnage below were mildly entertaining.
Neither moved to help and neither moved to attack. They simply watched with amusement. Truthfully, they seemed almost bored.
As if none of this mattered. As if they didn't need to intervene—because the rest of the gang could handle it for them.
Jaune felt a chill trace his spine.
Whoever those two were, they weren't ordinary Rank 1 awakened. They radiated a level of self-assured confidence he'd only seen in elite fighters—the kind who weren't worried because they had every reason not to be.
The bowler-hat man locked eyes with Jaune.
He lifted his cane slightly and tipped his hat in greeting.
It was a casual, unhurried grace that did not belong on a battlefield.
The street settled slowly, pausing for some unknown reason. The swarm of awakened gang members who had been hurling fire, lightning, debris, and fists at them only seconds ago gradually slowed their assault. Their collective advance faltered as though responding to an unspoken signal. Weapons lowered slightly. Footsteps stopped. For a moment, the battlefield simply… breathed.
Jaune, Ruby, and Yang regrouped back-to-back in the middle of the cratered neighborhood street, panting within their rune frames as they assessed the damage.
Jaune's eyes narrowed the instant he spotted motion where there shouldn't have been any.
A figure clawed his way out of the hole he had been launched through—that same awakened brute that Yang had punched through several houses earlier. Smoke still clung to him in wisps. Half his hair was burned off. His coat was ragged.
But besides the bruises and some burns, he was… mostly fine.
If there was any justice in the Dream, he should've been unconscious. Instead he cracked his neck once, wiped soot from his cheek, and trudged back toward the fight with a glare and a murderous intent that made Jaune's stomach twist.
The staff-user that Jaune, Ruby and Yang had tag-teamed earlier wasn't doing much better—but he was at least trying to pretend he wasn't spitting blood. He staggered into the forming semicircle with a shaky grin, as if determined to keep up appearances despite the very obvious internal bleeding.
Jaune grit his teeth. If even their combined strikes couldn't thin the numbers…
He didn't finish the thought.
Above them, thunder cracked.
Three enormous shockwaves boomed across the sky like someone slamming cosmic drums. Jaune and the others instinctively glanced up.
Against the crimson glow of the broken blood-moon, the sky itself had become a battlefield.
A small horde of colossal crows—shadowy monstrous things with wings like storms—tore through the clouds in pursuit of their prey. And fighting at the center of that aerial war was a single, gigantic raven made from pure darkness. An avatar of shadow shaped like a bird, yet possessed of an unmistakable ferocity.
That was Raven.
Shadow-Raven Raven was terrifying. Dozens of shadowy limbs bloomed from her avian torso—each one ending in a sword the size of a building. They whipped and carved through the air as she fought the displacement user far above. Reality itself warping and snapping from each exchange as space bent around their clash.
The shockwaves were so violent that ripples of distortion spiderwebbed across the sky. If even one of those stray slashes came down?
The entire neighborhood would be deleted.
Jaune watched for only a second longer before forcing himself to refocus on the ground below. If he lost concentration now, they'd be dead long before Raven or Qrow finished their fight.
Ruby's voice snapped him back.
"We need a plan," she hissed, shoulders heaving. "We can't keep doing this. Not like this."
Yang wiped her mouth with the back of her glove, glancing at the encircling awakened. Sweat—mixed with smoke—glistened across her brow.
"They're not coordinated," Ruby continued. "They're strong, but their teamwork sucks. They just rely on numbers and brute force."
Jaune nodded grimly.
"Numbers that'll still crush us if we stay on defense."
He looked around. Nearly thirty awakened remained standing. Some panting and some still fresh. Every single one weakened by his meta rune—yet somehow still extremely dangerous in their own ways.
His Aura was bleeding out at an alarming pace. He could feel it—like sand slipping through cracked fingers.
"We can disrupt their flow," Jaune said. "Force them to trip over each other."
Yang cracked her knuckles, explosions sparking beneath her boots.
"Good. Let's make them choke on their own crowd."
They took their stances again, ready to begin the chaotic melee—
—but someone else moved first.
A sharp tap echoed across the rooftop.
The bowler-hat man dropped lightly into the street with a flourish, landing as if gravity itself had accommodated him. He touched ground with elegance, brushing invisible dust off his immaculate white coat.
The multicolored girl hopped down beside him with a childlike spin, twirling her umbrella lazily as if descending into a ballroom, not a battlefield.
Every awakened within sight stepped back immediately.
Jaune felt the change ripple through the group—a subtle shift in posture and demeanor. These awakened obeyed strength, rank, aura presence—and whoever this man was, he sat comfortably above them.
The bowler-hat man raised a single gloved hand and the entire gang stilled completely.
Smiling pleasantly, he stepped forward like a gentleman approaching a table at a café.
"Well now," he said, voice smooth and lilting with a lazy delight. "Before we continue turning each other to paste, I thought it'd be polite to have introductions."
Jaune tensed. Ruby's scythe lowered slightly, but her eyes sharpened. Yang's arms hummed with barely restrained explosions.
The man tapped his cane, gaze flickering over the three rune frames with glinting interest.
"First things first," he said cheerfully. "Names."
Jaune did not answer.
The man chuckled softly.
"Well, I suppose it hardly matters." He gestured lightly toward the sky. "You're not locals, obviously. If you were from Belmont, you'd have won that little skirmish earlier. Or at least, you would've been present for it."
He gave them a theatrical shrug.
"Which means, naturally, you came from outside."
He didn't say how he knew. He didn't have to.
His tone implied it was obvious—to him.
Jaune stayed silent, jaw tight.
The man placed a hand over his heart.
"Oh, where are my manners? Allow me to introduce myself. I am Roman—Roman Torchwick." He paused dramatically, cane sweeping into a half-bow. "Master thief, extraordinary fashion icon, and apparently today's entertainment coordinator."
Yang scoffed.
Roman clicked his tongue. "Yes, yes, I know. Save your applause."
His eyes gleamed with wicked amusement.
"You'll have to forgive my acquaintances." He gestured to the gang members surrounding them. "They don't get very many opportunities to spar with humans. Most of their experience comes from… well." He waved vaguely. "Grimm. And even then, only with a great deal of assistance."
Jaune could feel the intention beneath the words.
Roman wasn't explaining anything.
He was toying with them.
Prodding. Testing. Watching their reactions. Looking for something that amused him.
Jaune's voice came out colder than he intended. "What do you want?"
Roman pretended to be offended—hand to chest, eyes widening in mock hurt.
"Want? Must I want something just to make conversation?" He sighed dramatically. "Kids these days. No appreciation for socializing."
The pastel girl gave a silent giggle behind him.
Roman's smile sharpened.
"Well, if I had to name a curiosity…" His gaze slid to Yang, lingering on the flickering wildfire aura curling off her fists. "It would be your runes."
Yang flipped him off without hesitation. A single, magnificent middle finger.
Roman's eyebrows shot up, amused rather than insulted.
"So rude," he chided, grinning. "Didn't your parents teach you any manners?"
If this Roman Torchwick wanted to "pause" the fight, if he wanted to give his forces time to breathe, reposition, or simply mock them… then Jaune would absolutely take advantage of it.
Jaune released his Weakness Rune the moment Roman paused the battlefield. It slipped from him soundlessly, its invisible tether snapping away from the surrounding awakened. The change was immediate. Shoulders straightened. Breathing steadied. Muscles uncoiled. The entire group of gang members recovered in an instant as though a weight had been lifted from their spines.
Roman felt it too.
He straightened almost imperceptibly, rolling one shoulder and then the other as if the air had thickened in a way he found interesting. The cane twirled between his fingers, the faint metallic tic-tic-tic of its tip tapping the ground punctuating his curious smile.
"Well now," he murmured, eyes glimmering. "That's quite a trick, kid."
Jaune didn't respond. His rune was already ready to reattach the instant the fight resumed.
Roman lifted his chin slightly, regarding Jaune with the interest of a man assessing a strange artifact. "A meta rune," he declared, delighting in the words, though Jaune could see a hint of emotion within his eyes. Why that was the case, Jaune didn't know. "Meta runes are rare and difficult to create. Most awakened avoid creating them—too much effort for too little reliability. That doesn't mean that they're weak however." He gestured lazily at the gang members scattered around the cratered street. "Yours is clearly built for combat."
Jaune felt his pulse hitch. Roman wasn't guessing. He knew.
Roman made a small flourish, a mock measurement in the air. "Let me think—since it removes a a large percent of our capabilities, no more than... what, fifteen, twenty—it must be called... Debilitate? Deficiency?" His smile sharpened. "Honestly, not bad. Few meta runes grant such immediate physical effect."
He tapped the cane once more. "So was I right? What's it called?"
Jaune glared. "Go fuck yourself."
Roman sighed dramatically. "Wonderful delivery. Terrible answer." He clucked his tongue. "Besides, 'Go Fuck Yourself' is three words. Only Rank Three Master Runes have three-word names."
Jaune blinked in confusion. Ruby shot him a bewildered look. Yang opened her mouth, then closed it again with an audible click of her teeth.
"What?" Jaune demanded.
Roman waved the question away as though it were a bothersome fly. "In any case, I'm not stopping this fight just for pleasantries, you know. I simply can't have my subordinates wasting what little strength they have left." His grin widened, thin and predatory. "They still have to assault the LUCID base, after all."
The words landed like dropped metal.
Before Jaune could form a reaction, the pressure in the air shifted—sharp, sudden and instinctively terrifying. Reality rippled. Something appeared behind Roman, not in a flash, not with warning, but simply was, as though he had always been standing there. A man in his fifties, gaunt and quiet, his presence twisting space in a way that made Jaune's pulse skitter.
The displacement user.
Roman looked almost pleased. "Perfect timing."
Space snapped.
The world folded inward like a page turning, and in an instant Roman his pastel subordinate, the displacement user, and every last awakened in the area vanished. Displaced. Removed from the coordinates Jaune and his squad occupied.
Jaune barely had the instinct to flinch before the street behind him exploded.
Qrow and Raven crashed into the pavement in twin shockwaves, reverting from their monstrous avian forms as the ground cratered beneath them. Dust billowed out in choking clouds. Both of them were bleeding and both were breathing hard. And both radiated pure, livid urgency.
"We have to move!" Qrow barked.
There was no sarcasm, drawl or dry humor. Just the clipped snarl of someone who had arrived seconds too late.
Before Jaune even processed the command, Qrow grabbed him by the back of his rune frame and pulled him effortlessly off the ground. Raven seized Ruby with one arm; Yang barely got out a startled protest before Qrow swung her up as well.
Then they launched.
The ruined street blurred into streaks of gray and red as wind ripped past Jaune's ears. His stomach dropped to his knees. The speed was beyond what Jaune's enhanced senses could cleanly process; the world tunneled into a smear of broken cityscape and shattered towers whipping beneath them.
"What the hell is happening?!" Yang shouted, her voice half-swallowed by the rushing air.
"Did they retreat?!" Ruby asked, clinging to Raven's arm, eyes wide behind her visor.
"They didn't retreat!" Qrow snapped over the wind. "They're tearing through the city—straight to the Belmont base!"
Jaune's breath seized.
Dozens of awakened, and the displacement user—heading directly toward a base full of weak technicians and awakened who were almost defenseless and suffering from dream erosion, unable to awaken from the Dream.
Jaune felt cold spread through his chest, sinking into his ribs like ice.
The displacement user could cross the city in a heartbeat. And every second that passed—
'We're not going to make it in time.'
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon