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I walked through the woods, breaking twigs and crunching fallen leaves as I made my way to the target spot. Emma, who was right behind me, made a point of constantly reminding me that we should be quiet as we made our way to the creepy looking candy house, standing on the sort of Cliffside near it to get a good view. I mean, who even has time to build a whole house out of actual candy, and in the forest no less? I guess in the long run; it didn't end up mattering. I pulled Titan's Razor off my back, cocking it as I started on my way up to it before Emma stopped me.

"Hold on." She placed her hand on my shoulder, "We shouldn't just walk right up to her doorstep like that. We should figure out a better approach."

She was actually kind of right. The woman in this house was unpredictable at best and really dangerous at worst. But I had a few ideas. "Don't worry about it," I started that way again, on my way to the front, "This is a better approach." She groaned, begrudgingly following me to the door.

We positioned ourselves at the sides of the graham cracker door. I squeezed my rifle in my hands, preparing myself. I nodded to Emma; she nodded back. She pulled out her Guan Dao- Scholar's Boon- and loaded a cartridge of Lightning Dust into the bottom, then some Fire Dust behind it. I backed up, now standing in front of the door with my body low. She went around to a sugar glass window and shot a blindingly bright flash of Fire and Lightning in, followed closely by me kicking the door in.

I aimed my rifle around, and this place was suddenly a lot less cheery. The outside was candy or at least looked the part, but the inside was all old, rotted looking wood, even the sugar glass windows looking dirty and stained. There was a rusty cage in one of the corners and, my God, it was littered with human bones, and the walls were stained with visceral blood splatters. There was a furnace too, a pretty old looking one, at that. Next to it was what looked like a pile of black, oily rags, maybe to start a fire with. But there was some God-awful screeching coming from the cloth pile, so I took a few steps forward, keeping my rifle trained on it.

Turns out, that heap of black rags could float. It turned to face me, and I shouldn't have been that shocked to see it wasn't actually a person we were dealing with. It was a Grimm, like one I've never seen before in my whole life. It had a mask with a long beak on it, like those bird masks doctors wore during the plagues. Its arms were long and lanky with claws as long as my fingers and looking as sharp as my sword, the arms themselves longer than its roundish body that looked like a wad of black wraps. It shrieked at us, and it turned out it could move pretty quickly.

I raised my sword as fast as I could, blocking a furious series of swipes from its razor-sharp claws. I pushed it back, not bothering to aim as I shot at it from the hip. Three of my shots flew through it, but I actually couldn't tell if that hurt it or not. It swiped at me again, hitting me across the cheek. The cuts burned like its claws were heated knives slicing at me, just for my Aura to protect me. I fell to the dirty ground, pulling my rifle up to shoot at it some more. It backed up, finally telling me that getting shot at least hurts for it, and it wants to avoid it.

Emma came up at it from behind with her Guan Dao, thrusting with it and stabbing into it with her blade, which came out the other side. She flung it back into the furnace as it shrieked before slamming the iron grate on it shut to trap it. If she doubted it would turn on, I certainly understood. She pointed her Guan Dao at it, spewing a cone of fire from the nozzle next to the blade into the furnace. The thing burned up quickly, screaming for what felt like ages before it finally died.

Emma walked over to me, helping me up off the ground. "Still like your plan?" She raised an eyebrow at me.

"Well, we're alive, aren't we?" I wiped my cheek, the grime from the floor smearing against my nice white shirt. I looked into the furnace, expecting it to jump out at us, but was actually pleasantly surprised. The inside of the furnace shined brightly, and I opened it up to see what was going on. Low and behold, on top of a pile of ash sat a whole stash of white, shiny pearls, along with some other valuable looking stones. I picked up one, looking at it to see if it was real, not that I could tell. "Ain't that a bitch...?"

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A river stopped us next, the water reaching for far enough to make the opposite shore a far sight. The water seemed pretty deep, and I could see the shadows of something that was swimming through it; probably a Devil Fish or God damn Cthulhu. That'd be typical.

There was a boat nearby on the shore, with a Faunus lying down inside it. He had white feathers on his arms and presumably the rest of his body. He had a straw hat with a red band around it, and a brown vest with a green undershirt underneath. His pants stopped in the middle of his calves, and he wore shoddy brown sandals on his filthy, dirt covered feet.

He lay back in his boat with his hat in his face, snoring like an Ursa. I rocked the boat with my foot, shaking him awake with a startle. "Oh!" He stood up, "Hey there! You need a ride across?"

Emma kept her eyes on the woods behind us, waiting for the next Grimm to jump out. "Yeah," I nodded to him, "We do. Any way you could help out?"

"For some Lien, I'll do anything I can, my man." He grinned a shit-eating, greedy grin. Of course, he was going to try and squeeze us for some cash, the people in places like that tended to do that sort of thing. Plenty of locals were looking for nothing more than some protection of course, but others liked to take advantage of the high Grimm count, taxing people every step of the way for security or services. The scum of the earth, I swear...

"Fine," I took a few of the pearls out of my pocket, planting them in his hands. "Will that be enough?"

"Almost..." He started eyeing Emma, "I can think of something else you could maybe pay with. Maybe you let me have some private time with her, save you the money-"

I grabbed his collar, stepping into his boat after him and forcefully shoving him back near the nose of the makeshift ferry. I precariously leaned him toward the edge of the vessel, his eyes widened at me in shock and horror as he was currently just a slightly slacked grip away from being Devil Fish food.

"I could row this boat myself, got it?" I glared at him, "The only reason I'm paying you is that I would prefer to get out of this without any blood on my hands. But I swear to God if you talk about her like that, you're a dead man." I threw him back into the boat, wiping my hands of the filth that was on his vest, and he immediately got to the ores.

"A-Alright!" He panicked, "B-But this thing can only carry one of you at a time. I-It's not a very sturdy boat, you see..."

"Fine." I stepped out of the boat. "Em, you cross first." She nodded, and I looked back at the ferryman. "I'll be watching you." He nodded quickly, and Em sat in the seat across from him, and he started rowing.

Suddenly, there was a loud, familiar growling in the brush behind me. I didn't bother to count all the Beowulves that I saw when I turned to look, but there was also an Ursa of considerable size. Not much variety, just your average Grimm pack. Good thing too, I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to handle it if there was a Nevermore, or God forbid, a Goliath. I suppose in retrospect that maybe it wasn't the best idea to scare the Faunus like that, knowing that negative emotions attract Grimm like moths to a flame, but I don't regret it to this day.

I took a knee, putting the closest Beowulf in my sights and pulling the trigger. A series of 7.62x39 bullets flew into it, turning it religious (or hole-y, if you will) before setting my front sight away from the one I just killed and onto the next one. They all were charging after me now, so I made it a point to be quick about gunning down each one. The Ursa would be more difficult because they take more shots to put down, but that practically goes without saying. I was out of ammo in my current magazine after a few more Beowulves, and with them on top of me now, it was just me, my sword, and the remaining Ursa and four Beowulves.

If there were ever a good time for my Semblance to decide to work, that surely would have been it. Aura Manipulation is cool and all, but it's not so good when it only occasionally lets you tear your enemies down. I supposed I would have to deal without it like I've done every other time.

I stood my ground, not being stupid enough to charge into them. I reared my sword back, ready to give a hefty swing to whatever decided to come at me first. I have to say though; I'm still glad that Em spat some fire from Scholar's Boon, or I'd be a goner. The flames erupted between them and me after my sister fired balls of flame over the river like a mortar, creating a beautiful wall that kept the Ursa at a bit of distance, as well as a couple of the Beowulves.

The other two of them decided to use their heads and go around the wall, coming up on my flanks. I hopped back away from the swipe of one's claw, countering with my sword. It raised its arm up to defend itself, which I gladly hacked off in the very same motion as its head, severing it from its torso with a hideous growl coming from it before it started to fizzle.

The other one was a bit faster, making me have to block instead of dodge. It's claw planted on the side of my blade, which I tossed to the side so I could move up behind it, slicing it horizontally across into two uneven halves. Beowulves were generally easy to deal with, thankfully for me, but this Ursa would be a whole other story, not to mention the other two lackeys.

The bear monster braved the flames, charging through them with some new burns and scorch marks right at me. I rolled to the side, instinctively slicing another Beowulf's head in half when it came at me. The Ursa came back with its big claw, batting my sword to the side when I tried to block, putting me in a spin as I held onto the handle, not wanting to drop my weapon and get myself killed.

When I stopped spinning, the last of the Beowulves swiped at me, hitting me across the chest. I sure as hell wasn't going to fall flat on my back, so I rolled when I hit the ground. It came at me again, and I drove my sword up through its head, cutting it down across its torso when I pulled it out.

Now it was just the Ursa and me. It lunged at me to bite, and I went around the side of it to avoid and open an opportunity to slash it across the front, giving it a deep gash. It growled or roared, or whatever a bear does and turned around quickly to smack the hell out of me with its claw. That did a good job of knocking me to the ground, and I could tell my Aura was running out quickly based on the fact that that claw hurt a lot more than usual, which meant I was going to start bleeding soon, and that'd be bad.

Emma kept up the support, shooting a bolt of lightning at the Ursa, hitting it square in the side and knocking it over long enough for me to put some distance between me and it. I loaded a new magazine of hollow points into my rifle, cocking it and taking aim at the Grimm. I shot probably a quarter of my mag into it before it started to look like it was hurting from it. Getting a little impatient, ambling toward it with a slight limp, I unloaded my whole rest of the mag into its body and head until it keeled over and died, fizzling into black smoke.

The boat came back, the side of the ferryman's face marked by a red handprint. Emma, who was waiting for me on the opposite side where there thankfully wasn't any Grimm to speak of, must have smacked him in the face after he tried something stupid. I briefly considered killing him, but he unmistakably learned his lesson already.

I hopped onto the boat right when three more Beowulves came sprinting out of the bushes, and thank God he was so quick to start paddling away. Just to make sure they don't try to swim at us or anything, I kept up the heat, unleashing the trusty old "Spray and Pray" method. Another one went down, and the other two stopped at the edge of the river. I assume that's because the Devil Fish or whatever was in there was fierce enough to keep them away from me; I've heard before that Beowulves can swim with no problem if it meant getting a human to snack on.

Thanks to me only bringing three mags, I was nearly out of ammo with just about a fourth of a clip left. The duck took me to the other side of the river, and I hopped off, feeling pretty tired after all those wolves. I didn't say goodbye as we walked along on our way to the town, and Emma shared my sentiment or lack thereof at least. It'd still be an hour or two before we made it there, but I was sure pretty sure we could go it without encountering anything else.

I was sorely mistaken.

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