Inside Pyrrha and Emerald ran to the elevator.
"We have to warn the others that they're coming," Pyrrha said. Her heart rate was up after that.
Emerald nodded.
They got in the elevator, and Pyrrha dialed Jaune, Oscar, and Ren.
Oscar answered. "Pyrrha? We've just got online."
"The doors seem to be open," Jaune said. "It must have gone okay for the others."
"That's great," Pyrrha said. "Bad news...Cinder and Watts are probably coming. We couldn't stall them that long...and I didn't get the Lamp back..." She hesitated, but if she outed Emerald, the others would be angry. "Also they may have found out about part of our plan."
"That's not good," Ren said. "Did they use it already, then?"
"It doesn't matter," Pyrrha said. "You have to hurry. Cinder could arrive at any moment."
"You guys are okay, right?" Jaune asked.
"Jaune, you're live," Ren said.
"Oh...okay...uh..." Jaune cleared his throat.
Oscar took the scroll off speaker.
"You guys are coming, right?"
"Yes, but we might be late," Pyrrha said.
"Maybe you should just meet us outside then, where the doorways are," Oscar said.
"All right," Pyrrha said.
She hung up and sighed. "They should have just enough time."
"Why did you do that?" Emerald said, looking at her strangely.
"Huh?" Pyrrha said.
"You just covered for me," Emerald said. "And you gave Cinder the Lamp...why? I literally helped get you killed. Why would you give that thing up to help me?"
"I..." Pyrrha hesitated. "Because, it doesn't matter what you did... You're with us now. I always work to protect my team. And I shouldn't have left you alone. That was stupid. So it was my fault also. I was careless before. We should have run before Cinder saw us."
"That's just as much my fault as yours," Emerald said. "I don't know if I would have bailed you out if our positions were reversed."
"I guess it's lucky for you they weren't, then," Pyrrha said warmly. "I suppose you don't have to thank me, but should we really argue about this? We have to get out of here and help the others guide people to the doors."
"Yeah..." Emerald said.
The door opened, and they walked out.
"But you know...she's...going to come after you now," Emerald said slowly. "I know Cinder... She won't stand for anyone one-upping her. I just...can't believe she almost killed me. Mercury was right, that SOB..."
Pyrrha felt a little sorry for her.
"I don't care if Cinder wants to kill me," she said. This was not quite true. "I suppose she will...but she would come after my friends anyway, so it's the same danger no matter what...and she would have learned about you eventually. She just...will never understand why what's she's doing is wrong, will she?"
"I don't even know why she's doing it," Emerald said. "Why she doesn't seem freaked out about this. Or did she not buy it?"
"Maybe she didn't, but you can't...save her," Pyrrha said. "Leaving Salem is a choice you had to make for yourself, isn't it? No one could make you. If she really wanted to, she would go."
"Like you'd all let her join you," Emerald said. "You could never forgive her for the stuff she's put you all though. Or me..."
"I don't know whether or not to forgive Cinder," Pyrrha said. "I haven't given it any thought. But I don't know if I put you in the same category... I'm not happy with you--" She shrugged. "--but all of us have made so many mistakes...it's getting hard to tell who is and who is not beyond repair. The General....Well, anyway, if you left Salem. I think you're as much on our side as some of the rest of us are. Not all of us like Ozpin anymore, but we all still agree she's worse. I guess that's where it is."
"But I just sold you all out," Emerald said.
"She was threatening you..." Pyrrha said. "It's...not the same thing."
"You're nuts, Nikos," Emerald said. "I thought you were just some stuck up, famous girl before, but you're really just out of this world weird, aren't you?"
Pyrrha shrugged.
Emerald sighed. "But then, I just almost died because of the one person I used to trust the most..."
She wiped some tears away. "So who am I to know?"
Pyrrha felt sorry for her again. But she didn't know what to tell her. This was...a little bit outside her expertise.
There was not much time to talk about it anyway.
* * *
What had happened to get team RWBY to the point of making the portals had been comparatively smooth to their friends.
Penny was able to fly all of them up into the Vault after they were brought close by the ship.
Fria wasn't doing well in this time, though. She kept fading in and out of consciousness.
Shine shook her head.
"I don't like this," she said. "This plan. It's problematic to use portals like this, but also I feel like we're using Fria... This could kill her."
"But she'll die anyway if we don't get out of here," Blake pointed out. "This way we have a chance. And you don't have a better idea."
"Without more methods of transportation..." Shine trailed off.
She didn't like how Ironwood had backed them into a corner.
"She just has to touch it, right?" Penny said, helping Fria over to the door.
Fria looked up like she recognized this place.
"It's been a long time..." she said vaguely.
"I do feel a little weird about this," Weiss said to Yang in the background. "She's just...so frail. Also using the Staff is going to be tricky."
"We don't have a choice," Yang said. "No time to be second guessing now."
Fria put her hand on the door. She knew to do this.
"What are we using the Staff for?" she asked, suddenly more lucid.
"To...save people," Penny said, before wincing.
"Oh, good." Fria nodded.
The door glowed, radiating magic that Shine could feel from where she was standing, and opened.
To Yang it looked much like the one with the Relic of Knowledge. Except it was grassy, not desert.
Which...made not a lot of sense, really. These areas did not match the theme of their cities at all.
"Miss Likstar, what is that?" Ruby asked Shine. She was the only one standing close to her.
Shine's eyes gleamed.
"That's not Remnant," she said. "I can tell you that much... Whoa." She walked up like she was fascinated by it, to the other girls' surprise.
She stopped right in front of the doorway. "This is not the same world, is it? That's how Ozpin hid them...a pocket dimension...or maybe just a door to a remote part of another dimension period."
"What?" Yang said.
"Yeah," Shine said. "What the heck, Ozpin? Why didn't he explain this before?"
She turned to frown at them. "There was more to that story... Oh, when I get my hands on him I'm going to have so many questions."
"Join the club," Blake said dryly. "But it sounds like you have personal experience with this...?"
"So is it safe?" Penny asked.
"Safe?" Shine almost laughed. "Of course not Nothing about dimension travel is safe. If you're lucky it's good... I suppose you've all come too far to go back now... Careful, though, if that door shuts while you're inside, it could be years before you get out, in your time...or ours."
"What?" Blake said.
"Why do you know all this?" Yang narrowed her eyes.
"It's not obvious?" Shine said. "Considering how I slipped up before, I thought you'd have put it together. I'm not from your world either."
Of course Yang should have guessed...but somehow she'd pushed that idea aside even if she'd had it.
Ruby, Weiss, and Blake all stared at Shine.
Fria looked at her and smiled. "Of course you aren't."
"I did think her readings were a little different than yours," was Penny's contribution. "But no matter. We should hurry... Ow..." She winced.
"Go," Shine said.
Ruby shook herself. "We'll have to ask her about it later," she said. "Come on."
They all slowly stepped in the doorway.
The strange thing? They could almost feel it was somewhere out of their world... The air was full of energy. Maybe it was the magic, but it didn't feel like Remnant...almost too clean.
Weiss resolutely stepped up to the Staff and picked it up.
"Ambrosius?" she said.
Smoke came out of the Staff and began to take the shape of a male figure...though not quite human looking, Shine thought.
Also...not wearing clothes.
The girls gaped at him.
"Goodness," Fria said.
Then she sighed. "I'm tired..." She sank to the ground.
Shine pursed her lips and began to pray a bit.
Then she called, "Tell that spirit to put some clothes on, for the love of decency, and get on with it. Stop gawking."
Ambrosius cast her an odd look but then turned to the girls. "Well, finally, it seems someone has come to engage my creative wiles!"
He crossed his arms. "Please do not tell me it's something as simplistic as a floating city this time? Because let me tell you, that took about the imagination of a gnat to pull off. Not even a gnat, a molecule, an atom's worth of imagination." He paused. "Then again, atoms make up the universe, so perhaps that's not the best metaphor--"
"Hi, um, Mr. Ambrosius?" Ruby interrupted him. "Sir, listen, it's about our friend... She's...she's dying."
"I'm going to go ahead and assume that you know that it's against the rules for me to bring people back from the dead," Ambrosius said, rather dismissively. "So--"
"Liar!" Shine called.
Ambrosius starightened. "Who is that impudent little girl over there?" he said.
"That's just...uh..." Blake said. "Just ignore her."
"You tell that enslaved excuse for a spirit that if he keeps up with those stupid rules, I'm going to come in there," Shine called. "And his dumb masters aren't around to stop me."
Ambrosius winced. "Pleasant, isn't she?"
"She has a thing for insulting the gods," Weiss said.
"Well, it's not like they're around to care," Ambrosius said casually. "What do you want me to do? Because I can't bring people back from the dea--"
"We know!" Weiss said impatiently.
"That's not what we want," Ruby said. "She's...not your typical girl."
[Penny: #notlikeothergirls.]
"If he was all-knowing like that other genie, he'd know that already," Shine called.
"Don't bring her up!" Ambrosius took that personally. "That know-it-all probably wouldn't even be able to create a rock!"
"Creating a rock is actually much harder and more time consuming than you might think," Shine replied.
"You're not helping!" Yang snapped at her.
"Neither are you," Shine replied.
Ambrosius grew tired of this and flew over to inspect Penny himself. He formed some kind of optical tool to do so.
"Seriously," Shine said, "put on some clothes."
"I don't make the modesty rules, sweetheart," Ambrosius said. "Also, why are you not being affected by the time dilation?"
He examined her with the scope also.
"Oh...I see." He backed up.
Then he turned back to Penny. "Hmm...she really isn't human! But with an Aura? I'd love to meet whoever did this."
"One would think the Relic of Creation would be more concerned with people ruining their own souls for these inventions," Shine remarked.
"I don't make the rules about that either," Ambrosius said. "Anyway, I see, there's something eating away at her. I'm guessing you think you have some clever plan to save her. Just know, I will give you exactly what you ask for. And I don't want any complaining when it's not how you wanted it."
"Monkey's Paw," Shine called. "But hey, at least he's warning you up front. I didn't seen Jinn doing that."
"Because Jinn doesn't have to," Blake said. "She just gives us exact knowledge."
Shine laughed. "You think Jinn gave you the full story? Do you people not understand how this works?"
Weiss opened up her scroll's file.
"We brought her schematics," Ruby said. "We want you to make a new version of her, using her exact same robot parts."
Shine sat down on the doorstep to listen to this.
"That was...curiously worded, girl," Ambrosius said.
"An exact copy of her would include the virus," Ruby said. "An exact copy of her without the virus would cease to exist the second you made something else."
Shine interrupted there. "Question: Why wouldn't that happen also with anything else you make? It's still a work of the Staff."
Pause. [Yeah, bet no one on the writing staff realized that little logical error they made.]
Ambrosius frowned. "Dang it, here I was hoping no one would notice that."
"But..." Weiss' face fell. "That was our only idea."
"I think the solution is simple enough," Shine called. "Ambrosius just scanned the virus, didn't he? Now let me see if I have the rules right. You can't destroy, right?"
"Nope," Ambrosius said.
"But you could create something that would destroy, correct?" Shine said.
"Theoretically," Ambrosius said.
"All right, ladies, here's how we solve this one," Shine said. "Instead of trying to do the impossible and make Penny a body--something that has every cell in it more complex than one of your high tech air ships and towers combined, and that this fool here could not possibly replicate, which is why he can't raise people from the dead, no doubt--start with something simpler. Have him create something that will draw the virus out of Penny like a magnet and then can be detached from her and destroyed. Within a few minutes. Like a reversed charging cord, perhaps."
"But Penny would like to be real," Blake said.
"If Penny is real as she is now," Shine said, "that is as real as she will ever be. He can't make her what she isn't. And neither can you. You would be arrogant to think you can replicate human beings, creatures made in the image of a Being you cannot possibly comprehend. You can't understand yourselves--do you think you could create another perosn? I'm sorry, but it won't work. No blueprint on the planet could make a human being."
[And that right there is why that solution was so stupid. It's easier to bring someone back to life than to make them a new body. That would work with existing information--a new body has to invent it... There's just no way it could ever happen. Also it was vague, which went against the rules they just established two seconds ago. It was a clear plothole that the writers didn't even both to try to make sound convincing. Ruby literally just says "get creative" to Ambrosius, when that is exactly what he says he cannot do--because he has to give them exactly what they ask for. That's the opposite of creative! And that's in the same freaking scene... This is why I gave up on Volume 8...]
"Whoever she is, she knows her stuff," Ambrosius admitted sourly. "I can't make a human being, she's right... Too complex. Only gods can do that."
"In that case, Shine's solution seems the smartest one," Blake said. "We have to put the virus inside something else... I mean, we could ask him to put anti-virus software in her, but it would vanish as soon as we use the Staff for something else."
"Yeah, we need to remove the virus quickly," Weiss said. "Can you do that?"
"If you had a model it'd be better," Ambrosius said. "But yes...theoretically...magic works differently than regular machines, so I could make something that could do that." [Can't be stupider than the show's idea anyway.]
"If I'd known you girls had that idea before, I would have said something then," Shine said. "But you discussed it so quietly."
"Okay, okay," Yang said. "How do we get a model for the virus remover?... Would a magnet work?"
"You could try downloading it," Shine said. "Transfer the file with the virus to something else... How the frick did you think Watts got it onto her?"
"Penny can connect to computers," Ruby said, getting more into this. "Yeah, that could work. Okay..."
Weiss used her scroll. "Here's an image of a USB," she said. "Can you make something like this that will let us transfer the virus from Penny to this? Completely."
"I suppose." Ambrosius sounded bored. "It's really a pretty basic request. I'd think you could have done this yourself without my help."
"We didn't have anyone with the expertise," Blake said.
"Because you forgot about Pietro..." Shine muttered.
"Okay, just do that then!" Weiss was getting bored.
"Wait," Shine said. "Tell him it has to be one that can fit into Penny's port."
"Right," Weiss said. "It has to fit her."
"Dang it," Ambrosius said.
Then he waved his hands and formed some kind of object in them.
It looked like an USB, but bigger and with a port that Penny's hand could attach to.
"There." He rolled his eyes.
Ruby took it.
Ambrosius vanished back into the Staff.
Time resumed, and Penny began to twitch again. "Ow..." she said. "I...can't...keep...fighting this..."
"This better work," Weiss said.
Ruby ran up to Penny.
"We couldn't make you a new body, Penny," she said, "but here, this should take the virus out of you. Plug into it."
Penny looked at it oddly, then she put her hand on it.
Her eyes flickered red-green-red-green for a few more seconds...
Then she calmed down.
"I can feel it going..." she said. "Like something is clearing from my server..."
"How long do you think it will take?" Weiss asked.
"You had better wait at least several minutes," Shine said, looking at Fria, who now was back to looking frail and confused.
"What were we doing in here again?" she asked.
"Can I ask how you just came up with that right off?" Blake asked. "I didn't think you even liked the Relic, and Ozpin's only just explained the rules. It took us a while to think of that."
"Experience," Shine said. "I'm pretty used to the whole Moneky's Paw riddle aspect of all this. Don't you girls ever read fairytales? Everything always comes down to how well you can understand the law of it, not just bare facts."
"Is there some course you took for all this?" Yang said.
"In a way, I guess," Shine said.
"I wish we could take it then," Weiss huffed. "I'm so tired of all this cryptic stuff."
Time ticked by.
"So you're from another world," Blake said, by way of passing it.
"Yeah." Shine figured it was past the time when keeping this hidden would matter. "Not like this one..." Nodding at the door. "But different in its own way."
"How did you get here?" Weiss asked.
"Doorway," Shine said. "Much like this...but better."
"But...why?" Ruby asked.
"I suppose the same reason you just crossed that one," Shine said. "It's my task. My mission. Wally's as well. We do what we do. Why do you do what you do?"
"To save people," Weiss said, "I guess...and to stop Salem."
"Those two things are not necessarily the same," Shine replied.
"You sound cryptic too," Yang huffed. "Just like Ozpin...so did he know?"
"It looks that way," Shine said. "At least, he knows we are. We told him."
"Why him?" Blake asked. "And not us?"
"You weren't ready to hear it," Shine said. "I'm not sure you're ready now, but you'll hear it one way or the other."
Penny looked up. "I think it's finished," she said. She took her hand off it and waited to see if she'd do anything. Nothing happened.
"Will her body still work though?" Blake asked.
Penny lifted her arms up. "It's...not quite as smooth as before, perhaps," she said, "but I can still move..."
"Maybe Pietro can tune her up later," Weiss said. "Now that the virus is gone, it should be possible, right? But at least she's alive."
"Right," Ruby said.
She crushed the USB. "And this is gone."
"Now for phase two," Weiss said, lifting the Staff again.
"Ambrosius."
He reappeared in the same way as before.
"Ah, free to create and--it's you again." He frowned.
"We're not done with you yet." Weiss had recovered her sass now.
"Ugh, fine," Ambrosius said.
"You know considering this is the only fun he has, he's really got a bad attitude about it," Shine said. "He must just like showboating for new audiences. What were you, a dramatician in your past life?"
"That's none of your business," Ambrosius said huffily. "And what's wrong with that anyway?"
"Something tells me that the gods think creative arts and creating are the same thing," Shine said.
"Hey," Yang said, "I just realized--you're not frozen in time. Why is it that Penny and Fria are, but you aren't?"
"Just got that, did you?" Shine said dryly. "Magic doesn't work on me. Also, my job does come with a certain sense of time fluidity. I can't just be bound by your time. That includes time frozen by magic."
"Nice," Ambrosius said. "I would love to meet whoever worked out your system."
"No, you wouldn't," Shine said. "He'd terrify the chains right off of you. And you'd shrivel up into a worm."
"She's...interesting." Ambrosius backed up from her again. "Well, what do you all want now?"
"Other than an explanation for what that was," Blake said, "we need to evacuate Mantle."
"And I have a plan." Weiss opened up her blueprints again. "Provided this one will work." She shot Shine a look.
"From what I hear, it should comply with the rules," Shine said. "I can make no promises beyond that if it will work. Depends on the people."
"Great," Yang said flatly. "Let's try the quick version: Can you make a bunch of doorways in Atlas and Mantle that open at a single spot each in Vacuo, Vale, and Mistral?"
"Sure! I'll just need specs and coordinates for each door, an explanation for bending time and space to account for the much greater traffic on one side, and a single point of exit on the other."
"Okay, that's about what we expected," Weiss said. "Except for the part about bending time and space..." She cast the others a strange look. "Who said anything about that?"
"Portals bend time and space," Shine said, in a tone that implied they were ignorant for not knowing that, "because they allow you to go instantly outside of time to any point, without having to travel the space at a rate that you couldn't even at high speed. It's why when Wally goes really fast, he can phase through worlds because he's going so fast as to make the space he's gone over almost non-existenct. It's called a tesseract, a square that you square 5 times. When you get to the 5th time, you add the element of speed to it. I'm not sure why. Some scientific things I can't quite grasp."
"What?" Blake said. "I mean seriously, what did she just say?"
[Also how the heck did the girls know what bending time and space was in the show when they'd never been told about it at any point? Logic!]
"Okay, listen carefully to what I'm going to say." Shine stood up. "He doesn't need coordinates like latitude and longitude--portals work by image, so he only needs a map of Mantle and Atlas. Tell him to put a door on...oh, one out of every 10 or 20 streets around the trench and in Atlas also. The exit point will be each school in the other kingdom, which you should be able to also show him on a map. That's the easy part."
Weiss and Blake both pulled up images quickly to show him.
"As for space time," Shine said, "the reason that portals work the way they do is because they take you outside of your time in your world, through the place without time, which most of us call a pocket dimension--or Ultimate Reality, depends on how you use it--and then drops you back into your timeline. You will not feel any sense of time while it happens because of that. But I have had times where my portals got slowed down because of interference, and I did experience it as a tunnel. Some tesseracts take that form, but even slow they are faster than the speed of light. You just may not perceive it that way... If you can't time it for all these people to get into, yours is going to have to be slower than mine, because otherwise it will close too fast."
"Okay, okay." Weiss put a hand to her head. "So how do we slow it down?"
"What if," Yang said, "instead of taking everyone through the...pocket dimension thing you just said, we just take them through a place like this?" She gestured around at the grassy area. "It's not Remnant, so it should be safe. It could be like the station for the train. And then they go back out. Each door can be color coded. Yellow for Vacuo, Green for Mistral, and Red for Vale. Blue for the ones that are going out of Atlas. Should be easy to remember."
"Okay..." Ambrosius said slowly. "You kids are either smarter, or much more foolish, than you realize."
"Yang, this is a pocket dimension," Shine said, like she was dense. It's the second one, she thought to herself in annoyance.
"Oh," Yang said. "Well, fine...but it's safer than what you were talking about, right?"
"Not at all," Shine said. "My portals are connected to Ultimate Reality, which, while dangerous, is much safer than a pocket dimension because it will always direct you back to one of the realities you can live in. They are all based off of it. Portals that conduct you to pocket dimensions only are much more dangerous because you can get trapped in them. Or they can have holes to other dimensions because they serve as bridges between them. I have one I can go to, but it's also based on Ultimate Reality that I know outside of it, so it's not unstable...otherwise it would be dangerous to use."
[You can read my Worldcrossed Story part 1 for more info on how this works.]
"I have no idea what you just said," Weiss said.
"That's the problem!" Shine said. "It takes years to learn how to do this properly, and you've had minutes. You have to try to follow what I'm saying or you're going to screw this up."
"So can we do the subway station thing or not?" Yang asked.
Shine sighed. "If it's all you can think of, it's better than leaving it open ended. People could just fall out of reality if you did that."
"She's right," Ambrosius said. "Portals are very dangerous. I wasn't going to point that out, but since she said it already...are you sure you want to go ahead?"
"We have no choice though," Blake said. "All other methods of escape were destroyed...so let's just do it this way."
"Yeah," Weiss said. "It'll be a one-way ticket to the other kingdoms, you see?"
"Okay." Ambrosius looked at her plan.
He got busy creating.
[Now if you've read any of my other stories, you know that I came up with this lore about dimension travel ages before Volume 8 came out, and I've read up on it quite a bit.
While it's theoretical, there are basic rules about it that people can agree would probably have to work if it was a real thing.
My issue with Volume 8 is that it spent no time whatsoever on that. The girls don't have to learn how portals work at all, and even when it's acknowledged that there's dangers to it, like not falling, they don't take time to wonder what that really means.
I get so sick of shows messing with things they can't understand and don't have the capacity to try to explain. Even using sci-fi logic requires some imagintaion and intelligence to make sound plausible, which is why sci-fi fans spot fakers a mile away. Otherwise, why would some things that used to be science fistion, like hoverboards, now be real? Sometimes you can be prophetic with fiction, if you're smart...but when you're stupid, it's just insulting to those of us who actually take it seriously as a creative art form...ugh...]
A shimmering, blueish light doorway appeared behind them, next to Shine. She stepped back. She could feel the magic coming from it, making her skin crawl.
"That looks a lot like yours," Ruby said.
"Probably because it was your imagination," Shine said, "and you've seen mine."
The girls started to step out of the Vault.
"Well, everything seems to be in order," Ambrosius said. "You were quite thorough, disappointingly so." He shot Shine a dirty look. "Of course, it's cheating to have someone who does this for a hobby here."
"Not a hobby, you arrogant prick," Shine said.
"Oh, and one last point of clarification about this 'central location' of yours--" Ambrosius said as the girls were just at the door. "Do not fall," he said with dead seriousness. He vanished and the door shut.
The girls looked at each other in confusion.
"Right..." Weiss said. "What does he mean 'do not fall'?"
"Sounds like the inside of that thing must have a hole in it," Shine said. "Or a cliff."
She studied it. "Yeah, don't fall."
"Why? What would happen?" Blake said.
"Strong chance you'd fall forever," Shine said. "If I know my lore. Or if not forever, then for a long time. And who knows where you'd land. Well--" She sighed. "--I don't like it, but this is where we part ways. I'll meet you ladies in Vacuo."
"What about Fria?" Penny asked.
She was lying still.
"My portals are rough," Shine said, "and not good for magic... If I take her with me, it could kill her now...so..."
"We take her with us," Weiss said. "Well, I guess the central location won't be that exciting, so it's probably fine."
"I'm going to wait for Winter here," Shine said. "Once she's safe, I'll leave. Unless I end up needing to do something else first...but don't worry, by the time Atlas is hitting Mantle, I'll be long gone. Wally and I are pretty good at escaping."
"Yeah...just be careful," Ruby said.
They took Fria and walked through the door.
Inside it was even stranger.
Shine was right--there was a hole...under the whole floor.
And walkways were going all over it, leading to other doorways.
Color coded as requested. One for each kingdom.
"I just hope the others got everyone organized into groups," Blake said.
"Even if they didn't, it won't matter that much," Weiss said.
They already saw some of the Happy Huntresses slowly making their way in.
Gradually other people began following.
* * *
Jaune, Oscar, Ren, and Nora had all managed to finish the message just barely before it got cut out.
True, Jaune only got as far as saying the doors would take them to the schools, and not far enough to say anything about the organizing part...but at least it was something.
"Maybe we can organize it from the inside?" Oscar said.
They headed to the door nearest them.
Pyrrha and Emerald met them there. They were staring at the door in wonder.
"Are we sure these things are safe?" Emerald asked. She looked horrible, like she'd been knocked around a bit.
Pyrrha's hair was also coming kind of loose without her tiara to hold it in place, and she looked as if she'd been running.
"I thought you guys weren't going to fight," Ren said.
"We...didn't plan on it," Pyrrha said.
"Oh my gosh! Are you okay?" Jaune asked.
"We're fine!" Pryrha said more sharply then she meant to, but she was afraid of outing Emerald at this moment and wanted them to stop asking.
It took them aback.
"We just need to go," Emerald said.
Then she shook her head. "But we lost the Lamp--I lost it."
"We didn't think you were going to get it back," Oscar said.
"We almost did," Emerald said. "But I...got caught."
Pyrrha glanced at her in surprise.
"Well..." Ren said slowly. "It's to be expected it wouldn't be that easy... At least you got away."
Emerald looked guilty.
"Where's Hazel and the others?" she changed the subject.
"I guess they'll follow Winter to the Vault?" Jaune said. "There's a door down there, obviously, for the other team. Up here is too risky. Cinder could show up any second. So we'd better go."
"Can't she just follow us anyway?" Oscar asked.
"Let's hope she'll hesitate to do that..." Ren said.
Although why, they had no idea.
"Do the doors shut once no one is on this side?" Emerald said. "Like that lady's?"
"I don't know," Jaune said. "I guess it depends on what the girls told the Staff."
Slowly they all walked through.