Jaune
Fear stands tall as he walks towards the groups of people as they fight. Jaune yells as he slams Crocea Mors towards the heated hands of Cinder, she manages to stop the blade but his anger is making him force it closer and closer to her neck. He does not notice, however, that Loss is approaching from behind with her Tonfas primed. Yang turns around and she gasps in terror when she sees Fear stood behind her, a grin on his face, teeth shown under the ripped lips. The green gas with swarms of flies erupts from his wrist and palm, billowing into her face, into her nose, eyes and lungs. She gasps in pain as she feels her lungs on fire from the Fear Toxin working its magic on her, collapsing to the floor. Yang clenches her cybernetic hand to a fist to cover her mouth as she coughs, her eyes burning as she tears up from the fear that is channelling through her. Her muscles tighten up like she is being electrocuted with a taser, unable to even move. "Don't be afraid, Yang...you're not dying, it just feels like you are." Fear tells her.
Jaune's eyes widen when he hears the faint voice of Fear, but when he turns around at Yang who's on the floor, he cannot even see Fear stood there. Cinder yells, creating a powerful fireblast that sends Jaune into the air, Crocea Mors thrown from his fingers and shield bouncing on the floor. Cinder punches him right in the chest. As Jaune lands on the ground, he looks up and sees the Widow standing above him, her black veil of shadows covering her face. Jaune turns and he hears Neptune having the same sort of reaction as Yang, at the exact same time. Same as Weiss, same as Kassius! All of them are having similar reactions, but others are having different ones, breaking down to tears instead of being drowned with fear. They can appear around them at any time, all at once, unlike Fury and Death who cannot produce many clones of themselves at once. They are weaker, but can break people mentally. Loss grabs the black veil and throws it back, revealing her face to him.
She is an extremely beautiful woman with long silver hair that has been hidden, concealed by the veil of shadows that covers her head. The hair blows in the wind, clean and silky hair. Her skin is a pale blue but is smooth and scar-less, alluring lips set beneath her small nose. Her eyes glow bright blue, hooded eyes. But as Jaune sees her, he feels a shock of pure sadness coming over him, his eyes tearing up when he sees something on her change. The eyes turn from blue to green and the hair becomes a luxurious red that forms into a stunning ponytail. The pale skin becomes pale white and the golden bronze circlet plate forms around her forehead. "Jaune..." Pyrrha's voice whispers, Loss' manipulating his heartbroken emotions to break him.
Jaune staggers to his feet, looking around as his surroundings begin to transform as the grass and ground shifts, becoming a clean marble floor and balloons rise from the grass. He sees the walls forming as he sees the bodies of people he knows around him, seeing Nora and Ren in their Prom-Wear as they dance, Sun laughing as he dances with Blake. He looks at them in confusion and worry as he stands there. Until he feels the gentle presence of a hand that touches his. "Do wanna dance?" Pyrrha asks him, and he gasps, feeling his heartstrings being torn when he sees her stood behind him. She wears her beautiful red dress as she stands there, a kind smile on her face.
Yang
Outside of Jaune's sorrow, Yang attempts to get back up to her feet but the fear is causing her head to pound in pain. "My toxin is filling your lungs, your mind, you heart...everything you are...drowning every last bit of it in nightmares." Fear says as he walks around her, his cloak trailing behind him as he walks. "Tell me – what do you see? The corpses of those you love before you? The blade of Wilt and Blush carving through your stomach to end your short life?" Fear asks her as he entraps her with his toxin. "Watching Miss Rose die?" He adds as he tilts his head with a smirk on his face. "As I tear your mind apart, one nightmare at a time, your friends will see you for what you truly are. You make yourself out as a confident girl, one of which who has nothing to fear...but we both know the truth...you are barely holding onto your sanity as it is with your younger sibling in our claws." He explains as he continues to walk around her, chuckling at her. As the toxin tunnels into her mind, his voice starts to sound more demonic, a lot like Mr Hyde in fact. Yang presses her hands to her head as she struggles to keep him at bay. She staggers and when she opens her pained eyes, which is when she sees it. She manages to rise back to her feet; the throbbing sensation of pain in her head is beginning to pass. She look around...
She is in the Charred Forest.
Black bark towers that pierce through the clouds, a huge tower in the middle of the land and she gasps when she sees her greatest fear. Before her are her friends, everyone dead. Jaune is laid down on the ground with the blade of Crocea Mors pushed into his own ribcage, blood drenching his black jumper. The blood has completely covered over the face of Pumpkin Pete on the hoodie, his skin turned pale. She continues to look and she sees Nora in Ren's arms with holes in their stomachs from where they have been killed. Her eyes turn when she sees the horrific sight of Neptune hanging from a tree and Sun has been shot through the head by an unknown source, the arrow stuck in his skull. She gasps in horror when she sees Weiss on her back with Myrtenaster snapped before her and the blunt half pushed into her belly. Blood everywhere. Kassius' corpse has been impaled onto a spiked tree stump, blood haemorrhaging from his wound as he lays there, his eyes still open as he lays there, his cybernetic arm ripped from his shoulder. Yang's attention finally ends on Blake who lies on the floor before her with Gambol Shroud broken by her side, a hole in her belly where blood is constantly spilling from.
Yang gasps as she falls to her knees, touching her best friend's neck to see if she is alive. Until Blake's hand sharply grasps onto Yang's wrist, holding her tight and scaring her soul from her lungs. Blood leaks from Blake's lips as she winces. "You – could've – saved – us..." Blake winces in agony. "Why didn't – you do more?" Blake questions as she dies, releasing Yang's arm. Yang shudders in terror when she looks up and sees her ultimate fear.
Across this war torn forest of their final battle are more bodies, Qrow's body with Raven, Taiyang and others laying there with blood all over the soil. Her eyes focus on the four Knights as they stand on the hill. Fury chokes Glynda in his hand and snaps her neck with his volcanic hand, throwing her down the hill with a snarl. Fear stands there and Ozpin is on his knees, and he points his one handed Crossbow at his head, launching a bolt straight into the Headmaster's skull, killing him. Loss has her Tonfa pushed into the heart of Oscar and she rips it out as he dies, blood pouring out from the hole in his corpse, slumping down to the floor.
Finally, the Knight of Death stands at the summit of the hill with his armoured hand clutching on her red hood, holding her dead body up in the air with triumph in those red eyes of his. Her silver eye is closed and she can see the open wound of her wound is open to the world. Death holds her corpse high; there is a hole in her heart where he has stabbed her with Ferrum Arctus, blood trickling down the blade. Yang gasps with terror and grief when she sees her sister's body in the clutches of the Grimm Reaper. His red eyes stare straight into her gentle purple ones. "The Canvas of life will be wiped clean..." Death snarls.
Neptune
Neptune gasps in terror, staggering around as he looks around the area to see where he is, hearing the roaring of water around him. He shudders as he hears the terrible sound of the water, his eyes focusing when the darkness becomes more vibrant, and an ocean of sapphire blue water flooding through his home. He stands on top of a collapsing bridge as it starts to collapse from the water crashing against it, pulling entire houses with them in the floods. Neptune shudders as he stands there, and he hears a small boy wailing with anguish and he turns, gasping when he sees a tiny little boy next to him on the bridge, reaching down to the rushing water beneath him. "Momma!" The boy cries heavily, tears gushing from his dark blue eyes, water drenching his brown hair.
Neptune looks up the village where he can see a mountain and a blown open dam, a massive avalanche of water still coming down and drowning the entire town. He then looks back at the boy, this happened in Mistral many years ago. He looks down at the water and he has to look away. He shudders when he looks around, still hearing the roar of the water and he can still hear the sounds like they were yesterday.
The boy...
The boy is him.
He stands there and he puts his hands against his ears and at the same time, the boy does the same as he sobs and sobs away. The roar of the torrential water is so loud that it is like a horde of Grimm bellowing at once. But he peers over and he sees a nightmare appear before him, a bad memory. He can see his mother in front of him, a beautiful young woman at the time and her husband beside her. They were in a car and they had to get out just as the cars all stopped on the bridge. They were in the middle of evacuating the town when the dam blew.
He remembers the sight of hearing the cracking of the concrete wall from whatever damaged it. Later revealed to be the White Fang who were flooding the town, killing many people at once with a single attack. They were going on foot and when he was walking, the bridge began to collapse from one of the supports getting smashed by a truck being carried in the torrent.
The bridge cracks and crumbles apart as the cars plummet down from the bridge and into the water. His father pushed him away and they both fell with their car and vanished into the blue, disappearing from Neptune's life forever.
Leaving him here for hours.
On his own.
Crying.
This is a really bad memory for him.
Weiss
She looks around, still holding Myrtenaster but the fear is making her feel extremely afraid as she stands there, looking around sharply as she walks around. The darkness swells around her and she shudders as she looks around, holding the hilt tight, and she jumps in fear when she starts hearing loud male shouting nearby. She looks around and the colour begins to appear as the Hallucinogenic Toxin begins to form a false vision before her eyes. Her fear sends her to her home in Atlas, the Schnee Manor. She walks through the halls and she stands there, holding her arm with a vulnerable feeling channelling through the muscles in her body. She shrinks down, hearing Jacques bellowing at her mother. "She is a failure to the family name!" Jacques erupts.
"She is just a little girl!" Willow defends angrily.
"You were younger than her when given the Family Fortune!" He shouts at her with venom in his tongue as he speaks. She backs up, nervous with scared eyes as she wants to leave this place, despite that all of this that she stands in is nothing more than a hallucination, a bad memory that Fear is using to break her.
"You married into this family for the name, Jacques! I could end this right now and fix the family." Willow challenges, but then there is an almighty loud clap from inside their bedroom and Weiss could hear her yelp from the impact of Jacques' hand hitting the side of her face, knocking her on the floor.
This all took place when Weiss was only six years old, and this is the conversation that she was hearing. Her sister was at school when this was happening and she was sick so she didn't go. Willow was fine with it, but Jacques was not and he wanted her punished for it, instead of being looked after. And Whitley was happily playing away as he always has been able to. Weiss can hear the sound of her mother whimpering in pain. "Remember your place, Willow." He snarls. "If she will not follow my path then there is no path worth following." He says to her. "I married into this family for one purpose." He says to her.
"Money?" She scoffs. "You never loved me...and to think that I was once head-over-heels for you." Willow growls with disgust at him.
"Oh no, my love." Jacques answers. "I married you because I enjoy winning." He tells her and Weiss can he hear scoff in disgust. She then hears the sound of the man approaching the door and she sees the handle moving downwards and the door swings open. She backs a step back, bleating with fear as she sees her father stood there. His hair still partially black, starting to turn white as he grows older and older. On the floor is Willow, a red mark on the side of her face from where he smacked her, a bruise on her eye.
He glares right at Weiss and he storms towards her. "Do you think they hand medals to you because you're sick? Get in the cab and get to school!" Jacques bellows as he storms towards the scared girl. Weiss looks away as his hand approaches her to hit her as he always does as discipline, but as soon as the hand gets near; he erupts into crows, all of them cawing as they disperse from his form.
Leaving her on her own.
She stands there and a gasp escapes her lungs as she looks down, seeing a small Weiss Schnee curled up on the floor, crying into the floor.
Jaune
Jaune looks at the beautiful Nikos girl, wanting to hold her hand forever. The cruelty of Loss' hallucinations is that she makes them feel real, the air feels real, and the warmth from a girl's skin feels real on yours. Despite the sad truth that it is all a dream, she could place you in a really happy memory with someone you have lost, and when you wake, all the happiness, the joy, the pleasure that you may have felt.
It will all be gone.
She smiles as she looks into his eyes, rubbing her thumb against his and he looks at himself, he still wears his armour and hoodie, unlike the dress he promised to wear when he danced with her during the Prom. Her body seems to glow, the red dress radiates with beauty across her majestic curves. She walks closer to him and she wraps her arms around him and he can't help but do the same, holding her close, never wanting this beautiful moment with her to end. So many things are going through his mind that he wants to tell her.
How he feels about her.
How beautiful she is.
There are so many things on his mind, and it is becoming overwhelming. The music transcends into a gentle piano and they both start to dance slowly on the dance floor, his arm around her and she smiles as she holds him, as if she is embracing this moment as much as he is. She puts her hand around his neck and she kisses him again and Jaune holds her tight, kissing her gently as well so then they can have this moment, one where they are not facing the moment of Cinder taking her from him. The kiss feels like it lasts forever, and when the kiss ends, they look into each other's eyes, holding hands.
She looks straight at him and he stammers, tears falling from his eyes and she stammers as she tries to speak to him. "Jaune..." She gently says.
"Pyrrha..." He also says, both are struggling to find the words to actually say what they want to say. They both want to admit their feelings, but the feelings of loss is too great.
"I wish..." Pyrrha stammers with tears in her emerald coloured eyes. "I want..." She stutters. "I want to have this forever..." She says to him and Jaune moves his head towards hers, and she does the same. They both affectionately touch their foreheads together, closing their eyes. She holds him tight. "I don't want to go..." She says as her voice begins to break.
"I won't ever let you go – not again." Jaune tells her as he holds her hand, but Pyrrha starts to cry in his arms.
"I can't stay here, Jaune..." She says to him.
Only now does Jaune realise that this is not the ordinary type of Hallucination...this is the real soul of Pyrrha Nikos and she looks into his eyes. Her soul is trapped somewhere, and Loss let her actually be with him in this moment.
Kind...but Cruel.
She holds his hand and he tries to hold onto her. "Goodbye, Jaune." Pyrrha sniffles.
"Pyrrha...please..." He begs.
As he looks at her, he hears the voice of Loss behind him. "I'm sorry." Loss says to him, making him look over his shoulder. But she is not there, when he looks back.
Pyrrha...
And everyone in the hall is gone.
Jaune closes his eyes as his tears soak his cheeks and he sniffles, looking down at the floor as he stands on his own. Because of Pyrrha.
Because of what Salem has done.
Ren
He looks around, hearing the howls of the Nuckelavee in the distance, the disturbing bellows of screeching voices all going off at once. He looks around and he turns to face the Knight of Fear as he walks through the terrain. "Kuroyuri – where you lost nearly everything..." Fear says to him, and as he walks, the flashback of the fall of his home completely pauses as the Nuckelavee smashes straight through a house with a roar, the horse rearing up and bellowing to the sky, kicking its hoofs with force. The creature atop the Equus is shrieking, but everything stops in one moment, chunks of concrete frozen in place. The roar of the creature has been paused, but Fear and Ren can both still move easily.
Fear holds out his skeletal hands as he looks at him with a smirk. "...and yet you also gained everything." He says to him.
Ren looks around and then he sees little Nora hiding under the house. He means Nora, and she does mean absolutely everything to him. Ren stares at him as he walks around the frozen memory, still smirking away as he always does with his hand holding Formido Falcem in one hand. "What is this?" Ren questions with stern eyes, and Fear smiles at him as he walks.
"This is what awaits you when you join the Infinite and the Unbound." Fear says to him as he walks towards Nora, holding her hand. As his hand touches her palm, she evolves into the current version of Nora and she walks alongside him. Fear looks straight at Ren as he walks around more, the Nuckelavee is still frozen where he came from.
Ren stammers. "What are you talking about?" Ren questions.
"One is capable of an unthinkable amount of things when one becomes a part of the Shivering Dominion." He says to him, and Ren watches the things that Fear is capable of. He was not afraid of the Nuckelavee at first because of his semblance, so Fear is testing him here. Fear approaches him. "When you join us, you can change everything about what you were." Fear says as he waves his hand before the Nuckelavee.
The memory continues and the house collapses over Fear and he vanishes in front of Ren. Ren backs up, looking up at the Grimm Monstrosity as the hoofs land down before him, the impact cracking the stone ground. The Nuckelavee shrieks to the sky, the long arms cracking and twitching as the beast stands tall, clenching the hand into a fist as it swings it straight at some civilians, smashing straight through a statue. The statue's frame shatters like glass, chunks of stone crumbling into little pieces, tipping over and crashing down into the ground. The amalgamated jockey's jaws stretch open as it roars, hanging limp down the side of the horse, rasping a wheeze as it breathes.
Ren expects to watch the Nuckelavee kill the people of his town again, until an arrow shoots into its chest and it roars in pain. He turns and he gasps, seeing his father stood there, launching his arrows at the beast and as more warriors come jumping down to fight the monster. The Nuckelavee screeches in pain when one smashes a hammer into its back leg, breaking it and another warrior cuts its arm off as it swings at him. The smoke billows from the wounds and it staggers around. One man jumps in the air with the hammer and smashes the horse's head into the ground. Finally, Li Ren releases the bowstring, sending the arrow hurtling forward and puncturing through the soft innards of its eye.
The head snaps back with smoke spurting from the exit wound and it twitches, before disappearing in a tower of smoke.
It never went that way.
Fear appears as he walks through the smoke and he looks at him. "When joining the Infinite and the Unbound, we offer those the chance to change their memories to become better, to live happily and at peace, without being plagued by their past." He explains to him, Nora walking with him. And as he speaks, she speaks as well, but only his voice comes out.
"Giving us the chance to be new once more." Nora says in his voice with a smile. He then looks and sees his father and mother speaking in unison with the exact same voice.
"The chance to have perfect memories, no more nightmares, just peace." He says through them. Now Ren looks straight at Fear as he approaches him with his hands held out.
"Isn't that something worth fighting for?" Fear asks him. "Isn't that something worth dying for?" He asks him, and that's when Ren realises what Fear is trying to do. He is making this idea to seduce him to the wonders of death, so then he can die and be under the control of the Knight of Death. To become just another pawn in their sadistic game of chess. Ren glares at him and he scoffs.
"No." Ren coldly answers. And Fear stops, the entire realm that they stand in collapses as soon as he says it. "I will not leave her." Ren says, but that was the worst thing that he could have said.
Because that creates an idea in the mind of Fear. "I see – it's not the Nuckelavee that you fear..." He realises as he walks around, the dark landscape forms the body of Nora who is on her knees by his feet. He holds his long fingered hand before her. "It's your beloved." He says with a smirk. "How very twee..." He chuckles with madness. "Would you like to know what I saw in her mind?" He asks him.
"It doesn't matter." Ren says.
"Oh no, but I like this." He says as he clasps his hands together, still sneering at the brave man. "She loves you more than anything in the world, she would harbour your children with grace, never leave your side...because you inspired bravery in her." He says to him, the faint laughs of a madman echoing around him. "She fears the same thing that you fear." He says, suddenly pulling out a gun from his robes and pointing it straight at the back of her head.
"No!" Ren screams in terror.
Fear instantly pulls the trigger, without hesitation. He looks at Ren, seeing the horror in his face when he sees the blood, and her body slumping forward onto the darkness that makes a floor beneath them. Blood spilling across the ground. "Whoops, my finger slipped." He chuckles. "You both fear losing your other half." Fear says to him, walking back into the shadows as Ren collapses to his knees, touching her hand and feeling nothing, sobbing in anguish.
He knows that it isn't real...
But it looked real.
Blake
She has tears filling her eyes as Loss manipulates her mind after showing her face to her. She staggers across the ground, trying to keep a level head but she can't. As she looks around, she gasps when she sees them before her.
Ghira and Kali.
They both walk towards her with kind smiles on their faces. "Blake...hello sweetheart." Ghira says to her with a gentle smile and a gasp escapes her lungs when she sees them, and she cannot help but cover her mouth, tears welling up and streaming down her cheeks as she stands there.
"Mom? Dad?" She whimpers, after knowing that Fury killed them, this is heartbreaking for her to see them like this. Kali smiles as she reaches out to her and touches her cheek with her hand, and just like it was for Jaune, everything about their presence feels like it is real. She reaches out and hugs her mother and her father.
"It's okay, sweetheart." Kali assures as she strokes her hair as she hugs her gently.
"I've missed you both...so much." She sniffles into her mother's shoulder.
"We've missed you too...but we are so proud of you." Kali assures as she smiles to her little girl whose ears are folded down as she cries. She looks up at her hulking father, they are both free of damage from their attack from Fury himself. A terrible moment in her life.
"You're nearly there, sweetheart." Ghira tells her.
"How do you know?" Blake asks with tearful eyes and a broken voice.
"You can beat them – I know you can." Ghira assures with a smile.
"How?" Blake asks.
"You know how, you need to find out what makes them believe in what they are – make them challenge who they are – challenge their own beliefs." Kali says to her.
"But I lost you both." She sniffles, but they both hold their hands.
"We had our time together – you and that boy have so much ahead of you." Kali says to her with a smile and she sniffles, wiping the tears from her eyes with her wrists.
"I never did like the boy, but he is devoted to you. At the end of the day, that is all I can ask of him to do. To keep you safe." He says as he caresses her cheek and wipes the tears away from her eyes.
She smiles, and as she looks at them, a bright white light starts to form behind them, and they both fade away into the glare, leaving her on her own once more.
Sun
The Wukong boy looks around sharply after Loss managed to get into his head, her eyes managing to bury their way through. He stumbles across the dark landscape but when he walks, he looks down and he sees his mother on the ground, blood pouring from the open wound in her belly where Hazel stabbed her years ago. Sun gasps, dropping his staff and collapsing to his knees. He touches her body and shakes her to try and wake her up. "Mom? Mom!" He cries out, begging for her eyes to open.
They never do.
Tears start to leak from his blue eyes and he shakes her harder and harder and she never wakes up. But when he looks up, he sees her stood there, her silver eyes looking into his blue ones. He was never given the gift of her eyes, and perhaps she never knew how to unlock the power.
Perhaps Kragen Nox could have taught her if he managed to save her before Hazel got there with the disguised Acolytes of Lien. "Hello, Sun..." She says to him with a smile. "You have grown into such a handsome boy." She says with a gentle smile as she caresses his cheek.
The sense of reality that the touch brings really hits Sun home, making him believe that it is real. He touches her hand with his own and he looks at his mother with scared eyes. "I miss you, mom..." Sun whispers.
"I miss you too, honey." She says with a smile.
"But I know that this isn't real." He says. "It's all happening in my head."
"Yes...It is." She says with a heavy sigh. "But that does not mean that it is not real." His mother says to him. He looks at her with saddened eyes.
"What do I do?" He asks.
"What you have always done." She answers. "Never let someone change who you are."
Kassius
He is the last one to experience the effects of the two Knights.
He opens his eyes, finding himself in some sort of house, it is not worn down or anything like that. It is actually quite nice looking, he slowly stands up and he is relatively fine, surprisingly in the circumstance. He still holds Lash Equinox and he walks around slowly. He examines the area, finding himself recognising some things.
This is definitely some sort of hallucination set in a real place from his memory. He finds a photograph and he picks it up off the table and looks at it. He sees himself in the picture when he was younger. Before he lost his arm. His mother is in the picture but no father and he has Yang around one shoulder, both smiling happily. She has two little ponytails of deep blonde coloured hair down her shoulders, she must have been little at this point. Kassius is two years older than her but he has always been her best friend even before that became romantic when they both became older. But in his other arm is another girl with blue eyes and black hair. She smiles as well but not as energetically as Yang. She has pale white skin and she leans into her brother's side. She is the same age, perhaps a twin sister, and clearly he has always looked after her.
He walks through, past a coat hanger, but when he walks past, he does not notice it beginning to move by itself, almost like it is alive. He starts to walk up the stairs, looking around the area of his old home. "Hello?" He calls out.
There is a tepee stood on the landing of the first floor and he looks around. But he stops when he hears a music box starting to play inside of it and he turns around to look at it quizzically. The music starts playing...
...a very familiar song.
"There was a crooked man..." It begins, a child singing the song happily with others singing with him, singing the peaceful little nursery rhyme. Kassius looks at it and he slowly and cautiously approaches it, looking at the machine as he crouches down. "...and he walked a crooked mile." The device continues. "He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile." The song continues and Kassius enters the tepee, looking at the machine as it spins round and he looks directly into it to see the tape that is rotating round inside to show a stop-motion animation of an illustration of something. "He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse." The song continues as he looks at the illustration.
There is a man walking with a cane inside, just a loop of him walking with what looks like a limp, but is jolly as he walks, taking his hat off to imaginary people who pass by. He wears a dress suit and trousers and shoes that are all coloured black and red. "And they all lived together in a little –" The song ends there and the drawings of the Crooked Man disappear into just a plain piece of paper.
Kassius looks at it with confusion, his eyes turn to a drawing on the floor.
It is the exact same drawing of Mr Hyde that Yang saw. His eyes widen and he looks straight forward and he screams in terror.
Mr Hyde is right in front of him.
"Boo!" Mr Hyde shouts with a big smile on his crooked face. His eyes glow bright red and he is a carbon copy of the drawing that Yang saw. Kassius throws himself from the tepee, crawling out as the tepee falls onto Mr Hyde who is still trapped inside of it. There is a terrifying laugh coming from the tent. The table sheet starts to rise up as Mr Hyde stands back up. Kassius stares in disbelief to see that Mr Hyde is actually real. Suddenly Hyde darts into the wall with a loud bang and the wall starts to crack violently, plasterwork and paint chipping off as the cracks fissure across as Hyde aggressively moves through the building above him. Mr Hyde's cracking walls suddenly erupts into a wardrobe that opens and he is stood there with the Walking Cane in his hand. "Ah-Ha!" He laughs as he runs across the bed and jumps at Kassius.
Kassius draws his sword and swings it straight at Mr Hyde, slicing through him. Hyde erupts into a swarm of crows that all fly through the windows, shattering them as they depart from the scene, cawing loudly, disappearing. He looks around and he starts running to find a way out of this nightmare. Another Mr Hyde appears before him. "Let me take control!" Hyde begs like a child before swinging the rounded end of his cane straight at Kassius. Kassius lifts the blade of Lash Equinox up and he cuts his cane in half. "Oh come on!" Hyde exclaims before erupting into crows as Kassius stabs him with the blade.
Kassius kicks the door down into his parent's bedroom and he gasps when he sees who is on the ground, on her knees before him. His eyes widen in disbelief.
It's Ilia.
Ilia looks at him with fear in her eyes and he walks towards her slowly. He stares straight at her and she is whimpering with fear. "Kassius – I tried to warn you – but they were gonna kill me..." She stammers with fear. Kassius glares at her and he does not even notice Mr Hyde appearing behind him, multiple duplicates of him approaching him from behind to whisper in his ear, acting as his devil on his shoulder.
"Come on! Finish her!" One of the Hyde's demands to him as he points his cane at her. There are five of them all around him, speaking at once to get him to kill her.
"Look at her, she's no better than the coward who hid behind a mask to kill your team, your girlfriend." Mr Hyde whispers into his ear with a smirk on his face.
"You need to do something." Mr Hyde whispers, taking his top hat off for a moment as he says it. "You need to stop her from doing the same thing to Yang." Mr Hyde says, now Kassius has Vulcan Nox aimed at her head and Ilia whimpers in terror, her hand held up for mercy.
"Good."
"Good."
"Good."
They all repeat it at once, over and over again into his head as he stares at Ilia.
And then there is a loud bang, and the sound of her body collapsing to the floor with blood leaking from the wound. But when he does it, he realises that she was never there, and now all the Mr Hyde's have up and vanishes from the scene. Kassius stands there, feeling unaccomplished, like he has not avenged his teammates, and he falls to his knees, clenching his hands into fists.
She keeps on getting away.
And that is what he fears.
Never getting vengeance.
Qrow
Qrow looks upon them all, seeing that they are all incapacitated from either fear or heartbreak, on the floor from what they did. He then focuses his attention on Fear and Loss who are walking in front of Cinder, Hazel, Mercury and Emerald, and wherever the Onyx Phantom is hiding. Qrow growls in anger, holding his sword tight. He, Raven and Winter have not been manipulated yet, but the night is still young, despite the sun in the sky. Fear laughs maniacally, throwing his back backwards as he laughs and Loss just walks around as the others get back on their feet. Raven turns and she can see Ren and Kassius getting back up slowly, able to shake their fears off faster than the others. The rest are still incapacitated. "Wow! Would you look at that? All it takes is a simple idea and look what the damage is!" He cheers with amazement as he looks at them all on the ground.
"This is between us, Fear." Qrow snarls. Fear laughs at him.
"Indeed. I believe it is, now – where were we?" He asks as he spins Formido Falcem through his fingers, slamming the Scythe Blade into the soil. Loss draws her bow and aims straight at the three of them, her blue eyes fixed with them.
Qrow stands in the middle with Raven on his right and Winter on his left. Ready to fight the two Knights.
"Kicking your ass if I remember correctly." Qrow says.
"You're a brave one." He chuckles.
They engage in combat again, but during the battle, Cinder turns and stares at Jaune, forming her bow again and she stands back up, walking towards Jaune on the ground. She draws the bow back and aims the arrow straight at him.
She could do it.
Right now.
But she is struggling to release the arrow, she grits her teeth and is desperately trying to do it, but something is stopping her. "Why can't I do it?" She screams in anger at herself, throwing the bow on the ground.
"I know why." Kassius says, making her eyes widen and she turns.
"Who are you?" Cinder questions.
"You know who I am – Sapphire." He says, causing Cinder's expression to transform into confusion.
"What?"