"There was some kind of fight here?" Wally said.

"It doesn't look like one of just Grimm," Shine said in a tone of dread. "Those are the marks of human weapons and dust, I'd say. This is some kind of den, just like the Hydra had. This means the Mind Grimm is near. No!"

She backed up from it.

Cinder had never seen Shine scared before.

She would have expected to enjoy it, the look of fear on that cocky woman's face.

Instead it made her feel sick, because it wasn't because of her, and anything that scared someone who was not even afraid of Salem, well, that scared Cinder.

"Shine, calm down." Wally grabbed her shoulders and rubbed her arms comfortingly. "It could have moved away from here. We don't know that we're that close to it."

"This was no accident. Salem led us to it on purpose." Shine's perception was still on point even if she was afraid. "She intends to use the Grimm as a trap, same as the others, and to keep us from being able to run from it like we did with the Deimos. The others will be caught also--they're too close to us. There's always some sound it starts to make. Do you hear anything?"

"I don't hear anything," Wally said. "It can't be that close. Just breathe, honey."

"What is wrong with her?" Cinder asked finally. "I've seen her face down things that most people are terrified of and not bat an eyelash."

Wally covered Shine's ears. "Just focus on something else," he said.

Then to Cinder he said rather crossly, "Everyone's afraid of something, Cinder, and you don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't understand," Cinder said. "She has never been affected by the Mind Grimm like us. Why would it scare her?"

"Cindy, you don't know people that well," Wally said, more sadly this time than angrily. "Shine is pretty much immune to mind tricks. But this last one is something even she's not sure about, because it's a part of all of us. Not everyone is greedy, not everyone gives into gluttony, not everyone carries anger inside them, not everyone lets envy eat them up, not everyone even wants things just for the sake of having them. All the other 6 sins are a part of most people, but they can be rooted out with time, if you fight them. But pride is something that no one can ever completely get rid of. They have to try to keep it down, but it's a part of all of us, the original sin, and even Shine has it--she'd tell you much more than we think she does. So no matter how good we are and how hard we try, we're in danger from it. Me more so, I think, because my world has more mind tricks, but pride isn't just a trick, it's human nature. I've been over all this with her at home. One of the first things she teaches people is that pride is the source of all sins and so is fear. Both of them."

"She's afraid now," Cinder noted. "Because of pride?"

"Cinder, have you ever, even once in your life, been afraid of what you could do to someone if you became the worst version of yourself?" Wally was getting worked up because of her attitude and he was worried about Shine. "I know you like hurting people now, but even once, when you were younger and not crazy, did you ever feel bad that you hurt someone instead of happy?"

Cinder flashed to when she'd killed her mentor.

She'd been glad to get away then, and for years had told herself that's all she felt.

But there had been a brief moment when she'd shed tears and felt it had been a bad thing to do. She'd tried to forget for a long time, but Wally brought it back to her.

Maybe her expression changed, because Wally seemed to see it in her eyes.

"Well... then you know," he said. "Shine cares much more about that than you do. She talks a big game, but she hates hurting people and always has. I do too. I think that's why we connected so easily. You're really lucky too. If we didn't hate it so much, you'd probably be in more danger on this mission than you've been. The thing about trying to be good is you don't just like good, you learn to hate the evil, especially the evil in yourself. We try to hate it. So when it's this close to you, it's scary. But I think we can still resist it. There has to be a way. Shine?"

Shine probably could still hear them talking.

She nodded and pushed his hands away gently. "You're right."

"Salem couldn't have known this." Cinder shouldn't have said that, but for a second she forgot that she was supposed to be denying knowing about the trap. "She's many things, but she couldn't know that you're so concerned with being corrupted. No one else ever is."

"Oh, so you did talk to her," Wally said, mad again.

"I... didn't say that." Cinder realized her error. "I just think her trap wouldn't be something that personal."

"And what did you tell her, Cinder?" Shine's eyes narrowed. "What is our weakness?"

"I didn't," Cinder lied, but it was not believable at all.

"You're lying," Shine stated it.

"I'm... I'm..." Cinder tried to think of a plausible excuse.

"You betrayed us," Shine said, and she didn't really sound like her usual calm, collected self.

Cinder was finding this less and less comfortable.

"I--well, you knew," she said, trying to sound confident. "You knew I would eventually."

"Like this?" Shine said. "This is senseless. Waiting till we at least got there would have at least gained you something. What do you intend to do? We don't have the Relics with us. We never carry them--you know that. Do you intend to pick them off...? Of course. She would kill them all, take the Relics to her, and then let us approach when she already has them and blackmail us to tell her our secrets about the gods."

Well, that was farther than Cinder had thought of Salem's plan, but the possibility was not good. Cinder would have no chance if that happened.

"And you are stupid enough to help her do this?" Shine pointed at her angrily with the sword. "You wanted to stop her, I thought. Giving her our playing chips is crazy."

"Look, I never said anything about getting her those Relics," Cinder spat, giving up trying to act dumb. [She has to act?] "She just wanted to thin the herd a bit to have a better advantage, and then I would bring the Relics along with you... I thought."

"Wow, you really just admitted that," Wally said. "I thought you'd at least try to act innocent. And what's to stop us from just trapping you in here and saving them?"

"I had to tell her!" Cinder spat. "She would have killed me right then. And she can track my every move. What choice did I have?"

"There's always a choice," Shine said. "There is not putting your own safety above the entire world's potential loss, and there is asking us for help instead of letting her manipulate you."

"What? And be more of a liability than before?" Cinder said. "You would have left me behind anyway."

"You know better than that," Shine said.

"Wel--" Cinder broke off.

Her arm was smoking.

Like it was a thought in her own mind, she felt the message loud and clear: stop them.

Salem didn't want them dead... but she did want them weaker. And she did want to have leverage... If Shine and Wally left now, they might find their friends still before Salem could do anything to them.

She wanted someone to stall... someone who had magic... their weakness.

Cinder realized all this as if the thoughts had been her own--and she had an idea that Salem was using the arm to communicate with her the same as she did with the other Grimm.

Which should have freaked her out, but at the moment it made her realize this was the signal.

Shine understood what it meant before Wally did. "She's going to stall. We have to get out of here now!"

Wally nodded and grabbed Shine and ran.

And then he hit something as he was trying to go out the other tunnel.

It appeared to be one of the odd doors that Salem had made in the Zeppelin. She called them portals.

This one had either been hidden by the darkness or had closed as he ran that way, because it sent Wally back, and he seemed dazed.

Shine dropped to the ground, next to one of the fallen humans, to her disgust.

"Wally?" she asked.

At this untimely moment, Cinder finally heard something.

Not a humming this time, or a roar like the Irasci, or screech like the Apathy.

This was pulsing and rapid, like an alarm siren would be, and shrill.

[High noise can cause brain damage and even unconsciousness.]

It seemed far away, or it was filtered through the stones themselves to not be quite as loud, but it was discernible.

Cinder flew into a rage such as she always did when confronted with an obstacle to her goals.

"Stay down!" She held up her human hand, and magic blazed into it.

Wally started to move, and she blasted him down before he could.

Wally was her problem, she thought. He was too fast for her. Shine was slower and weaker physically; she could be kept at bay.

Here Cinder made quite an unfortunate mistake.

Seeing Wally get hurt, first by the door and by this, seemed to make Shine snap.

She caught up her sword from where it had fallen--or did it just appear in her hand?

As Cinder threw fire at her, she defected it off like it was nothing.

"You just made a big mistake," she said, eyes dark. "Witch."

Cinder's eyes narrowed.

[Oh, snap.]

* * *

Winter's group heard the piercing sound while still in the tunnel, but then the tunnel let out into a clear space.

Somehow they seem to have picked one that led straight through the rocky maze instead of off to the side.

"Well, that was easier than I thought," Yang said.

She spoke too soon.

The Grimm fell on them as soon as they were out in that distorted moonlight.

There were dozens at least.

The group had to scatter to avoid getting closed into a knot by them.

Ruby, Yang, Oscar, and Neptune ran one way.

Sun, Raven, and Hazel ran another.

Qrow and Winter were chased farther ahead.

"We cannot get separated," Winter cried, trying to get around the Grimm, but they blocked her path on all sides.

"It's like they're doing it on purpose." Qrow slashed through one and then another. "Something doesn't want us together."

"Then we have to stay together!" Winter tried to leap over one of them using magic.

At least five of them charged her at once when she did that.

She blasted them with fire, and more came at her.

Summonings came out of glyphs.

"Winter! Winter, stop!" Qrow said.

"What?" She looked down.

"Magic, you're drawing them more. Stop using it!" he said.

Winter realized he was right.

She lost her focus and let the magic go.

The Grimm still surrounded them, but less came right for her.

"Well, you wanted to stop using it." Qrow and her had had that conversation earlier that day.

"But now we need every advantage we can get," Winter said.

"Maybe we should be trying the other thing." Qrow struggled to hold the Grimm off, but he was tired. They'd been at this trip too long for him to be at full strength. "I don't know much about it, but if we can't side with the gods, then we'd have to side with the other one."

"I don't know if I can call down fire from heaven just to stop these Grimm," Winter said.

"I don't know anything about it. At least you've done it before with something," Qrow said.

"But it was small, just a short burst of strength," Winter protested.

"Well, it's the only idea I've got. We can't fight this many with just Aura," Qrow insisted.

Winter looked up, then at her sword. Suddenly, she got an idea.

"All right, stay behind me," she said.

"Huh?" Qrow said.

"I don't know how they do this, but--" Winter pointed her sword tip into the ground. "Authority."

She hit it into the ground and made a glyph that expanded far more than her usual ones did.

Her Aura shimmered brighter than it naturally would have.

The Grimm charging them suddenly were knocked off their feet by the circle, and then they sizzled and turned to smoke.

The other ones stopped at the edge of the circle and bared their teeth but came no farther.

Winter almost laughed in surprise that this worked.

"Whoa..." Qrow gaped. "Did you know you could do that?"

"Not till I did it..." Winter said in awe. "I... I inherited the authority also... I didn't realize."

"Of course, you're one of them, right?" Qrow said.

"Aren't you now?"

"Maybe... I don't know how it works, but I don't think I can do that," Qrow said.

 "Try something," Winter said suddenly. "Try to use yours on purpose."

"It doesn't work on Grimm. They don't really have luck," Qrow said.

"That's ridiculous. Of course they would be affected," Winter shot it down. "You just can't tell because they're monsters. Hurry, I can't keep this up forever."

"Even if I wanted to, I can't just make them drop dead. There has to be something around to go wrong," Qrow insisted.

Winter glanced around the landscape.

As someone who used glyphs, she had excellent spatial awareness.

Behind them, which had been ahead of them before they turned around, there were more rocks, but they were spread out more. There were dark shapes all over them.

One of them suddenly opened and shot forward like some kind of snake and snapped in their direction.

Only it was like a plant.

Winter had never seen a venus fly trap, but if she had, this thing would have looked like it but uglier, larger, and dark black and red.

[Commence the "feed me" joke from Little Shop of Horrors.]

"What is that?" she asked.

"What?" Qrow looked.

There were dozens of them, now that Winter looked further.

She got an idea that might have been mad, but...

"All right, this is what we're going to do," she said. "I'm going to use a speed glyph to shoot us through those plants. Activate your Semblance toward the Grimm, and perhaps they'll be clumsier."

"Huh? What plants? What are you on about?"

"Just leave that part to me. Do as I say." Winter held out her hand. "If we stick together, it won't affect us, right?"

"Are you crazy? It'll affect you more," Qrow said.

"No, it won't," Winter insisted. "I'm sure of it. Now we don't have time. I can't keep this up forever. We need to lose them. Just do it."

"I will regret this in a second," Qrow warned her.

His Aura shimmered.

"Normally I don't try this hard, so I don't know what's going to happen," he said.

Winter smirked oddly. "Excellent."

The circle under them changed to a speed glyph--or it had been one already.

Taking Qrow's hand so he wouldn't fall off, Winter shot them forward.

But her mad plan worked. Every one of the plants shot out and missed them by inches in some cases.

And the monsters, who followed them at once, got hit instead.

Not all of them were killed by this, but the impact was hard enough to hurt some of them.

Grimm never fought each other deliberately, but by accident, of course, they could inflict damage same as anything else.

The plants must have snapped pretty hard, because some of them they hit burst into smoke right then.

Winter hadn't realized how big the field of plants was, because her glyph didn't take them quite far enough, but she made more before they could really slow down and jumped from one to the other, outpacing the Grimm easily.

Finally, she saw a large rock that was above the plants and landed on it to catch her breath.

Not a moment too soon--her Aura had depleted significantly with that massive effort. 

She turned back.

Most of the Grimm hadn't made it that far after them.

Qrow used his shotgun to stop the few who had managed to stay on their tail.

"I... literally can't believe that worked," he said.

Winter lowered her swords. "See?" she said, breathlessly but smug. "I told you."

Qrow glanced at her and then kissed her.

"I have to say that was... incredibly attractive," he said.

Winter straightened. "I know it was," she said, with more control than before. "Because it worked. Victory is always attractive. But this is not the time. I'm sure the others are trapped right now."

"Yeah, but Ruby could handle these things," Qrow said. "I didn't see any silver flash. That makes me think either they backed off, or she's in trouble."

"I can't imagine this rock is safe," Winter said, eyeing the landscape. "And I don't know what those are... but we should probably get out of vantage of the Grimm."

"I doubt they'd attack again after that," Qrow said offhandedly. "I could fly up and look for them."

"You just said not to use magic."

"We lost the ones on our tail. As long as I hurry, should be fine."

Winter hesitated but didn't feel as apprehensive about this as usual. "Well, as long as it's quick."

Qrow flew upward.

[I feel like Winter is getting used to this flirting thing very quickly. But that's kind of how I'd picture it, you know?]

* * *

Theo's group remained lost.

They finally found an opening that let them see the distorted sky again.

But they were still wandering in rocks, and the Grimm were on their heels.

And they began to find more rocks, ironically, that had strange bumps all over them.

They heard some weird noise.

The bickering got worse.

It stopped even making sense at some point, but none of them noticed this.

"You know, I think this is your fault, really," Vara said to Theo. "If you were more competent, this wouldn't have happened."

"I suppose you think you are then?" he said.

"Suppose I do think that?" she said.

"We're both down here, Vara Sol," Theo said.

"Oh!" she scoffed.

"You're all slowing me down," Nora said. "I'm stronger than all of you. I always have to hold myself back because you can't take a hit!"

"I always have to watch your back because you're so reckless!" Ren said.

"Hey, you know, both of you need to chill out," Jaune said.

He was still the only person not quarreling, other than Pyrrha.

She just had a headache and was hardly listening to anyone talk.

Emerald and Mercury were bickering with each other and the others also, but Emerald seemed more snippy than really enraged.

Blake had sullenly stopped talking and just glared at them coldly, like this whole thing was beneath her.

Weiss and Meridian just argued with the others.

https://youtu.be/DBRuccbdGvU

["Copycat"--Billie Eilish.]

* * *

Cinder realized 2 minutes into fighting Shine that she had far overestimated her own chances.

Shine only seemed to get angrier the more times Cinder tried to deflect her attacks.

But the part that Cinder wasn't ready for was how useless they would be.

She tried to infuse magic into her glass swords, and she had both hands now--she thought that would be an advantage.

She didn't understand how Shine cut through the glass like it was cheap plastic.

Or how Shine moved as fast as she did, since she never seemed faster than the average person the rest of the time, but now she gained on Cinder like it was nothing, backing her up to the wall.

Cinder tried to move and tried setting her blades on fire.

Shine didn't seem to feel a thing from the fire. Her Aura just deflected it, and she shattered the swords as fast as Cinder made them.

She didn't even seem tired.

Cinder was running out of room to back away from her.

Cinder was angry, but she was also rapidly becoming more afraid.

How was this possible?

"You weren't this strong before!" she snapped at Shine in outrage.

"I was always this strong," Shine said in a voice that was not like her own. It wasn't calm like she was keeping herself in check. It wasn't practically livid like she was in one of her tempers. It wasn't warm like she was trying to talk her off the ledge.

It was cold fury, like she was fully intent on stopping Cinder by force this time, and like she had no fear... but her lack of fear was worse than the fear had been.

"You--" Shine knocked the next sword from Cinder's grasp before she could do anything.

Cinder tried making a shield instead, and Shine hit it and it shattered like a mirror.

"--have no idea how powerful I am," Shine finished, as she hit the sword out of her hands. "How much I hold back all the time so as not to hurt someone! No one ever angers me enough to warrant that kind of effort. You should feel proud."

Her tone on that last word was chillingly sarcastic.  

Cinder's eyes widened as it dawned on her that she wasn't going to win this fight.

"No..." she sputtered. "No, you can't possibly--"

Before she could finish, Shine hit her with the flat of the sword, and she hit the wall she was only 8 feet from anyway, hard.

Cinder realized suddenly that her Aura was gone... too much work trying to not get hit before.

Magic should have... No... magic... wasn't working on Shine right then. She'd cut through it like it was nothing.

She put her hand up to her face and realized it was bleeding.

"I thought that blade didn't cut humans..." she said.

"It doesn't cut normal humans." Shine apparently could still be pedantic even when she was in a cold fury. "But you have magic inside you. And Grimm. When I'm not deliberately trying not to hurt you, then yes, it could certainly hurt you."

Cinder held up her hand, and magic swirled in it. She'd hit Shine with this once before.

She shot it, and Shine swatted it away with her sword like it was nothing, then she ran her sword through the Grimm arm and straight into the wall.

That hurt like fire worse than Salem's smoking did.

Cinder hissed and gasped.

"You should know better than to try to betray me," Shine said to her darkly, "Cinder. I warned you."

Cinder could barely breathe after that and had nothing to say even if she could.

Time seemed to slow while she waited for whatever would happen next.

She had a clear thought in the midst of this: Salem wasn't going to stop this... She didn't care if Cinder got killed completing this assignment, so long as it worked to keep the DJs slowed down.

Also, Cinder thought that as much as she might deserve this, it was still out of character for Shine to do it. It had to be the Grimm... so she'd been right. She wasn't immune.

And Cinder had pushed her over the edge. This was her fault. She'd finally gotten them to act like her... scarily like her, in fact... and it had blown up in her face.

[The Bible does say pride goes before a Fall... in this case, a Cinder Fall.]

Shine tightened her hand on the hilt of the sword, perhaps to yank it out and finish Cinder off with it.

But she looked at the sword first... and she saw her reflection in the blade.

The blade shimmered with that odd iridescence it seemed to have, so pure and bright against the darkness of this cavern.

Shine suddenly blinked.

Her eyes, which had been full of rage before, cleared.

"Oh..." She stared at the sword. "My God... no..."

It sounded like she was directing that at a person.

She slowly pulled the sword out of the wall and Cinder's arm, leaving Cinder hissing from that impact also, but then the burning stopped.

Shine dropped the sword and sank to her knees, putting her hand to her head.

"'There is no fear in love...'" she murmured to herself. "'Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.'... You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"

"What... what was that?" Cinder found her voice finally.

Shine startled and looked up.

"That was too close," she said grimly. "If I hadn't looked and seen the truth of what was happening, I... don't know what would have happened."

"You wouldn't have killed her." Wally was getting up finally, wincing. "I know you. You realized what was happening. You would never give into anger like that... Hurting her maybe, but not killing her."

"Can we be sure of that?" Shine said. "Pride... anger... they do strange things to people."

"You wouldn't have stopped if that was the case," Wally said. "No one else did that unless it was something in them that couldn't go through with it. Don't let this totally messed up Grimm make you think you're something you're not, all right, Shine? We all have our moments--you've said it yourself."

Shine shook her head.

"You know, right?" Wally said to Cinder. "She wouldn't have done it."

"I know only that normally she wouldn't have," Cinder said flatly. "The Grimm make us do strange things... Your powers seem to be back."

"And now we have to fight." Wally got up and ran to Shine, helping her stand. He picked up her sword and handed it back to her. She took it feebly enough.

"Are you going to stop this now, or do you want to have this out?" Wally asked Cinder.

That skirmish had taken the Grimm out of Cinder's mind also, at least for a second.

"No," she said. "No... Salem did nothing to help... Why should I help her right now? I did my part already. She can't blame me for what follows. But you..."

"Either you stay here, or you come with us." Shine took Wally's arm. "But we're going. We've lost enough time. Perhaps I will forgive you for what just happened once we're out of range of the Grimm. I wouldn't push either of us till then."

She walked to the door and slashed her sword through it.

The portal dispersed like it was afraid of her.

"You just had a real close call," Wally said to Cinder in a lower voice. "Shine's not a killer, and she's not a hater. If she was, you'd probably not have survived that fight. You be really glad she's a merciful person and so am I. Don't waste it this time. You can't afford any more missteps with the Mind Grimm around."

He followed Shine.

Both of them still not, Cinder noted, quite back to normal, but she was just relieved that they weren't attacking her now.

She rubbed her arm and looked at it distastefully.

Salem probably couldn't have forced her to do this without it... What was it now but a leash?

[Finally it sinks in.]

She followed them. No way was she staying around here till Salem figured out what happened if she didn't already know.

* * *

Pyrrha and Jaune finally got the others to be quiet, if only because the landscape was weird.

The rocks around them were still reflective, aside from the lumps on top of them that looked like clumps of moss or fungus perhaps, Grimm-colored.

The weird noise got louder out here.

"We should be careful." Pyrrha covered her ears. "Every time we hear something strange, it's a Grimm."

"I wonder why." Jaune covered his ears but spoke loudly. "Why always noise?"

"The book does say a lot about what you listen to. Maybe it's that," Pyrrha said. "Also what you look at... I don't see any strange lights. What are all those things on the rocks?"

"Just part of the landscape," Ren said tightly. "We're wasting time, as usual. We should press on to Salem."

"Don't you mean we should find our friends?" Pyrrha asked. "They might be in trouble."

"They'll be all right," Ren said. "They're probably behind us. We need to press on."

"I'm with Ren. We don't need to wait for them," Nora agreed.

"I'd rather get this over with," Vara said tersely.

"You've all been acting simply awful." Weiss crossed her arms. "I'd rather just go on and get this over with then spend another day with you on the road."

"The feeling is mutual!" Theo said roundly. "Spoiled princess."

"Arrogant ass!" Weiss shot back.

"Arrogant but right," Meridian said.

"Jaune." Pyrrha nudged him with her elbow but still kept her ears covered. "I suspected it before, but I'm sure of it now. It's too late, isn't it?"

Jaune nodded, looking freaked out.

"Something already has them in its grasp," Pyrrha said in horror.

"I think so," Jaune said loudly. "What do we do? We have to get them out of here somehow without killing each other or getting eaten. Somewhere out of range of the Grimm."

"We don't even know where it is. How can we get out of range? What if it's forward?" Pyrrha began to near hysterics. "I don't know how to help this! I'm a fighter--I don't know what to do when something invades people's minds. We need help, and no one is here who can help that!"

"Pyrrha, calm down." Jaune took his hand down and took her arms. "Panic is not going to help anything. Deep breaths."

Pyrrha took a few shakily.

"Now, somehow we're not being as affected," Jaune said. "Maybe a little affected. I don't feel quite normal... but I still know it's not normal... Do you feel odd?"

"I feel... unsettled and irritable." Pyrrha was honest hesitantly. "Even with you, to be frank..."

"No, that's good," Jaune said. "Me too... but I've been thinking it's not quite normal, right? At first it felt normal, but listening to them fight made me think it's actually weird. They aren't attacking us yet though... We can't be totally gone."

"If they all slip under completely, and we're the only ones who can fight it, they could... they could kill us." Pyrrha lowered her voice.

"Maybe if they do, they'll be sloppy," Jaune said nervously. "I've had nightmares like this..."

"Me too... especially since the other Grimm."

"Right... well... I guess we're in it now, so... the point is to wake them up. I think the first thing we have to do is figure out how this Grimm is working. There's the sound, but is there anything else? I don't smell anything this time. Do you think there's something else?"

Pyrrha looked around.

"Perhaps looking for it is dangerous," she said after a pause. "We usually go under before we realize what's happening. This time we seem to know... We can't block the sound out--that hasn't worked before. What if... I don't know, if we tried to block it out with our minds instead? We've never tried that. Shine said that she resisted it before when she was focused on teaching Cinder. Can we do that?"

"It's better than no idea." Jaune rubbed his ears. "We'd better hurry and figure something out. We never last forever."

"I'm done with all of you," Ren said right then. "I'm going."

He took off.

"Ren!" Pyrrha cried. "No! Come back!"

He ignored her.

"Does he really think he can go alone?" Jaune said incredulously. "Even under a Grimm, that sounds crazy. And why would the Grimm want us to go toward Salem?"

"Perhaps it's not actually towards Salem," Pyrrha suggested warily.

"Oh... yeah, that could be it..." Jaune said nervously.

"He's right. I'm outta here." Nora lifted her hammer.

Pyrrha suddenly yanked it out of her hand with her Semblance.

"Hey!" Nora turned to her furiously.

Pyrrha lifted her hand and stole all their weapons.

"I'm sorry," she said, wincing. "But you all already are showing signs of Mind Grimm influence. If you still can listen to me, I'm begging you to stop fighting and stop trying to go off alone. Anyone who can resist, I can give you your weapons back, but if not, I can't let you kill each other with these."

"Oh, that is just so you!" Nora said.

"You always think you know better than everyone, girl," Vara said, her eyes crackling with light. "Give me that sword back."

Pyrrha realized real fast she could be in big trouble.

"Pyrrha, run!" Jaune said. "Keep the weapons out of their hands. I can try to hold her off."

Winds began to swirl around Vara's feet.

"Against a Maiden?" Pyrrha cried.

The others stepped toward her.

"Not a lot of choice!" Jaune said. "We can't fight a Maiden and the others together. We have to separate them."

"This is not what I want to do," Pyrrha said.

"We have to!" Jaune said. "It's okay. Someone will probably see her powers and come help me."

"Then make sure to use your Semblance, Jaune. You'll need all the help you can get," Pyrrha said grimly.

She took off running and dragged the weapons after her.

Sure enough, everyone else ran after her, even Theo.

Jaune held up his shield.

"You want to get to her, you'll have to fight me, Vara," he said.

"I can free up two minutes." Vara looked at him without a trace of uncertainty.

She rose up, wind lashing around her face, and clouds darkened over her head.

[Not good.]

https://youtu.be/JTlXH5xF1pg