Chapter 2: The Storm
Jaune Arc
12:00pm,
Alliance Trenches,
The Divide
Jaune's throat was ridiculously dry. In fact, he was pretty sure that it had never been this dry in his life. Then again, he was about to charge over several hundred metres of open ground, so maybe it was the fear that was doing it to him. If so then he was glad it had manifested as a dry throat and not wet pants.
"Now that would have been embarrassing." He thought to himself.
Someone down the line gave the order for something to be done. Jaune wasn't really paying attention.
"Okay, we all ready?" He asked, turning to face Pyrrha, Ren and Nora.
A chorus of half hearted agreements greeted him and he struggled to remind himself that he had to be strong for them. But he found that difficult to do as he looked around at their faces.
Nora's hands were trembling, Ren was resolute but pale and Pyrrha, well Pyrrha just looked determined. Jaune hoped he looked determined as well, and not terrified like he really was.
"Paladins charge on my mark!" Came Cyrus' voice from somewhere down the line.
Tense seconds ticked by, and Jaune was aware of every little sight and sound, magnified through the very real fear of imminent death.
"Go go go!" Cyrus commanded, and the sound of Atlesian machinery filled Jaune's ears as the huge Paladins climbed over the trenches and into no man's land.
"First wave ready?" Cyrus called out, the first wave were the robotic knights "Charge!"
The sound of machinery once again filled Jaune's ears as wave after wave of Atlesian Knights climbed out of the trench and began jogging towards the bridge, leaving enough time to draw the enemy's fire and for the human soldiers to catch up and use them as mobile cover.
"Right, we're next," Jaune said, half to himself "remember, stick together, keep an eye out for Glacial Frost and make. It. To. Cover."
Boom!
Jaune flinched as the ear splitting sound rolled over the trenches and he knew without seeing it that someone he knew had just died.
"If I lose any of them.." Jaune thought to himself, glancing back at his team.
Then Cyrus gave the order to charge and Jaune had no more time for thinking. He heaved himself out of the trenches, held his white shield in front of himself as he waited for his team to follow him, before peaking around the side of the shield to see the battlefield.
Hell. That's what he saw, hell. Lines of gleaming white robots, some spattered with red, marched across the open ground, firing at the town as bullets zinged off of their carapaces and punctured their internal workings.
Two Paladins were down, their chassis blown out of shape by something that must have carried a massive force, Jaune had no idea what that something was but he was pretty sure he didn't want to find out.
Then of course there were the dead and the wounded. And it actually wasn't as bad as Jaune had feared. He made out a dozen or so Alliance soldiers scattered on the ground, some of them dead some of them not.
He couldn't worry about them now though, he had a mission and a team to take care of. And with that thought he let go a battle cry and began running with his shield raised and his sword in hand.
Bullets winged past him and threw up puffs of dirt near his feet, as he ran to the knights. A few slammed into his shield, causing him to stumble. He quickly regained his balance as his heart tried to leap out of his chest and risked a quick glance over his shoulder.
Nora was right behind him, her head down and Magnihild, in its grenade launcher form, held tightly to her chest. Pyrrha and Ren were behind Jaune and to his left, mirroring his approach. Pyrrha's own shield was raised and thanks to her semblance, the bullets streaking towards her never even touched it, they simply changed course mid flight, flowing around her like water.
Jaune reached the Knights and ducked down behind them as his team caught up and did the same. He poked his head above the robot army for a brief second, surveying the battlefield and trying to figure out where Glacial would be hiding. He didn't have to wait long.
Boom!
A white line, the trail of a high caliber bullet, streaked through the air and slammed into an Atlesian Paladin. The Paladin's cockpit exploded in a mess of grey machinery and a spray of bright red before the whole machine was hurled bodily backwards.
Jaune ducked back down, his stomach doing nest little flips and took a moment to steady himself.
"Cyrus?" He said into his radio, as he continued to keep pace with the slowly advancing Knights "We've found Glacial and we're about to hit him."
There was a moment of crackly static before Cyrus replied.
"Good! Put the bastard down!" Cyrus coughed, as men shouted in the background "Before we run out of Paladins!"
"Roger that sir." Jaune replied, turning to face his team "Okay, here's the deal."
His team mates all looked up at him expectantly and grasped their weapons tighter.
"Glacial is in that tower overlooking the bridge, it's the tallest one in the town so it shouldn't be hard to spot." Pyrrha, Nora and Ren all nodded to let him know they were following "Pyrrha and I are going to set up a shield wall a little way back to protect Nora while she sends a couple of grenades over towards the tower. Ren, your job is to suppress Glacial while we get into position and to stop him from-"
Boom!
"Taking out anymore of our guys." Jaune finished with a sigh before asking "Ready?"
They all nodded in reply and Jaune gave the word.
Jaune and Pyrrha charged out into the open, keeping their shields between them and the town and making sure that Nora was safely behind them the whole time. Ren meanwhile leaned out from behind the Knights and began firing short, controlled bursts over towards the tower with his twin machine gun pistols, StormFlower.
"This is good!" Nora called out, and Pyrrha and Jaune planted their feet in the earth and hunkered down, making doubly sure that their shields covered as much of their bodies as they could.
Nora meanwhile, had transformed Magnihild into its warhammer form and was busy loading a red canister into it. Something which Jaune assumed was extra flammable, or 'explodey' in Nora's case.
Magnihild clicked and Nora stood, raising the hammer over her shoulder like a baseball bat. She took a couple of deep breaths, fixed her gaze on the tower in the distance and nodded.
Jaune and Pyrrha drew away from one another to give Nora a clear shot and she swung Magnihild with all the strength she could muster, sending a bright red grenade whistling away at near supersonic speeds.
Jaune smirked, Glacial didn't stand a chance.
Glacial Frost
12:00pm,
The Town,
The Divide,
Boom!
Glacial's ears rang as he pulled the sniper rifle's trigger and sent both another bullet speeding away and another Paladin tumbling down. He swept the barrel of his rifle across the battlefield, searching for his next target, and smiled when he saw the silver-white armour of a captain glinting in the sun.
He levelled his sights on the captain's head, took a breath to steady his aim and pulled the trigger.
Boom!
The rifle bucked in Glacial's hands as it sent a high caliber round screaming off across the battlefield.
The captain however, either sensed the bullet coming, was alerted by the noise of the rifle or was just extremely bloody luck, as he moved at the last second, cheating death by a few centimetres at the most.
Glacial cursed and followed the captain, chambering another round into his rifle and preparing to take another shot. The captain ducked behind a line of knights and began weaving back and forth between them, denying Glacial a clear shot.
Glacial checked his remaining ammo, saw that he still had another twelve rounds to spare and decided to take the shot. He squeezed the trigger and three gleaming, white knights exploded into thousands of pieces of twisted metal, though the captain escaped unharmed.
Glacial loaded his rifle again, cursed and looked up to check on Mellow. The young soldier was lying next to him with a grim expression and one eye squeezed shut. Every now and again he would fire off several shots in short, controlled bursts, felling enemy soldiers and keeping others suppressed.
Satisfied, Glacial turned his attention back to the captain, looking down the scope of his rifle once again and spotting the man amidst the rows of the now battle damaged and dirty Atlesian Knights.
The captain was yelling something into his radio and not one second later a hail of bullets slammed into the floors and walls around Glacial.
"Shit!" He yelled, ducking his head down as Mellow did the same.
The bullets let up for a second and Glacial and Mellow rolled away from one another, taking cover behind the walls of the tower as another hail of bullets slammed into their hiding place, shaking loose showers of splinters and riddling the tower with holes.
"Where the hell did that come from?!" Glacial asked, more to himself then anything else.
Mellow grimaced shrugged in reply. He had one hand pressed to his side, which was soaked through with blood.
"Oh shit," Glacial exclaimed "you good?"
"Flesh wound sir," Mellow grunted in reply, as Glacial tossed him a medical bag "I'll be fine."
Mellow rummaged around in the bag and pulled out a roll of sterilised bandages, whilst bullets continued to chew their way through the building around them.
"Jesus, does this guy never run out of bullets?!" Glacial complained, as Mellow finished bandaging off his midsection.
The two soldiers sat silently, patiently waiting for the storm of bullets to pass. After several minutes Glacial grew bored with waiting and decided to see who was doing all the shooting. Bullets or no bullets he wasn't going to let his men fight to the death without him.
He eased the barrel of his rifle around the corner of the building and brought the scope up to his eye, keeping as much of himself behind the wall as he could. After several seconds of sweeping the battlefield with his gaze he finally located the source of his and Mellow's suppression.
A black haired, green clad boy, who looked strangely familiar, was busy firing short, accurate bursts of gunfire at them from behind a group of advancing Atlesian Knights.
"Well hello there." Glacial muttered, noting the purple streak in the boy's hair "Kids are getting awfully colourful these days aren't they?"
He levelled his sights on the boy's chest, feeling a pang of regret but knowing that the boy was most likely more Huntsman, and therefor killer, then boy and was about to pull the trigger when something caught his eye.
Behind the sharpshooting teen were a duo of overlapping shields, one white and the other red. Glacial frowned and as he watched the shields parted, drawing away from one another to reveal another teen. One holding a giant hammer. A giant hammer which she swung and which in turn fired an explosive round straight towards Glacial's position.
"Oh shit!" Glacial yelled, scrambling to his feet as the round sped towards the tower.
Mellow saw the incoming explosion and the two men ran for the tower's stairs, hoping to escape the imminent explosion. But they were too late.
The round struck the tower and impacted with devastating force, tossing Glacial and Mellow about like rag dolls and peppering them with shards of wood and molten metal. The tip of the tower collapsed sideways, sitting at a slant as the roof burst into flames and sent debris cascading down its sides.
And when the dust from the explosion settled, the battle continued to rage.
