The Guardian Rose

Chapter 23: The Fall of Beacon.

Rein: Quit standing there staring at me like an expensive tuna dinner. There's Grimm to hunt.

Meanwhile, the oblivious general, still en route to the Airship, gets a nasty surprise when the Knights on his dropship suddenly activate and turn on him.

Ironwood: No!

As Ironwood reaches out, the dropship suddenly loses altitude, plummeting from the ground as two flashes can be seen from the cockpit. The students watch in horror as they see dropship fall from the sky. Ruby decides to run to the bay doors of their Air Bus.

Sun: Ruby! What are you doing!?

Ruby then jumps off the Air Bus as it barely takes off, using her Semblance of speed to safely land on the runway after freefalling in the sky. As she runs to the stadium, she finds it nearly empty and full of brown dirt, where she sees a locker. She punches in the code, latches on with Crescent Rose, and immediately takes to the skies, Unknown to her, Neo was hiding in the locker. The locker landed on top Roman's stolen airship with a thud.

Roman: Ugh... go see what that is.

Necross: As long as it gets me away from you.

Back at Beacon, the hacked Knights continue to fire, but they are cut up by flurry of slashes. Weiss is taking down a sizeable group of knights using a combination of Myrtenaster's strikes as well as her using her Glyph Semblance, while Blake fights off a group of White Fang soldiers, before using her Semblance to dodge a dual sword-wielding soldier, more White Fang grunts charge at her, but they are all suddenly knocked back by Rein as he thrusts his arm out. Afterwards, Weiss, Blake, and Rein stand back-to-back-to-back, but notice a group of human Atlas Soldiers fighting off an Atlesian Paladin, which has also been affected by the virus and turned rogue. The Paladin easily bats aside several of the soldiers.

Weiss: Come on!

Before The small group could assist the soldiers, they notice a Bullhead about to crash land. An armored Beowolf is seen jumping out of it before it could crash with the aircraft. More soldiers continue to fight the Paladin. The Beowolf lands on the ground and starts to chase after fleeing civilians. Weiss and Blake exchange one last look with each other before parting ways.

Weiss: Be safe.

Rein: I'm gonna try and help the civvies.

Sharing a nod the three split up, Blake runs just outside the dining hall. However, she stops when the Beowolf from earlier latches onto the side of the building above her. Her attention is then drawn away from the Beowolf when she hears a wounded scream inside the burning interior of the dining hall. She turns fist clenched then gives a look of horror when she sees a familiar figure throwing an Atlas soldier.

Blake: No... Adam?

Adam: *grins creepily* Hello, my darling.

Meanwhile

Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury are standing on the rooftop watching the chaos. Emerald notices that her idol looked severely pissed off.

Cinder: Damn him...

Emerald: Can't believe that Y/n was the Shadow Rose this whole time.

Cinder: He knew this entire time who we were.

Mercury: He played us like a hand of cards.

Cinder: Are you at least getting the footage?

Mercury: Unfortunately not, he hacked my Scroll and now I can't do damn thing on it. He even deleted the memory on it.