Blake Belladonna, museum
Blake deflected the first volley of arrows with a deft double-sweep of her off-hand sheath, raising her weapons to meet Cinder's attack. For a moment the two women were a blur of whirling blades and flashing energy, with Blake blocking and parrying Cinder's strikes, ducking under those she couldn't block, forming clones to intercept those she couldn't duck.
The onslaught was too much for her, though, and she was soon on the defensive - it was taking all she had just to evade, let alone counter-attack. She tried to trap Cinder's blades in an ice-infused clone, only for the older woman to simply dissolve the weapons and reform them. Blake had lunged to strike while she was distracted, and instead left herself open to a volley of Dust projectiles.
Even though her Aura absorbed the damage, the impact sent her staggering backwards. Another clone was sacrificed to buy her time to turn the stumble into a backwards roll, landing on her feet again, but Blake knew she had to regain the initiative if she was going to stand a chance. Cinder was clearly hurting from her battle with the unknown third party, but Blake had never been a face-to-face brawler.
As the pair re-engaged, Blake leaped into the air, as if to bring her blades down on Cinder from above. However, at the apex of her jump, another clone materialised, again infused with Ice. Blake tucked her legs in and pushed hard off the statue's back, hitting it with a criss-cross slash, shattering the ice into a spray of fist-sized chunks and shards that showered down on her opponent. The faunus herself flipped backwards, arcing until her feet and one hand touched the wall behind her. Pushing off a split-second later, she was once again arcing over Cinder's head, firing Gambol Shroud's pistol down at her as she flipped, before landing gracefully behind her, leveling her gun in the woman's direction.
Her team had defeated their Cinder by working together. She was separated from the rest of RWBY, but she wasn't alone. She just had to match her until the Inquisitor or her ally with the metal plate could help.
Subaru Nakajima, Yggdrasil crime scene
Subaru crossed her arms and listened as Gerhardt described the infection, her nose wrinkling as he mentioned the smell. She had noticed it before, and filed it away in her mind for future reference. Mach Caliber was doing the same, albeit rather more literally, sending transcripts of the man's statement to the other teams mobilising elsewhere.
"Report from HQ - containment teams are standing by, local units investigating possible incidences." The device's synthetic voice chimed, giving its master cause to smile again as she turned to investigate the new arrival joining their street-side interview.
"I'm Subaru Nakajima. Thanks for coming, uh, your majesty." She replied, giving the big bird-like agent a nod in greeting. "We've got an unknown group abducting people from Mr Gerhardt's world, taking their blood and selling it as medicine. Only the blood is contaminated with the disease, and we don't know how many people have been infected - although it can't be that many, or the UMMA would have noticed by now..." She trailed off in thought, rubbing her chin.
"There must be a way to cure this disease." She said, frowning in determination as she looked up again. "The UMMA has access to medical technology from thousands of worlds. If we can find the people distributing the blood, we can end this before it even becomes a real outbreak."
