AN: So, there's this fantastic motto that Fiercesomest taught me to use while writing - when all else fails, make things worse. We... do that a lot. (Also, Fiercesomest is a sweetheart who writes a fabulous Weiss and Ruby and likes to make people blush with compliments. That fiend.)
Onward to the chapter!
Hugs,
Defenestrator
Yang's semblance illuminated the sea of rodents beneath her. Using their heads as the occasional springboard, she jumped and twisted above the Grimm rats, forcing them to rear upwards to reach her. It kept her away from those troublesome tails - she had nearly taken one to the face when she first rushed into the fray. The brawler dove headfirst at a Grimm rat, delivering an explosive punch to its eye and using the recoil to propel her backwards into yet another rat that had come up behind her. She kicked off from its nose, backflipping high into the air and peppering the Grimm below her with a volley of explosives in a wide arc.
The bright red flashes allowed her to briefly see a good deal farther out. The entire cavern floor was now a writhing mass. Yang angled her decent towards yet another rat, catching its whiskers and swinging around to jam her boot straight into its eye before unloading a full clip into its ear with her fist. She leaped back into the air as the Grimm crumpled, firing into yet another rat's snapping jaws that had appeared just as quickly as the last had fallen. A low growl escaped her. She would exterminate them all if she had to.
Weiss stood frozen in front of what looked to be a recent cave in. She'd been wandering the tunnels leaving ice markers for an indeterminable length of time. She'd only encountered one rat, which she managed to avoid by using one of her glyphs to perch suspended on the ceiling until it scurried passed, presumably on its way to whatever savage free-for-all Yang had set into motion.
The air in the tunnel was cool and damp. The piles of collapsed earth blocking the way were raw, unpacked. Weiss took a slow, deep breath, holding it for a second as she lifted her Dust-infused sword.
The blue light glinted off of a familiar, curved blade. It lay abandoned on the floor of the tunnel. The heiress's gaze flickered, taking in her immediate surroundings. A hulking Grimm rat's body lay half buried in the mounds of dirt, its back legs and tail all that remained visible. The walls were riddled with newly-dug tunnels. The dense smell of earth and the cloying stench that accompanied the soulless creatures of Grimm filled the place. There was no sign of her partner.
Weiss swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. She knelt to examine the scythe, looking for some kind of indication that Ruby had left it behind on purpose. That would be ridiculous, though; a Huntress, going weaponless in the field? Ruby going without Crescent Rose? Weiss clenched her free hand into a fist at her side so hard it shook.
Then she turned, enacting a glyph that sent her shooting down what she took to be the main passage leading away from the cave in. If Ruby wasn't dead, she was going to need help fast. And if she was, well... Weiss picked up her pace a little, dodging half-collapsed tunnel entrances and uneven boulders in the floor. She wasn't quite ready to think of giving up.
Blake sighed. Another dead end. She and Ruby had been creeping around these tunnels for what felt like hours. The Faunus kept her ears strained for even the slightest sounds in the distance. Still nothing. She frowned in confusion. The rats had been mysteriously absent for a while now. She briefly wondered if they were off chasing something- someone else.
Treading softly nonetheless, she brought them back to the four-way crossing they had just come from and leaned Ruby against the wall before unsheathing her katana. Gambol Shroud's blade bit into dirt, marking the ground near the path's opening with a large X.
Just as she moved to return to Ruby, Blake's ears picked up a sound in the distance, coming from the tunnel to their left, one they had already explored. Something was headed their way. She darted back to her team leader and pressed the smaller girl against the wall of the tunnel that led to the dead end. Hopefully the corner would keep them hidden. "Ruby," she whispered, "stay quiet."
Ruby started to say something but it turned into a wordless whine. She ducked against her teammate and closed her eyes.
Time lost all meaning to the brawler performing her fiery waltz through the air. Fighting like this was comforting in its own way. The rage kept her from thinking about anything but the battle at hand. Kept her from worrying about Weiss, and Blake... and Ruby. "She's gonna be FINE," she shouted to no one in particular, accentuating the final word of her sentence with a vicious left hook, straight into the eye of the nearest Grimm rat.
She punched too hard. Yang's arm sank nearly halfway into the creature's skull, gauntlets catching on the edge of its eye socket when she tried to pull back. It only took her a second to fire off a round, forcibly ejecting herself from the now-dead Grimm's cracked cranium, but it was a second too long. Another rat caught her arm square in its teeth, biting down with a vice-like grip.
The brawler whirled around and snarled, throwing her free arm up into the Grimm's nose and firing a full volley directly into its face. The rat threw its head to the side before crumpling, tossing Yang in a high enough arc for her to hit the wall of the cavern with her feet, and vault back to the ground before rolling between endless clawing, scratching feet into a full sprint.
She spared a brief glance at her left arm as she tore through the forest of claws attempting to crush her. It hung limp from her side, riddled with holes from the Grimm's teeth. Well, this was no good. She leaped over an oncoming tail. Time for a change of plans. She slid to avoid a pair of teeth before firing a shot to her side to deter a rat that was about to step into her path.
Yang used the force of the shot to alter her trajectory, now running towards where she remembered seeing the cavern walls from above. If she couldn't fight, she could at least lead them on a wild chase.
There were arrows carved in the tunnel floor. Weiss wasn't sure how many she had missed before she noticed the markings-she'd been travelling fast. Too fast, apparently, if she'd missed such a detail, but at least she had to be getting close.
... that's what she thought anyway before she skidded to a halt in the middle of some kind of crossroad. Myrtenaster cast enough light for her to note three tunnels branched off in different directions in front of her. Her helpful arrow seemed to have been replaced with a useless X. Which way was she supposed to go? She scowled with impatience, pausing for a second to catch her breath. She was going to have to be careful about expending so much energy on her glyphs all at once down here.
Peeking out from behind the corner, Blake nearly did a double take. Relief washed over her the instant she recognized the icy heiress standing not 15 feet away. She pushed away from the wall, keeping one arm around Ruby, and hissed in a loud whisper, "Weiss? Weiss - over here!"
Weiss snapped into a defensive stance at the sound, her sword flaring with blue light as she prepared to flash-freeze whatever had found her. She caught a glimpse of amber eyes. "Blake?" she lowered her guard and stepped forward, lighting the mouth of the tunnel they'd been hiding in, "Ruby! What happened?"
Ruby was of course in no shape to explain. She lifted her head a little and mustered a pained grin, "Hey, Weiss. You... look kind of blue."
"You insufferable dolt, do you have any idea how-how-" Weiss stopped when she noticed how flushed the younger girl was. Her silver eyes were dull, and Blake seemed to be the only thing keeping her from toppling onto her face. Just... what? Confused, she glanced at Blake, noting the black bandage on the Faunus's head.
Blake took note of the confusion in the heiress's gaze. Her features darkened. "Ruby's been struck by a Grimm rat's tail. I don't know what it's doing to her, but we have to get her out of here, now." She glanced around the corner. If Weiss was here... She expected to see a blazing ball of yellow running towards them at any minute, but she saw only empty tunnels. Amber eyes glanced back at blue. "Is Yang with you?"
"No," Weiss dodged her eyes as she moved to help support her partner. "She... stayed behind as a distraction."
The words came out almost automatically as she assessed the younger girl. Ruby's head hung low and she wasn't even trying to keep her feet under her. There was some kind of gash in her leg that was seeping blood. Probably where she got hit with the tail. Her skin was blazing hot to the touch and her breathing came in quick, uneven gasps. Weiss got her arm around her partner's waist- she was heavier than she looked. "Ruby, if you even think of stopping breathing, I'm going to kill you."
"Hey, I... missed you too," came the pain-choked response.
"Seriously," Weiss growled. "I will kill you."
Blake watched the exchange with a small smile. It disappeared when the reality of Yang's whereabouts fully registered in her brain. Her partner was still down there somewhere? Alone? The blonde was formidable to be sure, but she was also terribly, dangerously reckless.
She pushed the nagging worry away - Yang was more than likely just fine, she had to be, but Ruby... A thought crossed her mind. "Weiss - how did you get down here?" Hope sparked in her chest. "Do you know the way out?"
"Of course I know the way out," Weiss scoffed. She gestured back down the tunnel with Myrtenaster, the soft wash of blue light sparkling in the streak of frost she'd left on her way into the crossroads. "I trust you two can hold together long enough to make it."
Ruby roused herself enough to grip her teammates' shoulders. "Blake, what... what's with the bandage?" Red streaked the heiress's white combat skirt where it had brushed against her leg, "There's blood- are you okay?"
"It's yours, you dunce," Weiss hiked Ruby's arm up a little farther over her shoulder, darting Blake a look that said, "We'd better hurry."
Running was starting to get old. Aaand tiring. Yang's legs ached. She sprinted alongside the wall of the rounded cavern, leading the horde of rats behind her in a never-ending circular chase. These rats, she decided, were really really stupid. Sure their size was formidable, sure they had lots of teeth and claws and a tough-as-armor fur and deadly spiky toxic tails.
Honestly though, if they weren't en-masse, these things would be a joke. After firing behind her to bolster her speed and keep the rats interested, Yang checked her ammunition. She was dangerously low on both regular and explosive shots, which limited her options to no small degree. Anxiety began to creep its way through her rage. She wasn't sure how long she could keep this up.
Before she could continue that unpleasant line of thought, the brawler's blazing semblance suddenly reflected a wall of red eyes shining right in front of her. Part of the horde must have circled back around. Yang grimaced. Maybe these things weren't so stupid after all. Not wanting to waste a shot just on changing her running trajectory, Yang dropped and slid beneath the first rat of what could have been hundreds for all she knew. She dodged a claw, ducked under another, sidestepped chomping jaws aimed at her injured arm, evaded two tails aimed directly at her head. There were just too many threats at ground level.
The brawler knew that she needed to get back into the air if she was going to have any chance. Yang jumped over another tail aimed at her knees, using one of her few remaining shots to give her a height boost. She nearly missed the second tail coming at her from her left. Caught mid-air on her injured side, the brawler twisted and barely blocked it with her right arm's gauntlet only to be thrown back from the force of the blow, directly into the wall. Red stars flashed behind her eyes upon impact. Yang slid to the ground, dazed but coherent enough to register the horde closing in around her. She threw her good arm out in front of her, ready to make one last stand… while sitting.