For once the plan was enacted with very little bellyaching.

Shine declined to join them, saying she was too affected still, so Wally headed it up.

Vara splashed water on herself before going with him.

Ruby and Oscar also joined him, and Victoria seemed determined to go, though Robyn's medic in the Huntresses said that Victoria was showing some signs of exhaustion and looked kind of glassy-eyed, but the woman declined any advice to slow down.

"Time to go destroy some Apathy." Wally tried to sound upbeat.

Meridian also insisted on going. He said he was fine now that he'd rested.

"Okay, but remember, we might get one shot before those things get really angry," Wally said, "or whatever they get. If we get in trouble, you know... You're sure?"

"You're all risking your lives," Meridian said.

"Nothing new there," Wally said.

"Just hurry," Theo called. "Outside of the camps, people are getting worse."

It had been maybe an hour and a half, even, since they had first started moving people--already you could see more of a change than in the others. The Apathy might be increasing, even though they'd killed a lot of them.

Or it could be the remaining ones had started moving towards the edge of the kingdom more.

"All right, let's go." Wally waved at the small crew.

One of the Huntresses had found them a car so that they could save their energy more.

"You're going to be careful, right?" Weiss said to them. "You saw what those things do, so..."

"We'll be fine, okay?" Oscar tried to sound confident.

"Yeah." Ruby made a fist. "Easy peasey."

Qrow shook his head, but he knew by now he couldn't talk Ruby out of doing this.

"I'll be watching from a distance," Raven said. "Just in case."

That had to be the most comforting thing she'd tried to say in weeks...or years.

"Sure," Qrow said.

"See you in a few, Snow Tiger," Meridian said to Weiss, who frowned at him. 

"You could be a little more serious. This is a crazy idea," she said.

Meridian suddenly stole a quick kiss, to her shock.

"Sorry, just in case," he said.

Weiss glared at him, then she turned red. "You could have asked."

"I'll ask next time, promise," Meridian said.

"You--" Weiss sputtered, then she just stopped talking and walked away.

[I know, I know, consent is sexy. Give the guy a break--this is Vacuo. Even as an afterthought it's a surprise.]

Weiss just hoped Winter hadn't seen that--actually that was the main reason she was mad.

Luckily, Winter hadn't been looking right then, but she did see her storm away and wondered what happened.

"We're sending 5 people to do this?" Tai said to Shine.

"People have saved the world with less," Shine said, nonchalantly.

"So what do we do?" Yang asked.

"Pray," Shine said. "I know I'll be doing it. And stay hopeful."

The 5-man band and Victoria left.

[Let's see, Wally, Oscar, Ruby, Vara, and Meridian. Ruby's the Paragon, so Oscar must be the Smart Guy, Meridian would probably be the Lance, Vara is the Tank, and Wally is the Heart. If you're a story analyst nerd, you know what I'm talking about. Victoria has to be outside it, so is she like the antihero who occasionally works with the team?]

Left to wait, the group mostly paced, sat in the shade, split off to help the Huntresses move people, or prayed.

Team JNPR undertook the task of getting more music stands set up, since Jaune was able to help them resist the Apathy's pull--he was trying to pace himself more carefully now.

They got one up, and Pyrrha plugged in one of the soundtracks that began blaring a song that Nora instantly thought was bomb.

https://youtu.be/K_flH6B21Y8

[Been waiting for another chance to use this. I wanted one with more than just JNPR, but I thought this AMV was cool--and it was the only one that existed. This song is awesome. "Shout Your Freedom" by Skillet. AMV by A2Z]

* * *

Maybe it was the Apathy's effects, but the whole process of getting to Shade again felt like a surreal dream to the squad.

Victoria made them drive to the Grimm she'd left locked up.

Then she used her bait switch to get the Grimm to follow them once she'd freed them.

"I know this plan was already nuts," Oscar said, looking to the back of the car, "but purposely getting Grimm to chase us seems like a new level of crazy."

"This is just like that scene from Jurassic Park 3, " Wally said. "Only the dinosaurs kind of had more personality."

The Grimm behind them snarled.

"Just keep moving," Victoria said. "Step on it."

"Look, lady, I'm trying, but these streets are awful!" Wally said.

"Can I drive?" Meridian asked.

"No!" everyone said.

Wally took one too fast, and Ruby, who was not buckled in, slammed into Oscar and the side of the car.

"Hi," she said.

"Uh...hi..." Oscar turned beet red. "Maybe you should seatbelt your fasten."

Meridian snorted a laugh.

"Right." Ruby didn't even notice the mistake. She grabbed her seat belt. "Whoops...I hope Penny is okay..."

"I'm sure she's in one piece, just..." Oscar sighed.

"So you and Weiss." Ruby looked at Meridian. "I really don't get it, but you'd better be nice to her, whatever you're doing. She's my best friend."

"Does shes know that, Red?" Meridian asked.

"Yeah!" Ruby said. "We're totally besties. She just likes to act mean, that's all. She loves us, deep down."

"How deep?" Victoria braced herself on the back seat. "Can we not do the dating club thing while we're on the way to fight soul-sucking Grimm? I got enough of this while I was going to highschool and college."

"I honestly think it's better than talking about imminent doom," Wally called. "Which way do I turn?"

"Left, you idiot. Not so fast!" Victoria winced.

"Don't worry, Red Hood," Meridian said, bracing himself. "I'm a one-woman fellow, if that's what you're worried about. Or do you just mean nice literally?"

"Huh?" Ruby said.

"I feel like Qrow wouldn't like this conversation very much." Oscar didn't like the way Qrow had been glaring at him since earlier.

"I think we're almost there now," Wally said. "Are you guys ready?"

"Not even close, mate," Meridian said.

"Good." Wally pulled up and stopped the car.

Shade was right in front of them... It looked darker than before.

Vara, who'd be on the roof of the car this whole time, with seemingly no problem hanging on, hopped down.

"That was both painful and exhilarating," she said. "Come on, pansies. Don't give them a chance to sink their teeth in."

"It's claws," Ruby said, getting out.

"Whatever." Vara's eyes lit up. "So, the plan is we play music at this school, and then we do what?"

"Shine said to wait for something to change." Oscar had the speaker. "And then destroy them."

"What does that mean?" Meridian asked.

"I have no idea," Ruby said. "But I guess we should just do it."

She shook her head. "I feel a little weird already."

She blinked her eyes rapidly.

"Yeah, wow, it's really strong here," Wally said. "You notice it more when you move fast."

"Blasted demons," Victoria said, pulling out her last dust vial.

"Hey, you shouldn't ingest that." Vara put her hand on it. "I heard what that doc said. He might be evil, but he's not stupid. You want to kill yourself?"

"You care all of the sudden?" Victoria said. "I'm going to need it. We can't screw this up. Hands off."

She yanked it away and downed it.

Dust cracks spread over her again.

Vara shook her head. "You're going to regret that, Vic."

"Okay." Oscar pressed play on the speakers. "I hope this scares the Apathy... Can you scare them?"

Loud music blasted out of the speakers that wasn't quite what they expected.

[Okay, so it's cliché, but I had to use this song once I realized the lyrics sounded a lot like what's been going on in the story.]

https://youtu.be/XRlBpyppYqA

"Verily, verily, I will tell thee
Nothing but the truth
Listen to the preacher
Warning you about the deceiver
I am the way, the truth, the life, life. Nations rage, wars and plagues
Lords of chaos are set in place
Raising up kingdoms, small and great
Gonna make 'em all bow, power on display
Your idols will be consumed with fire, fire
The storm is rising. I am the earthquake
Armies shake at my name
I come for justice
Recognize your King
Do you want peace or war when
Heaven's force comes riding on a white horse? Your sustaining exaltation is coming to an end
Get up off my throne before I'm riding down to judge and wage war
The armies of Heaven at my command, command
Enemies, glory, thieves
Kiss the Son or get under my feet
Don't recognize me. You suppressed the truth
You say, "Lord, Lord," but I don't recognize you
My kingdom is at hand, at hand. I'm gonna strike you down
With the sword of my mouth
Why did you live in doubt?
Didn't you hear the words of the prophet?
You should have known
I got the words of God in my mouth."

They had to cover their ears.

The plus side? The Apathy's influence on them must have been blocked out by the noise, because they suddenly felt fine. Pumped even.

Oscar was both praying and trying not to scream because it was so loud, but he didn't turn it down anyway, though Vara was yelling at thim to do so.

Heck, the ground was vibrating from the sound.

Wally was vibrating with it.

Nothing else seemed to happen for a moment, but Penny suddenly came flying out of the school.

Penny couldn't actually cry, but her face looked like she would have if she could.

She said something to them that they couldn't hear, but Ruby held out her arms, and Penny flew up to her and took her hands, then shook her head.

Oscar wanted to stop the music for a second so they could talk, but he knew they needed to finish this... Something was about to change any second. The Apathy might come outside.

The Grimm who were blocking them were standing back right now.

Overhead, it began to cloud over. Vara was summoning wind and lightning.

Then, and without any warning whatsoever, there was a great jerk under them, as if the ground itself had moved.

Then they realized that it had, in fact, moved. Shade was shaking in front of them.

Abruptly, they were all flung to the ground, but since all that was on the sand, other than getting in their eyes, they didn't hit anything hard.

But cracks appeared in the stone walls of Shade, in the plaster and all the way up to the top of the office and towers.

The music shut off abruptly as the boom box was jerked out of place.

But that didn't stop the shaking.

And, like a bird hatching out of an egg, Shade and the land it was over split into two huge chunks, right down the left side where the office and the Vault were.

The ground under it cracked upward so that the Vault underneath was exposed to the light of day-- as bright now as it was, thanks to Vara.

All at once, it went dead silent, because the shaking stopped.

Everyone was still trembling in their boots or tennis shoes.

"Wh-what was that?" Victoria finally spoke, and she didn't sound much like herself.

A great, blood-curdling shriek rose out of the Vault from the Apathy under it that didn't like seeing the light.

Vara scrambled back, and lightning shot out of the clouds and into the Vault, frying a good half dozen of them, and black smoke rose into the air.

"Ruby," Wally called, "are you ready?"

Ruby put a hand to her eyes. "Yeah," she said.

"Vara, step back," Wally called. "We got this."

He was the only other one who could actually walk right about then, thanks to keeping in time with the shaking. Everyone else's limbs had become jelly.

He plucked Ruby up and dashed her over the rubble to the edge of the pit there now was.

Up close, Ruby could see that, in fact, the Vault itself had broken into pieces. No sign of the doorway to Underland now. Only broken pieces of stone and metal.

Vara, springing into the air, looked at it and gaped.

There was a huge flash suddenly of magical light--she knew it was magic by looking at it, and inside of her she felt something jerk suddenly.

Oscar gasped, and his eyes flashed.

The light went towards him and through him.

Meridian saw it, and he saw Oscar's eyes flash again, and then he spoke, sounding like Ozpin.

"I believe the magic around the Vault might just have returned..."

Vara thought she saw the light also shoot away over the sky.

* * *

Back at the oasis, the others felt tremors, though nothing so strong as Shade felt.

Winter rose into the air to see what was happening, and Sun climbed a tree.

He wasn't high enough to really see it all, but the top of Shade was visible from here, and Winter was high enough to see it split into two pieces.

She gave a cry of surprise, and people below were asking them what happened.

Kip was flying too, watching.

A light came shooting across the sky at them, like a shooting star but much smaller.

It went past Winter so fast she had no idea what it was.

Glynda, standing by the plane, saw it suddenly flash inside of it, and the Sword of Destruction throbbed for a moment with darkish gold light...then it faded.

Winter felt a strange sensation inside her, not exactly like the spasms of before, more like a yanking, calling feeling. It passed quickly.

She dropped to the sand, pulse pounding.

"Was that what I thought it was?" Shine was looking up.

"What was that?" Emerald asked, and a bunch of other people were asking it too.

Mercury shivered.

Qrow was flying overhead, and he landed and resumed human form.

"Did magic just come this way?" he asked.

Ironwood, forgetting about the fact that he was hiding for the moment, came rushing over to them.

"Did you see that?" he said. "What happened to Schnee?"

Weiss and Klein ran over to Winter also.

"I'm fine." Winter waved them off. "It didn't hurt me, it was just...strange."

"You seemed a little out of breath," Weiss said. "Are you sure?"

Cinder was rubbing her shoulder.

"What was it?" she demanded of Shine rudely.

"Really? You can't put it together?" Shine replied.

"I wouldn't count on her powers of perception," Watts said. "But even I'm puzzled."

"I don't know how," Shine said, "but it seems to be whatever magic that was binding the Vault to the Summer Maiden just got released from it. It must have been connected to the Relic in a way--or just the Relic's magic gets absorbed into the Vault, so it was released back to it."

"Absorbed?" Cinder said.

"I can't prove this without Ozpin, but one has to wonder why the Grimm didn't find the Relics under the school faster," Shine said. "Surely the Vaults must block the signal somehow. Yes, the other world hid them, but what radiated into the door probably was just stopped inside it. Magic soaks into a thing if it's around it. But I'd think the bulk of it would have gone either to Ozpin or to Vara herself. But I never heard that maidens could transfer their power to objects, so I'm not sure it was Vara."

"Wait, the Vault just got destroyed?" Theo said. "Is Vara okay?"

"She should be fine," Shine shrugged. "It's not like her life force is tied specifically just to the Vault. A little shaken, perhaps. The question is how did that happen?"

"That means that we can't put it back." Theo glanced towards the plane. "What did you do? Or was it Salem?"

"I don't think it was her, but if you haven't noticed, I'm not actually over there to answer that," Shine said. "We'll just have to wait."

"Did the Apathy survive that?" Emerald asked.

"I doubt that killed them all, Em," Shine said.

Yang shielded her eyes and shook her head. "Maybe we should go after them."

"Just wait." Shine was tensed, as if trying to sense something.

* * *

Wally and Ruby saw that the Vault falling open had crushed several dozen Apathy that had been clustered around it, drawn to the magic. 

The walls weren't glowing anymore. They looked just like regular slabs of stone or metal. Kind of sad-looking.

The remaining Apathy were hissing at the light.

"Well, this should be a piece of cake," Wally said.

Ruby's eyes flashed, and she vaporized at least 30 of them.

"Are there more?" she asked, rubbing her eyes. "I think my eyes are starting to get sore from doing this so many times in one day."

"There's a problem I've never really thought about. I wonder if Supes has that," Wally remarked. "Anyway, I'll go take a look."

He put Ruby on the edge of a more stable-looking section and then scrambled down into the empty Vault and tunnels.

He didn't see any Apathy at first, but as he stared harder at the darker area, he saw more of them lining the walls...tons of them.

"Uh, we might still have a tiny problem," he said.

He wished he'd not spoken, because in the next few seconds, things took a turn.

All the plagues had had a twist so far, but they'd thought the Apathy was a pretty straightforward Grimm...until...

They all suddenly seemed to move as one organism.

Wally looked up as they rose up over his head, turning into what was more like one huge tower of Grimm, with a lot of little heads sticking out of it, with glowing eyes and mouths.

"You all see that, right?" Vara called down to Meridian, Oscar, and Victoria.

"I haven't started having hallucinations yet, I don't think," Meridian replied.

"Ah!" Oscar squeaked.

Victoria looked back.

The other Grimm were coming close again now.

"Hey, get the fast boy out here," she yelled at Ruby.

"Mr. West!" Ruby called. "Come on."

"Oh, sure," Wally was backing up, as more Grimm came out of the other side of the tunnel and added to the gathering. "No problem, just gotta find a step ladder..."

The Apathy began to scream.

The energy seemed to drain out of them all.

Ruby fell to her knees.

Meridian covered his ears, but then he crawled over to the radio, still less affected than the rest of them, and pressed the on button again, and then play.

Victoria wasn't as affected, but she was making faces like she was in pain suddenly.

The music blared out, and the large gaggle of Apathy slowed suddenly and hissed at it.

Wally shook himself and got to his feet.

"Here." Ruby held down her scythe towards him. "Jump."

Wally didn't think he could jump that high, but he ran forward and almost right up the wall, with more ease than he thought, and caught the edge of the scythe.

Ruby, much stronger than she looked like she'd be for her size, pulled him the rest of the way up.

The Apathy reached out a whole pillar of them after him like an arm.

"That is disgusting," Wally said, glancing back at it. "Ew, ew, ew."

"Happy thoughts!" Ruby said.

Her eyes flashed again, and she disintegrated a whole arm of it, but then she winced and rubbed her head. "Ah, it hurts."

Wally picked her up, scythe and all, and ran out of their range before they could drain their energy faster again.

Oscar use his new gun feature on his spear to shoot at some of their faces, not that it did much, but it at least distracted them a little. A few of them turned to smoke.

Vara fried a few more, then she made the clouds blow away and the sun burst out, then it got stronger.

This irritated the Apathy further, and they started howling, but it didn't sound quite the same as before.

"Take this." Victoria held out her bait switch to Wally.

"Why?" he asked.

She pointed at the modified Grimm, which were about 15 feet away.

"Need to lure them to those ones," she said.

Wally took it. Did this count as fighting fire with fire? Using Grimm seemed kind of gross, but...

Well, they were going to kill something, might as well be other Grimm.

So he just had to...run back to the big wall of Grimm and toss this thing at them? Yay...no big deal.

Ruby was panting.

The Apathy were moving towards them.

"Do you think this is all of them?" Oscar called over the music.

"Better be," Meridian called.

He put a hand on Ruby, and his Aura shimmered. She looked up, and then her eyes gleamed, and light shot out of them again.

She vanquished another good two dozen of them, giving Wally a little bit more breathing room.

He ran forward toward the big glob of them.

They looked down at him, looming like a big head.

They screeched, but it wasn't as loud with the other sounds.

Wally tried to block it out.

Just had to run, just had to get the other Grimm to follow him.

"All right, turn that off for a second." Victoria raced for the boombox and flipped it off.

Immediately the other Grimm ran after Wally, ignoring the stronger, more positive-feeling people, thanks to Meridian.

Victoria pulled out another switch from her work belt.

The Grimm ran after Wally, right up to the tower of the Apathy as the pile of them was coming more out of the wreck of the school.

At the last second, Wally chucked the box at the Apathy's center, where one of them swallowed it, since it was stupid.

And probably attracted to the distress.

The other Grimm didn't stop. They ran right for it, and it only seemed to dawn on them at the last second that these were other Grimm.

They stopped abruptly, and Wally ran back, the Apathy's pull making his feet feel heavy.

He stopped and fell over.

Ruby burst into petals and ran and yanked him up and ran back as Victoria pushed a button.

Her Grimm all exploded into fire, electricity, rocks, and ice.

She also shot lightning out of her hand and into the top of the Grimm.

Another blast of lightning came from a little farther away. They turned. Raven had approached and was surrounded by a cloud of thunder.

The pillar of Apathy was decimated. Smoke and dust drifted upward.

The sky cleared a moment later, and the blazing hot sun illuminated what was left of the school.

The silence lasted for several very long seconds before Wally said, "That was a thing."

They could barely hear him. Their ears were ringing from the music and explosions.

"Sorry, what?" Oscar called.

"I don't know," Ruby said way too loudly. "But we should...check for survivors?"

Penny, who hadn't moved since arriving, said, "Ruby, my father..."

Everyone looked at her.

Vara landed on the ground and kicked up dust.

"Sorry, kid," she said, almost too loudly.

They could hear Penny's voice, perhaps because it was so shrill compared to most humans, but Vara's was hardly more than a rumble to them, but they could guess what she said.

Oscar shook his head at Penny.

"I don't understand how this could happen," Penny said. "I just spoke to him earlier today."

"It's like that on the field," Vara said, more loudly.

"Guys, are all the Apathy gone?" Wally was looking over the edge. He didn't see any.

Victoria held up her Grimm scanner.

"All the ones in this area are gone," she said. "I detect a few more bunches of them farther away. Should be a small matter to get rid of them once they're found--as long as you cut off the source...whatever that was."

"It has to be down there." Wally pointed. "I'll look around for it. Ruby, can you run back to camp and let them know they can come here? Might need help."

"I only got about half of that, Mr. West, but I'll go get help," Ruby said.

She took Penny's arm. "Come on, Penny..."

Penny meekly nodded. Then she just picked Ruby up instead of her running and flew that way.

Victoria then fell over.

She made some gasping sounds, that no one could hear very well, and some motions.

"Uh oh," Meridian said.

Vara examined her. "I knew it." She motioned at Meridian and to her head and arms. "She'll need medical attention right off."

"Put her in the car. We can take her to the medical station," Meridian said.

Somehow they managed to work out what he'd said and did this, then Meridian and Oscar went.

Oscar thought of using his staff to try to heal her--but nothing happened when he did. Perhaps it wasn't the right kind of illness...or it was something with Victoria herself that made it not work.

* * *

Penny and Ruby rejoined the group, with Raven on their tail, only about 5 minutes later. Penny was a swift flyer.

Everyone by now at least knew that Shade had broken into pieces.

But Shine had also told them the Apathy were mostly gone, and then she had burst into tears.

This freaked out more of the teens, but when Emerald asked her what was wrong, she said she was thinking of what Penny must have seen.

"At least that's normal then." Emerald decided it wasn't a reason for concern. "It's fine I guess," she told the others. "She's just acting like a mom or something."

"I almost feel like crying too," Weiss said, rubbing her face. "Somehow the strain of the last 2 hours is catching up with me now."

"Of course it is," Pyrrha said. She and the rest of her team had returned by now. "With the Apathy totally gone, we're not feeling their pull like before. That's bound to have an effect."

Well, she was right--a lot of people started either crying or getting nervously excited within the next few minutes.

But at least no one started fighting. The Huntresses made sure of that.

Then Penny and Ruby put down.

The teens were anxious to see if Penny was okay... It was hard to tell with her, but she looked sad.

"You didn't find him, did you?" Mercury actually seemed a little put off by the possibility.

"I did," Penny said. "It wasn't so bad in a way. He seemed peaceful..." She spoke mechanically. "But it seemed to me that it was just not right, that it all happened so fast. For so many of them. I wish we had come back sooner."

"So...are you okay?" Blake asked a stupid question.

"I'm well aware that dying is something that happens to all humans," Penny said, "some of them different than others--" With a glance at Pyrrha. "--but I admit, I do feel what I can only describe as somehow lost thinking of not having my father to guide me anymore. Is that what grief is like?"

Ruby felt like she was going to cry herself and drew some deep breaths. "Well, it is a lot like that."

"Yeah" Yang looked aside. "That and other stuff."

"I also think that I will not be able to tell him when I accomplish anything, especially like making friends," Penny said. "Is that what it's like?"

"Yeah," Ruby said.

"This is upsetting me also," Pyrrha murmured to Emerald. "And I can't even relate to it from personal experience."

"Me neither," Blake muttered, hearing them.

"Honestly, that's kind of what it's like not having parents either," Emerald said. "Knowing that you'd have no one to care if you do anything, bad or good. Kind of makes it easy not to care about it yourself. Maybe that's why I took up with Cinder so easily. Even if it was bad stuff, it seemed like having someone to care what I did was better than nothing...but then I ended up not liking what I did. Anyway she didn't care anymore, so I wondered why I cared for it myself."

"So why did you stay with us then?" Pyrrha asked. "At first, I'm sure most of us didn't act like we cared."

"Oscar did," Emerald said. "And Hazel. It might sound stupid, but I guess I just figured it was better than going off alone again. It sucks doing that, once you've ever left it."

"That I do actually understand," Pyrrha remarked.

"Yeah," Blake muttered.

"Can we do anything to make you feel better?" Jaune asked Penny.

Penny shook her head. "Unless you can bring my father back," she said offhandedly.

Some of them looked at Shine.

"I mean...it's possible, isn't it?" Yang said.

"We have to go back there anyway," Ruby said.

Shine walked over. 

"Penny." She nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss. Truly."

"Thank you, I guess." Penny wasn't sure what the protocol was.

"They said to send help," Ruby said, rubbing her ears. "Sorry, I still can't hear very well if you're not right in front of me--but to find the source of where the Apathy were coming from so no more come out, and there were still some left. But not at Shade..."

"Penny found her dad," Yang said. "We were just wondering--do you think you have another resurrection in you?"

"In me?" Shine said.

"Is that how that works?" Neptune wondered.

"I dunno," Sun shrugged.

"Could you?" Blake's ears perked up. "It's...it's pretty sad, isn't it? How does it work, again?"

"Blake, it doesn't work any one way in particular," Shine said. "Nor do I know why God does and doesn't allow it. But I feel no pull to it this time. You must understand, not everyone will be resurrected before the last day."

"Whatever that means," Yang said. "Your rules make no sense."

"Well, Yang," Shine said, with the tone that Yang knew by now meant she should shut up if she didn't want a lecture, "I cannot explain it. But I do know one thing--our lord Jesus Himself lost both his stepfather and his cousin in His lifetime. His cousin, even during the time he did miracles. And while he raised 3 people from the dead that we know of on record, he did not raise his own family. I do know that exceptions to the rule are up to Him. And if He did not make them for Himself, even lightly, then we must trust that for us it is also up to Him to know when we can."

"And really, who are we to know?" Pyrrha mused. "I'm sure I don't feel particularly deserving of it, but it wasn't about that. I see that now. It is just a gift..."

"I just don't get it," Blake said. "Why is it so random?"

"It could just be the reasons for it are beyond our understanding," Pyrrha said. "Not that it's random. I think it would be wrong to pressure Shine or Wally to do this. They feel bad enough, don't you think? They don't make the rules, they just follow them. They are no different than us."

The teens sighed.

"I think she's right," Ruby said after a moment. "We...can't just expect it to go the way we'd want every single time someone... But it's hard."

"No one is arguing that," Shine said. "I'm sorry, Penny."

"I will respect that you have rules," Penny said, rather flatly, but they didn't think she was angry. It was just that she had a hard time emoting to begin with, and this was harder than usual. "And I certainly don't know how they work enough to break them... I suppose my father did live a good life. Perhaps...who knows? He wouldn't have it differently. I only wish I had been there at least."

"I do know he knew you loved him," Shine said. "And remember, Penny, that love is something we give freely. That's worth a lot, when your children are willing to do that even when they don't need you anymore. It may not ease the pain to know that, but it means something, I believe."

Penny nodded.

"We should at least have a proper burial," she said. "Not just leave them like that."

"I feel like we're going to be doing that for the rest of the day," Ren said.

He wasn't entirely wrong about that.