Earlier, before Jay and Alice launched into the woods, Porfirio, who was standing at the head of the line of the group, was sent hurtling into the green expanse of the Emerald Forest. As he soared, he flicked his wrists, and the bracelets around them suddenly flared with brilliant violet fire, engulfing the entirety of both his arms. He gathered a large amount between his hands before lobbing it along his flight path, clearing a large opening. He landed with a crash, extinguishing his arms before beginning to run forward, into the woods. The appearance of an Ursa stopped his progress, towering over him and roaring at his presence. Porfirio merely smirked at the beast.
"I would not wanna be you today!" he shouted, before leaping into the air to dodge the creature's initial swipe. He spun while airborne, before igniting the anklet around his left leg as he extended it, bringing the limb down in a harsh kick to the Ursa's head. This flattened the beast, carrying its entire body down with Porfirio as he landed. He then slipped the burning foot underneath the beast's chin, performing a backflip kick, completely obliterating the weakened skull of the beast, the rest of the corpse falling to the ground and fading away. Porfirio put out his leg before turning to meet another Ursa, this one far smaller. Porfirio laughed at the creature. "Did I kill your papa, little one? It's alright, everyone gets a turn!" he said. Before he could move in to attack, a hook on a chain flew out of the woods, wrapping around the Ursa and dragging it into the treeline. Porfirio moved to see where it was headed. At the other end of the chain was Sienna, the compact motor on the back of her dress winding the chained Grimm towards her. She pulled her large bat off her back, and readied herself. Right as the Ursa reached her, she pressed a trigger on the handle, and a shotgun blast rocketed the bat forward along her swing arc, knocking the beast free of the hook's grasp as it finished winding back up and soaring into the air. She spun the bat around in her grasp, and it morphed into a pump-action shotgun as it rotated. She promptly re-primed the gun before shooting the Grimm out of the air, the buckshot annihilating a majority of the Ursa's upper body.
"Yeah! Hook, Line, and Sinker! Oh, hey P! How're you doin'?" Sienna shouted giddily before zooming over to the faunus.
Porfirio groaned at his new partner's pun. "You have got to stop talking to my mom."
"Heh, sorry," she said, before immediately snapping to another topic. "Looks like we're partners, huh? Sorry, I'm sure you wanted to-"
"Relax, Sienna, relax. Don't get too wound up. And it's fine, Amber can handle herself plenty well." He smiled at the shorter girl. "C'mon, the relic's gotta be this way."
"Kay!"
"Oh, and Sienna, please don't take my kills again. Kinda made a bet with Donnie earlier."
"Heh, alright. You're better at killin' 'em anyway."
"Damn straight!" Porfirio said as his flame-engulfed fist went messily through the head of a Beowolf that had leapt at them from the treeline. "C'mon, let's get moving."
Nero was launched shortly after Porfirio, and in midair, drew his shortsword in his left hand, and his concussion gun in his right. As he reached the treeline, he ground the blade into a nearby tree, decelerating him to the point where his landing was smooth and flawless. He flipped the blade into his standard reverse grip, and flipped his headset onto his head. Holstering his gun, he started a playlist entitled Kinetic before running full tilt into the forest. He kept the volume low enough to still faintly hear his surroundings, the reasoning for this making itself apparent as he was forced to come to a stop as a pair of Beowolves dove at him from the brush. He sidestepped the first, and caught the second's maw with his blade. He pressed a trigger on the blade, unlocking its position along the track built into its circular guard, and quickly flipped around to the back of the beast with the blade still in it's mouth. He fired his concussion gun into the back of the beast's head, the force of the wave throwing the monster's head the rest of the way through his sword. The second wolf charged, and Nero ducked, firing another blast upward to suspend the beast temporarily, before spinning his blade rapidly and using the momentum to lop off its head.
After picking himself off of the ground, Nero heard further rustling to his left. When he gazed through the gap in the foliage, he did indeed see further Grimm in the clearing. However it was what else he saw that surprised him more. By no means was an Ursa Major an easy bounty, and Nero wasn't even aware they lurked in the Emerald Forest. However, the seven feet of sharpened steel being pulled out of it's bisected corpse, and the several other fading and similarly mutilated corpses seemed to disagree with Nero's earlier notion. The blade was hoisted to rest on a brass shoulder plate, and golden feline ears twitched in response to stimuli. The armoured faunus sighed before making a motion to follow towards where Nero was lurking.
"Nero, get out of the damn brush. And turn that shit down, it's bad for your hearing."
Nero waded his way out of the opening, making brief eye contact with Amber as he pulled his headset off his ears. "I happen to have it at around 25% right now. Maybe your ears are just too good, Am."
Amber chuckled in response. "Maybe, maybe. I do have 4 of them after all."
The two laughed heartily before Amber made the same motion to follow from earlier. "C'mon. I don't wanna be the last person there."
"You even know where we're going?"
"No, but I figure if we wander around, eventually we'll find a corpse trail that'll lead us in the right direction."
Nero flinched at the morbidity of the statement. "Y'know, sometimes I forget you were a terrorist."
Amber merely chuckled again. "You'll have to tell me how to do that sometime."
Standing in a clearing far from the launch point was a ruined building, circular in nature, with a plethora of 'relics', which were merely 2 complete chess piece sets, scattered about it's base. When Jay and Alice broke the treeline, they immediately rushed for the structure and scanned the objects placed there.
"You sure this is what we're here for?" Jay asked, puzzled by the presence of chess pieces in the woods. "I mean, chess is old, but it's not like it's ancient history or something. Hardly constitutes as relic status."
"Yeah, I'm sure." Alice said, pondering over the selection of 'relics' before them. "Yang told me about her initiation a few months back. They had chess pieces as well. I'd bet my legs that these are what we're looking for."
"Well, we're taking the Black Queen then." Jay said, plucking it from it's place.
Alice giggled at her partner's choice. "Why specifically that one?"
"'Cause the Queen's the best piece! Plus, I'm quite fond of the colour black."
"I'd make a comment about how I'm dressed in all white, but because I don't actually know what that is, I'm just gonna roll with your pick."
Jay laughed, but then immediately snapped her attention to the sound of rustling at the treeline. What worried her was that Alice was not doing the same. Does she not hear it? Jay thought, preparing for combat. She was instead surprised to see a pair of swordsmen, well, a swordsman and woman, emerging from the brush.
"See Nero? I told you I'd find it."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. All it took was actual war theory."
"Actual war theory that worked." Amber turned her head to the ruined building, seeing Alice and Jay there already. "Oh, hey. I was under the impression we'd be the first ones here, judging by how quiet it was."
"Nah, did you really think you'd outrun someone who can fly?" Jay said, sticking her thumb toward her wings. "Sorry, kitty cat, but I won't be beat in a contest of speed."
"We'll see about that. One of Nero's mothers' semblance is pure speed after all. He's pretty fast on his feet. Plus, Porfirio can even teleport, so there's that."
Jay scoffed at her friend. "Y'know, that black ops training they programmed you with is shining through. That was the most efficient assassination of fun I've ever seen. Kill confirmed, asshole." She smirked and extended her hand for a high five, which was reciprocated with a clank as their armoured hands collided. "Glad you made it out here."
"To be frank, I'll be embarrassed if anybody doesn't. These cannon fodder are frankly boring me."
"Ah, getting a craving for the most dangerous game again, eh kitty cat?"
"No, just disappointed it's the same Grimm I spent a year killing by myself. I'd kill for a little variety."
"I'm just glad it's easy" Nero interjected. "No one's gonna get hurt if they're half as good as us."
"I'd settle for a quarter of the cat's strength to be frank" Jay said, turning to Nero. "Didn't figure you as a swordfighter, Rose."
"Hey, I have this too" he said, hoisting up a handgun-like apparatus that resembled a speaker. "I'm no one trick pony."
"Grimm, exit stage left!"
The sudden exclamation and the sight of a Beowolf missing at least two thirds of its head soaring from the treeline and landing in a crumpled heap several yards away temporarily put the group on edge until Porfirio, arm still ablaze, walked with Sienna out of the forest. Sienna rapidly zoomed to the relics, while Porfirio moved to talk to his sister.
"You make it here alright Amber?"
"Kill count, Porfirio?" Amber said, not breaking eye contact with a white pawn piece she held in her hand.
"Uh, twenty-one?"
"Twenty-four."
"Fuck!" Porfirio shouted, turning away from the group. He walked over and grabbed the same piece as his sister, stopping to look at Alice.
"How're you holding up, butterfly?"
"Thirty-seven."
"I fucking hate all of you."
The riotous laughter was interrupted when what appeared to be an Ursa Major with brown markings broke the treeline. While that alone wasn't strange enough to abate their fire, what was was the fact that Donovan and Jahim seemed to be riding it. They ground to a stop, hopping off the Ursa before turning to the group.
"Are these the relics?" Jahim shouted, a worried look on his face.
"Y-yeah," Jay said. "Someone wanna tell me what the fuck just happened?"
"Later. Jahim, grab the Black Queen and let's move! There's no time to waste!"
"What do you-"
A chorus of growls cut off Jay's inquiry, as a horde of what looked like no less than seventy Beowolves ran from the treeline, several armoured Alphas at their front. Jahim claimed the chess piece before hopping on the Grimm.
"Go, run! The school is this way! Follow us!"
The Ursa took off charging away from the group, and the rest, not wanting to be stampeded, followed suit. Alice and Jay ended up hopping onto the seemingly friendly Grimm to keep up, whereas Amber, Porfirio, Nero, and Sienna were simply fast enough to outrun the horde. The group came to a bridge over a small canyon, which lead to a cliff face that would be their salvation. As they reached the midpoint of the bridge, however, a new obstacle made itself apparent; two heads, one black, and one white, coiled their way out of the rubble on the other side of the bridge. A King Taijitu the size of a large building slithered it's way out into the open, making its presence known. This made Donovan pause, before halting Tania's process. Amber and the others turned to look at him.
"If the wolves get to us while we're fighting that thing, we're going to get killed," he said. "We'll handle the wolves. The snake is yours."
Amber nodded before running forward, the others following suit. Jahim and the others on Tania's back hopped off, leaving only Donovan on it as they exited the bridge and faced the oncoming horde.
"You sure about this Don?" Alice asked. "'I'm picking up quite a few of them."
"I'm sure we can handle it. It's just another hunt." He readied his giant, two-headed spear as he prepared his Grimm mount for a charge. "And don't call me Don."
"Roger, boss." Alice replied, drawing two guns. Jay's helm snapped shut, and Jahim's rifle's chamber clicked shut, a fresh crystal loaded in.
The four charged forward, meeting the horde head on in a hail of gunfire and blade strikes.
Amber, Porfirio, Sienna, and Nero all reached their end of the bridge, facing the enormous threat before them. They all readied their weapons, before the Taijitu finally noticed them, and hissed violently at their presence.
"This looks like it's gonna be tough" Nero thought out loud.
"No."
The others turned to look at Amber. Her face was contorted into a wicked-looking, yet composed grin, her eyes opened wide. The once shining gold pools were now a fierce crimson.
"This is where the fun begins."
