Seeing my apprentice injured and surrounded made the kid gloves come off from the very beginning.

  A wall of massive ten foot long swords plunged between Leona and the bandits followed by a rain of glowing swords that plunged into the ground for all of a couple seconds before detonating like small bombs, and the only reason the explosions were that small was because Leona was too close to use anything bigger without possibly hurting her or the towns people behind her in the process.

  It was still enough that three of the five weren’t getting back up again.

  I glared at the remaining two as the dust settled. Despite my bombardment, they actually seemed nearly completely unharmed.

  One looked like he had managed to hide before my attack detonated, slipping around a building. He was either impressively fast or managed to get an early warning somehow. The second was the exact opposite, going by the blast marks around his feet, he had withstood the equivalent of several magical RPGs going off in his face without moving an inch.

  I kept my eyes on him even as I landed next to Leona, only sparing a glance to see how bad her injury was. From my perspective it was just a gash on her arm, but just to make sure…

  “You okay?” I whispered to her, eyes back to carefully watching the two remaining bandits.

  I felt her nod next to me. “It’s just one scratch. My Wards deflected most of their shots, but one of them shot something that almost ignored them entirely. It looked like he was using fire instead of the normal bullets the others used.”

  I took a moment to consider her words. Leona had naturally modified her defensive Wards after seeing what guns could do, but neither of them had managed to test them against Dust rounds. Those were restricted to Huntemen or people with active Auras. Something the two of us didn’t have and couldn’t prove.

  At the time it hadn’t been a priority because neither of us were expecting Leona to end up in a serious fight anytime soon while we were fixing the Horizon. Now, I kinda wished I had insisted on getting my hands on a few since Dust could apparently cut right through her magic.

  I’d have to be a little more careful, too. My defenses were different from Leona’s but they were also mostly magical. The last thing I needed was to end up shot because I assumed I could take a bullet only to find out I was wrong.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for that.” I muttered. “You need to get everyone into the ship or headed towards the east gate. The walls were breached, we’re abandoning the town.”

  Leona inhaled sharply at the news but recovered quickly. “What about you?”

  I gave her a grim smile. “I’m going to deal with those two quickly.” The smile fell away, “And then I’m going to help escort all of you to the gate. At least nine bandits snuck in, I’m not betting your safety that was all of them.” Especially if that portal came from who I thought it did.

  My apprentice gave me a single nod and moved to start herding the townspeople towards the vehicles, only slowing down to allow a woman to tie a temporary bandage around her wounded arm.

  That was all the attention I could spare for her though. It was time to meet the bastards that decided to kill a town just to fuel their own greed.

  Two swords making up my impromptu wall dissolved into blue sparks as I stepped through the gap. I instantly spotted the bandit that had tanked my attack standing in roughly the same place and couldn’t help but frown.

  I exploded the better part of a street and put down three of his friends. Even if he was confident in his skills, he shouldn’t be taking me this lightly. So the question was, stupid overconfidence or earned arrogance?

  “So you’re the one messing up our operation, huh?” The bandit said, giving me a lookover. “Gonna be honest, I was hoping for someone that didn’t look like they still belong in one of those fancy academies just so the Boss wouldn’t chew me out as bad for how things went to hell. This was supposed to be my big break, you’re making me look bad blondie.”

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  “If it’s that big of a problem I don’t mind cutting you down.” I said coldly, as Monohoshi-Zao appeared in my hands. I quickly brought the long blade to sit up next to my face. “Won’t be your problem after that.”

  “Heh, scary.” The bandit scoffed, raising his own single handed axe into a ready position. “You sound just like her when she gets mad. Of course, she wouldn’t be mad over something like this either. The strong take what they want and the weak fall in line, blondie. That’s the way of the world.”

  “Then you don’t mind if I take your head.” I muttered as I dashed forward.

  As much as I wanted to see what someone with an active Aura could do in a real fight, this wasn’t the time to experiment too much. I’d end things as quickly as I could and then get the townspeople to safety. Getting revenge on the bandits for causing this in the first place could wait until after that. The only thing I was going to test in this fight was the effectiveness of the blade in my hands.

  I’d picked Monohoshi-Zao because it was a good litmus test for the rest of my projected blades against Aura. A normal sword overall for a Noble Phantasm, but one that almost guaranteed a hit.

  Not that the bandit seemed like he was planning on dodging.

  Even as I quickly closed the distance, he didn’t show any signs of even taking a defensive stance. Just setting up for some sort of counter attack without guarding himself in any way, obviously willing to bet on either his Aura or Semblance tanking the hit like he did for my earlier attacks.

  “Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi.”

  One sword, three strikes. I could actually see the instant the bandit realised he might have underestimated me and activated what had to be his Semblance – a solid glowing forcefield that covered him head to toe.

  All three of my attacks landed – one at the throat, two carving up under the ribs – and all three felt like I hit a metal statue instead of a person. Apparently his Semblance was something like a magic armor that was even tougher than the Wards Samuel could put up. Troublesome, but not unbeatable. Even without any special properties besides its length, I could feel as Monohoshi-Zao bit into the bandit slightly.

  And either because the Bandit was surprised I’d managed to hurt him even that much or because he was expecting me to slow down after hitting him, the counterattack was slow. I barely needed to twist out of the way to dodge it completely.

  My attack carried me past the Bandit so I quickly turned back to face him in time to see him reaching up to the small cut on his neck. “Damn, only the boss has ever managed a cut like that.” he said as he looked at the blood staining his fingertips. “Almost makes me want to introduce you two and see if she’ll take you into the tribe.”

  “It’d be a waste of my time, Belford.” A cool female voice spoke out behind me. “She doesn’t seem like the joining type.”

  I immediately used Haste to jump to the side, expecting an attack following up the words. But nothing happened. Instead I saw a woman wearing a red and black outfit leaning nonchalantly on the wall of a building, watching me carefully from underneath a full helmet shaped like a Grimm’s head.

  She was one of the few people on Remnant that I recognized on sight. Raven Branwen, mother of one of RWBY’s main cast, bandit leader, and depending on where in the timeline we ended up one of the four maidens - women granted incredible magical power when the previous owner died.

  “Boss, what are you doing here?” My opponent – Belford, apparently – questioned in a vaguely whining tone. “You agreed to letting me run the show this time.”

  “That was before you kicked off a Grimm Tide.” Raven said blandly and prevented me from speaking up. I didn’t know exactly what that was, but it also wasn’t too hard to guess based on the name. “We’re pulling out. Anyone that wants to live is getting sent back to Mistral.”

  “Damn, I put a lot of planning into this too. But I guess them’s the breaks, ya?”

  “Hold on a sec.” I interrupted. “Do you think I’m just going to let you walk away after you’ve admitted you’ve doomed the entire town?”

  Raven shrugged as she drew her sword. A curved, single edged blade resembling a katana that currently glowed red with the infused Fire Dust in the metal but could be swapped out for other blades as needed. An almost lazy slash through the air formed a swirling red portal to appear.

  “I don’t think you can stop us.” Raven replied. “Besides, we didn’t doom this town. A Tide can’t form from nothing. This town was always going to be destroyed, Belford just moved the date up a little bit. You can complain about it all you want but that's the truth. Now get moving, Belford, Cassander.”

  The second bandit, who I had mostly forgotten about, wasted no time sprinting through the portal and disappearing. Belford shrugged and began moving to do the same.

  I just felt my insides burn with rage at the casual dismissal the two had over destroying a town and, as far as they knew, leaving everyone left behind to be killed by the Grimm.

  “If you think I’m letting you just leave–” I started before I was interrupted by Raven swinging her sword again. This time a wave of fire spread from the blade that threatened to consume me, or so it first appeared. I could sense a decent amount of magic enhancing the flames beyond the Dust blade just generating them. Which meant I couldn’t just charge through them without thinking.

  I dodged even further back but by the time the flames died down, Belford was nowhere to be seen and Raven had her back to me, calmly walking towards her portal.

  “Hold it!”

  Raven ignored me and kept walking. “I wouldn’t waste your energy, little girl. Save it for the Grimm. The weak die, the strong survive. It was nothing personal.” She said as she stepped through the swirling red hole in reality before that vanished behind her leaving me with a lot of pent up anger and no one to take it out on.

  But if there really was something as dangerous sounding as a Grimm Tide heading for us, I didn’t have time to waste complaining that the bandits responsible for this whole mess had run off. I needed to focus on making sure the rest of us got out alive.

  With that in mind I turned and sprinted back to where the Azure Horizon was parked and was at least pleased to see Leona had gotten it and the other vehicles in the area moving towards the East gate like I had told her to. Thanks to that, there was very little else for me to do besides urge the few people we ran into on the way to the wall to evacuate and snipe a few flying Grimm that had managed to slip past the remaining defenders until we met up with Dann’s group at the gate and began fleeing the town for real.

  We were only a few miles out from the walls when I saw what it meant to face a ‘Grimm Tide’ through the Horizon’s cameras.

  A solid carpet of black shapes emerged from the surrounding mountains and forests that blotted out every other color that slowly made its way over the horizon until it washed over what remained of Thornbell.

  Some of the townspeople watching from over my shoulder cried out in despair at the sight of their home getting swallowed up. I could only think of how paradoxically lucky we had been to not only have been preparing to evacuate the civilians while being unable to locate the bandit camp’s new location. Because if I had gone out to deal with the bandits while this Tide hit the town unprepared…

  Well, I didn’t want to think about how many fewer people would be alive to run from them.