Chapter 8: NOVA

(Arcee)

I was in a bullhead with the response teams on my way back to Atlas. That was the second big attack in less than two days! But It was the White Fang this time. And they were knocking on Weiss' front door. Blake and Weiss were the most upset about this, but why the former was so worked up was beyond me. I would have to be careful not to overexert myself; regardless of who they were, they were still Faunus, people. Unless there was no other way, killing was out of the question.

I began to attempt contact with the guards on the ground. "This is Beacon response team to ground. Beacon to ground. Do you read?" Static. "Ground forces this is Beacon response team. Please respond, over." Static. Then a voice came through.

"This is Sargent Marco, Schnee security. I read you loud and clear, over."

"This is Arcee, from Strauss Laboratories with Weiss Schnee. We're approximately four minutes out and we need an idea of what we're facing. Over."

"It's bad. They just came out of nowhere! No! Captain Isaac is down! I repeat! Captain Isaac is down! He was dueling with that Fang leader, Boris and some other guy jumped in and stabbed him in the back!" There was a series of horrified gasps on the other end, "Scratch that! He just took down Boris too!" A horrifying screech nearly overloaded the mic on his end, "No! What the hell are you?! Stay back! Stay-", the line went dead. Everybody was listening in over my shoulder.

"Do you think it's a Grimm?" Weiss asked.

"I don't think, I know it's a Grimm. We're here!"

The door opened up and all of us piled out of the bullhead. The situation here was very identical to Marcus Maze's Lab attack. The siege here was happening right in front of us. The soldiers, once fighting as a group, scattered around the compound, breaking into separate fights. But there were a few of the soldiers that had completely forgotten about the siege and were trying to get to safety. I even saw a Fang and a Guard standing back to back as they turned corners. I fired up my jetpack and dropped beside them, causing both of the paranoid soldiers to take aim at me.

"Hey! Chill out guys, I'm a Huntress." The faunus walked over to the wall and slid to the ground in exhaustion.

"This was not in the job description!" the guard looked around in panic.

"There's no point in even being here with that guy...thing running around here! No one's ever defeated Boris before!" the faunus hyperventilated.

"Calm down, both of you!" Weiss, joined me, "Once this thing is brought under control we will assist the wounded without discrimination."

"Why the hell should we believe you, Schnee?" he growled until I set my Gauntlets to cannon mode and he shut up.

"Right now, neither side of this fight has the luxury of bickering among themselves", I clarified, "If you all don't leave or do something productive you might-"

BOOM! The building behind them exploded, throwing the faunus back towards us. At the exact same time, seven other explosions went off around the compound.

"The hell?" The Fang guy rubbed his head, "Those were our issue explosives, trigger detonated! This was a Dust retrieval mission, not an all out assault!"
I activated my semblance and scanned the compound. A single figure leaped out of one of the burning structures.

"I don't think the White Fang is in control of this fight anymore," I stopped the scan, "it's that thing! The one from Marcus' Laboratory!"

.

(Oblivion)

This entire exploit was working out even better than I'd predicted. The Fang's forces and Bullheads were shot, and The Schnee factory and security force was in just as bad a shape.

Chaos, destruction, fear. My work here was done.

I almost let my Grimm form disperse but I was interrupted.

"YOU!" a familiar voice called out to me. I turned around to see the giant gauntlet girl from that ragtag team that I met in the labs not long before.

"You guys have a bad habit of following me around. That's rather rude of you."

"You have a habit of bringing disaster behind you", she snarled, "Did you cause this?!"

"So what if I did? It doesn't concern you."

I dodged out of the way of the robed girl's strike and she, said, "You're right! It concerns all of us!"

"Ah, the famous Valentine Vance of Mistral. I didn't recognize you before."

Pain shot through my right shoulder as an energy arrow shot down from the top of the warehouse, a good distance away.

"That actually hurt you know", I said as my arm secreted black smoke and healed, "Since you all seem to want a fight, I won't have any choice but to leave."

"Guys, I found him! Everyone close in on my position, but use extreme caution. It's a special case." I narrowed my eyes. I saw a shadow in the doorway behind me and I dodged out of the way of a bullet coming from a girl in black.

I dashed for the other door and collided with a girl with fiery yellow hair. I dodged a punch from a pair of Vulcan Gauntlets (as I liked to call them) and slipped past her in the hall, quickly losing them.

No one had seen my natural form yet, so all I had to do was get out of here alive and then I could live a semi-normal life. I was only moments from that. I had reached the exit and I breathed in the cool night air without stopping. There was a full moon. But before I could take to the skies, a gale of rose petals blew past me. I stopped dead in my tracks in surprise. I hadn't accounted for this last one to be trailing me. I had to think fast.

I coiled my tail around myself as a first line of defense. I had to think like the predator that I had become, not prey. The rose petals got caught up in the wind, blowing in front of my face. One blew across my eyes and a red and black figure now stood in the tree behind it. Rose petals flowed off of a red cape and hood. The aura coming from this girl was indescribable. Something about her stood out from the others. I flipped open my claws. She smiled, then disappeared in a gust of rose petals. I leaped up just in time to dodge three gunshots from my right. I saw her and she had a sniper rifle in hand then she disappeared again. All of a sudden there she was again, coming right at me from the complete opposite direction! No one on earth could be this fast. Her sniper rifle twirled in her hand and changed into a giant red scythe, a beautiful weapon in every sense of the word.

She met my blade with hers and I caught my first full glimpse at her face. I was surprised to find that this girl was only fifteen, two years younger than her fellow team mates. My eyes caught her finger moving towards a trigger, and I realized that this weapon, even in this form, was still a gun, and that its previous form only suppressed its kick. I ducked as the scythe sliced over my head with extra force. Using another shot, she darted off in a circle around me, rose petals forming a cyclone in the air. I could barely see her now. It would only be a matter of time before she did a complete ninety degree turn back towards me. No sooner had I thought that, she darted in, scratching my right shoulder. I winced but barely dodged the second. The third time came, but this time I stretched out my tail and tripped her. She rolled to a stop with her scythe ten feet away. My Grimm side began to take over a little more. I walked over to her, picked her up and held her against the tree.

"You have heart, human. You put up a hell of a fight." My tail stretched out and put the point close to her neck. "I admire your skill, and at such a young age too."

"Let her go!" a girl's voice called. I turned around to see the two girls and the guy I saw before, plus seven others. I whirled around and held a blade to Ruby's throat.

"Don't come another step closer. I don't want to have to do this to someone with her talent, but I will if it means getting out of here." The girl in yellow and the guy with the orange hair prepared to fight. But a girl in white stepped forward.

"You had your chance to fight and you all let him slip away", then she said to me, "Despite the fact that you are a Grimm, I can only assume that you have the decency to accept a challenge."

I removed my tail. "A challenge?"

"Right. You let Ruby go and you and I will fight, alone."

"Weiss, don't!" Ruby said, "Get Professor Ozpin if anything. Don't fight him!" I released Ruby and let her run back to the others.

"I accept, but the others may not interfere."

She nodded and turned to Ruby, "I've never let the team down before," she drew a rapier and pointed it at me, "and I swear on the name of Schnee that I won't start now."

My inner Grimm was pleased by this. The others ran off to the entrance of the building.

"Weiss, is that it? You're even more guts than Ruby", I flipped open my claws, "But I see an problem between us. I was wrong in what I said last night. One of my concerns does involve you. Prepare yourself, Weiss Schnee! Today I shall have my revenge!"

I dashed forward and scissor sliced with my claws. Without hesitation, she back flipped, kicking my blades away. A glyph formed on the ground at her feet and she practically flew forward towards me. A glyph semblance. We parried twice before she backed off. She didn't rely on surprise like Ruby did. She was an upfront fighter, just like me. And she fought with a type of elegance that I had never seen before. It completely contrasted my primal fighting style. On the next attack, her sword glowed red and my attack was completely repelled from the blade. It was like a trampoline. The glow faded, leaving me to wonder just what the heck that was.

A yellow gear glyph formed at her feet and she dashed forward with blinding speeds. I tried to pull the same trick I did before, but she completely dodged my tail. Not only was she moving fast, she could see where she was going. I struggled to hold her back before the glyph's affect faded. I then snapped out my wings and zipped into the skies. I needed to come up with a plan. But before that could happen, Weiss had jumped up there to my height. I growled and zipped away again, and she responded by mid-air glyph jumping to me again! I dove back down and she followed. Only this time she got a little too close and I swiped at her left eye. I made a light scratch, but she screamed, backing away in shock.

I noticed that there was an old scar over that eye, and I must have opened it up again.

Like all Grimm, I could smell the aura coming off of her. I sensed pain in every sense. Perhaps it was from childhood. Whatever it was, it was somehow related to that scar.

"So you know pain", my Grimm muttered loud enough for her to hear, "Betrayal, broken heart. On the inside you and I are essentially the same." A tear dripped down her face as she stabbed her sword, now glowing in a multicolored fashion, into the ground.

"Bastard! Don't ever attack the little pride I have left!" the ground in front of her exploded as an underground glyph sent fragments of stone into the air in front of her. A black glyph caught it all then turned red as she rapid fired earthen shrapnel at me. I gritted my teeth as I realized my fatal mistake. She twirled her sword and I noticed how a part of the hilt twisted around to turn the blade into the same color as one of the many points on the dial. A ring of glyphs appeared around us and she bounced from glyph to glyph, attacking me as she went.

"We. Are not. The. Same!" she said in between slices, not giving me a second to recover. "Unlike you, I'm not a soulless monster!" she zipped past me, doubling her speed and landing a successful blow against my left shoulder. The last glyph turned black and she stuck to it. Her blade turned blue, shooting out a line of ice on the ground, freezing me from the waist down. Her blade glowed white and the glyph went red as she struck me before I could register it. My chest exploded in my own blood and the ice shattered, allowing me to fall to my knees. My Grimm receded leaving me there to bask in this pain. I couldn't do anything but curl my tail around myself as I collapsed in the fetal position, all Grimm features, save for the tail, fading away. I lost. Weiss knelt down beside me knowing full well that I wouldn't dare get back up again. Finally my mask had disappeared. Weiss gasped silently as she saw that I was in fact a human (at least she thought I was a human).

"I told you that I know pain. I was betrayed, just like you were. They turned me into this", I coughed up blood, and all went black, "We...are..the same."

(Nimbus)

It was Oblivion himself! I knew somehow that he was involved in the lab assault, but I never imagined that he was the Grimm who attacked the lab. That explained why he wore the mask. I dropped beside Weiss as she knelt down beside him.

"Why?" she asked to no one in particular, "What would drive one man to do all of this?"

"Ha ha! We've got them on the run! but they're sending in the big guys to cover", Nora said over the radio.

"Then we send in our heavy hitters!" I responded, "Yang, Nora, and Jaun, you guys get in there."

"But Nimbus, you said to save that for a later time!" Jaun said to me.

"Well this is different! Feel free to cut loose, Arc!"

"Jaun! It's too dangerous!" Pyrah objected.

"Let him go Pyrah. I originally wanted him to save this for when he went to spar with you again but desperate times call for desperate measures. Attention all response team! Stay out of Jaun's line of sight if you don't want to get flattened!"

"Did you train him in private?" Rin spoke up, obviously in a fight of his own, "I thought he had trouble accessing his aura."

"It's all in how you visualize it." As soon as I said that, a golden streak blasted through the wall of the building and into another. Weiss and I were blown away by the shock wave.

"What the hell?!" she complained.

"WOO-HOO-HOO! I taught him that!" I laughed in sheer joy.

"They're almost to their bullheads! Don't let them escape!" Blake commanded.

I heard a light chuckling behind me as Oblivion sat up, leaning on his elbow, "I got them." He coughed up a glob of blood before he pulled a detonator out of his jacket and pressed the button. BOOM! Four different explosions lit up the outside of the compound.

"You blew up the bullheads?" I turned to him.

"Like I was going to let those bastards get away for what they did to me. I hate them even more than the Schnee." Upon hearing this Weiss pinned him to the ground and slapped his cheek as hard as she could. Oblivion took it without even flinching.

"Tell me why!" she demanded, "What did we do to deserve this?!" a tail of a Deathstalker extended behind Weiss and hooked around her neck without hurting her.

"Are you really that oblivious to your father's dealings within the past few years? How many people, human and Faunus, died at Granite bark six years ago? Ask your father the true details and tell me why I really should take your life as recompense."

A squeak sounded off to his left as a little creature ran towards Oblivion. In response, Oblivion removed his tail and caught the creature on his shoulder.

"Grimm!" I said as I drew my bow and fired. Oblivion batted the shot away with the blunt side of one of his claws.

"Relax. He's harmless. This little slink has been my partner in crime ever since I was admitted to the lab. You did a good job out there Sly." The slink licked his cheek. Alright! I'll admit that no Grimm has ever looked that cute before. The roar of engines forced the slink to hide in Oblivion's jacket.

An Atlesian Militarty airship came in and dozens of drones dropped in to secure the White Fang.

"Alright, men we can take it from here. Excellent job!"

"Again with the flash entrance, James", Glenda Goodwitch said, "I'm collecting our groups and we're heading home."

A bullhead swooped in and landedright beside us and Oz stepped out to see us.

"Well, that was a rather surprising turn of events", he pushed up his glasses, "It's probably going to be a while before the Fang tries anything again." By now, most of the team had gone into the bullhead and were watching us.

"I have a vague idea that you were the monster from Maze's lab."

"I'm not denying it. I don't have anything else to hide", he retorted.

"I tapped into the radios and heard the whole conversation. I understand that you may feel like the victim in many ways, but that doesn't change the fact that you severely injured and almost killed dozens of people. However, there is no denying that your strength in combat is almost unparalleled", Oz helped him stand up and all of his Grimm features showed, "It would be such a waste to have someone like you locked away in prison."

"What are you insinuating old man?" Oblivion questioned.

"For starters, I'm not as old as I look. Two, I've been given the authority to let you choose your fate. Either you can spend years in prison in Atlas", then Oz gestured to the bullhead with his cane, "Or you can come to Beacon, and hone your abilities for a greater purpose. I don't think you'll get an offer like this from anyone else."

By now, everyone, was face faulting. I didn't want this guy at Beacon, specifically on my team. Oblivion was rather bewildered by this offer and stood still. Oz turned to go back to the bullhead when Oblivion responded. "Alright. I don't have anywhere else to go, so I might as well go."

"Then I wouldn't stand around there", Oz stepped into the Bullhead as it lifted off the ground, "You still have a bright future ahead of you, Oliver Eastman." Oblivion staggered upon hearing him. But he smiled as his mask dissolved, revealing a pair of eyes with bright red irises. He flipped out his wings, like a beetle, and flew up to the deck, where it all dissolved upon landing.

"So, now what?" Val asked as the door closed ant the ship took off, "Did we really just recruit a Grimm?"

"No, we have recruited a human. His powers may be Grimm based, but he is still human, and will be treated as such."

The newly named Oliver hesitated before he corrected him, "Sir, I'm not a human, I'm a half breed." A pair of pointy black antennae, sprang up from his hair which matched in color.

"Ooh! Let me see! Let me see!" Nora grabbed his antennae from behind and tackled him to the floor while he comically complained for her to stop. We all laughed.

"Case and point", Oz pointed out, "But in any case, Oliver's arrival marks a special day for three of you here." He motioned for my team and Oliver to step forward, facing him. He put his hands on the shoulders of me and Oliver, "This makes four, a full team. Nimbus Altos, Oliver Eastman, Valentine Vance, and Arcee Strauss. I am happy to welcome you fully to Beacon Academy. Together, you are now Team NOVA, led by Nimbus Altos! May your studies and exploits be used for the good of Vale and all of Remnant."

The other teams rushed forward to congratulate all of us. Oliver was probably not used to this sort of attention. We were all still very wary of him, and probobly would be for a little while.

But then I looked at myself. I was the team leader. True, we might be one of the most unusual teams that ever existed in the history of Huntsmen, but we might just be something great given time.

I just wish my father was around to see this.

(End of Chapter 8)

.

HEYOO! Beowulf is back!

I'm just glad that The situation didn't go as bad as I had thought. But don't go thinking that Oblivion...no, Oliver is going to be let off so easy. Ozpin and all of the staff at Beacon will be watching his every move, and Oliver knows it all too well. But I'm not questioning the Wizard of Oz's decision. He's a lot wiser than I'll ever know.

But I had the team name NOVA in my head ever since I decided to make 4 OC's instead of the original 2 (Nimbus and Oliver).

Back to Oliver, he most certainly not forgotten about what happened at Granite Bark six years ago, and I can guarantee that it will resurface whether any of us like it or not, but not in as violent a manner as before.

But on that happy note, it's time to go. I've got Exams this week and I'll be studying. So don't expect any new posts until after then.

But until then, this is Beowulf and the crew signing out!